Effective, enforceable piano studio policies
Discovery homeSign up for email updatessubmit a question We would like to thank Wendy Stevens for this article about studio policies. To read the full article, click here. Between August 5 and September 15, The Frances Clark Center is offering 20% off all full-length courses...
November 2017 Making Money Making Space: Creating Space to Move from Good to Great
November 2017; Vol. 9, No. 6
One of the wonderful realities and paradoxes about being a piano teacher in 2017 is that a good idea is only one click away. The proliferation of good piano teaching ideas and the increased connectivity that we have through email, social media groups, and websites...
How to Become an Indispensable Piano Teacher
May 2018; Vol. 10, No. 3
In a world where parents are constantly reevaluatiing the cost of a recurring service, job security may depend in part upon how indispensable we are to our piano students. How do we become indispensable? How do we keep parents from jumping from teacher to teacher or...
March 2018: Making Money, Making Space
March 2018; Vol. 10, No. 2
The swap list: Rules of engagement More and more teachers are moving to a no-makeup-lessons policy and reaping the emotional and physical rewards of not giving away too much of their time.1 But for most teachers who have this policy, “no make-ups” does not mean...
Are Your Marketing Strategies Deep Enough? Part II
March 2017; Vol. 9, No. 2
In Part 1 of “Are your marketing strategies deep enough?” (Jan/Feb 2017), we talked about the first four frequently overlooked principles of marketing: 1. We must know what our clients really want. 2. We must make sure we have a product or service that they want. 3. Regardless...
How to Dismiss a Student with Kindness
May 2017; Vol. 9, No. 3
A studio full of hard-working and well-mannered students is every piano teacher’s dream. But few teachers actually have the opportunity to live this dream for their entire careers. The truth is that most teachers have at least one student that they do not enjoy teaching. It...
How to Get Paid on Time
July 2017; Vol. 9, No. 4
If you have successfully moved from a per-lesson payment system to a tuition-based structure,1 you may still be left with the challenge of parents paying on time. There are many ways to tackle this issue, so choose what works best for your business. Prepay in...
What are the Foundational Reasons for Having a Policy?
January 2018; Vol. 10, No. 1
Sometimes it is easy to get into a tizzy about making policy changes when something pushes us to our limits. Conversely, some teachers “set it and forget it,” to the detriment of not making policy changes when needed, or not revising policies to keep up...
Making money, making space: Are your marketing strategies deep enough?
January 2017; Vol. 9, No. 1
While we frequently discuss the advantages and disadvantages of certain types of piano lesson marketing, we often stop short of asking deeper questions that can make our marketing more effective. Understanding how people in the twenty-first century respond to the constant barrage of marketing, and...
How often should I raise tuition?
September 2015; Vol. 7, No. 5
In the last article, we discussed how to determine a reasonable tuition and make sure that your studio is profitable. Once you’ve determined this and set your plan in motion, however, you can unknowingly sabotage your plan if you do not also plan to raise...
Does word-of-mouth advertising fall on deaf ears? Seven web essentials for marketing
November 2015; Vol. 7, No. 6
Word-of-mouth is often accurately touted as the best way to market piano lessons. But the concept of word-of-mouth has changed tremendously in the last ten years, both in how it works and what it really is.1 Consequently, word-of-mouth is starting to fall short in effectiveness and conversion...
Should we fear the future?
November 2015; Vol. 7, No. 6
“What is the future of piano teaching?” is an important question, but it may tend to strike a bit of fear into each of us. Almost implicit in the question is another, more ominous question: “Will there be a future for piano teaching?” With the...
Studio policies for your sporadic adult students
March 2015; Vol. 7, No. 2
I am a very happy and fairly healthy “Baby Boomer”—my father was a World War II veteran, and I was born in the fifties. We “Boomers” are your current and upcoming adult piano students. Why? Because we realize we have more to learn—we are excited...
Three keys to making a consistent income
March 2015; Vol. 7, No. 2
One of the unhealthy mindsets in our profession is the notion that piano teachers cannot make a reasonable or a consistent income. This is tragic because it is simply not true! Adjusting your business policy to ensure a consistent and reasonable income can be accomplished...
How to determine your rates and profitability
July 2015; Vol. 7, No. 4
Implementing a tuition structure that yields a consistent monthly income will ensure a comfortable income only if the chosen tuition rate is reasonable.1 Whether you are just beginning to teach or have been teaching for decades, it is important to go through two evaluative processes...