Hey there. Daniel from GrowYourMusicStudio.com, and in this video,
we're going to talk about what to do in your studio about unmotivated families
and what you can do in response to what a lot of studio owners say is a lack of motivation
that they notice in a lot of the families that are reaching out to their studio.
Now, I think this video's going to be really valuable to you,
but if you're watching this live or you're watching this
close to the time that I originally created it, I think it will be especially valuable to you,
because right now, we're going through the period that I call the "fall rush".
Even in my own studio, I have seen a huge increase
in the number of inquiries coming in about lessons,
so many that I don't even have room to take all of them,
and that is kind of what I want to focus on today.
I was going through some old communications with clients of mine,
people who've worked with me in some capacity to grow their studio.
I was looking through some old communications,
and I found a communication that came to me from Bethany,
and actually, I'm just going to read this right now.
I think you might resonate with it.
"So, just had a conversation over the phone with a piano parent,
about their child, that is a student at my studio,
(and for the sake of this video, we're going to call this student Susie.)
The parent says she is having a difficult time getting Susie motivated to practice at home.
She is currently going through one of those phases that I think everyone encounters
while developing a long-term skill like playing an instrument,
where she doesn't want to practice and thinks she doesn't want to play piano anymore."
Now, of course, I'm going to break the reading here for just a second
and say that of course, this applies to any skill that one picks up,
whether it's piano, voice, violin, guitar, whatever, but I continue.
"I know that children especially will go through seasons where they want to quit,
but I am certain they will be glad down the road if they just stick with it.
How do you all discuss this kind of situation with parents
and encourage them to keep their child enrolled in lessons?
I have some parents that seem to understand this,
but others don't seem to see the long-term benefit."
I will tell you is this is just one example of many, many studio owners.
The many dozens of studios I've worked with in the last year have some variation of this.
You know, people just seem unmotivated, okay?
So, this feels familiar, right?
Lack of commitment, an over-scheduled child, which of course, I have to eye-roll over.
"Oh, so you want your child to be good at music,
and you also have them scheduled in student government, chess club.
They're on travel league soccer, and you're also enrolling them in this?
Okay, we'll see how that turns out."
You know, just kind of an eye-roll moment for me, but again,
this is demonstrating that lack of commitment from parents,
a child is over-scheduled, there's a lack of parental support at home.
Is this beginning to feel familiar?
Then, sometimes I'll even encounter what I call, or what I sense to be,
a sense of entitlement from the parents, as if,
"Oh, we've paid you money.
Now you better get a result for us."
But they're not understanding that in the triangle between the teacher, and the student,
and the parent, that there are things that have to happen
at each of those things for the teacher's job to actually ...
or for the teacher's efforts to actually see their full fruitfulness or effectiveness.
Okay, so this, this right here, is where I think most studio owners get stuck,
or they get it twisted, because the opposite of these things,
the lack of commitment, the over-scheduled child, the lack of support,
the opposite of that, or the solution to that isn't more commitment from parents,
or a child that only plays piano, or guitar, or has voice lessons.
The opposite of that isn't that the parents are involved in their children's musical life
or that parents are extremely respectful and deferential to you.
That may be the opposite, but it might not be the thing that we want,
because to me, those kinds of families, that kind of sounds like a Stepford family to me.
I think that a lot of studio owners believe that they just want a studio full of that,
and on the surface, it might sound great, but the reason why I think
or will say that it feels like a Stepford family to me
is that we can't roll the clock back on global culture now.
We can't roll the clock back 50 years.
50 years ago, an entire generation of kids were collecting baseball cards or Cabbage Patch dolls,
and the rate of change in what was popular
in culture was much, much slower than it is now.
Right now, if I were to, on this video, say, "Kids like Pokemon Go,"
you'd probably roll your eyes, because that was two summers ago,
and there's been 18 things that kids have been into since then.
That rate of change in culture is a lot faster than it used to be.
It was much slower 50 years ago.
The point that I'm getting at, and really where all of this is leading to,
is just simply this point, that we're not going back to a time before smart phones,
we're not going back to a time where the options for media and for entertainment
were much less diverse than they are today, so what can a studio owner do?
What can you do in the face of lack of parental involvement,
that sense of entitlement that I was talking about, the distracted nature of children?
And this is it.
This is it.
This is what I've put all the focus on in my studio.
There is one thing that you can do to get some measure of control,
and if you had to focus on only one thing, I would say it should be this,
that all of your focus and all of your efforts should not be on
trying to increase that motivation on the part of the parent or on the part of the student,
but rather, it should all come back to you.
All your focus should be back on yourself, and in particular,
one skill that you need, and that is lead generation for your studio.
If you master lead generation, you get control, and those things,
while not solved, cease to become a problem, because what you're doing at that point is
focusing on something you can control and increasing the options that you have.
So I'm going to go back to what I said just a minute ago, or a couple minutes ago,
that right now, fall rush is going on.
I already had a lot of people re-enrolling from the spring,
and I had a certain number of slots to fill, and over even a two or three week period,
where I boosted my advertising budgets, I got more requests
and more people coming in to try out for those remaining spots than I had room for in my studio.
That's it.
I don't have to focus on anything more than that.
What that means is that when I'm thinking,
or at one point in time when I was thinking about how to solve the problems in my studio,
all my efforts focused on the skills that I needed to be able to pull that feat off, to be able to pull that off.
So, 10 years ago, and I'll kind of end this way,
10 years ago I would sit by the phone and wait for ...
Or 10 to 15 years ago, I would sit by the phone and wait for people to contact me,
and when I realized that that wasn't a winning strategy for the long term,
I put tons of time and focus, tons of time and focus and energy,
not on trying to get people to stay longer, not on trying to motivate the un-motivatable,
not chasing people down.
Rather, I put it on what ad networks work the best for a piano studio,
and I spent a lot of time and money and energy and effort figuring that out.
How do I communicate what I have to offer in a way that feels valuable to parents?
I put a ton of time and energy and effort and money into that.
I put a ton of time and energy and effort into talking to people
and being coached by entrepreneurs who were much, much farther down the road from me,
even people in other industries, people not even in the music studio industry.
I went outside the music studio industry
and looked at what other industries did to generate leads.
And by focusing on that, the fruits of that tree were I obviously got more control over my studio.
I didn't have a shortage.
There was never a shortage of people willing and eager to sign up to join my studio.
On top of that, it allowed there to be upward pressure in my prices.
It allowed me to have upward pressure in my policies, you know?
So my policies became more stringent over the years,
and all of this as a result of the fact that I knew that if people stopped working with me,
that I had three more people in the wings that would be more than happy to take that spot.
So again, the big idea, the big picture for this video is simply this:
Don't focus on those frustrating and vexing attitudes or behaviors
that students and parents can sometimes exhibit, not all but some.
Don't focus on those, that are just going to drain energy from you
and you're going to end up chasing down people that ultimately are going to let you down.
And rather, focus on yourself.
It's a weird message to hear, but it really is the best advice one can get.
Focus on yourself.
Focus on your own skillset.
Focus on the number one thing that you can control in your studio, which is lead generation.
If you do that, I think you're going to see, over time, not necessarily overnight,
but over time, within a year, you're going to see things begin to change.
You're going to have that confidence to push rates up.
You're going to have that confidence to make policy changes.
You're going to have that confidence to know that even in the slow period, summer,
or other parts of the year where you experience that slowness, you're going to have the confidence to know,
"Ah, you know what? This is just temporary.
All I got to do is boost my budgets.
All I got to do is get a little more exposure right now,
and I'm going to have a lot of people knocking on my door to work with me,
and to have their children experience music and education in my studio."
So, as I wrap up this video, I will say that if you put your focus there,
I think you're going to see a lot of good results.
I think you're going to experience confidence as a result of that.
Anyway, thanks so much for watching.
If you have a question, leave that below.
I definitely would love if you hit that like button or shared this with a friend,
either by email or just on Facebook.
Anyway, see you in the next video, and have a great weekend.
Bye!
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