First!

Hello, my name is Alex Hobcraft and my company teaches private music lessons for piano, guitar and voice. In 2009 I was studying to become a home inspector while managing a music store and teaching guitar. The owner came to me on December 26, 2009 and said he was closing the store in 2 days. I was frantic about my family’s future. Within a week and after many discussions with my wife, I realized that I could open my own music school. My fear drained. I knew all the students who were taking lessons would need lessons and I knew that if I moved the location just a few blocks north I would get more students. So I researched it and created a business plan.



We went as a family down to city hall to talk with the very helpful experts at Enterprise Toronto, find out building code regulations and to register our business name. We even had meetings with our bank as a family. Our goal was to create a business that could be set up to run itself and expand into other areas of the city in 3-5 years.



Our biggest difficulty was finding a place. Many local businesses were closing down so there were lots of options but as a start up building owners were nervous about leasing to us. After months of negotiations, meetings and broken promises we found a place that wasn’t what we wanted. My wife and I changed how to look at business and found that this place was actually better. We’ve been open since October 2009 and have just finished our first school year this June. We started with 12 students and grew to almost 50 within 4 months.