June 12, 2025 • 12 mins
Working with SCORE mentors, Lindsay Skipper has learned how to juggle marketing, bookings, performing and all the other aspects of her business with being a homeschool mom and a wife. On this episode of My Cincy Small Business Story, she is joined by her SCORE support squad to talk about her business, Elegant Violin, which was named 2025 SCORE Greater Cincinnati Client of the Year in the Startup category!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
My name is Michael Dawson. You're host of scores My
SENSEI Small Business Stories. In this episode, I'll be talking
with Lindsay Skipper, owner of Elegant Fineland, and from Score,
Mark Anderson and John Leeberman. We'll find out more about
that after this message.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
Did you know twice as many small businesses survive past
five years when they have the support from a mentor.
My sincey small business story is brought to you by
the volunteer mentors of SCORE Greater Cincinnati, a nonprofit organization
that helps launch hundreds of new small businesses and even
more jobs in Cincinnati, Northern Kentucky, and Indiana every year.
Our vision is to give every person the support they
(00:43):
need to thrive as a small business owner. Visit score
dot org Slash Greater Cincinnati to request a free business
mentor or share your own expertise. You can also listen
and subscribe for more stories about overcoming challenges, clearing obstacles,
and owning a successful small business.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Welcome, Lendsy, Mark, John, how you guys doing good?
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Thanks for having us and Lendsy.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Congratulations. I understand that you are SCORED Client of the
Year winner in the Startup category.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Yes, I was thrilled to win that a couple of
weeks ago. It was really exciting.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Good good, Well, I have some questions for you, but
before we get started, Hey, Mark, tell us about how
you became a Score mentor a little bit about your
background and why are you doing this.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Yes.
Speaker 4 (01:28):
So I retired from Fidelity Investments about six years ago
and decided as a good way to give back, I
joined Score shortly thereafter. I worked forty years in the marketing,
finance and leadership world, if you will, it's the last
twenty five being with Fidelity Investments. So I thought I
(01:49):
had quite a bit to offer new clients such as
Lindsay and also I think it's wasn't quite sure coming
from a corporate world, but realizing that regardles is the
size of the business, that that kind of business acumen
certainly could be beneficial for clients.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
So John, tell me how you became a school mentor
and why.
Speaker 5 (02:11):
It was quite accidental. Actually I retired early. I still
wanted to remain in the business field. I had my
own small business when I retired. I felt I learned
something doing that, and then I found out about Score
and how they had mentoring available and I realized I
could take what I learned as a small business owner
and try to help other people become small business owners successfully.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
So, Lindsey, tell me about your business, Elegant Violin. What
is it that you do?
Speaker 1 (02:36):
We are a wedding and event music service and we
serve Cincinnati area, reaching up to Columbus, Dayton, Indianapolis, also
down into Kentucky, Lexington, Frankfurt, and Louisville, and we just
opened a location last year in my hometown of Raleigh,
North Carolina.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
So I understand that your wedding planning experience kind of
led to or help you shape this business. Can you
tell me more about that?
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Yes. Back in twenty ten, I was planning my own wedding.
I had a short engagement and was recently out of
grad school and working a full time job, and it
was extremely difficult to get an idea of what various
wedding vendors cost. I found a lot of websites required
(03:25):
you to submit a contact form in order to get
a quote, and as a young bride, I just had
no idea what flowers could cost, what venues could cost, photography,
and so it was very challenging to navigate full time
job and having limited time to call and reach out
to these vendors. So I started realizing that if I
(03:46):
was a wedding service provider, and I grew up as
a violinist and have been playing since I was about
ten years old, I thought, well, if I do this,
I'm going to try to provide these prices in a
transparent way get back quickly to bride's because I know
how challenging it is.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
So what makes the line violin especially the way you
do it with your business so impactful for weddings.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
When I started out, I knew just as a musician
growing up, that a solo violinist needs accompaniment music, and
so from the very beginning I was providing my own
backing tracks or piano accompaniment. And so back in twenty
ten twenty eleven, that took the form of a CD
and a CD player, and then we evolved to a
(04:30):
Bluetooth portable speaker, and now we've grown to use a
really state of the art cordless and that we can
bring to the middle of a garden, the middle of
a field, wherever people need the music, we can set
up and bring that the beauty of a live string
instrument in my case, my violin's almost one hundred and
(04:51):
fifty years old, but it's got that supportive accompaniment line,
so it really creates like a duo effect that helps
people really enjoy the different contemporary songs that we play.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
So, John, what kind of student was Lindsay?
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Wonderful?
Speaker 5 (05:06):
She is the rare combination of music talent and business talent,
and I deal with a lot of musicians, so it's notable.
And she has a lot of ambition and can be
very successful, and we had to help her figure out
the right things to do and how to keep it
within the lane she wanted to stay and not let
it become all consuming for her because of her work
(05:27):
life balance.
Speaker 6 (05:28):
What I would add to this is as someone who
was very eager to succeed, of someone who was very
clear in what her aspirations were. And I could also
someone who I think we had a sense as she
could execute the near term step to get to the
long term goals.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
Lindsey, how did the monitors, how did the monitors, I'm sorry,
how did the mentors help you scale while maintaining work
life balance?
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Early on in the coaching sessions with them, it became
pretty a parent that I was getting stretched a little
thin between my commitment to being a state at home
mom turned homeschool mom now and the demands of the business.
So early on they had me create a job description
of all the things that I was doing as the
owner of Elegant Violin and as the violinist, and as
(06:19):
a social media manager and as the administrative assistant, and
they helped me see that there were definitely tasks that
I did not have to do on a week to
week basis to keep the business running, and so just
creating that job description and being able to parcel out
what could be delegated to an administrative assistant was a
really helpful step. I'm finally at that place right now
(06:40):
where I have somebody really functioning as an executive assistant
handling the inquiries, because our priority is to be able
to get back to brides quickly, let them know that
we're available, and to be able to respond in a
timely manner so that they can get on with the
other parts of wedding planning. So their encouragement to to
bring on staff to support the day to day operations
(07:02):
of the business has been a huge key in me
regaining some of that margin that I need in my
life as a business owner but also to my main
calling as a homeschooling mom.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
So what is your favorite business advice and how did
your mentors help you with that?
Speaker 1 (07:19):
Well, the four gentlemen that I've worked with as score
mentors have encouraged me to delegate, like I just mentioned
a mate, which I'm able to do through a software
at Client Relationship Manager system that I use and to eliminate.
So there's been many coaching sessions where I come in
with some topics that I want to discuss, and they
(07:43):
sometimes would encourage me to just stick to the basics
of what are these goals that you have that are
actually going to result in you meeting your business goals
of you know, income producing activities. So I remember as
our demand for our services was increasing and I had
just the one violinist and one of the coaches said, well,
you really just need somebody who can show up and
(08:05):
perform this music. Well, and that got me thinking more
outside the box of just me and my first contractor
and helped me start to see that we could really
tap into the talent that we have here in Cincinnati
and in Raleigh and give these violinists an opportunity to
share their gift because many of them also don't want
to have to run a business.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
So where do you see your business in the next
few years.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Well, we are focusing on building up this new location
in Raleigh, North Carolina. We're serving the Triangle and the
Triad region of Raleig Durham Chapel Hill all the way
out to Greensboro and Winston Salem, my old stomping grounds
and where my husband and I are from. And so
we're focused on building up that branch, and we're learning
(08:53):
a whole lot about what it looks like to start
a new location, to be able to serve a whole
new geographic region of couple. And I think after that,
I'm just trying to run my business in a way
that long term I'll be able to sell it and
possibly in the midterm be able either to franchise or
(09:14):
look at some new market locations.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
So if I wanted to get a hold of you
and contract for your service, how would I do that?
Speaker 1 (09:23):
A lot of people find us by searching online or
searching on Instagram and on their website. They're able to
see succinctly what we do. The way that we offer
a turnkey music service with that amplification that I mentioned.
And another thing that couples really like about our website
is they're able to view live demo videos of almost
(09:44):
all of our two hundred song offerings. So we have
over a dozen genres that couples can choose from, everything
from oldies, which I'm not saying you guys would like
to listen to, but I'm just saying we have an
oldies category, a pop category. We gave Taylor Swift her
own category because so many brides are wanting the classy
(10:05):
feel of live violin, but they want to hear modern
tunes that they and their friends and their family love,
so that future on our website is something they really like.
And we try to make booking very, very easy, because
I know how stressful it is for couples planning a wedding.
There's not a course in high school or college about
how to plan a wedding, and they're working full time,
there often live active lifestyles and travel a lot, and
(10:28):
so the booking is very simple, some paperwork, a deposit,
and after that they get to start working on customizing
their set lists for their wedding ceremony and cocktail hour.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
Can you give me the address the website address.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
It's elegant Violin dot com.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
Okay, very good. As we get close to the end
of this broadcast, is there anything else that you would
like to talk to us about or is there something
that we should know about you.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
I'd say, just what a surprise it was to be
able to win this award and be able to speak
with you, Mike on your podcast, and just was filled
with gratitude looking back at the three years that I've
worked with my at times three coaches, sometimes for and
I've just benefited immensely from not just Mark and John individually,
(11:18):
but together as a team. The ways that they've been
able to guide me at times, talk me off the ledge,
and just help me move forward in my business in
a wise way. They always brought me back to my goals,
which was to maintain that work life balance, to keep
this business from consuming my life because they just very
easily understood what my priorities were personally. And I'm just
(11:41):
indebted to Score, and I hope more entrepreneurs can reach
out and get the guidance and wisdom that they need
from these older business experts.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
Lindsay. Thanks again, Mark John. Glad you guys were able
to join us, so if you would like to sign
up to become a mentor or you need a mentor
to score about four and click on the appropriate link.
Hello.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
My name is Michael Dawson. You're host of scores My
SENSEI Small Business Stories. In this episode, I'll be talking
with Lindsay Skipper, owner of Elegant Fineland, and from Score,
Mark Anderson and John Leeberman. We'll find out more about
that after this message.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
Did you know twice as many small businesses survive past
five years when they have the support from a mentor.
My sincey small business story is brought to you by
the volunteer mentors of SCORE Greater Cincinnati, a nonprofit organization
that helps launch hundreds of new small businesses and even
more jobs in Cincinnati, Northern Kentucky, and Indiana every year.
Our vision is to give every person the support they
(00:43):
need to thrive as a small business owner. Visit score
dot org Slash Greater Cincinnati to request a free business
mentor or share your own expertise. You can also listen
and subscribe for more stories about overcoming challenges, clearing obstacles,
and owning a successful small business.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Welcome, Lendsy, Mark, John, how you guys doing good?
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Thanks for having us and Lendsy.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Congratulations. I understand that you are SCORED Client of the
Year winner in the Startup category.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Yes, I was thrilled to win that a couple of
weeks ago. It was really exciting.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Good good, Well, I have some questions for you, but
before we get started, Hey, Mark, tell us about how
you became a Score mentor a little bit about your
background and why are you doing this.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Yes.
Speaker 4 (01:28):
So I retired from Fidelity Investments about six years ago
and decided as a good way to give back, I
joined Score shortly thereafter. I worked forty years in the marketing,
finance and leadership world, if you will, it's the last
twenty five being with Fidelity Investments. So I thought I
(01:49):
had quite a bit to offer new clients such as
Lindsay and also I think it's wasn't quite sure coming
from a corporate world, but realizing that regardles is the
size of the business, that that kind of business acumen
certainly could be beneficial for clients.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
So John, tell me how you became a school mentor
and why.
Speaker 5 (02:11):
It was quite accidental. Actually I retired early. I still
wanted to remain in the business field. I had my
own small business when I retired. I felt I learned
something doing that, and then I found out about Score
and how they had mentoring available and I realized I
could take what I learned as a small business owner
and try to help other people become small business owners successfully.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
So, Lindsey, tell me about your business, Elegant Violin. What
is it that you do?
Speaker 1 (02:36):
We are a wedding and event music service and we
serve Cincinnati area, reaching up to Columbus, Dayton, Indianapolis, also
down into Kentucky, Lexington, Frankfurt, and Louisville, and we just
opened a location last year in my hometown of Raleigh,
North Carolina.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
So I understand that your wedding planning experience kind of
led to or help you shape this business. Can you
tell me more about that?
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Yes. Back in twenty ten, I was planning my own wedding.
I had a short engagement and was recently out of
grad school and working a full time job, and it
was extremely difficult to get an idea of what various
wedding vendors cost. I found a lot of websites required
(03:25):
you to submit a contact form in order to get
a quote, and as a young bride, I just had
no idea what flowers could cost, what venues could cost, photography,
and so it was very challenging to navigate full time
job and having limited time to call and reach out
to these vendors. So I started realizing that if I
(03:46):
was a wedding service provider, and I grew up as
a violinist and have been playing since I was about
ten years old, I thought, well, if I do this,
I'm going to try to provide these prices in a
transparent way get back quickly to bride's because I know
how challenging it is.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
So what makes the line violin especially the way you
do it with your business so impactful for weddings.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
When I started out, I knew just as a musician
growing up, that a solo violinist needs accompaniment music, and
so from the very beginning I was providing my own
backing tracks or piano accompaniment. And so back in twenty
ten twenty eleven, that took the form of a CD
and a CD player, and then we evolved to a
(04:30):
Bluetooth portable speaker, and now we've grown to use a
really state of the art cordless and that we can
bring to the middle of a garden, the middle of
a field, wherever people need the music, we can set
up and bring that the beauty of a live string
instrument in my case, my violin's almost one hundred and
(04:51):
fifty years old, but it's got that supportive accompaniment line,
so it really creates like a duo effect that helps
people really enjoy the different contemporary songs that we play.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
So, John, what kind of student was Lindsay?
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Wonderful?
Speaker 5 (05:06):
She is the rare combination of music talent and business talent,
and I deal with a lot of musicians, so it's notable.
And she has a lot of ambition and can be
very successful, and we had to help her figure out
the right things to do and how to keep it
within the lane she wanted to stay and not let
it become all consuming for her because of her work
(05:27):
life balance.
Speaker 6 (05:28):
What I would add to this is as someone who
was very eager to succeed, of someone who was very
clear in what her aspirations were. And I could also
someone who I think we had a sense as she
could execute the near term step to get to the
long term goals.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
Lindsey, how did the monitors, how did the monitors, I'm sorry,
how did the mentors help you scale while maintaining work
life balance?
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Early on in the coaching sessions with them, it became
pretty a parent that I was getting stretched a little
thin between my commitment to being a state at home
mom turned homeschool mom now and the demands of the business.
So early on they had me create a job description
of all the things that I was doing as the
owner of Elegant Violin and as the violinist, and as
(06:19):
a social media manager and as the administrative assistant, and
they helped me see that there were definitely tasks that
I did not have to do on a week to
week basis to keep the business running, and so just
creating that job description and being able to parcel out
what could be delegated to an administrative assistant was a
really helpful step. I'm finally at that place right now
(06:40):
where I have somebody really functioning as an executive assistant
handling the inquiries, because our priority is to be able
to get back to brides quickly, let them know that
we're available, and to be able to respond in a
timely manner so that they can get on with the
other parts of wedding planning. So their encouragement to to
bring on staff to support the day to day operations
(07:02):
of the business has been a huge key in me
regaining some of that margin that I need in my
life as a business owner but also to my main
calling as a homeschooling mom.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
So what is your favorite business advice and how did
your mentors help you with that?
Speaker 1 (07:19):
Well, the four gentlemen that I've worked with as score
mentors have encouraged me to delegate, like I just mentioned
a mate, which I'm able to do through a software
at Client Relationship Manager system that I use and to eliminate.
So there's been many coaching sessions where I come in
with some topics that I want to discuss, and they
(07:43):
sometimes would encourage me to just stick to the basics
of what are these goals that you have that are
actually going to result in you meeting your business goals
of you know, income producing activities. So I remember as
our demand for our services was increasing and I had
just the one violinist and one of the coaches said, well,
you really just need somebody who can show up and
(08:05):
perform this music. Well, and that got me thinking more
outside the box of just me and my first contractor
and helped me start to see that we could really
tap into the talent that we have here in Cincinnati
and in Raleigh and give these violinists an opportunity to
share their gift because many of them also don't want
to have to run a business.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
So where do you see your business in the next
few years.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Well, we are focusing on building up this new location
in Raleigh, North Carolina. We're serving the Triangle and the
Triad region of Raleig Durham Chapel Hill all the way
out to Greensboro and Winston Salem, my old stomping grounds
and where my husband and I are from. And so
we're focused on building up that branch, and we're learning
(08:53):
a whole lot about what it looks like to start
a new location, to be able to serve a whole
new geographic region of couple. And I think after that,
I'm just trying to run my business in a way
that long term I'll be able to sell it and
possibly in the midterm be able either to franchise or
(09:14):
look at some new market locations.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
So if I wanted to get a hold of you
and contract for your service, how would I do that?
Speaker 1 (09:23):
A lot of people find us by searching online or
searching on Instagram and on their website. They're able to
see succinctly what we do. The way that we offer
a turnkey music service with that amplification that I mentioned.
And another thing that couples really like about our website
is they're able to view live demo videos of almost
(09:44):
all of our two hundred song offerings. So we have
over a dozen genres that couples can choose from, everything
from oldies, which I'm not saying you guys would like
to listen to, but I'm just saying we have an
oldies category, a pop category. We gave Taylor Swift her
own category because so many brides are wanting the classy
(10:05):
feel of live violin, but they want to hear modern
tunes that they and their friends and their family love,
so that future on our website is something they really like.
And we try to make booking very, very easy, because
I know how stressful it is for couples planning a wedding.
There's not a course in high school or college about
how to plan a wedding, and they're working full time,
there often live active lifestyles and travel a lot, and
(10:28):
so the booking is very simple, some paperwork, a deposit,
and after that they get to start working on customizing
their set lists for their wedding ceremony and cocktail hour.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
Can you give me the address the website address.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
It's elegant Violin dot com.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
Okay, very good. As we get close to the end
of this broadcast, is there anything else that you would
like to talk to us about or is there something
that we should know about you.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
I'd say, just what a surprise it was to be
able to win this award and be able to speak
with you, Mike on your podcast, and just was filled
with gratitude looking back at the three years that I've
worked with my at times three coaches, sometimes for and
I've just benefited immensely from not just Mark and John individually,
(11:18):
but together as a team. The ways that they've been
able to guide me at times, talk me off the ledge,
and just help me move forward in my business in
a wise way. They always brought me back to my goals,
which was to maintain that work life balance, to keep
this business from consuming my life because they just very
easily understood what my priorities were personally. And I'm just
(11:41):
indebted to Score, and I hope more entrepreneurs can reach
out and get the guidance and wisdom that they need
from these older business experts.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
Lindsay. Thanks again, Mark John. Glad you guys were able
to join us, so if you would like to sign
up to become a mentor or you need a mentor
to score about four and click on the appropriate link.
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