David Cutler - The Savvy Music Teacher: Blueprint for Maximizing Income & Impact

Practical, inspirational, and incredibly thorough, The Savvy Music Teacher is a book that no independent music teacher should be without!

Brandon Pearce

Founder, Music Teachers Helper

www.musicteachershelper.com

Thank you to David Cutler for creating the Ben Franklins Almanac for independent music teachers, with an engaging combination of practical information and street-smart advice.

Sam Pilafian, tubist

Author, The Breathing Gym

David Cutler hits another musical home run with The Savvy Music Teacher! Presented with infectious prose that illuminates and inspires in equal parts, SMT hits literally every mark for both aspiring and veteran pedagogues. The blueprints, disseminations of complex real life data made charmingly accessible, interviews with countless successful educators, and the authors own rich experience as a world-class performer, teacher, and entrepreneur should be required reading for every musician.

John W. Parks IV, percussionist

Associate Professor of Percussion

The Florida State University

How refreshing to read a book that demonstrates how financial success and passionate dedication to a students success are not mutually exclusive, but are in fact inexorably intertwined! David Cutlers The Savvy Music Teacher discusses ways educators can stay true to their core values and, at the same time, build a viable, sustainable business.

Nina Perlove, flutist

The Internet Flutist

www.realfluteproject.com

As a brand new SMT, The Savvy Music Teacher helped me pave the way to a solid start-up studio. With countless blueprints, artistic initiatives, and financial models, this book has become one of my most valuable resources.

Estela Aragon, trumpeter

Trumpeter and founder, MusicFit Academy

www.musicfitacademy.com

This book is an enormous resource for teachers and administrators. Emboldened by the information within, teachers may ascend to Savvy early in their careers rather than climbing a slow learning curve over the course of time. If teachers want to be respected as professionals they must continue to grow and to present themselves professionally.

Ronda Cole, violinist

Suzuki Association of the Americas, Teacher Trainer

If success leaves clues, then David Cutler leaves footprints for readers to follow in pursuit of their own goals and dreams. Any musician committed to using the tools provided in The Savvy Music Teacher is sure to make a successful living teaching music.

Mike McAdam, guitarist

School Director, North Main Music

Author, The Private Guitar Studio Handbook

www.northmainmusic.com

David Cutler provides answers and solutions sorely needed by teachers, while encouraging us to value ourselves and the work we do. Are you worth it or not? Take the first step by saying yes and read this book!

Christian Howes, jazz violinist

Performer/educator/producer

www.christianhowes.com

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David Cutler 2015

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cutler, David, 1971 author.

The savvy music teacher : blueprint for maximizing income & impact / by David Cutler.

pages cm

ISBN 9780190200817 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN 9780190200824 (pbk. : alk. paper) eISBN 9780190200848

1.MusicInstruction and study.2.Music teachers.3.MusicEconomic aspects.4.MusicVocational guidanceI.Title.

ML3795.C88 2015

780.71dc23

2014050059

Philip Johnston

Music education is an apprenticeship with an unfortunate quirk: it frequently delivers graduates with elite artistic skills who are clueless about how to set up their own workshops.

The short-term consequence is that when recent college music graduates stagger blinking into the sunlight, theyre likely to be authorities on Dorian mode but not demographics, melisma but not marketing. They can analyze a fugue, troubleshoot intonation, and correctly identify tenor clef but are unable to build a website, craft a business plan, or manage their own taxes.

The longer-term consequence of such blinkered preparation?

Nothing.

Not nothing in the reassuring sense of the word, but quite literally nothing, in all its horrifying abyssal absence-of-anything voidness. Opportunities are not created. Performances dont take place. The musicians name doesnt come up in conversation. Events are not patronized. Parents seeking lessons dont call. It is a nothing that is frequently the catalyst for an insidious, bleak, anonymizing slide into this whole music thing didnt work out, which all too many musicians try to cure simply by practicing harder, until one day they decide not to practice at all.

Independent music teachers are a product of that same guild, too often struggling with this basic disconnect between the skills with which theyve been equipped and the practical realities with which theyre routinely confronted. They can play to an expert level, certainly; theyre well versed in pedagogical theory and have an encyclopedic knowledge of teaching repertoire and learning systems. But they dont have training in how to plan for, set up, run, resource, promote, expand, leverage, and diversify the small business that is a teaching studio.

Why would they? Most of those skills have nothing to do with musicianship, which is precisely why too many musicians treat them with disdain or fear. I am an artiste, is the protest. I do not need to concern myself with such things.

Yes you do. Heres why:

Musicians with successful teaching studios are financially secure enough to continue chasing their dream of being a musician. Secure enough, whether their actual music making generates reliable income or not. Secure enough, not just for the rest of this year or the next, but for the rest of their working lives. In a profession where excellence normally takes decades to incubate, and success therefore belongs only to the prodigy or the patient, time is the only currency that truly matters. Being able to