Transcript: Episode 045 – Kathy Rabago on Pivoting from In-Person to Online Summer Camps

Transcript for Episode 045 – Kathy Rabago on Pivoting from In-Person to Online Summer Camps

Transcript: Episode 045 – Kathy Rabago

Intro

Hey, there! Last week’s podcast was recorded before the winners of the grant competition had been selected, so I’m excited to announce them here today.

Brittany Neely and Rebecca Turngren were our two runners up. They received $100 business grants and free tuition for the summer Business Building program. Our grand prize winner received a $500 business grant, a subscription to Fons online payment and scheduling platform, a full studio logo and brand identity package from Gillian at GEM Studios who was on the podcast a few weeks ago, and tuition for the summer Business Building program. That grand prize goes to Scarlette Kerr. Congratulations, I’m so excited to work with you all this summer! And a HUGE thanks to our sponsors, Fons and GEM Studios. They’re the best.

Today I’m talking to Kathy Rabago, a piano teacher and music school owner, about how she pivoted the in-person camps her teachers had planned into online camps in response to COVID. And in the process, she created passive income generators for her teachers.

Kathy shares great insights for anyone thinking about running online camps and also about what it means to be a business owner.

Here’s my conversation with Kathy.

Transcript

[00:01:44]

Andrea: Hi Kathy. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for being here. Can you introduce yourself and tell us about your studio?

Kathy: Sure. I live in a suburb outside of Austin, Texas called Cedar Park, Texas and I started a commercial studio a little over 10 years ago. We just celebrated our 10th anniversary last month.

Andrea: Congratulations.

Kathy: Thank you. Yeah and it’s been a wonderful journey. It’s definitely been a journey of learning about entrepreneurship, learning about being a boss and running a company. I have 18 teachers that I employ–they’re not contractors–and it’s a pretty big job. We do most of our lessons in-house in the studio and then we also have some teachers that do some travel teaching to students’ homes as well as a private school that we outsource to and we do their lessons as well. Of course, right now during coronavirus we are still 100% online and had to make a lot of changes this summer.

[00:02:38]

Andrea: Yeah and I’ve been saying lately in interviews we’re recording this, it’s June 10th, just for context, because it seems like things change by the week, so to give context to anyone listening. And are you doing any teaching yourself these days or are you mostly the business owner?

Kathy: Right. I do teach because I feel like that’s a big part of my identity and what I love. I have my Doctorate in Pen and Pedagogy so I think a bit of me would be lost if I wasn’t actively teaching myself. But I love also guiding the teachers. I feel like I’m using my pedagogy degree that way as well, being able to train the teachers, and the nice thing about being a teacher and owning a studio and working that way is every year I’ve been able to structure my work around the needs of my family, which is nice too.

I have two children and they are 12 and 15 so they’re a little bit more independent now so I can do a little bit different teaching hours but I also need days that I’m helping them with their activities and their homework. And of course, when they were littler I have different teaching hours. So it’s been great because I feel like I’m definitely in charge of what hours I get to set and when I get to teach and when I get to do the admin work and so it’s been a nice fit for me as a mom too.

[00:03:50]

Andrea: Yeah, I find that really interesting. I think a lot of music teachers move into a role where they’re maybe 80 to 90% of their role is managing the business but there’s like that heart for teaching and we just can’t let it go entirely because it’s just fun.

Kathy: Yeah, absolutely. And I feel like I just wouldn’t feel myself if I wasn’t teaching so for now I love teaching. That may change but for now I love it.

Andrea: Yeah, so what does a normal summer look like in your studio?

Kathy: Right. So we do our private lessons all year round. Usually we see a drop off in our private lessons as families travel. We have a lot of international families that may go overseas for the entire summer so we’ll have that drop and then they usually come back when school starts. So it’s not a big drop but it is a drop, so we also run group classes. Our group classes don’t meet over the summer. That’s just a school year schedule. We don’t have group class and come over the summer but what we usually do is we run a boot camp once a week and we aim our camp at new students.

So that’s our marketing for new students and usually the kids that take the camps end up signing up for private lessons afterwards. We just found that to be a better fit than targeting the camps that are existing students, because a lot of them are still doing private lessons so they might feel overwhelmed by doing an additional camp. We get a lot of beginners that take our camp. We do one camp that we call a music sampler camp. That has always been extremely popular where I have a different teacher teach every day and we’re introducing a new instrument every day, and it’s actually hands-on so they get to try the violin or they get to try a harp or they could try drums or they could try piano. A lot of parents like that a lot and kids like it too because maybe it’s something they didn’t think about, Oh, I didn’t know that I could play the violin or the cello or something like that.

Yeah, so usually our camp enrollment is also 100% beginners. Often we’ll target a camp at our existing students, maybe like a Broadway camp for our singers or improvisation camp for our pianists, things like that. But the bulk of our income comes from new students over the summer with our camps.

[00:06:05]

Andrea: Alright. And would you say, maybe there isn’t a clear answer to this, but would you say the camps they’re more marketing strategy for you or are they to boost income in the summer or a little of both?

Kathy: Yeah, definitely a little of both. As a business owner I have a certain responsibility to provide income for my teachers that work for me, right? So when we have a little bit of a drop off in the private lessons I feel like I need to provide them other areas where they can work and make income so their income doesn’t dip as much. That’s one of the aspects of the puzzle. I want to give opportunities for our teachers to work.

A second aspect, of course, when we have that dip in private lesson, we want to make that up with some camp. It also bring in revenue for the business as well but also I found it a great way to target new students because it gives them a couple of hours– Usually we run our camps three hours a day over the summer so it gets them in the studio, gets them immersed in music. They get to meet their teachers, they maybe click with a couple of teachers, and then they become returnee students, which is the bulk of how our business runs right now.

[00:07:16]

Andrea: And obviously this summer is different because of the coronavirus. So what does this summer look like for you so far?

Kathy: Yeah, so usually we have all of our marketing done and when I say “we” it’s mostly me just doing the marketing. Sometimes I outsource some of this to other people but we usually have everything in place by the beginning of February, and that’s when everything goes out to the papers that are doing advertising and then online sources and things like that. We get our website ready to go. As usual we have that already like February 1st because, believe it or not, I don’t know if it’s the same in your city, but February is when parents start signing up for camps. You know I’ve never been a parent that plans that far ahead but boy, there are a lot of parents that plan that far ahead.

So we have everything in place. We had a lot of enrollment for this summer and then, of course, mid-March, like everybody, we had to change some things and shut down. It happened to be our spring break actually when coronavirus hit so we were out that week and then when all the schools announced it no one would be coming back, we also made a quick transition to online. So i spent the majority of my spring break working with each of my 18 teachers everyday making sure everybody was trained properly to be comfortable with teaching online.

But at that point, too, I made a decision that we also needed to cancel all of our summer in-person camps, which was a difficult decision to make at that time because in March we didn’t know how the summer was going to look. But once the schools announced that the rest of the school year would be online that was a pretty secure vet that summer would be a little bit part of the deal. So I have to go through it and refund all the tuition of the students that had already pre-registered and paid for camps, which of course is difficult, but then I have meetings with all of my teachers and we brainstormed ideas about online camps.

I’m the kind of business owner that I like working with the strengths of my teachers. I have some teachers that just love working in a group environment with students and some that’s just not their forte and they don’t enjoy it. So I only work with the teachers that I knew would enjoy this kind of teaching. I had a handful of teachers that wanted to attempt this so we came up with topics for online camps. I had them each come up with kind of a general description and we talked about curriculum together and we decided for our online camps that we would do a shorter length because usually, like I said, we used to do 3-hours a day for our summer camps and online that is just difficult for children, right?

So we decided for an hour a day. We came out with a format, came up with the topics, wrote descriptions, and rebuilt the website. So this was all done back in March so I had everything. I’d redo all the graphics, redo all the descriptions. We use an online scheduling and so I had to redo all. It was definitely tons of work on my end because I had to scrap all the work that I’ve done previous in the year and totally reformat. But making that decision early on gave us some time to advertise it which has been nice.

[00:10:33]

Andrea: Yeah, I think there’s so much value in making a decision that you can move towards and you may have gotten to this point and thought, “Oh, that was more conservative of a decision than I need to make but I think it wasn’t.” It didn’t end up that way but just by making that decision early like you said you did have a time to actually market it and just the kind of calm that it brings when you know what you’re doing, when you know what your plan is and you can move forward.

Kathy: Yes. And I think as entrepreneurs we always have to look at situations like the ones we are in and not be shut down and not think “Oh no, gosh, what am I going to do?” but instead think, “Okay, how can I restructure my business or how can I restructure my teaching to still meet the needs of the community?” but in a different way. That has always been my philosophy for my studio was to bring excellence in music education to the community. Not that we don’t already have it with some private teachers but I wanted to just expand on that and build a bigger program. For turning to online I thought, “Okay, how can we still get the kids educated, get them interested in some musical topics but do it in a different way that’s safer for all involved this year?”

[00:11:45]

Andrea: Can you describe some of the topics of the camps that you and your teachers came up with?

Kathy: Sure, yeah. So we came up with a couple of music history camps. We’ve had one and that one has already passed actually, that’s for the younger group. We had a bunch of kindergarteners and first and second graders in that group. We’ve got one coming up for the older kids, maybe like the late elementary and middle high school kids. I’ll leave it open and see who enrolls. One of my teachers is doing a music appreciation class, so a little bit not as heavy duty as maybe music history, just kind of listening to some pieces and talking about composers and things like that. One of my voice teachers is doing a singers boot camp so she is working with yoga poses and breathing exercises and things that you can do physically with your body to help support you as a singer.

We have a beginning piano camp. That’s usually one of our biggest in-person summer camps, so we thought, let’s do a beginning to get some of the kids who have never taken before, to do some lessons. One of my teachers is actually just moved– she grew up in France and she just moved to the US last year so she is doing a camp about French language and music and culture. So she’s kind of mixing her strength as French being her first language and so we’re kind of reaching out. I have another teacher who doesn’t teach for me any longer because he moved out of state but he’s an excellent artist so he’s also going to be doing an art camp with the kids. Working online, we’re able to branch out a little bit away from music, maybe into the more general arts and culture aspect. So that’s just a couple. We’ve got some other vocal camps and things like that.

Andrea: Yeah. And being able to bring back teachers who have moved away and get to incorporate their skills, that’s kind of cool.

Kathy: Yeah. Being able to bring him back– He lives now in Florida but he’s able to teach online like we all are so that’s been fun.

[00:13:44]

Andrea: Have you offered any online classes or camps before or is this new to you?

Kathy: We have never done an online camp but we have always done online lessons as an alternate for makeup lessons. So sometimes if a student can’t come to the studio, for whatever reason for a lesson, that’s always the first makeup option we will give them. Let’s just do an online lesson during your normal lesson time. Now, we have to admit we are much more well-structured now. We have all the mic setup and the cameras and the computers and iPads and of course, as the teachers do it more and more it’s getting better and better.

So of course that sometimes was just you have like a 5-minute notice. For music apps so it wasn’t as sophisticated as what we’re doing now but we have always offered that to our families. I personally have several students that I’ve always taught online. Some, with just a situation like this they used to stay with me and they moved away and they wanted to keep studying with me so we’ve been continuing their lessons online. A little touch of online lessons but this, of course, is the first time we’ve run online camps, so online group format, yeah.

[00:14:54]

Andrea: Okay. This is kind of a side question but are your teachers teaching from the studio or they’re from their homes too?

Kathy: They are all teaching from their homes right now. I did purchase some equipment in case any of the teachers needed extra equipment so I purchased a couple of extra iPads, some tripods for the iPads, some additional overhead cameras, and things like that. So I do have some of my teachers are borrowing our equipment right now but the majority had enough equipment to run at home. We are still all at home right now for the safety of the children and the safety of the teachers.

[00:15:28]

Andrea: Moving to the business side of camps, how did you think about pricing these online camps versus your in-person camps?

Kathy: Sure. We kept the hourly rate very similar to what we did in the in-person camp so our in-person like I mentioned was three hours a day. Overall, the weekly price was more than what we’re doing in one hour a day, so similar hourly price for the children. I always have to do the math and figure out, okay, I want to be able to pay the teachers X amount so what will be my minimum enrollment to be able to do that plus have the overhead at the studio cost and things like that. I factored that into figuring out the cost but it’s almost exactly what we were charging per hour for our in-person camp. I did add a little bit of cushion on it to do some materials fee, so if we have the camp where, for example, the kids need a book or some colors or some papers that we print out then we’re able to get those physical products and have the parents pick them up at the studio for the camp, so a little bit of cushion to get that.

Andrea: Yeah. And that’s fun because they get some of the tangible camp experience even if they’re not there in person.

Kathy: Right.

[00:16:42]

Andrea: What technology are you using to host the camps?

Kathy: We are using Zoom to do the group classes. All of our teachers have been doing that now for the past couple of months. And then, also, some of my teachers are also pre-recording the camps or recording them after that and we’re hosting them on an online platform so that they’re always available to purchase, which has been another great thing for both the teachers and us as a business. So that’s a different course platform that we’re holding them on. I had a teacher yesterday finish her singers boot camp. We got that all uploaded to the course platform so even though that camp is no longer live, if somebody wants to purchase it, they can purchase it and go through it on their own.

[00:17:24]

Andrea: Okay, yeah. Talk to us a little bit more about that. You have the one option where they can participate live in a class and it sounds like the teachers are recording a separate. It’s not like they record the Monday class and then upload that as a prerecorded camp. They are recording it specifically for this prerecorded camp?

Kathy: Yes, correct. So they’re recording it. Of course it’s the same. If you’re doing lesson plans for a week of camp, it would be the same lesson plans but when you’re recording it, it’s not going to be as long as working with the children for an hour because when you’re working with the kids you have interactions and you’re asking questions and doing things like that. So the actual video recording is quite short because you’re just explaining the topics and then are handouts, so like pdf handouts of the topics. For Music History 1 that I’ve been doing I’m working with my teacher who’s an artist. He’s been working on coloring pages so I hired him to do some coloring pages of all the history topics that we’re doing. Those will be available for the parents or the kids that sign up and then they can download all of the material, watch the videos and kind of just work through it on their own. Obviously it’s not as interactive. It’s more fun when you have other kids that you can talk to but they still get the educational aspect of learning about the topics.

[00:18:36]

Andrea: I think that totally makes sense to do a separate recording of that because then it’s optimized for that. Give me an experience like we’ve all watched webinar replays or something and they’re just a little bit annoying to watch after the fact. They’re great when you’re there live but a little annoying after the fact.

Kathy: And kids have shorter attention span and maybe they don’t want to watch that 50-minute class but you want to still watch about the topic and learn about that. So this is brand new territory because we don’t know how this is going to work. Hopefully if it works well then the teachers will continue to earn income off the camp they create if we’re still able to market that. So hopefully, I guess that part of my job as a business owner is to create opportunities for my teachers to make a living. So fingers crossed that that will work where that’s in the stages we’re still developing all of that right now.

[00:19:26]

Andrea: Have they attracted students outside of your geographic area?

Kathy: Yes. So I did some Facebook marketing with our camp offerings. What I did was I used all the graphics that I created for our website and put it into a Facebook ad and when it’s online we don’t have any limits so we did have inquiries from all over the US and you know, of course, it’s a numbers game. Not everybody who inquires signs up but we did have some students to sign up. We have actually some students in different time zones and we had to work that out and it has been good. You know we were talking about numbers about last summer and I was telling you that there’s always a big drop off in students and then we– I mean, not big, it’s a huge drop off, and then we have the summer camps make up for it.

We found this year, actually, with online lessons that the drop off has been a lot less, believe it or not, because I was talking to one of my teachers and she was bringing up the idea that she feels that she can be a lot more flexible now  over the summer without our room situation where we have to make sure that everybody has a room to teach in. She’s able to work around conflicts with families a lot easier with online lessons plus we don’t have families that are just going overseas for the whole summer this summer. It’s kind of a good balance in gain. Our online camp is going to be not of high of an income as our in-person camp but on the flipside our private lessons are staying up there a lot higher than they were before.

[00:20:52]

Andrea: And do you think you’ll consider making online lessons an option for your teachers too after all of this?

Kathy: Absolutely, yeah. Purchasing the equipment for my studio, I want to make sure each of our studios is set up to have all the equipment there. I don’t think it will be as fancy as like a laptop in every studio but we’re working on getting an iPad and a tripod and a setup in every studio so that if we need to because we don’t know about the fall. Nobody knows about the fall and if it’s a situation where the schools open and we open to start lessons and then a month into it the school say, “You know, we need to shut down because…” for whatever reason we need to be able to make that same move because we pretty much follow the public schools and what they do. We need to be ready at any moment to switch to online. And it maybe even a situation where I have a fever and I don’t want to come into the studio, you know you need to do an online lesson then, so yeah. So definitely, I think it’s always going to be an option.

[00:21:49]

Andrea: And if your camps attract students out of state they could even be a permanently online student for your teachers.

Kathy: Absolutely. You know the great thing about the prerecorded camps is it’s tons of work up front, I mean, I was very honest with the teachers and I think the ones that are working on it right now and they understand it is it’s so much work to do that video editing and then create the pdf’s, but once it’s done, it’s done, right? So now that’s a camp that can live on our site forever and the teacher can get income off of it for as long as people are enrolling in it.

Andrea: Yeah, that’s super valuable.

Kathy: Yeah, right.

[00:22:25]

Andrea: What course platform are you using for hosting those?

Kathy: I use a course platform that’s in a beta stage but I’m really enjoying it. It’s called New Zenler.

Andrea: Alright. Talk to us more about the marketing. You said you started in March marketing this and what did that look like?

Kathy: It’s kind of three-fold. We have an email list, of course, and if you’re a private studio or a commercial studio that’s like your most valuable thing is to have an email list because that’s how you reach your market directly. So like I said, we’ve been in business for a little bit over 10 years now so I have quite a lot of lists over the past 10 of people who have inquired about lessons or have taken lessons from us. That’s one aspect of the marketing and we’ve been sending out some newsletters, email newsletters with what’s going on and how we’re doing lessons, upcoming things like that. I think it’s a great idea for all teachers to have that kind of communication with their families even if it’s something like just once a month. Previous to this, we were just doing the newsletter once a month but then I started to do that more frequently as we had parents asking questions and things like that. So that’s one way.

The other way is we have been offering since March weekly free group classes for not only our students but anybody that wants to sign up. The teachers that are teaching the classes are also the ones that are doing the online camps. So again, because they’re the ones that enjoyed that in their action with the kids, so we’ll send out links to those who signed up. Once they sign up, sometimes it’s a new student and then we get their email, so that goes into our email list, but once they sign up then they get the link on how to log in and then the teacher would work with them for about 45 minutes in a little group class and teach them about a topic that they may not be doing in their lessons.

We try to send out the topics around things that we were doing for the camp so like for example, one of my teachers who’s a composer–she’s a published composer–she’s doing a Composition Camp so she did a class on Beginning Composition, and she had a bunch of little ones log on, really little ones, but they worked on compositions together. One of my teachers is doing Music Appreciation Camp. She did a couple, a series of classes on different topics about music and different composers. It’s two-fold. It was to provide an opportunity to our students that we are online yet still getting them together in learning about something and then there was also marketing for “Hey, if you like this, maybe you’ll like this camp that we’re going to be doing this summer?”

We actually got some sign up from our camps of people that join these classes that aren’t students. They just heard about them through other means and they enjoyed it and they signed up for our camp. That was definitely a marketing that worked. And of course, I paid the teachers for their time in doing the free classes but we didn’t charge the students for the extra activity. And then we’ve done some, like I mentioned before, social media marketing as well.

[00:25:19]

Andrea: Okay. How big of a role would you say the social media marketing plays in the results that you get?

Kathy: For the social media marketing, I do some targeted audiences outside of our area and like I mentioned I got some people outside of the Austin area so I think that was a good investment because I wouldn’t have been able to reach those fans otherwise. I think for our local audience the newsletter list and the free classes have been stronger as far as marketing.

That’s what people in business would call a warm market, you know, the people that already know you, that already take lessons from you. They know your strengths so it’s easier to convey what you’re doing to them versus somebody who doesn’t know you at all.

Andrea: Yeah. And it doesn’t mean the others aren’t worth it because you’re still building that brand recognition preps that’s just the first step into a new market, so some mix of those two. So you’ve said that you’ve already had one week of camp. Is that right?

Kathy: Yes, so we’ve just run one in person and like I said, I just have one of our teachers just finished one of her prerecorded one, so we have one of those done. So I think this is going to be a work in progress and then we’re getting ready for the rest.

[00:26:31]

Andrea: What did you learn that first week?

Kathy: Like any kind of teaching, it’s good to have a solid lesson plan to know exactly what you’re doing. With the one last week was actually one that I taught and I wanted to kind of be the guinea pig as the owner. So I worked in giving these PowerPoint slides of everything before so I have something of everyday to show the kids and working with some YouTube videos that I wanted them to watch. We had some activities and I mentioned the coloring pages that they colored and cut out. I had them glue them on Popsicle sticks. So we’re doing some active activities as well. This was kind of an elementary aged group.

Like with anything, planning is key. We didn’t ask the parents to stay even with this younger group but we have some parents sit in and help which was nice too. It was a fun experience.

[00:27:24]

Andrea: From your conversations to the parents and students and even teachers, what do you think they’re looking for in an online camp experience for after half a semester of Zoom school?

Kathy: Yeah. I’ve heard mixed things from the other parents and as a parent myself, even though my kids are older, you have the topic of Zoom fatigue, right? They’ve been doing online classes at school since mid-March. So you have that camp of people with that opinion like “I just want my kids to just do whatever they want. They don’t need to be stuck to the computer.” But then, you have the other camp of families that are saying, you know, they were doing online school but wasn’t 100% satisfied with the quality. But I still want my kids to learn more, right?

With that, you have parents that they’re setting their kids up for additional activities because they want them to learn. I see that more from the angle of the parents that are just kind of worried about maybe their kids falling behind or not losing this window of opportunity. I know with many of my high school students, my own personal students, they are all taking like community college classes this summer online to get college credits. None of that has stopped and the families that know that this is the window of opportunity before the kids are gone and grown. So yeah, it’s just like with everything. It’s difficult to please everybody but this is an additional enrollment for us. It’s not like it’s part of our lesson package so only with the families that will want it of course are signing up.

[00:29:04]

Andrea: That’s interesting. It’s like there’s a receptiveness but an expectation and searching for higher quality than maybe what they got in the last half of the school year from teachers who are scrambling and trying to make it all work just like all of us.

Kathy: We were all scrambling and I certainly appreciate all the efforts that all my children’s teachers did to meet their needs. I just know that sometimes parents want that education to continue. And like I said, it’s been interesting that the private lessons hasn’t dropped off as much. We’re seeing parents that see the value of this and want to keep their kids going and keep them engaged. Sometimes it’s nice like when my kids log on for their lessons it’s nice to know that they are having that hour of nice productivity with their teacher versus “Hey, I want to go spend this hour watching YouTube videos” or just chatting with my friends or playing Minecraft or whatever it is even though those may be fun activities. As a parent, it’s nice to see the education still continuing.

[00:30:05]

Andrea: Do you have any parting advice for a teacher who might want to try this this summer, maybe they just want something for their own students, maybe they want to try something broader, any advice for teachers who want to try this?

Kathy: Yeah. So like I mentioned before, it’s really good to see things like this is something that will shut you down and hurt you but how can you change, how can you reformat your structure as a teacher or as a business to meet the needs of your community again. It doesn’t take that much planning to do an online camp especially if you’ve been doing online lessons. So you’re familiar with the format and your students are familiar with the format. My students know how to share a screen, how to annotate, how to do everything, because they’ve been using this platform for so long.

To run an online camp does not take that much effort outside of your lesson planning. I would say go for it. Just try it. Take a topic that you think might be interesting to your families or your group of students and just run with it. I mean, the greatest thing is that if you’re already teaching online lessons you already have all the equipment so you’re not investing anything into this thing, and if it doesn’t work, you use it as a learning opportunity and move on.

[00:31:19]

Andrea: And where can listeners get in touch with you and check out all your camp offerings and things going on in your studio?

Kathy: So my studio is Velocitymusicacademy. That’s the URL Velocitymusicacademy.com. I have my own website. It’s KathyRabago.com and some of what I’m talking about that I’ve been developing with my friend that’s the artist, that’s actually available on my music theory website which is Pianoprogram.com. So I got those three different ways and I’m on Facebook and Instagram too and I’m happy to connect with anybody and chat with them and give them ideas. I’m happy to share.

Andrea: Alright Kathy, thank you so much.

Kathy: Yeah, no problem. Thank you.

Recap

Kathy shared some great takeaways about how they are running virtual camps in her studio this summer. I wanted to pull out just a few:

1. She restructured her camps to make them fit online, recognizing that most kids wouldn’t want to spend 3 hours on Zoom
2. She developed a standard format for the camps and then worked with the strengths of her teachers to help them develop their own curriculum
3. They put together supply bags for parents to pick up so kids still get to do the hands-on crafts and activities that are such a fun part of in-person camps
4. What Kathy said about parents registering for camps in February and March has been true in the places I’ve lived, too. BUT, I still think there are opportunities to run a camp this summer, even to just try it out with your own studio families and friends.

I love the way Kathy is maximizing the effort her teachers are putting in to developing online curriculum by giving them the opportunity to pre-record their camps and market those as well. What a cool way to enable her teachers to earn some passive income.

You could tell Kathy takes seriously her responsibility to provide for her teachers, by giving them opportunities to work.

This may be THE biggest addition in responsibilities a teacher takes on when they go from being a solo, independent teacher to multi-teacher studio owner. And it’s an important one to consider, if you’re thinking of making that leap.

As a solo teacher, if 80% of your time is spent delivering fantastic lessons and 20% is spent doing all the admin and marketing to keep your studio humming, it flips when you step into the role of studio owner and take on the admin responsibilities for several other teachers.

It has its own set of rewards, but it also has its own responsibilities.

The first video lesson for the Business Building program was released on Monday and our first live session is right around the corner. Enrollment for this program closes on Friday.

Get all the details at musicstudiostartup.com/summer2020

That’s all for today. Thanks for listening! I’ll be back next week.