It’s not so much how many students, as how your classes are arranged. This is the point where you’ll need to decide between how much work that you personally want to do versus the profit that you desire to achieve.
Experts suggest that about 150 students per instructor is a good rule of thumb. The key to handling student load is in scheduling smart and creating a good leadership team program. (Use the search function to find articles on each)
The ideal formula for maximizing your school’s profits it to conduct business with a low overhead and a lot of classes. Here’s a suggestion for easily accommodating as many as 150 students.
First, space your classes out correctly. You can do that by having your students attend class no more than twice a week. Teaching three classes per day, five days a week, and limit your classes to no more than 20 students. There you have it… 150 students attending class twice a week. Of course, that’s nice in theory, but you can get very close to that by assigning specific class times to students and getting your leadership team going.
Once you’ve exceeded 150 students, you might consider hiring an additional staff member. However, in order to maximize the benefits of this additional staff member they should not only be able to teach lessons, they should also be able to assist you in the marketing and sales functions of your studio.
Keep in mind that in order for you to teach a staff member how to answer the phone and enroll intros, you have to be able to do it yourself.
In order to get the most bang for your buck, this additional staff member should be able to complete all of the other tasks that you can do without a great deal of supervision.
Basically, you should be able to function well and bring in a considerable profit if you plan on one full-time instructor per 150 students.