My Piano Teaching Journey
2011
It all started on 4/9/2011, when I got my first email regarding interest for piano lessons. And who was it from, surprisingly? One of my best friends from primary school, my English friend Charlotte. She emailed me saying that her younger sister wanted to learn piano with me! (We were 2 little 11-year-olds at the time, emailing each other back and forth - smartphones did not exist). I was beyond excited to receive this email and to have my first client! I actually still have her email in my inbox – here is a screenshot of it:
So, that’s how it all began. I started teaching Nina (Charlotte’s sister), who was 10 years old at the time. She came over to my house for lessons, which was convenient for both of us as she lived only 3 minutes away from me. I was 11 years old at the time (year 6 of primary school), with 2 years of playing experience under my belt but no teaching experience. I got the idea of starting to teach piano from my dad, after we sat together in my room and I asked him to come up with ways for me to make money at 11 years old. I got hooked on the piano teaching idea that he came up with, created an ad on Microsoft Word, and walked over to the local IGA notice board to hang it up. Shortly after, my first “client” (Nina) came through…
Next, I received an email from a mum who wanted lessons from her 4.5-year-old daughter, who loved playing piano. It was certainly challenging to teach someone that young, but it did teach me valuable things! After, I was teaching a boy down my street, whose sister was in my year at school. I’m sure that the $10/30min lessons were a major enticing factor for parents, who weren’t sure whether their kid would stick to piano lessons, or if I was good teaching material. It is a small investment for parents that carries a bit of risk, and I understand that parents want to minimise it.
2012
When 2012 came, with surprisingly peaking interest from parents! This year I had NO LESS than 25 queries come through, all from parents requesting piano lessons for their children. I was 12 years old at the time, year 7 of primary school, and spending 1 day a week in high school. I taught piano lessons in the afternoon, with all students coming to me and parents sitting in the music room or waiting in the car.
2013 - 2014
In 2013, I started high school. There weren’t actually many queries then – only 3 emails that I could find. Perhaps parents started texting me then, as I had my own smartphone! It was a very modern, high tech Huawei phone with the hard-to-press buttons 😉.
In 2014, there was an increase in the number of queries. I assume that I was charging about $12 or $14 for half an hour at this stage, as I had already been teaching for 3 years, playing for 5 years, and was a high school student. Lessons were still given at my home, using a keyboard that my parents had purchased me when they realised I was serious about playing the piano.
2015 - 2017
After that, the years are a bit blurred. I have less and less emails in this folder from 2015 - 2020, as parents started messaging me through the phone for lessons. My rates slowly went up – from $10, to $12, to $14, to $15, to $20, to $23, to $25, to $28, and now it’s $30/half an hour. I went up in small increments each time as I was very young, and didn’t want to inflate the prices for my service. I did these lessons during school day afternoons – I had a routine. I would come home, get changed, eating my mum’s wonderfully cooked lunch, then get ready for lessons and teach. I did my homework afterwards – schoolwork was very important for me (still is).
2018
This was the year that I started tracking the money I was making, creating spreadsheets on Excel, and becoming more mature and financially savvy. I was in year 12, after all, and I was studying Accounting and Finance as one of my ATAR subjects. At this stage, I had 11 students, with $18 being the average rate for the lesson.
2019
2019 was even more promising, with a peak of 16 students (mostly piano, but also 2 Japanese/Psychology), and what was even better was that I could drive to lessons! I was finally able to expand the geographical regions of my students by travelling to their house on the weekends/evenings. I was starting the 2nd year of uni at this stage – switching over to Psychology from Commerce (majoring in Finance). I felt as though I was on the right track, pursuing a new course and fulfilling my dreams.
2020
Then, 2020 came along. This year was PIVOTAL to my piano teaching business. COVID19 hit the world in late 2019, and hit WA at around April 2020. Many of Perth’s citizens were extremely prudent and careful as they self-imposed themselves into a lockdown, even before it was officially announced by the government. It was during this time that parents started telling me that they would stop coming for physical lessons, and would prefer online lessons if possible. That’s when things REALLY changed. I had 12 students at the time, and 9 of them were keen to do online lessons (3 stopped temporarily). I conducted my lessons through Zoom and Skype, using my current laptop and placing it on the keyboard, so that students could see me and I could see them. Parents were very supportive and helpful during this time – buying tripods for themselves to put their phones/laptops on, reangling their laptop so I could see their child properly playing, and dropping me cash in an envelope in my mailbox.
During this period of time, I:
Set up an ABN
Registered for a business name (‘Ivory Tutoring’)
Set up a business bank account with Bankwest
Signed up with Quickbooks for invoice keeping
Set up a business email address (shenhav@ivorytutoring.com.au).
I did this all during the BUSY uni semester – the first semester of my 3rd year of psych. It was stressful at the time, but now that I look back at it, I learnt so many things and really built up the mindset of a ‘business owner’.
So, for most of 2020, I had 9 students and was teaching online for about 2 months. Since the end of lockdown in June/July, I went back to teaching face to face – and could really see the value and appreciate the importance of sitting right next to your student, writing things in their book, and playing duets with them. There’s nothing that I like more than that. However, online lessons are definitely a great option if the child or myself are sick, or if there’s no way that a parent can bring them to the lessons. It’s nice to have option B.
2020 - 2021
Towards the end of 2020, I had more and more enquiries, and taught 14 students. I teach nearly every day, and work on developing my business a few times a week. I’m always coming up with new ideas on how to improve my teaching, inspire my students, and how to better understand the child’s learning process. I see it as my mission to inspire my students to love playing the piano & keep it up in the long term. Also, to develop lifelong skills in goal setting, hard work and determination to succeed. I believe that these are crucial skills that help a lot in life, no matter what you do.
2021 and beyond!
I’m very excited for 2021 to further develop my business and teach more wonderful students. I’ll be going into my final semester of undergrad in Psych, so want to focus as much as I can on doing well and achieving my Bachelor’s Degree, but also fulfil my passions of teaching and playing piano. I currently teach 7 students privately and also teach at a local primary school on a Wednesday afternoon.
Thank you very much for reading and please do reach out if you have any questions!