Posts Tagged ‘rival’

Non-Compete Clauses From a Teacher’s Point of View

By Suzanne Kirsch

Teaching dance is my passion. And though I don’t yearn to run a studio of my own, I enjoyed the article about teaching contracts in the August 2009 issue (“Once an Employee, Now a Rival”). I can appreciate the fact that studio owners need to protect themselves. But despite all the articles about studio owners whose staff have left and taken students with them, not all teachers have the drive to become business owners or the desire to use their employers’ information to establish their own enterprise. I know many teachers who want to be in the classroom, not at a computer or on the phone during their non-teaching hours.

Contracts can be valuable to both studio owners and teachers when they state the expectations of both parties and the consequences if the expectations are not met. I would expect a contract to include the time frame in which my services were to be rendered, details about recital/competition material, use of a syllabus, compliance with a dress code, and expected behavior, and when and how much I would be paid.

 For several years I have focused on teaching ballet, and I have not yet found a situation that could offer me a full teaching schedule (to me, at least 25 hours per week). Living in a metropolitan area, I have choices about where to work. But since many studios cannot offer a single-subject teacher a full schedule, it seems a bit much to have to travel long distances in order to avoid working for what one employer considers to be a competitor. Besides the loss of personal time and the cost of travel, a long commute means more childcare costs. And of course, my time on the road is unpaid.

After 15 years of teaching, I recently encountered my first contract with a non-compete clause. I had accepted a position with Studio A, a ballet-focused school about 30 miles from my home. I live in the automobile capital of the world, where the bus schedules are sketchy at best and there is no railway system to fall back on when car problems arise. Calling a taxi could lead to a good half-hour wait and easily eat most of a night’s teaching income. But I’ve aspired to work for a reputable ballet school.

Not long after Studio A hired me, Studio B, about 10 miles from my residence and far from Studio A, contacted me. When I pointed out that I had already accepted work elsewhere, Studio B’s owner responded that Studio A was outside the radius of their non-compete clause. (The owner did not want the same material being taught “just down the street.”)

I checked into some of my state’s employment laws regarding non-compete clauses. Contracts in many fields contain stipulations that do not allow people to seek employment in the same industry within a specified distance of a former employer. Much of my research suggests that in the dance education field, such contracts would not stand up in court. First, most teaching positions would be considered part-time work, and second, teaching dance is so specialized a skill that prohibiting access to similar positions in the area would lead to financial hardship.

I have a vast amount of education and experience in my field. I don’t feel that any studio can claim to “own” my knowledge. Yes, any choreography I complete for a school belongs to them; but I feel that I should be able to make a living teaching technique classes without having to travel vast distances. Technique classes must be customized to the dancers in each class, as well as conform to various time frames. Having taught for three schools at once, I cannot say that I have or could have taken material I presented at one place and pasted it onto students in a different environment. Dance is a living art form and must be taught as such.

I understand that studio owners might not agree with my perspective. It’s a view from the opposite side of the table. But studio owners entrust their business to their teachers, and often, the teachers are the ones who provide quality customer service and represent the studio to the public. School owners risk losing valuable players in their businesses by trying to “possess” the services of teachers.

Lessons learned when trusted colleagues become rivals

By Eliza Randolph

What’s worse than losing a student to a rival studio? How about when a student or teacher from your studio not only leaves but starts a studio of her own? Already a challenging business, studio ownership can turn into an emotional rollercoaster when clashes arise between you and your employees, students, or students’ parents, and a split is the result. Three studio owners who survived such challenges talk about lessons learned and how they coped when trusted teachers or longtime students (sometimes both) suddenly transformed into rivals.

Lesson 1: Build trust through communication
“I didn’t see it coming,” Emily Thompson says of the decision by two teachers at her Ohio studio to leave and start their own school. “About three weeks after the recital I got a letter of resignation from them. And two weeks after that I found out they were opening their own dance studio.”

Thompson says she was friendly with both teachers, but the year before they left was a busy one and she hadn’t been able to chat with them much, except in passing at the studio. By recital time, she noticed that these two teachers were irritated by what seemed to Thompson to be minor problems, such as an incorrect costume order or the placement of a particular work in the recital program. Still, she says, she was stunned when they resigned and she learned of their plans to open another studio nearby: “I knew I didn’t feel as close with them at that time, but I wasn’t expecting that at all.”

The following year of dealing with her new competition was “a strain,” she says. “I haven’t spoken to them about it. But this summer the library program in our community set up a situation where all three of the dance studios in town were in the same place, performing for several libraries around the county. And it was awkward. I looked around the room and I saw that most of the girls there had taken dance at one time or another at my studio, and it was awkward.”

Thompson now sees measures that might ward off a repetition of her trauma. She has always had new teachers sign no-compete contracts, for example, but she hasn’t always renewed them each year.

That’s going to change, she says. “I would definitely keep up the no-compete contracts from year to year, and try to have more conversations with the faculty,” she says. “The year before everybody left, I didn’t have any faculty meetings. I did have them the year previous, and they always felt really negative, like [the teachers] were angry about things I was bringing up. Maybe they weren’t—maybe I was just too afraid of everything I was doing. I felt like they were annoyed or thought I was controlling them too much. And I didn’t like feeling that way, so I backed off.”

But Thompson acknowledges the importance of clear communication—regarding compensation, for example—and general expectations of employees and owner. “Stand up for yourself” as an owner, she says. “And at the same time I want the faculty members to feel like they can be creative and that they’re recognized as good teachers. It’s finding that balance between trust and not letting people walk all over you.”

The challenges of the last couple of years have shaken Thompson. “I’ve been considering doing something different, but I’m not ready to give up on dance,” she says. “With support from some friends and my husband, I just keep going on.”

Lesson Two: Separate business from personal
Chris Grau, who runs a studio in Pennsylvania, had her heart broken by two students she had taught for years, who left and opened their own studio within 10 minutes of hers. “I had had them since they were babies,” she says. “It was really devastating. It’s one thing to have a teacher who’s taught for you awhile take kids [away to a new studio]; I know that happens a lot. But I think it’s a different feeling to have kids [do it], whom you’ve put your entire life into during all these years.”

“The most difficult thing is [that] I’ve been in that business for over 28 years . . . but they didn’t want one bit of help from me. I would have helped them whole-heartedly. I love those kids and I wanted the best for them.” —Anonymous former school owner

Grau had been gradually teaching these two to teach. “As they got older, first they started helping me with classes, which happens in a lot of studios.” Then she began giving them classes to teach, and, as time went on, more responsibility. But, she says, “they did want me to give them more responsibility than I did.” She says she told them, “ ‘Not yet, because I have a lot of really good teachers here that I pay a lot of money to.’ So they were getting annoyed about that.”

Apparently that annoyance built up until the two novice teachers felt they had to go off on their own. Unfortunately, Grau says, they took many of her upper-level students with them. She was hit hard by this betrayal, in her business and in her heart. “I cannot let myself get attached to anybody like that again,” she says. “I have to be careful. I’ve got to separate the business from the kids. And it’s not that I don’t care about them—that’s hard for me. I don’t know if I can do it, but it’s something I have to work on.”

In the aftermath, Grau has regrouped and refocused her energy. She asked advice of friends and other studio owners. “And,” she says, “the gist of what everybody said was, ‘You need to build up your preschool program and little kids’ programs, your recreational programs, and not worry about your competition kids; they don’t really bring you that much money.’ ”

She’s on the road to recovery from the split, she says, but she’s not there yet. “I can’t say that I’m devastated, money-wise, but I’m not doing great,” says Grau. “I’m holding my own. I am working very hard to do a lot of things in the community—parades and county fairs. Wherever I can get my name out to anything in the community, that’s what I’m trying to do. And I’m trying really hard not to put my entire self into my competition team anymore. I need to put as much energy into the rest of my school.”

Lesson Three: Take the high road (or, give in gracefully)
A third studio owner, when confronted by a teacher and student who wanted to buy the studio from her or else start their own, gave in. “Because I had been in business for 28 years,” she says, “I was kind of ready to hand over the reins to somebody else.” She did feel, though, that the two had forced her hand. “A letter accompanied the meeting we had that said [owning the studio] had been my time for a long time, and now it was their time to strike out on their own and have their own studio,” says this former owner, who wishes to remain anonymous. “Or I could sell it to them. So they had definitely gone behind my back for at least a couple of months, planning what they were going to do.”

Nonetheless, she sold the business, and she even returned the next year to teach for the new owners. “My daughter still dances there,” she says. The decision to sell was made “probably more for [my daughter] than anybody else, because she was so close with her class that she’d danced with since she was tiny. And that was a huge deciding factor. And a huge deciding factor for the studio, because the whole studio is incredibly close, especially the competition group. And to think of them having to choose—I just couldn’t do that to them. They were too important to me. And the friendships that I’d forged. It would have torn that whole community apart.”

But it wasn’t easy to shift gears. “The most difficult thing is,” she says, “I’ve been in that business for over 28 years with an incredibly successful studio with over 400 students, but they didn’t want one bit of help from me. I would have helped them whole-heartedly. I love those kids and I wanted the best for them.” Instead, she has had to watch the new owners learn as they go, hoping that once they’ve established themselves they’ll feel free to draw on her experience.

The transition has been bittersweet, but she doesn’t regret her choice. “I’m loving retirement too. I can be with my kids and be able to do stuff.” But when running a studio is such a huge part of your life, making that transition can be tough. “It was a hard year,” she says. “Very hard. But I think knowing the circumstances and the outcome of what has happened, and how close the children in the studio are and how happy my daughter is, I wouldn’t have made another choice.”