How To Make A Guitar School More Profitable
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Getting more students is the fastest way to make your guitar school more profitable, right?
BZZT!
Wrong!
In this week’s article...
I show you 5 simple ways to take home more of way you earn teaching music.
(i.e. Make your guitar school more profitable.)
And get this:
In many cases, that can happen even if:
- you don’t attract any new students
- and even if you don’t spend any more time advertising your music school than you do right now.
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.
It all starts with changing your goal from “making money teaching guitar”, to a much wiser goal of:
“Making your guitar school profitable”.
How do you do that?
Let’s dive in:
Now, let’s cover each of these guitar teaching points in more detail:
Tip #1 For How To Make A Guitar School More Profitable: Teach Guitar In Groups.
You probably already know that teaching guitar in groups = you working less hours, having more time off and making more money.
In fact, when you have multiple students paying you for the same hour, your hourly rate can equal (or even exceed) that of some doctors and lawyers.
This goes a LONG way towards helping make a guitar school more profitable.
But here are a few lesser-obvious benefits of teaching guitar in groups:
1. When you’re teaching guitar in groups the right way, your guitar students get to develop self-reliance (from doing a bit of practicing on their own during the lesson as you walk around the room and help your other guitar students) ...
... while also getting 1-1 attention from you when you work with them during the guitar lesson.
Self-reliance helps your guitar students practice correctly at home (in between guitar lessons) and become better guitar players way faster.
And yes, despite me being Mr. Pro-Group-Lessons, I still think 1-1 attention is a VERY important part of teaching guitar.
I just don’t think it’s a smart idea for any guitar teacher to smother their guitar students in 1-1 attention like an overbearing parent :)
2. When you put an average student (with an average ambition & average work ethic) in a group with your most ambitious (and hardest-working) guitar students...
... they (the average students) can’t help but start believing in themselves more and become better players FASTER.
Your best students’ drive, passion, ambition and work ethic rub off on everyone else.
So, in a sense, your top guitar students are “helping” you with your guitar teaching, without realizing it. (And thus, you don’t have to pay them, lol.)
3. You can run MULTIPLE group classes that train the individual skills your students need to reach their goals.
e.g. a guitar teaching class just on technique. Or a guitar teaching class just on fretboard visualization... or ear training, etc.
This allows your guitar students to attend multiple classes (more on this below) and improve their guitar playing a whole lot faster than they could if you tried to cram all the guitar skills they needed into a 1-1 lesson.
Tip #2 For How To Make A Guitar School More Profitable: Offer Your Guitar Students To Come To Lessons More Than Once Per Week.
You’d be surprised how many students will gladly take lessons 2-4x per week (and pay you for it!) if you give them that opportunity.
Why do this?
First of all, similar to group guitar teaching, having guitar students come to you multiple times per week is extremely profitable for you.
Pro tip: It’s much more lucrative to have one of your guitar students come an extra time per week than to have a brand-new guitar student.
Why? Because your administrative (overhead) expenses are WAY less with 1 student than with 2 students.
Plus: it costs you money and time to attract every new student.
So, if you can make 2x students’ worth of income with just 1 student, that’s an easy way to make a guitar school more profitable.
And the second reason having guitar students come multiple times per week is a smarter approach to teaching guitar?
It makes it way more likely that your guitar students will DO what you tell them to do and develop good habits that they’ll stick to when they practice at home.
And that means...
They are more likely to become better guitar players who will refer their friends to you or simply help spread your reputation all over your local area.
Question: “Tom Hess, if making guitar students come multiple times per week is such a good way to make a guitar school more profitable, why don’t more guitar teachers do this?”
Answer: Because most guitar teachers just copy what other guitar teachers around them do.
That is why, since most people teaching guitar teach 1-1 lessons (and have their guitar students only come 1x per week), it is common for new guitar teachers teach their students the same way.
That is also why, in the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle (where I train guitar teachers to earn 6-figures or more, teaching guitar part-time), I tell members to NOT copy what average guitar teachers are doing... since that is the surest way to staying broke, frustrated and overworked.
Tip #3 For How To Make A Guitar School More Profitable: Don't Chase Pointless “Vanity Metrics”.
The key word in the phrase “make a guitar school more profitable” is: profit.
Guitar teaching profit is what you get when you subtract your expenses (all the money you spend to run your business) from your top-line revenue (the gross amount of money you make teaching guitar).
And what are “vanity metrics”?
Attract More New Guitar StudentsFind out how to become effective
at attracting new guitar students.
Improve Your Guitar Teaching BizDiscover how to make your guitar teaching business more succesful.
Earn Good Money Teaching GuitarLearn 11 steps you should take to earn more money teaching guitar.
These are basically expenses... but the kind of expenses many guitar teachers brag about ‘as if’ they were some measures of guitar teaching success.
Examples include:
- Getting a commercial location.
- Hiring staff (e.g. other guitar teachers working for you – helping you teach your guitar students)
- Opening up multiple guitar teaching schools in your area.
Question: “Tom Hess, are those things you just listed somehow ... bad for one’s guitar teaching business?”
Answer: No, not necessarily... UNLESS they become a badge of pride for some guitar teacher who brags to others about how many guitar teachers he employs or how many locations his school has expanded to.
The obvious problem with, say, opening a commercial location is a MASSIVE increase in expenses.
And if a guitar teacher opens one before they are ready (as in: before they have a steady flow of guitar students coming in), this will massively eat into their profits.
Same goes with hiring a staff of guitar teachers. Unless you have WAY more guitar students than you can handle, making payroll will become a big challenge.
Question: “Tom Hess, how do I know when I'm ready to take on these expenses in my guitar teaching business?”
Answer: This is something I can help you decide by diving into your specific guitar teaching situation in the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle.
Tip #4 For How To Make A Guitar School More Profitable: Prioritize Keeping Your Students Longer Over Getting New Students.
It’s much more profitable to keep an existing student 2x longer than it is to get 2 new students.
Why?
For the same exact reason it is more profitable to make an existing guitar student come multiple times per week than it is to do all the marketing, selling, trust-building and administrative work to get new guitar students.
Here are a few tips on how to keep guitar students longer that help to make a guitar school more profitable:
1. Retention is a byproduct of a relationship built on mutual trust and loyalty.
As such...
2. You’ll almost certainly NOT get to multi-decade retention (as some guitar teachers I’ve trained in the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle have) by teaching guitar ‘online’. Since the depth of the relationship will never be deep enough compared to what you can achieve offline.
Likewise...
3. You DON’T get to massive guitar teaching retention simply by being a better guitar teacher or being better at explaining things.
Instead...
4. You need to wear the hats of a trainer, coach and mentor as you work with your guitar students.
5. Set new goals with students ‘before’ their current goals are fully reached. The “before” part is key. This way there’s always something new for students to look forward and they don’t have time to think about quitting or get bored.
6. Sit down and make a list of all the things your guitar students need to know, believe and feel to continue taking guitar lessons with you for years. Then implement a few of these things at a time as you continue teaching guitar.
Tip #5 For How To Make A Guitar School More Profitable: Grow Your Music School ‘Geometrically’ Instead Of Linearly.
Focus on improving ALL the parts of your business at the same time: attracting students, converting them, making them good players, keeping them longer, reactivating old students who quit and getting referrals.
That is the “secret” to growing your guitar teaching business fast that enables virtually anyone to make a guitar school more profitable.
For example, when it comes to getting guitar students, ask these 9 questions to fill your teaching schedule a lot faster:
Now that you know how to make a guitar school more profitable, let me show you how to fill your schedule with more guitar students so you can reach your guitar teaching goals faster than you ever thought possible. 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 teachers will never know.
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