5 Reasons Why You Aren’t The Number One Guitar Teacher In Your City & What You Must Do To Grow Your Guitar Teaching Business To The Highest Level

By Tom Hess

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You probably know that most guitar teachers don’t earn a lot of money and don’t have a lot of really good guitar students.

What you might not know is how some guitar teachers earn over 6-figures per year and help hundreds of guitar students become great musicians.

There are 5 key differences between guitar teachers who don’t become successful and the ones who do. When you understand them, you can take the right actions to build a guitar teaching career you can be proud of.

Here are the biggest reasons why most guitar teachers struggle and how not to be one of them:
 

Reason #1 Why You May Struggle As A Guitar Teacher: You Imitate What Other Guitar Teachers Are Doing

Here is why copying other guitar teachers is a bad idea:

1. Most guitar teachers are not successful. Copying what they do (how they run their guitar teaching business and how they teach) gets you the same results.

2. When you try to copy more successful guitar teachers, you only see their tactics, but not the strategy. A tactic is a single action you take to achieve a specific result.

Posting an ad in a music store, improving some aspect of your guitar teaching website or distributing flyers around your neighborhood are examples of tactics.
 

Strategy is the thought process that connects tactics into a long-term guitar teaching business plan. It’s very hard to understand someone’s strategy simply by analyzing their tactics.

3. When you copy other guitar teachers in your area, you become just like them. This means, you turn your guitar lessons into a commodity (something you buy anywhere, like a soft drink).

Guitar students see no difference between taking lessons with you or any taking lessons with any other teacher. The only way to win is to be the cheapest guitar teacher in town.

The most serious prospective guitar students generally know that you get what you pay for.

The types of guitar students who look for cheap lessons are usually not very committed to becoming excellent guitar players.

They frequently miss lessons, do not practice on their own at home and often will not pay you on time.

What You Should Do Instead To Become The Number One Guitar Teacher In Your City:

• Get real training on how to teach guitar in the most effective way and how to build a successful guitar teaching business.
  
  Question: “Tom Hess, what do you mean by “training how to teach guitar”?”
  
  Answer: Training to teach guitar means learning how to transfer your musical knowledge and skills to other people. It also means learning how to attract new guitar students, make them excited to begin lessons with you and keep them happy taking lessons from you for a long time.
  
  Your guitar teaching skills have very little to do with how good you are as a guitarist and musician. You can learn to teach guitar on your own or by getting training from someone who coaches other guitar teachers how to teach guitar students effectively.
  
  Watch this video to see an example of what guitar teacher training looks like:

• Choose one musical style to specialize in and become the go-to expert for that style in your area. This makes you the #1 choice for anyone who wants to learn that style of guitar and helps you attract more serious guitar students.
  
  Want to learn 5 more easy ways to fill your guitar teaching schedule? Download this free eGuide to discover how to attract guitar students like a magnet.
   
• Charge at least slightly above average for your guitar lessons. The more your guitar students pay for lessons, the more committed they become to getting results. They begin to practice more consistently, pay more attention during their lessons and become more motivated to do what you tell them to do.
  
  Question: “But Tom Hess, what if I don’t feel comfortable with charging guitar students more for my lessons?”
  
  Answer: The easiest way to feel more comfortable with charging more money is to increase your guitar teaching skills. The more confident you are in your ability to teach guitar, the more justified you feel in charging what you are worth.”
• This leads to faster progress for guitar students and a better reputation for you.

Reason #2 Why You May Struggle As A Guitar Teacher: You Spend Very Little Time Working On Growing Your Guitar Teaching Business

You can either work in your guitar teaching business, or you can work on it. Working in your guitar teaching business means doing day-to-day tasks, such as:

• Actual guitar teaching (lessons themselves),
   
• Preparing lesson materials for your guitar students,
   
• Doing bookkeeping and administrative tasks,
   
• Cleaning your guitar teaching studio
   
• Answering emails
   
• Talking with new guitar students on the phone

Of course these tasks have to be done to make your guitar teaching business run. That said, these tasks do not make your guitar teaching business grow.

What You Should Do Instead To Become The Number One Guitar Teacher In Your City:

Invest time each week into working on your guitar teaching business.

This means doing things needed to grow your guitar teaching business, such as:

• Improving your guitar teaching skills
   
• Advertising & marketing to attract more guitar students,
   
• Improving your marketing systems,
   
• Creating new programs and classes for your guitar students
   
• Thinking of ways to motivate your guitar students to practice consistently to reach their goals.

These activities actually grow your guitar teaching business, enable you to help more people and make more money.

Tip: Write down your specific goals for where you want to be in 3 months, 6 months, 1 year and 5 years in each area of your guitar teaching business. Then take the right actions needed to reach your goals.

If you don’t know how to do the things needed to grow your guitar teaching business, get training on how to teach guitar.
 

Reason #3 Why You May Struggle AS A Guitar Teacher: You Have A Negative Attitude About Money & Business

Many guitar teachers think it is unethical to earn a lot of money by guitar teaching. Others feel guilty about marketing themselves and their guitar lessons.

This mindset hurts your guitar students and you in 2 big ways:

• You won’t do all the things that make it possible to grow your guitar teaching business. This makes it difficult earn a lot of money as a guitar teacher.
• You won’t help as many people as you could and should be helping. Many guitar students in your area will continue to struggle with their playing and never get a chance to work with you. These guitar students miss out on an opportunity to improve their guitar playing and you miss out on an opportunity to earn more money.
  
  Question: “But Tom Hess, can I simply rely on word of mouth to get more guitar students?”
  
  Answer: Yes, you can and this may work to some extent. That said, it’s very hard to consistently attract a lot of guitar students only through word of mouth.

When you limit the amount of marketing you do, you limit the amount of people you help and (needlessly) restrict the amount of money you earn. Everybody loses.

Do everything possible to reach as many potential guitar students as you can in your area.

What You Should Do Instead To Become The Number One Guitar Teacher In Your City:

Adopt the attitude that successful guitar teachers have about money (and marketing). All thriving guitar teachers know and understand that:

• When you make more money, you can re-invest it back into your guitar teaching business to directly benefit your guitar students.
  
  By earning more as a guitar teacher, you can offer your guitar students many additional benefits that you couldn’t offer them otherwise. For example: a better guitar teaching studio, recording equipment, high quality rental instruments, live events and jam sessions.
   
• The only way for you to consistently earn a lot of money is to help your guitar students become better guitar players. If you are earning a lot of money, it means your guitar students are happy to study with you.
   

Reason #4 Why You May Struggle As A Guitar Teacher: You Do Little Or Nothing To Improve Your Guitar Teaching Skills

Your guitar students pay you money because they expect you to solve their musical problems and make them feel better about their guitar playing.

Unfortunately, many guitar teachers do not do their job well. Most have “learned” to teach guitar by trial & error  and continued to teach in the exact same way for years.
 

What You Should Do Instead To Become The Number One Guitar Teacher In Your City

To become the best guitar teacher you can be, commit to improving your guitar teaching skills to the highest level possible.

Wouldn’t you expect your guitar teacher to do the same for you if you were the student?

Watch this video to learn some of the skills you need to be a better guitar teacher for your guitar students:
 

Being a great guitar teacher is no different than being a great doctor, lawyer, accountant or expert in any other profession. These professionals are always learning and keeping up with the latest advancements in their field… the best guitar teachers all do the same.

(Note: you might know that I offer a training program for guitar teachers. However, I really don’t care who trains you to become an expert guitar teacher. My intent is to encourage you to get expert training for yourself, regardless of who you get it from.)
 

Reason #5 Why You May Struggle As A Guitar Teacher: You Are Not TRULY Passionate About Teaching Guitar

No amount of guitar teaching skills (or clever marketing) makes up for lack of passion for guitar teaching.

When you lack passion, guitar teaching feels like a dead-end day job. You feel little motivation to help your guitar students improve.

Your guitar students can sense how you feel and this makes them lose motivation to practice and continue learning from you. Help your guitar students improve, and motivate them to keep coming back.
 

What You Should Do Instead To Become The Number One Guitar Teacher In Your City

1. Get clear on the reasons why you want to teach guitar. This helps you get more enjoyment out of guitar teaching and transfer your enthusiasm to your guitar students.
    
2. Stop teaching all your guitar students one on one. Combine private lessons with group classes to help your guitar students improve faster. Group lessons help your guitar students develop skills they would never learn in private lessons.
    
3. Learning guitar in groups is a lot of fun for your guitar students (and for you).

What should you do now?

You now know what it takes to become the most successful guitar teacher in your area. The next step is to learn how to fill your guitar teaching schedule with dozens of eager guitar students who are excited to begin lessons with you. Download this free eGuide to learn how to never struggle again to attract as many guitar students as you want.

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About Tom Hess: Tom Hess is a guitar teacher, music career mentor and guitar teacher trainer. He trains guitar teachers from all over the world how to earn 6-figures per year teaching guitar, while working less than 40 hours per week. 

Get the training you need to become a successful guitar teacher.