We offer a variety of discounts to new students as a way to recruit as many as possible. The first lesson with any new student will be a 50% off trial lesson where you can meet the student, discuss their goals, and see if you are a good fit for each other. We cover the difference for all discounts, such as subscriptions, after the 50% off trial lesson.

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We’ve found that trial lessons are the best way to get new students, but if you would like to stop offering trial lessons, please let us know. You will be paid $20/hour for trial lessons, and, when you feel that your studio is full, you can contact us to close your profile to new students.

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‍The Benefit: We have a monthly advertising budget of $500-$1500 per teacher to promote you to potential students. However, many of these students and parents are skeptical, and the trial lesson is a great way to encourage them to have a first lesson. We have experimented with a variety of methods for making students more comfortable with this process and found that over 80% of students that purchase a trial lesson continue to become regular students.

We know it can be challenging to encourage students to continue, so we wanted to share some tips from some of our top teachers.

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1. The #1 tip we’ve heard from our top teachers is simply discussing a time for your next lesson in the last few minutes of your trial lesson. At the end of each lesson, ask the student “Would the same time next week work for you?” If you agree on a time, let us know at hello@virtu.academy and we can schedule the lessons for you. Ending the first lesson with a brief summary of what you worked on as well as assignments or recommendations of what to work on for the next lesson is a great way to get students more engaged.

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2. Many teachers also find that sending a follow-up email to the student/parent after trial lessons can be helpful, since many busy students simply forget to book another lesson. We’d recommend sending a follow-up email to the student/parent (you can find their email address in the lesson confirmation email), and CC hello@virtu.academy so we can help with scheduling. If you don’t feel comfortable communicating with the student directly, you can let us know in the post-trial lesson form.

3. After each trial lesson, fill out the post-trial lesson form at https://trial.virtu.academy. If the student has already scheduled additional lessons or you have already agreed on a time for your next lesson, you do not need to fill out this form.

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Here’s an example of a simple follow-up email from one of our teachers. Feel free to use this as a template or write your own:

“Hi ____________,

It was great meeting you for our lesson today. I wanted to send you a quick summary of what we worked on and what I’d recommend working on for your next lesson.

• [bullet points of what you worked on and assignments for next lesson]

Does the same day/time work for a lesson next week? If not, feel free to take a look at my scheduling page at virtu.academy/teacher/YourName. Please let me know if you have any questions about anything we worked on. I’m looking forward to working with you!

Best,

_____”

The goal of our cancellation policies is to ensure both students and teachers are compensated equally for last-minute cancellations and no-shows. ‍

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If a student needs to cancel or reschedule —

• ‍If a student cancels or reschedules fewer than 24 hours but greater than 4 hours before the lesson, the teacher has the right to charge the student 50% of the price of the lesson.
  
  
• If the student reaches out to you to cancel or reschedule, please ask them to use the “cancel/reschedule” feature in the lesson confirmation email they received.
  
  
• If it is fewer than 4 hours before the lesson, the student will be charged the full price of that lesson.
  
  
• If it is after your cancellation policy, please contact hello@virtu.academy as soon as possible to ensure you are compensated.

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We will not let the student know that you had a choice to charge them for no-shows/cancellations, so you do not need to worry about impacting your relationship with the student. If you choose to let the student reschedule for free, we will tell them that you asked us to make a one time exception to the policy.

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‍If a teacher needs to cancel or reschedule —

The teacher’s cancellation policy will also apply to themselves. If you need to reschedule a lesson greater than 24 hours before your lesson, please fill out the rescheduling form here. This form is crucial for our daily operations and makes sure that there are no gaps in communication.

• If it is fewer than 24 hours before the lesson, please email hello@virtu.academy as soon as possible.
  
  
• If a teacher reschedules or cancels between 4-24 hours before the lesson, we ask that they provide a 50% discount on the student’s next paid lesson.
  
  
• If a teacher does not show up to the lesson or cancels/reschedules fewer than 4 hours before the lesson, we ask that they provide a free lesson to the student.

IMPORTANT: In addition to filling out the reschedule form for any lessons you need to reschedule and/or cancel, please email hello@virtu.academy so that we can make sure that the changes are appropriately made. This helps us keep our bookkeeping accurate when it’s time to send out teacher payments.

‍If your student is a no-show —

‍If your student is not in the lesson room after 5 minutes, please contact 202-919-8082. If you wait longer than 10 minutes before contacting us, we may not be able to charge the students’ cancellation fee to compensate you.

Please text or call 202-919-8082 with any other issues that arise during your lesson.

‍When setting up your profile, you indicated your general hours of availability for each day of the week. This block of time is, by default, available for students to book. Any events in the calendar you shared with us (such as work schedules, classes, practice sessions, etc.) will get blocked off in our scheduling software so students can’t book those times.

• It is important to add any events to your calendar and mark them as busy as soon as you find out about them. The moment they are added, it updates your available times on the site so that students cannot book lessons during your unavailable times.
  

• For longer times you will be away (such as a vacation), please be sure to communicate this time away to your students and email hello@virtu.academy as well with the dates of your extended time away. We can enter that into our software to make sure no one can book during those days.

IMPORTANT: If you make an all-day event, Google will mark you as free, by default. Please ensure all-day events are marked as busy in the event’s settings. You may also email hello@virtu.academy to block off full days.

During the onboarding process, you’ll receive an invite to Bill.com. In order to receive payments for the lessons you teach, you’ll need to set up a Bill.com account.

As soon as you receive the invite, please set up your account as soon as possible so you don’t miss any payments.

Payment dates —

Payments get sent out on the 1st and 15th of every month. If the 1st or 15th lands on a weekend or bank holiday, the payment will go out on the following business day. Once the payments are sent, you should receive them in 1-2 business days.

i.e. Any lessons taught from January 1st to the 14th would be paid on January 15th and lessons taught from January 15th to the 31st would be paid on February 1st.

We’ll send you a W-9 form to fill out so that we can send you a 1099 for tax season the following year. If you’ve given us a W-9 form but some information has changed since you filled it out, please let us know as soon as possible so that we can get a new form from you.

We recommend using a computer when teaching your lessons but if you have to use a smartphone or tablet, make sure that you download the Zoom mobile app. Click the original room link in the confirmation email to join your room.

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In case of technical difficulties —

• If there are issues with your Zoom room, please set up a Google Meet here and text or call 202-919-8082 as soon as possible with the link so that we can pass it along to your student or you can share it with your student directly. Make sure to allow access to your computer’s microphone and camera as directed in your browser.
  

• In the event that there seems to be nothing wrong with your Zoom room but your student is having trouble connecting, we will contact you and ask that you set up a Google Meet and send us the link so we can pass it along.