Transcript: 170 – How One Teacher Built and Managed a 100-Student Program with Leah Drake

Transcript: 170 – How One Teacher Built and Managed a 100-Student Program with Leah Drake

Transcript for 170 – How One Teacher Built and Managed a 100-Student Program with Leah Drake

[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.

Today I’m talking with Leah Drake of Vibrant Valley Music Studio, a solo teacher running a 100 student group program in San Jose. Leah walks us through the messy middle of a major model shift, how she transitioned from private to groups over a year, navigated COVID, survived multiple space moves, and ultimately signed a long-term lease that forced clearer systems and smarter decisions.

We get into Leah’s why behind group teaching, the structure of her classes, and the operations that make a 100 student studio work — onboarding/offboarding, a VA, and digital tools that help families actually practice between lessons. We had so much to cover that we actually split our conversation into two parts.

Today’s episode focuses on Leah’s transition and systems, and in our next episode, we’ll delve into the realities of space rental. Here’s my conversation with Leah.

Hi Leah. Welcome to the podcast. Can you introduce yourself and tell us about your studio?

[00:01:27] Leah Drake: Hi, Andrea. Thanks for having me. My name is Leah Drake and my studio is called Vibrant Valley Music Studio.

I’m located in San Jose, California and I mainly offer group piano lessons. Currently, I’m the only teacher in my business, but I’m at a point where I’m actually starting to expand and consider hiring other teachers or other programs into my business as well. So I actually teach about a hundred students a week because I can do this in groups.

And I’ve been teaching in this format for about seven years now, which is a long time. But I have been teaching in groups since about 2018, and I’ve been teaching piano for longer than that. But I feel like the more that I teach, the more I really counting those years as a group teacher, because that feels like the most pure expression of my teaching identity, where I am my best teacher self as a group teacher.

[00:02:16] Andrea: It took all those other years of forming what you became, I think probably too. Not wasted or lost. So I am eager to talk to you today because you have had many iterations in not just your teaching career in general, but also in your group studio. And so eager to dig into that. And also, I know you’ve given a lot of thought over the last several years about how to manage a studio of a hundred students being one teacher.

There’s just more administrative overhead when you’re handling a hundred students versus. 35. So, yeah, eager to hear what you’ve got to share on all that. Can you take us through just the different versions of your studio over these last seven years?

[00:02:53] Leah Drake: Yeah, so when I was first considering switching my studio to groups was a very new concept for me as a pianist.

It was never something I would experience as a student, so I had to learn a lot about how to incorporate that into my studio and then how to teach that way. There was just a lot to learn, and at the very beginning I was looking for any guidance on that, and I found a lot of great support from people like Debra Perez and Marie Lee, who were wonderful group teaching icons and very willing to share their expertise with me.

So I picked their brains as much as I could, and finally decided to invest in a set of digital pianos. At the time, I was renting a space from a local private school and convinced them to give me a little, tiny, tiny office where I could cram all my pianos in and have my little group studio. And I was very keen to switch my whole studio over, but I decided to give it about a year of transition time.

So at the moment, I decided to do groups I just started telling anybody who inquired for lessons that I was no longer teaching private lessons, but they could come in and do the group program. And my private students had about a year to participate in group activities that I set up outside of their regular private lesson time.

And our culminations of that year was a spring concert that featured all collaborative music. So everyone was performing together. They had to rehearse together a little bit. We did some rehearsals getting students to work together in addition to some more fun stuff. I think I called one of like a piano party at one point to like get everybody excited about coming in together.

And after that particular concert finished up, I said, okay. This is why we’re switching to groups ’cause I think it’s great. And if you are gonna stick around, let me know if you’re not gonna stick around. I understand it’s not what you signed up for, but I’m going in this direction and I hope you come with me.

I did lose quite a few students in that transition, but I quickly filled their spaces because I was developing the group program at that point, and it was gaining a lot of traction. I was gaining more confidence too, which of course helps anybody sell something new. Feeling like I could really handle it and I was able to rebuild the losses.

I would say within six months of that concert, I was back up to what I was considering a full studio at the time, which was probably only like 60 students felt like full from, from going from a private studio.

And I had already was back up to that only adding students in groups. And that was the fall of 2019.

So enter COVID. Right as things were starting to groove with my group program, we had to suddenly move it all online and figure out how to do group online, which is like a whole other creature. So that was a big left turn, and thankfully I had a lot of wonderful families that stuck by me. While we sorted that out.

I went from teaching in person, you know, with up to five or six students at a time to teaching online, and I could only effectively really do two at a time ’cause then we could take turns. Every once in a while we’d have a few more people in there for something not a normal lesson, but there were a couple of years teaching like that where I would just kind of hold us together.

It’s a group studio, but it’s, it’s a very small group studio and we’re trying to just preserve the benefits of learning together and the motivation of feeling connection at a time when everyone was feeling very far away from each other. So we survived that. It was rough, but we got through it and I actually got through it with now a very vast video library that I created during those years that’s proven to be quite the asset after COVID ended and now I have all those wonderful videos recorded. And I feel like because we spent so much time online, coming back together and doing something in person with lots of other people, it was like a balm to the soul.

It was just felt so good to be back together, making music in person after that, and group lessons in general, I felt were much better received after COVID. ‘Cause I didn’t have any trouble building up the studio again once I was back in person. You know, I didn’t lose too many students during COVID. The ones that stuck it out with me were like rocks.

They really hung in there through the weird few years and then when we opened back up and had an in-person option again, I think a lot of people were really craving something like that. And especially having it involve more social elements. I think a lot of the kids that came through COVID had very unusual disruptions to their social development because they were far away from other kids. And parents were addressing that and saying, let’s go back together.

We’ll, you know, do something in person and work with some other kids, get some social elements back in your learning environment. And it was a lot easier to sell that. Plus it was still kind of a hybrid time, so having some online and some in-person was a good option to like ease everybody back in.

[00:07:24] Andrea: Okay. And when did you go back to in-person?

[00:07:27] Leah Drake: 2022. It was longer than other people spent online, but as I mentioned, I was renting a space from the private school and they had really strict rules about any outside people coming into their cohort during COVID. And so I stayed online because I didn’t have a physical space to go back to for longer than I was expecting. And since we had successfully been doing the online thing, at that point it was like, well, what’s a few more months? We’re still online. We can just cruise online until the school says we we’re okay to come back. And so that was about 2022. We went back in person, thankfully to the same.

Physical school and they gave us a section of their gym, sort of their multipurpose room that was not really being used fully yet. It was became kind of a storage area during COVID, and they cleared a space that we could use that was more spacious and open than the little tiny office we were in before, so that worked out well.

And eventually we ended up in a real like classroom at their campus. That was wonderful. That was 2023, following year. And in 2023, the private school said they had to close for financial reasons. They, they really suffered with COVID. Their numbers dropped a lot and they couldn’t recoup fast enough and the school had to close after being open for like 60 years, it was very sad and sudden. And so after all the drama of trying to get back in person and making that work, the rebuilding numbers and figuring out new spaces, it was all gonna end very quickly. At the end of that school year in 2023, I did not have the next place lined up.

So everything moved home to my living room for two weeks ’cause. That was the only solution. And after two weeks at home, I was able to finally get another place, which was not too far from where the school was. So physically it was a lot more congruent with people who wanted the same location ’cause my home was not near my studio, so they had to really trek out to my house.

 So found another space in a shopping center that was a retail space. The shopping center, it’s still there, but it’s going to be torn down soon. And they were very cheap spaces, very low impact rent situations, not a formal lease. It was like a licensing agreement or something like that. It was not a lease.

It was like, sure, you can put your stuff here and here’s a key and we’ll leave you alone, but you don’t have any protection if something happens. Basically. Don’t bother us, we’re not gonna fix a darn thing at this place and you keep it until you don’t want it anymore or until we kick you out.

So it was still not a long-term solution, but it was out of my house. Which was a big improvement considering I had still about like 70, 80 students at the time and, you know, six digital pianos I needed to set up somewhere. So the fact that it was not in my living room was definitely an improvement.

But knowing that that center was gonna be torn down at some point, you know, they’ve been saying they’ll do it for years, but eventually it’s gonna be true. And I didn’t want to get too comfortable there, even though it was a very good space for what I needed and I still have mixed feelings about leaving it ’cause it’s still over there.

They haven’t done anything yet. But the knowledge that like it was not a sure thing, it was never gonna last forever. And they were, it’s a dead end. It’s not gonna lead you to the next thing. It’s just a stepping stone. I was still under a lot of pressure to find a consistent space for my business and I ended up where I am now.

I’m actually sitting in my studio now. It’s across the street from where I was in that other space that I have a lease here now for we’re just about done with the first year of that, and we have four more years on the lease, plus an option for five more years after that, plus whatever else the landlord might wanna do.

So finally measuring my tenure in these places in years and not months. Which is a huge relief and has allowed me to finally focus on doing other things with the business, not just surviving. Which has been kind of what it was since COVID hit.

And right before COVID was my decision to switch to groups.

So throughout all of that, it’s been about rallying to make the group program a thing and also. Making sure that the studio just continued to go throughout those chapters. It was not easy. And finally feeling like, you know, it’s not easy now for other reasons. This very expensive to be in a space that I’m in now, and it’s putting pressure on me to build out other programs so that I don’t have to shoulder all that rent by myself.

 But I feel like of all the problems I’ve dealt with, that one is an exciting problem to deal with because at least there’s a beautiful space where I can reliably show up every week, and at the very least I can just show up and teach and not worry about the roof over my head and everything else. It’s just opening up the door to growth.

[00:11:59] Andrea: Yeah, having those essentials in place makes a big difference, but I love, you know, you were making temporary decisions all the time, but you were making decisions and like moving forward with the thing and not letting that stop you or change, even the transition to group, it seems like there are so many opportunities along that path to say, oh, forget it. Group is just too complicated. Like all I can do is private lessons. There’s too much other things going on and you stayed committed to that. That, you know on the other side of it, now in the more stable place, I’m sure that feels really good. Like you didn’t set that big goal aside during all the time.

[00:12:30] Leah Drake: Well, and I think it really is a testament to how strongly I feel that group teaching is right for me as a teacher. I am a good pianist. I’ve never been the high quality performer that some people get to. I don’t have a music degree. I have a minor in music, but I majored in biology. And a lot of what I have learned as a teacher is what I learned after school and through just self research and working up my own skills as much as I can.

And so I feel like in many ways I’m a very self-made a pianist. I am not the kind of trained pianist that people sometimes get from a teacher. And the fact that I run my own business is kind of a happy coincidence in my life. I was, did not set out to be a business owner, but it turns out I really enjoy that part of what I’m doing and to be a teacher and a business owner, and at my core, I feel like I’m not just a pianist. I’m a musician. I sing and I have played the trumpet before. I have a lot of other experience that informs my perspective on music, and that is what I feel makes me different from other piano teachers who are very accomplished on their instrument and have been very successful teachers.

But they identify as pianists more than musicians. They’re like pianist first, musician second, and I feel like I’m the reverse. I value musicianship, and I think it’s really important for people who maybe don’t necessarily want to push themselves up to those extreme levels of artistry, let’s maybe call it that. They want to enjoy the experience and learn about music. ’cause they’re curious and they want to enjoy it at a level that’s not going to intimidate them from trying.

 

[00:14:00] Leah Drake: And I think there are a lot of people that are looking for that. Especially families who have very young kids. I have a very successful program for my four to six year olds and they’re looking for a beautiful start for their child to have that’s not too much. They wanna see if they like it. Right. We always hear about that with little kids. And I feel like in a group setting, they get a very gentle and exciting start to piano and they can see if their interest is there and they learn all of their wonderful basics alongside group mates that they can be friends with or they learn from.

And this program and approach has also been really successful with my adult students and my teen students, who traditionally, I’ve had more trouble retaining those in a long-term sense because they kind of float in and out more with being older and busier. They juggle a lot more commitments, but they still want music to be in their lives.

They can’t always put in the practice time. They can’t always even come to lessons consistently. But because of the way that I’ve set up my studio and my philosophy being more about recreational music making, it’s there to support them and be there for them as part of their life and not at the exclusion of something else in their life.

[00:15:01] Andrea: Yeah. Okay. So. It sounds like in that first year you were kind of planting the seeds, although your original private students weren’t required to switch over that year, you knew they were going to the next year or that was gonna be the expectation. Did they know that at the beginning of the year that they would have a year left in private lessons?

[00:15:18] Leah Drake: No. ’cause honestly, I wasn’t a hundred percent sure about that. I gave myself a year to transition in that direction, and my big decision at the beginning of that year was that I would not take any new students as private students.

The only new students I would take would go into the group program ’cause I had to gain experience teaching groups before I could tell all of my other students, Hey, you know how we’ve been doing private lessons?

We’re not gonna do that anymore. We’re gonna do this. I felt like I needed experience doing that before really making that case to them and not just selling it on them like, I wanna go do this. Feel free to come be my Guinea pig. It was not that. It was more like, you know, I had a long waiting list.

That was one of the reasons that I pursued groups because I had a lot of students I couldn’t take on. I just had no more time. And so it made sense. At first to get them off the waiting list and teach those students. It has the potential to make more income, which was enticing. But also the more I looked at it as a model for learning and a model for teaching, the more I became very excited about the implications for all the different things students could learn in a group lesson that they couldn’t learn as effectively in a private lesson.

And as a teacher. I felt like it was a really stimulating way to teach. I had been teaching privately for about six years at the time, and I was feeling like, okay, I know what this is. It gets a little boring sometimes, especially when students show up and they haven’t practiced. It gets really dull really fast, and for the students that are doing really well, there just aren’t many of them that are keeping me going, and I needed something else to get me excited as a teacher to keep things fresh for me.

So one of the best things that’s still true about teaching in groups is that I teach a lot of beginners, but I find I don’t repeat myself nearly as much because I can say one thing to the whole class and they hear it, and then we move on. And I don’t have to repeat myself quite as often. I don’t get so bored with the beginner phases.

I find them to be very exciting because you’re always dealing with a whole bunch of different personalities and learners in one group. And as the teacher trying to impart some knowledge, there’s wonderful challenge in that and it’s constantly keeping me on my toes. Even when I’ve taught the same thing over and over.

It’s always with a cast of new players and I have to figure out how to reach every single one of them in like the time that we have. So it’s very exciting to teach that way, even if it is sometimes a little more stressful. It’s very rewarding for me to feel like if I can do that effectively with a bunch of little kids who are excited to be there and maybe, you know, 50% focused, we’ll see if we can get ’em all in there and help them have a good experience, help them learn something meaningful and be ready to do something to build on that next week. If I feel like if I can accomplish all of that in the time that we have there, it’s very satisfying for me as a teacher. And I love seeing that students find that whole environment to be a lot more stimulating for them.

They love being with their friends, their classmates. They spend more time focusing on them than me sometimes. But if I can rally that to my purposes, I will make sure they’re learning from each other, that they’re supporting each other, that they’re answering each other’s questions and being there for each other in a positive way.

Where if they wanna be together anyway, at least we’re learning together and they’re getting more out of their lesson because other students are there.

[00:18:22] Andrea: I love that. So in that year, you were planting the seeds, so giving your private students opportunities to experience group. Would you call them piano parties and things like that? And then the recital at the end of the year. Super smart. So even your private students were performing in ensembles at that spring recital.

[00:18:37] Leah Drake: My goal was that they all tried it before they said no. But they did. But you know, they all, they all suffered through that experimental year, and I think for the most part, they felt like by the time they were asked to choose whether to continue with group or not, they were able to make an informed decision and they wouldn’t just be judging it on whatever preconceived notion they had of what group could look like. They were still with me. With the teacher they liked and they were still in the same studio. All of the logistical things about this were still the same.

They just had a few more classmates to have and I think once they knew what it was. The retention potential was a lot higher because of all those steps that I took. Even though I did still lose a lot, I retained a lot because I took those steps. If I had just turned the switch and said, you know what, last week I was doing private, this week I’m doing group.

That’s it. It would’ve been a much more extreme transition, and because I was still gaining experience as a group teacher, I feel like taking the year was a really good move to just get me ready to bring them all in and get everyone excited about it. I wanted them to be excited and not just me. If I’m the only one excited, it’s like, that’s fine.

I’m like my one woman parade over here. Yeah. But I need them to get on board and get excited with me because it should be exciting to do something new and not like, oh no, it’s not. The thing I loved so much is going away and it’s never gonna be the same. That’s a whole different way to look at it, and I didn’t want people to feel like that if they had another option.

[00:20:01] Andrea: And then was the announcement at the recital, is that the first communication that your private students had then?

[00:20:07] Leah Drake: No, I didn’t want to take away from the recital. I wanted that to be about the celebration of coming together and showing my previously entirely private studio here’s what we can do if we collaborate.

This is kind of a cool, you know, it’s a different spin on what you’re used to seeing when you come to the recital. This is not the same thing, and I want you to see it as something new and exciting and something that’s still a success and not feel like you can’t enjoy this because you know that you have to make a big decision soon.

 So I waited until after the recital was successfully complete. And I gave everybody maybe a couple weeks. ‘Cause it was at the end of the school year and summer was still really low time. I didn’t usually have a lot going on in the summer for people anyway. But I did tell them at the beginning of the summer that when we come back in the fall, we’re gonna be doing all groups. And the only exception I made at the time was for students I felt I couldn’t effectively group together. So my more advanced students, I didn’t have enough of them that were all similar in level to like in good faith, say you guys can work in a group together.

 But a lot of my beginners. I did have plenty of them to create groups and when I’m saying beginners too, I’m not just talking about like the brand new in the door beginners, but like people who are in their first year or two of lessons. There were enough of them I was able to create some groups and I gave them the summer to think it over and by the time I was building my schedule for the next school year, I got my answer from whoever was not gonna continue.

And then we started filling seats from the wait list and the big surge that comes at the beginning of the school year. There’s always a lot of inquiry at that time, and by the time we hit December, which was kinda the end of the fall, everybody was going strong and we were just cruising. So it was a rough year to transition that way, but again, I feel like any faster would’ve been too fast and any slower, people are like, well, are you really gonna do it? Or you just thinking about doing it? So, yeah. It worked out okay.

[00:21:55] Andrea: And then was it an email that you sent ultimately that told them this is the way it’ll be in the fall?

[00:21:59] Leah Drake: Yeah. There was an email that started that conversation and I remember spending quite a lot of time on that email because I wanted to word it just right.

And I’ve made that kind of the starting point of conversations that I would then have in person with a lot of families. They wanted to know more about it. They had questions. We had many phone calls, many talks in person at the student’s lesson about what was gonna happen next. And there was a lot of selling them on this after I made it official that that’s what we’re doing, so I want you to be part of it. And there were also a lot of conversations where the parent was, you know, really frustrated. They didn’t want me to change what was up going on. They’re like, can we just stay on as a private student with you?

And I’m like, well, only if there’s no good group option. And if there was then I said no. Like flat out, like I’m, I’m actually willing to walk away from this arrangement because I feel like it’s gonna slow down the transition for me to get all the way to a hundred percent group. ‘Cause even after that first transition I was teaching maybe 70% group and 30% private with this private students that I couldn’t effectively group together yet. And I didn’t wanna hold onto them for too long because the longer you hold onto them, the longer you’re delaying yourself from making that transition complete. It was always kind of a lingering well, I’m group except for these people. And I really wanted to see it go completely, 100% group, which I did achieve after COVID. That was several years later. With COVID it definitely slid back a little bit and I relied more heavily on private lessons than I meant to in, when I set out to become a group teacher.

It’s like, well, yeah, but nobody saw that one coming, so we’re just gonna use what, use the skills we have and use the model that’s effective and just teach privately for a little while. But yeah, the the transition was imperfect, but also it was decisive on my end. And then I had everybody just decide whether they wanted to come in to that paradigm or if they needed to find another teacher.

And I was about like, hold on, but let go be ready to let go of people if they’re not, if you’re not a good fit anymore. And that was really the phrase I kept coming back to is we’re not a good fit anymore. I’m sorry for that, but we just aren’t. So I wish you well.

[00:24:05] Andrea: So pulling the trigger on those emails and starting those conversations can be such a daunting thing.

Can you, I dunno if you can like put your head back in this space that you were like the night before you sent that email, or two months before you sent that email, what was going through your head at that time in terms of like, how ready did you feel to send that email? And were there moments throughout the year where you were like, ah, this is scary. And when it came right down to it, like had you worked through most of that mentally, take us through that emotional journey.

[00:24:34] Leah Drake: Yeah, by the time I sent the email, I was pretty sure about what I was doing and I was bracing myself for what people were gonna say about it because that was more intimidating.

But I had much fewer doubts about myself and the way I wanted it to go. At that point, It was the moment I was building up to over that year of trying to bring everybody into situations where they were working with other students and playing with other musicians and the year of building the group program, taking in new beginner students and learning how to teach groups.

I felt like by the time I got to the end of that year, and I’m sending that email, I am in love with teaching in groups. I still feel very new at it, but I’m working hard at learning how to get better, and I’ve also realized that the number one way to get better is to do it. And you can only spend so much time just spending hypothetical research about how to teach in groups until you’re in front of a group of students and you have to do something about it.

And that is the most effective way, I think, for any sort of learning, is to just jump in and do it and learn by doing, make the mistake. And usually the mistakes are very low cost anyway, but you learn so much more from doing than you do by hypothetically sketching out what you’re gonna do. And I was already learning a lot that way.

And I felt like the only way I’m gonna become better at this, which is going to make this whole thing make a lot more sense, if I’m a really good teacher for groups, I have to get more experience. And the only way to do that is to convert and make space for people who are excited about that program and don’t hold onto the people who are wishing it would stay the same and go or go back to the way it was ’cause those people are looking for a version of me that’s not there anymore.

[00:26:07] Andrea: Yeah. So it sounds like the discomfort of setting the email was

[00:26:11] Leah Drake: there was very little at that point. I mean, I, I did very carefully word that email. I researched a lot from other group teachers who had been willing to share what they did when they switched their studios about verbiage and how to tout group lessons as the most amazing thing. You get people excited. Why are group lessons better and making a really clear argument that this is a good thing, it’s different, but it’s a good thing and I want you to get excited ’cause I’m already excited. So there was a lot of planning that went into that email and in reality, the wording of that email probably started in September of the year that I took to transition.

And by the time I sent that email in June, I was already speaking that way to my studio about how wonderful it is to get people working together. And that was just the written verbiage of here’s what you need to look over on your own time and let me know what you wanna do. But here, here it all is again, why it’s great, why I’m doing it, and why I would like you to be part of it.

So at the time I actually hit send, I was already in that mindset and a lot of people could kind of feel it coming. I think it was not a huge shock that I was going to move that direction considering how different the prior year had been. I think they were just, anyone who was a more surprised than others was, was just feeling like, oh, I didn’t think this would really impact me. I thought that was just, you know, a weird year we had, or something.

Like, no, it’s gonna, it’s gonna affect you. You just, you let me know how you wanna handle this and we’ll, we’ll go from there.

[00:27:36] Andrea: Alright. So then when those student responses started coming back and some were, yay, let’s do this, and some are not.

Did that feel like a rejection to you? Did it cause any doubts? Did you have any moments of fear there?

[00:27:47] Leah Drake: It definitely was scary to see the number of people who were sure they were gonna leave, but there is some comfort in when they’re that sure that they’re not gonna continue with you. You’re not really even competing with anything at that point.

They’re looking for something else. It’s the same feeling that I get when somebody inquires about lessons and they want coaching for exams, which I’ve never done. And I quickly tell ’em I don’t do that. And then we part ways and it’s no big deal. But when it’s a family I’ve worked with for years and they want me to do something that I don’t do anymore, it is harder to say, oh, I don’t do that anymore.

I don’t wanna let you go, but like I don’t, I don’t do that anymore. But it was easier to kind of focus on it like that, where if someone was coming in off the street and I was telling them I do group lessons, and they would say, great, we wanna sign up fine. Or, Ooh, I don’t wanna do that, fine. There’s a door.

Yeah. It was definitely a lot of emotion trying to let figure out what to do with students who were with me for quite a long time, who really didn’t wanna go into a group, but there were actually very few that were with me for a very long time who didn’t wanna stay. ’cause at that point there’s another level of relationship with those students and families.

And they trust you to a certain point. And they believe that if you’re really willing to upend the entire thing and do it this way, there’s gotta be a reason. And I think for a lot of them, they did trust me enough to see it through. And the ones who were newer, they tended to leave if they felt like we really weren’t a good match.

’cause they didn’t feel as emotionally invested in our relationship, which is fine. It was also easier to let those families go ’cause I hadn’t known them as long anyway. There were a handful of students who were long-term students who that was their decision to peel off from the studio. At that point, their kids were getting to high school age and they were just feeling like maybe piano was already a question mark in their lives and this was all they needed to say, yep. That’s all for us right now. So that transition brought about some of those conversations perhaps sooner than they would’ve normally come about. And the collective loss of students felt very vulnerable for me. But one of the reasons I’ll go back to that, I was thinking about doing groups anyway, is because I did have a very long waiting list and I was trusting the fact that if I’m an attractive enough teacher that I can bring in these students who wanna start with me, and I have to keep telling them I’m full. Here’s the flood gates are open. Let’s go start some new classes. I’m ready to start. Tell your friend I did a referral discount that I still do, actually. I offer people a tuition credit if they bring in a new family to the studio, and especially with groups. I want them to have a friend. I want them to see a familiar face. Maybe have someone else that they’re there for, not just me, because that’s gonna keep them in there for longer too. So that helped a lot as we transitioned, and I just felt like it was kinda ripping off a bandaid.

It was, the sooner we get this over with, the sooner we can move into the phase where there are lots of happy, excited new students who are there because they signed up for group. Not because it was private, and now it’s group and we’re just still here. So there was really good energy around embracing the new students who came in as a way to cope with the students who were not there anymore. It was just all about perspective and moving forward and not looking back.

[00:30:50] Andrea: I appreciate you sharing that. ’cause that’s such a real thing, like oh, even if you know, or like you intellectually believe it’ll get better, it’s still like there’s pain in those days.

[00:30:58] Leah Drake: Yeah. And it was a lot of change, and I think change is, in general, it can be very exciting, but also really scary when you don’t know how it’s all gonna shake out, but it’s changing so fast. You can hardly keep an eye on what’s different from day to day. There was a lot of change in that summer. On the flip side, as much as it was exciting to bring in families that were new and ready for this, there was a lot of like learning new names, learning new families, setting up new relationships, and that was very draining, just emotionally and socially for the transition at that point.

And on the heels of losing a lot of students who were very familiar and wonderful and I’d already built up all this time with them, it was kind of emotional whiplash going from one end to the other. There was some peace in finally getting everyone settled after a few months of the school year had gone on and we had mostly a full studio and I’m like, okay, no more change for a little while. Didn’t know about COVID coming, but you know, we just could finally rest for a minute.

[00:31:49] Andrea: Yeah. So tell us about your groups. How large are they? What do you do for curriculum? We don’t need to go super deep into curriculum, but just kinda how do you formulate those groups and structure them?

[00:31:59] Leah Drake: Yeah, so I have six pianos in my classroom, and I can take up to six students at a time. My smallest classes are three at a time. I don’t consider it worthwhile to build the class unless there’s at least three students in there, and I want us to be able to spread out and all use our own instruments, so we cap it at six. For a while it was only five pianos. I eventually added a piano a few years ago. I have two types of group programs. I teach either same level groups or multi-level groups. The same level groups are intended for younger students, so I have different programs for different age groups.

So I have one program for ages four to six, different program for seven to 10. And then the multilevel program takes over from the 10 to 18 group and my adults.

[00:32:42] Andrea: Okay.

[00:32:42] Leah Drake: My same level groups, my younger ones, I use piano Safari as my main teaching method. I can say a lot about how much I love Piano Safari, but the bottom line is I feel like it gives me a lot of good structure.

And is a very successful way of teaching students what I would like them to focus on. So for example, learning to play by ear at the beginning is a really exciting part of teaching beginners ’cause they can immediately make music and they’re a lot more willing to put up with the delay of reading that can come from just trying to figure out how to read music.

 So we are immediately playing from day one and not always reading right away. And then when we do kick in on reading, it’s like gas on the fire. They’re so excited to read that they read really well, and that’s very satisfying as a teacher, when you get to a point where students are reading and they’re excited to build in that skill because they’ve already got all these other non-reading skills honed.

They’ve got oral skills, they’ve got keyboard geography skills, they’ve got collaborative skills, they have improv skills. They have good technical foundation. All these things that like have nothing to do with reading, we can focus on that first. And so one of the best reasons I like using Piano Safari is because it really helps me as a teacher emphasize those skills first and wait for the reading skills to catch up because they do need some time to build and we can still make a lot of music and have a lot of fun while we’re waiting for those to catch up.

So with my younger students, that’s my primary approach and I try to keep them in same level groups for as long as that makes sense. Mostly for scheduling reasons and for however many students are working together at the same level. So as students advance, it is harder to keep them in the same group because there are usually fewer of them overall in the studio.

 So creating enough potential schedule options for them is challenging when there are, are fewer of them. So, for example, I’ve got lots of level one classes. Speaking about piano safari leveling, lots of level one classes, a handful of level two classes, and one level three class. And what happens is as I work with them, as they get more advanced, I love teaching those advanced groups, but because there aren’t as many of them this is one of the reasons I also teach multi-level groups and I’ve, that’s a more recent edition. I only started adding that to my programs maybe two years ago. I started dabbling in it with my adult programs and then expanded it to include my teenagers, and that has been a very effective game changer at how to handle students who are old enough to be very independent in their lesson. They don’t need a lot of handholding and they really wanna direct the pace themselves anyway. They want control of what’s happening and they wanna choose their own music a lot more. They wanna direct how fast they’re advancing. If they are putting in the time, they wanna be able to see the progress.

And if they’re feeling overwhelmed because their life is full of other things and they can’t put in the time, they don’t wanna feel punished for that. And so I found that multi-level teaching embraces that whole group so much more effectively and gives everyone a place to learn at their level and push themselves when they’re ready.

I often compare this to like being in a group fitness class. Sometimes people just show up to a group fitness class because they want to take a quick class and like figure out what to do for an hour and other people are going to the gym every day and they’re adding this into their routine that they’re gonna go enhance part of their life with this particular time in with a teacher and a coach. And because the approach is multi-level, we do ensembles in that environment. I mostly use piano pyramid and other multi-level ensembles where there’s five or so different level parts for the same piece. And I can assign parts based on a student’s sight reading level if they are a very new beginner, they get a part that’s for one hand, simple rhythms with note names written in, and if they are able to tackle more and more, I have different levels of parts that I can hand out up to something that only an intermediate level musician could effectively sight read. And I focus on the sight reading portion because I don’t wanna be spending weeks and weeks to learn a piece when there’s someone with a very easy part that’s not gonna take them very long to master. And someone with a very complicated part. I need to know that the person who has the most complicated part, they could still chew and swallow that whole part without taking too long to get to a point where they’re playing successfully with others.

So that’s become a really successful way of handling older students who have a lot of experience. They’re diversifying more in their level because they’re either putting in the time or they’re not, and they still wanna participate. They wanna come to piano and have that be part of their lives. But they need it to not be so exclusive that you either do piano and you practice, practice, practice, or you cut piano and you do sports instead.

Yeah. That’s one example. But like, you know, as kids get older, everything asks for more time and they either figure out how to manage their time. They practice more as a result, or they leave practice outta the equation and just practice whenever they can, which is usually not a lot. And they balance their lives with lots of other activities.

And I think there’s value in that too, especially when you have opportunities to be part of so many different things. I don’t wanna be the reason someone doesn’t involve themselves in all the great things that they could be doing. I think being exclusive is a really wonderful thing when it’s your thing that you’re gonna go do and be best at.

I think that’s great. But there’s so many wonderful benefits to trying lots of different things and doing things at a lower level where you’re getting a lot of great exposure to different skills and different learning environments. I think piano needs to be included in that and in that model of multi-level, I can accommodate both the students who wanna push and the students who don’t wanna push.

 And they can all work together and be with their peers. My middle school and high school students don’t have to be with elementary age kids if they’re beginners. They can be with their older kids, with their beginners, because they wanna be with those older kids anyway. And the students who have a lot more experience, you can address a wide range of levels with that approach.

And they can decide, for the most part, where their level is, they can say, oh, am I a pianist two or a pianist three on this piece? Am I, you know, do I need an easier level or a harder level? And a lot of them will actually take two parts. They’ll take one that they know they can play with the group and one that they wanna reach for.

And they’ll play the easier part with the group. They get the ensemble experience, they get the site reading experience, they get the confidence boost of, I can definitely do that. Ah, but they want to keep pushing and they can see. Visually, here’s the next level part. Yeah. That probably is too hard for you to play with the group unless you’re gonna put in a lot more practice.

Sometimes that is what spurs them to practice, though. That shows them, hey, if you wanna level up, there’s the path. Go walk the path. Go work on that. Yeah. I’m not gonna get in your way, I’m gonna cheer you on. But when it’s time to play with the group and we’re keeping up at a certain tempo, maybe you just take that other level part and you’d be part of the group with that.

Eventually we blur the line between one level and the next and they can easily jump into that higher level when their skills are ready for that.

[00:39:12] Andrea: And that’s its own skill that is important for musicians to have. I think of real life musical experiences like, oh, you are the accompanist for this group, you know, this ensemble or something.

And you have to know what you can drop and leave that like that is a real skill. And yeah, when you’re just used to perfecting everything, you don’t necessarily practice that and to look at Two versions of the same piece and say, I can do this one site reading. This one I can do next week after I’ve practiced. But I think that’s really valuable.

Yeah, it’s definitely a different

[00:39:41] Leah Drake: Yeah, it’s definitely a different way to teach and a different way to be a student. I think that it’s very refreshing for older students, teens and adults really respond well to being in charge of that choice and not just being told, you have to go learn this piece because the teacher says, go learn this piece.

There is some of that because I’m choosing the ensembles we work on just so I can teach effectively, but. I’m giving them a lot of ownership over what they’re learning. That usually is enough to keep them motivated, if not actually get them to practice more. So it’s been, like I said, a game changer for my older students.

I used to have a very hard time holding onto students as they got to be middle school or high school age. They would drop piano ’cause they felt like they couldn’t keep up with it at the level that they used to, and therefore it was not something they could do at all. I think that there’s so much potential for showing them that you can still do this if you need to take it down a notch for how much time you’re putting in, still come to class.

You’ll still learn a lot every week, even if you don’t practice. But if you stop coming at all, you’re never gonna make more progress. So it’s just about balancing all the things in your life, and if you really enjoy this, then keep doing it. You’re not gonna be told you can’t do this anymore just because you can’t put in the hours of practice you used to.

 

[00:40:52] Andrea: Talk to us about managing a studio of a hundred students. We’re talking now in August. I’m sure you’re getting enrollments and that can be crazy. What tools do you use? What keeps your life sane in these seasons?

[00:41:02] Leah Drake: Yeah, that’s a great question. I think working in this way, teaching this many students has forced me to develop systems of organization that did not exist.

They wouldn’t have to exist in a smaller studio, but they do have to exist in a larger one. And the most significant thing I can say to this question is, I have help. I do not do it all by myself. And that was a difficult step to take at the time where I was really feeling like I had always been the only person doing everything and maybe it didn’t have to be that way.

So one of the best resources I use now is a virtual assistant who I found through my web designer. My virtual assistant lives in Iowa and I live in California. So she does all of this work remotely and I think I really lucked out ’cause I, I think I just found a really good person to do this on the very first try and I’ve heard that that does not always happen.

So it’s been a good fit and she regularly takes care of some of the admin that can really layer up, for example, billing. And she helps me check the Sprout beat assignments that I use. She helps me coordinate the larger events in a more predictable way instead of more of like an organic way that I’ve always just sort of thrown everything together.

She helps me track practice challenges and things that I like to run and does a lot of the repetitive work that can happen in any of those situations where it really doesn’t require my expertise as the business owner or the teacher to do. And yet I will always do those tasks because I’ve historically been the only person to do them.

So working with her has really helped me analyze what I’m doing. What am I spending my time on that is truly something my expertise is demanded for, or is this something I could train someone else to do? And that’s been a really important reflection on how I’ve been spending my time and if I’m starting to feel burnt out, is it because I’m teaching so much or is it because of all the other stuff that comes with teaching so much?

And half the time it’s the other stuff that’s coming from that. It’s the teaching becomes the relief and the joy of working at this level and having so many wonderful students that I get to see every week, that’s the reward. And figuring out how to show up for those students being refreshed and energized and not drowning under the admin load.

It’s been a really big focus point for me as I scale my business bigger and bigger. I hit 113 students as my peak last year. I mean, that was like, wow, I didn’t even know I could do that. That’s really exciting. And I remember feeling like that was a lot of teaching. I probably don’t wanna teach quite that much ’cause it was an intense teaching schedule. But I would only ever even reach that number if I was having somebody help support the backend of things. And so while I don’t have any other teachers in my business helping me cover all these classes, I do have someone in the wings who I meet with once a week, and we always talk about what else I could have her do for me.

One of the number one things she does for me is help onboard or offboard students. So for example, this is August where there’s normally a lot of inquiries about new families, and we’ve been onboarding, I would say like maybe 20 new students in the last couple of months. And it’s culminating now with August, and so there’s a checklist of things that I do for bringing in new students from, you know, telling parents about how to use resources, getting all of their practice space accounts hooked up, sprout beat accounts set up, and just going through this checklist with every single student that comes in as a new person.

I wanna give them a high quality experience that’s going to make their transition into the studio really easy and clear, and my assistant is helping me keep up with all of that, especially at the high enrollment times, that can easily overwhelm me. And something else that I learned as we were working together is that when students leave in mass, like at the end of the school year, a lot of them will peel off for the summer or just decide that that’s it for them and they’re gonna leave.

There’s a large amount of offboarding that I usually get very drained by because that’s really sad time when you have students leave who you didn’t want to leave or students leave because they’re going a different direction even if you didn’t really love working with that particular student. It can be scary and emotional to see people leaving ’cause that takes your income with them.

And having someone help me get a little more removed from that phase, it helped me stay focused and not get depressed about whatever’s happening and just stay positive and professional about it. Like it’s, it’s okay. Go ahead. Go leave. I’m okay over here. You’re gonna be fine. I’m gonna be fine.

And we just turn the page as quickly as possible and not dwell on it. That made the end of the school year so much lighter for me. Even though I, it’s not like I’m losing lots of students, but then just the number of them that was all at that moment saying, oh, we’ll see you in August, or see you in September, or we’re, we’re done for now.

The, the sheer volume was definitely an overwhelming thing that when I didn’t have somebody else to help shoulder that, it definitely took me down a few pegs before I was able to kind of rally. And then by the time I was rallying, it was halfway through summer. And, and there was kind of a missed opportunity to get students back in the door.

And so the, the whole ability to work with someone who’s helping you keep the studio full at all times. I mean, obviously the number one way to keep the studio full is to be a good teacher and retain your students. But the reality is the more students you have, the more variables there are. And you never know who’s gonna be coming in or leaving.

And the easier that that process got with someone helping me made a huge change in how often I can stay at my capacity. Other than having a person work with me. I would say staying organized is about using the resources that I have for teaching. So I use Practice Space with my students to send them digital assignments.

A huge part of why I like Practice Space is their library so that I can prep all of my stuff and send it easily with a couple of clicks. And everybody gets a really robust assignment with all of their stuff in one place. And it’s digital, it’s easy. Parents can see that. Parents love it actually, because if they don’t know how to play an instrument. They get a so much more support from me during the week than they normally would, and they’re relieved that they have something to lean on when their student goes, I don’t know what to practice. And they’re like, well, let’s look at the whole like vast list of things we can do. We can listen to in a recording, we can watch a little video.

We can read the steps that she’s written out. It’s like, what are we supposed to do? So that’s been really good. Helps me catch a lot of students, especially when you’re doing groups, you wanna make sure they’re coming back to the next class, like ready to do something else, ready to move on. And part of that is being clear with the assignment and giving them all the resources to make use of their time during the week and not just fumble around going, I’m not even sure what page I should be looking at right now.

You know, we just get through that as quickly as possible, and having something like Practice Space makes that so much easier for me. I use My Music Staff for just about everything else. My calendar and billing integration there is probably the number one reason I still really like using that platform.

It keeps all of my student information in one place. Keeps the calendar tidy. Students can book their own lessons if that’s something that they’re allowed to do, which sometimes they are, sometimes they’re not. But that’s there for them and it keeps things simple for billing them from the calendar, which I think is become such a normal thing in my business.

I wouldn’t even consider, I, I would have to really consider how to do that outside of My Music Staff ’cause I have grown, grown so accustomed to using that platform for that reason.

[00:48:05] Andrea: Awesome. Thanks for those recommendations. As we wrap up, is there a book or resource that has had a strong impact on you as an entrepreneur or as a teacher?

[00:48:13] Leah Drake: When I was first starting to teach in groups, I would highly recommend anybody look at the Group Teaching Blueprint by Marie Lee. She generously put together so many wonderful tips and resources in one place with her Group Teaching Blueprint, and I would. Also say that having that resource connected me with a lot of other teachers who are resources in and of themselves. The group teaching community is wonderfully generous about how much they’re willing to share with their wisdom and what works.

And the Group Teaching Blueprint came before the Group Illuminated conference, but that’s now kind of like the next level of where to find anything you would ever want to learn about group teaching? If I was just starting out, I would be all over that conference because it gives you access to so many wonderful, experienced group teachers, and they cover every topic of group teaching from getting into the classroom, managing students, curriculum retention, dealing with parents. Dealing with admin things and just the whole spectrum, and it’s a really fantastic resource to go learn about group teaching or enhance what you’re doing with group teaching.

[00:49:20] Andrea: And what’s next for you? What’s the goal you’re working towards right now?

[00:49:23] Leah Drake: I am looking at expanding my business to have more teachers in it, and a lot of that has come from getting into a commercial space, which is still relatively recent, and feeling like, okay, now that we’re here, what do we do next? So my steps in that direction have included adding some kind of preschool program. I’ve been very keen to add Music Together as one of the programs that my studio could offer.

It wouldn’t be me teaching ’cause I’m already full with my teaching schedule. But I hope to bring in someone who can offer those kinds of classes during the daytime, on weekdays when I’m not already teaching. Add in a program there, and my studio is called Vibrant Valley Music Studio with an intention that it’s not just a piano studio, it is a music studio.

So I would love for the studio to offer what I consider like the primary instruments, piano, voice, and guitar. At some point in the future as we add in other programs, I think the piano program being the one in charge of that, it’s very established and it doesn’t necessarily need other piano teachers right now.

It’s that these other programs don’t exist yet. And that’s where I’m going to be throwing my energy, getting other programs in working with other teachers who don’t do what I do since they can add something to the studio that’s not already here. And eventually I would love to see my five day teaching week turn into a four day week or something like that so that I can manage more and teach as much as I wanna be teaching, but not more than I wanna be teaching.

[00:50:50] Andrea: They’re great goals. All right. Thank you so much for your time and generosity of information. Where can listeners follow along and get in touch with you?

[00:50:58] Leah Drake: The website is probably the best way to get in touch with me. My website is vibrantvalleymusicstudio.com and my contact information is there, so you can always reach out directly if you’d like or just learn more about what the studio does. What’s happening with that. We’ve got a newsletter you can join if you wanna hear about the month to month antics of anything going on in the studio, and I’m always available to answer questions about more than that.

[00:51:21] Andrea: Right, Leah, thank you so much.

[00:51:23] Leah Drake: Thank you for having me. It’s been a really great chat.

[00:51:27] Andrea: What stands out to me in Leah’s story is how she stayed laser focused on her goal of being a group studio, even through the setbacks of COVID losing teaching space and the emotional weight of students leading during her transition. She spent a year planting seeds with collaborative experiences so families could see the value of her groups, and she kept selling the vision before the logistics, so the transition felt exciting rather than disruptive.

Speaking of logistics, managing 100 students takes serious organization. Leah shows us what that looks like, creating clear onboarding and offboarding processes using digital tools so families know what to practice. And most importantly, bringing in support. Her decision to hire a VA was a turning point, giving her the capacity to keep her studio running smoothly without drowning in admin work.

We covered a lot in this episode, but the story doesn’t end here. Next week, Leah and I continue the conversation by talking about one of the biggest studio decisions: space rental. We’ll get into how she navigated the Bay Area real estate market, what risks she weighed, and how the choice to lease a commercial space is shaping the future of her studio.

And if Leah’s story has you thinking about the bigger picture of your studio, a great place to start is our free Vision and Values course. It’ll help you clarify what’s important to you as a studio owner so you can set meaningful goals and stick with them even when things get bumpy. You can find that course at musicstudiostartup.com/courses.

Again, that’s musicstudiostartup.com/courses. That’s all for today. Thanks for listening. I’ll be back next week.