Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle Student Feedback

Jonathan Vipond, Professional Musician and Guitar Teacher, Bradford, UK

“Tom Hess has changed my life. He has helped me teach my guitar students better, and helping me get over the fact that I don’t need tons and tons of material to teach… I need concepts, and I need to teach the student rather than teaching a class. I would say that that is the single most important thing.”

Honestly, I wasn’t seeking help, it came to me. A friend of mine sent me this sweep picking video of Tom, he was like check out this guy he is crazy good. I was like wow this is really good, and at the bottom of the YouTube video it said do you want to make 6-figures a year teaching guitar, I said yes, so I clicked. I didn’t think it was possible to have a full time teaching business, so it had never occurred to me until that point and then I made the decision that that was going to be my career.

I sent an email to a few people who had testimonials on Tom’s sales page, and one of them emailed me back and said he was a 6 week paid vacation from teaching on the beach in the south of France, and that I needed to sign up right away.

My confidence level in teaching has gone way up. Also I can teach groups now, I only taught private lessons at first and Tom showed the benefits and the value of actually teaching in groups, and how it is more effective than teaching in private lessons, and that alone has made a huge difference in my business.

Let’s talk about how Tom Hess is making me rich. When I started out, I was making like 10 -20 thousand dollars a year teaching. And now, not only is my business running much better than it was… there’s a lot of work to do, it’s running a lot better than it was… but now, I’m in the 6-figure club. I set a goal when I joined the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle to make $100,000 a year, and Tom Hess helped me get there. And now, we’re on the way to the 7-figure mark, and I have no doubt that he will make it happen. I mean, I have to obviously do the work, but he will help me make it happen.

My life has more flexibility now because of the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle. I have more money to be able to do things that I need to do for the business, and for the family. If you have $200, or if you don’t, sell your car, and invest the $200 and you will make it back. If you do everything… for me what happened is I said "alright we’ll give Tom Hess one month and we’ll see if he can really help me", and within that month I already had made my money back.

The forum is amazing value. To not be in the Platinum group and not have access to the forum is the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. Because the forum is such a valuable support system of people where you provide value and you receive value from others, we help each other work through questions and a lot of the times we don’t even need Tom to help us solve our issues. Granted, there are times when we do, but on the forum a lot of those things can get solved so that when we do have our phone calls with him we don’t have to focus on those minute details, we can focus on the big picture.

Sometimes just working through my frustrations with my students or the way my business is running, I’ll get on the forum and post that question or frustration, and immediately get 10 responses that say I’ve been there, I know exactly how you feel, and I’m like ok, I’m not crazy. You know, everybody can relate to me.

Tom Hess has changed my life.

Eric Bourassa, Ft.Worth, Texas, USA

"Before I started to work with Tom Hess in the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle, I had 2 guitar students, I now have over 50 students and my phone doesn’t stop ringing!”

I managed to gain full control over my finances (earning 4 times more than before) and my guitar teaching skills have improved a lot so that my students can be certain that they gonna get great results faster. For the first time in my life I feel independent.

The program paid off after 3 months and the investment I made is nothing compared to the huge results I got in the long term. Thanks to Tom I managed to build a really strong reputation in a very competitive city and gained a lot of satisfaction from my new life.

Greg X, Professional Musician and Guitar Teacher, London, UK

"Tom Hess’ approach is so methodical, so scientific, and he just lays out the blueprint for how to best teach a person. And of course it’s obvious, he’s been at this for decades, analyzed the science of teaching people music and guitar, and his approach is just mind-blowing."

It was a perfect marriage of two things: I love music, I’m an entrepreneur. Tom Hess made me see how, through his Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle, that you can make a great career that is satisfying both financially, from a financial security point of view, and it’s very rewarding because you can help your students to reach their goals and beyond.

Not only does Tom Hess have this great program, it’s also populated by some of the greatest people you will ever meet. The combination of the path that he lays out in front of you, plus once you see the example of so many great people implementing it, who are eager to help you do it as well, what more could you want?

I have improved in so many ways…

Aldo Chircop, Gzira, Malta

"I got 55 new students in 5 months. Within 6 months of starting the program, I have quit my non-music related job and have been a full time teacher ever since.”

My guitar teaching skills are 100% better now than they were before I joined the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle.

Antony Reynaert, Guitar Teacher and Professional Musician, Ostende, Belgium
www.antonyreynaert.com

“There’s a lot on the back end that you have to know to be successful. Without this training, I wouldn’t be anywhere near where I am right now.”

My teaching has improved, as a teacher, how I relate with the students, they’ve helped with retention of the students… but just to get a better mindset for the actual business, and for running a business. It’s not just as simple as opening up the shop door and just saying “Come on in”.

Being around with the big players here as part of this teacher training, it’s inspiring. You get to hear what they go through each day, each week, you can relate with them, they can relate to you, they inspire you to just be better. I don’t think there’s a bad word said about anybody here, it’s just like great successful people, really easy going, and just great people to be around.

Allen Hopgood, Carrara, Australia

“My students are happy, they are progressing fast (a couple of them actually surprised me) thanks to the teaching techniques described by Tom.”

Before I began working with Tom I had no guitar students (I was not teaching guitar). The Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle was instrumental in having my business started. This was no small feat, giving the amount of competition in my zone (I have 2 music schools within 2 blocks from me). The techniques that Tom gave me totally bypassed this problem, and I never had any difficulty in showing the students that I was their best choice. My roster is totally full, and I have a waiting list too.

Tommaso Zillio, Professional Musician and Guitar Teacher,
Edmonton, Canada
www.tommasozillio.com

"The Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle has helped me develop my teaching schedule to minimize the amount of hours I have to teach guitar, maximize my students success, and maximize my income."

Tom enabled me to teach less hours and still maintaining financial success for the first time in one year. My lessons are 100% better and my time problems have disappeared.

Zack Uidl, Illinois, USA, Professional Guitarist, Guitar Teacher and Composer

“I think what convinced me that the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle was right for me was seeing the success that other people in that program have had since starting their businesses, following what Tom Hess tells them to do, and how they've grown as a business owner, as a teacher, as people, and just seeing those results. That's what convinced me. It's like "Hey, if these people can do it, there's no reason why I can’t”.”

My teaching skills have improved immensely since starting the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle. I'm much better able to take what a student wants to learn, what they want to achieve on guitar, and be able to craft a plan for them that will lead them to the result that they want. And whenever there are obstacles that block them from playing, I'm able to break it down, isolate the root of the problem, help them overcome that...while still being able to motivate them and encourage them along the way.

Before I stated the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle I was sort of like a lot of other people, just sort of working the usual daily grind of 9-5 sort of job, doing a job that, even though it was in an industry that I enjoyed, it wasn't doing something that I really liked. And in order to get that position that I really liked, it involved a certain amount of work and climbing a ladder that I didn't really want to do because, at the end of the day I wasn't really as passionate about that. With joining the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle, it's been a total 180. I work for myself now, I have my own hours, I have a lot more time on my hands to do the things that I want to do, things I enjoy doing, because I create my own schedule. I decide when I work, what I do with my time, and life's become a lot more relaxing that way because I know that I am the mater of my destiny in that way. I plan everything I do and having that sense of freedom is incredibly liberating because you're not chained to someone else's schedule. You set the boundaries, you set the terms, and you've just got to follow them.

The forum is such a wealth of information. I remember when I first joined I was going through the forum for hours and hours just finding so much incredible stuff. and before that I was actually a Correspondence Lesson student of Tom Hess...seeing the regular forum for the first time, my mind just kept getting blown everywhere. And that's when I really started to realize just how incredible this program is and just how much potential there is for people who, even if they haven't been playing guitar as long as someone else, you can still come into the program, you can still become a great teacher and a great player, and you can walk up the stairs and climb that ladder that same way that everybody else did and it's easy to do it. You just gotta put in the time and the effort and stay persistent and never give up.

Ryan Mueller, Toronto, Canada

“Tom’s taught me how to really inspire my students, motivate my students and push them to achieve more than I would’ve been able to on my own. When I first started teaching I failed a couple of times. I even had my own studio before, and messed everything up, and had to go back to a regular job. And then, you know I was looking on the internet and I found Tom. And I decided to join because I was looking for a mentor who could help me achieve a teaching business that really supported the life that I wanted.”

Since joining the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle, my guitar teaching skills have dramatically improved. My guitar teaching business went from complete crap to extremely well-off. Not only did it create a paradigm shift in my mind, you know it gave me every step I needed to for every problem I had. Every little frustration, anything from the financial side of things, to the marketing side, it gave me exactly what I needed to know… and from this, it’s just helped me get through every road block that I could’ve possibly come up against with ease, I didn’t even have to struggle.

This program has made a massive impact on my life. I went from barely making any money, in debt… you know struggling to get by to earning well over 6-figures and actually now into double 6-figures. It’s really made a huge difference on the quality of life. You know, instead of struggling and being scared of how to pay the bills every month to having so much more money each month than the average person makes in a year.

Literally Tom delivers to you so much value in this program that the amount of money you’d invest in the first month would be made back almost immediately. If you put in the effort and take action on what he tells you to do, within the first month you’ll definitely already make your money back. Within the first couple months I gained 30 students from this program… so it way exceeded my expectation.

It’s really inspiring to be in this program with other teachers who are also trying to accomplish the same goals. It really helps in the fact that you can talk to other people who are trying to do the same things as you, that are business-minded and are going through the same things that you are and you can actually talk to them, and use each other to figure out solutions to the problems you run into as a music teacher. It’s you know, extremely motivating because you’ll be more inspired to grow your business because you’ll be with other people who are trying to do the same thing and you’ll want to live up to that expectation too.

Jacob Melling, Richland, Washington

“When I first started teaching, I didn't know you could learn how to teach from anyone. But I did know that Tom Hess was a master teacher. I had been taking lessons from him already, and I'd been to several events before I stared teaching. I saw the proof of how Tom Hess could teach. I could tell that he knew what he was doing, and I learned from him because he had the proof. He had absolute proof that he knew what he was doing, he'd taught thousands of students, and the approach has been working for me so I knew it would work for other people.”

What convinced me that the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle was the right thing for me was because of proof. Tom Hess had proof, he had taught people, many people, thousands of people, how to play guitar properly. He had also taught other people to teach guitar before I started the program, and I could see the fruits from them. To me it was very simple. He knew what he was doing, and I wanted to learn from him because I wanted the same results.

Since my guitar teaching business started from zero, it has improved massively since I've started. I've built a six-figure Canadian business up to now, and it's just going to continue to grow. It has allowed me to replace my day job as well as my wife's day job, so it has totally transformed me and my life.

If you have a teaching business that is not making a lot of income, it is very wise for you to invest in the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle because that investment is going to give you the tools and give you the resources and access to a huge network of other teachers that can help you build your business much faster, with much less money required. Because of that, you will be able to multiply your investment very quickly.

Maurice Richard, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

“I can't think of any other program that has had so much success making people make great guitar teachers and music school owners. The track record is just overwhelming if you compare it with any other program out there. I think that also comes from a certain mindset that I really identify with and that is very motivating.”

I wanted to make a living from music and I didn't see how I could do this directly from being a recording or performing artist. And I thought that teaching guitar would be a great way to make money and even develop my [guitar playing] skills, because you learn a lot about that when you are teaching...and being 100% focused on music, so everything that I did for my music practice reinforced the business part, and everything that I did for the business part reinforced the music part. So everything was in the same direction.

When I started two and half years ago, I had a job that gave me a lot of flexibility, (I was a translator) but there was zero human contact, because all the time I was just translating text onto a computer. I had never seen the people I was working with, and it was not really my passion. And I was limited by how much money I could make in an hour. In two years I got my business to six figures which, in Spain, is quite high because the living standard is up to 2.5 times lower than in some cities in America. I mean, if you make six figures there you are very comfortable.

I'm able to do this while having some freedom of time, so I choose to work on the business because I love it. It's the contact with the students, the contact with the other teachers in the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle, I talk with them every day. We support each other, many of them have become some of my best friends. The events, when I come to Chicago and I see these people in real life, not only on the forum, it's one of the best moments of the year. But what is even better is that I know that I have a great school that I can come back to, and I just love hanging out with my students because, thanks to Tom Hess, I've been able to build systems that allow me to select my students. I have loads of people calling me all the time and I'm able to be a little selective.

If I want to take days off, I can. I have big goals for this music school so I choose to work hard on it, but I really don't feel forced. In fact it doesn't even feel like I'm working at all. It's not work, it's fun.

Matthieu Delage, Madrid, Spain

“I found that since joining the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle that my confidence in teaching students has progressed significantly.”

I've found that learning different types of formats has helped me to be able to teach my students in a much better way, due to being able to consolidate the way that I'm teaching them. I can easily have more time to devote to prepare myself, be able to create content, lesson materials, things of that nature, so that my students will progress much faster than if I was just winging it all the time.

I decided to learn from Tom Hess because when I was in college I actually took a few guitar pedagogy classes, and after I graduated from college, I found that they didn't really help me that much because they were focused on different theory books and things like that. With Tom Hess it wasn't so much about using a specific method, but being able to develop your own method for how to teach your students the best that you can.

My guitar teaching skills have improved significantly since I started the program due to learning different styles of teaching, learning how to teach multiple students at the same time, and being able to layer it so that none of the students are bored, and yet they are all learning and staying focused on the task that they need to be working on.

Joshua LeBlanc, Lafayette, Louisiana, USA

“The Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle and Tom Hess have taken my teaching to a whole new level.”

I decided to join the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle because I wanted to be successful. I was tired of my current day job, I’d worked at that for many years, and it was a non-music-related field. And teaching the way that 99 percent of how guitar teachers teach music is not productive for the students, and it’s not a financially viable business option. Tom Hess has married together the two ideals of student success and financial success for the business owner, and it has worked extremely well for us. And seeing his success with other people at the events that I’d attended just to learn how to play guitar better… I talked to other people that worked with him and I knew I had to join the program at that point.

Tom Hess not only is the most successful teaching mentor and trainer in the world, he creates some of the best guitar teachers in the world, and I wanted to be part of that group. You can either be part of the people that are winning and making a difference, or you can just kind of fumble around and doing your own thing. I’d wasted enough time and I’d wanted to move my ass and do something positive.

My guitar teaching skills have improved massively. The complete student focus, and “student success focus” have really made a difference to the students in my school. My students have made more progress in the few months that we have been using the techniques that Tom Hess has provided for us than they have in the years before. I have one [student] who has been playing guitar for ten years, and in two months he says he has made more progress in those two months than he has in the previous ten years. And it is just that student success focus, not just the business focus.

My life is a lot better at this point because I am getting very close to quitting my day job and doing something that I actually have a passion for. Like Eric Johnson said, “There’s nothing cooler than playing guitar for a living”, and I fully agree. It’s not “buying something”, investing in the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle is an investment. If I was talking to someone who had never been a part of the program, you need to buy this program! You need to be a part of this program, because you can either do the same thing for the next twenty years, or you can become a successful business owner and really make an impact on your students’ lives. Don’t waste any more time doing things that really don’t work. The number of guitar teachers and guitar schools that are successful outside of the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle is small compared to the proportion of people that are successful in the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle. The program works. It makes good people better, it makes average people great teachers, great business owners, so I would recommend anybody getting into it today, if not yesterday.

Jeff More, Albany, New York, USA

“It is so inspiring to be around other students who are earning six figures or more. Just being around them motivates you, makes you want to take the next action, implement what we’re learning, and it’s almost like a race sometimes. It’s great, I love it.”

My guitar teaching has improved at the bank account for sure! And my teaching, I feel so much more comfortable with teaching. All my students get much more personalized attention, and things are going really awesome and they’re going to continue to get even better.

I feel great knowing that [my business and I] are completely dominating our competitors! They have no clue of even a fraction of what we’re doing is! It works phenomenally, everything’s going great, I love it.

Erik Dashuttaman, Maui, Hawaii, USA

“Before being coached by Tom Hess, I didn’t really have any clear idea of what I should do and what order I should do it in, in order to grow my business to develop it.”

I’d been teaching in various ways, I’d teach privately or deliver educational programs for other schools and organizations for a few years, but I just found myself at a point where, despite having worked quite hard, I didn’t really have anything to show for myself. I didn’t really know how I was going to consolidate the experience I’d had up to that point and continue developing in a way that just didn’t feel slightly random.

So I feel like being part of the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle has helped me develop a clearer idea of what it is that I want to accomplish in my business, and how I’m going to do that in a consistent way, versus “stabbing in the dark”.

It’s definitely intriguing and inspiring being around other business owners who are making six figures and multiple six figures in their businesses. I think it also really helps to understand and clarify what it is that I want to do in my business and my life, and how I want to show up what it is, specifically, that I want to provide. Because you see other people who have clarified that. I don’t necessarily want to do the exact same thing that they’re doing, but seeing the number of different people all progressing down their own path of becoming increasingly clear about what it is that they’re trying to accomplish in their business is helpful to that process of clarification, that might otherwise happen in a very trial-and-error kind of way.

Diana De Cabarrus, Edinburgh, Scotland

"Before I joined the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle, it took me a few years to recruit as many students as I did in the last couple of months, so all in all Thanks Tom for the great teachings...”

I’m making more money now and my students receive better teaching, because the program not only explains how to attract more students, but also how to give them more value for what they pay you.

Chris Martins, Professional Musician and Guitar Teacher, Paris, France

“The Elite Guitar Teacher’s Inner Circle changed my life… totally totally changed my life. That’s been huge. Teaching in groups has been awesome. It’s not just here’s a lick or here’s a chord or here’s a song… it’s like Tom says 80% people and 20% teaching. So the groups are great because you can group people that are similar levels, but it’s the social interaction too I think helps a lot with students… they can see people who are sort of in the same boat as them in terms of what they want to be able to do with playing and they’re playing together so that sort of concept there is great. And just the ways to teach… strategies instead of just tactics from week to week… preparing lessons… I mean, it’s huge I can speak for hours actually.”

I’ve been teaching for 17 years and it’s been on and off. I started going to the student’s house teaching and then I did teaching in schools more recently the last 4 or 5 years. I’ve taught in shops, I’ve taught a lot and I’ve always… or more recently… probably a year before I met Tom and the Elite Guitar Teacher’s Inner Circle, been sort of more thinking about setting up my own business at home for teaching, because that’s just more security, I don’t have to rely on someone else’s business or shop or school or whatever and I can sort of do things more of the way I want to do them, so that sort of made me want to do that… exactly that. So I started advertising a few fliers, a few posters… nothing too big so... Then I found the Elite Guitar Teacher’s Inner Circle. I just wanted to have my own business and control, and not have to leave the house.

Tom just knows how to do the teaching side of things. I just read what he had on his website, what Tom had on his website for teaching and that was it… I was there definitely. It was just so huge. Not just teaching and business and setting up a business… and just I got the impression that when I read that I was going to be shown everything… and holding your hand … this is what you do. So I just thought if I am committed, I can’t not make this a success. I guess I just thought I got a choice… I can do it on my own, or I can have somebody who knows what they’re doing, and I always think, if you want to know how to do something, go to someone who’s done it and done it well. Just reading information on it, I just learned so just much right there without having any contact with Tom. And I just don’t know anything else like either… never come across anything like it. I know guitar teachers who just teach by default really. Great players, but not necessarily great teachers… or just clueless you know, on what to do. So just I thought I can do it myself or I can go down that route so it was a no brainer.

With the Elite Guitar Teacher’s Inner Circle, my business skills have gone from nothing to pretty good. I feel like I have a lot of information that I can use that no one in my area who teaches guitar has… I can see it. You know, where I used to teach before the Elite Guitar Teacher’s Inner Circle and set up my own business… it was just hopeless. So just knowing how to set up a website… optimize a website so people can actually find it… delivering flyers… making video brochures… and how to write ads… I used to just have information on how to write guitar lessons and my address and that was it.

Since joining the Elite Guitar Teacher’s Inner Circle, at the time I had about 8 or 9 students at home and I was teaching in a shop, and at schools… now I’ve got 65 students, they’re all in groups… I’m just about on 6-figures… I probably am on 6 figures… I’ve at least tripled my income. I’ve been able to buy a new house, get a studio built at home… teaching studio. And for your family and kids, it’s just awesome to be able to do that. And to do that with teaching… which you love. You can get up when you want, and you’ve got time, you can make your own hours and stuff like that. To me, if you would’ve told me 18 months that I would have 65 students and that sort of income… it just wouldn’t have been conceivable… and to me that’s like, just the start. You know, I can see that doubling again… the numbers for sure. So that’s… yeah that’s just changed my life… definitely changed my life big time… mindset and just… yeah, what you can do.

I’d say to anyone who wants to join Elite Guitar Teacher’s Inner Circle who doesn’t live near me to join definitely. I mean if you’re thinking about teaching, just do it. It doesn’t even matter if you’ve been playing a couple of years or whatever, just do it, you’re going to learn so much for your own playing anyway to start with, and then you can start teaching beginners pretty early on… it’s not like you have to be at any virtuoso level to be teaching. So if you’re thinking about teaching, just do it. Make the investment and do it right.

Simon Candy, Melbourne, Australia

"Tom Hess has helped me teach my guitar students better because he’s shown me not just ideas on what to teach them, but how to actually help them whatever kind of student they are on a more kind of psychological level, how to get them practicing more, how to really get them picturing the success that they’re going to have, and actually making that a reality with the students."

I’ve got students who’ve been with me for only a year who are kicking other teacher’s students in the local area down the road with their playing, managing things in a year that other teachers have managed to teach theirs in 5 or 6 years.

I sought the help of Tom Hess because I made the decision at the time I wasn’t ever going to have a day job again. I had a few students at the time, but I just decided I was really serious that I was going to be a professional musician, and part of being a professional musician was that I wanted to teach to earn money.

And after finding some articles online, I tried out a couple of things that he was saying and I was like, okay if these things work and this is the free stuff, well let’s see what he has to offer with his pay stuff. And I think within two weeks of actually paying for the course, I’d already got enough students to pay off what the course was costing me. And then everything else after that was profit and new students and it was awesome.

Since I started the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle, my business has improved massively. I started with only 4 students and I now have about 45 students who come very regularly and they learn much more than I’ve ever been able to teach students in the past. The business is growing very very quickly and I’m able to not only teach from my home and have students come to me, I have a space that I rent out as well and I have lots of students come and visit me there.

So for a new teacher, joining the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle is massive. I don’t even know how to explain it. I’ve tried to explain it to other people before. Sometimes they just don’t believe me, they don’t think it’s possible. You have to see it to experience it, and to experience it, you have to do the things that the course tells you to do. But when you do that, the things you have to do are actually really easy and it’s just getting off your backside doing them, and you will use it to make money, get a whole lot of students and have some awesome kickass students who you can really help to become cool guitar players.

It’s great being around the other people in the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle, because I can ask them for advice whenever I want. I’ve never been in a situation before where I can ask people who are earning 4, 5, 6 times the amount I am for advice on what I should do. And because they're not in the same location of me, they’re not competitors of mine, they can give me that advice, and they’re happy to do so. They're from all around the world and okay, they might not be able to give me the exact advice I want for my country, but they can tell me where to look. They can tell me who to speak to and they can give me great advice on how to grow my business loads of areas. It’s awesome.

Darryl Powis, London, England

“It gives me so much drive to be around other members who earn six figures per year teaching guitar, learning from them, and getting my ass kicked here and there when needed.”

I'm super stoked now to get home and keep on developing and working on implementing all those things that I learned from them, bringing that into my business, passing knowledge onto my students and helping them learn a lot better than before, with much more fun, and way easier.

Michael Korte, Hagen, Germany

"Tom Hess has helped me teach my own guitar students better in terms of how I approach teaching them, so when I first started in the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle I had no experience teaching guitar. I was looking for some help on how to do that and was pleasantly surprised and happy to find the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle."

The different training methods that Tom Hess teaches you about are fantastic. And when you do apply those things to your students, you can see how much improvement they make versus your old ways of teaching.

Since joining the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle, my guitar teaching business has improved dramatically. I started with absolutely nothing. Maybe like 4 students and then I quit my job and I started teaching on my own and I built that up to like maybe like 30 or 40 students and then I ended up hiring another teacher and this went on and I ended up opening a commercial space and now I think we teach around like 150 different students and some of them do multiple classes a week so that’s really cool. So my business has grown to a multi 6-figure level, which is insane because when I started, 6-figures was not even in my mind.

Before I joined the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle, I worked for a pharmaceutical company, I was a scientist and had your typical 40-hour work week and commuting in traffic and I was never really happy cause I didn’t have my time. I always kind of felt like a slave to my job cause there was so many things that I wanted to do, even if it was just like sitting at home and reading a book, like that’s what I wanted to do with my time. So now that I run my own business and my business has grown so much, I love Tom Hess’s saying that "when do I wake up? When I’m done. And when do I go to bed? When I’m tired." So that’s my life now which is great, because it allows me to take time off whenever I want. Which I could never do before, because you were limited to however many vacation days you had. And instead of teaching 40 hours a week, or instead of working 40 hours a week, I now only teach about 7 or 8 hours a week, which is awesome because that leaves a lot of extra time to do the things that I want to. So life is a lot less stressful than it used to be. And I’m definitely a lot happier than I used to be too, so that’s good.

Joining the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle even if you are a beginner teacher is very helpful, because I myself had absolutely no experience teaching and I didn’t have a lot of experience with guitar in general cause I didn’t take a lot of lessons growing up, I was mostly self-taught, so I felt very self-conscious about even being able to teach, like it just felt like I wasn’t going to be able to do it. And the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle really gives you the confidence. The members that are on the forum are very motivating, very supportive. And we’ve all been there, we’ve all been to the point where like we started with zero students. But the biggest thing is to actually take the action to step forward, even if you're broke if you think you can’t afford it… it’ll pay for itself within the first month if you just do what you're told to do.

The forum is a vital part of the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle. Everyone is so helpful and they really force you to think about the questions you're asking on a much deeper level. So especially in the beginning, you ask kind of like surface level questions and because you need the answers to those surface level questions. But people are always encouraging everyone to think a little bit deeper about the questions they are asking. And it’s great because there’s so much information on that forum now, I mean there’s a whole backlog of everyone’s conversations so it’s a treasure trove of tidbits and information like you know, how to make an effective lesson policy and opening your own commercial space and there’s just so much information on there. And everyone’s very supportive in answering your questions so it’s probably the best part of the program.

Lauren Bateman, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

"I like to be coached by Tom Hess most because he fucking delivers. He just gets results. Tom Hess just gets results. You know there’s a lot of guys online who offer all sorts of courses, but Tom Hess always delivers."

It's fucking amazing alright, to be in an environment where you have all of these super-successful guitar teachers and you're hanging out with each other, you’re sharing ideas, you're helping each other take each other’s business to the next level. It’s great... it really is.

What Tom Hess has done or helped me do is he’s showed me how do you not only teach a student… I mean that’s the easy part, you know, you get the information and you tell them alright, we'll learn these chords or this scale... and what makes Tom Hess’s methods different is that he actually shows you how to train and coach your students. Because eventually the only thing that matters is that your students do what you tell them to do right and then that takes training. And you don’t just want to show them stuff, you want to turn them into good guitar players, great guitar players, and Tom Hess gives you the tools to achieve these things. And you can really find that anywhere else on the internet. I mean, I’ve looked. There is nothing.

I wanted to become a better teacher. I started out like most teachers not knowing jack shit about what I was doing. I only had a few students. Didn’t know really how to get more. I didn’t know how to effectively help them. You know, just going at it by trial and error. So I started looking around and I found Tom Hess, joined the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle and things just took off for my business.

Tom Hess - he’s the fucking best out there. He is the single greatest guitar teacher/coach on the surface of this planet. At least I haven’t found another one that is better. There’s some guys out there who can tell you, alright I can show you how to do this or I can show you how to do that, but they don’t even come close... it’s... it’s shooting fish in a barrel really.

I have improved in ways that basically I didn’t know what I was doing in the beginning and I learned to actually what I’m doing now. Like I said earlier, I’ve got the tools and skills needed to effectively teach guitar students and turn them into the guitar players they want to be and that’s great. And business-wise, I went from barely zero to 6-figures and there are not very many guitar teachers on the face of this planet that can say that they got to that level. So I have improved quite a bit.

So how the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle is going to help you build your business and increase your skills as a teacher is that it’s going to give you the tools that you need to build an effective business that basically runs itself. And you're just going to completely murder the competition. Okay not literally of course. But you're going to fucking kick ass. None of your competitors are going to do this stuff.

Even if you don’t have much income, it’s more than worth it. If you’re only remotely serious about actually building an effective teaching business… I mean a successful one… If you really want to do this stuff right and you want to build a good business that’s going to work for you and your family and not worry about money, and you know, living from month to month, paycheck to paycheck... If you're done with that shit, then this is the program for you. And it’s not that expensive. So even if you just try it for a couple months, you're going to see it for yourself. Just do it.

Marc Scholtemeijer, Haarlem, Netherlands

“So there are many things that I’ve learned from Tom on the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle package that would’ve never been able to come up with on my own, or it would’ve taken me ages, and that are certainly not being done by any competitors in my local area, so I couldn’t have copied it from anyone else that I know either.”

So there’s a list of those things, the focus on group lessons has been really important, the ways you can structure group lessons, and the way that you can rotate people through them, I would’ve never thought of that on my own. Something that I could not have done without the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle is have the faith and confidence that it’s actually possible to build a highly effective teaching business even when you’re surrounded by lots of other teachers who might even be better players in a very competitive market. Tom’s package showed me that if you do what he tells you, you can succeed.

My guitar teaching skills have definitely improved with Tom’s Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle...my life has changed in a big way from teaching people, because it’s massively rewarding. I really enjoy playing. And I enjoy music, and all that is great, but there is something really special about being able to share that experience with other people, and not just through playing or jamming with people, but through teaching people as well. And that’s not something that I was getting from either my music or my life in quite that way before, so it’s much more rewarding. And I’ve actually found quite a big piece of courage. It’s been a big example to myself that I can take something that I was you know passionate about but essentially clueless about before working with Tom’s teaching training. And I can move from zero to a very effective place very quickly with the right mentor and the right methods.

For me it’s really simple, the money that I invested into the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle is money that I’ll get back from the teaching business by many times over… and not just money, there’ll be less stress, I’ll have more satisfied students… It’s not just purely the financial thing, it’s really, really valuable.

So for me it’s inspiring to be around the other teachers in the program because you can see the kind of success that they’re having, so that’s… there’s evidence that if you do the stuff in the program, it will work. So there’s not a problem… or there’s no fear, will this work or will it not work. Do the things that you get told to do and you will get a great result. It’s good to have a great network of people that you can share your challenges with as well.

Andy Hope, London, England, USA

“When I started the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle, I had zero teaching how to teach guitar… I had never taught guitar except a couple friends. My initial thinking was I mean, I don’t know, everything that I’ve learned in life, you can get by so much faster if you seek out someone that knows how to do it, and you can learn from them instead of trying to figure it out on your own.”

So, if someone’s thinking about should I join, should I not… totally. It’s great, I would highly recommend it to anyone.

The Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle has helped me develop my own teaching skills as well as business skills. I mean, like I mentioned I hadn’t really had any real training before, I never really taught a lesson. I had taught lessons, but not serious like I’m going to do this for work. So it just helped me to get the most value to my students to help them see that I am the obvious choice. I mean, part of the reasons why I decided to get into teaching was because of all the teachers I had, 10 of them, besides Tom, I feel like none of them knew how to teach. Teaching is more than just showing chords and licks and things like that. I figured I can do it much better than the teachers around. But at the same time I knew that I had a lot to learn. So it’s been great, I’ve definitely bettered my own skills, and developed into a much better teacher.

The forums definitely helped. Just like anything, you’re going to have very specific questions to your very specific problems. So on the forum, it’s great because you can ask these questions and Tom can give his advice on it or another teacher that’s in the same situation can give his perspective, or a teacher that’s already been there and done that can give his perspectives, and so all the little tiny, minute details really helped to kind of piece things together and get feedback from people.

Preston Howard, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA

“I knew the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle was right for me when I heard the first call that was talking about topics that I had never really thought about before, and hearing solutions that were ideas that I had never really heard for guitar teachers. I initially knew right off the bat that this was going to be a great program. He was also talking about things I had never even heard of people doing for their guitar students. I was hooked from call 1.”

Since joining the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle my life is better, not only financially, but mainly it's better because I have less stress, I have more time and freedom. Honestly, I'm a better teacher, which makes me happier, personally. If you're looking for those things, this is the place to go.

The reason why you would want to join the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle is because you will be better at everything concerning teaching. It's not just the teaching part, or you as a trainer, or you as a coach or maybe a mentor, you're going to be better at the act of making a difference in people's lives. And that's what you want to do as a teacher is make this difference. This program helps you do that much better than college does.

Mike Walsh, Deerfield, Illinois, USA

"I had 4 students when I started out 7 years ago in my teaching business. It really improved rapidly. In the first year, I got to 100 students. 7 years later we have hundreds of students and 3 locations."

We have a team of 14 different teachers working for us and it’s just been the nicest thing ever cause I never have to work a day of my life. I can do pretty much anything that I want ... and I just love my job so the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle pretty much helped me developing that. I couldn’t imagine being anywhere near the level of success that I am riding on without the program.

When I first started teaching guitar, I was 22 years old and didn’t really knew what I was doing. So I was member of the Music Careers Mentoring Program with Tom Hess. And I figured if I want to have a music career, I might as well learn to coach students and create students… I was teaching anyway, I had 4 students at the time. So I had to find a way to really step up my game and I couldn’t really afford to not look into the program, so that made me realize that it’s like a one-time opportunity. I’ve been here in the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle for 7 years now, and it’s been steady progress and the learning curve is excellent, the support and the people on the forum is worth the entire investment in the program, and I’m really content about the progress I’ve made so far.

I think Tom Hess is the number one in the area of teaching businesses as far as the whole online courses go. I’ve never really checked out other resources on this topic. I have read a couple of articles written by other guys, but if I guess if you don’t have built your own business to the point that you can be really successful at teaching, there’s no point at teaching others. And that’s what separates Tom Hess from all his competitors. He’s doing it. He has build a massive amount of presence on the internet. So I think that is what most people are drawn to. He doesn’t only talk about it, he does it. So that’s why for me, there’s like no one else that comes close in the area of coaching you on the teaching business.

My life really looks awesome right now, so couldn’t be any happier. Me and my fiancée just travel whenever we want, we do whatever we want, like that’s a big part of why I decided to join the program because I didn’t want to have shitty day job. And I just wanted to build my own lifestyle and we did ever since.

Antony Reynaert, Ostend, Belgium

“I’ve been a member of the Music Careers Mentoring Program and I knew that the advice that Tom gave on that was gold. So when he had a program specifically for teaching, I thought if I’m going to be teaching I’ve got to be in that program, because if I’m not, I’m not going to be the teacher that I could be.”

I mean the day I quit my day job and just started teaching and earning my income from teaching, that would’ve been it. And I know I wouldn’t have been doing that if it wasn’t for a couple of reasons, one of which was definitely being a member of the program. That gave me the know-how and the confidence to do it, and become a guitar teacher.

My guitar teaching skills have increased… it’s hard to say, I was barely teaching before I joined, so I’d have to say they’ve increased 100% since I joined the EGTIC. I’m earning money out of it now.

The Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle will pay for itself. You’re going to get more students. You’re going to be able to teach those students better than you would’ve been able to before, so they’re going to stay with you longer. So it’s a no-brainer.

It’s incredibly inspiring being around the other teachers. Like I mentioned earlier, I’ve not implemented even everything that the program offers and it’s changed my life. And some of these other guys… they’re making… they’ve got all these students… teaching them all these amazing things and changed their lives even more than it’s changed my life. Just being around these guys is incredibly inspiring. It kind of gives you a kick up the butt to do a little bit more.

James Krumbock, Winchester, England

“Tom has helped me teach my guitar students better by helping me improve my own mentality towards teaching. I taught for a long time before meeting Tom. I took it pretty seriously, but it was more of a hobby, not really for seriously making money. And now that it’s actually a business and Tom has taught me how to approach it as a business, I’ve become more serious about bringing real, really good value to my students and that has made me a much better teacher.”

My background is in music. I have a master’s degree in music, but all through my schooling nobody every taught me anything about business, nobody every taught me anything about how to succeed in business. So when I found Tom it was a completely different set of skills that he had to offer to me. And I was working a law firm at the time… really was not what I wanted to do and so having someone come along and say I can teach you how to actually make a business and live off that business doing what you love to do was all I needed to know. I got a 45-day trial and when I went… I got a few of the calls and they were fantastic. I mean there was a bunch of stuff in the calls that I never even thought of. So that was one thing that I knew that convinced me that the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle was right for me.

One of things that has improved since joining the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle in terms of my teaching ability is being able to teach people not only in a on-on-one setting, but in other settings that are actually better than just the one-on-one format. These are things that I never even thought about before joining the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle, but now that I have seen the light so to say, it has made me a much more effective teacher working in different formats.

It's massively motivating, because there are people who have multiple times the number of students that I have and they’re hugely successful and seeing that the things that I’m learning when they are implemented actually work, is very motivating for me to get down and do the work that it requires to be successful.
Specifically seeing someone who was making $20,000 a month was very inspiring, and that really kind of kicked my butt and got me inspired to really work on my business and do the things that Tom teaches us to do.

Nicholas Anderson, Olympia, Washington, USA

“I was already teaching guitar before I had even heard of Tom and when I saw the website for the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle, I immediately thought this is going to be the program for me, because I knew I wanted to teach guitar. And by joining that, it’s really helped move from working as a teacher for someone else and now teaching by myself, for myself.”

Seeing that it actually worked for other people, I think that was the biggest thing that convinced me to join. And the way Tom talks, whether it’s about guitar lessons if you’re a student, or the way he talks about how he teaches students, is really convincing, because I knew he knew what he was talking about and I knew he could help me because of that.

My guitar teaching skills have definitely improved. I found now I’m not worrying about content. That was something that was a real concern, even when I first started in the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle, I thought oh I’ve got to have all this stuff ready for the students. Now I feel really confident that I know exactly what I give each single week for each student. And it’s a lot easier to implement and there’s less stress before each lesson.

Now, I’m working for myself teaching guitar, and that is my sole source of income. Before I joined the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle, I was working probably about 30 hours a week working for someone else doing teaching stuff, and I wasn’t making as much money doing more hours… so that’s completely changed how much free time I have, and how much money I’ve got in the bank.
There’s a lot of people on the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle forum, who when they joined never taught a guitar lesson in their life, and those people are now working full time as guitar teachers, and the calls that we get from Tom are extremely helpful in getting you the right mindset, and just getting you the first steps which can be really the scariest part of deciding to become a guitar teacher, plus you’ve got the support of all these other members on the forum who are really going to help you out. If you’ve got a question there are so many professional guitar teachers on there that you’ll get so much feedback, you’ll be able to implement something straight away.

Greg Trotter, Melbourne, Australia

“The Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle has really taken me from… really it took me from zero. I started out teaching in my parent’s basement when I was still living with them. And I’ve taught, you know after I got married in our first apartment, moved in with my in-laws for a little bit, taught at their house, and two other houses that we’ve lived in. And now we’ve moved our business downtown and it’s exploded. We started hiring teachers and beginning a music school. We’re now on our second location for that, because we grew out of our first location. So it’s taken me from a basement to having our own big building with 8 teaching rooms and all sorts of awesome stuff going on and 5 or 6 teachers working for us. So literally from zero to over a hundred students. I’ve been a member of the Music Careers Mentoring Program and I knew that the advice that Tom gave on that was gold. So when he had a program specifically for teaching, I thought if I’m going to be teaching I’ve got to be in that program, because if I’m not, I’m not going to be the teacher that I could be.”

I’ve talked to other teachers before and they really don’t understand business. Even other business owners that I know, there’s a lot that they’re missing out on. So the business help that we get in the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle, not just for music teachers is awesome to run a music school… but it’s the kind of business help that applies to anything and it makes it really really valuable because a lot of people pay a lot more money than you pay for the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle to gain that kind of information and then to go through the trial and error of making it work… when in EGTIC, Tom’s already gone through that.

If you’re thinking about doing the EGTIC but you feel like it costs too much, then you really need to think about the potential money that you’re losing by not doing it.

That’s the big thing, because when I first started I was like, oh that’s a big investment, but the thing is you make that money back really quick and you make it back ten, twenty-fold.

Brad Litton, Vernal, Utah

"Tom Hess has completely changed my whole life. Everything I’ve been doing, it has changed dramatically in a very, very positive direction by the strategy and suggestions he have advised me to my situation. And I have an ass-kicking awesome life right now."

Since being a member of the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle, I’ve gone from zero business experience, zero teaching experience to having a 6-figure business and giving massive results for my students by continuously implementing the advice from Tom Hess, from over 20 years of business and teaching experience that I can tailor-fit to my situation how I really want it and then… boom, it’s just grown massively since I started.

Now since I’ve started the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle, I wake up, I go down to my own music school and basically run my own life as my own leader and also the leader of my assistant. I have a lot more freedom if I want to go take a vacation, if I want to take a day off, I can choose to do the things like in my business. I have things set up so I have a lot more freedom to do the things I want to do.

Teachers that are not part of the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle program right now... they cannot afford not to invest in the program. They are losing an enormous potential of money. And also, they are also in danger, because in this program there are so many strong people from all over the world that it’s constantly growing… that if they don’t get in the program, they will also lose the protection, and they can be run over like a deer by a train. Just for their own security that would be a very wise thing to do because it’s so strong, the things we are learning, that the competition should be very, very afraid if one of our members would come to your town.

That’s one thing. The other thing is that which other teachers do you know that are earning 6-figrues or more teaching guitar? Probably none. Here, we are many. Right. So I never heard about any other community or mentor that makes that types of result. I would immediately join the program. We have a lot of fun. We have a forum and community where we can support each other through thick and thin. I know some people think oh it’s a scam or whatever… people have doubts and very often, they just have doubts about themselves. Because they say who am I to do this, can I really do this? Because Tom Hess sets strong expectations in his marketing, he’s very strong in his marketing. I know that he really, really wants you to go out there, because he knows that when you get committed to the process, he got your back. He got your back. And he will always want to over deliver, so if you join the program and you just do the steps that have been laid out there, you will be successful. So if you wait, you're just losing money by waiting. And you will quickly get the money back that it takes to get in the program. It’s like peanuts, it’s like nothing compared to what you get out of it.

Magnus Gautestad, Kristiansand, Norway

"I like the fact that Tom Hess is pretty direct. He delivers massive value on every level. Everything I’ve received from him has been way above and beyond what I expected. Tom Hess has always come across as someone immense integrity."

I’ve really benefited from the individual calls I’ve had with him. The amount of time he spends on the forum offering advice to people including myself. I’ve found him very approachable.

It’s also made it a lot more fun for me, I mean previously I was getting a bit burnt out with the whole teaching thing and being part of the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle and learning all this stuff has completely reinvigorated my enjoyment of teaching. I absolutely love it now, whereas a few years ago I would’ve quite easily packed it in. So that was a big thing for me and I’m just so happy about that.

What made me seek out help was I moved countries so I was originally in the UK, I arrived in New Zealand and had nothing and started teaching for a local music school and a local high school. And it was terrible. I realized I just needed to do something to kick start things much more effectively. I was looking for guitar teacher positions at the time and stumbled across Tom Hess talking about the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle and it sounded great. So I checked it out and signed up basically.

There were a couple things in the beginning that convinced me that the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle was the right thing. I got in touch with a former student who gave a glowing recommendation. The testimonials from previous students including this student that I got in touch with blew me away.

When I started my guitar teaching business in Auckland, I had a few private students pay me cash. I was teaching out of a spare room at my house. The lessons were dotted throughout the day. I just kind of decided you know, whenever people wanted a lesson they could have… if they didn’t turn up, I didn’t earn any money. I’m now teaching in a purpose-built teaching studio with groups of people. I know they're going to turn up. I know from a financial point of view, that I’ve got security. I have a much higher quality of students now because I’ve learned how to weed out the people that I don’t want or need to teach. As I said before, I just enjoy the whole thing so much better. I just love going to do the teaching and to work on the business and it’s all great fun, which it never was before.

When I joined the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle, the monthly payments initially, my wife and I were a little bit concerned about it and we thought, okay we’ll give it a go for a month or two and see how it happens. I mean, I would say within the first week or two I was utterly convinced that it was well worth every penny. And it really didn’t take long at all until that monthly payment didn’t even register, I mean I was able to build my business up so much quicker. And you know certainly now, I don’t even notice.

The people who are part of the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle forum are not like any other music teachers I’ve ever met. And I used to work in schools and met lots of different music teachers and colleges. They all share the same goals, and the same philosophies as me. They're all trying to do the best for themselves and the best for their students and that is hugely inspiring. Just the fact that there are people who want to get the best out of everything really. It’s also incredibly inspiring how freely some of these people give advice as well, you know, especially the really high earners, you know just to see what they're giving back to the forum is fantastic and inspiring in a sense that I want to get to the point where I’ve got the time to do that as well for the other people who are coming up. It really shows you what’s possible and how you can engineer your life and your time to allow you to do that kind of thing for other people as well.

Dylan Kay, Auckland, New Zealand

"Tom Hess has helped me teach my own guitar students better in a tons of ways."

The main ways I can think of are, number one that: private one on one lessons are not the way you should teach the vast majority of people. And this was quite a culture shock to me when I first came into the program. And I had been teaching a little but just private one on one lessons out of my house basically. And I’d always said, oh that’s just what you do. You know, somebody comes for an hour, sits in front of you and that’s it. But being part of Tom Hess’s program will show you that that’s just the worst way to teach the vast majority of people. And that was one of the biggest changes that I’m really grateful for. The results for my students are just vastly superior than just sitting in front of you in a room for like an hour every week.

Another way that Tom Hess has helped me teach my guitar students is really enforcing that you don’t have to teach people tons and tons of stuff. You don’t really have to overload them with information every week. You just got to take the things that they already know and help them get the better result with it. And get them really enthusiastic about that. And the more you do that, the more you get them to do what you want them to do, then they're going to become much better guitar players than I could’ve ever possibly have hoped for if I didn’t discover the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle or the Guitar Teaching Super Summit International.

What convinced me in the beginning that the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle was right for me was the way the information as presented. Just like Tom Hess’s other products, it was in a very straightforward, step-by-step way. If you do this, this, and this, you know, it’ll work for you. It doesn’t matter where you are in the world, what culture you're a part of, the systems work.

My life now looks way better than before I joined the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle. The fact that I’m sitting here in America. I’ve been here for two weeks at two really kickass events to benefit my own teaching and my own playing is fantastic. I was able to phase out a day job that I hated to teach guitar full time. And I know I earn more money than I ever have in my life before.

The forums help me get more out of the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle’s sessions, because the various members will report back the results of what they’ve implemented. And they’ll also make posts, you know, just about questions before they go and implement something just to get the other teachers' feedback who have probably already implemented it or are in the process of doing it so… Again, it’s making it all the more tangible when you can see that these guys, wherever they are in the world, they're doing this. You know, you’ll get feedback that it’s working for them. And that adds immense value because it just makes it a little more real. It doesn’t matter where you are. It doesn’t matter who you are. You don’t have to be a world-class player. It’s all about using the information and just implementing it.

Michael Hanna, Larne, United Kingdom

“Some of the most important things that I’ve learned from the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle program is actually motivating my students. Being able to get them to do what I’m trying to teach them and train them to do is something I really struggled with in the past.”

You know, when we approach the teaching of especially a lot of students, they’re learning the instrument voluntarily. There’s an old saying, it’s hard to push a rope. But learning to use effective and constructive methods of actually motivating the students has been such a great thing within my business, it’s really helped me to grow with what I’m doing. In addition to that, many of the business approaches, things like policies within my school, payment policy, make up lesson policies, the formats that I actually run my lessons in… not only has it helped me to provide more for my students, that it actually even eases up the number of hours that I have to teach on a weekly basis.

One of the main reasons that I sought Tom’s help with the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle program was that I had a school and I had a number of students, but it was falling apart. I noticed the lack of motivation in my students, they weren’t actually practicing, they weren’t working on things, and of course when the students got bored, they would leave… and I knew that it was just a matter of time before I would be out of business. And that’s where Tom really made a difference because he showed me how to actually make my business work.

So the main reason I chose to work with Tom is not only has he proven that he was able to achieve results with other people, other business owners and teachers, very much like myself… but he had actually done the same thing himself. He was a teacher, he had started from basically nothing and had found the tools and means to establish a very very large business, very effective working business. And in addition to that again, his passion for teaching, and his passion for building businesses really stood out to me.

The thing that really made it clear to me that I had made the right decision was Tom’s intensity. Again, I think about that intensity, not in a bad way, but again, another way I think about it is it’s his passion. He really cares deeply for the people he’s working with. He works very hard to ensure that the information that I am getting, that we get through the program, is going to work, and it’s going to work very very very well.

I’ve more than doubled the size of my school, and definitely more than double my income. And not only that, I’m actually teaching less than when I originally started, I mean based on the changes in formats, and the policies that I run with my school, the security form my business from an administrative standpoint is better than ever… I don’t have to worry about chasing clients anymore… its’ great. The stress is as low as it’s ever been.

You definitely want to invest in the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle program and the main reason is because you don’t have to worry about trial and error anymore. You don’t have to try something and see if it’s going to work. You’re going to know that the methods, the strategies that Tom gives you will work. Your business is going to grow, things are going to get easier, the stress is going to go down… life gets great.

The thing I like about the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle is that it’s not really just one approach this is it this is what you have to do and that’s it… it’s very open. The strategies can be applied to a number of situations based on what I want, or what somebody else might want their business to actually be. It gives us the opportunity on the forum to see what some people have… what direction they’ve gone in… what for them has worked for those situations and what if they made mistakes they can warn other people about those kind of things. It’s also good to get feedback about projects that I might be working on, so if I’m running an advertisement campaign, or I create a promotional video… I can post a link or I can put the video right up and I can get within a matter of hours some very good feedback on whether the video is going to work or whether there’s problems… and that can save me a lot of time and especially a lot of money with the advertising and work that I do. These people, the people on the forum, they have experience they’ve been working with Tom, they’ve been working on their own to build up the business… and they’re also very supportive because when one person succeeds with this it means they are going to be able to provide more back and help everybody else to get even better.

Graehme Floyd, London, Ontario, Canada

“I like that the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle just puts teaching guitar on a whole new level.”

I think that people who aren’t musicians, they think of teaching guitar as not a very lucrative job. Whereas the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle gives you all the tools you need to become an entrepreneur and create your own business and get it to thrive by understanding business better, understanding sales, understanding marketing, and getting more out of students, and basically you’re creating more value to your students. Once you start creating more value, you’re earning more money, and he gives you so much advice on those topics.

I think the best use of your money when you’re starting a guitar teaching business is to invest in yourself, and invest in knowledge and training and become a better teacher, become a better business person and for music business, and specifically guitar teaching business, I don’t know anyone better than Tom Hess. So, it’s very specific training for guitar teachers, it’s not like a general business course, it’s very targeted towards guitar teachers. So, that to me is really cool, because as far as I know there’s nothing else out there like that. So I think there’s not a lot of expenses, overheads when you start a guitar teaching business… I mean you don’t have to buy expensive equipment or anything, you can just get going. So the money you are making you might as well invest it back into your business and back into yourself and the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle is a great way to keep improving as a teacher.

The program covers a lot of business skills, like one of them would be marketing, and we cover online and offline marketing. Creating your website and getting your website in a really good position on Google… things like that so that you stand out online and people can find you, so you can attract students by saying the right things, you know, having good headlines, having good copyright, good…. Also sales, the things you say to people on the phone, the things that you say to people when they’re in the room with you and they’re not sure whether you’re the right teacher… you know what to say, and you know how to add value and persuade that you’re the person for them and deliver on that as well.

The program also covers guitar teaching skills comprehensively, it helps me learn how to focus on training, which is a real important part of a student’s development. That’s something I wasn’t doing before I started working with Tom. Training really enables you to help students apply what they know and practice it correctly so that they’re developing good habits. That’s such an important part of teaching. A lot of guitar teachers, typical guitar teachers tend to neglect teaching their students properly, and that’s why some of their students won’t progress as quickly as they could, so that’s definitely an important skill. Also teaching in groups, we get to learn the best ways to teach groups, and how to create more value in groups than private lessons, and the students love it and get motivated and they have fun, and usually they stay with you for a long time because they enjoy that group environment. And we get to understand the strategies for teaching group classes and getting good results for students and leveraging our time and money by teaching groups.

I think that meeting Tom and starting all these programs with Tom… it’s been life-changing.

Chris Ball, Melbourne, Australia

“Tom Hess helped me a lot in the way that he kind of changed my whole thinking process about how to teach, what to teach students.”

To be honest, if I wasn’t a guitar teacher…it would be a no-brainer to join this community, even if it may cost some bucks. It’s worth way more than the money you spend. Because just imagine how much money you can make if you do certain things different, or better, or correct, because many teachers, I think, are pretty good guitar players, but they have never learned how to actually teach. Even at university, they learn a lot about how to play guitar, or how to handle music, or how to better understand music, but no one learns really how to teach music.

I would definitely recommend everybody who is a teacher and who wants to make money with guitar teaching, just join and see that, in the first month, you will realize it’s worth the money.

Constantin Einmann, Augsburg, Germany

"When I started teaching guitar, I realized quite quickly that I didn’t really know what I was doing. I was piecing it together based on how I’d been taught in the past. Some elements of that were okay, but I was pretty clear from not very long into it, there was a lot missing… a lot of students weren’t really getting great results, despite me thinking I was doing a great job."

I wanted to be the best teacher that I can possibly be. And it made sense to me that to do that, I should seek out teacher training. I didn’t do music in college or anything like that so you know, I was looking online for that type of thing. When I found Tom Hess’s page, what he was saying was very convincing, it spoke to me. And yeah, I was pretty convinced and as soon as I signed up, I knew that I had made the right decision.

My guitar teaching skills have changed tremendously. My guitar teaching business is much, much bigger than what it was before the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle. I have about 80 students in my school. And these students are getting real results. They're getting great value for money. They’re getting experiences at my school that they could not get anywhere else in my city or possibly even my whole country. Life-changing experiences they're having.

It’s a huge inspiration to be around the other teachers in the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle. It’s a huge reason why I’ve been able to do what I’ve done so far. And the support level is incredible. It's a space where you can have a question about anything to do with teaching, put it up there and it’s not just any old guy that’s getting back to you, you know it’s people that really know what they're talking about and there’s a warmth and generosity of spirit on the forum. A real sense of sharing and, and community and that’s huge for me.

Christy Bannerman, Glasgow, Scotland

“Working with Tom in the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle, learning about teaching guitar has definitely helped a lot, because on my own I feel like it would be a lot of trial and error to learn as much as what I can learn from him really fast. He covers everything that’s important, he’s really good at it.”

It helps me more than anything to know how to relate to students and how to interact with them, and guide them in the path of playing that is not the typical path, something that is better and helps people get good results.

My teaching business has improved tremendously since beginning the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle. I won’t go into numbers or anything but, things are going good. So being in the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle has definitely had an effect on my life in a positive way. Being on the forum is awesome, knowing all these amazing guitar teachers from all over the world that I can interact with all the time. It helps things a lot because you don’t have to just sit there and wonder or do the trial and error guessing approach… and it helps you to see bigger what you can do and what your options are, depending on what you even want to do, and even knowing those options is great. And it helps you definitely plan towards whatever goals you have whether they’re big or small… That’s one of the best things about the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle.

Ryan Duke, Seattle, Washington, USA

“Since I started the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle, my guitar teaching business has improved massively in that, in less than a year, I was actually able to leave a full-time career that I didn’t actually enjoy, and I’m now making more money than I ever was at that job, and in much less time, doing something that I actually love to do.”

And on top of that, as an added bonus, I get to spend more time with my family, which was something that was really missing when I was working at that other job. My quality of life is better than it has ever been. I’m less stressed, and I wake up every day feeling 100% confident, and much better about myself, and the path that I’m on in my life. And that was something that I really needed in my life that I was not getting from my other job.

It’s only been a year since I quit that job…I’ve actually been doing this for a year, and I haven’t had to do anything else. It’s like, I haven’t had to go somewhere that I hate going to. It hasn’t quite sunk in yet…it’s one of those things that I’ve wanted in my life for so many years, and now that I have it I’m much happier. It’s pretty cool.

My guitar teaching skills have improved dramatically since I joined the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle… By actually getting real coaching and real strategies, and just real feedback on how to actually teach things to people, and then also being able to bounce those ideas off of other expert teachers via the forum that is available for Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle members.

If you’re a new guitar teacher, joining the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle would definitely be the number one thing that I would put on your list, even if you’ve never taught before… I hadn’t really taught before either. You’re going to get yourself on the right track, right away. You have two choices: You can either try to do it yourself and try to teach yourself, and try to really stumble along the way…Or you could learn from the experts and just shortcut your learning curve, so that you can deliver better results to your students sooner, and you can also learn from other people’s mistakes and help yourself avoid making them, or get yourself on the fast track through them so that you can get on to doing what you love to do and have fun sooner.

Andrew Tintle, Roseville, California, USA

“I joined the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle way before I even had the capacity to start teaching. Every day I would listen on the way to work, I would listen to sessions, I would listen to other students, other teachers, you know… starting at zero, then working their way up to maybe 10 students, then suddenly they’re at 30 students and I’m like, man this is real… and this could be me. Nobody is anything special and tons of people are doing it… I can do it too.”

It really got to a point where I had so much frustration that I was still at my current job and I didn’t do it… you know, I’d go on the forum, I’d see all these people making huge breakthroughs and stuff… and I was like, I have to do this, and if I don’t do this now, when I’m like 40 I’m going to kick myself for not even trying. That’s basically it, it was really motivating to see those guys.

Before I joined the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle, I saw no future of music in my life, which is very depressing to me, because I know if I could do anything and really be passionate about it and be full on into it, it would be music. Anything else would just pale in comparison. It was really frustrating… And now, my life has totally changed because of Tom. And I would like to thank him personally for the opportunity. It’s changed my life in so many ways. My wife, she lives in a different state from me in Malaysia. Like 2 and a half hours from me. Her weekends are different from the weekends in my state. If I was in my regular job, we would have half a day a week together. Because I’m teaching and have flexibility, I can spend half a week with her. Apart from that, I was working, if I include commute time, I was working 11 hours a day, 5 days a week, and at one point I was even working 7 days a week doing 3 different jobs. The amount that I was earning then, I am almost earning as much now just by teaching less than 4 days a week.

Vishaal Kapoor, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

"I sought help to build my guitar teaching business because I just started to become a guitar teacher. I had no idea what I was doing. You know I wanted to get students, I wanted to be able to make a living but I was just as clueless as the next guy. So I already was a correspondence student with Tom Hess and realized that he has the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle, and once I read about it and saw the success that other members were already having, it was a no-brainer for me. I signed up immediately."

I couldn’t teach guitar before at all. I don’t think many people can just naturally start teaching the guitar. They think they can but there was so many things I didn’t realize that I was doing wrong or could’ve done more efficiently. So yeah with the EGTIC I was able to not just realize how I’m going to build my business and get more students... but how I’m actually going turn them into total badasses.

My life is massively different... and better, much, much better than it’s ever been before thanks to the EGTIC. I make a lot more money than I ever have. I have a much better lifestyle. I have a nicer house. I have more money in the bank. More time off. I’m able to fly half way around the world for a couple of weeks every year if I want to and hang out with great musicians...

So I’m one of those guys who can listen to the calls from the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle and go yeah I got that, and I understand that intellectually it’s all good, but then it’s a matter of implementation. So I find that with the forum if I’m either asking questions or reading or reading the posts or commenting on someone else’s thing, it helps reinforce the stuff that I already got. So that pushes me a lot further you know, it’s a little bit more than just being able to listen to a phone call once and go yeah that’s cool.

Greg Trotter, Melbourne, Australia

"Tom Hess has helped me teach my own guitar students better via a lot of new ideas that I never had before."

Music teaching is a bit of a lonely sport in some ways, and you're a leader in a big school and there’s sort of no one to connect with in lots of ways. You know, you connect with your teachers from your school. I might know the odd teacher around the country, but there’s no one who’s really kicking you and pushing you and giving you new ideas. That’s what Tom Hess does. And it’s all these new ideas that benefit me and the students. Cause since I’ve been with Tom Hess, I’ve created all these new programs. I’ve shifted into commercial premises, which mean that I can run more group classes and jam sessions and things like that, which I never could before.

I came across Tom Hess when I was searching for some information when I was studying at a local university. And a page on Tom Hess’s website came up with the information that I wanted. And from there I clicked on a few links and I read Tom Hess’s sales page about the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle. For a start, it sounded too good to be true. And then I read a bit more… I read a bit more and I couldn’t believe that there was a guy… someone else in the world that actually thought like I did. I thought that was a bit uncanny as well. It still sounded too good to be true, but I signed up for Tom Hess’s free book that he was giving away and I’ve been with him ever since. It’s been quite a few years now, and best decision I ever made.

The forum alone is absolute gold really, and the people that were on the forum were just hard to describe. They were so helpful and full of great ideas. So it’s not really just about Tom Hess, it’s about a whole community and program that everyone’s helping each other. I’ve never seen anything like it in the world.

Since I started with the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle, my business has nearly tripled. That’s quite a big movement actually. I was already doing okay before I started, but I still had high hopes that we could go bigger and better.

My life now is a lot easier than what it was before I joined the program. Because before I joined the program, I was doing everything myself. I was working 40 -50 hours a week. I was absolutely mentally drained, physically drained. I was absolutely a nutcase by the end of the week. Now I got other teachers working for me. We’ve got people coming in after school and helping out. We’ve got a teacher training program working, and I can actually cut back a bit and start working on the business more. What that will do, is that will create more opportunities for people coming through so we all rise. Everyone rises. Everyone gets an opportunity. That’s how it changed my life. By changing my life, it’s changed everyone around me's life as well.

My advice to any new guitar teacher, or even a guy that’s got 20- 30 guitar students would be: you need to get into some sort of community program that’s actually going to give you a kick along. You know, light a fire under you, because when you're working by yourself it’s very difficult to keep motivated. Even the best people find it hard to keep motivated. I was pretty self-motivated, but I’m more even on fire now. And the thing is when I first started this program, I was actually doing reasonably well, but I’m doing a lot better now. And it’s just that whole synergy thing of everyone being together. And you’ll never get it working by yourself. You’ll never get it. And this is just the best program ever to be in.

Kevin Downing, Palmerston North, New Zealand

"Before joining the Elite Guitar Teacher’s Inner Circle with Tom Hess, I had zero students. I hadn’t started at all. And after implementing just a few of the things that Tom Hess teaches us in the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle, I got multiple students and it was in a format that also allowed my time to be used to continue to work on my business."

Because before I was part of the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle, I was setting up a business that was going to just be run like any other guitar teacher's and hope to get only 2 or 3 students a month and all private lessons by themselves. But now, even in only one month of teaching I make over 1,000 dollars a month with group formats and rock-solid lesson policies that I never would’ve thought of if it weren’t for the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle.

I had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to teach guitar. I was tired of my day job. I was tired of selling my time instead of selling results. And I knew that I wanted to work for myself. I hadn’t decided what I was going to do yet. And then I saw something written by Tom Hess about teaching guitar, and I investigated further and saw the results that all of his clients have gotten and seen that it’s rock-solid, it’s real, it actually happens, it’s possible and I knew right then that I was going to join and I was going to do it.

The fact that I saw results from other people is definitely one of the main factors that I decided to be coached by Tom Hess in his Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle, but not only the fact that I saw other people getting results, it was the way that Tom Hess spoke, even in his free materials, it made everything sound so clear and so easy, with concepts that made sense, but I just never thought of on my own.

Both my teaching skills and my business skills have grown quite a bit since joining Tom Hess’s Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle. He gives easy to follow pointers on both sides and separates them very well while at the same time showing how they work together and that has helped tremendously for me to put together my business.

Being in the environment of the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle, being part of the forum, seeing the other guitar teachers who are succeeding, the ones who are making progress, the ones who are overcoming difficulties... that is the most motivating thing about the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle to me, is being able to see other people who are having real problems and crushing them.

Chris Hirsch, Ruston, Louisiana, USA

"Tom Hess has helped me learn how to get more results for my students through hands-on training, through lots of great observation as well as showing me things that maybe I hadn’t thought of as a teacher and as a player. So the value that I get as a teacher and a player just magnifies the results I get for my students."

I had just moved home from college and had a mountain of student loan debt and no income. And I was teaching guitar at the time in the city of my college, but I lived 70 miles south of that so consequently I lost all my students at the time. So I was looking for the best way to get new students which is where I stumbled across the Elite Guitar Teacher’s Inner Circle. And I remember getting the first 2 calls and being so on fire from listening to them, waking up at 3 o’clock in the morning, grabbing my notebook and just feverishly writing. And my girlfriend at the time, now my wife was like… what the hell are you doing? I’m like I can’t stop thinking, I gotta make this happen... I gotta make this happen. And the value that I got from it right then, I knew that if I just applied the principles and implemented all the marketing concepts which I had never thought about on my own, as well as the teaching principles themselves, I knew I was going to magnify my results. So, I found it kind of out of desperation. I needed to get this thing going. I knew I didn’t want to do anything but music, and this was by far the best thing I had ever seen on the guitar teaching topic. So for me, I knew it was the way out that I was looking for and it’s totally changed my life.

When I first started the program, I had zero students, no income and had just moved back to my mom’s house with a mountain load of student debt. I now am making just under 6-figures. I’m going to be there so soon, and I have a house, and I have a lot less debt, and I teach part-time, and I’m on my way to building a money-making machine that’s going to pump out killer guitar players over and over and over again. Again while giving me the lifestyle that I’m looking for.

There are many reasons why a beginning guitar teacher even with little income should get into this program. The first thing is, it’s going to inspire you to become a better version of yourself, and just with that first step, you can get more results. After that, it’s going to teach you how to attract the right kind of students, get them the best results, and then make sure they stay with you for a long period of time. Now it doesn’t matter if you're not a great guitar player, because the principles and methods that you learn allow you to train your students even if they're better guitar players than you. So, if you're insecure about your guitar playing, it doesn’t make a teacher. We all know great guitar players that are terrible teachers.

So for a beginning guitar teacher with no income, this investment is going to allow you to get more students faster, keep them longer, and get them better results so you get more students, etc. etc. It just builds from there.

Before joining the Elite Guitar Teacher’s Inner Circle, I never participated in a forum cause I just thought they were all stupid. So that fact that I have been in this program for so long and actively participating in it, I say that says something, because none of the other forums kept my interest long enough to ever participate… this one… I’m on it every day. Multiple times a day. It’s my Facebook.

Josh Beetler, Taunton, Massachusetts, USA

“If you want a career in music or a career in teaching music, it’s definitely the best place to be, 100%. It’s really amazing.”

My teaching skills have improved dramatically across all three instruments: I teach guitar, piano, and voice.

Before, I was doing everything on a much smaller scale, and now I’m committing 110% to it to see really massive results. The biggest thing that I’ve seen from the program is that there is a lot of success that comes out of it if you put into practice the things that you are shown. The harder I go, the much bigger the return is.

Amy Di Giambattista, Melbourne, Australia

"I first sought out help to develop my guitar teaching business, because I’ve been working for about 8 years in a teaching business that I’d set up. And I’d grown it to some level and I was working with a couple of other people, but it was hard to see how it was really going to continue expanding, it was an awful lot of work, it was a lot of admin, I wasn’t really getting that much satisfaction from it and I had sort of stopped believing in it."

Tom Hess is the first person I encountered who had something specifically for guitar teaching business owners. So I had done a little bit of marketing and business study with other people and they had programs that were for coaches of different kinds to be in a kind of mastermind group and to get that kind of support. But it was for all kinds of coaches, there might be sports people, dieticians, nutritionists and I never really felt like that was specific enough. So when I found one that was especially for guitar teachers, it was like amazing, this is exactly what I need.

My skills as a guitar teacher have definitely increased massively since I joined the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle. I think in the preceding 10 years when I’ve been doing various different kinds of teaching delivery in guitar and songwriting and singing, I think I’ve relied a lot on my personality and just jollying students along, hoping they’d enjoy the time they spend with me… It did work up to a point I think. But it wasn’t really very strategic and I didn’t necessarily feel like it was particularly scientific. I was kind of hoping this stuff was working, it kind of seemed to be working, but frankly I wasn’t really sure if something I was doing with one person was actually going to work better than something I was doing with another person. So having just a more systematic approach that I can see and practice works better and gets results for other teachers. It has definitely improved my teaching.

Since joining the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle, my guitar teaching business has improved basically from zero to 30 students, because I left the last business I was involved in, I moved to a new town, I didn’t have any students and it was a perfect opportunity to start again with a different outlook.

So it’s really changed everything about how I teach and how I think about the possibilities of teaching, and the possibilities of running a teaching business.

The main thing I was concerned about in various respects before I joined the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle was this idea of sustainability. So how do you make your life sustainable, how do you make your levels of energy sustainable, your creativity sustainable, your you know well-being sustainable… you can’t always be sprinting, there has to be enough space and regeneration, income and everything for it all to work. And I’ve been working in music in a sort of month to month way or job to job way and I just didn’t feel like it was sustainable. And I didn’t really know what I was doing wrong. Now I feel like I’m in charge of what my life is going to be like and that’s such a great feeling. And it gives me the best possible opportunity to make good on what potential I might have to offer and what the potential of people I work with is.

Joining the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle would be very helpful even if you're not earning that much as a teacher right now, because you just won’t make all the bad decisions in the beginning. You’ll learn how to set things up properly from the start. You won’t, I mean I wasted like 8 years, running a completely flawed business model, which did make some profit, but I really wish I had known then what I know now.

The Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle forum helps enormously getting ore out of the calls in the sessions, because anything that’s not clear, you can ask somebody else and almost any query or issue or situation that arises with any student or parent or transaction or process or system, somebody else has already experienced. If you ask a question, experts from all around the world are going to get back to you within 24 hours saying hey do this don’t do that. And just saving you from not knowing what to do, not having a clue. It’s just brilliant.

Diana DeCabarrus, Edinburgh, United Kingdom

“Before joining the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle, I was stressed out with teaching. There was clearly a ceiling to the amount of income I was going to earn, because I was working as many hours as I could and not really getting anywhere. Having joined the program, it’s changed everything.”

My whole conception of how much I thought it was possible to earn teaching guitar has changed, and really now the sky’s the limit. I can see myself continuing to build the school as much as I want. It’s given me more free time with my family, it’s allowing me to spend more time with my playing, which I wasn’t doing before because I was teaching too much. The business, now, is at the point where I have the freedom to do other things, I can take time off to go on holiday, or come here to the [Tom Hess live] events, it’s given me a life that I never imagined I could have had from teaching guitar. I just always imagined that I would be kind of “scuffling about”, doing “bits and pieces” here and there, no real hope for retirement…it’s a completely different world now.

I don’t think I would have achieved anywhere near what I have achieved without the support and inspiration from the other teachers in the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle. What’s fantastic about the program is how good you get to know these people, how free they are with their advice, and being able to help other teachers as well, on the forum or in person, is incredibly valuable for me as well, in terms of thinking and solving problems…that has been one of the most fantastic things about the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle is the support and seeing what other people have achieved. It definitely motivates you to work even harder than you are.

The forum is utterly unique as far as I’m aware. It’s a very positive place, people are prepared to open up and really explain what they’re going through, ask for help…so in helping other people, it’s so enormously important for your own growth as a teacher and being able to think through problems. There are some incredible minds on the forum. People with an enormous amount of experience that I don’t believe you would find anywhere else in the guitar teaching world. And being able to ask advice and not just being given the answer…the more experienced members will take you through the thought process in solving the problem, so that you develop way more skills in that area, rather than just asking for a solution and it just being given to you on a plate. I think that’s an enormously important part of it.

Dylan Kay, Auckland, New Zealand

“My guitar teaching skills have definitely improved since I joined the program! My business has improved in all of the areas, the teaching side, the business side, the marketing, and of course it brings me much more income now that I've reached over the six figure level with my teaching business since starting the program.  Today my life is better, I feel much happier in my life, I'm more optimistic, more positive. I feel that I can do anything I want!”

I've gained this confidence, I'm more stress-free, I don't have any stress. I can pretty much enjoy my life, and I can see that my teaching business is growing, I can do more and more of the things that I want to do with my life. I've gained more freedom, the business runs without me being there constantly so I can enjoy life instead.

For a new teacher joining the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle, one of the biggest benefits is that you get help on the most important parts of starting your own business, which is of course business and marketing. You can be a really good teacher, but teaching skills won't be enough to start and build up your own teaching school empire, and that's what you really need.

For me it's very inspiring to be around the other teachers from the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle because I feel that they are on the same page, they are motivated, they have high goals, they have wisdom, they are smart. I get really, really motivated when I'm hanging out with these guys, and it makes me want to push myself further and exceed my own success that I've had.

Joni Kosonen, Helsinki, Finland