Join John Kozicki (Michigan Rock School, RockSchoolProprietor.com) and Mandy York (Music Time of Milford) with a glimpse of what music instructors and music lesson business owners can expect from their conversations on the Rock School Proprietor Podcast!
Episode Transcript:
I’m Mandy York, I’m a classically trained singer, and now I teach parents and children how to make music part of their everyday lives.
And I’m John Kozicki. I played in a punk rock band while studying business in college, and now I run a rock school. This is the Rock School Proprietor Podcast.
With vastly different backgrounds, but both running successful music lesson businesses, Mandy and I actually have a lot in common. So we decided to record our conversations. From philosophy and culture to teaching and business strategies, we turn our experiences into practical advice you can use in your music lesson business.
Our successes, failures, and biggest fears, we discuss them all, so you can leverage that information to be a better teacher, coach, manager, and a leader.
Ms. Mandy, classically trained, was a little like, is this where my daughter should be starting her musical education? In my world, I’m worried about the piano wrists and the light fingers and I’m worried about my posture and where my breath is coming from. And at the Rock School, it’s just, it’s a little more like whatever feels good and whatever’s cool, you know?
But you know what? You’ve had this really great influence on me over the years and you’ve softened my edges, I think, you know? Well, and not just you, but having my daughter in your program too.
And what I’ve learned from both our conversations and just doing this for so long is that how we come to music isn’t always as important as what keeps us in music, whether that’s from a classical approach or from a non-traditional rock style approach. Coming together and finding your musical community, that’s what’s most important. And I think that’s what you and I can share and that’s what you and I can teach because again, we have these crazy different backgrounds, but in both of our studios, we have this really strong community, this really strong sense of coming together around music.
And that’s what I want all studios to be able to do.
You know, we’re just a couple of music studio owners having conversations about the things we go through, day to day, week to week, year to year. It makes for really interesting conversation with the diverse backgrounds that we have.
What I love about this is every one of your statements are well thought out and focusing on your goal and your mission. And every one of mine are just about like, okay, how can I incite a little bit of emotion? How can I incite a riot?
And those are the differences between us that I love. But it’s funny that we always come to a common ground on every single thing that we talk about.
Yeah.
Some of these things that we talk about are not easy. It’s easy to teach music. It’s harder to talk about what makes teaching music important to us, important to our students, and important to the families in our studio.
But those are the things that will make the biggest difference. Those are the things that will lead to better retention and more successes. You can subscribe to the Rock School Proprietor Podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and everywhere where podcasts are found.
And for further resources and show notes, visit rockschoolproprietor.com.
I’m John Kozicki. And if you ask me what’s most important about guitar, I’ll say the lower you hold your guitar, the cooler you look.
Do you really feel that way? That’s true, isn’t it?
No, it’s not totally true. I mean, it’s true, but there’s other things that are important.
