Skip to main content

The Private Teaching Business Model

Over my years of teaching I've come across a wide variety of interpretations about the private teaching business model.  I feel that this is a natural result of the type of society we live in.  Many services these days are either "subscriptions" or "appointments."  For example, a gym membership is a subscription.  You pay a monthly fee to use the facility at any time during their hours of operation.  A doctor's visit or a haircut is an "appointment."  You call ahead to set up a time, you show up and then pay after the services have concluded.

With most services falling into one of these two categories, most people try to rationalize music lessons as one or the other.  However, music lessons are neither subscriptions or appointments.  They are actually a combination of both if the business entity is going to be successful.

The reasons why this hybrid business model occurs are:

1)  The service itself is centered around personal attention (appointment model)

2)  In order for the service to be effective, longevity must be assumed (subscription model)

When a private teacher is taking on a student, he or she is not looking at the potential client as a hair dresser would.  A hair dresser's service is finite.  You may like your particular hair dresser and wish to return but the quality of a hair dresser's service is not affected whether you return or not.  A single appointment is a complete experience.  Music lessons are an ongoing experience that require years of work to yield results.

Since the service requires so much time, most music teachers have their students pay monthly or quarterly as a subscription service would.  They must assume that the appointments will continue.  But the fact that the student is paying for appointments is what makes subscription payments confusing.  Unlike a gym where people are free to walk in an out at any time, a teacher must schedule appointments.

It is important to understand this if you are interested in music lessons and are trying to figure out if you have the time in your schedule.  Due to this hybrid business model, most established private studio teachers do not have the same flexibility of schedule that one might expect from other appointment services due to the reoccurring nature of lessons.  Therefore, it is not uncommon to have to wait potentially several months before being able to schedule that first lesson.

Additionally, most music teachers are not able to refund or offer make ups for missed lessons.  Like an appointment, the item being sold is time.  A lesson time slot cannot be returned and resold.  Once it is gone, it is gone.  A hair dresser can have "walk-in" new clients.  A music teacher does not do walk -ins and must account for this when collecting payment.  So, in this sense, music lessons are more like a subscription service.  You do not pay less to Netflix just because you watched fewer movies one month.

The aim of this post is to help educate people interested in music lessons on why music teachers have the business policies that they do.  Like any good business owner, a teacher should always strive to provide a high quality of service.  But, in order to do this, a private teacher must be able to make a living off of providing this service, which means certain business policies must be in place.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Illusion of Mastery

Dr. Molly Gebrian touched on a concept called "the illusion of mastery" in her Rethinking Genius interview.   Basically, it's what psychologists call it when you do something over and over again, giving yourself a false sense of mastery. Wait... if you do something over and over again, shouldn't it be mastered? Well, not always. The true test of mastery is internalization.  If you're still having to follow the directions for how to make chicken, you haven't mastered chicken cooking.  Mastery means that you've cooked chicken so many times you're no longer worried about the basics.  It also means that you are confident enough in those basics that you are able to add extra elements with some degree of certainty.  For example, you know how the chicken should be cooked even after adding a sauce or extra seasoning. In other words: you can complete the task under pressure. The physical and psychological leap from the practice room to the stage is th

Like Brushing Your Teeth

One of my teacher trainers told me that practicing should be like brushing your teeth. There is never a day when your tooth brushing is affected by other events in your day. The process is completely emotionally detached. I mulled over her words of wisdom for quite some time after she said them to me. What struck me the most was the suggestion of emotionally detaching myself. All my life I have been told that music is supposed to express emotion. So it was almost like it would be wrong to try and strip that away. For me, the teeth brushing example was a very interesting concept. I realized that the level of habitual repetition of that daily routine is rarely achieved in any other life areas. Dishes get put off, vacuuming, shopping for groceries.... but I always make the time to brush my teeth. Always making the time for practice? A lofty ideal indeed.

Interview with Michiko Yurko on Music Mind Games and Sight-Reading in the Suzuki Method

Welcome to Rethinking Genius, Michiko! Please introduce yourself and tell us about your company, Music Mind Games. Hi, Danielle! I am Michiko Yurko and I am the creator of Music Mind Games, a project I have been working on for 40 years. It’s been great! Music and education were important to my parents. Although they followed different professions, my father sang and my mother played the piano. I was always supported in my music and dance lessons and related activities so I have very positive memories of those years. My mom was an elementary classroom teacher and her extraordinary devotion to her students and her creativity taught me to be innovative in my own work. Music Mind Games, LLC was founded in 2005 after Warner Bros (my publisher for nearly 20 years) was sold to Alfred. Although they believed in my work and continue to publish the book Music Mind Games, Alfred said they could not afford to produce the Music Mind Games materials. My husband, Cris and I discussed all sorts o