The 1 Thing Music Studios Must Do to Keep Students

Being in the business of teaching music lessons is NOT easy guys!

You have to get students.

Then the hardest part:

You have to figure out how to keep current students while you work on getting more students to fill your schedule.


To get students to stick around, you need to give them a REASON to stick around.


After they've learned the basics, why should they continue doing lessons?


Students need a path to follow, like Karate.

Karate students typically stick around for YEARS... even the younger kids ages 4 - 6!

We enrolled our son Josiah in Karate when he was 4 and he stuck with it until we was 6.
​(We left when first lockdown happened last year.)

To be honest, we didn't feel the owner was great at the business side of running the karate studio. Josiah liked going, but he didn't LOVE it.

But we kept him in there because we KNEW they had a plan for him and we could clearly see what he was going to accomplish!


THIS is why Karate is so successful at keeping students for YEARS...

There is a CLEAR path for Karate students!

You memorize a move or two, then graduate into the next belt where you learn a new move.


Music Teachers and Studio Owners:
You need the same for your students.

You probably already have some sort of graduation path mentally noted for your students.

But you need a way to SHOW THEM that path and a way to motivate them to follow through to graduation.

If your students don't know the goals they are working toward, they WILL QUIT.

Before we laid out our level system at our studio, we had the problem of guitar students quitting after they learned 4 chords.

Piano students quit after they finished their first piano books.

It drove us crazy! And we'd verbally tell them there was SO MUCH MORE for them to accomplish, but they wouldn't listen.

We didn't have a way to celebrate their wins and SHOW them their path!


Once we put it on paper and started "graduating" them into levels our retention went through the roof!


Creating a graduation path also sets you apart from your competition! ;)


So, how can you create a path or graduation system for your studio?

1. Sit down and write out what you want your students to accomplish.
2. Divide those accomplishments up into "levels."
3. Get swag for each "level" and certificates, rewards, etc to celebrate your students' wins!

We put a color to each level and gave students a checklist they could follow along with.
They knew EXACTLY what they needed to accomplish in order to graduate into the next level.
When they graduated, they received a different color wrist band, certificate, and we'd take them out into the lobby and celebrate them in front of everyone as soon as they finished a level.

It cost us almost nothing, but was HUGE for our students.

Want some examples of what fellow music teachers are doing for their graduation levels?

So, what is your student path going to be?

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I'm sending out a template THIS week Marketingfor9 subscribers can use to create their level system checklists for students!

If you'd like the template, subscribe NOW at marketingfor9.com