In my line of business, which is teaching music lesson privately, we are always striving to build a clientele. The numbers go up when the season is good, and down when the season is bad. I could agree with that statement if I thought it was the whole picture. Unfortunately, it is not. There are much more components to the problem.
Here’s a for instance coming your way. Yes, students come and go, that’s true. But how fast is the movement? That’s an important element of the conversation because we are trying to build, meaning, accumulate the number of lessons per week. If students are quitting faster than they’re signing up, you end up with losing numbers.
Here’s something else: how are you doing? Seriously. How are you feeling? If you think that’s a trivial question, think again. Everything you feel affects your lessons. Are you grinding the Blues these days? Or did you just buy the car of your dreams? Did you just realize you can’t pay your credit card debts this month? Or did you get the first kiss you wanted from the person you were coveting? You’ll bring the mood that any of the answer to these questions will generate to the lesson, whether you aware of it or not. So, what’s the solution? Well here it is: a morale that can’t be darkened, a happy philosophy about life and its adventures. In other word: Be Batman. Oh, and keep your sense of humor. That too, is precious.
Yes, you have to fight to be self-employed, but not in a militant way. If you are in the service business, as I am, you fight to provide as good of a service as possible, you spend your energy on that: get a great lesson plan, a fascinating course, a positive attitude. Work on that. Promote your business, never stop. Then be relax once the student is in your studio. Trust the material you’re proposing, concentrate on being with the person, walking a mile in their shoes. But you don’t have to be down when they are. You can keep your own mood and lift them from whatever dark hole they fell into. Now, you’re not a therapist or a magician, but you are here to help, aren’t you? Well, then, be really there for them. That’s how you beat YouTube and group lessons online. That’s how you fight… Among many other ways.
