Meet Lydia Velichkovski | Founder of Tribeca Music, NYC

We had the good fortune of connecting with Lydia Velichkovski and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Lydia, what was your thought process behind starting your own business?
I realized the constraint of dollars for hours and wanted to expand beyond that limitation of my personal hourly schedule. I also enjoy learning new things, so learning how to start and run a business felt exciting and fun for me.

What should our readers know about your business?
I run a private music instruction business called Tribeca Music. We teach private lessons in piano, guitar, voice, violin, and cello. We teach in-person lessons in students homes in New York City, mostly in lower Manhattan around the Tribeca and Battery Park City neighborhoods. We also teach online lessons virtually to students around the world. All of our teachers have higher education degrees in music, years of professional performing experience in NYC, experience teaching students of all ages, and warm and patient personalities that work well with students of all levels.

I am most proud of having 100% 5 star reviews from our students and students’ parents. I love hearing parents say they’re thrilled with their child’s musical progress, music has given their child a new confidence, or that their child is thriving now with music in their life.

Referrals have been everything for my business – both in helping me work with amazing and professional music instructors and in getting wonderful clients. I have a friend referral program that encourages students to refer their friends with a $50 e-gfit card reward for both the student who referred their friend AND the friend who is starting lessons. I also give teachers a $100 referral fee for referring their friends, if we hire them. I would much rather a referral from someone I already trust and love working with rather than randomly search for new clients or teachers on the internet.

Running a business has taught me patience. I have had slow and steady growth, but I wouldn’t change that for anything. It’s never going to be some magical success overnight – even “overnight successes” have years of failure and experience before their seemingly quick success.

Consistency is key – what are consistent actions, habits, or systems we can realistically stick to as a business that will contribute to our growth? For us, the systems for success have been a culture of following up, hosting gorgeous biannual recitals to encourage community, regularly checking in with students, helping students learn songs they love to play so they’re always excited about their lessons, encouraging our friend referral gift-card program, having a human touch to all of our client communication with personal attention and care, and asking for client testimonials on a regular basis.

I want people to know that my business Tribeca Music is based on the foundations of excellence, care, and integrity. We always want to make sure our students are 100% happy with their progress, our services, and their results.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
1) A concert at Public Records in Brooklyn 2) Friday night jazz jam at Williamsburg Music Center
3) The Odeon, my favorite classic New York restaurant in Tribeca for dinner
4) Riverfront walk either on the Hudson River, westside of manhattan river walk, or the Brooklyn Bridge Dumbo walk on hopefully on a late sunny afternoon then sunset.
5) Lure fishbar in Soho for spicy tuna crispy rice and a martini
6) The Whitney museum then a walk around Little Island on the river and dinner at The Standard Hotel
7) Two Bridges hang with gallery visit to 56 Henry then seafood and vermouth at Cervos
8) A day in Red Hook for a show at Pioneer Works then watch the sunset on the river with the statue of liberty

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
I joined a program called Music Academy Success System at the end of 2019, right before the pandemic. That program changed everything for me. It taught me how to expand from a private piano teacher to running a music lesson business with multiple teachers and exponentially grow our student roster. That was really the start of my business growth.

I also was a part of a music entrepreneurship online group course in 2022 called 6FME (6 figure musician entrepreneur) that helped me tremendously with learning how to make sales for new clients. One specific tip I learned here was to follow up prospective client emails with booking a call rather than just continuing the conversation over email. Almost every single phone call I have with a prospective client ends up in a sale (in our case booking a first lesson), whereas conversations via email often get lost and no response eventually.

Lastly, I hired a mentor, Rachel Lipson who runs a successful music school called Blue Balloon School, which is about 4x my business size and teaches students in many cities across the US. Because she had already grown in exactly the way I want to, she was able to give me very specific pointers that have guided me along the way.

Website: www.tribecamusicnyc.com

Instagram: tribecamusicnyc

Facebook: tribecamusicnyc

Image Credits
studio@jimifranklin.com (I didn’t provide any other photos because most of our photos are with children and I would have to get explicit permission from their parents to share)