Transcript: 157 – Noah Tretter on Enrolling Students from a Hut in the Swiss Alps
Transcript for 157 – Noah Tretter on Enrolling Students from a Hut in the Swiss Alps
[00:00:00] Andrea: Hey, it’s Andrea with Music Studio Startup, the podcast about the business of teaching music. Learn from the startup stories of music teachers who are doing incredible things with their studios. Be inspired by creative musicians who are branching out and thriving as entrepreneurs. Be empowered by the insights of experts who will help you grow your own studio.
Let’s get started.
Before I get started, I’ve got another public service announcement. We’ve given a lot of attention to the new Corporate Transparency Act and the Beneficial Ownership Information Report, or BOIR, filing requirement over the last few weeks. Since our last episode, there’s been a rather significant update to this ruling.
If you’re on our email list, you already received an announcement about this. If you didn’t get the memo, here’s the TLDR. As of the recording of this episode, enforcement on this ruling is currently halted. The ruling is being evaluated by the courts. And the halt on enforcement may or may not be lifted.
We just don’t know. I’ll link to our article about it with some additional resources in the show notes for this episode at musicstudiostartup.com/episode157. Now onto today’s episode. If you’ve ever wished you could travel, but have told yourself that you can’t take time off or it’s too expensive or whatever, this interview will have you rethinking those assumptions.
Today, I’m talking to a returning guest about how he has designed his studios, plural, to be able to take extended backpacking trips every year. We talk about budgeting for the trips, how he preps his students and teachers, and how he keeps things on track while he’s away. Here’s my conversation with Noah.
Hi, Noah. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you for being a returning guest. Can you introduce yourself and tell us what you do?
[00:01:55] Noah Trettor: My name is Noah, as Andrea has stated, and I am a music teacher in Eugene, Oregon. I have Trettor Studios, which is my private in person studio, and I also own and operate Maestro Music Lessons Online, which is my online multi teacher studio.I’m also in the army band and do performing things with them.
[00:02:17] Andrea: That’s right. You are a very busy musician, business owner, and you were a past guest. I think it was episode 116 where you talked about some of the work you’ve done with your online studio and charter schools and kind of accessing some of those funding sources to help make music lessons more accessible for students.So we’ll link up to that in the show notes, but that was a great introduction because I think it also is a segue into our topic today, because although you work really hard, one of the things I appreciate about the perspective you bring to your work is that the work has to have a, an upside to it. And you also want to enjoy your life and have some balance there too.
Which brings us to our topic today and a challenge that music teachers face. And that’s just, how do you take vacations? And I think, as you know, it’s possible to take vacations. You just plan for it. And so today we’re going to talk about how you managed your studios, plural, through an extended travel season last summer, and kind of how, how you went about that.
So set the scene for us, what was going through your mind as you ideated the trip.
[00:03:29] Noah Trettor: Well, it’s a more difficult question to answer. My wife and I, we tend to, for the past four years, we’ve been taking off around eight to ten weeks a year and during those trips we are usually backpacking. And this year’s theme was going to The Swiss Alps, the French Alps, and the Italian Alps, hiking the Tour du Mont Blanc, and the Walker’s Hout route, which came out to around 300 miles, and it took around five weeks to complete.And the best thing about hiking in Europe, we’ve done wilderness backpacking trips in the U. S. as well, there’s plenty of them, but the issue is that the infrastructure Isn’t as good. So like, it’s kind of hard to pull out your computer or whatever when you’re hiking on Appalachian Trail and Pacific Crest Trail.
But when you’re doing these trails in Europe, you would hike to the top of a mountain and there’d be a hut there and you’d get a coffee and a brownie maybe. And then I pull out my computer and I send some emails.
[00:04:27] Andrea: From a hut in the Alps. [00:04:29] Noah Trettor: Yeah. Yeah. In the absolute middle of nowhere. You know, they have some, some satellite internet and yeah. [00:04:35] Andrea: Awesome. Okay. So we’re going to hear more about how you plan those. So it sounds like your goal every year is to take some extended travel. Was this the longest trip you had taken? [00:04:46] Noah Trettor: No, this is not the longest trip we’ve taken. The longest trip I took was for my honeymoon two years ago. My wife and I hiked 600 miles on the Camino del Norte and Camino Portuguese.And that took around six and a half, seven weeks. And same thing. I was also working during that. Yeah. It’s all about just making sure that you make it happen, I guess, at the end of the day. But yeah.
[00:05:11] Andrea: All right. So with this trip, tell us specifically, how long was it? That you were gone and what time of year did you take the trip? [00:05:20] Noah Trettor: We were gone for around five weeks and we left in August. We were just gone for all of August and part of September. [00:05:26] Andrea: Okay. And as you plan the trip, what was your goal? Are you always expecting to work kind of as much as normal or do you want it to be more vacation? What’s going through your mind there? [00:05:37] Noah Trettor: I feel kind of like nerdy about it because I, I actually think it’s really cool to, you know, to, to work while on vacation.Know some people would disagree with that, but I definitely went into it with the intention of doing a certain amount of work. When it comes to my second studio of managing and just kind of like looking after ads and client acquisition and whatnot, I can’t take a total step back, but I can reduce my work and kind of prep ahead for those bigger periods of time, you know, away from home.
[00:06:11] Andrea: And you went in August. That seems like a really challenging time as a studio owner who’s trying to enroll students for the teachers who work for your studio. What made you settle on that particular time? [00:06:24] Noah Trettor: Well, during that period of time, personally for me, I have an army band tour in July, so I can’t teach during that month regardless.So I take off July as well. And then I just kind of do army band things. And then in August, I just, I want to reap the benefits of my labor and not take some time off. And so the other reason for, for August is just that in terms of getting quarterly projects and setting up advertising and whatnot, the only thing that has to be done for my second studio, my show at that point is just the client acquisition.
Like, as soon as, if I should have the teachers hired, I have the ads designed. Everything is scheduled. So it’s really just a whole lot of emailing. That’s that’s all the work is.
[00:07:10] Andrea: So it’s maybe a busy time, but more controlled and more reactionary. Almost just responding to emails as they come in. Yeah. Yeah, [00:07:19] Noah Trettor: Definitely. That’s a good way of putting it more reactionary. [00:07:22] Andrea: So you’ve got your, your private studio where you are actively teaching and then this, virtual studio. When you were planning, how did you prepare those two studios for the trip? [00:07:35] Noah Trettor: So for my private studio, and I think this is where most of the listeners will be kind of interested.Four years ago, when I started to kind of take these trips, it felt like a gamble. And I mean, I was kind of expecting to lose like half of my studio. But really your students, they also want to take time off in the summer, at least most of them, you might have a slight dip, but if you, you know, have a good report with your clients and they’re really happy with, you know, what they get out of it, they will stick around.
So, for Trettor Studios, it’s a big prep thing to do is just to let my students know that I’m going on summer vacation. I don’t necessarily tell them what I’m doing. I just feel like, I’m very lucky to be able to do these types of trips and sometimes I might come off as kind of kind of pompous or, you know, whatever, um, be like, Oh, I’m going to go backpacking in Europe.
But, you know, they just started like, Oh, you’re, you’re a teacher. You’re, of course you take the summers off, you know, and I’ve set that precedent and they just kind of expected at this point. With Maestro, really the big thing, like I said, I have to make sure that the advertising is all set. Everything is designed.
If I need to hire teachers, I have the teachers hired any web design stuff, like, kind of do that on the forefront. And that kind of goes with like. I don’t teach in July. So I do that tour. I’m doing a lot of the admin stuff during that month.
[00:09:03] Andrea: Okay. Okay. So your students have just kind of been trained to expect this and aren’t totally surprised by it.How about the teachers for Maestro?
[00:09:11] Noah Trettor: I don’t tell them. No, no. I mean, my expectation for myself is, uh, I put in the same amount of work, you know, like I don’t make any excuses. Like if I’m really tired or don’t feel like doing it, I still do it because I kind of need to, or else the business isn’t going to grow and get to these metrics that I’m hoping to achieve. [00:09:35] Andrea: Okay. And they, it doesn’t make any impact to them because they should still be able to reach out to you. You’re not trying to say, hey, leave me alone. I’m going on a vacation. You’re still open for anything they might need. [00:09:48] Noah Trettor: Yeah, exactly. And that’s kind of the beauty of like, so, like I said, it’s a lot of backpacking, but when you’re backpacking and and in Europe the infrastructure is just so good there. Like, I always have service. [00:10:02] Andrea: That’s incredible. Have you ever explored, like, getting a sub or anything like that for your personal students? [00:10:08] Noah Trettor: I have. Sometimes they are, you know, I’m, I’m quite particular with who I send my students to, but if they do want to continue over the summer, and some of them do, I generally push them on to using a teacher from Maestro Music Lessons.And that works out really nicely. You know, everyone’s happy. I know my teachers with Maestro are phenomenal. And then I generally give them a discounted rate for the summer.
[00:10:33] Andrea: Nice. As you’re traveling, what are your normal work routines? [00:10:38] Noah Trettor: It’s really just making sure that I put an hour in every single day, at least an hour.Sometimes it’s two, you know, depending on what’s going on, but I would just kind of fit it in wherever, wherever I could. Not usually in the morning since we’re, we’re hiking during that time, but sometimes I’d pull it out at lunch. Sometimes it was at the end of the day. I have lots of pictures of just like very funny places to work, you know, like sometimes I was in my tent and I had just set up my backpack as like a desk and I’d pull out my little foldable keyboard.
I’m also, I didn’t bring a computer by the way, I brought my Galaxy Z Fold phone, which is basically just like a really small tablet, which linked to my keyboard.
[00:11:23] Andrea: Okay. So real keyboard connected to a phone and that let you do all your emails. [00:11:28] Noah Trettor: Yep. Yep. And I might have made quite a few typos being that tired, but it, it worked out in the end. [00:11:36] Andrea: I was going to ask what systems and tools are critical for maintaining smooth operations while you were gone. [00:11:41] Noah Trettor: Yeah. So definitely something to help with the typos. Um, that’s a big one. But how I, how I set it up. So, like I said, everything was kind of set up. Ahead, then I had one of my teachers take on more of an assistant role.So generally leads will come in through Calendly on our website and I would have them put them into a spreadsheet kind of lead tracker. And then from there I would do the follow up emails and we would both just kind of tackle the organization aspect of that. But yeah, that’s, that’s really about it for that.
[00:12:18] Andrea: Okay. So you had someone kind of like keeping things on the rails and you were just doing the emails. [00:12:22] Noah Trettor: Yeah, [00:12:23] Andrea: Are you a person that is sitting down to do that hour of work, something you have to discipline yourself to do, or is it pretty easy for you to just kind of do it as part of your routine? [00:12:31] Noah Trettor: It’s extremely challenging. It’s it’s it’s very, very hard. My, my wife also on the trip, you know, she brought an iPad mini and also another, like, foldable keyboard. She’s a copywriter, so she can work remotely as well, which is kind of how we do it, you know, kind of. Dual income working abroad, we’re kind of paid for the trip on the trip, but there were days when she’s like, no, she didn’t have to do it. So she’s like, no, I’m good, but like I had to, I had to do it because it’s like, it’s so critical to follow up with like, You know, on time and make sure that people aren’t left hanging. Yeah. I kind of forced myself to do it for sure. Although I will say I, I prioritized experience over overworking.I made sure that it happened at some point, but like if I was having a nice conversation. I would put my, my stuff away and just talk to the French people or, you know, whatever. Or if there was a good dinner to be had, have a good dinner, enjoy that. And then, then do a little bit of work, but always made sure it happened.
[00:13:36] Andrea: Okay. I appreciate you acknowledging that it is really hard and, and that you did it anyway, but also like living in that tension and kind of navigating, like, I don’t want to miss the experience because I’m working. But thinking about future Noah and what story he wants to be able to tell from the trip, I just think that’s really cool that you can, you can still be disciplined and stick to what you want to accomplish, but it doesn’t have to come at the expense of the experience or anything like that. [00:14:05] Noah Trettor: Right. Like I said, it’s, it can be done for, I’m sure there’s plenty of listeners who are have thought about doing things like this and it can definitely happen. [00:14:15] Andrea: And are there days that you say this is a vacation day? I’m not doing anything. Or do you have weekends or anything like that? [00:14:22] Noah Trettor: I think there’s like a day or 2 that I did take off.Like, maybe if it was just for reminder that we were backpacking, like maybe, like, you know, there was a big storm that came in and we were hiking in torrential rain and I was like, okay, I need, I can’t do this mentally right now. So I mean, I, I would save the really hard days, you know, maybe I could take like one or two off.
[00:14:44] Andrea: You’ve referenced the ads and how you, you already had your marketing set up and you were just kind of executing that system. Can you talk more about that to give listeners some context? [00:14:53] Noah Trettor: Yeah, so our biggest audience for Maestro Music Lessons Online is homeschool families. And the best way to reach homeschool families is through homeschool influencers.We have a handful of influencers that we work with, and our main kind of funnel that we use for paid advertising is email marketing. So I pay them X amount of dollars to have them send an email from their account to their email list. And it’s, it’s fairly straightforward. It’s, it’s kind of scary just because of how expensive it is and you get like one email and that’s it, but we’ve had, we’ve had a lot of really good luck with it.
So. Yeah. Just making sure that they’re paid. Everything is scheduled. Some of them are a little flaky. Hopefully they’re not listening to this and you know, you kind of have to like, be like, okay, is everything good? Like everything all right. But it’s, it’s worked out so far. Yeah. So things were designed, things were scheduled, things were paid for ahead.
[00:15:51] Andrea: Yeah. The way you handle marketing in your studio, I’ve gotten to know you a bit over the last couple of years since we did the first interview, but I have noticed it’s very systematic routine. And so it does some people think of marketing is like this all encompassing thing that is kind of vague and you don’t know when it starts and stops and but you’ve got a real strong calendar that you release the marketing emails and respond to the inquiry emails that come back and it’s so it’s a very ritualized thing and I think that’s what kind of makes it possible for you to do this, like kind of go to Europe in the middle of a high enrollment season. Right? [00:16:26] Noah Trettor: Totally. Yeah. I mean, I definitely understand the trends with the enrollment. So August, September, that’s a big season. January, February, that’s another really big season. I’ve experimented a lot with podcast ads and off seasons, which went terrible.
Very, very sad to lose out on thousands of dollars.. Yeah, I’ve experimented with having things go out like before the summer, so maybe there’s could be like a summer rush, but didn’t really work out very well either. You definitely get the most bang for your buck in August, September, and then January and February.
[00:17:06] Andrea: And it sounds like that was kind of in the back of your mind too, when you were starting this as like, you wanted to structure your business in a way that would enable you to take trips like this. [00:17:14] Noah Trettor: So I actually did not think that far ahead when I was creating my businesses.I mean, as a young blossoming musician, right out of college, the whole idea was just to really just be a musician. Like it’s hard to be a musician. And then kind of later on, it also came with like, okay. I had, I had a few jobs. It didn’t quite work out. So I just, I wanted that freedom. I wanted the freedom to be able to take time off when I wanted to, reasonably, and do all these trips that I’ve, I’ve dreamt about since I was a little kid.
[00:17:52] Andrea: I like that. Then you’ve Pivoted and just like found a way rather than, oh, I can’t do it, but you’ve just found a way to make it happen. [00:17:59] Noah Trettor: Right. Yeah. [00:18:00] Andrea: Speaking of making it happen, trips can be expensive. So how did you budget for your trip? How do you make that part happen? [00:18:07] Noah Trettor: Yeah. And I get this question a lot. And I think. You know, most people generally don’t ask because I think they just kind of assume maybe I’m like a trust fund kid or something. I don’t know, but not the case. And the, the style in which we travel is, is fairly inexpensive. I buy plane tickets up to a year in advance. Like, we got tickets from Seattle to Zurich for 500 dollars.If you look for a long time and you could just kind of like prowl, you will find deals like it doesn’t have to be 2, 000. And so the other thing too, is that, okay, and I say this lightly because Switzerland was absurdly expensive. We went to a grocery store to grab dinner and it was like 100. I mean, just like outrageous.
[00:18:57] Andrea: Wow. That was the grocery store, like just ingredients. [00:19:01] Noah Trettor: Yeah. Yeah. That was like pasta and like a dessert, you know, some sauce and it was just, it was insane. That store in particular still makes me mad, but for the, as a kind of a general thing, Europe is fairly inexpensive. France is comparable to the West Coast, like I said, Switzerland’s outrageous.But if you go to like Spain, for example, my wife and I hiked for seven weeks for like, I mean, I think I spent 2, 000 during that whole time. And we were staying at hotels most nights. This time around we were camping a lot. We would stay at refugios, which were these huts in the mountains, but kind of the way that I budgeted for this one in particular can be a bit more because of the Swiss Alps.
But about 3, 000 for, for myself. So 500 bucks on the plane ticket, I think it was about 1, 500 on lodging. And then maybe about a thousand dollars on food. That’s essentially what it came out to, but I plan for the whole year to do this. I work a lot during the school year. And I say fairly aggressively and live fairly frugally in preparation for these trips.
Like, everything is, my whole life surrounds these trips, essentially.
[00:20:14] Andrea: It sounds like you’ve got, like, your values are clear. You can sacrifice all the other times of the year and in an effort to make these other things possible. And you live according to that. [00:20:25] Noah Trettor: Yeah, and I can’t under, I can’t understate the feeling and reward that we get from doing these trips.Like, it’s not just about taking time off. It’s about just meeting new people and having these experiences. I was reading, this sounds very hippy dippy, but I was reading this book called 4, 000 Weeks. And they have this concept called Deep time and it’s something that like your dog experiences and it’s the idea of they don’t know what time it is.
They just they get up when the sun comes up, they go to sleep when the sun goes down and the same thing happens. You just kind of get into this, this rhythm. You don’t look at the, you don’t look at your watch. You don’t know what day it is. You don’t know anything. You just, you eat when you eat, you go to sleep when you’re tired.
And to kind of embrace that for several weeks is a really magical.
[00:21:18] Andrea: What was the biggest challenge of running your studio while abroad? [00:21:22] Noah Trettor: The biggest challenge of running it was definitely just being exhausted. And it’s kind of a compounded effect that starts to happen. Every time I look at pictures of myself towards the end of these trips, um, you can really see it in my face.So just like maybe slightly malnourished. I’m not selling these trips. I feel like, but, um, kind of forcing myself to continually do it. It gets harder and harder every single week, but I mean, as long as everything, as long as the systems are set up and it remains systematized, it’s, it’s easy from that side.
Make a lot of spreadsheets, put stuff into the calendar, you know, do the same things that you would do at home.
[00:22:03] Andrea: And then just follow through [00:22:05] Noah Trettor: And just follow through. Exactly. [00:22:07] Andrea: Have there been any unexpected benefits to your businesses from taking the trips and the time away? [00:22:12] Noah Trettor: Yes, and the reason why is because as a, let’s say a private teacher, you know, you’re a solo-preneur type, you are your business.So if you are not in a good headspace, your business will not be in a good headspace. If you’re stressed, you’re going to be kind of giving off that energy to your clients. Every time I like do these types of trips, I feel really, really good for, for a couple of months. Like I don’t feel burnt out. I don’t feel like, Oh, I don’t want to do this anymore.
You know, like sometimes that happens. I feel like a lot of us experience that type of burnout and I feel like I’m able to keep that at bay for a very long time when I do these types of things.
[00:22:52] Andrea: I find lots of creativity too, after periods away like that. Even just like a really good weekend can can bring that, but there’s nothing to be extended time away. [00:23:03] Noah Trettor: There’s something to about just like walking. I think Steve Jobs would just kind of like, he talked about how he would walk with a tennis ball. And it’s the same thing. We’re just kind of walking. I mean, you know, aggressively walking. Lots of good. Yeah, I come up with. You’re right. Yeah, I do come up with my like year of ideas.Right now, Maestro is, we’re about to launch our online course that I created with one of my teachers, and that definitely came from these trips.
[00:23:31] Andrea: Uh huh. And I bet like, not being able to go back and like sit down at your computer for eight hours probably gives you a different I don’t know, thought process as you’re just, you know, thinking things over for the 15th mile of hiking that day or whatever. [00:23:47] Noah Trettor: Yeah, yeah, it definitely does. And just, I think to, like, being able to step outside of that space and go back into it, kind of, as you please. I don’t know. I, I think a lot of it has to do with creativity and how people kind of handle that. I personally have really strong bursts of creativity. Like they’re really intense, but they’re really short.And I don’t know, it’s about like recognizing it. Right. So when I’m in those environments, I feel like I am more in tune and can just kind of capture that feeling. Right. If that makes sense.
[00:24:19] Andrea: Yeah. Looking back, is there anything you would do differently? [00:24:23] Noah Trettor: No, I don’t I don’t think so. Maybe maybe get an iPad mini.The screen was a little small for the phone for sure. And just to just to put into context the phone. Like I said, it’s like a really small tablet. It’s not quite like a phone. So I think it’s like, 7 inches of
[00:24:41] Andrea: your hand. Stretched out. [00:24:45] Noah Trettor: Yeah. [00:24:47] Andrea: Small for working. Is there anything I haven’t asked that I should? [00:24:50] Noah Trettor: I don’t think so. I just hope that if whoever is listening to this is thinking maybe they don’t have the time or the finances, like you can make this work if you really want to. And I always like to To preach that like vacations and traveling doesn’t need to break the bank. It really doesn’t. You can do it pretty affordably and your students will understand.They want you to take a vacation.
[00:25:19] Andrea: Amen to that. Is there a book or resource that has had a strong impact on you as a teacher or entrepreneur or traveler? [00:25:27] Noah Trettor: Yeah, I would say the original one was the Four Hour Work Week that was like the first business book I read and that kind of. I’ve captured the essence of what I wanted things to be.I’ve created these systems and my business is getting pretty close to it at this point, which is pretty cool. And then if some email marketing books too. They’re very good.
[00:25:51] Andrea: All right. One Hour Content Plan is the one you’ve got there. . [00:25:54] Noah Trettor: 300 Email Marketing Tips. [00:25:56] Andrea: 300 Email Marketing Tips.So I’ll link up to those in the shows and what’s next for you. Is there another trip in the works for 2025?
[00:26:02] Noah Trettor: We’re gonna hike the Alta Via. The Alta, Via there’s several Alta Vias, but we’ll do the first one in Italy, and then from there we’ll link up to the, it’s called the Alpa Adria. And we were joking that it was called the Alpa, Andrea today , but that goes from Austria down into Slovenia.And then loops down into the Italian coast. And once again, it’s not super wild. So I, I will, I will be working. So
[00:26:34] Andrea: how many miles will that trip be? [00:26:35] Noah Trettor: I think it’ll be around 450 for this one, less rugged. So we’ll probably be able to go a bit faster. [00:26:41] Andrea: All right. And where can listeners get in touch with you and follow along on your adventures? [00:26:46] Noah Trettor: I don’t really post about the adventures much, but you can get in touch with me at tr************@***il.Com or in**@***********************ne.com. [00:26:57] Andrea: All right. Thank you Noah. [00:26:59] Noah Trettor: Yeah. Thank you. [00:27:05] Andrea: Travel and vacations can take many forms. Sometimes when I’m on vacation, I don’t even want to see an email icon on my phone, much less respond to a message. But other times I’m happy being in a workcation mode where I work some and vacation some. My reflection from talking to Noah was that it comes down to intentionality and setting expectations for what he wants the trip to look like.He’s figured out what’s important to him:. experience in the world, having time for people he meets on his travels, and what’s not important, first class flights and fancy hotels. And then he makes it work. Within those parameters, he budgets throughout the year so the trip isn’t a financial burden. On the business side, he figures out what he can do in advance to minimize his workload, and he sets a reasonable work target for while he’s traveling.
I admire the delicate balance Noah strives for on his trips. He acknowledges how hard it is every day to sit down and commit to that hour of focused work. And yet he does it. It also takes a combination of discipline and flexibility to follow through most of the time, yet not be so rigid about it that you can’t close up the laptop to have a spontaneous conversation when the opportunity arises.
I think that comes back to the intentionality and Noah being really clear that experiences come first on these trips. Great food for thought as we begin our winter holidays. Who’s feeling inspired to go plan a trip? You can find the links to all the resources mentioned in this episode at musicstudiostartup.com/episode157.
This will be our last episode of 2024. We’ve got some very exciting things in the works for music teachers in the new year, including a new perk for hub members. If you’re not already a hub member, the hub is how we support music teachers year round through the ups and downs with relevant and timely business resources, tools, and office hours.
Check it out at musicstudiostartup.com/hub. That’s all for today. Thanks for listening. I’ll be back next year.