A Better Option: My Move Out of Evernote and Into Notion

We’re three days into 2025, and if there’s one thing I know for sure, it’s that a lot can change in one year in the world of technology.

One year ago, I was sharing with you on the podcast how I had moved 80% of what I do into Notion but left 10% in Evernote. Mostly, I kept ahold of Evernote for articles and reference items I didn’t access much but didn’t want to let go of. I got tired of Evernote bugging me to upgrade, so several months ago, I finally exported the rest of my content from Evernote and into Notion.

Fast forward 12 months, and now, 90% of my life is organized in Notion. You may wonder, “What about the final 10%?” While we all have this fantasy of being able to do everything in one place, I just don’t think it’s realistic!

In this post, I’ll give you a little visual comparison of the difference between Evernote and Notion (two note-taking and productivity apps), share the process I went through for moving out of Evernote and into Notion, explain more of my reasoning behind the 10% that’s not in notion.

If you’re an Evernote user looking to move into Notion or just looking for a quality app for managing your studio and life, I hope you’ll walk away feeling inspired by what Notion can do for you.

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136 – How Valerie Merrell Uses Notion to Manage Her Studio

Subscribe on Apple PodcastsSpotifyOvercast, Amazon Music, iHeart RadioCastboxPocket CastsRadio Public or wherever you get your podcasts!

Amy talks with Valerie Merrell, a piano teacher from Indiana, about how she utilizes Notion – a productivity and note-taking app – to manage her piano studio.

Subscribe

Join Amy’s email list

Support the Podcast

https://pianopantry.com/patreon

Items Mentioned and Other Related Content

Notion App

Evernote

Organize Your Life With Notion (Workshop)

Digital Organization Coaching with Amy

Podcast Episode 105 – Evernote vs. Notion

Podcast Episode 109 – Amy & Joy: Ways We Used Notion This Week

Access Bonus Notion Tour Videos

Transcript

Welcome to episode 136 of The Piano Pantry Podcast. I’m Amy Chaplin, your host—a piano teacher who also loves talking about digital tools and productivity. We are at the end of a 3-part conversation series here on the podcast with teachers on how they are utilizing Notion to manage their music studios.

In episode 134, we heard from Jill Gilbert, a teacher from Washington State. Last week, you heard from Stephanie Thompson, a teacher from Michigan, and today, you’ll hear from Valerie Merrell, a teacher from Indiana.

Notion is an awesome productivity and note-taking app that my friend Joy Morin and I have become pretty passionate about using over the past few years. We’ve developed methods and systems for managing teacher life using Notion and are now working to help our independent teacher community discover this wonderful tool.

Each of the three teachers sharing with you in this series participated in our workshop this past March – a workshop that we will be running again on September 20-21.

In this live two-day workshop, we share our methods and systems for managing teacher life using Notion. We’ll not just teach you HOW to use Notion; we’ll also teach you how WE use Notion. Registration is open. Visit PianoPantry.com/notion for more details.

And now, let’s hear from Valerie.


Amy: Well, Valerie, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here today. And would you just start by introducing yourself and letting everyone know what your studio currently looks like?

Valerie: Sure. Yeah. Thank you. I love visiting with you. So this is always great. So, I usually have between 25 and 30 students in my studio. There are usually two to three virtual ones that I’ve kept from previous states I’ve lived in and that jumped up. One of them referred a bunch of family members, and so I now have seven that are virtual as well. And so, for some of those, I overlap lessons so that the students get private lesson time and ensemble time weekly, which is fantastic. But that’s pretty much my comfort zone; sitting around there with 25 to 30-ish students is what I prefer.

Amy: So now Valerie and I are real-life friends, too. She lives in Indianapolis, so we’re only maybe an hour and a half, two hours from each other, and have been part of the state board and things like that together. And she’s been on this podcast several times, I think. We had a conversation in 2022 or something like that, about attending grad school later in life, which we both did. And then you’ve also been a part of my Tonara podcast episodes, I think. Right, Sherry?

Valerie: Yes, that’s correct. Yes, yes.

Amy: So I told her, I’m like, you may be the person that’s been on here the most. And that’s what happens when you’re friends with the podcaster.

Valerie: Oh, always fun though. Always fun.

Amy: When did you discover Notion, and how long have you been using it?

Valerie: Joy Morin introduced me to Notion in the summer of 2021. I remember that very specifically because it was during the virtual NCKP conference. And so a few of us had rented a house and were staying together, and she showed some little snippets of how she was using it. It was very early, I think, in her exploration of it, so she wasn’t completely advocating for it or, you know, sold on it, but she was just exploring it a little bit.

I just really love organizational devices, whether they’re physical or digital, and I fell in love with them. So, I poked around at it for a little bit. There were some that you could do initially without delving into too much. And so I did that for a while, and then I decided to. Do a getting things done database if you’re familiar with that.

So “Getting Things Done” is this book and this system. I set it up following this YouTube tutorial, and it was fantastic because it’s pretty powerful, and I would never have been able to do that on my own. And it would have taken forever if I tried to figure out how to do that. So, I really appreciate the YouTube tutorial, and I have used it for years.

I continue to use that, and it’s really fantastic. Then I just slowly started using it more for the studio and really loved the functionality that I found. And I also, so I took the Notion workshop. That you and Joy did. What was so fantastic about that was that sometimes when you use a product, you get pretty comfortable using the few parts you have used but don’t take the time to explore other things.

And so. There were quite a number of super easy things, but I never would have found them, you know, unless I had taken time to explore on my own, and obviously, I wasn’t doing it. And so, I feel like my creativity and the potential, the options ballooned with the information presented so clearly to me. So, I put pretty much anything I can put in Notion these days.

Amy: Yeah, me too. And it’s just baby steps. You know, when you start using a new product, sometimes you’re just dabbling, learning it, slowly moving into it, until it just becomes like, you’re everything. And that’s how I feel like Notion is.

I love how you said when you first started using it, you know, you watched that YouTube video, and it was so helpful in kind of getting you started because I feel like, With Notion sometimes people start using it, and they’re just a little bit unsure how to organize it even though it’s it has a great structure that you can create with it. Sometimes, it’s just like needing that first step to help you figure out the best way of making it more functional.

All right, so now let’s get into some specifics. Would you mind just telling us how you use it in your studio?

Valerie: Oh yeah, so I can’t count the ways. I started listing – like I made a list of a bunch. So professionally, I use that with being the, the gym to the local music teachers of the association president, I use it to organize quite a bit of information and we are setting up our very first piano ensemble event this November, I’m thrilled about it. I have also kept all of the organizational information here, like the venues.

The venue comparisons and such so that I also have all that information for future years. And piano rentals, repertoire, and just so many moving parts. So, I’ve used that in the professional aspect of my music career as it goes. But I also, For my studio. I do. I have a studio dashboard, and I have a massive amount of pages off of it, which I access quite often and some that are there more for reference.

So, as I was going through the list in preparing for this, I remembered I have my Christmas or, excuse me, my Christmas list. Ornament list. So for, for every year, I have a theme that I do. And so two years ago was Legos. And then last year was whatever it was, you know what I mean? And this year is detectives. And so I do an ornament that goes along with that theme. And so that’s just a quick reference place that I don’t have to like, think back through what those are. So it’s things as simple as that, but it keeps the information organized so I don’t have to recall… okay, what did I do 3 years ago? What did I do 2 years ago?

It’s stuff I would not access terribly often, but it’s definitely helpful to still have. And then I have information like. Events that I don’t want to do yearly. So we often have, you know, like a fall recital or spring recital and the things that we know we consistently do every year in our studios, but I like to do some events, not every year and I don’t want to keep reinventing the wheel with creating them or considering when was I going to do that?

When did I do that? How far will it be until I want to do it again? So, keeping a multi-year rotational schedule type thing like we did silent films last year, and I don’t want to do that every year, but I’d like to do it probably every two years, and so I can now have that in the rotation things like that.

Amy: And seeing it all together you can really just see that visual like you said of like okay every four years I might do this every five years I might do this and it’s just nice like seeing it in one glance.

Valerie: Exactly, especially when considering a student’s longevity with me. And so how many times will they experience this thing? Yeah. And so I have it broken out by season and, then I am working on, well, when I started, I was trying to decide how I actually wanna do this? Because there are so many ways that you could put the information in, sometimes that’s a deterrent.

And so I find value sometimes in check, like trying it out a couple of different ways, like segmenting it by season and then more of an overview by year to see which is more practical for my purposes, which I actually refer to more. Yeah. This past summer. I created a summer list by week, just a simple project list because there are always so many projects floating around in my head or ideas or things to consider.

And it was, it’s Sometimes too overwhelming to have a massive to do list, and I have in the past created like a dump list of ideas in general. Well, how often do you go back and reference that kind of thing, you know? Yeah. It’s good to get out of the brain, but sometimes it’s just too overwhelming to go back and look at, you know.

And so seeing the information or the task, the ideas segmented by week was like, that’s a throwaway list. I won’t go back and access that again, but it was fantastic for that brief period of time. So I have these, you know, these pages that I use regularly and these pages that I use seasonally. And then I’ve also found value in, okay, just for this one thing, I’m going to do this.

Amy: Yeah,

Valerie: I also use it for event preparation. Certainly. Yeah. And one of my favorites is my new student checklist. I always thought, okay, do this and this and this and this. And, you know, then 10 minutes before they walked in, I was like, oh, let’s do this and this and this, you know, 10 minutes after they walked out, oh, more, you know, and so just really making sure I had a sequence of when students that initially sent in an inquiry and, you know just documenting their process and they became a new student and then having like all the things to check off once you’re a new student and then also moving them past that into kind of the continuing education segment of their, their life in my studio type thing. Yeah.

Amy: So I’m curious, you mentioned, you know, managing projects and like having weekly management through the summer and just making it feel more like it wasn’t just a dumping grounds, but more of just a way of helping you plan it out more easily and also then let go of it when it was complete. How did Notion help with that as opposed to how you may have done that prior? Can you try to be more descriptive? How did that play out exactly?

Valerie: I have a few thoughts on that. The first one is that it was really easy to set up and customize specifically with, like, you know, I’m thinking about this. Throw away one for the summer, right? And I was able to customize it much more to my liking. Not that making something visually pleasing is super important, but when it’s a big part of your life, you know, it’s lovely to see something that you enjoy seeing or that you created. And previously, I had been using like Excel or Google Docs or, you know, that type of thing. And so I didn’t enjoy looking at those.

Amy: Yeah. It makes a difference.

Valerie: Yeah. So that enjoyment factor was great. I really like how you can nest things on the side panel. So when I first started, I didn’t realize this, and I would just create pages. And so I would. Have all these pages on the side and I would have to go select what I wanted.

And then in the course that you did in the workshop, one of the first things was that you exposed us to this idea of like a dashboard. And then we could nest these things underneath that. And then I can nest some things underneath those. And so the organization. was significantly easier to find things much more logical. So I appreciated that very much.

Amy: So being able to layer things into levels basically and create almost like a breadcrumb similar to how you would like on a web, a website, you know, where you have different levels of pages within pages.

Valerie: I think one thing that I value so much as well is Being able to keep such a variety of styles of documents within one system, because before I was jumping between lots of programs and different places that things were saved, and You know, even now, sometimes somebody will say, Oh, do you want to save this to one drive? Or do you want to collaborate with this on another platform? It just becomes overwhelming when you have so many options for where to find something.

I have to go when I look for something I created or worked on 4 or 5 years ago, there’s quite a number of places to look because things were just organized, but in a scattered organized fashion, I suppose, you know, and it just visually felt overwhelming, you know, even yesterday, my husband asked if I wanted to transfer something like a document to him, and I was on an apple, and he was not.

And so. I was saying, well, you know, you don’t use this. What would be the easiest way? And he said, well, “how about OneDrive”? And my body just shutters…”oh, that’s another one I haven’t used in a while.” Now I have to go flame the login. I have to figure it out, you know? And so I, I just was like, well, how about let’s do, you know, if I can keep things to Google Drive and Notion, it makes my life much easier.

Amy: Yeah. I, my husband luckily has gotten onto Notion as well. So it’s just been so much better because we can do vacation planning, and we can share pages, and we can both contribute to the page. And it’s just a different experience than sharing on a Google Doc or something like that. What has been the most surprising thing about using Notion, or maybe your favorite thing?

Valerie: I think the versatility. When I was initially introduced to it, and explored it a little bit, I really was looking more for, looking at it as a, Oh, you know, this can replace my spreadsheets. And it really is so much more than that.

It’s, it’s, and it’s fun to explore. The ease of customizing is just so fantastic. And I am not like a scrapbooker. I’m not a super crafty person in right ways. And it just offers enough balance for me to do something. So it looks pleasing and fun, but I don’t feel pressure to do a lot. And I don’t feel overwhelmed because of that.

Amy: Yeah, I’m the same way. I, like, I’m not a crafter. I used to do scrapbooking in high school and stuff, but yeah, the artsy stuff to me does not come naturally. Like, you know, some people do beautiful bullet journaling and, you know, all the artwork that they design, you know, that’s just never been me, but this allows an outlet to kind of have a little artsy side where you can create designs and layouts and looks that you enjoy and have fun with it without getting crazy.

Valerie: Agreed. Agreed. And I think, you know, when I think of a spreadsheet, it’s always the joke. When I’m talking to somebody and an idea comes up, I’m like, Oh, spreadsheet time. Right. I love spreadsheets. I love color coding. I love. And that’s, you know, when you think about crafty things, the things that spark joy in my soul or something often look at organizational things.

And this just allows you to tweak them it fairly easily into something that’s even a little bit more visually pleasing. So despite what your style is, or regardless of what your style is, you can probably do even more super creative, crafty-ish things with it. Or you can keep it fairly streamlined and, you know, simple and clear, but still add some fun elements, I think.

Amy: Well, thanks so much for being here today, Valerie. It’s been so fun chatting with you and hearing how you use Notion in your studio. You’ve given us a great picture of what that can look like and the possibilities, and I’m sure our listeners have been inspired today. So, thanks for being here.

Valerie: Oh, yeah. Thank you.


Amy: Guess what, friends?! Each episode of this Notion series includes a video tour where Jill, Stephanie, and Valerie give you a look into their Notion account so you can see firsthand how it looks and feels.

You can access this bonus content by joining my Patreon Community. For just $7 a month, you’ll also get access to quarterly presentations, regular tiny tips from me, weekly power hours, and email processing support. Join at the Insider level today at PianoPantry.com/patreon.

It’s a pretty sweet bonus if you ask me, especially since your monthly support also helps cheer on the continued creation of this podcast.

These video tours will also be included in the resource hub Joy and I created for our Notion workshop attendees.

Register for Organize Your Life with Notion by September 6 to receive $30 off. Visit PianoPantry.com/notion for more details.

135 – How Stephanie Thompson is Using Notion to Manage Her Studio

Subscribe on Apple PodcastsSpotifyOvercast, Amazon Music, iHeart RadioCastboxPocket CastsRadio Public or wherever you get your podcasts!

Guest host Joy Morin talks with Stephanie Thompson, a piano teacher from Michigan, about how she utilizes Notion – a productivity and note-taking app – to manage her piano studio.

Subscribe

Join Amy’s email list

Support the Podcast

https://pianopantry.com/patreon

Items Mentioned and Other Related Content

Notion App

Evernote

Organize Your Life With Notion (Workshop)

Digital Organization Coaching with Amy

Podcast Episode 105 – Evernote vs. Notion

Podcast Episode 109 – Amy & Joy: Ways We Used Notion This Week

Access Bonus Notion Tour Videos

Transcript

Amy: Welcome to episode 135 of The Piano Pantry Podcast. I’m Amy Chaplin, your host—a piano teacher who also loves talking about digital tools and productivity. We are in the middle of a 3-part conversation series here on the podcast with teachers on how they are utilizing Notion to manage their music studios.

Last week, we heard from Jill Gilbert, a teacher from Washington State. Today, you’ll hear from Stephanie Thompson, a teacher from Michigan, and next week, you’ll hear from Valerie Merrell, a teacher from Indiana.

Notion is an awesome productivity and note-taking app that my friend Joy Morin and I have become pretty passionate about using over the past few years. We’ve developed methods and systems for managing teacher life using Notion and are now working to help our independent teacher community discover this wonderful tool.

Each of the three teachers you will hear from in the coming weeks participated in our live workshop held this past March – a workshop that we will be running again on September 20-21.

In this live two-day workshop, we share our methods and systems for managing teacher life using Notion. We’ll not just teach you HOW to use Notion; we’ll also teach you how WE use Notion. Registration is open. Visit PianoPantry.com/notion for more details.

A special thanks to Joy for hosting today’s conversation with Stephanie.


Joy: Hello Stephanie, thanks for being with me. It’s great to have you. Would you take a moment and just introduce yourself to us and tell us a little bit about your studio teaching?

Stephanie: Yeah, so my name is Stephanie Thompson. I’ve been teaching for 20 years this summer. And I’ve had a studio of about 35 students for the past 10 years. So this is my first year. Full time gig. I teach mostly in person, but I do have a few online students and I have, I follow the traditional lesson format where it’s one on one private lessons anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes.

Joy: Awesome. That’s great. I’m excited to hear a little bit about how you’ve been using Notion. So we’ll get to that. First, I want to ask, so when did you discover Notion, and how long have you been using it now?

Stephanie: It was through you and Amy about less than a year ago, I would say. So I haven’t been using it for that long. Before that, I was an Evernote user since 2012. Oh. So it’s been. I finally got everything transferred in preparation for this. That was my impetus to get everything transferred over all of my notes and my Evernote is at zero right now. So that feels great.

Joy: Awesome. That’s great. Okay, cool. So, let’s dive into it. Would you tell us a bit about how you’re using Notion specifically for your piano studio?

Stephanie: Yes. So, my favorite thing right now is email templates. So, I do the same four recitals in my studio each year. We have a cider and doughnuts meet and greet recital in the fall. It’s the informal recital where we play outside and eat cider and doughnuts. I have my holiday recital in December. We have our awards recital in May, then a summer pop recital in August, and I keep that same format year to year.

It’s been pretty regular for about five years now, and I plan on keeping it that with the same regularity. I like it. My students like knowing what to prepare for the upcoming year. And we’ll do one-off things here and there, but that’s the main core. We do the same events throughout the year as well, like festival MTA student achievement testing and guild auditions, and they tend to happen at the same times of the year, too.

So, I have my email templates for each month. So I can see, okay, I need to send out the fall registration and the last invoice of the year info in June. I need to send out my high school diploma photo request for Guild Notes magazine for any students who earned their diplomas, and I need to send out the June studio class information.

I can see in November, I need to send out my festival and SAT registration info. And what I have is I have pages with it. The emails that I sent in previous years, so basically, all I need to do is go through and change dates, and if there are any small differences, I change those. It’s nice because I don’t have to think that much.

Sending emails would always take me a lot of time, and I would be nervous sending them. I had to make sure everything was just right and worded correctly. Do I give them too much information? Not enough information? And my emails have been very well crafted over the years, so it’s nice to reuse them over and over again.

And then at the top, I have my new lesson inquiry response. If I have a waitlist, I will have my new lesson inquiry response when I have an opening. I have a no-lessons reminder. I have an invoice reminder. So that’s my favorite part about using Notion. It’s all right there, and I can just copy and paste it.

A lot of what I use Notion for is very simple. It’s just text notes. I don’t use it as powerfully as you and Amy do, but I just need a place to keep track of all of my information in one place and have it be instantly accessible. Whether it’s on my phone or my laptop so I can pull up my studio class groups right away, Those are all in there I have my recital planning checklist, where I have my four recitals listed out, and I have my holiday recital packing list, so I know to bring the Christmas tree, the Christmas lights, the fake presents, everything that I need to get for that.

I have all of my recital welcome speeches from years past, so when it comes time for recital time, I don’t need to hem and haw over what am I going to say, I’ll look at what I said last year. I always have new things that I add to and change, but if I didn’t know what to say, I wouldn’t stress because I have years of recital speeches that I could just change a little bit. So that was helpful, too.

I’ve got my Piano Studio waitlist. I used your template for it, which was nice. I simplified it a little bit. I like things to be really simple, so I could use them very quickly. But I used your template, which was really handy. I’ve got my Annie’s music order, which is a local music store.

And anytime I have something that I need, I just add it in there. Then I copy and paste it into an email to her at the end of the week, and she gets that. I’ve got some fall scheduling notes. So that’s what I use it for in my piano studio in a nutshell.

Joy: Wow, that’s amazing. I’m so excited to hear about how you’re using Notion. You hit on so many different great ways to use it. I think Notion is just a great landing place to just put anything text wise that you might use again as a reference, or like you were saying, things like emails that you might send the next year recital speeches, like you said it’s just great not having this. Documents in your computer or old emails deep in your inbox, but having a go-to place where it’s neat and organized and you can reference things.

Stephanie: I have under my professional block here, and I guess this is piano studio-related. I have my teaching repertoire. Again, everything is all text. It’s all text, which is just perfect because if I am looking at one of the Facebook groups like Piano Teacher Central, and they’re doing this, Oh, what are all the great Halloween pieces that you know, or I need some flashy, late intermediate piece, I can just say, Oh, I’m going to type that in Facebook When I need that, I can just pull that out for later.

And then I have my reference notes section, which is just a bunch of pages within that page. And if I go to a conference, I have my NCKP notes. I have any conference notes. I actually just used it today with my last lesson. I was going through with my student the four stages of learning a piece of music, and I wanted to say exactly how it had been presented at the conference, so I just held up that note. It took me about five seconds, and I don’t even have the best organization. It’s just the pages chronologically, but they’re all in that one place. I was able to pull that up for the student as we talked about that concept.

Joy: That’s awesome. It’s a great example that you could just pull it up today. The search feature in Notion is really good, too. So that can be even if you’re still organizing or figuring out how to organize your sub-pages within your pages. That’s why I use the search feature all the time, too.

Stephanie: Oh, I use search for so many other things, so I will have to use that in Notion for sure.

Joy: Awesome. That’s great. Would you like to share maybe just one last like favorite thing about in general how you’re using Notion or maybe one specific favorite thing?

Stephanie: My favorite thing is the email templates. I led with that. That’s my favorite because I don’t like to spend time thinking about emails. I just like to send them. I don’t want my time inbox to be full. And I’m gonna use it for a lot of personal stuff, too. Like my exercise plan, I have a PDF with links to the YouTube videos I’m supposed to do for the week, and I just click on those, and I think my favorite part is just how accessible it is, though.

You can pull it up on your phone, and it’s there. jot down a quick note. It doesn’t take a lot of time. Other apps that I had used in the past would take a while to load, or they would say, they would always pop up with the window. Do you want to upgrade? No, I want to make my note before I forget it.

Joy: It’s been awesome hearing, just in a nutshell, how you’re using Notion for your studio. Stephanie, thank you so much. I’m thrilled to hear all the examples you shared with us. It’s very inspiring. So thank you.

Stephanie: Of course.


Amy: Guess what, friends?! Each episode of this Notion series includes a video tour where Jill, Stephanie, and Valerie will give you a look into their Notion account so you can see firsthand how it looks and feels.

You can access this bonus content by joining my Patreon Community. For just $7 a month, you’ll also get access to quarterly presentations, regular tiny tips from me, weekly power hours, and email processing support. Join at the Insider level today at PianoPantry.com/patreon that’s PianoPantry.com/patreon.

It’s a pretty sweet bonus, if you ask me, especially since your monthly support also helps cheer on the continued creation of this podcast.

These video tours will also be included in the resource hub Joy and I created for our Notion workshop attendees.

Register for this Organize Your Life with Notion workshop by September 6 to receive $30 off. Visit PianoPantry.com/notion for more details.

134 – How Jill Gilbert is Using Notion to Manage Her Studio

Subscribe on Apple PodcastsSpotifyOvercast, Amazon Music, iHeart RadioCastboxPocket CastsRadio Public or wherever you get your podcasts!

Amy talks with Jill Gilbert, a piano teacher from Washington State, about how she utilizes Notion – a productivity and note-taking app – to manage her piano studio.

Subscribe

Join Amy’s email list

Support the Podcast

https://pianopantry.com/patreon

Items Mentioned and Other Related Content

Notion App

Evernote

Organize Your Life With Notion (Workshop)

Digital Organization Coaching with Amy

Podcast Episode 105 – Evernote vs. Notion

Podcast Episode 109 – Amy & Joy: Ways We Used Notion This Week

Access Bonus Notion Tour Videos

Transcript

Welcome to episode 134 of The Piano Pantry Podcast. I’m Amy Chaplin, your host—a piano teacher who also loves talking about digital tools and productivity. I am especially excited to bring you a series of three conversations over the next few weeks with teachers on how they are utilizing Notion to manage their music studios.

Today, you’ll hear from Jill Gilbert, a teacher from Washington State. Next week, you’ll hear from Stephanie Thompson, a teacher from Michigan, and finally, from Valerie Merrell, a teacher from Indiana.

Notion is an awesome productivity and note-taking app that my friend Joy Morin and I have become pretty passionate about using over the past few years. We’ve developed methods and systems for managing teacher life using Notion and are now working to help our independent teacher community discover this wonderful tool.

Each of the three teachers you will hear from in the coming weeks participated in our live workshop held this past March – a workshop that we will be running again on September 20-21.

In this live two-day workshop, we share our methods and systems for managing teacher life using Notion. We’ll not just teach you HOW to use Notion; we’ll also teach you how WE use Notion. Registration opens on Monday, August 26.

And now, let’s hear how Jill Gilbert is using Notion.


Well, Jill, thank you so much for being on today and being willing to share with our listeners on a little bit of what notion looks like for you in your studio. Would you please start out by just introducing yourself, though, and let us know what your current studio looks like.

Jill: Yeah, sure. Yeah, thanks for letting me be a part of it, Amy. So yeah, my name’s Jill, and I have a studio in my home. I’ve been teaching for a couple of years. And I am in central Washington. And Notion has helped me get a a system in place so that I can have all my thoughts. Out of my head that don’t need to be taking up the space in my head because I have a really busy life at my house just apart from my studio. So Notion helps just keep things kind of under control.

Amy: And you’ve only been teaching for a couple of years, right?

Jill: I’m about to start my third year, yeah.

Amy: You’re kind of lucky in a way that you’ve been able to utilize Notion, not completely from the start, but in your early days.

Jill: I’ve heard that, yeah, I came in because I lodged an earlier bullet that could have otherwise been a mess to clean up.

Amy: Right, exactly. So when did you discover Notion? Had you been using it prior to the workshop that we did? How long have you been using it?

Jill: I think it’s because I originally heard it when I did the digital organization workshop with you. And that was just an option that we had talked about for ways to organize online stuff and I think it was just one of the options.

Evernote was another option. And at that point, Notion looked Kind of complicated to me. So I just stuck with Evernote cause I knew it and it was working just fine. But then I got into it because of the price increase with Evernote. And I realized after getting to spend some time with Notion, that it was a lot crisper anyway.

And so it just, it just took a little bit of pulling the trigger to give, give it a try before realizing it was a lot better than, a lot better of a system than Evernote.

Amy: Definitely. And I really like that word that you just said, that it’s crisper. Because I agree. There’s just such an almost minimalist feel about it. It’s just clean. It’s crisp is a great way of describing it.

Jill: Definitely.

Amy: In the digital organization workshop that you talked about, in the early days when I did it, one of the sessions I did was called “Daily Capture and Save,” and that’s where we talked about things like Notion and Evernote. I actually don’t do that particular session anymore just because there are so many other things to cover.

Jill: Oh, okay. Yeah, for sure.

Amy: So, that’s why we used to have a session about that, those kinds of things. All right, now let’s dig in just a little bit. I would love to hear how you’re actually using Notion in your music studio.

Jill: Well I use it to kind of just have everything in one place that applies to different things that I pull from online or that I need to deposit online. It used to just be everything I would just kind of save into my, into a folder on my desktop. And I would have all kinds of tiers and stuff of where things were saved. But I could never actually see everything all at once without having to kind of thumb through all the different folders on my desktop.

So I do still have that system on my desktop because I want to have things that are not connected to the internet that I want to have saved kind of long term, but what I do for Notion is for my studio. I have just all the different departments where my brain, where I have things to organize and where I have things to plan and execute.

That’s particularly useful for getting resources online or getting things put online. It just communicates better that way, and has it all in one place so I can see everything, and then I can be more efficient with my planning and my executions.

Amy: I would love to hear a few specifics. Maybe give us a few details.

Jill: My goal is to get lesson planning up there. I haven’t done it yet. It’s still in my summer bucket list. Find a system for summer, for lesson planning on there. Yeah, but yeah, totally. Student documents things that all the registration things that come in from, from my tally forms. I’ll go, I’ll get dumped into Notion.

So then that’s all in one place. All of my, even just the curriculum of each student and what they’ve done and what they’ve performed and where we’re headed and, you know, just my notes of what, what each student is working on or ideas of what I want them to be able to try. Or, you know, short-term slash and long-term goals, both, I guess, for each student.

I keep things on there like communicating with parents, just really quick. Phrases that I need to use or templates for emails I can tweak and also just kind of, you know, drag things in and out from my inbox really easily. I guess the other one is just another place where I start, where I dump just ideas of like things that I need to change in my studio or things that I want to implement in theory time, or when my students are doing lab time, stuff like that.

Amy: So you’re using an online form, so Tally and Tally connects to databases in Notion. So when your students register, do they fill out the form, then it sends it into a database, so you keep all their student details there, correct?

And then you have pages, maybe for each individual student, where you track their details, their repertoire. Ideas for the future, things for that student. Little notes, things like that. Yes. Yeah. And then I love the idea of having a place where you can save ideas for the future. Maybe things you want to remember to do for your studio or that you’re looking forward to, or little notes like that as well.

So, it’s so easy to sometimes have ideas about things but not have a place designated to drop those ideas and those thoughts, and then they kind of get lost, or they’re scattered all over the place.

Jill: Oh, or multiple places where those ideas end up going. So then it’s a lot of chasing my own brain of where, where was I, where was I thinking? And where was I going to make myself run into that idea again later on?

Amy: You were talking about emails with parents as well. I recently just got some emails. I had it in my Evernote account. I’ve been slowly moving things over. But I recently transferred some email templates that I do like as a series to families.

Like, “have you had your piano tuned recently”? Or, you know, here’s one little practice tip, “how you can build habits within your daily life,” and things like that. So kind of the same thing. I think it’s great to have little templates like that, that we, things that we do over and over again, that. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel every single time.

Jill: So yeah, exactly.

Amy: So what did you do prior to Notion? I know you mentioned Evernote. Were you utilizing other things as well? Or pretty well just Evernote?

Jill: I was kind of using multiple things. So Evernote was where I kept a lot of my student curriculum and student info. But all those other things I was mentioning were in 20 other places. So the email was a big one, and then my notes app on my phone was a big one. And then I’m also just still very much a pen-and-paper kind of girl. So I also just have truly like Scrap paper everywhere. Tons of, you know, notes to self. So that was a lot of what I did before getting, getting things kind of all streamlined onto Notion.

Amy: I know things like the Notes app were great in the early days of having devices, but unfortunately, the problem is, is with some of the basic Notes apps. Apps like Google Keep, and the Apple Notes are it’s hard to really organize in any way. I mean, you just have all these notes kind of just in there and sometimes you get multiple ones.

If you dump one idea on one note, you know, it’s just it’s not really a good way to organize those notes. So they were good in the early days, but now we have a lot of systems that have more capabilities to keep those kinds of things organized.

Jill: You’re gonna have to do a digital coaching session, on how to clean up your Notes app just in and of itself. One by itself. It’s become a huge boulder, just like email.

Amy: Yes! So you did mention earlier, you know, one of the things, reasons you transferred was because Evernote was getting pricey. So, just so that people are aware, Notion is free. Right now, I think it only goes to a paid tier when you need to share with, like, more than eight people even, so it’s very generous for what most of us are ever going to need.

Or, as I think now, Evernote is around the $10/a-month range or something like that in order to be able to use it on more than just one device. I’m in the same place. I finally stopped paying for Evernote this year. I kept it for quite a few years while I was still using Notion just to try to make the transfer.

And I’m like, okay, I’m just, right now I’m just transferring stuff out of it. I’m not saving anything there anymore. So it was time to pull the plug. Sure. For sure. All right, so what has been the most surprising for you about using Notion?

Jill: It surprised me that I could make it work honestly, because some of the ideas I loved at first, but I didn’t think that I could actually make it streamlined. For example, doing those databases when I took the workshop with you and Joy, the databases was just like, I loved that idea, but I did not understand or didn’t, I didn’t consider that it would actually line up and then be beneficial to, you know, to offload my time, things off my plate.

But all it took was Just a little bit of heads down, head-down time, and that’s kind of it. I’m just a little bit of front-up front work. And then it’s in, then it’s, then it’s a, you know, a well oiled machine now. So that surprised me because I thought it was going to be more high maintenance, but it was really only just a couple of tough, tough hours of, you know, getting things to work the way I wanted them to work and figuring out what those things just took a little time, but then after that, it’s just been really smooth.

Amy: And it’s worth it then. And I know, I like hearing you say that because I know I’ve heard other teachers mention that sometimes it’s scary trying a new program.

You think, you know, oh, is it going to be too complicated? Do I have to learn another thing? And, you know, the truth is, like you said, yeah, I mean, there are some learning curves. But, if you’re willing to put the time in, then you really reap the benefits in the end, upfront, by just learning and, you know, really trying to hone in those skills, so.

Jill: I was just going to say, I think that it’s also they transfer, those skills transfer to other programs out there right now, and so that’s really helpful too. I don’t remember where I was just recently working on something, but it seemed like the blocks of that program functioned exactly the same as Notion. I wish I could remember what it was. It wasn’t tally.

Amy: That’s a great point, definitely. And I think even things like shortcuts and stuff that you learn to use shortcuts, a lot of times that transfers to different programs as well within Notion and outside of and so forth. Has there been anything that you found challenging about using Notion?

Jill: There was I guess just that, that initial idea of like figuring out how to make databases work because I wanted to make everything Be exactly like Excel spreadsheets, and they’re similar, but you can’t manipulate things exactly the same way. And so that just was a little bit of a frustrating thing to get used to.

And I still don’t know that I have everything quite dialed in about how to, you know, manipulate. You know, different, different cells and stuff like that. But yeah, I guess that was, that would probably be the only thing. Everything else hasn’t been frustrating at all. It’s really easy to make things from scratch and it’s really easy to just make it as complicated or as simple as you want.

Amy: Well, Jill, this has been so fun chatting with you. We’re going to continue our chat and do some screenshots and, well, not screenshots, but screen sharing and get a little tour. If you are interested in seeing that, you will be able to find that bonus content in my Patreon, and it will also be a part of our future Notion Workshops, but thank you so much for being with us today, Jill.

Jill: Yeah, my pleasure, Amy. Thanks for helping me out with everything.


Yes, you heard it right. Each episode of this Notion series will include a video tour where Jill, Stephanie, and Valerie will give you a look into their Notion account so you can see firsthand how it looks and feels.

You can access this bonus content by joining my Patreon Community. For just $7 a month, you’ll also get access to quarterly presentations, regular tiny tips from me, weekly power hours, and email processing support. Join at the Insider level today at PianoPantry.com/patreon that’s PianoPantry.com/patreon.

It’s a pretty sweet bonus, if you ask me, especially since your monthly support also helps cheer on the continued creation of this podcast.

These video tours will also be included in the resource hub Joy and I created for our Notion workshop attendees.

Register for this Organize Your Life with Notion workshop by September 6 to receive $30 off. Visit PianoPantry.com/notion for more details. Registration opens on Monday, August 26.

109 – Joy & Amy: Ways We Used Notion This Week

The Piano Pantry Podcast is available on these podcast streaming networks: 

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Episode Summary

Amy and her friend Joy Morin of the Color in My Piano blog share six ways they’ve used Notion (a productivity and note-taking app this week as independent piano teachers.

Joy Morin is a pianist, teacher, composer, and lifelong learner. She writes a blog at ColorInMyPiano.com, where she enjoys connecting with fellow piano teachers and sharing resources for piano lessons. Joy currently operates an independent piano studio near Ann Arbor, Michigan, where she resides with her husband, two daughters, and cats. Her books and music are available for purchase at keysatplay.com.

Items Mentioned

Episode 105 – Evernote vs. Notion

Workshop: Organize Your Life With Notion

 
 
 
 
 
View this post on Instagram
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

A post shared by Joy Morin, Piano Teacher (@joymorinpiano)


Transcript

Welcome to episode 109 of The Piano Pantry Podcast. I’m your host, Amy Chaplin.

In the early days of the Piano Pantry blog, I was known for demonstrating all the powerful ways that Evernote could enhance how we worked and saved information. We all know how technology evolves, as does our use of it, and this has been one of those for me. Here I am, more than five years later and there’s a new kid in town that’s left Evernote a bit in the dust.

If you’re around here much, you’ve already heard me talking up Notion – a productivity and note-taking app a lot. I cannot sing the praises of Notion loudly enough. Not only has it enhanced my daily workflow, but it has brought every area I manage in life together in a way that Evernote never could. Its minimalistic feel, seamless and intuitive functions, beautiful formatting options, and visual building features are above and beyond anything else I’ve seen out there.

As this community’s self-declared go-to organization gal, I’m determined to help pave the way for my teacher friends to embrace a more streamlined way of working using Notion. So, I’ve teamed up with my good friend, Joy Morin of the ColorinMyPiano blog to offer a special two-day workshop on March 8 and 9, 2024.

In order to help paint a clear picture of what it could look like for you, for today’s episode, Joy and I sat down a few days ago to share a few ways that each of us used Notion this week as independent teachers.

By the way, if you missed it, you might want to go back and listen to episode 105, where I lay out a very clear comparison between Evernote and Notion. If you’re a visual person, we’ve provided supporting pictures of all the pages we discussed today in the show notes.


Amy: Well, Joy, I am really excited to sit down with you now because you have inspired me in the past on different ways that you use Notion. And I love just hearing what you’re doing with it and what other people are doing with it. And yeah, let’s like share a little bit with each other.

Joy: Yeah, I’m excited about this. To hear how you’ve been using Notion in the last week and I’m going to share some of my own examples. So this will be great.

Amy: We like to geek out on Notion.

Joy: We do.

Amy: Okay, so I’ll start with one. I started using it as a place to house everything for my annual note naming challenge, which I’m now calling March Minute Madness.

And in the past, I used to just use like a big foam board that I would pull out every year, and I had like a cardboard chart, like you know, where kids track like their stickers, like a sticker chart basically, and I would just cut out however many lines of that I needed for all my students, and we would track their There are times for the note naming challenge on that.

And then I would record the annual winners in like a word document and I would save that in my file explorer, you know, but this year I decided to pull all that together in notion. So I just created like a landing page basically. And on this page I have a link to a spreadsheet that I made in Google sheets where it tracks all my students times from last year so that we can compare and see how they’ve made progress.

And then when this year is over, like I’m just going to pencil it in, I’ve got like a clipboard and then when we’re done, I’ll just go in and record those in a spreadsheet. So the link is there. I’ve also got some bullet points where I just track the students that have won each level because I have five different levels and so each year there’s five different winners basically.

And then I can just see from year to year who’s won. So it’s just a nice little easy place. I don’t have to go into Microsoft Word, you know, and then I don’t have to pull up my board anymore. Like it’s all just right here in this nice little place. What about you?

Joy: Oh, I love that example. That’s great. So one way that I’ve used Notion in the last week is working on my Tax filing preparations, which is a fun task for all of us piano teachers this time of year.

So basically in Notion what I’ve put together is a pretty simple page that’s just a bullet point kind of list. Making sure that I have included all the information that I need to in my spreadsheets and PDF documents that I need to give and turn over to our tax preparer. So this is a page that has a bunch of lists like bullet points, like I said, except in Notion there’s a feature that you can use where it’s an empty box that then you can click on and it’s very satisfying because that little square box will turn into a check mark.

So it’s a nice way for me to keep track of the tasks that I still need to do and what I’ve already completed when it comes to preparing everything for filing our taxes. So this is a page I’ve used for the past two, maybe three years now, and it’s a simple checklist, but I’m able to kind of tweak it each year and improve it a little bit.

And it’s really convenient to have the same list ready to go at the beginning of the year when I sit down to work on my taxes. In previous years, I think I had somewhat of a list in my, just kind of directly in my spreadsheet. And then I think I also would get like a checklist from our tax preparer that kind of suggested.

You know, what all we needed to pull together. So I, it was, it felt like it was like here and there, you know. So it’s just really great having this list all in one place in my Notion.

Amy: And you created also like a button that you can autofill a template, right?

Joy: Yes, that’s right. Yes. You can use a neat little feature in Notion. It’s a block that looks like a button. And then when you click the button, it will just kind of automatically Populate whatever information you’ve set it to populate. So in this case it’s my checklist and so each year I click on this and it gives me a, a fresh list from the last year except all of the check boxes are not yet filled in.

So that means last year’s list that I like went through and checklist every item on this list, you know, I can just kinda be done with and then in the next year I click the button, and I have a fresh list that I can use.

Amy: So much easier.

Joy: Yeah.

Amy: Less manual work. Awesome. Well, one thing I did this past week was create a page to help me plan things that I need to do when I attend a conference.

So, I also used that same button template feature that you just mentioned to help me auto-populate a couple of different checklists. I’ve got a checklist of different people I want to catch up with and a checklist for materials and resources I want to check out in the exhibit hall. And a checklist of just things to pack, right?

Things to not forget. And some of these are just important because, like, you know, you’re going to a conference, and you get all these people that you’re like, Hey, we need to grab dinner together. Or I want to meet you to go to the session together. And you’re gathering phone numbers, maybe. You might have people sending you messages on Messenger or Instagram.

And, you know, you get to the conference, and you’re like, Okay, shoot, what was that person’s phone number, you know? And this is where I can get it all in one place as I’m going over the weeks, and I don’t have to rush, you know, the day of the conference, trying to figure out who I’m communicating with.

I also have a page, actually, I have several pages that I created on this conference landing page for every conference I go to. So, I have a page just for this upcoming MTNA 2020 2024 conference in Atlanta. And that’s the place where I have specific details for that conference going on. And I already created one for MT& A 2025.

And the reason I did that is I was reading in a book or in a podcast or something somewhere, and I heard about ideas for restaurants to try in Minneapolis. And I was like, Oh, I have to save this for MT& A 2025. Perfect. And so, you know, otherwise, in the past, I would have just, you know, forgotten about it or jotted it down somewhere randomly and, you know, never come back to it again probably. So I can start building ideas for next year.

Joy: I love that example and I think I need to create a similar page for myself. That’s a great idea. Awesome. The next example I’ll share is that in the last week, I used one of my Notion pages that I set up for when I took an online course. So this is a page, so the course I’m currently taking is the Teaching Intermediate Piano course that the Royal Conservatory of Music offers online.

And so this is a ten-week online course, and there’s material to read online. I like to take notes when I’m learning, so my Notion page basically exists of notes that I’m taking as I work my way through the course material. I also use it to work on the assignments I have to submit for this particular course.

So I can just be typing up my assignments, you know, make my rough draft, do my editing for it, and then when I’m happy with it, I just copy and paste it over into the actual course page, and then submit my assignments when I’m ready. So I love this because it gives me a place where I can always come back to it and refer to my notes if I want to.

I’ve got my registration information and login information for this particular course. It’s just, like, all on this page, so I’m not gonna lose it or be trying to track down, you know, details from, like, an email from months ago or something like that. It’s just nice, all in one place, to put anything related to this particular course.

So, this Notion page is actually kind of a sub-page. So I have a page called Learning, that’s what I call it. And then anytime I take a course or if I take like a workshop or a webinar and, or attend a conference, anything like that, that I want to take notes for, I can create sub-pages underneath my Learning page.

Amy: Ah, that sounds similar to my conference page. And now I need a learning page like you, Joy. All right. So for my last item, many of you might know my Friday finds post series on the Piano Pantry blog. I’ve been doing it since 2016. It used to be weekly, and now it’s about every three weeks, but it’s just a place where I love to share random things that I have found all over the internet that I think my teacher friends would enjoy, whether it’s teaching resources or silly YouTube videos or recipes.

All kinds of different stuff, and I’ve always had a place like where I would just save a link, you know, Like I used to do it in Evernote But more recently, I’ve been trying to save stuff and categorize it for different times of the year that I might save it So I might have an idea for something that would be fun to share over the holidays, but I might think of it in April Right, so I don’t want to share it like in Friday finds in April So I’m gonna save it for Christmas, and I just created these simple little boxes on my Friday Finds page that just kind of highlight items for the month of December.

When I save it, I can just drag it under the box for December, and then when the time comes around, boom, it’s right there. I also have some different things for the Thanksgiving season and some regular places that I pull from. Like, every time I write my Friday Finds, I think about, okay, you know, what have I bought from Amazon recently?

What have I been listening to on Spotify? What’s the third thing? Oh, I now have a favorites page on my website where I just share different favorites like cooking gadgets or teaching resources, and sometimes I’ll include little things from that. So it’s just a little reminder to me to check those three different locations to see if there is different things that I could share.

Joy: I love that example. I mean, it’s just a simple, straightforward page where you’re just able to paste links to things that you want to share in the future. And it’s all organized. I’m looking at your page now; it just looks very beautiful. All right, the last example that I’ll share is related to my current position working for a local church.

So I’m the pianist at the church and I also lead the church choir. So I’ve created a page in my Notion account that is actually made public so that I can share it with the musicians at the church, the other musicians and the members of my church choir. So most of the pages, actually all the pages in Notion by default are private pages that just you can view in your own Notion account.

But Notion does offer some settings that are really convenient for you if you want to Collaborate with someone else to work on a page. There’s a way you can do that. There’s also a way to, a way to take a page and get a public link to that page and be able to share that page with anyone that you share the link with.

This is a setting where the page, in this case, is editable only by you. And anyone looking at your page from the link you’ve given them can see things but not edit the page. So, I call this the Music Hub page for my church, and this is a page that is linked to from the church’s website.

So that means anyone who’s in my church choir and wants to hear recordings of the pieces that we’re working on and preparing can click through from the church website and get to our music hub page in my Notion account, and listen to the YouTube video that I’ve put on there. Or click play and listen to the mp3 track that I’ve recorded on my piano so that they can practice, you know, the alto part or the tenor part or whatever it is.

So, I’ve also got the schedule for our rehearsals coming up and other important dates relating to what’s going on with the upcoming church services. So this has been a really helpful communication tool for this position that I work in and just really something convenient.

Amy: And I’m looking at your page right now, and it’s so pretty. And the cool thing with Notion is there are two different settings for the pages. So you can have a page that’s a little bit narrow format. For if you think about a webpage or a blog where you’re reading it and the page isn’t super wide, you can also make a full-size page where it’s like the full width of the screen.

So you have a little bit of options for how big the page is. And this is a great example that you have of this, the page that Joy created actually almost looks like a webpage, right? It’s beautiful. She’s got a little header. She’s got a picture, she’s got a quote, and there’s just so much that you can do with it.

And that’s the cool thing about Notion: it is very customizable, but it doesn’t have to be complicated. It could be very simple if you just like very, you know, basic note things. I know my husband’s that way. He’s like, I don’t need my Notion to look pretty. I just want a good place to take notes and a, a nice way to structure them and to be able to share things, but also keep portions of my Notion private.

But it can also be beautiful and very visual, like this page that Joy has created. And I think that’s why I love talking about this with you because you just get so many different ideas. There are just so many different possibilities, and that’s one thing that we really want to do for our teacher friends is to share different templates and uses for how you can use it as an independent teacher.

Joy actually introduced me to Notion several years ago. And just the sharing she did with me inspired my own Notion pages and got me going. And if it wasn’t for her, I feel like, eh, I may have eventually got there. You know, but it really made a difference getting to see things that she had done.

And that’s what we’re hoping to do for you guys – to help you, like, have a great starting place to get you kicked off. So that you’re really, you know, just hitting the ground running with these Notion pages.

Joy: We really can’t recommend it enough. It’s a great program. I’ve looked at a lot of different task management and productivity type apps, and I think Notion is very different, and I’m not the only one saying this.

I think there are a lot of people out there who have really discovered Notion and realized that there’s something different about it, just the flexibility that it has and how easy it is to use. And you can keep it very simple, however you want to incorporate it in your life. As you learn the tool more, you will find that there’s a lot that you can do with it.

So it’s also very powerful.

Amy: And that’s a keyword, but I think it is really easy. It really is. It’s just some basic building blocks. And it’s just a lot of fun. So I think you’re going to love it.


Thanks for listening to our chat today. If you’re interested in learning more about our upcoming workshop, Organize Your Life With Notion, here are a few details:

It’s being held Friday and Saturday, March 8 and 9, 2024, from 10:30 am-1:30 pm Eastern Time via Zoom. Replays will be available for 6 months.

You’ll get live instruction from both of us, 10 in-depth sessions, 2 guided projects, and an accompanying workbook and set of cheatsheets. Best of all, you’ll get access to a special starter pack of Notion page templates designed by Joy and me, especially with our independent piano teachers in mind, including a prospective student inquiries tracker, student curriculum notes, student attendance tracker, studio communication calendar, tax preparation, and more.

For more details and to register, visit PianoPantry.com/notion. The early bird discount for $40 off ends March 1 so don’t delay! Again that’s PianoPantry.com/notion. Get links to everything we talked about today in the show notes at PianoPantry.com/podcast/episode109.

Registration Open! Organize Your Life With Notion

I’m excited to announce that registration is now open for Organize Your Life With Notion, a 2-day online workshop with Joy Morin and myself!

If you’re tired of having your life scattered across multiple websites and productivity apps and would love to see everything you manage on one beautiful dashboard, this workshop is for you!

My friend Joy Morin of ColorinMyPiano.com and I have both been using Notion (an awesome productivity and note-taking app) for several years now and aren’t exaggerating when we say it has changed our lives.

We’ve become pretty passionate about all the ways we’ve utilized Notion to make our lives easier as independent teachers and now are teaming up to offer this special live shop to pass along these methods.

In this 2-day live event, we will help you build a custom, personalized digital workspace in Notion and, in turn, revolutionize the way you work in 2024. (Replays will be available for 6-months.)

You’ll get access to a starter pack of Notion page templates built by us, including things like a prospective student inquiries tracker, student curriculum notes, a studio communication calendar, a tax preparation checklist, and more.


For more details and to register, visit this link.


If you would like to hear a little more from us on how Notion has impacted the way we work, join us for a Live Chat on Instagram on Monday, February 19 @ 1:15 pm Eastern.

Find us on Instagram @pianopantryamy and @joymorinpiano.

P.S. If you would like to hear a little more on how I use Notion, check out these podcast episodes:

The Piano Pantry Podcast Episode 105 – Evernote vs. Notion

The Piano Pantry Podcast Episode 109 – Joy & Amy: Ways We Used Notion This Week

105 – Evernote vs. Notion

The Piano Pantry Podcast is available on these podcast streaming networks: 105

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Episode Summary

A comparison of two task-management note-taking apps: Evernote and Notion. Learn the differences between the two apps and hear why Amy has moved most of what she does from Evernote into Notion. More importantly, she’ll share one big reason why Evernote has remained part of her workflow but in a more focused way.

Items Mentioned

Beyond Measure Podcast Episode 153: Cheers to One SIMPLE Lesson Activity

Notion.so

Evernote.com

Evernote: An Independent Music Teachers Handbook Part 1: Studio Organization

Evernote: An Independent Music Teachers Handbook Part 2: Web Clipper

Evernote: An Independent Music Teachers Handbook Part 3: Account Features, Tagging & More!

Save the Date! Organize Your Life Using Notion

Evernote Web Clipper (extension) for your browser

Notion Web Clipper (extension) for your browser

Support the podcast on Patreon

Transcript

Welcome to episode 105 of The Piano Pantry Podcast. I’m Amy Chaplin, a piano teacher who likes to nerd out on organization and productivity tools.

In 2016 and 2017, I published a 3-part video tutorial series on the Piano Pantry blog on how independent music teachers could best utilize Evernote – a note-taking app – to manage their lives and studios. I was a huge advocate for this app, even going through their community leader program, which has now been discontinued.

Almost two and a half years ago, I moved much of what I was doing with Evernote into Notion, a newer app on the market. Some of you may have heard me mention Notion informally in various places over the last couple of years.

Today, I’m ready to dig in with you and talk about why I moved most of what I was doing in Evernote into Notion. More importantly, though, I want to highlight the one reason why I haven’t left Evernote entirely and how I now use its best feature in a more focused way.

Before we dive in, though, I have a random teaching tip to share with you. I had to be sure and share it THIS week because LAST week, my friend Christina Whitlock did an episode on one simple lesson activity she likes to do. When I heard her talking about it, I was like, “Ah! Yes, I do the same thing but with a slight variation.”

The activity is to play through several pieces and have students rate their feelings on the piece – how much they do or don’t like it. Kids have a hard time sometimes expressing what they think about a piece, so Christina gave them simple words to write down: “Yes, No, or Meh.”

My variation is to use hand gestures – so I tell them to give me a thumbs up if they really like it, a sideways thumb if it’s OK, and a down thumb if they don’t care for it. This has worked great, and the kids enjoy communicating with me in this way.

I think both versions of this would be useful in different ways depending on how many pieces you’re presenting and how many students you’re doing it with at once.

Thanks, Christina, for prompting this tip!

Now, onto our chat on Evernote vs. Notion.


Let’s start by comparing some of the basic facts on these two apps, including access, age, and price.

Both of these apps are organizational, note-taking, and task management-type apps. They are cloud-based, meaning you can access them from multiple locations, including your web browser, from a desktop computer app, and on your device – that is, a tablet or smartphone.

Utilizing a tool like this for daily life and business management is important for that very reason. It’s 2024, and we need to be able to access things from anywhere and not be relegated to only having things on our home computers.

Evernote has a lot more history, as it’s been around for almost 20 years. Notion has only been in the market for around 5. Being a newer product, I think it launched with a slightly more modern approach to organization. While Evernote has made updates, its default organizational system still works for the most part as it did 10 years ago.

Pricing is one point that is quite noticeable in the divide between these two systems.

Evernote used to have a fairly generous free plan as far as space was concerned. The limiting factor was that you could only access it from two places, like a desktop and an iPhone. I think that has since changed, and while you can access it from anywhere, the new free Evernote only gives you 50 notes total, which is not a lot, in my opinion. It really depends on how you’re going to use it. The first tier of payment to use Evernote is almost $11 a month, so I would say it’s lacking in a good midrange cost. The first pricing tier used to be in the $6-8 per month range.

Notion is generously free until you need a place to organize a team – which most of us as teachers don’t. Free speaks pretty loud to us as Independent business owners, which makes Notion very appealing.

Let’s talk next about the general organizational schema (skee-muh) between these two apps. I was reading a little online about others comparing these two apps, and one term that stood out when comparing is generalization vs. specialization.

Evernote’s organizational schema is very generalized and has always been around notes and notebooks. Notes exist inside of notebooks. So, you might have a Notebook full of notes for your home studio, one for your personal household management, and one for your University job.

It used to be that Notebooks stood as their own entities, meaning if a note existed in your “Studio” notebook, and you went to use the search function, Evernote wouldn’t search everywhere; it would only search inside of one notebook at a time. I don’t know when, but luckily, that has since changed, and you can search your entire account at once and not just inside certain notebooks.

The search function of Evernote is actually quite powerful and is one strength it holds over Notion. By strong, I mean that Evernote will literally search the text inside PDFs as well as handwriting. So, if you take handwritten notes on a conference handout and then scan that handout into digital form to save in Evernote when you use the search bar to search for a keyword like “scales,” it would find that word even in your handwritten form and thus find that note for you. Notion isn’t quite there yet in those regards.

Besides Notes and Notebooks, the next layer of organization in Evernote is to use its tagging system. This is something I blogged about years ago and still to this day love using. When you tag a note, you can tag it with multiple things.

Let’s return to that imaginary conference session I mentioned where you uploaded the handout from a session on technique. You might then tag that note with a tag called “conference sessions,” or you could also be more specific, “2024 MTNA Conference,” and then also tag it with “technique,” “intermediate students,” or “goals for 2024.” Then, that note will show up without being duplicated when you visit each of those tags. Tags are like labeling things for different aspects of that item.

The nice thing about relying on the search and tagging system is it alleviates the need to create all these ordered and organized Notebook. I actually always just used one notebook. As long as you have properly titled and tagged your note with keywords you would find yourself using when searching for it, you don’t have to worry about organizing – you can kind of let it go but still easily find things using the tags.

OK, so as far as the search function goes, Evernote does have a bit of a heads-up there.

Evernotes organizational structure, though, is very simplified and generalized through the use of notes and notebooks. There are not a lot of options for customization, which is where Notion shines. Notion doesn’t have a default organizational schema – you get to define a structure that works for you, and it doesn’t have to be the same for every page or note you create.

Notion is built around block editors. You can drag those blocks around to create highly custom visual workspaces. Now, when I use that phrase, I’m afraid it’s going to sound hard and scary, but it’s actually not; it’s really quite easy once you learn some of the basic block times and movement. You can create checklists, Trello-style Kanban boards, calendar views with databases, and more. It can be as simple as you like or a visually beautiful page that can almost look like a webpage.

While Evernote is a good for simple note-taking and capturing information (which I’ll talk about more here in a second), Notion is better for building an overall management system. This is why I have stopped using Evernote as my main organizational tool and now use Notion. While I could save information and create notes and lists, it was hard to see big picture things and just wasn’t very visually appealing. I am a very visual person, so when I saw the beautiful visual organizational structures I could create, I didn’t give it a second thought.

Notion is where I plan an organize all of my podcast episodes including tips, mailing addresses for guest host gifts, email text I copy and paste when inviting teachers on for interviews, track ideas for tiny tips, and more.

I organize details for my retreat and digital organization coaching sessions. Tracking things like cost, scheduling, attendee history, attendee surveys using a forms database, verbiage I use on social media posts from one marketing time to the next, and more.

I have a page for mentoring I do with Big Brothers Big Sisters. After I meet weekly with my lunch buddy, I write down what we did that day, important things I want to remember she told me, ideas for activities we can do, and more.

For my studio, I track all of my student’s information in a spreadsheet-like database that’s connected to an online form. When students fill out the form, the information automatically gets sent into that database. That, combined with moving all payments to auto payment through Coinhop, means I have ceased paying for a studio management program.

I could go on and on with examples of how I’m using Notion to organize my daily life, but for the sake of time, I hope those few examples give you a good idea. While I still have to share with you the one thing I do still use Evernote for, I first wanted to let you know about a big event coming up on March 8th and 9th that is designed to help walk you step by step through setting up your own organizational work structure in Notion.

My friend Joy Morin from the Color in my Piano blog are teaming up, and believe me when I say, this is going to be a high-quality event. You will get a sneak peek at some of the pages and structures we’ve designed over the last few years. You’ll be walked through the process of recreating pages and templates that we design that we believe will help you in your daily workflow. There will be options to get extra support or to take things further, learning how to use databases that connect to online forms like Google Forms, and more.

If you are tired of having your life scattered everywhere and would like to have one digital space to organize multiple areas of your life then this event is for you.

Registration will open up in early February so keep a look out for details.

OK, so let me double back here and do another recap before I highlight the one feature that I’m still Evernote for.

When comparing these two apps, Evernote is more focused on note-taking and has a set generalized structure around text-based notes and notebooks. While you can include things like images, links, files, to-do lists and more inside of a note, there isn’t a lot of customization you can do to the overall workspace itself. If you like keeping things simple and just having basic note lists then Evernote may be the better choice. Keep in mind that the free version only allows 50 notes then it goes to $11 a month.

Notion is a lot more visually driven. Rather than building what’s called a “note,” you build a “page.” Drag and drop movement of these pages allows you to create custom workspaces. Yes, you can do note taking in Notion like you do in Evernote. You can save images, files, links, and create lists inside of pages just like in Evernote, but rather than just looking like a basic text note, you can create workspaces using lots of different visual and colorful elements.

The only thing that I have yet to move out of Evernote into Notion is what I call my “brain dump” or my “idea capturing.” Evernote and Notion both have extensions you can add to your internet browser that all you to clip bookmarked links off the internet and save them into the program. Evernote, though, takes this a whole lot further. You can clip images, take screenshots, select a whole blog post, and have it remove all the ads off the page, and more. The web clipper is a lot stronger and more customized than Notions.

Because of that, Evernote has remained the place where I dump things like articles, ideas, and content. Conference note-taking especially. I love that Evernote searches PDF file text and my handwriting so it is a nice place to upload all my session documents and take notes directly into during conferences.

That’s it though. I don’t even really use it much more on a daily basis. I used to have around 4,000 notes in Evernote and I have cut it in half. A lot of it is stuff I will probably never see again, but if I was wanting some ideas on elementary Halloween music, I know I can go search in my Evernote and find that recommended piece I clipped off the internet 6 months ago I wanted to remember.

That’s how I use it.

Who knows, in 12 months, I could be telling you another story, but that’s just how it is with technology. I know it’s hard, and I know that it’s constantly changing, but I have so much respect for all of you teachers out there that I see you making efforts to figure it out. It’s hard, it’s a struggle, but you’re doing it anyway because it’s just part of what we have to do these days to keep ourselves sane. Am I right?!


As we wrap up this last episode of January, I want to thank all those who support this podcast over on Patreon, including Laura D., who is one of my Insiders. Thanks, Laura for teaming up with me to help bring content to our community every single week!

If you are enjoying this podcast and would like to throw a little thanks my way, you can currently join for only $4 a month. If you would like a little more support and good stuff from me, you can join at the $ 7-a-month level.

For those insiders, once a month, we get together for an email power hour, and I always share one good tip for inbox management. Then, once a quarter, I present a special session.

Last quarter was focused on how to create your own content, and in our next session – coming up on the last Wednesday of February – I’ll be sharing a brand new session I’m debuting at the 2024 MTNA National Conference in Atalanta called The Wow Factor: Crafting Winning Proposals and Engaging Presentations. Visit PianoPantry.com/Patreon to join.

As always, if there’s anything in this show you would like the links to, you can find everything including a full transcript at PianoPantry.com/podcast/episode105

Save the Date! Organize Your Life With Notion

Hey, teacher friends!

Today, I’m excited to announce, along with my friend and colleague, Joy Morin of the Color in My Piano Blog, a big event we’ll be hosting in March.

Many of you have come to know and trust me regarding all things workflow, digital organization, and productivity. You’ve seen me blog a lot in the past about using Evernote as an independent teacher and seen the growth of the digital coaching series and retreat.

Joy is known in our circle as an advocate for excellence in piano teaching from many angles and has supported teachers as a blogger, speaker, and more for around 15 years.

Knowing the sucker I was for good organizational apps, in September 2021, Joy introduced me to Notion, a newer app that launched in June 2018.

I’m not exaggerating when I say that it rocked my world!

Continue reading

151 – The Art of Progress: A Balanced Mindset for Any Project

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Break large projects into baby steps to stay productive and avoid overwhelm. Discover practical examples for managing time, balancing creative work, and tackling daunting tasks efficiently.

Subscribe

Join Amy’s email list

Support the Podcast

https://pianopantry.com/patreon

Items Mentioned and Other Related Content

Germ Alert: A Teachers Guide to Staying Healthy

Digital Organization Coaching (Online)

Transcript

Welcome to year number 4 and episode 151 of The Piano Pantry Podcast! I’m Amy Chaplin, a piano teacher, and your host. If you’re new around here, in this podcast, we talk about all things studio teacher life-related, from organizing our studios to getting dinner on the table and all that comes between. You’ll receive loads of easily actionable tips on managing your studio, life, and home.

Today, we’re looking at what it looks like to approach large projects with baby steps.


I’ve been creating content for teachers since 2016, and if there’s one thing I can say for sure, it’s that it is very hard to find large blocks of time to let yourself loose or lose yourself in creative projects. Depending on your teaching schedule, even if you only have 4-5 hours of students a day, that can mean an additional 1-2 hours of outside-the-lesson studio business-related work, leaving only an hour or two of extra time to tackle either projects you’re working on for your students or for other teachers.

I have played around with my own schedule sooo many times, trying to find the perfect blend of work dedicated to my main income stream and work dedicated to my own creativity and other income streams, whether it be for this podcast, the blog, coaching, or teaching resources for my own students and eventually – for you.

There are two big lessons I feel like I’ve learned that are almost contradictory to each other.

Have you ever heard of the maker vs. the manager’s schedule? In a nutshell, it comes down to two ways of thinking about your time. A manager’s schedule is focused on small segments of time—like 15, 30, or 60-minute meeting blocks—whereas a maker’s schedule is where we creatives often need to live.

Creative work requires large chunks of focused heads down time. Sometimes, you need to get in the zone and can’t do that in a 30-minute block between students. Big pockets of time – 2-4 or 8 hours – allow our minds to hone in, get in the zone, and knock out progress.

So, my first lesson was realizing that I needed to create large pockets of time in my week where this kind of work could live.

The second big lesson I learned, though, was that even head-down focused time on creative activities can have its limits. I’ve tried dedicating one entire day to projects, but 80% of the time, I still found myself having had enough for that day by around 3:30-4:00 p.m. anyway.

While having a maker’s schedule seemed ideal in the long term, the best balance was achieved with a mindset open to a blend of both.

Even large pockets of time weren’t enough if I ONLY worked on big projects when I had several hours in a row. To keep moving forward, I had to be willing to take advantage of the smaller windows in the manager’s schedule as well.

The best life balance for completing projects was a combination of both worlds: finding chunks of time and being willing to do even small snippets of work when time lent itself.

I remember hearing a podcast episode several years ago. I can’t remember whose podcast it was, but I remember they were interviewing Katherine Fisher, co-author of the Piano Safari method. The interviewer asked how she managed to get so much work done while homeschooling her children.

Her answer was that she just had to be willing to do the work that needed to be done, even in those small windows of time when she didn’t feel like it. She couldn’t just wait until inspiration struck or she had two full hours to work on a project. That has stuck with me. It’s really hard doing that kind of work in little bits of time, but if we don’t, there will never be enough large chunks to satisfy.

This mindset is applicable not only to work we enjoy but to work that we don’t as well. Do you have projects – whether it be ones in your business or your home that seem so momentous that you can’t even imagine where to get started? Rather than thinking about the end goal – what if you told yourself to only think about the ONE little thing that you could do next toward that task?

Let me share some examples from my own life that this mindset has helped me tackle over the past year.

The first example is transcripts for this podcast. When I first started this podcast, I just had to get it going and wanted to keep things simple. There were no show notes pages, and there were no transcripts. The longer I went on, though, I realized the accommodation of transcripts was greatly desired, so I slowly started adding show notes pages to my website. Even then, I only had transcripts of solo episodes, not conversations. It’s been baby steps, but I am now slowly getting transcripts of past conversations. I have added almost 10 more transcripts in the past few weeks for conversations from last year. Have I written on my task list to turn all the conversation episodes into transcripts? Nope. My only task listed is to turn the next one into a transcript.

The next example is decorating our home for the seasons. I do this changeover three times a year. Early September is for Fall decorations (which are my favorite), the weekend after Thanksgiving is for Christmas decorations, and sometime around Spring Break, I return to everyday decor. It’s really hard to find a half day to tear down and put away all the current decorations and set up the next. I’ve found it feels much less like a “thing” if I spread it out. One evening I might gather everything and set it in a pile in the living room. I put all that away the next night and pull out the next season’s decor. On the third night, I get the new decor set up. Over the course of a week, it’s all done, and it didn’t feel like a momentous task.

The third example is cleaning windows. I could spend one entire Saturday and kill myself exhausted or spread it out over several days or weeks. In the Springtime, I go to one wall in the house at a time. Clean the windows on the inside and get screens put in. After a week, the whole inside is done, and then I move to the outside, again spreading over a few days. Pro-tip – you have to be careful what time of day you’re cleaning windows – especially in the summer. You don’t want to clean the windows when the sun shines directly on them, or they will be more prone to streaking.

hMy fourth example the new database I created for tracking my reading in Notion. For years I’ve just used a simple table. I like to track the year I read the book, the author, who recommended it, whether or not I would re-read it, and the rating. The more I’ve used Notion, I realized how beautiful a database would work for this. The beautiful part of getting it all into a database was I can easily see what books I’ve read from individual authors with one click, what books I would llike to read some day, how many times I’ve re-read a book and so forth. There are so many cool things you can do with a database. It was a big task designing my own custom reading page and database but I did it in baby steps.

One evening I combed through last years list and added the books I read last year into the database. One evening I designed my books dashboard where I can use the database to display a fun chart that shows how many books I read for the year, one evening I created my authors database that connects to the books database and so forth. All in all – this book reading database project likely took me 8-12 hours – becuase I added years worth of books read into it, but I did it over the course of 2 months in small snippets – only focusing on the 1 portion of the task that came next.

My fifth and final example is similar to the windows cleaning one. When it was time to winterize outside the house, I put all the summer stuff away from both the front and back porch one evening, the next morning I cleaned the porches, and the third day I pulled out the Fall decorations for the front porch. Taking small steps toward big projects helps make the thing that feels like such a big thing not feel like so much of a thing.

So I ask you, what are some projects you desire to accomplish but are struggling to find the time to tackle – either because you’re trying to find ONLY those large chunks of time or because you feel too overwhelmed to even know where to start?

Is it organizing your sheet music?

Turning a different room of your house into your studio?

Cleaning out the attic?

Writing a book?

Organizing your digital sheet music?

Clearing out Your email Inbox?

Well, good news friends, you don’t have to do these things alone. There are two ways I’m ready to help right now. First off, my Patreon community meets weekly for power-hours. It’s a great way to ensure you have dedicated work time.

Not only does Patreon help support this podcast, but you get bonuses from me as a thank-you. Most recently, I shared an in-depth video on understanding Google Drive sharing, and our last email-power hour focused on using email rules and filters to help manage your inbox.

A special shout-out to Patreon member Lisa Lawson for supporting the podcast – thanks, Lisa!

The second way I can help is through the upcoming Digital Organization Coaching series. The winter session of this online small group coaching program starts up Friday, January 31 and will run for six weeks from 1:00-2:30pm Eastern Time.

Over the course of 90 mintues every week, I will help you take baby steps to tackling tasks that can feel momentous like cleaning out that inbox, organizing your digital files, media and more. Replays are available if you can’t make it live, but I would encourage you to make the time to be there and be accountable in person.

Visit PianoPantry.com/digital for more details and to register. Get $20 through January 29 using the code DIGITAL20 at checkout.


It’s the dead of winter, and many states are getting arctic cold weather. Make sure you’re taking care of your instrument by keeping the humidity up in your studio. A small thermometer that displays humidity, like the Acurite thermometer, is a simple way to help draw your attention to humidity levels. While 35-40 percent is desirable, sometimes, in the winter, you might be struggling to keep it in the 20s. Keep those humidifiers going, and just like we water our bodies and house plants, we have to water the air! Otherwise, the dry air can cause your acoustic instruments to fall out of tune more quickly. It’s also good practice to keep your acoustic piano away from an outside wall, fireplace, or constant stream of air, such as next to an air vent where conditions can change with more extremes. For more where that came from, visit the Teachers Guide to Staying Healthy Post on PianoPantry.com linked in the show notes.

149 – Auto-Payment Processing Options

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After the sudden shutdown of Coinhop, we explore five auto-payment processing options for music studios such as Stripe and Wave.

Subscribe

Join Amy’s email list

Support the Podcast

https://pianopantry.com/patreon

Items Mentioned and Other Related Content

Save Time and Money Taking Payments with Coinhop

Acuityscheduling.com

Fons.com

MyMusicStaff.com

DuetPartner.com

Stripe.com

Waveapps.com

Transcript

Welcome to episode 149 of the Piano Pantry Podcast! I’m Amy Chaplin, your host. On this podcast, we talk about all things teacher life-related from organizing your studio to getting dinner on the table and all that comes between. Speaking of all that comes between, today is one of those as we consider auto-payment processing options.

I was planning on making episode 149 a whole other topic, but when I received an email in my inbox the week before Thanksgiving stating that Coinhop, my auto-payment processing app of choice since 2018, was shutting down, plans changed.

I’ve been a huge advocate for Coinhop for years, and I know many of you were using it on my recommendation. I felt responsible for helping us all figure this out, so I delayed the publication of this episode so I could have a little more time for research.

I hope my efforts in today’s robust episode help you work through your own thoughts and feelings on what to do next. It was a lot to do in a short amount of time, and I’m not totally 100% sure where I landed at this point is my final decision, but sharing this episode with you definitely helped me think through everything as I hope it will for you as well so let’s dive in.


I’ll just say upfront that there is nothing else out there like Coinhop. If you’re not familiar with Coinhop at all, it was an app that you could also access directly through the website. It had a very minimal interface. You entered your customer name, email, phone number, and the amount they were being charged monthly. An email or text could be sent to them to connect their payment method. ACH was the preferred method as it only incurred a 1% fee for the receiver. Payees could opt to use a credit card, but it charged a small percentage to them, not to the receiver.

All payments were processed automatically on the 1st of every month, and you were sent one transaction from Coinhop. However, depending on different payment methods and connection dates, you might end up getting paid in two or three deposits. That didn’t start happening to me though until I moved my entire studio to that method and had more people going through the process.

Here are all of the options we’re going to go over today: Acuity Scheduling, Studio Management Software, Stripe, Your Personal Bank, and Wave.

Acuity Scheduling

First up is Acuity Scheduling. Acuity is an appointment scheduling software similar to Square. I considered Acuity first because it’s the scheduling tool I’ve used for a couple of years for signups for things like Power Hours, one-on-one consultations, mine and Joy Morin’s Notion workshop, my digital organization coaching, studio summer lessons, group classes, and more.

The ability is there for you to set up recurring auto payments through their subscription tool. There is no free version of Acuity, though. The baseline is $16 a month, and the next level, which gives you access to text reminders and those recurring subscriptions for autopayments, is $27 a month.

While setting up the subscriptions isn’t too difficult, Acuity itself has a bit of a learning curve, so I wouldn’t recommend this option for most teachers unless you already use it.

Even though I am comfortable with and already pay to use Acuity, I’m not sure it’s the best answer for this need. As I mentioned, Acuity is designed around appointments. When you set up a subscriber for an automatic recurring payment, you have to assign that subscription to an actual appointment type and value for the subscriber’s redemption.

While I can fudge it and set the appointment type it’s connected to to $0—after the client sets up the subscription, it still displays two buttons: “Use Subscription” and “Check Balance.”

While I could instruct my families to ignore those buttons after setting up their payment information, having to do things like that feels messy and unprofessional to me.

For this reason, I think I’m leaning away from Acuity for my auto payments.


Studio Software

The next option, which is probably the most obvious or logical to consider, is to use a dedicated studio software program like My Music Staff, Duet Partner, or Fons. The wonderful thing about these sites is that they are designed entirely around the music studio business. The cost is anywhere from $15-$30 per month—similar to Acuity.

They all have the ability to smoothly process and manage your autopayments with a variety of setup options, including subscription-based flat monthly fees, packages, and such. I’m fairly confident they all connect through Stripe for payment processing, so you pay the usual 2.9% plus $0.30 per transaction processing fee.

The possibility of moving to a dedicated studio software for payment processing for me has a somewhat complicated backstory, so bear with me as I has it out with you.

I used My Music Staff for several years but only ever used it for formal invoicing for semester and yearly payments, managing my student and family details, and connecting my studio website contact form to my student waiting list in My Music Staff. Even when I had My Music Staff, I wasn’t using the auto-payment feature because I was using Coinhop for those who wanted to make monthly payments, which was cheaper than doing it through My Music Staff with Stripe’s fees.

As Notion—a productivity and note-taking app—has become a huge part of my workflow, a few years ago, I moved the registration forms and management of my student and family details into Notion. This past June, I stopped accepting annual payments and moved my entire studio to monthly auto payments with Coinhop as my payment processor and discontinued use of My Music Staff entirely.

Now that I have to reconsider how I want to handle monthly auto-payments, I realized that I might need to simultaneously reconsider my current process for having students sign up for summer lessons and group classes during the year, a process that I have set up mostly for auto-reminders as well as making it easy for me to track who is coming without having to have direct communication.

The summer before last, rather than having students scheduled at the same set lesson time each week, I started letting them book their four lessons for the summer at whatever days and times worked around their schedule in June and July. Since their lesson times were not consistent, I wanted an auto-reminder feature. I was already using Acuity Scheduling for things like my Piano Pantry power hour and consultation signups, so I started using Acuity for my studio summer scheduling. The $16 per month fee included email reminders.

As you know, emails are not good for half my studio families. They just don’t check them, so this past summer, I upgraded to get text reminders in Acuity, which cost $27 a month. These days, I think most people respond better to text reminders than email reminders anyway.

I decided to continue using Acuity throughout this year for signups for weekly Jam Band and other classes that occur every couple of months, such as piano parties for my younger students, recitals, and performance and musicianship classes.

Now that I’m using Acuity throughout the school year and not just for the two summer months, and considering it’s the same price as a lot of the studio software, I realized I might need to just go back to studio software and kill two birds with one stone.

I’ll just say upfront that whether it’s My Music Staff, Duet Partner, Fons, or any other, most studio management programs are very similar in features and abilities. What distinguishes them is the overall interface and design. This is not a paid ad at all but I’m going to talk about Fons because it was the one I was most curious to check out as I was considering going back to a studio management program.

I created a free account in Fons and started playing around. I also had a Zoom meeting with Fons support where I could ask a lot of questions, which was very helpful. I had some pretty specific questions around payment processing but even more around the booking and auto reminders since I was comparing it to my experiences with Acuity.

First of all, I’m really impressed with the overall design. It’s very user-friendly and, for the most part, fairly intuitive. It is web-based—there is not an app. Families can just pin the link to the webpage to their phones’ homepage.

You will set up the family’s information and then invite them to create a login so they can connect their auto-payment information. They also need to log in to sign up for lessons and classes.

Both credit cards and ACH are accepted. Families do not pay any processing fees either way. As I mentioned earlier and as per the norm, we, the teachers, pay 2.9% plus $0.30 per transaction for credit card processing and 1.8% for ACH. While a cheaper process fee, the ACH bank transfers can take longer to clear.

This is all connected to Stripe, so you will get a weekly deposit. You can set the due date any way you like. So, for me, since I was doing Coinhop, it’s been set to come out on the first day of the month. Luckily, you can set it up the same way to be due on the first of every month.

Families will receive an invoice when you send them the link to set up their payment method, but they will only receive receipts once the payment is processed. It truly is automatic. Families don’t have to approve the payment every month, nor do they receive an invoice prior to the payment coming out, which is great.

That’s the gist of the auto-payment feature.

Even though this episode is about automatic monthly payments, since I was considering and looking into class signups and automated text reminders, I’m going to share what I inquired about and learned as far as this goes in Fons.

The first question was, “Can I create one-off lesson times they can sign up for in the summertime?” Specifically, I want to open up exact lesson times, like Mondays at 3:20, 4:00, 4:40, and 5:20, and then they sign up for a specific time. Almost all my students are 40 minutes long, so I like having exact lesson slots. For students who take longer lessons, I just tell them to book two slots back to back.

The answer is that the only way to create open lesson times with specific times connected to them in Fons is to create a group class that only allows one person to sign up. Otherwise, the individual appointment system is designed around more of an open calendar similar to what Calendly does, where you set your availability, such as Monday from 10 am to 6 pm. Then, people can sign up for whatever time works for them.

You can set up regular recurring lessons throughout the year as recurring appointments. The family then has to accept or approve that recurring appointment. For weeks that you’re closed—like during holidays—once you set up that recurring appointment, you can cancel those appointments without notifying the families.

You set global settings for your entire studio on how far families can book lessons or classes in advance and how your reminders work. Email reminders are default and cannot be turned off. They go out 24 hours prior to the appointment. Text reminders are optional and do not cost you extra, which is nice as that was one feature that cost me $11 more a month in Acuity.

If you turn on text reminders and families do not want to receive them, especially when they have the same lesson time every week, they can reply STOP to the text, and they will stop receiving them. But it will turn ALL of them off – even for the one-off classes, but they will still receive emails.

I know there are a lot more features in these studio softwares but these were specific things that I was looking for. I’ve realized the big question I’m asking myself as I’m considering studio software once again as a possibility is: do I really need these auto-text reminders? Is it really worth the cost?

The only reason I’m questioning it now is that I have been slowly cutting back the size of my studio and am getting closer to the 15-student mark and 11 different families. There’s a big difference between managing a studio of 15 and a studio of 20 or more. It’s amazing what having 5 fewer students feels like. $30 a month is a big expense for a smaller studio. As always, we have to weigh the benefits and convenience with the cost.

I’m still not 100% sure with Fons. I’ve gone back and forth over the last couple of days. The fact that thrown in another decision point for myself regarding group class signups and text reminders has only complicated the decision for me. *sigh


Stripe

The next logical option to consider is to skip the studio mangement software that goes through Stripe anyway and go directly to the source—Stripe.

You can easily set up recurring auto payments directly in Stripe as well. First, you set up your customers, then your products, such as your flat monthly lesson fee. If you have new customers paying a higher rate than old customers or families paying for more than one student, then you would set up different products for each of those different fee amounts rather than having families have to make the payment twice for different students.

Next, you set up your online checkout preference—basically, do you want to use a direct link you can send to families, or do you want to embed it on your website. Then, you can choose what payment methods you want to let them use to process. You could do credit card only or you could allow things like Apple Pay, or ACH Bank Transfer. I personally would allow Credit Card and ACH Bank Transfer. If you turn on ACH, just know that those payments can take longer to process than credit cards.

Also, Stripe has a recommendation that will pop up to turn on something called Webhooks first. I don’t think that would be necessary for us, as it’s more for someone selling physical products that would want to make sure the payment clears before shipping. You might possibly consider this if you want to be 100% certain the payment clears before the students get the lessons, but if you have the payments timed right so that the payment is made prior to the lessons occurring, it shouldn’t be a problem. Just something to be aware of, though.

One point to note is that you cannot customize the payment link.

Another point to note is that Stripe recommends turning on something called “Link,” which is what will autofill your customers’ payment and address details so they can easily complete their purchases. This seems like a reasonable setting to turn on.

When you set up your bank account, you’ll also want to set up your payout schedule – how often you want your processed payments to come through to your account. Unlike Coinhop, you won’t get it all in one deposit. Your payouts will list what transactions they were from.

Use can set up custom branding with your main brand color, logo, and icon. I have my studio 88 logo and then a smaller version of the same design which just says S88.

Tiny little catch, though, which is isn’t a deal breaker but was just a minor annoyance. The brand color is used in a really wide strip at the top of the stripe payment link. For me, green. When I uploaded my logo, which is all black except the number 88—for studio 88—which is the dark green, the 88 doesn’t show up because it’s the same color as the green background. Luckily, since I had my logo custom-designed, I have the original black and green version as well as solid black and solid white versions.

So, I changed it to a totally white version of my logo so it would pop against the green background. However, when I checked the custom settings for the printable PDF invoice, the entire background of the page, which is white since it’s printable, the white logo did not show up at all. *sign

You can’t set different logos for different versions of the invoice, which makes sense. Again, this is not a total deal-breaker but just a little annoyance.

My solution was to use the solid black version of my logo rather than the one with the number 88 in color or the solid white version. Another thing you’ll want to know is if you need to use a .PNG version of your logo rather than a .JPG version, as PNG supports a transparent background. Otherwise, your logo will look weird with a white background set on top of your brand color. Hopefully, that makes sense through this verbal description.

Another minor branding workaround I had to do was with the ICON. The file of the short version of my logo, which fits into the circle-size social media profiles, is cropped right at the edge of the logo, so when I uploaded it, it got cut off a bit. The answer was to open a blank square-size file on Canva, upload the logo, and leave a large white border around it, export the PNG file from Canva, and then upload it to your Stripe Icon. Then it fit perfectly.


Patreon

Before we finish out with the final two options, I just wanted to let you know that this podcast is supported by listeners on Patreon. If you are finding value and enjoyment in this content, please consider supporting the podcast. For $4 a month you will make a big difference in keeping this content going. For $7 you’ll can get a few extras from me throughout the year. Visit PianoPantry.com/patreon

A shout out to newest member Barbara Collins for joining in and cheering this podcast on. Thank you so much Barbara for your support!

Your Bank

OK! moving on. The next thing you might want to consider is to talk to your bank. I scheduled an in-person meeting with the manager of the bank where I have my business checking account—it’s a local bank.

It was honestly really eye-opening. I opened my business checking account 14 years ago and have never checked in with my bank to see if I needed to move to something different. She made some really good recommendations for me, both for helping keep my account more secure online and sharing some payment processing options I had no idea existed.

I thought the only possibility might be Zelle for business, but that wasn’t the case. In fact, they didn’t recommend Zelle for what I wanted to do. First, it can be limiting to your clients because not everyone’s banks give it as an option. Second, at least with my bank, there is no option to set up automatic monthly payments through Zelle. Interestingly enough, I do know a teacher friend who has someone who has her set on autopayments through Zelle, so it might depend on the bank whether or not recurring settings are available.

I don’t know that it does a lot of good to dive into specifics here because every bank will have different options, but I’ll still share what I learned.

My bank has an option called Cash Flow. You can set up the recurring payments, and it will email your client to connect their payment method. Only ACH transactions are accepted with Cash Flow. You pay $20 a month plus $0.50 per transaction.

For comparison, I’m making up numbers here. Say you take in $4,000 in transactions total per month. If your student payments are $150 a month, then that’s roughly 25 transactions. With Stripe’s 2.9% fee and $0.30 per transaction, you would pay around $120 a month in processing fees.

With Cash Flow that would be $35.

The second option they have only accepts only credit cart autopayments. It’s called Clover Dashboard and it’s similar to Stripe with the 2.9% and $0.30 per transaction fee. It also has a one-time setup fee of $129 and then a $7 per month fee ongoing.

In our above scenario, it would cost you the same as Stripe, except you would pay an additional $7 per month plus the one-time setup cost. The benefit of doing things through your bank like this is that you have more personal support than you would through the online Stripe portal.

The only option my bank had that accepted both credit cards and ACH was more complicated than would make sense for any of us in this business, so I’m not going to dive into details.

The benefit of Stripe is that I can accept both ACH and Credit Card transactions, which gives families more flexibility. However, I’ll be paying a higher fee than if I use the option that only accepts ACH through my bank.


Wave

The last option we’re going to cover today is Wave. The first important point to note as we are talking about the Wave app. The website is waveapps.com. This is an important distinction between another website—Wave.com, which is another payment site dedicated to making Africa a cashless continent. So you want Waveapps.com not Wave.com. Also, that’s Apps plural. If you go to Waveapp.com without the S you will get a site that is not valid.

Wave app is an online money management portal. Unlike Stripe, you can use it for general accounting purposes, scanning and saving digital receipts, payroll, and more. The process of setting up recurring invoices is very similar to Stripe. You add customers, you add your products, and you set up your recurring invoices. An email is sent to the customer to set up their payment information, and they are mailed a receipt after it is processed every month. I thought both Stripe and Wave were very easy to use and intuitive.

Wave’s recurring payments are called “recurring invoices,” and Stripe’s are called “subscriptions.”

One thing that might take some time to see what works best is setting up the invoice date and the due date. If I understand correctly, unlike Coinhop, you can’t tell it to process the payment on the 1st day of every month. You have to tell it what date to generate the invoice and how long they have to pay it—like due on receipt, due within 7 days, or within 14 days, etc.

So, if you generate it on January 1 and set the due date to 14 days from receipt, the due date is the 15th of the month. What I’m not 100% sure of without testing it out myself is whether the date the payment is processed becomes set to whenever they set up the payment. So, if they get the invoice on January 1 and go in and set up their payment on January 7, will that be the date their payment will always process?

If you want all payments for the month of January cleared by January 1, then you might need to set the invoice to process on the 15th and say it is due within 14 days, so all payments for the next month are received prior to the first day of that month.

Again, I’m not 100% sure without actually using it myself.

While I really like the Wave interface and the professional-looking payment setup, we currently use Quicken to manage all our personal and business finances. It’s a little more robust than Wave, but personally, for now, I don’t think Wave is the option for me. Of course, you wouldn’t even have to use the other tools in Wave—you could just use the payment processing.


Conclusion

As we wrap up here, let’s recap.

Unless you are already using and are very comfortable with Acuity Scheduling, I wouldn’t really recommend it as an option for consideration for auto payments.

If you like the idea of getting a good autopayment option and want access to studio management tools, such as booking group classes and receiving auto text reminders, then you might want to use studio management software.

If you don’t already use an online money management tool for your business and are interested in using it more, I recommend strongly considering Wave.

If all you want is a simple way of offering auto payments without any other bells and whistles, then I would recommend just going with Stripe.

Before you make any decisions, though, please consider talking to the bank where you have your checking account—especially if it’s local. You might be surprised at the options they can offer.

As for me… well, as I said at the beginning, I’m not 100% sure this is my final decision, but right now, I’m leaning toward trying out my bank’s ACH processing option, Cash Flow. They have a 60-day trial period before the $20 fee is charged, which means I can have two months of processing to see if I like it.

While it’s nice to streamline things in the same place, I also think it’s good business and a nice courtesy to give people payment options. I might reach out to my studio families and let them know I’m going to trial ACH processing through my bank and just say that if anyone really prefers to do credit card processing, then I will set them up on Stripe.

One final thought. Size also plays a significant role in business decisions. If you manage a fairly sizeable studio, then I think there’s a strong argument for using studio management software. As my studio gets smaller and smaller, the need for certain tools like this feels less necessary.

Like anything, friends, there’s a lot to weigh in these decisions. Think about it for a while, make a decision, and if it doesn’t work well, then rethink it again next year. I know it’s not always fun making changes, but sometimes we don’t have a choice.


As we roll into the end of 2024 and see 2025, peeking around the corner, remember to mark your calendar for two upcoming dates. The first is the workshop Organize Your Life with Notion put on by myself and Joy Morin. It will run for 3 Fridays in a row from January 10-January 24 from 1:00pm-3:00pm Eastern Time. Visit PianoPantry.com/notionwait to join the waitlist.

The second item is my online digital organization small group coaching series, which will run for 6 Fridays in a row from January 31 – March 7 from 1:00pm-2:30pm Eastern Time. Visit PianoPantry.com/getorganized to join that waitlist.

Thanks for taking a moment to rate the podcast on your podcast app and if you have an extra minute, I would appreciate a review as well. Next week you can look forward to a special teacher talk episode with my pal and fellow podcaster Christina Whitlock. Until then, friends!