growing pains

I am blessed to have a husband that in addition to his full time job, watching both kids while I teach at night has also been the studio's business manager for years. He also has forseen the entire construction project and learned how to have employees and do payroll among many other things that I don't care to do!

Our Anniversary was on July 4th and I look at all the adventures we've had throughout 8 years of marriage. I think we'll slow down for a bit before any more!

It occurs to me that expanding has been the most challenging adventure that we have taken on. Many things have not gone as smoothly as I've liked but I do know we are taking the actions to help them move slowly.

Part of the challenge is maintaining our current student body of students while expanding to many more very quickly. My guess is that throughout my years of teaching I've gained 10-15 students in one month and that seemed like a large number of students. In June/July we've gained about 40 new students and each day there seem to be inquiries to start lessons. While we have staff to handle the new students, the scheduling and legistics have been challenging.

I've prided myself at really working to maintain solid communication, friendships and 'good service' as well as teaching skills for years... and I've felt this has definetely lacked since April. Again we're taking actions to improve this to exceptional service!

We've purchased a software for scheduling that will have capability to enroll online and even pay online for many classes. It will also help us with billing, communication and general organization!

We also have one excellent office staff worker, Julia, and will be looking to find another to help share the hours. Getting them trained will relieve the load for me a bit.

We're so blessed to have incredible teachers as well.

My hope as a teacher and now owner/manager... yikes.. bit shoes to fill... is to set the example for students, office staff and other teachers as well as take time for our family and for me by giving up some of the responsibilities to trained office staff, teachers and other professionals.

My next step is to find a mentor to help me with filling the role I need to have to keep the studio growing to the next level! While we have awesome mentors through Simply Music all around the country, I need one to regularly meet with me to keep me filled!

Here's to continuing to improve each day. : )