La Bene Vita

Wednesday

*stares at the WDC declaration, "BLOG - Last: 6 Days ago"*

We are at 138 students, which is not as high as I wanted to be this close to the end of the month. But we have four samplers going with really good batches of students who all seem to want to be there, so we are pretty sure most of them will enroll. The last batch of samplers seemed to have kids whose parents were making them take the classes. We also have a drum sampler starting next week that has one opening left. W00t! My only worry is our adult songwriting class. Lots of people say they want to take a songwriting class. Few actually enroll.

Now, if I could just get our summer camp program in order. It's a logistical nightmare, because we need teachers, but we can't let them go over 40 hours, and we need rooms, but we're currently scheduling day classes and will have to work around them, and we need space and curricula and advertising, but we need to know how many students we can accommodate first. And we need it fast, because advertising and enrollments take time.

Meanwhile, we hired two new teachers and extended offers to three computer lab attendants. We are confident that all three candidates will accept our offer, so we should be officially announcing their hires by the end of the week. That makes 15 employees: 10 teachers (one of whom is also the assistant manager), 3 lab attendants, the office manager, and yours truly, a.k.a the site manager. We have the BEST employees. I only have concerns about one or two of them, and I'm just keeping my eye on the situation. For the most part, we seem to have assembled a crazy cohesive band of music lovers.

We found an existing online scheduling database called JackRabbit, and Chris tried it out. It has pros and cons. It seems more geared toward a dance studio than a music studio. But we're considering signing up for a trial to really test it out - AFTER we hire a receptionist and have the manpower to duplicate our scheduling for a month.

I find myself in need of an electronic drum set, two pianos, and a somewhat-major renovation to keep up with our growth, all of which I have been spending time evaluating and pricing. This is an expensive business. But I get to buy cool toys, so who am I to complain?

But life is busy. Yesterday alone, I was confronted with four dropped balls (all my responsibility.) I hate letting people down. I also am keeping a close eye on cash flow, because the growth is costing us some investments, and I don't normally like cutting it so close.

And I'm eating. What do you want? People gotta eat. I suppose they don't need to eat pizza, candy, and huge meals at the Japanese steakhouse, but that's a problem for another day. Specifically, tomorrow. Or Monday at the latest. You know how I love new weeks... and this one almost coincides with a new month, so perhaps refreshed goals will be in order next week.

Peace out.