Studio Business

40 Ways to Use Notion as a Music Professional

If you’ve been around my blog lately, you’ve probably heard me talk about Notion — my favorite online tool ever for managing my business and life.

I’m not alone in being excited about Notion. Notion is taking the world by storm, thanks to its unique, lego-like format allowing you to create pages exactly the way you want — whether simple or complex.

As Notion’s website states: “Notion is a single space where you can think, write, and plan. Capture thoughts, manage projects, or even run an entire company — and do it exactly the way you want.”

In this article, I’ll share 40 ways music professionals can utilize Notion. Without further ado, here’s my list.

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Studio Business

Joy Tries to Convince Daniel to Try Notion

I was recently chatting about Notion with my friend, Daniel Patterson of GrowYourMusicStudio.com, and offered to give him a tour of my Notion account and tell him why he might want to consider switching from Evernote to Notion. Daniel suggested we record the conversation, and so we did!

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Announcements

Early Bird Rate Expires Soon: Organize Your Life with Notion, an Online Workshop with Amy Chaplin & Joy Morin

Hello, friends!

Just a quick note to tell you that the early bird discount expires soon for the upcoming online workshop Amy Chaplin and I are offering. It’s called, Organize Your Life With Notion, and over the two days we teach you how to use Notion — our favorite online tool ever — to manage your music studio…and life in general!

If case you aren’t familiar with Notion… it’s basically a note-taking app you can use on your phone and computer to create pages for tracking information or planning projects (think student information, recitals, events, trips, notes…anything you can think of!).

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Studio Business

Your Qs Answered, and How I Use Notion to Manage My Piano Studio

As my friend Amy Chaplin and I prepare for our upcoming online workshop about how to use Notion (a productivity/note-taking app we are both fans of), we’ve been receiving great questions from piano teachers about Notion. Today, I thought I would answer some of those questions and also share more specifics about how I use Notion to manage my piano studio.

An aside: I hope I’m not bombarding you with too much info about Notion! I think you’ll find this blog post interesting, but if not, rest assured I have content on other topics coming down the pipeline soon. 🙂

Q: Is Notion specifically for music teachers/professionals?
A: No, Notion is not music-specific. It’s a general productivity/note-taking app that is taking the world by storm right now. Tons of people are getting into it and are finding great ways to use it.

Notion is part of the “no-code movement” — an effort to make it possible to build your own interactive pages, systems, or software without having to know computer programming. The basics of Notion are easy to learn. And over time, you can continue to learn and “grow into” it. It’s kind of like building with Legos: once you know what building blocks you have, you can build whatever you desire.

During our workshop, Amy and I are excited to share our enthusiasm for Notion and help other piano teachers find ways it can support our unique work as independent teachers and business owners.

Q: Can Notion take the place of studio management software?
A: Yes and no. Notion can do a lot of things, but it cannot do things like invoicing or collecting tuition payments, for example. You would need other platforms for those functions.

Personally, I have never used an all-in-one program such as My Music Staff or Duet Partner (although I do think they are good services). Instead, I use a variety of services for managing my studio business. For example, my students pay a flat rate tuition payment automatically each month using Coinhop. This eliminates the task of manual invoicing. For keeping track of my teaching schedule, I use Google Calendar. To keep track of student information and much more, I use Notion (more on this shortly).

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Announcements

Register Now: Organize Your Life With Notion

Hello friends!

I’m so pleased to announce that registration is now open for the online workshop Amy Chaplin and I are hosting next month.

Amy and I have been working behind-the-scenes every week to plan a very special event for you and pass along our systems and methodologies for using Notion to make our lives easier as a piano teachers and music professionals. If you like the idea of getting the various areas of YOUR personal and professional life together into a centralized dashboard and digital workspace, please consider joining us!

To learn more about our online workshop and register, view our page with the details HERE.

(Pssst… Just so you know, a special early-bird discount is going on now. So, don’t delay! We hope to see you online March 8-9!)

Announcements

Check out Amy’s Podcast for a Deep-Dive on Evernote vs. Notion

Just a brief note from me today — I wanted to point you a Piano Pantry podcast episode that just dropped from my pal, Amy Chaplin. In this episode, Amy goes on a deep-dive comparing the two productivity apps, Evernote and Notion.

If you know Amy at all, you know that organization is a strength and passion of hers. She’s been a longtime user of Evernote as a tool to capture notes, ideas, and documents. As she describes in her podcast episode, when Notion came on her radar, however, she moved the majority of her Evernote content over to the Notion. In this episode, she also points out the main differences between Evernote and Notion and WHY she decided to make the switch. She also lists examples of how she uses Notion in her daily life.

Take a listen to Amy’s Evernote vs Notion episode (or read the transcript) HERE. And feel free to check out more episodes from her Piano Pantry podcast HERE.

Have a great weekend, friends!

PS: In case you missed it — I published my in-depth Introduction to Notion blog post last week. And Amy and I are working hard right now to prepare a special event: a two-day, online workshop where we help you build your own centralized digital workspace in Notion as a piano teacher. It’ll be held Friday, March 8 and Saturday, March 9, 2024, from 10:30am to 1:30pm Eastern each day. We are planning an AWESOME event with lots of bonus materials and Notion templates that you won’t want to miss. Please mark your calendar, and stay tuned for registration info soon!

Studio Business

An Introduction to Notion — A Customizable Digital Workspace to Organize Everything in Your Life

Do you find yourself using paper LESS and using apps MORE when managing your to-dos and projects?

I know I do! Although there are a few areas of life where I prefer paper, most of the time I prefer keeping things digital.

In fact, I’ll admit I’m a little bit of a nerd when it comes to following what new apps or platforms are available in the productivity and note-taking space. I find it fun to see what each one has to offer, and if it looks interesting enough I might even take it for a test drive.

In 2021, I revisited a platform called Notion and was blown away with its capabilities. I downloaded a few of their free page templates and started customizing them to my own needs, and I’ve been hooked ever since.

Notion has become my go-to hub for keeping track of almost anything in my life, both personal and professional. For me, it has replaced other tools such as Apple Notes, Evernote, Trello, Airtable databases, and even Google Docs/Sheets/Forms in many cases. Notion is simple to use, yet can be incredibly powerful, flexible, and customizable.

In this blog post, I’ll tell you why you might want to give Notion a try, what it can do for you, and how you can get started with it. Perhaps Notion will become an all-in-one place for you to keep your life organized, as it has for me!

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