It's hard work managing a teaching studio. In the first video in a four-part series about automating your studio and leveling up your marketing, we'll go over automating your studio finances.
Are you a working musician, or know any working musicians? Then you might be interested in our article about why you don't need an invoice template for musicians!
Hi, I’m Matthew Weiner, a long time web developer and musician, and in this video series, I want to teach you how to make your life easier by automating most of your studio admin work, and to share some of the strategies that I’ve learned in my decade of working as an independent contractor that can make. life. easier. Obviously you love music, you love teaching music, but you probably hate most of the back office work: the scheduling, the invoicing, the rescheduling, the lesson prep, and all of that. You’re going to be able to spend so much less time and energy on these things by: #1 automating them, and #2 consolidating the tasks into as few tools as possible.
This is mostly going to be centered around the idea of a single source of truth, or, at least, as few sources of truth as possible. Basically, the goal is to automate as much as we can, using as few tools as we can.
Now, it doesn’t matter what your level of experience with technology is. Whether you are a total tech noob or a long time programmer like myself, you WILL be able to use these strategies no matter what your skill level is.
So why should you listen to me? There’s all manner of people sharing all manner of things all over the internet. Well, first off, I am a self-taught professional programmer…I’ve been working on my own as an independent contractor for over a decade. I haven’t had a “real job” since I graduated college. I’ve been in the trenches the entire time. So I understand what it’s like to do the grind, day in, day out, as a solopreneur. If you don’t know what a solopreneur is, it’s you, probably. It’s an entrepreneur, somebody who’s running their own business, trying to make a life for themselves, on their own. A solo entrepreneur, solopreneur.
Aside from being a programmer, I’ve been playing violin for 25 years, which is a bit crazy to say, and I was also a working musician for years before covid, doing the casino and wedding circuits, business luncheons, musicals, touring, recording, you name it. Basically any opportunity I got to play music, I would do it.
I also helped to start and run an arts nonprofit in Chico, CA called Uncle Dad’s Art Collective, that was around for years, helping to empower the local arts community. We put on all sorts of events, from coffeeshops to a 1200 seat auditorium, original productions, orchestral arrangements of local music, and also put on educational events to help musicians to manage the business side of things - bookkeeping, retirement, that kind of stuff.
As you might imagine, this means that I built a lot of relationships with musicians, many of whom are also music teachers, and many of whom are my good friends. All of this, paired with my experience as a contractor, gives me, I think, a unique perspective on the struggles that you face as an independent music teacher.
Alright, enough about me. You’re here to learn how to get rid of the headaches that you deal with everyday in your teaching studio. In this video I’m going to touch on 5 ideas surrounding finances, and in the next videos I’ll delve into other things like managing teaching repertoire and lesson calendars.
The first idea, before talking about technology at all, is the idea that it’s okay – even important – to spend money on things that save you time in your business. Especially if it saves you time on the admin work that you don’t get paid for. I know this might be obvious to some of you watching this video, but honestly, I’m grateful every time somebody reminds me of it, so I figured that I’d pay it forward and remind you, too.
It's essential to understand that time is your most precious resource. Money can be made back, but time, once it's gone, is gone for good. When you spend money on your business to save time, that time can be spent doing what you actually love and get paid for: teaching music.
Now, let's be real, I get it, every dollar counts when you're self-employed. Trust me, I've been there. When you feel like you’re living invoice to invoice or gig to gig, whether or not you actually are, it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking, "Hey, I can do all of this myself. Why would I pay someone, or pay for a tool to do something I can handle on my own?" It’s something that I still struggle with, especially as a programmer where I know I could technically build just about every tool I need.
But here's the kicker: being scrappy is a double-edged sword. Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should. If you're spending hours each week on admin work, bookkeeping, scheduling, managing emails, invoicing, and so on, that's time you're not spending on teaching, practicing, or even just living your life. Your time is worth money, especially the time you spend on the “unpaid” work you have to do just to keep things running.
So, for instance, think of how much time you spend each week tracking finances and sending invoices. If spending $30 a month on bookkeeping software frees up even one hour a month for you, then you've effectively bought back your own time at a fraction of the cost. Think about it, how much would you charge students for those extra hours? Probably a lot more than thirty bucks. Even if your teaching rate is low, you’ll probably earn that back and then some in a single lesson.
You also need to think about the opportunity cost. When you're bogged down with the nitty-gritty of running a business, you're not just losing out on personal time; you're also missing potential opportunities to expand your business, to teach more students, to make. More. money! And what’s worse is that this scales with your success. The more clients you have, the less time you have to spend on each one!
The time you save by outsourcing tasks is time you can invest back into growing your studio, honing your skills, or even just just, so you can give your best to your students, your family, or your dog.
Take it from me, I’ve been wearing all the hats for years: there’s no glory in doing it all yourself. You’re the only one who knows. Your energy is finite. And your focus is finite. But there are so many tools and resources out there that are designed to make your life easier. So take advantage of them, especially if you can make them a business expense.
Another small tip – if you haven’t already, set up a dedicated bank account for your business. Even as just a sole proprietor, keeping your business and personal finances totally separate makes life so much easier, especially as your business scales. [you gotta keep it separated]
Moving onto idea #2 – one of the most important parts of running a small business, if not the most important part, is getting paid and keeping track of your finances. And as important as those are, they can be a pain to manage.
In talking with folks, invoicing, collecting payments, and tracking finances seem to be some of the biggest time sinks of running a teaching studio. And this actually mirrors my own experience. For years after I got started as a contract developer, I tried all sorts of invoicing. At first, it was literally just sending emails, texts, and phone calls to get a check (back when checks were a thing), and today you probably do the same but just venmo or cash app. And, like many of you, I hacked together spreadsheets to keep track of my finances.
The first level up from here is just to manually send invoices. But even this means that you first need to REMEMBER to sit down every week, or month, to create the invoices and send them out. And then after you remember to send the invoices, you still need to actually sit down and send them. This is something that I struggle with. I’ll remember to do something, but as I get started I remember to do something else, then something else, then a few days later I realize that I never actually did the first thing. And like everything else, the busier you are, the worse this gets.
Which brings me to idea #3 – the first level up for my life as a contractor was signing up for invoicely, which is an invoicing service that you can use to automate your invoicing. On top of single invoices, it also lets you send out recurring invoices. Whenever you’re doing something frequently, or over and over again, it’s an opportunity for outsourcing, and an opportunity for automation. So if you’re consistently sending invoices, especially the same ones over and over, you’ll see huge benefits from something like invoicely.
Another benefit you get from invoicely that wasn’t available back when I was using it, is that you can set up automatic reminders for when folks don’t pay their invoices on time, meaning you’ll never need to send a manual invoice or a reminder email again. Well…maybe not never…but most of your headaches will be gone. Invoicely is free for 5 invoices a month, and $9.99 for up to 100 invoices a month.
So think of how much time you spend thinking about, forgetting, and then remembering to send invoices, and then following up with folks who haven’t paid you. Is that time worth $10/month? My guess is that the answer is yes.
So this is great, but it still leaves you using spreadsheets for your finances, which is a small pain on a weekly basis, but a bigger pain when tax time rolls around.
But here’s idea #4 – the next huge win for me was getting QuickBooks. If you’re using a google sheet for your finances, pause this video and get a quickbooks subscription. (Now, I say quickbooks because that’s the software that I’m familiar with, but there are lots of other options these days like xero – x,e,r,o, and freshbooks).
First off, just like invoicely, quickbooks lets you automate your invoices and invoice reminders. But the big benefit is that you can say goodbye to spreadsheets. QuickBooks connects to your bank account to help automate the process of tracking your income and expenses. Remember when I suggested that you set up a separate bank account for your business? This is a big reason why. [you gotta keep it separated]
And since quickbooks is truly built for accounting, you can generate all sorts of reports, and if you self-file your taxes, it can generate files for you that help to speed up that process. Plus, if you ever want to work with an accountant or bookkeeper, you just add their email to quickbooks and you’re good to go.
So think of the time you could save with invoicely, and then tack on the time and effort you’ll save monthly and when tax times come around by using quickbooks. I guarantee you it’s worth the $30 per month, especially if you ever want to apply for a mortgage, or loans, or anything that requires income verification. This stuff is always more of a pain as a sole proprietor compared to when you’re employed, and the documentation you get from quickbooks will come in really useful later.
So now you’ve automated your recurring invoices and reminder, but even then, the reality is that you still need to worry about whether you are getting paid. Even with reminders, people get busy or just forget. I literally just got a phone call from somebody whose invoice I forgot to pay. It happens, especially when you’re busy. Multiply this by every invoice for every customer. You know what I’m talking about, because you deal with it probably every single work.
Here’s where the NEXT level up comes in – idea #5 – subscriptions. But Matthew, you might be wondering, how do subscriptions apply to a teaching studio? So, you know how you pay for netflix or whatever by adding your credit card, and you’re just charged every month? You can set that up for your teaching studio! Now, these days, you are lucky, because there are so many ways to do this compared to when I got started. You can create subscriptions using tools like Square, PayPal, and Stripe. I love Stripe, so that’s what I’m going to recommend. There’s no monthly fee to use it, but they take a small percentage each time an invoice is paid.
Just like invoicely or quickbooks, you can create recurring invoices, but the difference is that your customers get a billing portal where they can add a payment method that will be automatically charged each time they are invoiced. So not only do you automate your invoices, you automate their payments. You save time and forgetfulness for both you and your customers. It’s better for everybody.
The cherry on top when using Stripe, is that there are tons of integrations available. So, in the spirit of automation, you could search the Stripe app marketplace for “quickbooks,” and discover that there are apps that will sync your Stripe transactions with quickbooks.
To be fair, many other services, like square, also have quickbooks integrations these days. But the nice thing about stripe in particular is that, since it’s so ubiquitous, you’re more likely to be able to connect it to other tools and other bookkeeping software.
To recap, we’ve gone over how it’s worth spending money to save yourself time, to open a dedicated bank account for your business, and you just went from collecting every lesson payment with venmo, to automating your invoices, invoice reminders, customer payments, and bookkeeping by connecting Stripe and Quickbooks.
And hopefully you understood all of this even if you’re a technical novice!
I know that this might be a lot to take in, but I promise that, even if it takes some effort to figure out how to get these working, the automations will absolutely be worth it for your business in the long run. And the more you work with these types of tools, the easier they become to use – just like playing music, it’s a practice. And the more you practice, the better you’ll get.
I hope that you’re starting to see that it’s actually possible to automate your teaching studio by connecting just a few different tools together. In the next video, I’ll help you automate your repertoire and scheduling. Hope to see you there!