How I Built A 50-Person Waiting List

 A 50-person waiting list doesn't happen by accident. But it also isn't the result of having the most qualifications in the area, or spending money on advertising, or doing anything particularly complicated.

In this episode, I walk through the four things that actually built mine: defining who I wanted to teach, becoming visible to the right families, communicating a clear and consistent message, and letting the studio's reputation do the compounding work over time.

I also talk about what a waiting list actually changes about the way you run your studio, because it's not just a nice thing to say in your bio. It changes the decisions you make, the confidence you hold your policies with, and the quality of the enquiries you receive.

If you have empty slots you can't seem to fill, or if you take on every student who enquires because you don't feel able to say no, this episode is for you.

In this episode:

• What a waiting list actually means for your studio, beyond simply being full
• The process of defining your ideal student and why it is the foundation everything else builds on
• The free visibility tools that help the right families find you before they have even contacted you
• How to communicate a message that attracts the families you want to work with
• What a professionally run studio does for your reputation and your word-of-mouth referrals
• How to manage a waiting list professionally and what to say when you're full
• The four objections that hold teachers back from doing this work, and honest reframes for each one

Resources mentioned:

• How to Attract Your Ideal Piano Students (blog post)
• Free Studio Policy Template:
• Focus Sessions (£67/hr)

Access the show notes here: Episode 7 Show Notes

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

I used to follow teachers on Facebook who talked about their waiting lists and I'd feel this weird mix of admiration and deflation. Like I was happy for them, but I was also wondering how did they do it? I couldn't work out what they were doing that I wasn't doing. I thought maybe they were exaggerating or they'd been teaching for like 30 years or they lived somewhere with no other teachers for miles. Because in my head I'd split teachers into two categories without really realizing it. The ones who were full and turning people away, and then the ones like me who were grateful for every student who stayed, and then quite anxious every time someone left. And I didn't think of those two stages as the same journey. I really thought of them as two different types of teacher, and I was pretty certain I was not the waiting list kind. This episode is about what changed, and it wasn't luck. The first time I had to turn somebody away because I had no space, it felt really odd and quite scary. I was thinking, up until that point, I had accepted every single student who had come my way, and I thought, this is a mistake, I should find space for them, I should make space for them. And I was really quite surprised that I came to the conclusion that I needed to turn them away. But the result was quite impactful for me. The fact that I had some students who were willing to wait for a space in my studio, it was a real boost for my self-esteem as a teacher, and it signalled to me the value that I am providing, the fact that people were willing to wait to be taught by me. So it was scary but good. So in today's episode, we are going to talk about the four steps that built my waiting list, why none of them required spending money on advertising, and what the waiting list has actually changed about the way my studio runs. I'm Victoria. I started teaching piano part-time 18 years ago alongside a career in pharmaceutical market research, and I made pretty much every mistake you can make when it comes to running a teaching business. But today I run a thriving studio from my home on the south coast of England with students I love and a waiting list I'm proud of. I started this podcast because I want that for you too. If you've ever said yes to a reschedule you really didn't want to do, felt your heart sink when your phone buzzed with another last minute cancellation, or found yourself putting off increasing your fees for another year because the timing never feels quite right, this is the podcast for you. I've been there and come out the other side with a teaching business that lights me up every single day, and I'm here to help you do the same. To start with, I'm going to go into what having a waiting list actually means and why it's not just a nice thing to have. So the most obvious one is the practical protection that it offers. When a student leaves, the slot fills from the list without scrambling to find new students, without needing to spend money on advertising or having a dip in your income. So your studio stays full. That's the most obvious one. The less obvious one, unless you have experienced it, is the psychological shift. When you know there's families waiting to have a spot in your studio, it really allows you to make decisions in a more confident way that is more true to your values and your ethics as a teacher. So it actually gives you permission to support your policies in a more direct way and to stand up for who you want to be as a teacher and the students that you want to teach. So ending a relationship with a student who isn't a good fit feels much less frightening when you know the slot is not going to sit empty for a long time because you have this waiting list to draw on. And it gives you that extra bit of support that you can hold your ground and you don't have to apologise for supporting your policies. You don't have to apologize for the way you run your studio because you have people waiting to join, and that is a signal that you are providing what they want. The other side of it is for prospective families, the fact that you have a waiting list signals to them that other people are waiting to join your studio too. So it provides this really robust social proof that does all the talking for you before you've even had the first conversation. And it makes sense, doesn't it? When you hear about teachers with a waiting list, you just think, oh, they must be amazing teachers. Everybody wants to be taught by them, that's why they have a waiting list. And it's not untrue, they are a desirable teacher because they have a waiting list, but there'll be a reason behind that, many reasons in fact, that make them a good teacher. But that doesn't make them an unattainable level. You absolutely can build your own wait waiting list. It's having the faith that you are a good enough teacher, which if you're listening to this podcast, I can be 99% sure you are because you're looking to improve and to be the best teacher you can be by learning as much as you can about how this all works. So for me, when my waiting list started growing, it really did provide this security blanket, I suppose. I was worrying less about losing students. Now I've mentioned before that I have anxiety and I've had it for a very long time, for as long as I can remember, really. So it's not uncommon for me to be anxious about almost everything. These days life is a lot more settled, so the anxiety is less, which is wonderful. However, one of those things I think we can all agree on is that there is this worry that we're going to lose our students. Because it comes with that vulnerability that they have to choose us, and they do, they they choose us, we teach them, but then the fear of losing them is always lurking in the background somewhere, no matter how long you've been teaching. But this waiting list really helps to reduce that feeling quite significantly because you have an unavoidable signal from other families and students that they value what you do. They value your teaching, and the spot in your studio is a desirable thing, so they are willing to wait for it. It had a bit of a knock-on effect on me psychologically, so on all areas of the way I run my studio. Supporting my policies, especially the really tricky ones, when it comes to turning away sick children from lessons and the fear of losing your student because you turned them away because they were sick, that kind of thing. Or putting your prices up. Episode five went all into what goes into raising your fees. But just the concept of increasing your fees, it does strike fear into many music teachers' hearts because of everything I covered in that episode, but the the fear of losing students is at the heart of that as well. So when you have a waiting list, you have an abundance, an overabundance of students waiting to be taught by you. It allows you to make that price increase more securely knowing that you're running your business professionally and and your services are in demand. Okay, now we're moving on to step one of how I built my waiting list. So this is where you actually define who you want to teach. So it's all about our ideal students. Now I think we're all familiar with this when we started teaching, you take on pretty much every student who comes your way because you're wanting to fill your lesson slots and start making income and not be scrabbling for new inquiries. So it's a very natural thing to just say yes to every student who gets in contact, even with a trial consultation lesson. And because we've all done that, we've all had that experience, I think we've all realized the downside of doing so. Because taking on every student that comes your way in the end actually costs you a lot in terms of your energy, your fulfillment, the quality of your teaching week, and it can have a negative impact on your other students, which is why it's such an important area to talk about. And this isn't to make you feel guilty if you are taking on every student who comes your way. I'm just acknowledging that it's a very natural thing to do, but there's also this very important reason why we shouldn't just accept every student because every teacher is not the right fit for every student, and vice versa. And it's through no fault of either side, it's just the combination of personalities and skills and approaches don't always line up, and that's fine. So for me, there were a couple of students that stood out when I look back that I I definitely shouldn't have taken on. One of them was a teenage boy, and I talk about red flags a lot, and there were quite a few red flags with this boy's parent, but I was in full-fledged people-pleasing mode, and I wanted to take on as many students as contacted me. So even though almost everything went against my instinct, I did take him on, but ended up terminating lessons within a couple of months, which was absolutely the right thing to do. And it was just things that didn't line up with what I was comfortable doing. So he was preparing for an exam, which is red flag number one. Leaving a teacher when you're almost ready to take your exam doesn't doesn't bode well in many such situations. But I agreed to take him on and see what his playing was like and and help him finalise preparations for the exam, which we did, and he did really well, and there was no problem with that. It was subsequently the expectations of the parent for skipping the next exam, and I'd only had him for a couple of months at this point. I had never seen him learn a new piece from scratch before. I had no idea about his his understanding of theory or his approach to anything like that. I'd just seen him play his exam pieces for me and the scales and arpeggios and and doing some of the exercises. So that I mean it was that was just all covered in red flags. And it gave me a lot of anxiety. My mental health really suffered for that short period of time when I was teaching that student because I was torn because the student was lovely and clearly very talented and well-meaning, but the control of the parent was just unmanageable and not something that I felt comfortable dealing with in my studio, and and to be honest, didn't feel that I needed to keep this student and all of the baggage that came with him. But of course, if you've ever turned away a student or if you've ever terminated lessons with a student, it's painful. No matter what the reasons are, it's always painful because we form these bonds with our with our students, and even in a short period of time like with this student, it's sad to see them go because you're there and you want to help them, but the situation just if it isn't right for you and your studio, it's not sustainable, and it's going to sap your energy in many ways, and that's going to have a negative impact on the rest of your studio, your students and families, and yourself, and your family, and the the whole lot. So one of the things I always ask when I'm having a consultation lesson with a prospective student and their family is whether or not they have an instrument at home and what it is, and if it's not suitable, I recommend a minimum spec instrument that they'll need to purchase in order to start lessons with me. And I make it part of my studio policy agreement that they signed to saying we have this and this is what we're gonna use to practice on. I did take on a student where all of that was signed and agreed, and then I found out there was no instrument at home. And I mean that was red flag number one, but it was early on, so I thought, oh, you know, it's I'm just gonna remind them that they definitely need an instrument, and I'll do my best in the meantime. So of course I couldn't send this child home with anything to practice because there was nothing to practice on. So we did lots of theory games and and playing in the lesson, playing on the piano, but there was nothing I could get him to practice. And this is quite a big one, really, because there's a level of trust you need with your studio families, and when they sign to say they've agreed to something and then they don't, it doesn't feel very nice. And if I had had the experience and knowledge that I have now, back then, which of course is not possible because it was in the early years, I would have completely changed how I responded to all of that. I probably would have paused the lessons and said he can have a slot, he doesn't have to wait, but he needs an instrument at home to practice on, otherwise you're wasting your money. And I would have been a lot more assertive about that. But of course, back then I just held out the hope that they would get an instrument for him soon, and it ended up being six months without one, which was quite hardgoing in the end, despite multiple prompts from me. But yeah, so that was that was an example of one of one of my students who was not an ideal student. Because the other thing it signifies is that the family wasn't on board with my approach to teaching, because that was a key requirement for having lessons with me. So already right from the beginning it indicated a mismatch in expectations and mutual respect. So it's something that can feel quite awkward in the beginning, but is quite an important thing to recognise if it does happen to you. As a recovering people pleaser, this kind of thing I find very difficult because I don't want to upset anyone, I don't want to cause anyone worry or annoyance, so I'll go out of my way to make sure everything's smooth and often to my own detriment, but I'm working on it. So this is a personal thing for me. I know it won't apply to most of you, but if it does resonate with you, I'd be interested to hear from you. For a long time I have had hearing sensitivity, as in loud noises are painful, they feel physically painful rather than just shocking, like, oh that's a loud noise. No, it's actually it feels like real pain is going on inside my ears. And I I mean I'm can't be sure where where it's come from, but it's definitely a precursor for migraines, and so when I have had students who I'm talking child students who were unable to control themselves around the piano and not bang on the keys, and I'm sure we've all had a few of those, those lessons were particularly anxiety-provoking for me, and I hadn't realized quite how much of an impact it had had on me until I started to dread certain days in the week when I had these students, and it was just the the anxiety of having to endure this this pain, these loud noises that other people a lot of other people can't understand if if you haven't experienced it, this hyper-acusis, as it's called. And I bought those flare inserts that you can put in your ears, and they they do help a little bit, but it's only in taking the edge off the the pain is still there. But I am actually getting fitted for hearing protection in the next couple of weeks because I the last teaching course I went on, there was a session on hearing health, and it was very informative and actually something that I've never really considered before. And I have an Apple Watch and it's got a decibel meter on it that you can turn on just to check the decibel readings around you. And uh it goes it's green, you know, if it's safe levels of noise and goes into yellow and red. And quite frequently, if I'm where I'm sat next to the piano with my students, they don't actually have to be playing that loudly for it to go into the fully into the yellow section. So the combination of being made aware of how hearing health is quite an important thing for us as music teachers to protect, and then combined with my particular experiences of painful sounds, I thought I'm just gonna get this thing done. Not so that I can take on lots of uh non-ideal students who bang on the keys, of course not, but it's something that has prompted me to actually do something about it. So, in terms of not taking on students that arrive at your door, I think I would have had more confidence to say this student isn't ready yet for piano lessons because they're unable to follow instructions and and not bang on the keys and things like that. So even though it is painful when you say goodbye to a student, when you terminate lessons for the right reasons, everything does improve in your studio and your general well-being. And that is the place that I've got to at the moment where I don't have any days that I dread. And that's isn't that a much better place to be? I think if you really look at your teaching week and think, are there any days that you I mean dread might be too strong a word, are there any days that you like less than others and really think about why? It might be because you have too many lessons packed into one day, or there might be a student you find very challenging. Now, we can't just I I'm aware that we can't just and shouldn't just cull students from our studio willy-nilly. But it's something, it's an important thing, I think, to reflect every so often on how you're feeling about your studio and your lessons, your students, how you're teaching, the way it's laid out, the the timetabling, because there are likely to be small things you can do, you can change, that will make your teaching week that much more enjoyable. And I don't want to say bearable because that's not where we want to aim for. We want to enjoy our teaching week, not to endure it. So I'm sure we've all experienced this. Um, having I have had students in the past where you get serial policy breakers or boundary pushers, and you know, the odd push of the boundary here or there is fine and human, and you can just you can support your boundaries. It's not really a reason to get rid of a student from your studio, but if you have ones that come back again and again and again, it may be worth considering whether another teacher might be a better fit for them in another studio that has different policies from you, and that's okay because yes, you would be turning away a student, but you're making space if you're full, you're making space for one of your ideal students. So when it comes to understanding and identifying your ideal student or students, because you all have likely more than one particular profile, is to consider the whole picture. So, I mean, it comes down to so many different things. How old are they? Why do they want to learn? How do they respond to challenges? What does their week look like? What ethos does the family have in terms of music lessons? How do they how do they value music lessons? How involved are the parents in their activities, and therefore how likely are they going to be involved in helping the student practice? So it doesn't have to be really overly complicated, but you could start by looking at your current students and think about the ones that feel really easy and enjoyable to teach. The ones where you perhaps look forward to their lessons because of who they are and how they approach practice and how they respond to your your style of teaching. That can help point you in the direction of your ideal student because you may already have some of your ideal students. So I mentioned this earlier, but the instrument requirement. Of course, they need to have a minimum spec instrument, so it's looking at the students, families who are willing to invest in a decent instrument because we all know practicing on a poor instrument, or in in the case of piano, if they only Up having a keyboard with no weighted keys and no touch sensitivity, they can only get so far, and actually, practice is so unsatisfying when you're practicing on a toy keyboard compared with a digital piano, even you don't have to have an acoustic, of course not. Uh, it's so unsatisfying that there's it reduces a lot of the motivation for practice. So it's a real key element that your ideal student needs to have the right instrument. So once you've answered those questions, you may well have a couple of different rough profiles for your ideal student. So you might have a child profile and an adult profile if your ideal students fit into those categories. But I want to talk about some of the red flags that can come along with um certain features, certain attributes that may make a student not your ideal student. So things like uh what their if it's a child or or even an adult, what their weekly schedule is like. So if they have a very packed schedule, for a child it could be they do a different activity every day after school and stuff at the weekend, they're not going to have enough room for practice, realistic practice, no matter how dedicated they are. And that's an important thing to bring up in the consultation lesson. It's one of the questions I always ask because it's setting expectations from the beginning that this isn't just you come to the lesson once a week and that's it, which you do experience in lots of other clubs. And as music teachers, we know it's just one part in the whole week of the music practice that they need to be doing. Another red flag is inconsistent or slow communication from the student, whether it's the adult or the parent of the student. If their responses are sporadic or very slow, that's going to very likely cause issues if they do become a student of yours. Because communication is key and you need to be able to stay in communication to keep them updated on all the things that go on in your studio, whether it's specific events like a festival, exams, or a recital, or teaching dates and, for example, specific days you won't be teaching, you don't want them turning up because they haven't checked their messages. So communication is quite an important one. One of the big red flags for me in the early stages of meeting a new prospective student and their family is when I'm meeting a child student, and the parent has an excessive focus on exams and grades, because that doesn't fit with my approach to teaching. I am not an exam treadmill kind of teacher, I'm proud of that. But because this is a way uh that a number of teachers operate and a number of parents expect, it's one of those things to get out of the way early on. If if the first inquiry talks about exams for a beginner or just with exams in mind, it's highly likely that is the way they are focused. And yes, you could meet them and find out you know how strongly they feel about that, how they feel about your approach to teaching and assessments, and see if it could could align. But there's no point, as they say, forcing a square peg into a round hole if that is the way they are thinking about music lessons, then you're not the right teacher for their student. And that child is not the right student for you. And there's nothing wrong with that, but it's quite a deal breaker, in my opinion, because of past experiences that I've mentioned. Now, there's no one perfect ideal student that is going to fit everybody. It's unique to you, it's unique to you, your personality, your approach to teaching, the things you value, the personalities you are able to adapt to and to get on with, because it doesn't have to be a perfect match, it just needs to be good enough to enable effective teaching and an enjoyable experience for the student and yourself. Okay, so we have identified our ideal student. Now we're going on to step two, which is building a visible and credible presence. And yes, I mean online because that's where all the searching is done these days. It's all online, even though you are a teacher who may teach local students. There are ways to obviously make yourself visible in real life, but online is the primary focus for this section because that's how it works in today's world. So I want you to consider this. You are at home and something has gone wrong with your one of your light switches, and you need to find an electrician to come and fix it for you. What's the first thing that you do? These days it's probably to go to an AI platform and ask for help. I would say more often than not, you go to Google, which now has um Gemini, is it, that answers all your questions. So you go to Google and you search for an electrician and then you make your decision based on a number of different factors. It's exactly the same process for parents looking for piano teachers for their children or adult students looking for lessons for themselves. They go to Google and they look for piano teachers near me or flute teachers near me or whatever instrument you're teaching, or whatever instrument they want to learn. And the families who are going to become your best students are going to find you on Google before they ever contact you in person. And what they find when they do that search either builds the trust or it doesn't. So it's a key part in the pathway to being found by your ideal students. So there's three main foundations that I feel very strongly every music teacher needs to have in place in order to make this whole system work. First thing is to have a Google Business profile, which literally puts you on the map. When you Google someone and they show up on Google Maps, they have a Google Business profile and it's completely free. It also allows people to leave Google reviews for you so public opinion can be shared that way. The second thing is to have a simple website. It does not need to be all singing and all dancing, it doesn't need to cost the earth, it just needs to be a tiny corner of the internet that you own that you can put your information on and be found. And the third thing is a social media presence. Now, lots of people have polarized views about social media, and even if you hate social media and disagree with all of it, it is the way people communicate, many people communicate. It's it's a huge part of where parents share recommendations with other parents in groups, and so it's key to helping your ideal students to find you because that's the whole purpose of this thing. It's not to get sucked into social media for likes and follows, it is about being visible online in a way that's relevant to your ideal students and families. So I'll go through each one separately. So the Google Business Profile, it's very easy to set up, it doesn't take very long at all. As I said, it's completely free. Um, you apply, you put your business name in. Now I would recommend against being really clever with words for your teaching business because when you string them together, it could create a funny name or an unfortunate word. So I just went for Victoria Clark piano so that people would know my first name, my last name, and the instrument that I teach to make it super clear because you basically need to be as transparent as possible. So you apply, and then a couple of days later you receive a little postcard in the post with to the address that you have labelled as your your teaching address, which for me is my home address, and there's a a code I think on there or a QR code or something. No, no, there'll there'll be a number code on there for you to enter, basically to prove that you live at the address you're setting up as a Google Business profile. And that's it. Then you appear on the maps and um you can adjust all of your profile information, you can put as much on there as you want to. I chose not to put my mobile number on there because it's my personal number and I didn't want to be getting phone calls at all hours of the day, so I kept it to email only, which has been fine because then I can answer in my own time and I've got a log of every contact I've received rather than having to go through voicemails or missed calls and things like that, which is I find a little bit more confusing. But if you have a separate mobile number or landline that you want to give out, that's obviously your choice, that's fine, it's a perfectly valid way to be contacted. Um, but I've found these days people prefer to text or WhatsApp or messenger message as well as email when they're reaching out for a consultation lesson. So, needless to say, a Google Business Profile is essential for a teacher who teaches in person because it gives you local visibility, it allows the people in your town and areas around it to know where you are because attending an in-person lesson, a key factor is how far the student has to travel to get to you. And so you might have no idea that your ideal students could be living right around the corner until you put yourself on Google, uh, they won't know either. Now, the website thing. I know not a lot of music teachers, certainly not piano teachers, have websites. Some do, and there's a big cohort that don't. And I'm just gonna put my opinion out there. You don't have to agree with it, that's fine. But I do feel that if you would like to attract your ideal students as opposed to any students, having a website is a very effective way to do that because you can control things in a way that you can't, certainly on social media. You can put exactly what you want to on your website to describe who you are, what you offer, who you teach, and to to show your ideal student you are right for them. Yes, there is a cost involved. You can have some very, very inexpensive websites made these days. I have a Squarespace website and that costs me just over £200 for the year. Now it is an outlay and it's every year, but in the grand scheme of things, I have had so many inquiries come through my website that have delivered to me so many potential students, and I have no doubt is the reason I have a 50 plus person waiting list in combination with the other things that I'm talking about today. The website is likely the first or second place your potential student will meet you, and I say that in inverted commas, the first time they're coming into contact with you and who you are in some form or another. So it's a really important place to make a good impression. And with a website, just having a website with your name on it goes a long way to building trust. It signifies that you are a committed music teacher. You're not just doing this on the side because you want to make a bit of extra money. Those teachers aren't committed to teaching in the same way that someone who does this full-time. So, this really is advice for full-time teachers or those who would like to become full-time, I think, uh, to have a website so that you have a solid foundation built up because having your own little piece of the internet, your little bit of real estate online, gives Google something to show up in search results, in addition to your Google business profile. It gives Google something to show up when people are searching for. I don't know, harp lessons in Surrey, or maybe a bit more narrowed down than that. Harp lessons in Guildford. It's one of those things that, yes, it does have an outlay, but when you compare it to the income you will earn from the students who find you because of that very website, it very quickly pays for itself, and of course, is an expense that you can offset your tax bill with. Now, this episode is going to become way too long if I go into lots of detail about what to include on a website, um, but as a basic level of detail, you need to have a clear description of who it is that you teach, what families can expect from you, a contact form that makes it easy for them to contact you, and to definitely include an about you page, and to definitely include an about you page so they can get to know you. One major piece of advice: try not to be a teacher for everyone because then you'll end up being a teacher for no one if there's nothing that helps you stand out. Be honest about who you are, what your experience is, what your experience is in your instrument, when when you learned your instrument for how long, uh, any study you've done since, any teacher training, any continuous professional development, you can't kind of include bits of those in in there too. But I would recommend making it real. Make it make it a bit personal about you. Things that you like, you know, just so that you are not just a generic teacher who will teach all students regardless of their age or their ability, and can prepare them for everything from playing for fun or for exams or for this or for that. And I'm saying that as someone who used that as my first description on my website, uh, once I realised how generic it was, I put my own personality into it, and you know, that was the start of things really taking off. As for social media, I started with a Facebook page, so you can make a business Facebook page. And when I switched to full-time teaching, I didn't obviously have a lot of students, I didn't have a lot of student videos that I could share. So I recorded myself playing some of my favourite pieces of music, and I would post different things about teaching and what I enjoy, and you know, but just basically sharing a bit about who I am, which is the best that you can do before you've built up a a big student cohort, because it starts to let your ideal student in to see who you are and to start to make connections and maybe enjoy the way you explain things, and yes, that means you could do some talking to video, you could do some talking to camera videos, talking about different things about teaching or playing your instrument that you love. You don't have to, but the more you share about yourself, the more likely your ideal student will be to find you and connect with you. I did also have an Instagram account that I made a business account at the same time, but I found a lot more inquiries came through my Facebook page rather than my Instagram account. That may have changed these days, but it's worth going with the platform that you're most comfortable with. I picked Facebook mainly because it has Facebook groups and in local groups you can you often get people asking for recommendations for the nearest or for a good piano teacher or flute teacher or whatever. So people can then tag your business page who know about you, they can tag you in those local pages, and that's how students can find you as well. So it's a very useful thing to be involved with. Now, something that I kept a log of was requesting students to leave a Google review for me after they've been with me for about six months. So this really started to build the social proof so that uh prospective students could read Google reviews and see what my other current students think about me as a teacher and the teaching that they received. It goes a long way to building the trust with potential future students and it really does carry enormous weight for families who are trying to decide whether to trust you with their child. You need to develop with a parent for them to feel comfortable leaving their child with you for half an hour every week. So, with the uh in-person side of it, albeit smaller, if you have a music shop in your town or the next town over, or if there are any local music teachers that you know live nearby, reaching out to them and connecting with them, doing some networking if you don't feel too icky about that, just finding out who the other teachers are and maybe meeting them, a teacher who has a full studio and they have a waiting list, they may well refer on to you if they understand a bit about you and how you teach, because they obviously don't want to refer blindly to another teacher, but if they can't take anybody else on and their waiting list is already massive, uh they may well want to refer future students to you, which is could be a great source of new students, but they won't do it if they don't know you exist. And I say that as someone who is great one-to-one in groups, I find it a bit more difficult, but reaching out to strangers is probably the the the um more difficult one on my list, but with practice, as with everything, with practice things get easier. So, just an aside, I actually had flyers made. I I can't remember which website I used, but I had like a thousand flyers printed, and I I got myself to walk around my local area, roads I'd never walked down because if you haven't driven down that road, you don't know they're there, and I went door to door putting leaflets through people's doors just to let them know I was around the corner and providing piano lessons, and you know, I designed it with all the stuff, and I did get a few students from that, and it does access those who are not on social media and those who don't use the internet for finding services and and people. It is a much smaller subset of the population, but not a useless one to potentially access for your student base. I got a lot of steps in on those weekends. I remember doing an entire really long road near where I live, and I was quite impressed with myself. I think it was about two hours and it was in the summer, one hour on the way up, um, and I stopped at the McDonald's for some food halfway, and then I made my way back for an hour in the blazing sun. But it was very useful and it got me, in fact, more confident with speaking to new people because occasionally they'd be outside in their front garden or if they'd be just coming home and I would introduce introduce myself and say, you know, I'm a local piano teacher and I'm looking for I I'm taking on new students, I'm just sharing information about myself. I will say though, the vast majority of my inquiries and then real students have come through directly through my website, followed by being contacted on Facebook, um, followed by I got a flyer from you. So I do remember a time when everything was set up. I had the Google Business profile, I had my website, albeit just basically set up, with some some images I'd taken myself and text I'd written about myself, and I had my social media business pages. Oh, that's the other thing. Getting yourself visible on Facebook also means engaging in conversations in local groups and demonstrating your knowledge and understanding of your instrument and music in general, it lets people know you know what you're talking about. So you can offer advice to maybe students, adult students who are learning, even if they're not going to become your student, by helping and offering valid advice, it allows you to become more visible as an expert in your field. So if you're a flute teacher and you're offering advice on the best flutes to buy because someone is asking for for advice on that pro-topic, then that's a great way to demonstrate who you are, and it off the back of it it could lead to inquiries from other students who've read that comment in that group. You know, the possibilities are endless. But I did reach a point where I would start to notice patterns. Um normally it would be towards the end of the summer holidays, and then again after Christmas, before New, well, maybe after New Year's or just before New Year's, ready for the start of the New Year, and then again at the end of uh near the end of the Easter holidays, or halfway through the Easter holidays, there would be an influx of inquiries that come would come through the website and messages through Facebook uh inquiring for whether I had availability to take on new students because those are the typical times when parents are connecting themselves and thinking now's the right time for my child to start learning an instrument, so they reach out at those times. So when you start seeing those patterns, you can see how well the system works. The fact they can find you on Google, you've got a website to build the trust and a way to contact. To you outside of social media and then social media itself to learn a bit more about you day to day and what you're regularly posting about and talking about. Now, if you're listening to this thinking, there's no way I can do all of that, I don't have time, that's fine. You can take it to the most minimum specifications, just having yourself on Google, having a placeholder website that's got your contact details on and a picture of you, and maybe a tiny bit of text, and a way for them to contact you, and then the social media thing, just setting up these pages, you don't have to spend every day posting. There's no one has time for that. When you are finding yourself wanting to spend time working on this is your business development, this is you finding your students or allowing your students to find you. That time spent on social media in in the ways I've already mentioned, responding to queries from potential students and just getting involved in conversations related to your area, those things are worthwhile, even if at the time you can't quite connect the dots and see that that is what leads to people trusting you as a music teacher. So don't panic, you don't have to overhaul your life and spend your life online. These are just three areas that have allowed me to build a reputation for myself as a piano teacher in my local area that provides me with a continual, nearly continual stream of inquiries and a growing waiting list. And that's the goal of this episode is to help you understand how to build your own, how to get to the point where you can build your own waiting list by attracting your ideal students. Okay, now we're on to step three of this system, which is to communicate a clear message. Now I've touched on this in the last section, but we'll go into a bit more detail. You need a clear message about yourself that makes the right families decide to contact you. So if you have a studio policy agreement, that communicates a lot to the potential student or family before you even get to the first lesson. The fact that you have one adds to the professional side of things. It tells you that you run a well-organised business and first impressions like this really do matter. If you don't have a studio policy agreement, I have a free studio policy template which I will link in the show notes. It's the most popular free resource that I have. Loads and loads of people have made use of it, which makes me very happy. It provides all the clauses that you may need. You can remove ones that are not relevant but written in a way that is clear and assertive. So definitely make use of that if you don't have one already. In terms of what you say about yourself, there's lots of things you can cover, but I'd maybe talk about how long you've been teaching, or if you're brand new to teaching, you can say how long you've played your instrument and how long you've enjoyed playing your instrument. You can talk about what you value in the student-teacher relationship, whether it's the you know the joy of making music together or the satisfaction you get from seeing a student learning a challenging skill and succeed, seeing them succeed, you know, whatever whatever it is that you really enjoy in what you value in that relationship. Definitely talk about who you teach, because if you only teach children, if you don't make it clear in your information, adult students, if they're not sure that you teach adults as well, might be reluctant to reach out and ask. So always be very clear whether you teach just adults or just children or both. So some of the personal bits about this that you can share are why you chose to become a teacher. That can be a really nice way to let prospective students in and families let them in to see who you are and why you love teaching. Uh, talk about what lights you up about it and what you want most for your students, what your goals are for the students that you teach. These are the kind of details that help a parent decide whether or not they want to trust you with their with their child and whether you're the right person for their family. Now, if you're thinking about communicating to adult students, obviously you feel you can write things that that you would say directly to an adult student. But if it's a child student, you're obviously communicating to the parents because they are going to be the ones who find your information and they're the ones who are the decision makers when it comes to the child student. So all of that messaging needs to land with the parent first. And think about the things that a parent would be looking for for their child. So what reassures them in a music teacher? What makes them confident that this teacher is going to be the right one for their child, that they're going to be kind and consistent but also push them? Or particular worries that a parent might have. So as a parent to an autistic child, not that I think she would go for one-to-one music lessons with a stranger, uh, it's something that would be on my mind. How comfortable would this teacher be with teaching an autistic child? Now, obviously, that's uh you've met one autistic person, you've met one autistic person, you don't know what all the autistic people are like. Now, that's not to say that you could write something directly for them, but considering the students you are looking to connect with and the parents you're looking to connect with, these are some of the things that you can have in mind. Now, a quick word on pricing transparency. I know there's a lot of teachers who are reluctant to put their fees online anywhere for the reasons of not wanting uh future students to be shocked or turn away or not even bother contacting them because they think it's too expensive. To allay your fears uh with that, any students who look at your prices and decide they're too expensive, they're not your ideal students, and that's fine. You don't want them to contact you anyway, if it's not the right fit in that sense. But I would definitely recommend listing your fees on your website because that's the very first question a lot of people ask because they need to know whether they can afford you. And it's not a case of, oh, but if I meet them first, they'll really understand uh how good a teacher I am and how much they want to have lessons and then they'll make it work. If the fees are too high, the fees are too high, and if that is a consideration that outweighs everything else, then that's an important thing to know up front as well, because music lessons are not cheap, then and it's not all you know, it's not a set of ten lessons, is it? And that's it. It's a long-term investment, certainly for the students who will be your ideal students. I think it's important to have it on your website. Otherwise, you'll just be continually answering this question, and it's actually nicer and more convenient when you're searching for a service provider of some kind just to see how much they charge, just to know, am I in the right ballpark? Is this gonna is this even feasible to start start off with so that your potential students aren't wasting their time? And one last point about this clear message that you're putting across. If your website and your Google profile and your social media pages all say roughly the same thing and use the same tone, whatever you whatever kind of tone you've used to write your write your copy, it really does build confidence. If you can see the consistency as an outsider, it starts to allow you to get to know this person through their online presence, and that consist consistency leads people to having more trust and they're being therefore being more likely to contact you to inquire about lessons. So I I noticed a very distinct change when I refreshed all my website copy, and it's when I changed it from being a generic catch-all teacher to this is actually who I am, this is uh my approach to teaching. I even put a specific part on there about not being an exam treadmill teacher. Obviously, I used more words than that, but to get the point across that if all you want is for your child to work through exams one after the other after the other, that I'm not the right teacher for you, because I feel quite strongly about that. And so the number of uh inquiries I've had where that has been the case has fallen dramatically, which is great, it means the right people are finding me. But something I added when I put a bit more of my own personal story uh onto the About Me page was the fact that losing my mum to pancreatic cancer in 2019 was the prompt for me switching from part-time teaching to full-time teaching, and that's why I do what I do because I've chosen I've realized how short life is and how much I want to just do the thing that I love, which is teaching, which for me it demonstrates my passion for teaching and the fact that when things got a bit scary, I realised what was worth spending my time on, and that is teaching the piano. And I have a student, I mentioned this in another episode, I have an adult student, really lovely lady, and that particular part in my about me copy is what prompted her to send an email to contact me for a trial lesson because she had recently lost her mum as well, and so it was a it was a quite a strong connection that we had. Now, that's very specific and nothing to do with piano, but when you can connect with someone who is offering the service that you are looking for, which is in my case piano lessons, that goes a long way to to showing what the student-teacher relationship will be like. And it's years later, and I'm still teaching her, and she's wonderful. She, if you have followed any of my social media, she is the one who used to teach the harp, she plays the harp, and she taught me she gave me a harp lesson and lent me her lovely lap harp uh for a few months while I was having a go at it. So it's a wonderful relationship we have, and we love playing our piano duets together, and I'm sure one day we will do a harp piano duo. It's just an example of how when you open up a little bit and you let you let people know who you are or what your values are, this is how your ideal students will find you. So we're on to step four, letting the studio's reputation do the work. So once you have all these foundations in place, a well-run studio actually builds its own reputation and you can just get on with the job of teaching and enjoying all of that while keeping tabs on all of these elements as they go along. From a family's point of view, a well-run studio looks something like this. Lessons start on time, you've got a teacher that communicates professionally, you've got studio policies that are clear and applied consistently, and you're a teacher who is visibly invested in the student's progress. When your student families are confident in you as a teacher, they talk to other parents. I mean, the playground is the place where all of it is shared. Oh, you know, did you know so-and-so started piano lessons, they're really having a lovely time. Oh, I was thinking about piano lessons for my little ones. What who do you go to? What are they like? That word of mouth is useful. They share recommendations, and so you have a studio, when you have a studio that's professionally run, you get recommended precisely because you're reliable. You're not going to get recommendations if you're uh disorganized and things are confusing and communication is lackluster, it's not going to work. But I doubt you're any of those types of people. So the thing with studio policies in building a good reputation, it might feel counterintuitive, but a teacher who's got a really clear cancellation policy and sticks to it is not a teacher who looks difficult. It's a teacher who is organized and serious about what they do, they take their profession seriously, which communicates in turn that they are serious about your child's musical education. And so this clarity and professionalism is what attracts committed students. It attracts ideal student families purely because of how you operate. And so as time goes on, what happens is the quality of the inquiries that you get continues to improve. So the families who contact you are more likely to be the families who've already read about you and seen your reviews and understand your approach and they've already decided you're a good fit. So the result is you get fewer awkward conversations, fewer students leaving within a short period of time, and so your retention rate, as we all like to call it, your retention of students is really high, and you actually you end up with more students who stay and progress and get further along the pathway because you know you can have lots and lots and lots and lots of beginners, but they filter out as you get into the intermediates and the advanced, don't they? So allow the right students to find you, the ones who are going to stay and they are going to learn and progress to those higher levels. That's what this is all about as well. And even if you don't want to teach advanced students, if you're someone who prefers teaching beginners only or just beginners up to intermediates, that all still applies because the quality of the student is there. Now, when your studio is full and you continue to receive inquiries, which you will do if you do all of these things, if you get all of this set up, is how to respond to these prospective students. So as long as you are direct and warm and professional, you don't need to apologize for not having any space. Just a straightforward message that explains you don't have any spaces right now, uh, and you can offer the waiting list as the next step. It's kind and it's businesslike, and it's not dismissing them, but it's being clear that you can't take them on. You will get some people asking, well, how long is the wait? And that's you know, that's quite hard to answer how long is a piece of string. Uh, because depending on your retention rate and the ages of your students, the length of time until a space opens up can be quite variable. For example, if you don't have if you have some child students who are who are near like the 16, 17, 18, they're likely to go off to university at that point and therefore free up some slots. But other than that, if the students are content and making progress, it could be a very long time until spaces open up. So the phrase I tend to use is whatever time we are in the year, I will always say it's unlikely that a space will come up in the next year. So that gives them an indication of how long the waiting list is. Now, depending on their availability, this is just what a side note I want to make, is if they are a student who can come during the day, they obviously will be much more likely to get a spot than or much sooner to get a spot than those who only could come in the afternoon or evenings because of course those are the prime slots and they fill up the fastest and are in most demand. Generally, that's the first question I'll ask, in addition to would you like to go on the waiting list? I'll say if you are able to come for a lesson during the day on a weekday, you're much likely to get a spot sooner than if you need something in the afternoon or evening. Now, turning away a student is sometimes the most professional thing you can do and not adding them to your waiting list. If the family's requirements are not in line with what you can offer, if your approach isn't a good fit for what they need or what they're asking for, recommending them to another teacher is genuinely helpful and it's actually the mark of someone who knows their own studio well. I remember the first few times I turned away students who it wasn't worth putting them on my waiting list because I couldn't offer them what they needed. There was an adult student who wanted to compose music, I can't remember what it was for, but it was to do with backing tracks and n and very little of it actually aligned with the way I teach and what I was confident in offering. So I had to be honest and just said he wasn't the right I I'm not the right teacher for him, I wouldn't be able to provide what he needed, which actually felt really good to be completely honest like that, and he understood and I I didn't have anyone I could recommend him to, but it's one of those times where I'm sure we've all been there where we think, yep, I can do this even though this is out my outside of my comfort zone, and sometimes we might be offering more than we can actually live up to, and that's not a good place to be, is it? So being honest with yourself and the student, whether you can provide what they need is very important. So once you have a waiting list, there are good ways and bad ways of managing your waiting list. The bad ways are ignoring the waiting list entirely, which I'm sure you wouldn't do. But to manage it professionally involves things like keeping in touch with families on the list, not all the time, but set yourself reminders on a regular basis, maybe every few months, maybe three to three months. Don't leave it more than six months, I'd say. Just to keep checking in with whether their availability has changed, uh, if they have any questions about getting an instrument. Not overpromising for when you can be available to teach them or their child, but checking that they are still actually waiting for a lesson slot is very useful. Periodically, I will contact my entire list just to check whether they still are looking for lessons and updating the list when they come back and say, no, we found a teacher or we're no longer looking, or you know, whatever they come back with. So what I did was created a Google form to send out to my entire waiting list to capture all the information in a way that I could then analyse and use in a more useful way. So finding out what the availability looked like across my waiting list and how much demand there were there was for each different section of you know of the weekdays broken up into chunks of time throughout the day. And this was a really useful output to have because you can export from Google Forms into an Excel, and I used that to work out who I could offer slots to when I recently opened up a number of teaching slots at the start of March. So I was able to see exactly where I could place people without having to trawl through hundreds of emails. It was a very useful thing to have. Now, even after hearing me talk about all these different elements that went into uh me being able to build my waiting list, you may still be thinking, no, it's not for me. I'm never gonna have a waiting list, because there are some mindset blocks that we all have at some point, and it's an important thing I think to address that some of us just don't see ourselves as teachers who could be in demand until maybe it happens by accident, and then we realise, oh, actually we are. Well, there's a couple of things I just want to talk about here. Some things that hold teachers back from actually doing this work that helps you to get to the point where you're building a waiting list. So you might think, I'm not experienced enough to turn students away or have a waiting list. Uh having a waiting list is not something you get permission to have once you reach a certain number of years of experience. It's something that happens when more people want to learn with you than you have slots available for. So you may not have availability to teach every day of the week. And in fact, just on that note, I don't think you should teach every day of the week unless you absolutely have to, and if you do, we've got some other things to talk about uh with prices and fees and stuff. But you may end up having a waiting list sooner than you realised if you need to restrict your teaching days to certain days of the week, and that's all that you can offer. But that means that means your studio is full, and that's all you can offer. That's fine. It can happen at any stage of your career, and the things that work towards filling your studio are having a clear message about yourself and who you teach, and being this visible presence with professional policies, and this work is available to absolutely every teacher, regardless of how long they've been teaching, regardless of how many qualifications they have. I mean, I don't have a degree in music, and for years I thought that's what you needed to have if you were going to be a very successful music teacher. But you don't, you need to know your stuff, but just having a music degree doesn't mean you're automatically a great teacher. It doesn't mean you have all the skills that you need to teach the variety of students that you're going to teach. Another objection is I live in an area where there aren't enough students. There isn't the demand. Most teachers who believe this have not actually made themselves visible enough yet. They've not done the visibility work. So, recap you need a Google Business profile, you need a clear website, and you need some kind of presence in the local community spaces. So, whether at whether that's online, local groups, or physical local places like music shops, uh making local schools aware that you are a music teacher, parent community groups, things like that. All of these create visibility where there might not have been any. So the demand could be there. The teacher might just not yet be visible to the people who have the demand. So it's an important thing to consider if you think I live in the middle of nowhere. You you don't know every person who lives in every house and that means they don't know who you are. So it's always always worth exploring some more. Another one, I feel guilty saying I'm full. It feels like I'm letting people down. Now I'm not gonna lie every time I turn someone away and put them on my waiting list I do feel a little bit guilty because you know it it's normally a message from a parent who says oh my my son or my daughter has been asking me for piano lessons for ages and we got them a little toy instrument and I think you know love that for later. Have to apply some on a proper instrument later um but they can't stop playing it and I think and some of them really sound like these totally motivated and enthusiastic little kids who just can't wait to get started on the piano or a grandparent has a piano at their house and every time they go visit they can't get themselves away from the piano that kind of thing. And it does feel sad feels like you're letting them down but you are only one person. As a music teacher you cannot teach everyone however much you want to without stretching overstretching yourself and reducing the quality of teaching and your quality of life and all the other qualities that go go with uh having a balanced life you can't teach everyone so you do have to let some people down and that's just the nature of it. But really when you say you're full and you offer a waiting list you're not you're not letting them down. You're just being honest and saying you know I have X amount of time and it's already promised to these students and it would be a disservice to the student and to yourself if you took them on and you don't have the time to teach them properly. A family who has to wait for the right teacher is actually better served than a family who ends up with a teacher who is overstretched. We don't we don't want to go down that way. So if you reframe it you're not letting people down. You are continuing to provide a high level of teaching for your students and that is evidenced by the size of your waiting list and the student retention and the the Google reviews from your students. And another another objection my studio doesn't look professional enough to attract the students I really want. This is something I hear so much that teachers can't teach in their own home because it is not big enough. The area isn't big enough it doesn't look professional enough it's not fancy enough but I know lots of teachers who do teach from home and they have small rooms in which they teach and maybe the piano is in the living room and there's furniture and a table and the rest of it all around but that's fine you just need enough space for you and the student to sit at the piano and you sit next to them and you know you've got a little space for your notepad or your planner or whatever. That's all you need. You don't need a super fancy setup to teach from home and you don't need that to attract lots of students. This problem is almost always a messaging problem not an ability problem. So if you as long as you have a clear Google business profile, a tidy website with accurate information and reviews from current families that's often enough to shift the first impression significantly I don't think you're ever going to have a family that turns up to your house and says your house is too small you can't give us lessons if you have a piano and a room that it fits in and room for people to be in there you and the student and maybe somewhere for the parent to sit that's all you need. You don't have to be perfect before you start being visible. When I started teaching uh when we lived in Putney and we were renting a one bedroom apartment the lounge was the main living area and we had a tiny bathroom a galley kitchen and one bedroom and that was it and you had to go we were on the middle floor of this big Victorian house so students had to ring the buzzer and I would let them in and they'd come up the stairs and they'd come straight into our living room where we had a big dining table and a sofa and the TV was on the wall and our stuff was everywhere and I had my little Yamaha Clavinova digital piano in the corner because of course I was renting and it was um you know it was just an apartment there's no way my acoustic piano could go up there and it was fine it was enough I was able to teach effectively just sat next to them while they were at the piano and the dining table is just where I laid my my notepad that I used back then just to keep track of everything and I had my stack of books on the piano and it was fine. You don't need a fancy setup to be able to teach well and to be able to attract a lot of students. So if you have a little bit of time this week one thing I would like you to do is to sit down and write a description of your ideal student. Not necessarily the student you currently have but the student you really want to teach. I'll link to the blog post how to attract your ideal students I'll link to that in the show notes. You can refer to the blog post for the questions that will help you with this task. Things like how old are they why do they want to learn how do they respond to challenges and from that I mean if they find something difficult do they throw their hands in the air and run away or do they try a bit harder and persist? You know what you know where I'm going with that when it comes to overcoming challenges of learning an instrument. Things like what does their week look like if it's too busy they might not fit practice in things like that. And just writing this description of your ideal student really can help clarify something in your thinking that once that is clear and starts to come it starts to come through in everything you communicate and that's where this waiting list starts. As soon as you've got your ideal student in mind everything you write for your website everything you put on social media everything that comes out of your mouth every time every time you talk to potential students you'll be thinking about helping that particular ideal student with those values in mind that you want to offer them and that is how you'll grow your studio that's that's where your waiting list starts to grow. In addition to the how to attract your ideal piano students blog post and the free studio policy template they'll both be linked in the show notes. I also offer focus sessions uh which you can book via the website if you would like one-on-one support with any of any any part of your teaching business and I'd just like to finish by sharing what it feels like to have a full teaching studio full of students who found me because I communicated who I teach and who I am. It feels very safe and it feels like a a piano like a collective piano family that we have especially when I run my recitals and we all come together and it's all the same parents and siblings and grandparents each year because those those students stay with me year on year and it's a really wonderful bit of community that has come about because of the students I teach it's it's a really nice feeling and it's actually very fulfilling and goes a long way towards reminding me that I'm doing the right thing doing the thing that I love and that making that switch to full-time teaching back in 2019 was absolutely the right decision. So if you have any questions about running your studio or anything to do with your teaching feel free to reach out to me. I am here to support you and please believe in yourself that you can fill your studio if it's not already and grow a waiting list of your ideal students so that you have that security in your teaching studio. I hope you've enjoyed this episode and I would always love to hear from you so send me a message if you've got any questions and I look forward to seeing you in the next episode. Bye bye