Business Resources Library

A thriving studio regularly evaluates its mission and operations, including aspects that inevitably change over time. We can’t escape taxes and insurance! And then there are life changes, including retirement. Often the answers will change as the studio evolves through start-up, growth, maturity, and succession planning. Let’s explore five essential questions that an independent studio owner (or any business) should never stop asking.

Are you thinking ahead about changing jobs, easing into retirement, or vowing never to retire? Some teachers plan for a specific new “third act” in their lives. Others maintain a studio into their nineties! Some changes we plan for; others surprise us. How do we make career decisions at life’s important crossroads?

I’ve often considered piano teaching to be the best job in the world—why?

Ever find yourself overwhelmed by too much to do and too little time, so you “purge” your schedule of all the extra commitments? You feel better for a while, only to find yourself in the exact same situation several months later. Sound familiar?

Starting to wonder about retirement? Financial planning is essential. Equally important are transition challenges such as mindset shifts, identity questions, and new searches for purpose or meaning. Everyone navigates the retirement transition in their own unique way and in their own time. Here is a compilation of resources recommended by contributors in this issue (April 2026) of the 'MTNA Business Digest.'

In the MTNA 2024 Member Survey, MTNA asked questions to teachers who identified as being retired from full-time teaching, including “As a retiree, why have you decided to continue as a MTNA member?”

Preparing for retirement is something that many independent music teachers put off for years, but the earlier you start saving, the more time your funds will have to grow. Having a sound retirement plan is empowering; it gives us the ability to choose later in life.

This issue’s featured entrepreneur is Martha Hilley. Many know her as a long-time professor at the University of Texas, or as a past president of MTNA, or for her Southern charm and “darlin’!” greeting. Now meet her as an entrepreneur at age 79, opening an independent studio for senior adults. Watch her video to see her studio set-up and hear her story. Or keep reading for her story in her own words.

As piano teachers, we understand how to diligently practice our instrument and the art of music; however, do we prepare for career transitions that alter the course of our lives? All musicians traverse different seasons and that journey should include practicing the mental processes that accompany significant changes.

As we face the later years, our relationship to our profession, indeed to our everyday life, is full of opportunity, but also limited in ways we may never have imagined. With some deliberate choices, but also as an organic evolution, my metamorphosis has been a reimagining and an accounting. Absent large amounts of wealth, what can I leave behind?