Jeffrey Cufaude is an architect of ideas …custom-designing keynotes, workshops, and leadership conferences that promote learning and community.

What most impresses me about the blog is not that Jeffrey is a musician, a teacher, or even in the arts. And yet his articles are relevant and to the point. As an “ideas architect” (something I had never heard of before), his topics are broad enough to appeal to the masses but specific enough to be useful in my day to day work.

As music studio teachers, owners, and administrators, we can only do so much with our limited resources. How do we fill in the gap? Volunteers. Throughout my career I have worked with volunteers as an organizer or recruiter. I have been a volunteer myself both in arts organizations as well as several other types of non-profits. It is a tricky job. On the one hand there is the enormous need (have you ever heard of an arts organization that had more than enough help?) and on the other hand there is the habit of using volunteers to the brink of burnout and beyond.

While reflecting on the article I began to think of my own volunteer experiences and, as a studio owner, the use of volunteers in my program. I am reminded of:

• The students’ parent who volunteers his photography skill at every studio recital and then donates the proceeds of all photo sales to a studio selected organization.
• The “studio parent” who organizes the studio recitals and receptions
• The parents and teens who run the “music store” for our annual weekend workshop
• The countless people it takes to organize and run a fundraising walk or concert for our organization
• The music students who want to perform regularly at a local senior center to fulfill their school community service requirement
• My own volunteering on several non-profit boards and committees
• Organizing the benefit concert for our scholarship fund
• Providing materials, treats, and support for the small group who fold the weekly church newsletter
• Joining the volunteer cadre of teachers who weekly give their time as teachers in the religious education program at our local church

And the list goes on. How do you use volunteer time and energy in your program? Is there someone who leads your volunteer efforts?  What have you volunteered for in the past? Was it a good experience? Did you feel valued? Would you do it again? These questions led me to two highlights from Jeffery’s article.

Don’t waste volunteers’ time. Time is one of the most significant contributions a volunteer offers to an association.  It is a gift we need to manage carefully.

Don’t forget the fun! Doing the work of the association is serious business, but the way we go about it doesn’t have to be dry and boring.  We must engage not only volunteers’ minds, but also their hearts.  Making volunteer experiences memorable will keep them coming back for more.

I hope you find a few moments to read the full article. It is terrific food for thought. I would love to hear your ideas on creating a strong and vibrant volunteer community.

How does a teacher in a private lesson situation do it all?  When we teach at our homes, we live at work… we breathe work, sleep at work, eat at work, spend time with family at work.  Separating the daily workspace and homespace is easy enough, but nearly impossible when our minds are constantly working on our next “to do” list.  Sometimes, we simply need help.

If you could hire the BEST assistant (one who would do everything except the teaching), what would you want?  What skills?  What jobs/tasks would they complete?  What hours?  What mannerisms, habits, and different personality preferences would you hire?  What would be the pay?  Any benefits?

We need to address all of the above questions, and more, when considering someone to hire.  Employing someone in your home studio requires reliability, trust, their ability to work independently, and a quick grasp of their job description and tasks.

For me, the following would be non-negotiable for the all-around helper.  I would consider, however, someone who could learn the skills need (but perhaps doesn’t already use them, or know they exist).

*Clerical – computer, bookkeeping, filing, billing, ordering supplies
*Studio Tasks (daily) – practice logs,
*House cleaning – vacuuming, dusting, straighten waiting area
*Technology – keep things running, programs, software, electronics, printer
*Public relations – quick to respond to emails & phone calls, courteous, friendly
*Advertising – someone who could efficiently & thoroughly utilize the advertising options.

Hours would be…
*Before the Teaching Day (prep, public relations) – perhaps 2 hours?
*During the Teaching Day (tasks not requiring my attention) – 3 to 4 of the hours?
*After the Teaching Day (cleanup, filing) – perhaps 1 hour?

The ideal situation would be as shown above, but I’m not speaking for everyone.  Who would you hire?  If you could sit back, relax, enjoy time with your family, and afford the financial change hiring someone would take, what would you do?  What things would you put back in your schedule?  What enjoyable things do you do to relax after a long day of teaching?  How would your life be changed by hiring someone you could trust to do things just as thoroughly & carefully as you do them?

I am new to the thought, but am excited at the possibility!  I am excited for what the future holds in my studio.  What does the future hold in your studio?

Tool #1:
Studio Helper
I use this daily to track all clients and outstanding balances due. I encourage all clients to use the Paypal ‘make a payment’ link and so all payments flow easily into Paypal and then into Studio Helper. Essential!

Tool #2:
Paypal App
I have the Paypal App on both my iPhone and my iPad. I regularly use it to quickly withdraw funds from my Paypal account and deposit them into my Citi business account. It takes less than a minute and can happen from anywhere I happen to be in the world.

Tool #3:
Evernote
An absolutely essential tool for me that I use to basically capture any and every idea I have about how I can grow my business. For example, recently I was on the hunt for a new commercial space to hour our school. I walked the neighborhood and snapped photos on my iPhone (in Evernote) of anything I saw I liked. I then added any text notes concerning details about each property (though the contact info was already usually in the photo). I finally made a single ‘notebook’ within Evernote that included all the photos of properties and my text. After synching with my iMac at home, I could organize and decide which properties seemed worth following up on.
In addition, I use Evernote as my daily ‘to do’ capturing tool. I have a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday ToDo set of notes in one notebook. Each week I only put big picture ToDo items on those daily lists. I define a big picture ‘Todo’ as something that absolutely has to get done in order to grow my business. Ferris’ suggests that your list should never have more than 2 items on it. In other words, you need to look really hard at what is actually generating you revenue and translating into growth you want. Do not add stuff to your lists that just keep you busy. That, he argues, is pointless and ultimately causes burnout.

Tool #4:
Omnifocus
Considered by many to be the most thorough integration of David Allen’s ‘Getting Things Done’ method, Omnifocus is essentially just a task manager. But it is a task manager on steroids. It let’s me categorize tasks by project, assign due dates, assign the context in which I will complete them (i.e.. phone, email, online, etc…) and it even gives push notifications so that I don’t forget something pressing. And, it works wonderfully between all three of my devices. Everything syncs perfectly.

Here is how I use Evernote and Omnifocus hand in hand. First of all, I learned a while back that my task manager is NOT the place to keep all my ‘someday maybe’ todo items. If it was just a brainstorm of cool things I could for Brooklyn Music Factory but wasn’t essential to day to day operation, it needed to go elsewhere. What happened was that I became totally overwhelmed by my todo list in Omnifocus and lost touch with what needed to happen immediately. Sound familiar? So, enter Evernote. I use it for capturing all of my brainstorms, all my notes from reading interesting blogs or business books, all my faculty meeting notes, curriculum notes, etc. Basically it holds everything except the list of todos that keep my business afloat.

So my workflow is simplified because I have one place that holds most everything on my mind (Evernote is great for clipping from the web or grabbing an email to reference later) while living in another zone is my actual day to day todo list. Above I mentioned that I do have a sort of larger view todo list in Evernote, but that is really just reserved for the BIG things that absolutely have to get done…examples might be: invoicing or 2-3 crucial emails to be sent.

Finally, if you have staff, as we do, then I recommend sharing these programs with them and getting them to sync with the necessary Evernote notebooks or Omnifocus projects. I simply add to my administrators todo list in Omnifocus and never need to send an email or bug him. I can look and see when he has completed a specific task or if he needs more time.

When running a small business, it is key that you develop a work flow for day to day tasks for yourself and your employees. While there are still times I fall down on the job of keeping track of all the moving parts, I feel more together under my current collection of tools and how I use them than I have ever before. There are many many choices and that alone can be overwhelming. I have found that the key is picking a few tools, learning how to use them well, creating a system/work flow with those tools, and then sticking to it long enough for it to become second nature. Often times, the final step is the hardest!

Who else uses these tools? Have you found some others that do the same thing but you like better? What is your method for getting things done day in and day out? Please share…..

Understanding the business part of your work is essential, but it’s crucial to recognize that size matters.  Getting an MBA or reading big business advice books may not give you what you need to handle a small business.

That’s because most studios are small businesses.  It is possible, of course, that you are part of a chain of studios.  In that case, you may function as a middle manager, and must hew to the budgets and regulations of a larger corporation.

However, since most studios are small businesses, it’s important to realize that a lot of the popular business advice out there may not apply very well to you.  Clarifying which business practices suit you and your day-to-day work can have a big impact on how you handle your work, how you can best work with staff, students, and community, and how to handle competition.

I’d like to tell you a couple of brief stories about how I learned that some business “wisdom” was not geared towards my business, and what I did about it.
I used to own a small but national CD distributing company.  As business picked up and I had to hire help and deal with payroll and a larger office, I decided to visit SCORE, the Senior Corps of Retired Executives.  This free service employs retired business people to advise owners of small businesses on how to successfully start up and grow their business.

One day I had a meeting at SCORE with 3 of their advisors, and they lambasted me for various weaknesses they pointed out to me in my organization and plans.  Let me say that SCORE provides valuable services and publications for small businesses.  However, that meeting wasn’t the only one that was distressing and humiliating to me.  I started to wonder why their criticisms seemed a little out of touch with what I knew about my business and my market.  Then I asked each of the advisors about his experience in business.  What I learned fit in with what I learned later about another SCORE advisor who acted as treasurer of the board of directors of a music school.

What I discovered was that each of those men had worked for large corporations.  Each one had had jobs in which their budgets were set for them, their tasks delegated by their bosses, and their jobs and promotions were on the line based on how well they served corporate management.  None of them had run a small business.  I realized that their criticisms of my work were by the book, and based on no real experience of what I was actually doing.

As a small business owner or manager, you are not being controlled by a corporate budget, corporate culture, or assignments from your boss.  You created your studio, or are entrusted to run it, and chances are, you probably greet people at the door, hire teachers, say goodbye to students, take payments, do mailings, do accounting, handle your marketing, and sweep the floor!

Small business people not only do everything, they also invent a lot of their own procedures.  As owner of my own small business, I had created many of my policies and procedures based on the needs of the business, not based on a how-to book or on the requirements of my bosses.  Knowing my work, my market, and my suppliers, I knew where things were headed in a personal way that those retired corporate executives had only read about.

As a small business manager, you have to be creative based on the needs of the studio and the people you deal with every day.  If you take to heart too much of the big business advice out on the market, you might start acting like a corporate manager and forget who you work with and for every day, and chances are, those people will not like it.  Unlike the corporate middle manager who has to manage a budget that can afford to absorb mistakes here and there, you have to toe the line, and make decisions that really work for you.  And you can’t always delegate everything to someone — even if you do, you still have to follow up to make sure things are done the way you want them, because everything about your studio says something about you.

Unlike big business, small businesses have to take direct responsibility for how they handle their employees and customers.  We can’t hide behind company policy.

Very often we hear, over and over, a lot of shrieking about “business” (some call this politics!), but we have to be very careful about what we’re listening to.  A lot of the sloganeering and maneuvering on behalf of “business” is really about making things smoother for big businesses, not small businesses.  The distinction is rarely discussed in public but makes a huge difference in practice.

Big businesses mostly work with other big businesses.  They do great things, especially with economy of scale, but they often have enough money to manipulate local economies, to put local small businesses out of business, to get tax breaks and influence laws and regulators.  Much of this has little or nothing to do with the kind of work small businesses have to focus on daily–responsibly working with their customers, employees, and communities.  Small businesses are local and can’t survive without local support and respect.

One time, as a member of my city’s Chamber of Commerce, I got tired of reading the Chamber’s newsletter claiming to represent “business” when really they were representing big business.  At that time (10 years ago), the Chamber had five major insurance companies on board, and therefore opposed broader health care coverages that would have been a boon to us small businesses — we could have hired top talent, attracting them with health benefits, and growing our businesses.  I complained to the Chamber president that maybe we should start a new Chamber of Commerce for small business.  He got so scared, he invited me in for an hour’s meeting!

Maybe we should have Small Business Chambers of Commerce that can really represent local businesses.  In the mean time, think about the difference.  Hold your head up, and be careful not to buy into every claim by a politician that they say will benefit “business”.  Some of those regulations they want to get rid of are exactly the regulations that keep big businesses from putting small businesses out of business!

And remember that you’re local.  Don’t get too impersonal with your customers/students, faculty or community, just because some book or advisor tells you that you don’t have time to be flexible, considerate, or respectful.  Build your community and your business one person at a time, and they’ll support you in turn.

How does your studio stack up against the schools around you?  Do you try to match up with schools,  or to contrast with them?   A studio is a kind of school, so it’s natural to make the comparison.

While many studios probably don’t make a deliberate decision about it, some feel they are taken more seriously if they incorporate elements of regular school, while others see themselves as an environment that offers a break from the school mold.  It would be interesting to hear from you (add a comment below) whether your studios tends in one direction or the other.

The most obvious connection of studios with schools is in the calendar.  Some studios coordinate closely with days-off or vacations of local schools; others pay no attention because it is often precisely during those school breaks that students have more time and flexibility to come to the studio.  Many studios split the difference, recognizing that people are more likely to be away during school breaks, and offering makeups, but still allowing lessons and classes to proceed.

The less obvious but more important comparisons with schools, however, have to do with teaching methods and attitudes.  Although individual teachers have to work in their own ways, the studio can also set a tone in these areas.

For example, is practicing is treated as homework?  Are there studio-wide benchmarks, grades, or tests?  How do students proceed from one level to the next?  Are there achievement awards?  Do teachers use a curriculum of some kind?  These can be discussed either at the level of teaching or at a studio level — but they all live in the shadow of … the Big Question!
The Big Question is:  Whose side are you on?

If you assign homework, are you testing whether a student can measure up, or are you offering the student a chance to do something that intrigues or inspires them, or that they understand will lead them to something exciting and challenging?  If you have recitals, tests or evaluations, are they presented with the threat of embarrassment for those who don’t do the work, or are they looked forward to as rewards for progress made?  If you use a curriculum, is it rigidly applied or can it adapt to individual needs and help them move forward on a solid foundation?

“Whose side are we on?”  Asking yourself this question can help you when you plan events, classes, policies, and publicity.  It can help when you greet students who come in the door, or when you have to handle questions about payments or registrations.

Unfortunately, many schools are so tugged by requirements of laws, budgets, test results and behavioral standards that they forget they’re supposed to be on the students’ side — helping them learn and grow.  A lot of time in school is actually spent in confrontation with students — full of testing, threats, and control.

Your studio and your teachers can be on the side of your students.  Students come to you, after all, because they want to learn what you offer, whether you teach music, dance, art, gymnastics, or other skills.

It’s important to remember that teaching and learning is all about progress, not about achievement.  As much as we need benchmarks of various kinds to mark student progress, the only real goal of teaching is progress itself.  Whatever skill someone learns, they can always learn to do it better.  And everybody used to be a beginner.

Recitals, competitions, classes — all can be geared toward rewarding progress by celebrating honest effort at all levels.

I’ll never forget the first music studio where I took lessons.  At the end of each year, we were required to participate in a studio-wide recital.  For many it was nerve-wracking, but the reward we all were proudest of was a little pin we were given, marking how many years we had been at the studio.  It didn’t say how good we were, just that we had put in good effort to make progress over X number of years.  We were proud to be a part of that studio.  They were on our side.

Nearly 20 years ago, a grateful student gave me Ernst Bacon’s book Notes on the Piano.  I don’t teach or perform piano, but she assured me it was worth reading anyway.

She was right.  It’s an amazingly thought-provoking book for musicians and music teachers.  Ernst Bacon (1898-1990) was an American composer and pianist.  Below, I have selected a number of quotes that might be of interest to you.  There is more discussion of each in the book, and also many more topics and ideas.  I heartily recommend the book itself.  Here’s a link to getting a used copy via Amazon.

The book begins with the author’s suggestion that the book is “to be nibbled” – opened and read here and there and anywhere.  Here are some snippets allowing you to do just that.

Ernst Bacon on Teaching Music

“The superior teacher…invites rather than compels the student…he is pleased by the emergence of differences.”

“A teacher’s hardest lesson is to limit his explanation to the minimum.”

“The teacher should introduce conscious devices only when they are needed, just as the doctor prescribes medicines only when the body cannot take care of itself.”

“Too much American teaching is by encouragement, too little by provocation.”

“A great deal of the best teaching is achieved by nonencouragement, even sometimes by outright obstruction.”  If schools and teachers are too tolerant, they leave “to resistant minds no academic crimes to commit…. A good talent needs some sturdy rules upon which to sharpen its claws.”

“I would rather instill in my amateur students love, than knowledge, of music.  Left with only knowledge, they will at the end close their books and consign the course to forgetfulness.  But if they have learned to love but the smallest part of the art, they are likely to pursue some phase of it the rest of their lives.”

“The proper time to begin music is when it attracts you enough to begin…when trying is more satisfying than not trying.  And who but yourself can measure that?”

“Not the least part of gaining facility is removing resistance.”

“The hand teaches the body, the ear teaches the hand, the heart teaches the ear.”

“The uninformed think that art is a continuous harvest, rather than ninety percent cultivation.”

“Whenever I hear someone called perfectionist, I conclude he must be that, and nothing more.”

“The only tradition that stays alive is that which adjusts to time and place.”

“The conflicts of art are mostly between truth and formality.”

Ernst Bacon on Playing Music

“How you begin a piece is everything.”

“The way you hold the interest in your hearers reveals how you hold it within yourself.”

“Energy is needed for restraint as well as for effort.”

“Power is an effect, and not a fact; an impression and not simply force.”

Why playing more forcefully does not mean playing faster:  “In all speech, increasing emphasis calls for added deliberation.”  A “relaxation of mood” brings more ease – and a tempo increase.

“I know of no such thing as a correct tempo…..The old indications, andante, largo, allegro, are descriptive more of character than of tempo….A proper tempo is one that is appropriate to every element of a performance” by which he means the work, the player’s personality and technique, acoustics, place, occasion, the audience, and even the time of day.

“Music mostly combines song with the dance, therefore the beat must be modified in accordance with the flow of the melody.”

“Music is all proportion.”  Two adjacent chords are proportionate to each other, rhythm is about proportion, as are two notes of a melody, the sounds within a chord, and every color, cadence and dynamic.

“Good diction is clarity and musicality both, and yet it must not be so marked as to injure melody through overemphasis.”

“What is warmth in music that is all warm?  What is dissonance in a bed of discord?  What is light without shadow?”

Ernst Bacon on Practicing Music

“The purpose of practice not to reduce consciousness but to heighten it.”

“No task is too great provided you find its appropriate tempo.”

“The superior artist is not always the one with the largest capacity; he is usually one who has realized what has been given him to the fullest.”

“Any success, untempered with some failure, has little chance of lasting”

“How fast can you assimilate what is to be done without losing spirit and control?  Ultimately, the quickest road is to take your time.  Not another’s, but your own time.”

“All exercises should be done in rhythm…this encourages the development of an inner pulse, and exploits the driving force of rhythm in promoting dexterity… Toward this end, the metronome is less than useless…rhythm is a human and not a mechanical thing…note values are ever an approximation.”

“Practice unmakes perfection when carried too far.”

“Stiffness accompanies anxiety and relaxation comes with assurance.”

“It is manifestly impossible to learn to play rapidly by playing only slowly.  Slowness gives the feel; rapidity the gesture.”

“Ask yourself if you do a certain passage with pleasure, and you will know whether you have, or are on the way to have, learned it.”

“Melody involves a study of its accompaniment…. The more thought has gone into the accompaniment, the freer then is the thought for the melody.”

“Weakness and strength must be equalized, or else utilized for unequal ends.”

“Good technique obliterates itself.”

You may be a teacher yourself, but in your role as studio manager, you are in a position of leadership, and set the tone for your studio.  Keeping in touch with your teachers, and responsive to them, sets an example that makes them feel more engaged in the studio, and in turn, they will pass that positive feeling about your studio along to their students.

Let’s discuss ways to be involved with teachers without being intrusive.  Each idea has its opportunities and challenges — staff meetings, studio-wide events, benefits, thank-yous, and other communications.

Staff Meetings

Theoretically, regular staff meetings are a good idea, allowing regular communication and follow-up, and giving teachers a chance to get better acquainted with other teachers and staff.  In this way, everyone can feel more a part of the studio as a team.

Yet holding a meeting is easier said than done.   Some teachers feel it’s all they can do to get to the studio and teach, so it’s important not to expect too much, and to make a meeting worth their while.

Here are a few ways to encourage attendance at staff meetings:

1.  Provide lunch or snacks.

2. Schedule meetings at times when it’s easy for teachers to attend — a time most are at the studio anyway, or, even though it’s better to have everyone there at once, you could offer alternate times for convenience.  Plan a meeting in conjunction with a studio-wide event, especially if it solicits teacher input on the event.

3. Schedule meetings at reasonable intervals — too often and they will feel like an imposition.

4. Every meeting needs an agenda, a purpose.  There may be a need for some general discussion but make sure there’s at least one clear issue of practical value that needs teacher input.  Take notes and follow up on what is discussed.  Nothing turns people off meetings more than feeling nothing has come of them.

5. It’s fine to make announcements at meetings but that’s not a good reason to have a meeting unless there can be a discussion.  Announcements without discussion are best done by email, or by distributing a flyer.

Studio-wide events

Any event that brings a studio together helps build your team.  Events that feature student performances also help you get a sense of what your teachers are doing without imposing on them, although in some cases observing classes might be reasonable without being intrusive, depending on your relationship with the teachers.

Some studios schedule open houses with demonstrations and  opportunities for students to register for classes and lessons.  Engage your teachers in demonstrations and in leading sample workshops.  One studio I know of has special programming days where teachers offer workshops for all comers, discussing and demonstrating aspects of learning music.

For more ideas on studio-wide events, please see the earlier blog post on this topic.

Benefits and Thank-yous

Some studios choose to treat teachers as employees, with paychecks, tax withholding, and benefits such as contributions to health insurance.  These benefits tend in and of themselves to build a stronger connection to your teachers than having them as independent contractors.  For more on the employee/contractor issue, see the earlier post on this topic.

Anything that gives teachers a benefit by being part of your studio can help build your team.  Here are some examples:

1. Free admission to studio-sponsored events

2. Discounts you might negotiate with neighborhood businesses who would like to see your teachers do more business there

3. Local parking perks

4. Sales of CDs at studio office or desk

5. Gigs–some people looking for musicians for weddings or other functions will contact your studio for ideas.  If you can devise a fair plan and wish to provide this service, you could parcel out such requests to your teachers.  If you put something into it, such as advertising, or office work, you could take a cut as well.

6. Performances — the studio could host teacher performance nights to help exposure of both the teachers and the studio.

7. Website exposure — the studio could bring its teachers into its website offerings, including photos, bios, calendar of activities, and even sales of items.  This says to everyone, “Here is our team — see what they’re doing.”

8. Annual gift cards at Christmastime, an annual cookout in the spring or fall.  These activities bring people together, and foster appreciation for the studio and its managers/owners.

Other Communications

Basic communication is essential.  There needs to be an easy way for you to get messages to teachers and vice versa.  Studio Helper is of course a plus in this way, but  you might also consider a newsletter to highlight changes, activities, keep teachers aware of upcoming events and meetings, feature different teachers, classes, and students.

Feedback is important, and responsiveness just as important.  One studio I know has a teacher assigned as liaison with the management.  If such a teacher is respected and friendly with the other teachers, this is a great way to provide easy access for teachers to communicate concerns, or for you to have help organizing participation in events or soliciting feedback.

The risk of falling short in providing accessible communications is a buildup of petty concerns and unnecessary resentments.  Even a suggestions box can be helpful in this regard, especially if it’s well marked, with slips of paper or forms and a pen nearby.  Some people seem made to complain, so sometimes you can’t escape, but it always pays to keep communications open and honest.

With a healthy team of teachers, your studio will become known as the place to come to!

Please feel free to add comments below and share with us how you like to work with teachers — what’s worked for you, and what hasn’t.

• In person. Networking by being where your clients like to be; coffee shops, clubs, playgrounds, school functions, conventions, etc.
• By phone. Calling regular clients to ‘check in’ or cold calling potential customers.
• Snail Mail. Sending out cards or even hand written notes announcing events, thanking loyal customers, reminding new and old customers of what you offer.
• Email. Essentially the same use as snail mail, with the additional benefit of attaching media files.

The question we, as studio or school owners need to ask ourselves is how effective are these forms of networking and communicating. Are they resulting in an expanded network that is blossoming into a larger client base? Or as my brother, a studio owner in Nashville, TN, pointed out, often it feels as though he keeps running into the same people at every party he throws (his main form of promotion/networking). His client base is not expanding through the channels that seemed to work only a few years ago. The traditional forms of networking can and still do work for some (my connection to and participation in my children’s school is still the strongest networking tool I have), but times are changing and our clients are turning elsewhere for advice and guidance when choosing teachers, studios, schools, etc.

My first step in trying to better my grasp on social media and the impact it could have on my network was to hire a ‘consultant.’ I put it in quotes only because I’m not sure that’s exactly what he, Adam Bird, would call himself…that is what I call him. My cousin, another studio owner, referred to him as a ‘digital native.’ Essentially, he is someone who is in his 20s and has never known life without the Internet. He has always been connected and views it as a fundamental part of every day communication. For me, a 41 year old, working with him has been a revelation.

Lessons I have learned to date:

- All of your clients (or potential clients) communicate in their own preferred way: text, email, phone, face to face, iChat, Facebook, Tweets….even Youtube.

- It is the business owners responsibility to learn their clients (and employees) preferred methods and use them to communicate as efficiently as possible. For me it has meant: emailing, Facebooking, texting, and postering/handbills. I cannot skip any of these without missing out on communicating with one of my students or employees. Studio Helper is a life saver with the email portion of the communication. In fact, I have probably 20 of my own email templates that I use every school year at regular intervals. But email alone is not enough!

-Facebook is an equally valid way to communicate and network (more on this later)…suffice it to say, though, that I have a number of students and parents of students that are just as apt if not more so, to let me know about something through our school Facebook fan page, than through email and certainly more often than by phone.

-An email client above and beyond Studio Helper is still essential. I use Constant Contact.

-When communicating with current clients via social media outlets, DO NOT sell them your products, instead enhance their experience with what they have already invested in. An example would be  regularly posting videos of recent band rehearsals that highlight both the student’s achievements but also possibly what they need to continue working on.

-When communicating, know your brand and try to project that image consistently. Is your studio intense or casual? Do your clients feel hip when taking your workshops…if so, all of your communications need to make them feel that way.

-Social Media marketing/communicating is a two way conversation NOT a one way advertisement of your company.

-Finally, communicating through multiple channels does take time. Creating a workflow that carves out enough time everyday is important to making sure all your clients are happy and feel like they are not being ignored. Just like your website needs to be regularly updated to keep visitors interested, Facebook, Youtube, Twitter…and email campaigns need to be addressed daily or weekly.

Next entry I am going to go over in detail my workflow for staying in touch. I’ll discuss where I have stumbled and what has helped me get back on track.