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THANK YOU SO MUCH for your reply. I have been checking this every few hours looking for a reply.. I have first started teaching when I was 14. I've experienced teaching as a private piano teacher, a music teacher at a school and the piano teacher at institutes. I am now 21 and I have settled at private teaching in hopes to get a good business.

Right now I am aiming to do all you say. My only question right now is... HOW do you get to make a teacher want to work for you? Wouldn't that teacher want to have his/her own students and earn full fees? Besides providing "visa" (because as of now I can't).. Why else would a teacher want to work for me?

Thanks

Hi Liezl,

I founded a music school two years ago in Michigan when I was 24. I also was a private piano teacher for 8 years before that (maintained a private studio in my dad's house) and always dreamed of owning my own music academy. When I was first thinking about "really" doing this, I was completely at a loss of how to start. Someone I trusted told me that the way to start was really just to...start. Here are things I did between making the decision to open a music school and my actual opening day (9 months):

- Set an opening day and chose a business name (which was changed three times in those 9 months)

- Sneakily surveyed my current students to try to get a feel for whether they would be OK with this transition (since I definitely needed my base of 40 students to come with me to the new "school" to keep us afloat at first)

- Viewed a lot of other music school websites and wrote down questions that I had to consider about my own (here is my website if you are interested: www.expressionsmusicacademy.com)

- Read a lot of business books

- Wrote a business plan, of which the "financial plan" part of it was the most important. To do this, you just have to make a lot of "educated guesses" on expenses, revenue, etc. You will find yourself asking a lot of questions, which is good. Then you just keep adjusting it as you get answers.

- Got a realtor and started touring available spaces in the area I wanted to open the school

- Wrote a school policy and created a very basic admin system (such as how I wanted to schedule students, enroll them, bill them, etc.)

- Interviewed quite a few instructors 5 months before opening (the response was overwhelming when I e-mailed professors from local universities). I was shocked just how much they DID want to work for me.

- Found someone to do my website and put it together

- Built a basic advertising plan

- Attended one of Sam Beckford's Successful Studio Strategies seminars (VERY valuable in those formative months...and worth the $$ investment)

There are plenty of other things I did, too. But really, all of them stemmed from the major things I listed above. I kept a giant list of things to do at all times. You might want to break your list of tasks into major areas and then have sublists of things to do for each area. Areas would probably look like this:

- Facility
- Business/Financial Plan
- Instructors
- Website
- Policy and Systems
- Advertisement

I also had some serious help from a few people. My dad, for example, is an accountant and was also a big supporter in many other of the "business" type areas. My step-brother had some experience building websites, so I was covered there. Other than that, though, it was me getting out of my comfort zone, working harder than I've ever worked in my life, and just going for it. I also invested some savings from my teaching the past few years.

Since I made the actual decision to pursue this in 2009, I have been the happiest I've ever been and am now a great supporter of anyone who wants to try to start their own business (especially in an industry they are passionate about). Expressions is debt-free and we have 260 students and are growing at about 6 students per month and expanding our facility in January. I have made so many mistakes and learned so much and am happy to share it with you. Please just e-mail me at my business e-mail address (on website) if you would like to know more. I had a lot of help getting started (including from someone on this forum) and am glad to do the same for others.

Best wishes to you!

Hi Jessica S,

Very inspiring and helpful post. I share the same dream as Liezl, it's all I ever think about, I can't seem to finish school quick enough. I have a small studio (if you can call it that) of 25 students. I get to teach on a clavinova, though I'd rather teach on a real acoustic piano. And though I'd like to stay here in Rexburg, Idaho and open a school of music, it seems the culture here is to find lessons for as cheap as possible. Stay at home moms are giving away the first month free and charging $35 a month for lessons. How do they feed their children? Though demand for teachers is high, there is a huge supply of underqualified teachers, and many qualified as well, thus driving down the price.

Where should I move to maximize profit?