Do you want to teach music on your own? Run your own private music studio? Be your own boss and make your own schedule? Do you want to have full control over what you teach, how you teach, and when you teach?
You’ve come to the right place.
(In this course (English/Chinese), I will show you step by step how to build your own teaching studio.)
First of all, why do you want to teach?
I can think of a few reasons:
- You like teaching.
- You love music, and you want to share your passion and knowledge with others.
- You need to make a living and you want teaching to be your work.
What else?
Now think about the choice of teaching under someone else, belonging to a music instruction studio/company, and being part of the teaching staff.
What’s wrong with it?
Nothing. There are many merits to teaching for someone.
For example, you don’t have to find your own students.
You also don’t have to manage your students, you don’t have to worry if they forget to pay their tuition to you. You don’t have to worry if they show up or not. The studio policy and the administrative staff would help deal with all that.
You just have to show up and do the teaching. A lot of times they even have their preferred teaching materials so you don’t even need to pick the books.
You also don’t have to worry about planning for any other activities like concerts and performance opportunities.
Pretty sweet isn’t it?
So what are the disadvantages of teaching under someone, in a bigger music studio?
I can think of a few:
You don’t get to pick your students.
You might not be able to choose what materials you want to teach them.
You don’t get to organize anything else than showing up to teach the lessons.
And most of all, you don’t get to decide how much you want to charge your lessons, and you get a percentage of what the studio charges.
I mean, it is fair the studio gets a cut of what you earn, because they do have to administer your students for you. There is also an overhead, the cost running the business, like the studio rent, the staff, the utilities, the advertisements, the insurance, so on and so forth.
You have to ask yourself, after you have decided to start music teaching as your career, if you want to teach for someone or if you want to run your own studio. Because, let’s face it, it’s a lot more work making it on your own, it’s a lot more stressful, and frankly, sometimes lonely to run your own small business. You have to do, EVERYTHING. I mean, everything.
You have to maintain the space clean and take out the trash.
You have to pay for the utilities.
You have to make sure it is a safe space for your students and their parents if you have teaching younger students.
You have to make sure everyone pays, and no one argues with you about the payment.
You need to make sure you are profitable, i.e. budgeting.
There are some administrative costs even just running a home studio.
For instance, keeping a website, maintaining your music instruments, purchasing music materials are just some of the basic things that pops up in my mind immediately.
For me, I run two student concerts every year now, doing that has a cost and I always budget them well. At this point, I have it down to the T.
Other than running a private teaching studio, I also run an online music learning platform, and do music and book publishing works. So that would be a way bigger budget than just a normal private teaching studio, and those are all separate costs from it.
Now, after weighting the pros and cons, if you still want to set up your own music teaching studio, then let’s dive more into it.
The next step is, do you want to teach at your home, or do you want to have a separate studio from home?
I have done both, and personally, I LOVE running my private teaching studio at the comfort of my own home. (I do have a completely separate space outside my house as a teaching studio these days, but that was not been the case in the past.)
But let me give you some pros and cons of this too:
Running Private Music Teaching Studio at Home
1. Convenience: You don’t even have to leave your house! You save so much time. Just make sure you dress well and appropriately for the occasion. Because it is still work you want to be respectful and respected as a proper professional music instructor, not a bum wearing pajamas to work. You are not 14, and this is NOT a PJ day at school!
2. Budget Friendly
Renting a separate space requires more money, and you know what that means? Paying more out and making less money! That also means you might want to work more to cover the rent and other maintenance and utilities that might be required for a commercial space.
Remember, saving money means making more money.
3. Less Stress
Teaching at home is definitely less stressful. Why? You don’t even have to spend time commuting at all! Other than saving money, you are saving a lot of time and mental space going to work, either by driving or taking public transportation. If you are driving, you need to find a parking space! If you’re taking public transportation, you might have to get squeezed among all those people going to work at the same time! I am so grateful I don’t have to do any of that at all. It might also mean you can eat healthier and even take rest between lessons, at your own house!
4. More Time
You know what more time means? Less work and more time having fun and rest! More time for sleep and working out! More time for yourself and with friends and families. What’s not to love here?
Running A Separate Teaching Studio Away From Home
1. Privacy
Some people do not like strangers (at least at the beginning) come to their houses, their addresses are being shared. I don’t list my exact home address online, just an approximate location. I only share it when I confirm our appointment. And I do a lot of screening through how I write on my website and emails, I know I have already screened out those I don’t want, and I know who I am meeting so to speak. For me, I only had a couple strange encounters at the beginning of running my studios in different countries, and after that, it was pretty much smooth sailing. And yes, you might want to have a credit card reader just in case people say they didn’t bring cash for the first trial lesson and then they never showed up again. And yes, therefore I always tell people to pay me in advance BEFORE I even meet them in person. That works 95% of the time, and judging from how they write in their emails, the 5% is pretty trustworthy in my opinion.
2. Boundaries
Some people are not good at separating home and work, if these two things happen at the same place. I mean, I can’t say I was good at that either at the beginning, or for the first few years, because I was very committed to my teaching. I put all my heart and soul and my time into it. I would think about a particular student’s issue (sometimes not even music issue) well into the night. But that was when I didn’t know what “personal boundary” was.
Nowadays, I am quite clear with my work-personal boundaries. I turn off my phone after I finish my last lesson of the week. I don’t check my emails in the weekends (when I don’t work). I have shown my students and their parents what my boundaries are and they respect them without issue. Nothing is that urgent to be honest. It is after all piano lessons, I am not running an ER.
If there are deadlines (e.g. competitions, auditions and exams), I make sure they are met way before they are due. That’s just how I roll even when I was in college. I always finished my papers way ahead of time so I would have to edit them if I needed (I never did).
