Tattoo Artist Thinking About Opening A Storefront In Nyc Not Sure What My Best Course Of Action Would Be In This Situation

I am 22 and I have always had a lot of big dreams and ideas. My goal is to live for myself, as I have always found that companies are not trustworthy entities and I don’t want the people who pay my salary to have the ability to take it all away in an instant. Naturally I have gravitated towards unconventional jobs that allow me to be an entrepreneur. This includes my current job where I work as a tattoo artist. Although I’m not a major name in tattooing and I have a small following, I do make enough money to live off my labor.

As much as I love tattooing, and even with how much my business is growing, tattooing is not always stable work. I wish I had something a little extra to supplement my income up as the potential earnings for a tattoo artist can be hit pretty quick if you aren’t a top 1% world class artist with celebrity clientele. I’ve thought about owning a tattoo shop, it would function as a private studio where the artists can pay a rental fee and have a tattoo station to themselves. But if I’m going through the effort of providing a space I’d like to find a way to monetize it further. I have another interest outside of tattooing (fashion) that could be really cool to marry together into one space.

The front room would be a fashion boutique, dedicated to the archives of prominent western designers such as Maison Margeila, Raf Simons, Helmut Lang and some others too.

The back room would be where the tattoo studio is, so it’s a bit more lowkey and has a speakeasy type of vibe. I want people to feel like they are stepping into a cool underground scene when they are in this part of the store.

So, right now I really know nothing about retail or what it’s like to have a storefront. My main question is what would you do in my situation? I don’t have a degree so I am considering going back to college and getting a fashion business degree from FIT ( I currently live in NYC but I’m new here and can’t apply for in state tuition yet if I were to go back to school). Or I could just use that money I would have spent on tuition to put towards the studio and launch the business.

TLDR: I am a tattoo artist that wants to open a tattoo studio / fashion boutique hybrid should I go back to college to learn more about running a brick and mortar store or should I just save all my money and invest in the business when I’m ready to open. This is still a few years away but I want to start planning now as it’s going to be an expensive operation no doubt