Transcript: Snapshot 028 – Shannon Saravia
Transcript for Snapshot 028 – Shannon Saravia
[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.
Welcome back. We’re doing a special series on the podcast this summer called Studio Snapshots. Rather than the in-depth process oriented interviews, you’re used to hearing these rapid fire interviews. Give us a glimpse into a guest studio at a moment in time. Their part reflection, part anticipation of the future, and fully a celebration of where these teachers are today.
Today, I’m talking to Shannon Saravia. Here’s Shannon’s snapshot. Hi, Shannon. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for being here today. Can you introduce yourself and tell us briefly about your studio?
[00:01:11] Shannon Saravia: Absolutely. Thank you for having me. So my name is Shannon. I own a small studio in Southern California.
We’re in the greater Los Angeles area in the small city of Luverne. We actually opened our brick and mortar studio doors last summer in 2023, but I actually started the studio as a solo teacher, giving lessons out of my home and online starting way back in January of 2020. So now, fast forward to today, we have about 75 private lesson students who take piano, voice, and guitar lessons with us.
We’ve also seen about 200 babies and toddlers participate in our Parent and Me Music Groups for Littles classes.
[00:01:49] Andrea: Awesome. Wow. January, 2020. Interesting time to start a studio. You didn’t even know it yet. So today we’re doing one of our studio snapshots, which is a quick look at where you’re at with your studio right now.
And I always have to refrain myself from asking a lot of follow up questions. So we’ll just hop right into it. What is one thing you’re celebrating from the last school year?
[00:02:10] Shannon Saravia: A big thing that we celebrated this year was that we had record participation in our recitals. About 60 percent of our students participated in both our December recital and our June recital.
[00:02:21] Andrea: That’s awesome. How were you challenged last year?
[00:02:25] Shannon Saravia: I think the biggest challenge for me and our studio in general was that we made the big switch from going, I guess, month to month or by lesson tuition to all inclusive monthly tuition flat rate. Switching to this was difficult and I definitely dragged my feet on it for literally years, but I finally bit the bullet and did it.
The change was really big for some of our students, and we had a few who left at that time, so it was kind of hard not to get discouraged by some of that, but then seeing the consistency in our budget and our teacher’s hours and pay as well, to be able to have a steady, predictable monthly tuition has given us a little bit more breathing room in our budget, which was definitely needed.
[00:03:08] Andrea: Yeah, that, that can definitely be just getting through those kinds of changes could be, you’re not alone in that being a challenge. Besides that, did you take any risks or go outside your comfort zone last year?
[00:03:19] Shannon Saravia: Yes, we actually also started offering group piano lessons. I took the successful group lessons training by Daniel Patterson.
It was extremely helpful. We didn’t push to convert our entire studio or all of our piano students into group lessons, But the students who did convert have been so impressed by it. So that was really encouraging.
[00:03:40] Andrea: Did you take anything away from that experience? Just the risk taking that you’ll carry into future opportunities?
[00:03:46] Shannon Saravia: Yeah, I think I realized that pouring into myself and my teachers on a professional development level is very important and it can have just incredible results going forward and for the students and the studio.
[00:04:01] Andrea: And what do summers look like in your studio, both for your students and for you?
[00:04:05] Shannon Saravia: So in the summer, we are offering some group workshops that are a little bit more flexible schedule wise, since we moved to flat rate with no makeups.
This gives students an opportunity to make up a missed workshop by jumping into a different one on a different day during the week. We also have a new six week session of our music groups for littles, which is our parent and me intro to music classes. So we’re really excited on launching both of those actually next week.
[00:04:30] Andrea: All right is there anything you’re doing this summer to prep for next school year?
[00:04:35] Shannon Saravia: Lots of admin work. To top it all off, one of my admins is actually going on maternity leave herself any day now. So I am bracing myself to kind of take over some of her stuff, to divide it up and give it to our other admin, our front desk girl, and, um, It’s also kind of a lot as I haven’t had my hands in a lot of that stuff for the past couple years.
I have 2, 1 year olds at home that take up a majority of my attention. So that plus, I’m starting up some more teaching again this summer. It’s been a lot speaking of, you know, the professional development we just mentioned. I’m also looking to join course on preschool group piano in hopes of adding that into our group lesson rotation so that we can add that in the fall.
[00:05:22] Andrea: Okay. Busy summer for you. If having two one year olds isn’t enough. What app or tool has made the biggest impact on your studio or life management this year?
[00:05:33] Shannon Saravia: I am a huge fan of Google Business Suite, especially like Google Sheets. Especially having three admins, all of us updating notes about new signups and leads, teacher availability, scheduling.
It’s been crucial for us to stay on the same page. If we all just update that. I’m not sure if we have too many Google sheets going on at the moment, but we feel like it’s better to have too many than not enough, just so that we can all stay on the same page. We do also use My Music Staff, which has been very helpful, but I know they’re working on upgrading a lot of their systems.
So we just kind of have our Google sheets as just extra documentation, kind of like backup.
[00:06:14] Andrea: And what’s one area of your business where you tend to get carried away or go overboard just because it’s something that you really enjoy or like to nerd out about?
[00:06:23] Shannon Saravia: I mean, I mentioned Google Sheets. I guess something that I noticed I tend to do is when we’re launching something new or we have an event like a recital, I will have a majority of the details already planned out, but sometimes I get just this inspiration or some sort of inclination to just add an extra cherry on top or something. So for instance, we just had our June recital and I felt like that it just needed one more thing. And I wanted a rug because we had it out on a patio at a coffee shop.
I wanted a rug underneath the piano. So like 24 hours beforehand, I was able to go thrift one and I just added it, but I just added that one extra thing, you know, and I found that’s something that I tend to do when we’re launching a new program or having a big event. So
[00:07:12] Andrea: I love that the one extra thing was a rug, not like another piece on the program or egg shakers in the audience or something like that is an aesthetic thing. And I think if people see you on Instagram, they will see that you have a very good sense of all of that. So that’s awesome that you had a rug. I’m going to pay attention to that in your recital pictures. And where can listeners get in touch with you and follow along with your studio?
[00:07:36] Shannon Saravia: They can follow me on Instagram. My studio Instagram is creative_cultivation_studio. They’re welcome to follow me there. Send me a DM. I’d love to connect.
[00:07:49] Andrea: All right. Shannon. Thank you so much.
[00:07:51] Shannon Saravia: Of course. Thanks for having me.
[00:07:58] Andrea: Thank you for taking the time to be with us, Shannon. We’ll include a transcript and all the links mentioned in this episode at musicstudiostartup.com/snapshot028. The music studio startup website is also filled with lots of other resources for music teachers, just like you who want to set up their studios for success this summer, including our very popular self paced Business Building 101 course and our hub and mastermind for studio owners who want to be supported and challenged to grow as entrepreneurs.
And if you happen to be a new music teacher or know someone who is, don’t forget to check out our 1, 000 grant competition at musicstudiostartup.com/grant. The deadline to apply is July 31st. That’s all for today. Thanks for listening. I’ll be back next week.