On this Q&A episode of the Rock School Proprietor Podcast, John Kozicki (Michigan Rock School and RockSchoolProprietor.com) and Mandy York respond to a listener whose long‑time instructor left, opened a competing studio, and poached students. Now a competitor, this instructor also reused photos and reviews from the original school. They unpack what options the studio owner has, explain how copyright and DMCA takedowns can help with images, and discuss the realities and limits of enforcing non‑competes.
In this episode:
- We celebrate 100 episodes of Rock School Proprietor podcast.
- The emotional impact of a former instructor poaching students and what legal recourse is possible in these situations.
- The steps studio owners can take in protecting intellectual property, including photos and website copy, where where reviews fit in.
- If non-compete agreements are enforceable in music lesson studios, and if it is in your best interest to pursue legal action if one is a non-compete contract is broken.
- How to handle conflicts with instructors or former instructors if they begin teaching independently outside of your studio.
The hosts also cover boundary setting, trust breakdowns, practical steps to protect your business going forward, and when it’s worth pursuing legal action versus focusing on retaining and serving your own students.
Rock School Proprietor is a podcast for independent music school owners and lesson studio operators. New episodes drop Wednesdays at RockSchoolProprietor.com and on all podcast streaming platforms.
——————————————
Your ratings and reviews on Apple Podcast and Spotify are always appreciated!
Join our private Facebook group, “The Modern Music School,” a community for like-minded professionals to connect and share insights.
Looking for a simple and effective guitar curriculum that includes FREE instructor training and support? Consider John’s book, Complete Guitar Strumming.
Episode Transcript:
(Please note: This transcript was generated by robots. There may be errors. For the best experience, please listen to the podcast episode.)
John Kozicki (00:01.068)
Welcome to Rock School Proprietor Podcast. My name is John Kozicki.
Mandy York (00:06.498)
and I’m Mandy York.
John Kozicki (00:08.543)
Big, big episode today, Mandy.
Mandy York (00:12.48)
Yeah.
John Kozicki (00:13.707)
First, we’ve got a question. So this is gonna be a Q &A episode and those always seem to go over well, I think because it’s real other studio owners sharing their stories and we’re offering the best advice we can. So it’s Q &A episode. But also this is our 100th episode.
Mandy York (00:39.566)
100. That’s wild. No, congratulations. This is great. Wow.
John Kozicki (00:40.939)
Can you believe it?
John Kozicki (00:45.819)
Yeah, other than it being, you know, a big 100 episode milestone, we’ve been, man, we’ve been putting in the work, you know, like that’s 100 episodes, one every week since we started doing this almost two years ago. But I also kind of don’t know like, all right, well, what do you do with that? It being 100 episodes.
Mandy York (01:01.55)
Mm-hmm.
Mandy York (01:05.74)
Almost, yeah.
Mandy York (01:13.069)
Yeah.
It’s a great accomplishment. And it’s been a super fun journey, like being able to talk with you on a consistent basis on all these things that we’re going through in our respective studios. Like you said, we’re doing a Q &A today. I love the stories that have been shared. Those are my favorite episodes, you know, the stories that we’ve heard from other people and shared. And then we’ve met a lot of people over these last hundred episodes too.
John Kozicki (01:30.805)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (01:39.54)
We have, we have, and there’s, I mean, I guess if we look back on all of the people that we’ve spoken with, we look back on other Q &A episodes, the information that we’ve shared, that’s a lot of stuff and hopefully a lot of knowledge that listeners can gain from our conversations, which is really has been our goal.
from the very beginning, we in part started this because we always have these conversations in real life anyway, or we were having, maybe not as frequently, we certainly weren’t doing it every week, but we would have conversations like this on a regular basis, kind of offering one another support, and we decided to take it online and share it with the world, and so it’s really cool that.
Mandy York (02:11.0)
Definitely. Absolutely.
Mandy York (02:18.668)
Mm-hmm.
Mandy York (02:23.157)
Once a week, yeah.
John Kozicki (02:38.271)
we’ve been able to share that much. So now we’ll pander for ratings and reviews if people have gained any info for it, because we certainly would appreciate it. And I think that helps other studio owners, other instructors find us and share the info so we can make our industry better.
Mandy York (02:45.314)
Yes, please.
Mandy York (02:59.278)
Absolutely. Cool.
John Kozicki (03:00.709)
and 100 episodes, way to go.
Mandy York (03:03.276)
Woohoo.
John Kozicki (03:05.653)
So onto the question, should we get into the question?
Mandy York (03:09.424)
Yes, I want to hear this story.
John Kozicki (03:12.093)
Okay, dear Mandy and John, recently an instructor that was teaching at my school left after being with us for about eight years. For most of that time, he was great. And I would have said he was one of the most reliable teachers we’ve ever had. But about a year and a half ago, things started to change. In his time with us, he became a father and had two kids.
And with that came a lot of moving parts. I get it because I’m a parent myself, so I understand the challenges of trying to make money and figuring out how to balance life as a dad. His schedule requests started to become a real challenge. He’d add an extra day with us, then decide it wasn’t working for his family, then want to stop that day. At one point, we were a little desperate to hire and he agreed to take on
more days if I’d pay him at a higher rate. I agreed. Then he decided he didn’t want those hours after all. If he found out one student couldn’t make it, he’d want us to start calling all of his other students and ask them to change times that day so he could get off work earlier. At one point, he asked for permission to teach some of his own students at his home. He said it would just be some of the neighborhood kids that he knew.
and he wouldn’t market his services or go after our students. He eventually left and it wasn’t on the best terms. Then I found out he was teaching one of our students at his house. He’s now running a competing home studio. If that isn’t frustrating enough, he’s using photos from our website on his. He’s in those photos and so is a student from a recital, but I own those images.
He’s also using reviews that parents wrote about our school. His name comes up in those reviews, but the context is our business and I’m the one who solicited those reviews. He did sign a non-compete when he worked for us. It covered poaching students he met through us and operating a competing business within five miles while employed with us. It also specified that he can’t take any students that he met.
John Kozicki (05:35.925)
through us for one year. What would you do?
John Kozicki (05:44.276)
right?
Mandy York (05:45.127)
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if this hasn’t happened to you before, you’ve worried about it happening to you, right? I think it has not happened to me, but it’s something that, yeah, that I’ve worried about.
John Kozicki (05:53.572)
Sure. Yeah, I think so.
John Kozicki (06:01.742)
there is a lot going on here. There’s the, there’s the, poaching the students or student, should say, specify that he said one, there’s the breaking the non-compete. So there was an agreement and that is now been broken. there’s, you know, the, stealing photos, that’s like an intellectual property thing.
Mandy York (06:03.792)
Hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mandy York (06:29.452)
Yeah. Mm-hmm. Nope.
John Kozicki (06:31.454)
kind of not cool and the reviews I guess fall into a similar realm. So I think we’ll have to unpackage all of that.
Mandy York (06:40.32)
I think, yeah, and even the way it kind of unraveled, right? How that was handled, the back and forth and the demands that were made of the studio owner. There’s stuff to unpack there too.
John Kozicki (06:44.668)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
John Kozicki (06:51.528)
Mm.
Yeah. So I’ve got a similar, I had a similar experience. It wasn’t as serious, I don’t think. There wasn’t any, to my knowledge, wasn’t any like the stealing of intellectual property. But this was, this was in my very early days of my first music school. And I had an instructor who was working for me.
I wanna say he was teaching maybe one or two days a week for me. And we were on good terms, know, like, he seemed friendly. I never had any issues with him with scheduling. So that is not similar. But while he was teaching for me, he did decide to open a brick and mortar studio about five.
miles away, maybe five to 10 miles away. it was just a single, you know, a single space studio. It was just a place for him where he could teach students. again, he was at the time he was still teaching for me, maybe one day a week. And I do remember thinking
On one hand, I felt like it was far enough away that I sort of admired his pursuit of this thing that he wanted to do, right? Because in part, that was what I did. I had this idea, I leased a space and I went for it.
Mandy York (08:38.915)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (08:50.362)
And so I remember thinking like, man, can I be upset at him for doing the same thing that I did?
Mandy York (09:00.874)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (09:02.314)
Um, but then I found out that he started teaching one of the students that he was teaching at my studio, at his, at his private studio, right? And, and that’s where I was, I was kind of hemming and hawing. Like, what do I do here? I feel like I need to address this in some way. I need to.
Mandy York (09:15.244)
his private. Yeah.
John Kozicki (09:30.923)
talk to him about this, because I’m not sure if he knew that I knew, if that makes sense. And I want to say it was like maybe a week or two. was kind of like, what do I do? And within that time of me trying to figure out what am I going to do with this situation and how am I going to discuss this with this instructor, he put in his notice.
Mandy York (09:36.462)
yeah.
John Kozicki (10:00.554)
Yeah, problem kind of solved itself. And then honestly, I want to say within a year of that transpiring, he ended up closing that little studio anyway. And it never really was a thing. yeah, I kind of beat myself up over it. But in the end,
Mandy York (10:01.592)
So he
Mandy York (10:15.938)
Mm-hmm.
Mandy York (10:21.581)
Okay.
Yeah.
John Kozicki (10:29.524)
kind of didn’t really need to. I don’t know if I’m foreshadowing my advice at all on this one, but possibly. So what do you think? What do we talk about first? Do we talk about the student poaching? Or did you have something to say about my story?
Mandy York (10:35.182)
You
Mandy York (10:39.757)
Well,
Mandy York (10:46.1)
Yeah. Well, no, mean, this, I’m kind of starting at the beginning of here and there’s parallels with your story and the listener story where, there were these, initially what started to happen was the blurred lines, right? Like I’m teaching for you, but can I do some of it at my house also, you know, or I’m teaching for you, John, can I, but I’m also going to do this thing over here down the street.
John Kozicki (11:14.122)
Mm-hmm.
Mandy York (11:14.582)
Or I know it was farther than that, sorry. And I don’t, I think when, when that starts to happen, you kind of have to see the writing on the wall, you know, have like, if, if this is what your instructor is doing, if they’re kind of moving out, trying to do things on their own, maybe take that as your first, first sign.
John Kozicki (11:29.3)
Sure.
Mandy York (11:41.807)
Maybe not red flag, maybe yellow flag. don’t know. You know what I’m saying? And, and decide if you’re okay with that and maybe know that this is, this is the beginning of a transition or hold firmer lines and say like, no, this is, if you’re going to teach for me, if you’re going to be part of our studio, the way we do things is that you’ve got to be here in-house. Right?
John Kozicki (12:08.806)
Mm hmm. Sure. Yeah, it’s interesting because I think in reading our friends message here.
I kind of, see the empathy or I can sort of sense that empathy. Here is someone whose life has kind of changed and now there are different responsibilities when you become a parent. those come with a lot of pressure. And I can see our friend who wrote this message, I can see him trying to be sensitive to that and trying to work.
Mandy York (12:26.668)
Yeah.
John Kozicki (12:53.714)
in a way that is going to be mutually beneficial.
But I also can see based on the information that we’ve gotten about this instructor, some of these things feel like maybe they were done out of desperation.
Mandy York (13:16.046)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. He’d been there a long time. He was a star instructor.
John Kozicki (13:17.192)
you know, like as
John Kozicki (13:23.338)
Well, that and as much as our studio owner friend here was trying to be accommodating, I’m getting that maybe this instructor, the pressure that this instructor was feeling, like was greater than the studio owner maybe understood. I don’t know. Maybe I’m reading into it and…
Mandy York (13:46.876)
Yeah.
John Kozicki (13:51.934)
I mean, not cool. Don’t get me wrong. Like, not cool to do these things. But yeah, I’m just trying to see both sides.
Mandy York (13:54.057)
Yeah. Yeah.
Mandy York (14:03.63)
No, and just like the studio instructor said, I mean, we, understand what it’s like to have families and to navigate changing situations at home. balance, that’s a constant, you know, a constant that we are navigating is balance. So yeah. Like I feel for him. It’s hard. Yeah.
John Kozicki (14:23.006)
Yes.
But the request, I do too, I do too. But the request is from our listener friend here who says, what would you do? Yeah, okay. So let’s talk about the, let’s talk about the photos first. The photos and reviews. Because I think those both fall under that umbrella of intellectual property. There might be some differences between the photos and the reviews. Now,
Mandy York (14:33.838)
Mmm.
Mandy York (14:44.771)
Yeah.
John Kozicki (14:57.577)
That’s, those photos are copyrighted once, I mean, assuming that those are on our listener friend here’s website, as soon he puts those on the website, those are his, you know, he’s copyrighted those, those are his property. So for someone to then take those and use them, that’s not okay. That is not legally okay.
So I think if he wants to pursue any sort of like retribution or try and remedy this, he’s got to document it. He’s got to document like, here’s this photo. Here’s the timestamp of when I added it to my website. And then, hey, here’s this other version of this photo that’s now being used by someone else.
claiming it’s theirs, that’s gonna prove that yes, it is his. Now, there is this, I had to look this up, because I knew you could do this. I know you can submit to, like if this is being used on this competitor’s website, what you can do is, and this is a little sneaky, I admit it, but what you can do is you can,
contact the hosting service of that website and say hey this photo that’s being used is my intellectual property and It’s being used on a website that is hosted by your service. So it’s it’s called a DMCA takedown request so DMCA stands for digital Millennium Copyright Act and what it does is it
compels that service provider to remove any infringing content to avoid liability because they’re hosting this website so they can be liable as well. Now, that’s the legal stuff, right? And I’m sure you could go even harder if you wanted to, but then you’re getting into lawyers and…
Mandy York (17:13.538)
Yeah. Yeah.
John Kozicki (17:23.293)
you know, maybe like the less aggressive would be an email to this person, hey, I noticed you’re using this photo. And that’s, you know, property of my music school. You know, I’d like you to take it down. But on the flip side of that.
Mandy York (17:32.952)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (17:47.114)
according to our friend here, that photo is of that instructor. So that person, that former instructor could very easily then come back and say like, oh yeah, well, you’re using my image on your website and I want you to take that down. So what do we do? Right? It’s like a stalemate.
Mandy York (18:07.992)
Yeah?
Mandy York (18:13.004)
Yeah, that is tricky.
John Kozicki (18:17.927)
And I think the same could probably be said for the review. I’m not entirely sure. Maybe not. That might be stickier.
Mandy York (18:18.69)
Hmm.
Mandy York (18:24.75)
Yeah, that seems like more deceitful to me, the review, because someone reviewed the school, right? I mean, they had to go to like Google, the Google business, right? Of that specific school.
John Kozicki (18:36.211)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (18:45.265)
Yeah, well, and it’s not clear. It’s not clear in our in the letter here if or the email if that review is on the Google My Business page or if it’s being used on the school website or where that is. And I think it says, yeah, it’s in the email. It says that this instructor’s name comes up in the reviews. So again,
Mandy York (18:58.486)
Yeah, sure.
Mandy York (19:12.184)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (19:14.745)
it’s it’s kind of this gray area right the like and I and again not clear if it’s using first and last name or if it’s just first name but yeah it’s sticky
Mandy York (19:18.339)
Yeah.
Mandy York (19:24.078)
Mm-hmm.
Mandy York (19:32.491)
It is really sticky.
but the, the studio owner, like he earned that. He, he earned that review and he, you know, either took the time to take those photographs or hired someone to take those photographs, you know, to have someone else just take them. Like that, that’s not cool. That’s not okay.
John Kozicki (19:43.741)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (19:59.219)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (20:02.682)
It is not, no.
Mandy York (20:05.228)
I feel like I would email. I really do. feel like I would. Mm-hmm. Yep.
John Kozicki (20:11.164)
How would you do it? Would you be like, would you go in hard and just be like, look, you are infringing on my intellectual property and I need you to stop and if you don’t, I’m gonna get lawyers involved. You know, would you do that?
Mandy York (20:27.606)
No, I would probably be nice about it. And I know, well, I’m just thinking I’m like, and then per our last episode, like I would make the other person mad and they would give me a bad review on Google, even though I’m being nice. I know I probably would be nice about it. Like, and I think that’s how you should approach this whole situation. Like don’t get into it. Don’t start, you know,
John Kozicki (20:33.05)
I knew you wouldn’t be mean about it because I know you.
John Kozicki (20:40.785)
Yeah.
John Kozicki (20:53.276)
Mm-hmm.
Mandy York (20:57.038)
conflict or a grudge or whatever. Hey man, wish you the best of luck kind of thing. But I do notice you’re using these that is copyrighted material. And you know, I need you to take it down. I would probably be kind of like very straightforward in my language. Like if you wouldn’t mind, do you think it would be okay if you took it down? I would, no, I would be like,
John Kozicki (21:23.172)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Mandy York (21:26.424)
This is what it is. I need you to take it down. but again, like best of luck to you. do wish you all. I don’t want, you know, don’t want any hard feelings, but it’s, it’s a little black and white to me, particularly with the photograph. I don’t know. You, you have, photographers come in all the time. They’re taking pictures of your instructors at concerts. I like kind of.
John Kozicki (21:45.224)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (21:51.72)
Yup.
Mandy York (21:54.841)
putting myself in your shoes and the images that I know that I’ve seen of your school, that would, that’s a hard no for me if they took images from you and put them up for their own school.
John Kozicki (22:03.644)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (22:07.632)
Yeah, okay. I think I tend to agree that if the route is approaching this former instructor and about these, photos and the reviews, I agree with you. Hey, I wish you the best. I really do. I’m sorry things ended the way they did, but I’m gonna ask that, you know.
you take these down because they are like my property, maybe not worded that way. But again, I’m trying to put myself in that former instructor shoes. if that photo is like, if it’s me, if I’m that instructor, and it’s a photo of me, I’d be like, it’s a picture of me, you take it down off your website. You know, so then I then does it escalate.
Mandy York (22:53.39)
Mm-hmm.
Mandy York (23:03.018)
Yeah, I, but it really, it really depends on the photo, right? Again, if I’m thinking about your photos or my photos, you know, I hire photographers too. They’re, they’re representative of what my space looks like. Right. Well, in your case, the, the stage, the setting, the concert venue. I, I get photo releases from everyone.
John Kozicki (23:08.093)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (23:19.528)
Mm-hmm.
Mandy York (23:32.498)
I guess if he asks you to take the photo down, I wouldn’t argue with him about it. but I also wouldn’t let him use it, but I wouldn’t let him use it either. Yeah. Yeah.
John Kozicki (23:41.801)
I think he has to be prepared for that as a possible retort. If he does say, take this photo down, that the former instructor will then say, well, you take it down too. I think he has to expect that. So what about the poaching student?
Mandy York (23:51.074)
Mm-hmm.
Mandy York (24:00.93)
Yeah.
John Kozicki (24:10.404)
what about the non-compete because this is where, know, if it’s almost like if he engages in one area.
because everything is so tied together, will all this other stuff also come out and also come into play, right? You know, we can debate back and forth about a photo and a review, but at the end of the day, it’s like it’s a photo and a review. It’s not that big a deal, but the lost student, that’s worth real money.
Mandy York (24:33.387)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (24:52.966)
You know, what about that?
Mandy York (24:54.146)
Yeah.
Mmmmm
It’s, I, I’m thinking about this a little bit differently than you are. mean, it is like, is clearly the student that’s yes, that’s a loss of money. That’s loss of student. I’m, I’m thinking about like the photo, very black and white, like, no, this is my property. You can’t take it. I think like it sucks that he lost a student.
John Kozicki (25:06.458)
Okay.
John Kozicki (25:21.384)
Mm-hmm.
Mandy York (25:30.754)
but I might treat this as like just as any other competition moving into town, which we’ve discussed in the past. We’ve discussed on episodes, right? Like.
John Kozicki (25:37.8)
Mmm.
John Kozicki (25:41.446)
even though it breaks the contract.
Mandy York (25:43.822)
Well, that’s a whole other thing, right? I don’t know about these non-compete contracts. Right? Like how enforceable are they?
John Kozicki (25:52.454)
They are hard to enforce,
Mandy York (25:56.375)
So I mean, I have something in my agreement too, but to be totally honest, I’m not gonna go after anybody. I just want to have the conversation and be clear upfront about my expectations and hope that you’re the kind of person that will uphold this bargain.
John Kozicki (26:10.001)
Well.
Mandy York (26:20.042)
I don’t know.
John Kozicki (26:21.763)
Well, yeah, because then if you do pursue that, you’re talking like it’s legal action if you’re trying to enforce this, right? And then you’re hiring a lawyer.
Mandy York (26:31.008)
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Mandy York (26:36.61)
Yep. know. These are the things you have to think about. And it depends on your situation. Maybe in your situation it is worth it. In my situation it wouldn’t be, you know, we, as I was saying, like I kind of would treat this as someone else moving into town, which hurts. It, you know, it makes you real tense at the beginning.
John Kozicki (26:38.001)
How much is that worth?
John Kozicki (26:46.651)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (26:59.111)
Mm-hmm.
Mandy York (27:01.154)
But as we’ve discussed before, you just have to focus on you and what you do best. like in your story, your competition didn’t, it kind of fizzled, right? He’s teaching out of his home and this listener, I think I’m right. Like this listener has a brick and mortar, right? Yeah. Those are very different things. I think you.
John Kozicki (27:14.929)
Mm-hmm.
Mandy York (27:29.324)
You just buckle down and do what you do best.
John Kozicki (27:36.839)
Yeah, so I’m gonna try and put some, like, I’m gonna zoom way out and try and put some perspective on this.
And it sort of goes back to some of the things I was identifying at the beginning after we read this this email.
And goes hand in hand with what you were saying about this is just more competition moving into town. So number one, I think.
Aside from a sternly written email to this person, then, you know, and I mentioned the whole like, kind of on the slide, the download, you could send the the the the notice to the his yeah, his his website host, you could do that. That might result in that.
Mandy York (28:24.686)
take down request.
John Kozicki (28:34.983)
photo being taken down, I don’t know. I also don’t know if it’s ever disclosed who sent the request. Probably easy to figure out in this situation. But going back to, because the next level beyond that is expensive. It’s lawyers.
Mandy York (28:44.344)
Yes.
Probably, yes. Yeah.
John Kozicki (29:01.287)
Lawyers getting involved and then it becomes this expensive thing for what? What is the gain here? Like if you have resources and it’s like a moral issue, yeah, this is the right thing to do because he stole my intellectual property and he broke this contract and I’m not worried about these lawyer expenses. This is morally the right thing to do. Okay, cool, do it.
But in the real world, if you are concerned with the expenses of what it would cost to do this, not only monetarily, but time-wise, what is your gain?
Mandy York (29:45.678)
You’re not getting that student back. Yeah. No. Yeah.
John Kozicki (29:46.031)
Right? Exactly. You’re not getting that student back. You are not getting that student back. That ship has sailed. Now I’m going to zoom out a little further.
I think it’s telling how, and sure there’s two sides to every story, right? But I think it’s telling that how this instructor used to be fantastic and then life changed for this person. And it seems like they’re feeling the pressure of those life changes and priority shift. And I think we kind of have to respect that.
But some of the schedule requests that I heard in this email that the instructor was asking of the studio.
If that is because now he is responsible for his own admin, presumably, right.
Mandy York (30:44.652)
Mm-hmm. Great. yeah.
John Kozicki (30:48.845)
If he is approaching his clients that way.
It’s not a good look. You know, they’re probably gonna be like, this guy is a little flaky. You know, he used to be really consistent, but now he’s asking us to change times, and now he’s like canceling this to do this other thing. I just feel like it’s gonna work itself out.
Mandy York (31:16.472)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
John Kozicki (31:18.311)
And then zooming out even further, like, and I get that our friend here, this is, it hurts because he put his faith in this person and then like these are the results as you were saying, morally, no, he shouldn’t have stolen the student. No, he shouldn’t have taken the photo. He shouldn’t have used the review. That’s like, it’s just kind of not cool. But if those are all coming from like a position of desperation,
I have to assume that our friend here, the studio owner is not in that same spot. And the amount of energy that it would take to kind of fight this. Again, what is going to be the gain? Could that energy be focused on what he’s doing at his studio and taking care of his own clients? You know, as hard as it is to just kind of like, all right,
to brush this one off and just let that person do what they’re gonna do. I think that perspective is probably important because we don’t have the crazy resources to hire lawyers. Yeah, yeah.
Mandy York (32:16.472)
Yeah.
Mandy York (32:27.734)
Right. No, this instructor has been around for eight years. That’s a long time. This is emotional, right? This is emotional. Yep. I don’t, we talked about that.
John Kozicki (32:32.837)
Yeah, sure. Yes.
John Kozicki (32:42.649)
It’s like a bad breakup when you don’t get closure. Do you ever really get closure though in a bad breakup? No, you have to figure out how to just live with this, the new way of life and put it behind you.
Mandy York (32:47.062)
Yeah, yeah, it’s… No, it’s not a thing. No, no.
Mandy York (33:00.738)
Yes. It’s really hard to do nothing. It’s really hard to do nothing. Yeah.
John Kozicki (33:07.331)
It is. Yeah.
Well, does also it does make me think about I shoot what what episode was it that when I shared that story about the competitor moving into town and like how I handled it poorly and I realized like, man, I spent a lot of energy on that. And I probably should have been focused on what I was doing.
Mandy York (33:23.436)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Mandy York (33:34.037)
Yeah. Yes. Yep. Like I said, you, you’ve got a brick and mortar business. It’s like, and I think, I don’t know specifically what the, this listener situation is, but thinking about here, you and I, like, he’s just, he’s just teaching private lessons out of his home. I don’t mean just like he’s, he’s offering a valuable service to people, but your studio is also offering like,
John Kozicki (34:00.763)
Yes.
Mandy York (34:03.448)
community and culture and bands, know, and concerts and like.
John Kozicki (34:07.535)
Mm-hmm.
Mandy York (34:12.312)
Just focus on that. Keep doing.
John Kozicki (34:14.267)
Yeah, and our friend here has to make that decision for himself. But what I would advocate for is maintaining perspective on what he wants to happen, what he wants to gain, and how many resources, what type of resources he wants to put toward this thing that, like, you know, at best, like you said, he’s not gonna get that student back.
Mandy York (34:20.087)
Yeah.
John Kozicki (34:44.039)
The image thing, like yeah, maybe he gets it taken down, but he also might have taken down on his website, then whatever. Similar with the review. Yeah. What kind of time and energy do you want to spend on this? And what could you otherwise be doing with that time and energy?
Mandy York (35:11.064)
John, I think you nailed it. You did. You wouldn’t know you did. It’s because you’re so wise. You’re so wise. It’s all the extra years you have on me, I think, maybe. But you, so what you’re saying, you’re saying you wouldn’t, I’m sorry, just, you saying you wouldn’t even email. You are very much like, zoom out. Don’t even just.
John Kozicki (35:13.479)
I don’t know.
Well, maybe. Well, but you are so right. Sorry, go ahead.
John Kozicki (35:36.581)
I mean, would I email? Maybe. Maybe I would email, but I also would expect that if I email, like, I had, I will never forget this. I will never forget this. had a parent who was not happy with one of my policies at one point. And,
Mandy York (35:49.838)
setting your expectations.
John Kozicki (36:03.094)
we were having this this email exchange back and forth and at one point she was like you know is that how you treat your customers something like that right and and i was like she’s just baiting me right now she’s baiting me into like this this argument and when i realized i’m being baited i was like all right we’re done and i just disengaged that was it so
I think if he does go that route and decides like, am going to send an email or I’m gonna, you know, engage here, he has to know when to cut his losses and not be pulled into a a bigger thing than it needs to be. So, yeah.
Mandy York (36:54.434)
Yes. I appreciate that a lot. Good.
John Kozicki (36:58.608)
But you’re right, this is super emotional and I wish our friend the best on that. Hopefully this is helpful.
Mandy York (37:01.559)
Mm-hmm.
Mandy York (37:06.744)
Yes, hopefully. Yeah. I would say, and even like, no matter what you do, wait, like take time, make sure you really think about these things. I mean, obviously he’s written in it’s, but I think when these situations do come up, don’t react immediately. That’s important. Take some time for those emotions to settle. Yeah. Okay.
John Kozicki (37:17.584)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (37:25.626)
Yeah.
John Kozicki (37:30.01)
Yeah. Well, did we do it? Did we anything else? Any other advice?
Mandy York (37:35.143)
This was great. No, think that’s good.
John Kozicki (37:40.017)
Okay, well hang in there, because this is a, yeah, it’s a tough one and any other listeners, if you haven’t experienced this, it’s relatively common, know, hopefully you don’t have to. But keep those emails and those messages coming because we love to dig into these and help out when we can.
Mandy York (37:52.812)
Yeah.
Mandy York (38:03.205)
yeah, for sure. Cool.
John Kozicki (38:04.71)
All right, well with that, we’ll see you next time. See ya.
Mandy York (38:07.151)
All right, thanks, John. Bye.
