5 Stages Of Building A Guitar Teaching Business By Trial And Error
EMAIL TO GET ACCESS
By submitting your info, you agree to send it to Tom Hess Music Corporation who will process and use it according to their privacy policy.
From coaching thousands of guitar teachers to earn 6-figures or more working part-time...
I found that most guitar teachers go through the same 5 stages as they build their businesses.
But what's interesting is:
Only the final 2 of those 5 stages are actually necessary.
The first 3...
(the ones where most guitar teachers stay stuck for decades)...
Are filled with nothing but disappointment, frustration, and an income that's way too low.
But the good news is:
You can skip the first 3 stages entirely… once you understand how the whole process works.
(And once you realize why those first 3 stages are a total waste of time.)
EMAIL TO GET ACCESS
By submitting your info, you agree to send it to Tom Hess Music Corporation who will process and use it according to their privacy policy.
In this article, I show you what the 5 guitar teaching stages are...
What to expect in each one...
And help you skip the first 3.
This way, you can have the success you want and deserve much faster than most guitar teachers.
Trial And Error Guitar Teaching Stage 1: Overoptimism
In this stage, guitar teachers believe they'll figure everything out simply by watching what other teachers do, as well as by winging it and learning as they go.
So, what they do is observe how other guitar teachers:
– attract prospective students
– convert them into actual students
– teach guitar to their students.
– get referrals
… and try to do something very similar.
Inevitably, this leads to:
Trial And Error Guitar Teaching Stage 2: The Dose Of Reality
After some time of copying all the common guitar teaching "strategies" …
As well as following their natural instincts about running their guitar teaching business and teaching guitar students…
Newbie guitar teachers begin to face all the common problems guitar teachers deal with.
They start to feel overworked, overwhelmed and underpaid… and their early enthusiasm for guitar teaching starts to fade.
One big cause of this is the traditional teaching model of private 1-1 lessons.
Private lessons (especially if taught for 30 minutes at a time) require you to work a lot harder to earn even a modest income.
For example:
1. You end up working more hours to teach guitar to your private guitar students than you would if you taught them in groups. (Group lessons allow you to earn a lot more money teaching guitar without teaching many extra hours.)
2. Private lessons are far more boring for students (than group lessons). This often means, your guitar students typically won't continue taking lessons for very long. And that means: you'll be working a lot more to replace the students who quit.
3. Your guitar students improve much slower compared to how they could progress in group guitar lessons. (This guitar teaching article explains why.) This limits the number of referrals you are likely to get as you try to scale your guitar teaching business.
Trial And Error Guitar Teaching Stage 3: Despair
After some time spent in stage 2, many guitar teachers begin to wonder if the grass might be greener elsewhere. And they decide to:
– leapfrog to different (random) approaches for teaching guitar or attracting guitar students without thinking them through
– move to another city and restart their business there (thinking that they won't have the challenges they had in their first location)
– try their hand at teaching guitar online instead of offline, thinking that they'll have more luck attracting guitar students when they can teach guitar to anyone in the world.
All of these reactions are big mistakes… especially the last one about teaching guitar online.
That's because (successfully) teaching guitar online is much harder than teaching guitar offline.
Here are some reasons why:
1. You face way stiffer competition from the very best (and long-established) guitar teachers with full-time teams working for them, who have a reputation that you don't have. This competition typically doesn't exist when teaching guitar offline.
2. You have to work a lot more (without ever stopping) to create free content to market yourself and stay relevant as an online guitar teacher and have any chance to stand out from your competitors. The time you spend creating that content is time you cannot spend teaching your students or advertising to get new students.
3. It's much harder to build relationships with your guitar students when you teach online. (Hint: these relationships determine how long these guitar students stay with you more than anything else.)
This is one of many reasons why it's far easier to make money when you teach guitar offline vs. online.
In this stage, guitar teachers either decide that teaching guitar isn't for them and leave for another career … or settle for earning a low income and a perpetually mediocre lifestyle.
Guitar Teaching Stage 4: The Turnaround
Very few guitar teachers ever get to this phase (unless I am coaching them).
Most either stay stuck in stage 3 forever or give up teaching guitar.
But guitar teachers who do reach this phase do so after becoming fed up with trial and error.
They finally decide to invest in themselves to get real coaching on how to become successful in their profession… the same exact way you'd go to university or medical school to learn how to be an engineer, an accountant, a doctor or an airplane pilot.
Pros in other professions don't wing it… and neither do successful guitar teachers.
But to be clear, I'm not talking about getting a music degree. A music degree only helps your own playing. It doesn't show you how to help another person – who isn't you – to make their playing better.
Getting guitar teacher training is about learning:
1. The most effective guitar teaching models (that help you deliver exceptional results to your guitar students, without working yourself to death).
2. Marketing strategies (specific to guitar teaching) that help you fill your schedule with eager guitar students who are ready to invest in themselves… and making your guitar lessons so fun, your students almost can't imagine 'not' taking lessons from you.
3. Top-level guitar teaching skills that allow you to transform your guitar students into great players fast (and help them enjoy the process of learning guitar from you).
And the best part is…
You can simply START at this stage from day 1 of you being a guitar teacher. You don't have to go through stage 1-3 – wasting time and missing out on a ton of income and success like most guitar teachers do. If you start teaching guitar by getting guitar teacher training – you'll be light years ahead of most guitar teachers in your area who only wise up to this idea in "stage 4".
Guitar Teaching Stage 5: Success
Guitar teachers who persevere all the way through this stage…
Who get training on leveling-up their guitar teaching skills and marketing know-how…
Who implement what they've learned in their businesses…
… they often reach the level of success, freedom and fulfillment most guitar teachers (and most people in general) only dream about.
I'm talking about earning (at least) 6-figures per year, working part-time… while having the freedom to play guitar, write music, work on their music career, or spend more time with their families – enjoying life at a level most guitar teachers only dream about.
Now that you know how to build your guitar teaching business faster, I want to show you how to get more guitar students to start taking lessons with you, so you can fill your schedule and grow your guitar teaching income faster. I show you how in my free eGuide: THIS Will Get You A Lot More Guitar Students. Download it today and discover the guitar teaching secrets most guitar teachers don't know.
Build a thriving guitar teaching business by getting training for guitar teachers.
