The Most Important Secret Of Successfully Marketing A Music School Has Nothing To Do With Marketing

If you’re serious about growing your music school or studio, then you must understand this. Otherwise you will never be able to market fast enough to replace all the students you are losing. Over the years, there have been many markers of my growth as a marketer and studio operator on my way to owning a successful chain of music schools. I remember taking my new wife out for an inexpensive d

What are the characteristics of an effective 1-1 meeting? The other day, I led a management training meeting for members of our team who aren’t yet managers on the topic of 1-1 meetings. I started by asking the students what they thought an effective one-on-one meeting between a manager and a team member should look and feel like. Now, if I ask this question of people who are already manager

NYC Guitar School East in tip-top, 3S-ed form! Cleaning Up Is Faster, More Fun And More Effective With This Simple Lens At NYC Guitar School, we have lots of rooms, lots of equipment, lots of books, and lots of moving parts. Sometimes they get messy! And it isn’t just physical rooms or file cabinets that get messy–so do processes and systems, like the way we book lessons or do our mark

Over-lecturing is a common teacher mistake that kills the passion and progress of students. Sometimes we talk too much because of ego; we want to show off. Sometimes we talk too much because of laziness in preparation. But usually we talk too much (or for music teachers like myself, we play too much) because we are so enthusiastic about our topic, and we have a fundamental misunderstanding of what

Step By Step Growth Isn’t Just For Your Students…Set Incremental Goals To Grow Your Guitar Teaching Studio As a guitar teacher, do you ever feel like your studio is stuck? Maybe in the number of students you teach, or your earnings, or the amount of time it takes you to prepare lessons? Or do you even sometimes feel stuck in the quality of how much you enjoy teaching or the impact you

How To Proactively Fill Gaps In Your Guitar Teaching Schedule When Students Are Away Today’s Topic: On Time Cancellations Many New York City Guitar School teachers mention to me that they appreciate working in a school with a standard cancellation policy, where they get paid if a student doesn’t show up for a lesson or cancels with late notice. The flip side of enforcing late cancellat

If You Use Bad Judgement, You Become Vulnerable To A Range Of Outcomes. They Are All Bad. At New York City Guitar, we have lots of policies which are written to ensure a safe and respectful environment for students and team members Most are very specific, but we have one which is more general, the “Best Judgement Policy.” It reads: When working with all students, use your best judgment

Good advertising copy is a vital element of in building a successful music school. Good copy informs and inspires your students and potential students, and is allows you to build connection and enrollment virtually, when you can’t have an in-person conversation. In this blog post I’m going to talk about one of the most common mistakes that music school owners make when they are learnin

At New York City Guitar, we have lots of policies to ensure a safe and respectful environment for our students and team, from rules against harassment and discrimination common to many businesses to specific rules for teaching guitar to kids, like a policy to always invite parents to observe lessons and a policy to not touch the student’s fingers when teaching technique. Five or six years ag

How I Reduce Drama And Trauma? + Increase Cash And Clarity In My Business In Only One Hour Per Week The secret to having less drama and less trauma in your business finances is to establish regular rhythms to keep track of finances and easy to maintain systems for decisions and reporting. In this blog post, I’m going to walk you through our weekly financial meeting, which allows me as a busi