Help: Piano teacher. Lesson schedule packed. What next?

May 25, 2013 10:33 PM

Asking this for the wife: She is an experienced piano and voice teacher in a mid-size city. Masters' Degree in Music/Education. 10+ years teaching K-5 music in public schools. Regular piano students (half-hour lessons) now, teaching from our home. Trouble is, her lesson slots are almost entirely filled, i.e. she's topped out. So... How might one take this kind of skill and experience and parlay it into a better income? Not looking for a job. Looking to build a business to dovetail with her current lessons, maybe even eventually surpass them. Really interested in something online, for example, that would expand her base beyond local. We've barely scratched the surface of things like video lessons, etc. But we want to hear ideas outside the box, especially if others are making it work. Eventual passive income would be a big bonus. But I've never heard of an MLM for piano lessons...
posted by skypieces to Work & Money (17 answers total)

Don't know about online, but if there's essentially a waiting list to be one of her students, why not increase the fees? Demand outstripping supply = price goes up.
posted by Dansaman at 10:55 PM on May 25, 2013 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Thanks for the thought. Certainly something being considered. But she likely won't raise her price on current students anytime soon (she's already top bracket, price-wise, for our area). For future students, maybe. We're looking more at things that can be done in other time brackets (almost all lessons are in after-school hours), or for things that leverage her time better, in general.
posted by skypieces at 11:02 PM on May 25, 2013

This is a classic "there are only so many hours in the day" problem.

Some additional ideas:

- Teach groups of students and/or operate a "summer music day camp".
- Publish learning materials
- Publish a book about teaching piano and voice
- Train other teachers
- Open a small music school and be the director/head teacher but hire other teachers too
posted by Dansaman at 11:15 PM on May 25, 2013 [1 favorite]

The obvious answer is that her fee is too low and should be increased. Especially if it has not been increased in over a year. I see on preview that you've addressed this, but I think it's worth mentioning to the (parents of) current students that she appreciates their ongoing relationship, and is excited at the success of her venture. For whatever reason...(I'd go with length of time since last increase), the fee will be raised by $5 per 1/2 hour. If they all squeal, you can ease off by telling them that the increase will be effective for them in 3 or 6 months time if they wish to pre-pay now for those 3 or 6 months at their current rate.

Getting people to pay ahead in larger chunks of time is always good. Better still for your wife if non-refundable and backed by a contract that your lawyer has approved. Pre-payments can be invested in further training for your wife, upgrades to the facility where she teaches...whatever else a piano teacher needs to invest in.

She could offer to coach other music teachers? Maybe visiting classrooms in your school district to offer ideas keep them up to date about pedagogy? I say that because visiting classrooms is probably outside the hours of her normal teaching schedule.

She could also get music teachers into your home/some other space to all discuss together. She can probably charge each teacher the same as what a student pays for lessons. Actually, probably more! And there's more than one student in the room. If there's a college with a Music Ed program near you, this is where she should look for these types of clients, because lots of Music Ed students are earning money on the side by teaching {instrument}.

Topics:

• Motivating students to practice
• Choosing suitable music for the learner
• Dealing with lateness/no shows/poor cancellation habits
• Dealing with parents who are pushy/inconsiderate/tough to deal with/overestimate their child's ability
• How to fire students who aren't practicing/don't pay/have poor attitude
• Dealing with the finances of private teaching, if she feels comfortable discussing that
• Setting up a home teaching space - lighting, music stands, privacy, available water, whatever actually goes into what works for her.

The "passive" income from this might come from getting enough other music teachers interested in teaching her...insights. Send them out on the speaking circuit and collect half of their speaking fee.

Another suggestion is to try teaching people who are not children. (some) Adults who want music lessons may be willing to pay more than (some) parents. But more important than that, the adults who want to (re)learn piano might be in a position to get your wife speaking gigs at their places of work. She can talk about how learning music is helpful for math and creativity and...well, she probably knows this. She can talk about how it should be the last thing cut from school budgets, but also how it can transform the company if they all just take piano lessons! (that's a stretch, but hey...maybe)

She can also start a music academy. Hire one or two of those music tutors she trained, and pocket a portion of the fees. Your wife does the scheduling via website and lets the instructors know ahead of time about cancellations. Any student who gives less than 48 hours notice forfeits their entire fee. Your wife keeps half and pays half to the instructor who didn't get to teach. As she hires more instructors, fees for your wife's time increase further, until eventually she doesn't have to teach music, but is instead managing the other instructors. (or filling in for them as they fall sick, play hooky, take vacations....)

Final suggestion, and I know this sounds stupid...but a candy/prize machine for the waiting area if there is a waiting area. Kids get antsy. Kids might be able to talk their parent out of a quarter. Quarters add up. (Just not gum. You know what happens to gum.)

Actually, this is really my last suggestion. Maybe she should take some classes at business school? Because whatever she ends up doing, she will have ever more business questions. She can either spend the money learning how to figure it out while earning an MBA, make costly mistakes, or pay someone to tell her what to do. And maybe she can help manage other people's tutoring businesses, even if she doesn't start an academy.
posted by bilabial at 11:16 PM on May 25, 2013 [7 favorites]

There was a woman in the affluent, suburban town I grew up in who taught piano to E V E R Y O N E. Eventually, she started "certifying" her students to teach. They'd pass through some sort of program, presumably for a fee, and have permission to say they had her approval to teach. A lot of these kids were high school students who would mention this certification in bios in music programs and stuff. I think they'd probably get younger students who'd then move up to the main lady if they stuck with it long enough, and the whole thing expanded the hell out of her brand. It sort of was MLM.
posted by alphanerd at 11:16 PM on May 25, 2013 [1 favorite]

When I was in school in Australia, we had external teachers come in and teach individual lessons during school hours that were paid for privately, kids would leave class for half an hour at a time. I have no idea if this is plausible where you are, but putting it out there.
posted by jacalata at 11:17 PM on May 25, 2013

In re: what to do during school hours- has she been marketing to the homeschool crowd at all? I know a violin teacher or two who have made a real inroad in that market and done quite well financially while filling up some morning and early afternoon hours.
posted by charmedimsure at 11:41 PM on May 25, 2013 [10 favorites]

So... she's a successful piano teacher. She needs to make the leap to where the money is in almost every business of this type: teach the teacher. What if instead of taking on another piano student in her last slot, she took a piano teacher and teach them her "secrets" to success.

Turn what she does into a "method" and train it. You charge more for this, obviously, than you do for normal piano instruction. Bonus: some former piayer students become teacher students.

(Someday, I'm going to go all meta-meta-meta and start a school that teaches people how to start instructor schools.)
posted by ctmf at 12:42 AM on May 26, 2013 [1 favorite]

(Which is not exactly the "supervise a bunch of teachers" idea, but close. It's closer to alphanerd's certification idea. Instead of teaching non-players to be players, teach players to be teachers, and teachers to be better teachers.)
posted by ctmf at 12:45 AM on May 26, 2013

Depending on how good a performer and critic she is, she could hold masterclasses. I used to attend some in Newcastle, they were quite popular and usually had 20+ people with at least 8-10 having a chance to get critique every week.
posted by fearnothing at 1:15 AM on May 26, 2013

When I was a child, my piano teacher had regular (maybe monthly or semi-monthly) music theory lesson days on Saturday mornings. She invited groups of students to come at the same times (loosely grouped by age & piano experience level) to study music theory. Sometimes we would play little games or work on worksheets; it was nothing too complicated.

Anyway, it seems like it could be a nice way to possibly up the teacher's income by having one extra lesson per month for students, but with more than one student at a time. And it has the added benefits of teaching your students more about theory and giving them an opportunity to get to know one another.
posted by pril at 2:39 AM on May 26, 2013 [3 favorites]

The traditional thing is to branch out and do master classes, theory classes and composition classes. These can all be group classes and they can be one-offs as well, often held for two hours on a weekend.

In summer, there is the option to run a one or two week music day camp, but with piano that is very difficult because there are few venues with multiple pianos.
posted by DarlingBri at 3:36 AM on May 26, 2013

Tap the adult market. I took lessons 25 years ago and wish I remembered more. I've seen programs to hook a keyboard up to a computer and teach me, but feedback from a person would be better. Also, an easy way to teach people to read music, and another that would help with using two hands. If you are reaching them in their homes, you have everything there at their disposal. Teach them to build up to it by going lefty on odd days, etc. Think gamification.
posted by jwells at 5:13 AM on May 26, 2013

In addition to tapping the home school and adult market, look at schedules for private & charter schools. Some always follow the local SD schedule, but some don't, leaving the parents with a gap week that'd be filled even by p part time mini music camp. She can target just those students while working with the school.
posted by tilde at 5:53 AM on May 26, 2013

I'm a beginner piano player, but I want to play Christmas music for my friends. I need really easy versions of popular songs. Last year, I went googling and found several websites where piano teachers had created arrangements of songs for various levels of students and were selling the sheet music. This could be a passive income stream.

Ditto if she can package any of the teaching methods that folks are mentioning above - publish it online and sell it.
posted by CathyG at 6:24 AM on May 26, 2013

Adult classes - my sister (a dancer) teaches musical theatre to seniors and she loves it. Your wife could do piano accompaniment to adult ballet or go as a traveling minstrel to senior's homes.
posted by crazycanuck at 4:30 PM on May 26, 2013

She could have a couple of her most advanced students act as music TA's. Pay them a little bit for the job of leading ensembles of her other students, as an adjunct to their individual lessons. Of course the students pay your wife for being in the ensembles.
posted by lakeroon at 6:06 PM on May 26, 2013