When the COVID-19 pandemic came to Rhode Island, Phil Mazza feared it could be the end of the music business he established in 2017 called Providence Guitar Academy.
A few months before the pandemic, Mazza had just moved into a new location that he built out for $25,000 with a new name, Providence School of Music, hiring a bunch of new teachers to provide lessons on other instruments such as piano, violin, saxophone, drums and even the ukulele.
“I thought I could be doomed,” said Mazza, a jazz guitarist by training who studied music composition at the University of Rhode Island. “But I wasn’t going to roll over.”
Despite the pandemic, Providence School of Music more than doubled its clientele and hired even more teachers, now offering lessons both on Zoom and from its new 2,000-square-foot location in a former dentist’s office at 148 Waterman St. on the East Side of Providence. Mazza said pandemic stay-at-home orders led many people to take on music as a new hobby, and enrollment grew from 180 in early 2020 to 500 currently. The business now has 20 music teachers and a two-person office staff, up from nine pre-pandemic, Mazza said.
“This is one of the few things people can do through the computer and still actively engage with a person at the other end and get value out of it,” said Mazza, who has since resumed in-person classes in addition to remote learning.
However, it wasn’t all smooth sailing to begin with, Mazza said. Enrollment took a hit during Rhode Island’s initial stay-at-home order, growing afterward and then declining once again during a second lockdown in November 2020, he said.
“It was a crazy yo-yo,” he said. “We took an immediate 25% hit. We were down to 140 customers in April after the lockdown started. We transferred everything to Zoom, and we were doing a lot of free stuff … [such as] livestreams with kids to engage while everyone was stuck at home. Then when we locked down again in November, we lost more.”
About four years ago, Mazza said it was just him teaching guitar lessons in a low-cost subleased room at the Angel Care Montessori school in Providence.
Mazza said he decided to start the business, in between gigs and studio recording sessions with various bands, because he wasn’t satisfied with how he and other teachers were treated as employees of different music schools around Providence, where he has taught off and on since 2002.
Mazza said he started the business with $5,000, thanks to a low rent and no costly overhead, but it required him to put 90 hours of work each week into the endeavor.
“In the beginning, I was the inventory,” Mazza said. “It was a little intimidating. But I knew it could be profitable when I ran the numbers.”
Mazza said his guitar school grew after he paid for assistance designing a website, creating promotional materials and executing on “lead conversion,” teaching himself how to manage a business along the way.
“I wanted to have a school that respected teachers’ time a little more,” Mazza said. “I took the very serious mindset that I took to my music the last 20 years and applied it to business. … Building a business takes grit. I look back and just say, ‘We made it and we’re stronger for everything we went through during the pandemic.’ I’ve never been more excited for the future of the school.”
OWNER: Phil Mazza,founder and director
TYPE OF BUSINESS: Music lessons
LOCATION: 148 Waterman St.,Providence
EMPLOYEES: 22YEAR FOUNDED: 2017
ANNUAL REVENUE: $700,000
Marc Larocque is a PBN staff writer. Contact him at Larocque@PBN.com.
