Seven Drum City

Describe how Opus1 has helped you better manage and grow your school?

Christopher Luis-Jorge: Everyone, my name is Christopher Louis Jorge, and I’m a studio manager at a music school in Washington DC called 7DrumCity. We back in in January made the complete jump to Opus1 from our old software, and it has been a real boon for us. We’ve been really benefiting from the uh. Uh, from the features that Opus1 offers us, uh, specifically, I think about how before Opus, my days began with opening up our emails and every single day we were responding to the same kind of questions related to rescheduling and helping our students to, to coordinate their schedules, to do makeup lessons, asking about teacher availability and so forth. And the thing that was just so demoralizing about that at the time was how rote. That kind of thing was um. The answers were some variation of the same kind of thing, but required a human touch to provide the necessary context so the student can have the time that they needed. But one of the things I’ve really valued about Opus1 is the emphasis on student autonomy. Um, we’ve been able to configure it in such a way that our teachers’ time, our time is protected, the students don’t have full reign to Schedule themselves for silly hours or create these massive gaps or anything in our teacher schedules, but it has given the students the ability to take the reins for themselves. And in doing so, the most obvious way in which it has affected us is now when I log in for the start of the day and check our emails, um, I no longer feel an impending sense of dread. I didn’t know the dread was there, but it was, and Opus1 has really made that a lot easier. We also use our space, uh, as a rehearsal space and while I recognize that Opus1 isn’t necessarily constructed with the rehearsal space in mind, um, it’s adaptability to work for a rehearsal space has been a really nice side effect of moving to Opus1. Uh, the same sort of benefits occur there too. Uh, no longer are we micromanaging all of the nitty gritty scheduling stuff, who’s going to be in what room at what time? The tools that Opus1 provides has made that significantly easier for all of us. Uh, and it’s been a really good experience. It’s made things a lot easier, um, in doing so. It’s helped the same people who have been here the whole time, uh, free up our minds to think about other projects. We’ve been growing since we’ve switched to Opus1 and the reduced cognitive load that we’ve all, been enjoying as a product of switching to Opus1 has been a godsend, to be quite frank, uh, the same amount of people are now doing more work. Um, and that sounds, and I don’t mean that in the like, oh, we’re a 5 person team doing the work of 10 people. I mean to say that there was this task, there were these, these series of tasks that every single workday. Just occupied our minds and prevented us from. Uh, from really doing what we wanted to do. This is a music studio. Everyone who works here, myself included, are musicians, we engage in art and varying forms. Um, I would consider myself a creative person, and I think the rest of our team would similarly consider themselves creative people by using Opus1 by switching from our old software, or scheduling software. It has allowed us to Be more creative, to have our minds free so that we can think about higher order concerns. Uh, I think our students have also been responding to it very well too. They, uh, I mean, obviously, they’re able to reschedule for themselves, which is, which helps us, uh, but we’ve been noticing a lot of students have been feeling more in control, more empowered to. to be involved in their uh in their own lessons management. Another feature that I really like too is the sort of student hierarchy system that Opus provides, in which parents can assign. Uh, their children as dependents under a larger umbrella. Uh, that’s been extremely helpful in keeping straight, some of the more nuanced situations. Uh, for instance, we do have students who are divorced, uh, and having them, having them, structured in such a way has made things a lot easier for us, for them.

What would you tell someone who is thinking about trying Opus1?

Christopher Luis-Jorge: I would encourage someone who’s interested in Opus1 to give it a try for sure. Uh, I would mention that Opus1 appears to be a youthful software. Is that safe to say, in the sense that I, I feel that you have, they have a lot of potential and a lot of really strong customer support. Um, we’ve only implemented Opus for a few months now, and in that time span we’ve seen requests we’ve made. Uh, become features in the software, and it creates this impression at least of a very dynamic and constantly growing. sort of digital ecosystem, uh, and um it’s such a, it’s just it’s very flexible, it’s very flexible and its potential is is yet to be completely realized. Uh, so I would encourage people to give it a shot, uh, see what you like about it, and there’s something that you feel is missing. In my experience, Opus1 has been listening and takes it very seriously. Uh, I’ve seen these missing features get added as soon as the email has been sent, so, um, you provide a lot of support, and I would, I would mention to a person who’s interested in Opus1, just the, the unusual level of support that you all provide.

What did you use before Opus1 and what’s better about Opus1?

Christopher Luis-Jorge: Prior to using Opus1, we were using Mind Body. um, and Mind Body was fine. It was fine. The problems though are are baked pretty deeply into the software. Mind Body was constructed to be a management tool for yoga studios, and there are certain intrinsic assumptions that went into it, that when we translate it into a music school context. Uh, created a lot of problems that were that were tricky, they were very nuanced to fix. For instance, though I recognize there are different schools and practices of yoga, uh, there are different skill levels as well. The differences between these things are not quite as significant as the difference between. The drum The bass guitar, the electric bass, and singing. Uh, so having a software that can appreciate that we have a teacher, yes, but this teacher has X, Y, or Z instruments under their belt, they’re comfortable teaching these things, um, and to really honor the difference between. These these different instruments has simplified a lot of things uh with running a music school. That’s significantly better. Uh, not to mention the fact that Opus allows for a lot more hands on, uh, customer interaction with their own scheduling has reduced the workload for us. We are no longer answering the same frequency of questions that we would used to get every single day, uh. Parents feel more aware of their own students schedules, which is fantastic that we weren’t seeing that in Mind Body, um students feel more empowered to reschedule, they seem more aware of how many makeup credits they have, things like that. It’s a really simplified the equation for us considerably.