We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Kiara Hall. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Kiara below.
Alright, Kiara thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard.
One thing that I do differently than ANY OTHER MUSIC EDUCATION COMPANY/SCHOOL is I pay my teachers 70% of the profits. I keep my operating costs and advertising at a minimum by capitalizing on word of mouth referrals. I give my teachers a platform to sell materials and swag.
My tenured teachers earn $100/hr. Our company provides tax and wealth management referrals and seminars. All digital classes they contribute to is profit shared for the duration that the product is being sold, which allows them to have recurring revenue that they don’t continue to work for.
Substitute teachers are made available should our head teachers need a break or go on tour.
Students are encouraged to remain with their teachers with or without Kiki’s Music School facilitating. When a student finds a great mentor that decides to move on from Kiki’s Music School we do not fine them for building a meaningful apprenticeship in music.
This model of business is not designed for corporate gains but to foster the creative genius in our students and teachers. Having a living wage that allows teachers to fund their creative lifestyle is what makes us different.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I am a life long creative, musician, and entrepreneur. My father and grandmother are also a musicians and entrepreneurial. One of my favorite stories my family would tell me is about a time I got in trouble for typing shoes for quarters at kindergarten in Paterson, NJ.
A year after having my son and graduating from Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, WA I decided that I wanted to find a way to get paid to practice music. I launched Kiki’s Music School with a listing on Thumbtack as a private piano teacher. 6 years into the business as a sole proprietor I had a few friends from school reach out to me for leads and work.
My first attempt at marketing my own business for others was complete flop! I made the mistake of paying for ads on social media posts that weren’t converting and the algorithms suppressed my content until I continued to pay. I switched gears into client referrals and took off! It cost me no money and scaled my business significantly.
What made getting client referrals easy was my teaching style and bond with my students. I teach music as a form of self expression not strictly on technical execution. The curriculum evolves with the students strengths and musical ear. The techniques they learn are immediately put to use as transferable skills in writing, math, physics, and philosophy. We also dive into music history and appreciation as well as physical training for vocalists. My students and I build an easy going rapport so we can develop skill and give and take critique.
Another reason getting client referrals was easy is because I jam packed a ton of value into my service. In the process of developing my teaching style I have created materials and games all provided at no extra cost. I subscribed to a sheet music platform and created a list of free music platforms that allowed me to share millions of songs to learn. I also provide resources to get instruments for lower prices.
When hiring I intentionally chose teachers that have a diverse music education, varied cultural backgrounds, and that speak multiple languages. I have families that take lessons in Japanese, Spanish, Hindi, and English virtually and in-person. Each teacher has so much to offer and often writing curated lesson material for their students. We also accommodate our autistic students and those who practice music for music therapy.
There is something for everyone! We aim to deliver such thorough music education that students headed to university or college can save money by testing out of freshmen and sophomore classes.
The accomplishment I am most proud of is students that have taken what I’ve taught them and let their curiosity transform their style and technique. I absolutely love the musicianship they’ve developed!
We’d really appreciate if you could talk to us about how you figured out the manufacturing process.
I manufacture my own speciality music notation notebooks. I taught myself adobe so I could create the design of the paper and covers. Then I found an international printing service that would allow me to drop-ship custom books! The only part of this process that costs me money was the Adobe software which I got on a Black Friday/Cyber Monday discount, and my time. The book printing is covered by the customer when they purchase. Prices are phenomenally low and there are also bulk discounts.
Good research and the right service provider will make your vision so much easier to execute.
One lesson I learned was troubleshoot software api implementation on your site 10 times before launching. Having customers unable to order because of a bug in the system will lose you customer relationships! Sandbox orders (fake orders) are not enough trouble shooting. Use a real card to do the transaction and see if it works from mobile, tablet, laptop, chrome, safari, bing, and applepay.
Trademark yo shxt! Look for your product dupes on ever commerce platform you can think of. Be more thorough than the first page of google.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
I had to stop being the main and only employee of my business. Learning to delegate and project/team manage is So important. Scaling will mean taking less personal profit to bring on more staff. Separate yourself from the face of the brand so you can step away or your business will run you instead of you running it.
The transition from being the brand to owning the brand has been the most difficult part of running my business.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.kikismusicschool.com
- Facebook: @kikismusicschool