How to get off the teaching hamster wheel and create a studio that gives you energy instead

Michelle Lynne: Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Fri Stars podcast. I am your host, Michelle Lynne, and I’m here today with violist Laura Sinclair. Laura, welcome.

Laura Sinclair: Hi. Thanks so much for having me.

Michelle Lynne: Yeah, it’s a pleasure. Actually, Deanna saw your name in my calendar, and she’s like, “What? Laura? Laura from CIM?” I was like, “Yes, that Laura.” So she knows you, and I don’t yet. So I’m happy to have you on today.

Laura Sinclair: What a thrill to be here. I’m so excited for our conversation.

Michelle Lynne: Yes. So when did you study with Deanna? Do I dare ask?

Laura Sinclair: Um, I was at CIM from 2007 to 2009…doing master’s.

Michelle Lynne: Okay.

Laura Sinclair: And I think she would’ve been an undergrad then.

Michelle Lynne: Yeah, exactly. And then she went over to Juilliard for her masters, and then Paris, where I met her. Okay. So you guys were, were you chamber buddies, studio class buddies?

Laura Sinclair: Studio.

Michelle Lynne: Uh-huh.

Laura Sinclair: Studio buddies. Our, our teacher Jeff Irvine does a great job of having several studio classes a week, but we typically were in the same one and always had to play for each other. And oh, she was just a love.

Michelle Lynne: That’s awesome. Nice to see her grow as a player over those, yeah, and as a, as a person, three times, ’cause she’s birthed three children, so…

Laura Sinclair: Oh my gosh.

Michelle Lynne: Yeah, she just had, her third just came off mat leave. Do you have like a funny moment from her? Anything that, that you remember about Deanna in undergrad?

Laura Sinclair: No, I don’t think so. I’m trying to think of it. I’m…I just, I, as a master’s student, it was really fun to watch these, like, freshmen come in and, like, to figure out how to be in university, which was really fun. And, uh, but also marvel at, you know, my undergraduate was in Canada, and like, it was nice to be finally in a conservatory where even the undergrads took everything so seriously.

Michelle Lynne: Right. The level’s very high. And so undergrad in Canada, in New Brunswick, where you’re from?

Laura Sinclair: No, in at Wilfrid Laurier University.

Michelle Lynne: Nice, nice, nice. Nice.

Laura Sinclair: Pensky String Quartet.

Michelle Lynne: Okay, cool. I did my undergrad at, uh, U de M in Montreal and two years in Edmonton, where I’m from. So yeah, we have this nice Canadian connection. Small, small-town Canada girls. How often do you go back?

Laura Sinclair: Not often enough. I have family in Toronto, so I’m there more often. And then, you know, I’m from a family of farmers in East Coast Canada, so I am there like for a bigger chunk of time in the summers, but it’s just so hard to get there in the winter with Air Canada being…

Michelle Lynne: What it is.

Laura Sinclair: The airline it is.

Michelle Lynne: This episode was not sponsored by them, so you can be honest.

Laura Sinclair: It should not take me 40 hours to get to East Coast Canada in the middle of July.

Michelle Lynne: Oh, oh dear. Was that, was that something that happened?

Laura Sinclair: Yeah, last summer.

Michelle Lynne: Oh, that sounds awful.

Laura Sinclair: Yeah. Flight delays.

Michelle Lynne: So sorry. It’s like faster to drive.

Laura Sinclair: It would’ve been faster for me to drive.

Michelle Lynne: Oh, geez.

Laura Sinclair: I always profit from the, from the ordeal. Thank you, Canadian airline laws.

Michelle Lynne: Right. Also, Europe has some great airline laws, like 600 euros if you’re more than three hours delayed or something.

Laura Sinclair: Oh great.

Michelle Lynne: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Great. Well, please intro yourself for our audience, then we can jump right in.

Laura Sinclair: Um, my name is Laura Sinclair, and I am a violist and Suzuki educator and studio teacher, coach, and speaker based in Delray Beach, Florida. I help musicians develop sustainable and successful teaching practices as part of their portfolio career.

Michelle Lynne: As part of.

Laura Sinclair: Part, as part.

Michelle Lynne: As part of, okay, great. Great. Well, I’m excited to dive in. So tell me a bit about how you got started in this teaching education and helping other teachers.

Laura Sinclair: It was, um, really from a lot of “me search.” So my backstory is that I finished my academic career in South Florida, which has a robust freelance scene because of the snowbird population down here. And so I finished school, and I was like, well, I guess I should start. I was also directing, uh, a string orchestra, elementary string orchestra part-time. Well, what else am I going to do with my time? As I get myself established as a freelancer, I should probably teach a few students privately. And I fell into teaching not really knowing anything about how to run a studio or how to attract students or, um, what to do when I had gigs that conflicted with those students. So for about a decade, as my studio teaching built, my performing career got established down here, um, I had reached what I thought was the pinnacle of success, air quotes for the podcast listeners. And, um, I was totally burnt out.

Michelle Lynne: Hmm.

Laura Sinclair: You know, I didn’t have a good solution for, if the good gig comes along, that will advance your career, what do you do with all of those students that you are, that you are expecting to teach? They’re expecting to be taught by you? You know, I went for years by having people pay me by the month and having my students’ parents equate a lesson with X number of dollars. And so they’d show up on the first of the month and say, “We’re not gonna be here two Fridays.”

Michelle Lynne: Yeah.

Laura Sinclair: So we’ve taken that off the check. If six of your students do that, that leads you all to be…

Michelle Lynne: Oh yeah.

Laura Sinclair: Leads you to take on, like, fill your studio beyond capacity for what you can reasonably do while you’re also performing.

Michelle Lynne: Yeah.

Laura Sinclair: So…

Michelle Lynne: Familiar. I did that for many years.

Laura Sinclair: Yes, I have these conversations, and people start nodding their heads, and they’re like, “Oh yeah, I did, I did that, or I do that.”

Michelle Lynne: Yeah.

Laura Sinclair: And it doesn’t feel comfortable, and you don’t really feel like you can be present in one thing ’cause you’re worried about the other thing. And, and often you have so many students that it does affect how prepared you can be for the gig as well.

Michelle Lynne: Right. Yeah. I mean, you’re describing the ultimate portfolio career, which our listeners are very familiar with. It’s, I think it’s juggling, it’s just you have to be really good at juggling, like…

Laura Sinclair: You’d be really good at juggle…

Michelle Lynne: And prioritizing. And as you’re saying, if I have a gig or I’m supposed to teach, what do I do? Well, the answer is always shuffle, right? Like, we’re always like shuffling around, like, oh, I can squeeze you here, and I can teach this 30 minutes. And I mean, I have this conversation with Deanna too, and she’s, um, starting to teach now in Minnesota. She just came off mat leave, and it’s like, “Okay, well, I’ll teach a few on Sunday.” I’m like, “No. We don’t work Sundays, we have a rule, you know?” And it’s like always, always looking for these gaps in our schedule to kind of clog things in. Okay. So tell me more about, you were like at max, you were successful, quote, successful burning out. Yeah.

Laura Sinclair: Totally at max. And then 2020 was my gift.

Michelle Lynne: Oh, wow.

Laura Sinclair: Like the “crisis opportunity” that every, that I needed.

Michelle Lynne: The crisis opportunity. I’ve never heard that word.

Laura Sinclair: That my brother gave me that term.

Michelle Lynne: Okay.

Laura Sinclair: Just a crisis opportunity, Laura.

Michelle Lynne: Wow. Okay.

Laura Sinclair: So, you know, I started working with a coach of my own, and I was, you know, it also gave me this opportunity. I kept teaching because that’s all I had. The performing had dried up. And so it gave me this wonderful opportunity to kind of like laboratory what I was giving my students in terms of group class offerings. In terms of, you know, what’s fun? Do we, do we really love a theory class? Do we love a music history class? Like it kind of just because the kids were home. I was home. I think I taught for 21 months straight. I had started my studio year in August of 2019, and I didn’t stop teaching until June of 2021.

Michelle Lynne: Wow.

Laura Sinclair: So it was really like a deep dive long-term project of do we need a weekly lesson?

Michelle Lynne: Hmm.

Laura Sinclair: Do you just need a practice check-in? You know, I was getting creative with like lesson structure in terms of, you know, some people couldn’t afford the weekly lesson anymore, so we did a biweekly lesson. Then we did like a really brief practice check-in.

Michelle Lynne: That’s good.

Laura Sinclair: How’s this going? Here’s your opportunity to ask questions live over Zoom or in my driveway or however I was teaching them. And so that led me to emerge from the pandemic with a better structure for my own studio.

Michelle Lynne: Mm-hmm.

Laura Sinclair: But still be watching a lot of my colleagues still trying to do this juggling thing. And you and I’ve both spoken about having parents in rural places that, so it also gave me this inspiration to make my studio more portable so that I can be with those elderly people in rural places when I need to be.

Michelle Lynne: Yeah. Okay. So tell me more about this. ‘Cause I mean, I love the idea, obviously, of a practice check-in, but then that means that you lose your hourly lesson money, right? Or how did you, can you talk about how you organized this?

Laura Sinclair: So, that was like very much a constantly an influx of experimenting with what I can offer as a, as a teacher. And a lot of my clients offer something totally different. So this was that one. I would tag the, that lesson and the practice check-in was kind of during the, the same time, but it was the end of my teaching day. So I was either done at 7:45 or I was done at 7:15.

Michelle Lynne: Mm.

Laura Sinclair: That allowed that parent to pay. I was basically doing 30-minute tuition for them and seeing him for 45 minutes one week and 15 minutes for the other week.

Michelle Lynne: Okay.

Laura Sinclair: That allowed us to do more concentrated time. But ultimately what I emerged with was, you know, a workable amount of studio offerings, lessons, group class recitals, and everything that I could bundle together and offer in a tuition-based model.

Michelle Lynne: Okay.

Laura Sinclair: Removing that hourly mindset from the parents of a lesson equals $65. I once had a colleague say, “Well, I just charged $60 a minute, $60 an hour, because a dollar a minute is what I can remember.”

Michelle Lynne: Well, I can remember $2 a minute, so I charge $120 an hour.

Laura Sinclair: Exactly. Let’s work on your…

Michelle Lynne: Yeah, exactly. I’m like, okay. That’s an interesting pricing model. Okay, tell me everything about tuition-based. I mean, me personally, just to share. I was doing the monthly thing and then very quickly got very old, like, “Oh, Jimmy has a soccer game. He can’t come this Wednesday.” I’m like, “Okay, but I need that 30 bucks.” I’m sorry, but I’m a student, and like, this is money. This is groceries, this is rent. So I, somebody suggested, uh, charging per semester, but for me, because of my performing schedule, it felt too big to take on this four months’ check from the, we don’t do checks in the Netherlands anyway, but you know what I mean, bank transfer. So I went to a 10-week model. So every, um, whatever. First, beginning of September, I billed 10 weeks, and then I would just keep track and check, check the check marks. I mean, it was a little bit of a messy system, but I did my best. I scrolled a lot of WhatsApp messages, like, “Did he come that Wednesday? I can’t remember if he came that Wednesday.” Like, like it wasn’t, it wasn’t perfect, but it was better than the monthly ’cause that killed me. And especially what you’re saying with the mentality of the parents just being like, “So, oh, it’s just a, it’s just fun for him. It’s just his hobby.” Like, “No, this is not a hobby. This is musical training, this is discipline, this is fun, you know?” So anyway, I’d love to hear your, your journey in this.

Laura Sinclair: Um, I think for what I love, I love seeing the transformation of the parent too, just kind of realizing that, “Oh, this is an education, this is just an activity that we do on Tuesdays.”

Michelle Lynne: Yes.

Laura Sinclair: What I love about a tuition-based model, and certainly, not everyone that I work with sets up a tuition-based model. They do go for, ideally when you’re setting up something like this, you’re going for a timeframe that’s workable for you. So like 10 weeks, if that works for you as a performer, then absolutely you should be doing a 10-week term that includes what? What is possible based on what you know about your 10 weeks, and then with some wiggle room for unknowns of what if you get sick? What if the gig of a lifetime comes up?

Michelle Lynne: Yeah.

Laura Sinclair: You know? You know, if you had 10 weeks that you could possibly teach, I’d probably only offer eight.

Michelle Lynne: Mm. Mm-hmm.

Laura Sinclair: Because what if you wanna go out of town? Yeah.

Michelle Lynne: So tell me more about like how you introduced this tuition. How did you go from the hourly to the tuition-based model?

Laura Sinclair: Um, it started. Just wanting to stop. Uh, in addition to wanting to stop the, the monthly mayhem, it also started with I wanted to be offering people more but didn’t know how to average it out. It didn’t feel good to like, you know, invite a pianist into group class and then start asking people to split the cost of the pianist, or we’re having a recital and here’s your hundred dollars recital.

Michelle Lynne: Hmm.

Laura Sinclair: So the way I explained it to parents was a lot about, I call it, like I do talk about flat rate. You know, here’s everything that’s included.

Michelle Lynne: Yep.

Laura Sinclair: It’s kind of like buying a car, as crazy as that sounds. You know, we go over all the features and benefits of everything you’re gonna get from the studio, you know, the however many recitals a year or a term. I’m a Suzuki teacher, so there’s group class, but I think a lot of non-Suzuki clients that I work with are also doing studio class and masterclass or recital performance, like recital opportunities, or, you know, coming up with an operational budget that includes all of that and allows you to just divide that over however many weeks or months that you’re offering it. Really does make it more predictable for the parent or the client, depending if you’re working on with adults, and makes it easier so they don’t really have to think about it, and…

Michelle Lynne: Yeah.

Laura Sinclair: Becomes an expected part of their life.

Michelle Lynne: Right, and obviously that flat fee is gonna be higher than, let’s say your hourly is 65, like you said. So what’s that $260 a month? So I don’t know, 10%, 20% extra as the flat fee per month, let’s say. Weren’t the parents then doing that mental math, like, oh, what that means that each hour is 75, or did you get any of that kind of pushback?

Laura Sinclair: I didn’t actually. I think I was lucky in that they start, they were seeing what they were getting on top of it all, and they were seeing that I was, you know, I was like, you know, “This is all covered.”

Michelle Lynne: Yeah.

Laura Sinclair: “This is all covered. This is all part of your tuition.”

Michelle Lynne: Yeah.

Laura Sinclair: Can, in a lot of the writing, in my emails to them, I talked a lot about being of service. See, this is such a, a nice shift from when I grew up. My piano teacher would hire the hall herself, pay it out of her own pocket. It wouldn’t come. So we were still paying the hourly model to her, and then she would just expense that herself. And then I think that teaches people that a good music teacher is a generous one, and look how much she does for us, and she would teach us extra hours for free.

Michelle Lynne: And then, I don’t know, it kind of created this mentality of like, that’s what being a nice, good piano teacher is that you would just give extra time for free. So it became hard for me when I had students going from that 30-minute slot to a 45-minute slot. Because now the price goes, you know, up the 25%. But like, oh. But if I was just nice or if they were good enough, then I would just spend the extra 15 minutes. ‘Cause they love them so much, you know? And it’s like, okay, yeah. Well, and it’s my time, you know? Yeah.

Laura Sinclair: And I think, you know, those, those music teachers of your, have really set us up for failure.

Michelle Lynne: Yeah. Right.

Laura Sinclair: Life was so different.

Michelle Lynne: Yes.

Laura Sinclair: And it was this like self-serving attitude of, I’m gonna pay for all of this because I want to…

Michelle Lynne: Mm-hmm.

Laura Sinclair: I mean, that’s nice if you want, if you want to be like that. But we also have rising cost of living and rent to pay and…

Michelle Lynne: I know she had 80, she had 80 students a week. Like she was working day and night. Like it was just insane, you know? It was just, yeah.

Laura Sinclair: And that’s what was modeled for us all. So it’s no wonder that we’re all sitting out here trying to attain this like crazy standard of teaching. Not in terms of quality of teaching, but in terms of quantity of teaching…

Michelle Lynne: Mm-hmm.

Laura Sinclair: While we’re balancing everything else and feeling like we’re coming up short.

Michelle Lynne: Mm-hmm.

Laura Sinclair: I think moving to the tuition-based model allowed me to take on less students. And feel like I was giving them a quality of education that I wouldn’t have if I had been the 80 students a week.

Michelle Lynne: And did you notice a shift in the way that your students showed up to the lesson in terms of preparation?

Laura Sinclair: Big time. Because I was able to be more present and I was able to be more invested. I had more mental bandwidth to keep track of what was going on with each student. And, you know, to like keep encouraging the group aspect. I think leaning into community is what makes studio retention effective. If your students are coming in and out, they don’t know anyone else in the studio. No one cares if they quit.

Michelle Lynne: Mm. Mm-hmm.

Laura Sinclair: But if they met everyone else in studio, if they are part of a community, if the parents are hearing about how tough it is to practice with their child or how tough it is to get their kid to practice, you know, it normalizes the experience for everyone. And I think it also allows everyone to, um, you know, kind of support each other when it doesn’t feel like it’s going so great.

Michelle Lynne: So did you shift entirely to group lessons?

Laura Sinclair: No, no.

Michelle Lynne: Oh, okay.

Laura Sinclair: So I, so my, my studio model is: individual lessons, almost a weekly group class. They have about 23 group classes in 10 months.

Michelle Lynne: Okay, so you took like your studio class from CIM and now brought it back. Okay.

Laura Sinclair: Exactly. You can blame Mr. Irvine.

Michelle Lynne: Okay. Love that.

Laura Sinclair: Just because, you know, you know that studio classroom from CIM, we saw each other every week. We knew what the other person was working on. Even if you weren’t performing in studio class, you played a scale like we were all working on the same technique, and we had to play something from technique list, and it rotated every month. So no one wanted to be the person playing technique stuff in group class, in studio class the first week of the month, ’cause we were all just figuring out what that crazy finger exercise was. But yeah, no, the community aspect of it, I’m certainly not, and there are lots of coaches out there who will show you how to transition your entire studio to group offerings. But we’re all sitting here as the product of individual lessons.

Michelle Lynne: I’ve heard like even universities are going to like group classes ’cause there’s not enough money. And I was just horrified at that because I’m like, how can you give the level of individual teaching that we all need in a group? So yeah. I love the addition of a studio class, essentially to your, to your individuals.

Laura Sinclair: No, I think it, um, I think the community is there when you are feeling like you’re about to falter and then offering something that’s a little bit more long-term, even if you went for a 10-week term, makes it feel like, okay, we can get to the end of 10 weeks and then reassess, or we’re in it for the, it feels a little bit more like a long-term commitment.

Michelle Lynne: Yes. Also the, that they can’t quit without giving notice. Um, okay, so you’re, you added a group class. You’re talking about bringing a pianist in the snow cone. What other like benefits or what were you telling the parents to, to give this new model?

Laura Sinclair: Um, I also pointing out that the recitals were happening, like I was taking care of everything for the recitals. I moved away and maybe as a Western Canadian, you’ll appreciate this. I stopped doing potluck recital receptions.

Michelle Lynne: I miss butter tarts though. Oh man. I can eat a really good butter tart, but yeah. Okay. I mean, it is nice to not have to bring something on your plate.

Laura Sinclair: Yeah. I wanted the parents to start to feel like I was taking care of…

Michelle Lynne: Yeah.

Laura Sinclair: Also wanted to feel like I was being a sturdy leader for everyone because I…

Michelle Lynne: I.

Laura Sinclair: Try to flip the perspective a little bit in thinking that, we have raised, as you’ve been teaching over the years, you’ve raised, you know, tens, hundreds of little instrumentalists, whether you’ve, whether they stay with you forever or they stayed with you for just a little bit of time. You’ve done this before. And many of the parents we interact with have never done this before. And then we all get offended when they don’t treat us the way we wanna be treated. But they’ve never done it.

Michelle Lynne: Yes. Right. I love that.

Laura Sinclair: Yeah, so I, it was a lot of pointing at the value of everything. It was a lot of making them feel like, “I’ve got you, and this is where we’re going, and here’s the vision.”

Michelle Lynne: Hmm.

Laura Sinclair: And, um, and you know, I also leaving a little space to be, I always try to communicate that, you know, we’ve got, I’m also human, so let’s have a conversation.

Michelle Lynne: Mm-hmm.

Laura Sinclair: If people start having issues. I’ll be the first one to have a quick parent conference to talk about it and try and get ahead of things or try to anticipate things. You know, if you’ve got a kid who’s going off to the middle school for the performing arts, like it’s good to be the person who knows, “We’ve gotta do X, Y, and Z, and I’m gonna help you and guide you through this.”

Michelle Lynne: Mm-hmm. Can you talk a bit about the impact on your performing career once you made the shift to this new model?

Laura Sinclair: Huge. Huge. It allowed me to one, I left my orchestra job. I quit it entirely.

Michelle Lynne: Wow. Okay.

Laura Sinclair: Um…

Michelle Lynne: In Florida. Okay.

Laura Sinclair: Um, so that allowed me to put my entire focus on my private studio. And in contrast, I, I started writing curriculum for a nonprofit.

Michelle Lynne: Okay.

Laura Sinclair: So I have many port slots in my portfolio too. So I swapped out the orchestra job for a nonprofit curriculum director job that allowed me to work whenever I wanted to.

Michelle Lynne: Also in the music industry.

Laura Sinclair: Also in the music.

Michelle Lynne: Okay.

Laura Sinclair: Yes, we do after-school string outreach in Southeast Florida and also in the Caribbean.

Michelle Lynne: That’s amazing. Also, I think it’s just really worth noting. ‘Cause as an entrepreneurship teacher in two faculties, the number one thing the students think is, “I need to win an audition, and I’ll be fine.” So I just love highlighting people who’s like, “Hey, I got the orchestra job and then I left it.” ‘Cause I found something else. Like the, our careers aren’t so much bigger than potentially the one thing that we’re all sold in school is being successful.

Laura Sinclair: Right. And, and you know, like the orchestra teacher job came with the salary and the benefits and everything, and I was miserable.

Michelle Lynne: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Laura Sinclair: Especially during COVID and after. Mm-hmm. Um, because of like the cult, like the, the mentality around it, it’s a great job for the people who want summers off and are okay with, and want the daytime hours. But I was lacking. It was, I found it limiting.

Michelle Lynne: Mm-hmm.

Laura Sinclair: I got tired of bureaucracy. Um, but what happened was that I, it allowed me to practice more. It allowed me to just put myself in the right places, say yes to the right gigs, and now I feel like I’m subbing with great organizations and playing in good sections, and I’m happy with where all of the performing has landed.

Michelle Lynne: Hmm. Mm-hmm.

Laura Sinclair: Versus chasing, you know, the low per-service orchestra in the area and then being mad when somebody doesn’t put you in their section. And now I’ve got, it allows me to say yes to the stuff I want to and no to what I don’t. And continuing to put more energy in chamber music, which is more fun, as we all know.

Michelle Lynne: Yeah. Yeah. That’s amazing. Yeah, I mean, I hear similar things from Deanna that she’s, I mean obviously mom, but also pursuing the portfolio career with choosing. She doesn’t necessarily wanna be doing auditions for an orchestra. She likes subbing for Minnesota Orchestra, which she’s doing next week. She’s playing for candlelight. She’s got her teaching, but it’s like she’s got freedom, and that’s a priority for her. So it sounds similar to me if you’re describing like, “I wanted to choose what I wanted to do.” I’d love to hear more about the curriculum too. I love outreach concerts.

Laura Sinclair: Yeah, so we are doing, we’ve launched the first violin program of its kind in the, it’s sort of an organization called Volta Music Foundation. We’ve launched a violin program on the island of Anguilla. So this past year we had 20 little violinists that we taught virtually once a week.

Michelle Lynne: Wow.

Laura Sinclair: With these amazing teacher volunteers in the room helping them. Um, so I’ve gone Anguilla three times now. First to get the program going, and then one as support halfway through to wanna run a week intensive, and then as a, with a string quartet for the final concert. And just, I mean, the enthusiasm for it, the kids are really excited. And in the past, nonprofits have arrived there, thrown a bunch of violins on the island, and said, “Oh, here, you’ll figure this out.” But here now it’s actually an organization that’s supporting and providing the instruction that goes with it. So I’m excited to see where it goes.

Michelle Lynne: That’s awesome. Very cool. How do you help your fellow colleagues to shift to this model? We’d love to hear about that.

Laura Sinclair: Opening up the conversation and talking about it is like the first step to it all. I think that a lot of us, what I notice amongst my colleagues and anywhere I travel is a lot of people. Have you ever noticed that performers don’t really like to admit that they teach?

Michelle Lynne: Oh yeah, I’m, well, yeah, definitely not, not my circles, but I know of the idea that it’s maybe seen as, “Oh, you couldn’t, you know, get your full income from performing, so you have to supplement,” something like that.

Laura Sinclair: Yeah. They don’t like to, like, no one likes to admit that they’re teaching or talk proudly about the fact that they teach or talk about the successes of their students on the gig. So it’s a lot of, “Hey, Laura, can I talk to you about?” Now that they know that I do this, it’s like a, “Hey Laura, can I talk to you about this student I have?” “Hey Laura!” Like, it’s very secretive. It’s very…

Michelle Lynne: It’s a shame. Yeah.

Laura Sinclair: And you know, that’s part of the reason that I start talking about it and why I like helping other people, you know, reorganize things. Um, because I don’t think we should be ashamed of the fact that we teach. I think we have a lot to add. And I think studying with an active performer benefits a student in a lot of ways.

Michelle Lynne: Yeah.

Laura Sinclair: I think no matter how busy you are, as you mentioned, your 10-week structure, like if I were living where Deanna was, I like six weeks on, two weeks off. We just design a program around that. You have to like, there’s a way to design your teaching around the market that you’re in. And a lot of…

Michelle Lynne: Good.

Laura Sinclair: Colleagues. I start to say, “You’re already doing everything that you wanna be doing for your students. You just need to package it differently so they can, and build a system where they can’t flake on you.”

Michelle Lynne: Yes, exactly.

Laura Sinclair: So it kind of comes down to just smart business systems sometimes too.

Michelle Lynne: Yeah. So what are some of the shifts that you’ve seen with your colleagues or any, any stories that came out of it?

Laura Sinclair: Um, I have, I have a, a colleague that I’m slowly trying to shift towards, going back to it, uh, having a studio class. You know, often when I see them on gigs or lamenting that they, you know, “My…it’s gonna take me forever to get my studio back to where it was. You know, so-and-so graduated.” I’m like, “But you can’t get that if you don’t have your studio class happening anyway. You’re teaching more kids than I am, and you’re playing more gigs than I am. So let’s start to build in that creates the community.” That means that they’re staying. Also, teach online if you need to teach online. I have a lot of friends who are so anti-teaching online that they will drive back from a gig three hours away just teach all day on Saturday and then drive back to the hall to play the Mahler Symphony that night.

Michelle Lynne: Yeah. It’s a lot.

Laura Sinclair: It’s a lot. It’s a lot. And I don’t think it’s a great example for our students either to see a teacher that that’s not taking care of themselves.

Michelle Lynne: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. In terms of audio quality, are you finding that you can get most of the lesson or May is, are these teachers driving three hours ’cause it’s, you know, their, their level 10 student who needs that active approach?

Laura Sinclair: No, I think they’re, they’re driving because it’s, you know, probably needs an afternoon of more creativity to solve the tech problems of like, you know. Throw your ring light in your suitcase and bring a good microphone and then, you know, do spend some extra time with your students, helping them get up and un, having them understand what kind of camera angle you need in order to be able to coach them effectively. So it’s a little bit of like client education and then your own research so that you can, you know, deliver effective instruction too.

Michelle Lynne: Yeah.

Laura Sinclair: But it’s all figureoutable. We, we do way harder things as musicians than these kinds of like little tech problems.

Michelle Lynne: Okay. So you’ve mentioned a couple times not having a weekly lesson, but in your flat rate package deal, it’s, is it not four lessons a month or how do you set it up?

Laura Sinclair: No. So in mine it’s, and everybody’s a little different. Mine includes 35 lessons a year. And so that is a regular lesson time, September through May. Because Florida schools, that allows me to do flexible lessons with them. In August, Florida schools start halfway through August. That allows people to kind of experiment with when they wanna come for a lesson, what the timing looks like in terms of their kids’ energy. Lets them get all of those, chess clubs on Tuesdays, information from everybody.

Michelle Lynne: Yes.

Laura Sinclair: Then I set my schedule to start Labor Day, and then school ends in May. And then that gives me, typically with any. There are orchestra weeks there. I play, I sub a lot with the Naples Philharmonic, and as they like to say, they’re a grownup orchestra, so I can typically fit my teaching in the evenings after their rehearsal schedule. So I’ll just teach online those Naples weeks. But there are other weeks that I have another orchestra I play with. I just don’t teach. So that’s all built into my calendar. The parents aren’t feeling like I’m canceling on them and not giving them their money back. They know that all of those absences are being tracked, and, um, allows me the freedom to go, “Okay, this is just gonna be a heavy week. I don’t have the capacity to teach. I’m not going to, and I don’t have to.”

Michelle Lynne: This is so interesting. I think this might be the first time I’ve heard of a studio set up like this. I mean, I think it’s very smart. So 35 lessons a year, you block your orchestra weeks that you can’t handle and you don’t have parents being, you know, confused with like, “Oh, it’s Tuesday, seven o’clock, and we showed up at your house,” and like, how do you navigate all of that kind of?

Laura Sinclair: You know, somebody always shows up once. You only ever show up once, and then you learn. Then they learn to read the emails.

Michelle Lynne: Okay.

Laura Sinclair: Yeah, so it’s also about, um, it’s also about like smart business systems come from like getting yourself paid, letting everyone know where they need to be and when the schedule is changing. And then, also constant reminders. And so I don’t do that on my own. I’m not set. That sounds like a million emails I don’t wanna send. So there are studio management softwares out there that anybody could use. Um, my favorite is My Music Staff, and that works best for me. That handles, that, sends an email and a text message before every studio, anything, group, class, recital.

Michelle Lynne: Text message is key, man. That’s so helpful.

Laura Sinclair: Yes, yes, big time. You know, you’d be surprised how many people opt out of them.

Michelle Lynne: Okay. Okay.

Laura Sinclair: And then, you know, I’m privileged in my freelance work that like I mostly know what I’m doing. And I’m sure you may, you may be like this as well. You can kind of see where you’re gonna be until I can see where I’m gonna be until June.

Michelle Lynne: Okay. Okay. Wow. Yeah.

Laura Sinclair: Allows me to sit out, sit down, and go, “This week, on these weeks, you’re definitely not gonna have a lesson. You know, these weeks you’ll definitely have a lesson.” Everybody’s kind of planning around it. They get an annual calendar from me that also helps that out with that. I think that what the tuition-based thing helps everybody in both ways. It gets the parent committed. It also keeps you as a performer, if you’re a performer, first, kind of. It also helps you weigh adequately. The gig is worth canceling the lessons.

Michelle Lynne: Interesting. Okay. Because you’re weighing more than the finances now. You’re not trading. Yeah.

Laura Sinclair: Trading. Like if I have to cancel these lessons and I decide that I’m,

Michelle Lynne: I.

Laura Sinclair: Just like, I’m not doing this. Like it’s not a week where you’re just taking off. You need to put them somewhere else.

Michelle Lynne: Yeah.

Laura Sinclair: Reschedule my students at times. Then you’re looking at, okay, I’m gonna miss my daughter’s soccer game. Is that worth it?

Michelle Lynne: Yes. The overall feeling I’m getting listening to you share, this is kind of like space or breathing. I feel like there’s room, adequate room for everything, you know? And like a house is organized, and you’re like, “This goes here and this goes here and here’s how the whole thing like.” The candle’s lit. I don’t know. It just gives this feeling of like relief or sighing or being taken care of. It’s comforting to hear this laid out like that and not chasing that gig. I mean, I guess I’m just describing abundance mindset over the scarcity. Like, “Oh, the phone rings, come tomorrow for this wedding, it’s 200 bucks. Okay, great. I could use that 200. I’m gonna cancel everything.” Schedule them to, like I said, at the beginning of the episode, Sunday afternoon, which normally we try to keep one day off, you know? I mean, tell me more, like what has this given you as a, as a person, as, I don’t know if you have, yeah, space.

Laura Sinclair: Is the perfect word.

Michelle Lynne: Yeah.

Laura Sinclair: Space is the perfect word for it. It’s space to be creative. I think it’s shown up in my performing as me being a more generous and prepared and, and, present performer, which always makes us better.

Michelle Lynne: Hmm.

Laura Sinclair: Um, it gives me the space to not constantly be code switching between roles either. Like, sure, I could teach on a Saturday afternoon if I was doing nothing else, but that means that you have to wake up and like be one role.

Michelle Lynne: Mm.

Laura Sinclair: Make pancakes for your family, and then turn your teacher brain on. I think for me, I like to think of it as just giving myself permission to stay in one role for a set amount of time and then be able to move on to the other thing. ‘Cause as portfolio musicians, you know, we’ve got all these hats that we’re wearing. The exhausting part is constantly changing hats.

Michelle Lynne: Yes, absolutely.

Laura Sinclair: So I think this gives me permission to change my hats less often.

Michelle Lynne: Mm-hmm.

Laura Sinclair: Makes me feel a little bit more steady and sturdy for everybody.

Michelle Lynne: I’m reading a book right now called At Your Best, and it’s about energy management and like our zones of energy and just he categorizes like red, gr, orange, green. Um, so it sounds like yeah, staying in that green zone of like, “I’m being a mom right now,” or “I’m gonna focus on my performance,” or like, “This is a practice morning.” You know, that kind of, actually I had a friend who’s not a musician giving this advice a few years ago, and it changed everything. ‘Cause I was trying to do like my emails, messages, and practice all day. It was like the whole day was just open. And she’s like, “You need to split your admin time from your practicing time.” And I’m like, “But you don’t understand. Someone text me, and they need an answer right now.” It’s like, “Well, do they? Do you?” Because then, because then I gotta go digging through emails and figure out when this thing, you know, and then I’m stuck in, and then I’m trying to go, go back to practice, practice another 20 minutes and then check, you know? It’s just a mess. So it sounds like you’re doing that on a larger scale now. It’s like, “This is my studio time, here’s my practice time.” There’s peace in that.

Laura Sinclair: There’s peace. There’s a lot of peace in that. So for me, my prac, my teaching practice. I typically don’t teach outside of Monday through Thursday.

Michelle Lynne: Okay.

Laura Sinclair: You know, as performers, Monday is almost never touched.

Michelle Lynne: Yeah.

Laura Sinclair: At least where I am. And that’s, that’s sacred group. That’s our group class day.

Michelle Lynne: Yep.

Laura Sinclair: Group class off the weekends. You know, a Suzuki teachers are guilty of always having Saturday morning group classes. Well, in South Florida. We have a large Jewish population that doesn’t do anything on Saturdays.

Michelle Lynne: Got it.

Laura Sinclair: I’m a performer, and I don’t get home until midnight on Fridays. Who wants to take a group class for me at 9:00 AM on Saturday morning?

Michelle Lynne: Oh man. I mean, I’ve done it so many times. 9:00 AM Saturday morning, just chugging the coffee. No, I love that. That’s so smart. Like I, I don’t teach anymore, but I coach, and I’ve put my coaching days. Also, Deanna and I, we work Monday, Tuesdays. ‘Cause most of the days I’m not performing, or like we set the hours, or, you know, most of my one-on-one clients are on those Monday, Tuesdays. So I love having those kind of days assigned to certain hats.

Laura Sinclair: Mm-hmm.

Michelle Lynne: Then you can shift into more like, okay, it’s a performing weekend. Like let’s go get into the performer role.

Laura Sinclair: Yeah. ‘Cause it’s so hard, like a Saturday morning, like, “How am I supposed to teach for students, turn my, turn my performer brain on and do it well for the rest of the…”

Michelle Lynne: Yeah. I mean, we can do it, but we’ve done it for so long, and it’s not, I, I think that’s what leads to this scattered scarcity mindset that we see so many musicians, and I know people who come into our community fast forward. That’s like one of the, even today we had our call and they were talking about energy management and how not to get overwhelmed with the task list and you need to learn all of the new rep, and, and you know, it’s like, okay. Systems and what you’re talking about creating space and boundaries and like assigning times for things and 35 lessons over the year. I mean, this is really interesting. I’m sure this is gonna help a lot of people who are listening.

Laura Sinclair: Yeah. And it’s different for everybody. You know, I work with some people, and they’re like, “I have to, like, I don’t want any vacation time. I, I wanna teach 48 lessons a year.” I’m like, “You, or can we create a little bit more space? When’s the last time you took a vacation?”

Michelle Lynne: Right.

Laura Sinclair: A lot of my, a lot of my, my client, my coaching work is very short term. And it’s like, kind of like, um, it’s like a TLC show for your studio.

Michelle Lynne: So you…

Laura Sinclair: Just a studio makeover.

Michelle Lynne: I love that.

Laura Sinclair: But it always starts with, you know, what’s important. What are the big rocks in your life? What are your major commitments? What are the, what, what do you want life to look like?

Michelle Lynne: Mm.

Laura Sinclair: No one ever asks a music student what you want life to look like.

Michelle Lynne: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Laura Sinclair: It’s all like, “What job do you want? What orchestra do you wanna play with?”

Michelle Lynne: Absolutely. I’m just thinking of my precious bachelor ones that I just spent the year with, like having these conversations, you know, and they’re all just telling me, “I just need to win the audition, you know? Then it’ll be fine.” And I’m like, “You know what? I really hope that you do. I want every dream in your life to be realized, like go for it. But also, if it’s not what you thought it would be, then you have to know that there are other ways to build a fulfilling career.” And that’s why we love having people like you to come on to tell us about that. So if somebody wanted to book a TLC Studio makeover with you, Laura, how would they do that?

Laura Sinclair: They can visit my website, lauraksinclair.com.

Michelle Lynne: I.

Laura Sinclair: Or, and just click. I offer free studio consult calls to anybody who wants to talk teaching with me. Happy to have a conversation. Whether you want, whether you’re interested in a TLC studio makeover, or you just wanna chat teaching. I love these conversations and welcome them at any time. Um, you can also follow me on Instagram. @viola_maverick is the easiest place.

Michelle Lynne: That. Why Maverick?

Laura Sinclair: A long time ago, probably 15 years ago, I was in the middle of opening a music school that didn’t actually happen. And my business partner was like, “No, you’re going to do something different with teaching. Like it’s gonna be different.”

Michelle Lynne: Wow.

Laura Sinclair: Like that. “You’re a maverick.” You know, when I think Maverick, I think like cowboys and… And or Top Gun. But I think I need to lean in. I think you can lean into the, like a maverick is somebody who’s doing something different.

Michelle Lynne: This is actually very, yeah, it was so meaningful to me. ‘Cause I had, um, I’m part of a church, and there was a prayer team that came from England, and this man prayed for me and said, “You’re a maverick.” And I had to go home and look up what that meant. And then TFA started, and I was like, “Oh, like we’re builders. We do things differently. Like we’re pushing against the…” So I love, I love that that’s what it means for you and how great that your business partner saw that in you.

Laura Sinclair: Yeah, probably before I did. Long before I did. That was 15 years, like 10 years before I started doing any of the changing. I was on the hamster wheel for a very long time.

Michelle Lynne: Yeah. Well, thank you for modeling a healthier way to be a thriving musician, and it’s been a real joy to have you on today. Oh, action point. What’s one thing? What’s one thing that everybody can do after listening to this episode, Laura?

Laura Sinclair: Um, I want you to zoom out on your life and figure out what hats you wear and what days those hats can be worn.

Michelle Lynne: Oof. I’m working on that one still, but I have a, I have a pretty good idea. Okay, that’s good. I like that. Okay everybody, thank you for listening. Thank you for tuning in. Make sure you go follow Laura on Instagram and DM her your answer to that question. Uh, if you do listen, make sure you share this to your stories. We’ll reshare and thanks for being here. We’ll see you in the next episode. Bye, Laura. Thank you.

Laura Sinclair: Thank you.