Interview lesson, meet-and-greet, intro lesson, trial lesson, consultation—whatever you choose to call them, introductory sessions are a great way to jumpstart your potentials students’ success in music lessons. This article presents five steps to help you make the most of your interview lessons with new music students.
Step 1: Define Your Goals for the Interview Lesson
Before conducting an interview lesson, it is important to determine your goals for an interview lesson. For many music teachers, these sessions are useful for setting expectations for their music studio and determining if a student-teacher fit is possible. They allow you to build rapport, communicate your expectations for practice, behavior, payments and other studio policies and procedures, and assess the student’s goals, needs and level of interest.
Additionally, an interview lesson can also be an opportunity to:
I just updated one of the studio business forms from my Printables page for the 2022-23 school year. It is called the Lesson Attendance & Payment Sheet PDF. Even though I don’t personally use this sheet myself anymore (I now charge a monthly flat tuition rate), every year I receive requests from teachers asking if I would please update it for the upcoming school year. And I’m happy to do so!
In case you haven’t seen this from before, here is how it works: Write your students’ names in the first column. Each week, write the lesson date (in a month / date format) in the column for that week. This is how you can track attendance. The small circles in each cell are where you can write checkmarks indicating tuition payments. Whether you charge by-the-week or by-the-month, you can place a checkmark by each paid lesson date.
Today’s blog post topic comes to you as a result of a question submitted by a reader. The question I received was essentially: How do you go about acquiring music books for piano students and managing the reimbursement/expense?
While there is no single “best” way to do business, there are certainly a number of good options to consider in order to find a procedure that works best for you and your clients. In this blog post, we’ll explore a handful of possible procedures and discuss their potential downsides and upsides.
4 Main Options for Acquiring Music Books and Managing the Expense
As I see it, here are the main options for self-employed music teachers:
You can ask students/parents to purchase their own sheet music.
You can purchase sheet music on behalf of your students and then collect reimbursement afterwards.
You can purchase sheet music on behalf of your students and cover the expense yourself via a special books/material/registration fee.
You can purchase sheet music on behalf of your students and cover the expense as part of the tuition fee charged for piano lessons.
I just finished updating one of the studio business forms from my Printables page for the 2021-22 school year. It is called the Record of Lesson Attendance & Payment PDF. I do not currently use this form myself anymore, but every year I receive multiple requests from teachers asking if I would please update it for the upcoming school year!
In case you haven’t seen this from before, here is how it works: Write your students’ names in the first column. Each week, write the lesson date (in a month / date format) in the column for that week. This is how you can track attendance. The small circles in each cell are where you can write checkmarks indicating tuition payments. Whether you charge by-the-week or by-the-month, you can place a checkmark by each paid lesson date.
P.S.: Here is a link to where I explain an alternative system for tracking payments received. But nowadays, I enter everything into a Google Sheet! I explain my system and share the spreadsheet in my online course for piano teachers, Excellence for Piano Teachers. If you’re interested, you can learn more and join the email list to be notified when the next session is offered (usually in January).
In yesterday’s post, I talked about my gradual transition from online lessons to in-person for my Michigan-based students (my Ohio-based students from before my move will remain online). As promised, in today’s post I am sharing a free printable poster you can use to welcome students and help remind them of your protocols when they first arrive.
Any time students come for their first lesson at my studio, I find it’s important to “train” them, so to speak, with my expectations such as removing shoes, washing hands, etc.. After welcoming students at the door, this involves stating something like: “Whenever you arrive in the future, I’d like you to remove your shoes here, wash your hands here, and then head to the piano!”
I thought it might be useful to post a friendly poster with these reminders, in case it helps students remember what to do the first few times they arrive until it becomes a habit. I laminated it and use poster putty to hang it where it will be easily seen.
I created a few different variations of the poster, in case you might like to use it! I’ve included versions with and without masks (for pandemic times and non-pandemic times). And there are versions included for using hand sanitizer versus washing hands in a sink.
To download this PDF, visit the Printables > Studio Business page and scroll down to “Welcome Poster for Piano Studio.” Enjoy!
[Just for fun…here’s a selfie taken after chopping off 12 inches of pandemic-time hair and donating it to Wigs 4 Kids!]
Hello readers!
I hope you all are well. Here in Michigan, we are in the midst of BEAUTIFUL summer weather and it feels as if the worst of the pandemic is behind us (which I would certainly like to believe is true!). The current full vaccination rate in the state of Michigan is 46%, which is also the current rate in the U.S. as a whole (as of June 2021). In my local county, the full vaccination rate is even higher at 60% and the rate of reported Covid-19 cases per day is down to low single digits.
With these facts in mind, I have started transitioning a few of my students from online lessons to in-person lessons at my home studio. (You might recall — 75% of my students are in Ohio from before I moved and they will remain online.) I am taking a number of precautions, because I would much prefer to err on the side of caution and keep everyone healthy if I can help it!
In case you happen to be in the same position and might find this useful, below is the wording I used to communicate my precautions and expectations to parents via email.
Are you on Instagram? Although I’ve had an Instagram account for a long time, I have been surprised to realize that the enjoyment I get from Instagram has been increasing the more/longer I use it. Although Instagram is owned by Facebook, I like Instagram better than Facebook.
In this blog post, I’d like to share a little about how Instagram works, how I use it, and why you might enjoy being on Instagram, too.
[If you enjoy the content here on my blog, you’ll probably enjoy the content from my Instagram channel, too. I invite you to follow me there!]
Using Instagram
Instagram is available as a free smartphone app (iOS | Android). It is also free to create an account.
Instagram is a visual-based platform. It differs from Facebook in that all posts must contain a photo or a video — you cannot post text alone. This puts the visual element front and center. For that reason, there is generally less negativity (and less political talk) on Instagram than on Facebook. I enjoy scrolling through my Instagram feed!
[Here’s an example Instagram post from earlier this year. You can find the mentioned BINGO sheet here.]
Instagram is a fun way to connect with friends and contacts. You can use Instagram for sharing anything you’d like, whether personal or professional. You can also opt to create multiple accounts — one for your personal life and one for your piano studio, for example. Personally, I prefer using only one account and using it to share a combination of things from my family life and professional activities.
In short, I use Instagram as a “microblog.” As the name implies, microblogging is like blogging except the posts are generally shorter and quicker to read. I see my blog here at ColorInMyPiano.com as a platform for sharing lengthier articles, while Instagram can be a platform for sharing smaller, everyday things. When I have something fun to share that doesn’t warrant an entire blog post here at ColorInMyPiano.com, I can post it on Instagram!
I just finished updating one of the studio business forms from the Printables page for the 2020-21 school year. It is called the Record of Lesson Attendance & Payment PDF. I do not currently use this form myself anymore, but every year I receive requests from teachers asking if I would update it for the upcoming school year!
In case you haven’t seen this, here is how the form works: Write your students’ names in the first column. Each week, write the lesson date (in a month / date format) in the column for that week. This is how you can track attendance. The small circles in each cell are where you can write checkmarks indicating tuition payments. Whether you charge by-the-week or by-the-month, you can place a checkmark by each paid lesson date.
Do you use Gmail for email? Today, I’m sharing a few tips that might prove useful for your studio emails. We’ll talk about how to maintain email lists, use BCC, add an email signature (or two!), and create a simple-but-awesome template for your studio emails. Let’s streamline our emails and make our studio communication look great!
Some of these tips might still apply even if you don’t use Gmail, but you’ll have to search out the how-to instructions yourself. A quick Google search will hopefully help you out.
Without further ado…here’s my four tips for using Gmail for your studio emails!
1. Maintain a Student Email List in Google Contacts
In your Google Contacts, you can maintain a email list for your current students, which makes it easy to quickly send out announcements or reminders.
How to set this up? Visit contacts.google.com and click on “Create label.” Call it “Piano Students – Active” and then, if you like, make another for “Piano Students – Inactive.” Then, start adding your students’ email addresses to the list.
When students begin or stop lessons, be sure to return to contacts.google.com to update your lists to keep things current.
Let’s talk studio communication! In this blog post, I’ll share about how my studio communication has evolved over time since I began teaching and some examples of studio communication I’ve sent to my students. At the end of the post, please consider sharing with us about your own studio communication. I hope you’ll pick up some fresh ideas or inspiration!
1. Hardcopy Newsletters
Do you remember the days of hardcopy studio newsletters? 🙂 I bet many of us have gone digital nowadays. But there’s certainly a time and place for hardcopies.
When I first started teaching piano back in the 2000s, my newsletters and notes to parents were all hardcopy printouts. My newsletter was published monthly. I spent a decent amount of time creating them, but I enjoyed it.
Below is an example newsletter I made for my students back in 2011. Click the images to enlarge.
I switched from hardcopy newsletters to email around 2012. But, I do still find it useful to send home hardcopies of certain things. Perhaps you agree!
For example, I like to send home hardcopy flyers about certain local event opportunities for students. Another example is for important communication — such as when I informed students of my planned move from Ohio to Michigan. In these cases, I use both email and hardcopy.
2. Email Marketing Services
When I decided to make the switch to email newsletters, I researched the popular email marketing platforms and ended up choosing MailChimp. I liked their user interface and the attractive email templates. The plans are reasonable; in fact, many piano teachers will be able to get by just fine using the free plan.
As shared in this post, my husband and I recently relocated from Bowling Green, Ohio to Saline, Michigan (outside Ann Arbor). I’m sure I’ll share a full tour of my new piano room, but for today, I wanted to share a simple solution I found to help remind my students to remove their shoes when they arrive.
My new piano room is carpeted, and it’s a light color. I didn’t always enforce the “shoes off” rule in my previous home, but I decided I wanted to be more consistent about that here. Even I follow this rule strictly myself.
The main way to achieve that is to train students from the first time they are at the studio. However, I thought it might be nice to also add a friendly reminder for them to see when they arrive.
Nearly a year ago, while attending the 2017 Indiana Music Teachers Association state conference I had the opportunity to chat with friend and fellow blogger Daniel Patterson (of GrowYourMusicStudio.com). We were talking about studio marketing, and I shared with him a story about what I had learned from rebuilding my studio from scratch after relocating to Ohio back in 2011. He was intrigued by my story, and invited me to participate in a recorded video conference sharing my experience.
0:40 How I marketed my studio, because I couldn’t rely only on word-of-mouth being in an unfamiliar area.
2:30 Why I’m glad I trusted my instinct when it came to setting my tuition rates. The big lesson learned: It may not be wise to assume that having low tuition rates will result in gaining new students more quickly.
5:00 What it was like in those early months, waiting for my studio to grow. I did the marketing I could, but I needed to be patient until my studio grew to my benchmark goals.
Your turn: What was helpful from Daniel’s and my conversation? What lessons have you recently learned from experience as a studio owner?
As shared 
