Promoting your teaching studio

This book provides plenty of ideas for promoting your studio, but ideas alone are not going to transform anything. You have to actually make those ideas happen. The problem is that effective promotion is not just a wind-up-and-forget exercise—it’s an ongoing commitment, and will require a significant investment of time. To maintain the levels of creativity and enterprise required to consistently enhance your studio’s profile is hard work, and you’re not always going to feel like it. So how will you cope when your batteries are running low, and it all feels like too much? There are some simple things you can do to help you stay the course.   Daily Diary of "What steps did I take today?" To help keep you focused on the target, you should maintain a daily log of your promotion accomplishments. Purchase an appointment book—one that has plenty of blank lines for each day of the year. At the end of each day, record all the steps you took on that day towards building your studio. Posters designed, phone calls made, advertising copy written, ads of others that you’ve analyzed, local businesses approached, words written on your article for the local paper, letter drafted to parents about discounts for referrals—anything and everything. It doesn’t just have to be completed steps that you record. You might be in the middle of preparing a free seminar for prospective students, and have spent an hour working on the outline. In that case, you record: • Spent an hour working on the outline for the seminar. The diary will help motivate you in two ways. First of all, it will provide a running record of all the promotion work you do complete, helping you feel a sense of accomplishment as each task is added to the list. But most importantly, the fact that you have to record something each day will mean that you will want to ensure that there was something to record. Having to write in "Nothing today" is an awful feeling, and you’ll usually find that you’ll take a step of some sort—no matter how small—just so you don’t have to leave the day blank. In that way, your daily log becomes like a person who is gently checking up on you. "What did you do today to help make your future teaching schedule a reality?" it will ask, and it will stare at you expectantly. You’ll be amazed at how hard it is to have to admit "Um....nothing, actually". You’ll also be amazed at how these small daily tasks add up. In three months, you will have recorded more than ninety of them, and if your phone is suddenly ringing a lot more than it used to, you won’t need to wonder why. This starts today. What have you done? At the very least, you can say that you spent time reading this book. :)   Calculate the change in income It’s not tough arithmetic. Simply take a moment to work out what you currently earn in a year from your existing teaching schedule, and then perform the same calculation for your Future Teaching Schedule (see p 40). Be sure to add a few dollars per lesson in the process (Remember, once your studio has a waiting list, you’re in a strong position to put up your fees). The difference between the two annual figures should be quite impressive, but that’s not the real story. You’re not just planning on having a full studio for only 12 months. You need to multiply the difference between the two incomes by ten, which will show you what impact your new schedule would have over a decade of teaching. One quick illustration. Assuming a lesson fee of $18, if you were to have an additional 35 students in your schedule, you will earn a quarter of a million dollars more in the next 10 years than you would have otherwise. What will you do with that extra income? I’m sure you’ll have some good ideas. And the next time you feel like giving up on promotion, remind yourself that the penalty for quitting this particular race is $250,000. It’s probably all you need to know.   Chart the growth in enquiries To complement the daily recording of the steps you take towards promoting your studio, you should also keep track of enquiries as they come in. Find yourself a big "Year at a Glance" calendar, and put a small green spot under the appropriate date as prospective students call. Alternatively, if you have set up one of PracticeSpot’s free studio management websites for yourself (See p 226 for more information), you can track all enquiries through your Enquiry Manager. Either way, you want to be able to quickly and easily record enquiries as the phone rings. Don’t be discouraged if things are quiet at first. They’re supposed to be quiet at first—all your creative promotion work will take time to have an impact. But when the phone does start to ring, you’ll be able to record the extra enquiries on your calendar, helping you see what a difference your existing efforts have made, and reminding you that additional efforts in the future will be worthwhile too. In other words, you’ll be able to see confirmation that all your work has worked.   Keep referring back to this book regularly This book has plenty of options to get you started again if your engine stalls—even if you feel that you have carefully read every idea, it’s worth taking the time to visit the ideas again every few months. You’ll notice some options that you may have overlooked the first time, and others that you had originally dismissed as being impossible, but that now feel achievable. There are also over a thousand pages of free information at the PracticeSpot website at www.practicespot.com, there are teacher newsgroups to participate in, and fellow teachers at your Local MTA who you can bounce ideas off, and be encouraged by. In short, you’re not alone. (You’re also more than welcome to send me an email at philipj@practicespot.com)   Found this helpful? It's just a start - the PracticeSpot Guide to Promoting your Teaching Studio is the largest collection of studio promotion techniques ever assembled. Over 240 pages of ideas, inspiration and analysis from Philip Johnston, founder of PracticeSpot, and author of The Practice Revolution. Free shipping to all destinations - this is the ultimate guide for teachers who are serious about growing their studios.

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