David Hart has become a friend of mine in recent months, and we meet together via Skype on a regular basis. David has been teaching guitar in Australia since the early 1990’s and he grew a large music school with multiple locations that increased by over 3,000 students in a single year. He eventually started the G4 Guitar Network as a way to provide a leveraged system that guitar teachers around the world could join as a franchise. G4 now has over 40 affiliated schools worldwide with many new ones in the pipeline, and it’s a great resource for guitar teachers who want a pre-built model they can use to grow their business.

In this episode, David and I have a conversation that covers topics like how to deal with some of the main challenges most guitar teachers have to face, advice for brand new teachers who want to avoid common mistakes, and how using a pre-built system can make success with your teaching studio a much easier proposition. I highly recommend David and G4 Guitar Network for every guitar teacher who’s been overwhelmed with trying to do it all themselves, and who would like a turn-key branded system for success.

Items Mentioned In This Episode

Link – Music Teacher’s Helper
Link – G4 Guitar Network

Podcast Transcript

Donnie: Hi, David. Welcome to the Start Teaching Guitar Podcast.

David: Thanks, Donnie. Good to be here.

Donnie: Yeah, it’s great to have you. Can we start by just having you tell us a little bit about your story? How did you get started with playing the guitar?

David: Okay, it’s a long story, but I’ll condense it down into a short version. I started way back. I’m 47 now and I started. Really my first attempt at guitar was when I was about eight years of age. My parents, and I don’t even remember. I have no recollection, except for one vague memory of going to a guitar lesson with a teacher. Apparently I went for about three or four lessons, and I wasn’t practicing, so my parents decided that they weren’t going to go on with it. And you know, my parents really, at that stage, had separated, at about seven, so we’re all living in a very small space, so my mother couldn’t afford lessons. We were really on that kind of poverty line, so it just was a huge privilege, but I really loved music.

My mother knew that, and so the passion was there, but no direction and neither of my parents played in music, so they didn’t have any idea of how to help me. And the teacher obviously didn’t know either. So, that was a false start, and then, when I hit high school, at 13 years of age, I met a guy, who had some guitars and we became friends because I was interested in music. Went to his house, saw his guitar and amp, and I think he had a Marshall amp at that time and a Vantage guitar, and that was the time when Van Halen was just coming on the scene. Actually this was just before Van Halen. Van Halen came out probably about a year later and at the time it was really AC/DC really was the main influence, and then Zeppelin and yeah, Van Halen sort of came on the scene.

So, it was a real. KISS as well and that was a real turning point for me, but I started on drums because he was a guitar player. He wanted me to play drums, so I did the drums, and then I went to guitar. I was really mucking around on his guitar and I didn’t have any formal lessons. I was sort of self-taught for about two years, and then I finally decided to go to a teacher because it just wasn’t working. I was hacking away pretty badly. So, I had kind of that false start, and then I started as a teenager, and then, yeah, went from there.

Donnie: Okay. So, yeah, we have a very similar background because my story is almost identical. I started when I was like eight years old and had a false start with a bad teacher, and was influenced by similar bands. I’m a few years younger than you. Not much, but I was a big KISS fan and AC/DC. All of that stuff, so yeah, it’s kind of interesting how the beginning for both of us is kind of similar, but you mention that you took some lessons and that the first time you had lessons as a younger child it wasn’t a good experience. But what was it like for you once you were older?

David: Well, I guess I could say my first lesson after that experience at high school with the school teacher and maybe a couple of students, if you could call those lessons, but there was a guitar class at school, but it was really not very organized and, you know, it was just people telling each other what they could do. There was no real technical advice or how to sit or hold a guitar, or any of that sort of thing, or how to practice even. But when I went to my teacher at 17, I really got lucky. I mean the drum teacher I had – again, I got lucky, because I look back and I’ve worked with lots of teachers. I’m talking hundreds of teachers over the years, and I look back on those two teachers and I seriously got lucky.

The drum teacher was just remarkable. Amazing guy and very structured, very organized, but very positive the whole time. He made you feel that you could achieve, you know, because I was very doubtful. You know, in those days, I thought you either had musical talent or you didn’t, and so that was my mindset at the time, which we know is just absolutely false, but that’s where it was. And so, other kids who had started when they were five and six – I thought they were natural, but they just started a lot younger or had musical parents or good teachers, or something.

Donnie: Yeah. Yeah.

David: I equate it to, say, learning Chinese. If you grow up in China, you’re born in China, of course you’re going to learn to speak great Chinese. You don’t even need to be Chinese. If you’re born in China, you’re going to speak Chinese. You know, and so that’s the thing; is that anybody is capable if you’re in the right environment. It’s what I call 98 percent environment, 2 percent maybe genetic because there are people who come. Every now and again you see someone who’s just got that kind of genetic trait of musical ability, and they’re usually the kind of lucky ones, but you know, most great musicians worked hard to get where they got.

Sorry, to get back to that point, what happened for me was that my guitar teacher, a guy named Mark Bergman, still alive and well in Australia. He learned from a guy who was one of the top BBC Session jazz guitarists at the time. So, he really taught my teacher how to teach and how to play, but he was even more than that. He just had a passion for working with students and really developing you. You just got swept up. There was no way out of it. There was no way that he was going to let you be an average player. He just had this ability, and that’s what seduced me into teaching. That’s why I became a teacher, because of him primarily.

Donnie: Yeah, so that’s a great transition there. So, let’s talk about teaching guitar. You’ve actually obviously been teaching for a long time and you work with guitar teachers now, so how did you kind of get started? You just mentioned kind of the origins of, you know, how the seed got planted to start teaching guitar, but how did you kind of grow you business from there and kind of get to where you are today?

David: It was a pretty tough, long, hard road I would say. You know, the long and winding road would be the great way to sort of put it. You know, when I started, I did what most guitar teachers do and, you know, we know this. You know this from working with them; is we try and do everything ourselves. We try and learn through our own mistakes and, you know, there’s an old kind of phrase, which is, you know, a smart person learns from their mistakes. A wise person learns from other people’s mistakes. And I considered myself pretty clever in those early days. I mean I look at what was happening. I really analyzed what I did wrong and, you know, how I could do better next time, so I was improving.

That was just the way that I guess I was brought up, but it didn’t dawn upon me probably for at least five or six years, and I read an Anthony Robbins book. And I realized, after reading his book, I just got so much out of that. It really just changed my whole mindset. Why haven’t I been reading books before this? So, I think I was at about 26 or 27 and actually the reason it happened was because my business was failing. I just found that it just wasn’t working and I was frustrated. And I don’t even know where I came across the book, but I’ve been reading different books on business, but when I struck Anthony Robbins, it was a mind shift. It wasn’t just about, you know, how to do your accounts or, you know, how to get a bank loan. You know, it wasn’t the kind of practical steps. It was about shifting your whole mindset.

And I realized that applied to everything, not just business, but teaching. And once I started working with students, I realized that it wasn’t just a matter of showing them how to play the guitar. It was a matter of shifting their mind to getting to understand. Going from that as Carol Dweck puts in her book, Mindset, which I recommend reading. Going from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset. And a fixed mindset is basically I’ve either got musical talent or I don’t, whereas the growth mindset is, well, I may not have musical talent today, but by working on it, I can have musical talent in the future. So, yeah.

So, that’s it really. My thing with teaching was that, and where it really shifted for me in that kind of first stage, and there were obviously stages, but the first shift for me was realizing I needed help and that I wasn’t going to do this alone. That I really had to bring in, and then I actually brought in a coach and started attending seminars. And now I’m perhaps a bit of a junkie when it comes to learning. I’m constantly either reading a book or going to a seminar. Every year I travel overseas, at least two or three times to go to seminars and work with different people on different things. And that’s part of why I wanted to connect with you, and you know, we’ve got a great friendship now, because you’re very knowledgeable.

You know this industry really well and, you know, you and I are sort of bouncing ideas and sharing things. Yeah, so that’s what I’m all about. That’s how I work these days.

Donnie: Yeah, that’s great. That’s another thing we have in common, because I’m a pretty avid reader of business and self-improvement books, especially in the mindset area as well. It makes all the difference. It really does. And one of the things that you touched on that’s so important is being willing to reach out and ask for help, but also being willing to pay for it, you know, because a lot of people, teachers in particular, just figure that they just have to figure it out. And if money is tight, you know, I’m not going to invest any money in hiring a coach or somebody else to help me, and it never really ends up working out. So, that’s a huge thing that I agree with you on one hundred percent.

David: Yeah. Yeah, because I’m not saying you can’t get great free advice. You can. There’s plenty of great free advice to be had, but the reality is, is that if someone is not invested in you, so when you go to a coach, then they’re invested in you. When you go to a restaurant, you know, the people who are waiting your tables and making your food. If you aren’t going to pay for that food and pay for that service, I don’t know that they’d be that keen and they’re certainly not invested in you. And you know, great coaches, as far as I can see, really do deserve to be paid because we want them doing more of what they’re doing. We want them positioned where they can.

This is not saying, again, and I do quote a lot only because I think, you know, clichés are quite powerful, and that is that, you know, you pay for your education one way or another. You either pay for it in the beginning or you pay for it in the end through mistakes. You know, and I did that earlier and I’d rather pay for it upfront, go: “All right, you know, you teach me how to do it.” If you think of all the timesaving things that you’ve learned along the way, you know, one coach that I had that’s worth mentioning is Jay Abraham. Incredible coach, and you know, what he taught me about business and, you know, marketing was just mind-blowing. You know, his kind of exponential strategies of growing a business and, you know, here I was, plugging away, putting ads in the local newspaper, and you know, maybe on a directory or something, but this kind of pre-Internet, and he comes along and just blows my mind away with all these marketing strategies.

He’s worked at all the big companies. Lots of big-name people. So, you know, I spent four thousand dollars or something doing a kind of four-day event with him, and I made that four thousand dollars many, many times over.

Donnie: Yeah. Yeah, that’s usually how it goes.

David: Yeah.

Donnie: Yeah. So, what made you decide to start helping other guitar teachers? How did you get started being a coach yourself?

David: I guess I kind of fell into it. You know, when I look back, I think there was no intention there in the beginning because I mean this is for a lot of guitar teachers. Their intention is to play guitar and, you know, I was in high school, doing my high school diploma, and at that time, I was playing in bands and gigging already. And I sort of decided that, you know, I wasn’t going to go to University because I wanted a career in music. That’s where I was heading. And as I came out, the gigs were good, but you know, we were the young guns and, you know, we got paid the bottom of the barrel. We were the band that they called upon. We were young and dumb and had no sort of pull in the industry.

But we had – you know, not myself because I was a very average musician at that time and I’d only been playing guitar for really about a year and a half when we were doing this, but the drummer that I had was only 13, but he was incredible. He was just a kid that was just amazing on the drums. Still is, but he doesn’t play commercially. But him, and then we had a bass player, who was older, who was about 30 at time, and then my brother on vocals. And my brother was a really good frontman. He’s great, getting the audience. He’s done a lot of acting and drama, and stuff like that, plus he’d done a lot of what we call talent quests in Australia, where he had to get up and perform in front of an audience. Bit like The Voice or one of those things, but he used to win them all the time.

So, he was all about winning the audience over, and I wouldn’t even say he was a great singer back then. He’s improved a lot these days, but even back then he was a great singer, but he was a great performer. He could really get the audience in and he loved Elvis. You know, he was kind of a big Elvis fan. So, we had that band and we would get paid, but not much. You know, we’d cover our petrol. We’d cover our basics, so there wasn’t much money left. So, I had to kind of get a job in retail to support that, but the teaching was something that I started doing because it made money, and that was the only reason.

And then, as I made more money through teaching, what had happened, because my experience in retail, I developed sales skills and business skills. Mostly sales skills, but I was able to take those sales skills and apply them to my guitar teaching business, and so I was enrolling students quite quickly. Anybody who was ringing up, I was getting students. The sales weren’t the problem. Just about everybody that called I could enroll, and so I realized: “Wow, this is building quickly. I don’t need my retail sales job anymore. I can now do teaching.” And that’s kind of where I sort of got into the teaching.

The next step on that was that it became lonely. I felt very alone because there were no other. You know, I was working in a retail sales team, playing in a band. Used to play in sports teams. I was all about team playing, and the reason I started a school was because I felt lonely. That was really the bottom line. So, I opened a school and brought in a couple of other teachers, and that really worked for me. That was where I felt at home, because I had other teachers to bounce off. And really the growth for me of the teaching was initially for the survival of the business, because if you even have good teachers, if you have a good program, you weren’t going to teach students and it was very hard.

You know, it’s okay when you’re teaching at home, but you don’t have really any overheads. But when you’re in a commercial premise, when you’re paying a rent, you’re paying wages for staff, etc., you need to teach students if you want the business to grow. So, that’s where I really got kind of stressed, let’s say, because it wasn’t working and I had to lay people off, and then, you know, all sorts of problem, but then it’s when, like I said, that kind of Anthony Robbins moment of starting to learn and get other help and advice from others that I really started to step up. It’s a long story, but I won’t go into too much detail, but that gives you an idea.

Donnie: Yeah. So, that’s a great transition into what you’re doing now with G4 Guitar Network. There’s probably a few people at least listening to this or watching it on YouTube that have never heard of G4 Guitar or what you’re doing. So, for anyone like that, can you just kind of give us an overview of what G4 Guitar Network is all about and what you’re doing?

David: Sure. G4 was kind of an extension of, if I can add to that thing about being lonely and not wanting to do it by myself, but wanting to play on a team. When I say alone, I don’t mean I was sort of sad and lonely and depressed. I just was itching to play on a team. And so, I went, you know, through the years. I had schools and, you know, ended up with, and still is, the biggest suburban musical school is Sydney, Australia. But what happened there is, in about 2000, I decided that I needed a change. I needed to do something different. I’d done this. It was all good and I wanted to be able to go to another level. And when I stepped out of that, I sold the business and then moved on. In about 2003, took a couple of years off, and really developed G4 because by that time I was getting a lot into, you know, reading about people like Steve Jobs and learning from those kinds of guys about how, you know, you should really focus on one area. Don’t try and be everything.

And so, I got away from this musical school of teaching every instrument and just focusing on guitar and developing a program, and that was another thing, which was advice that I got about develop a program. You know, you can’t just be Dave’s Guitar School. What is Dave’s Guitar School? You’ve got to have a product. You know, when you think of Apple, they have products. They have an iPad. They have an iPhone. You think of McDonald’s. They have a Big Mac. So, you’ve got to have some kind of product, and that was where okay, so I need to take what I do and put it into a system because it’s working for me. If I could systemize it and, you know, I got this kind of from the e-myth. Put it into a system. That’s where I spent two years developing the G4 Guitar Method. Even though I’ve been developing it for years before that, I really got it together, and then I went in and started the first school.

But to carry on from what I was previously doing is that I then, at that point, decided I was going to open a location, so I was going to have a chain of schools. And so, within that two years of opening, it went from literally zero in a new area. Nobody knew me. I had no sort of, you know, reputation because I sold my other business. I couldn’t open anywhere near there because I had a legal obligation and a moral obligation. I wouldn’t do that. I would go into competition with a business that I’d sold. So, I went across to the other side of Sydney, complete other end, and started from scratch.

And within two years, I had five schools and we’d enrolled over three thousand students. And so, at that point, again, I was becoming overwhelmed and stressed because I had all these people to manage. I had 20 teachers. Five schools. And it was just growing at a ridiculous rate because the system was working, but it was kind of like I’d launched this rocket into space and now I didn’t know where to go. What do I do now? And that’s when the idea for the network, which I’d had before, but this was when I really could of realized it was time for, because having a network was going to put me in contact with teachers around the world, who had a similar idea and a passion, but were owners of their business. I wanted them to have an ownership. I didn’t want it to be where they were an employee, and that’s why I went for the network.

And it’s just working out beautifully. We’ve got now around 40 odd teachers. And last year, at this time, we only had one or two teachers who weren’t in Australia. They were all in Australia. So, in this last year, we’ve now got 20 odd teachers in the US and the UK and one in Canada, and it’s just exploding. In the last couple of months, it’s really starting to take off because we relate. It’s been a whole series of steps to get where we are now, but it’s pretty well in place. Just got a guy from New York joined two days ago, which is exciting because now we’re in the Big Apple. So, we’ve kind of got, you know, guy in California. A guy in Seattle joined only last month. You know, Pennsylvania. Maryland. So, yeah, we’ve got popping up everywhere. Arizona.

So, it’s really starting to come together nicely.

Donnie: Yeah, that’s great. So, sounds like you have this International movement that’s starting up here with G4. That’s cool.

David: Well, it’s a bit like that. Yeah, it’s kind of the, you know, guitar players, guitar teachers that want to play on a team really, and that’s how I would put it. I would just say that we’re coming together, we’re networking, and we’re sharing our kind of passion for teaching and learning from each other because, you know, most guitar teachers operate like Islands. You know, they’re very much isolated, doing their own thing, and they’re reinventing the wheel often. So, you know, there’s a lot of work in setting up a business and to pull all that work that you’re putting into sort of growing your name, your brand, building teaching lesson plans – everything is so huge, and to be doing it for one person, it’s like building a restaurant to feed one person.

You know, it’s a lot of work just for one teacher. So, that’s where we kind of unite. And I spend, you know, my time, literally ten hours a day, developing G4. You know, making it easier for these teachers to operate, which is like them having a full-time employee with 30 years of experience in the business, working behind the scenes for them. And yeah, that’s how I see it.

Donnie: Yeah. Yeah, so could you give some more details about specific ways that G4 can help guitar teachers be more successful?

David: Sure. Sure. I think, well, the number one thing that teachers struggle with is time. You know, when I talk to the average guitar teacher and probably the average person these days for that matter, it’s the time that they struggle with. I don’t have enough hours in the day, you know, trying to do all these different things. And time is not equal for everybody. And so, if someone like a Bill Gates with Microsoft can run a multibillion-dollar business as well as one of the biggest charities in the world, he can be, you know, speaking on stages. Every week you’ll see him speaking on a different stage somewhere. So, if someone like him can manage all that, plus he’s a family man as well – he’s got time for his own kids and his wife -, we could say, oh, it’s because he’s got money. He’s got privilege. He’s got all those things.

And perhaps that helps, but it comes through leveraging and leveraging is really what G4 – the bottom line of what G4 is about. And it’s leveraging your time, your brand, everything. And so, if you think about a guitar teacher and the time they spend as a G4 guitar teacher, they often say to me, “I want to do this or I want to do that,” and I can say, “We’ve already got that done. Here it is,” or if we don’t have it, let me put it on the project list and I’ll work on it. And a recent example would be, you know, a lot of the teachers were talking about parenting, working with parents. You know, parents. We want them to do their bit at home with the kids, and the reason the kids drop out and give it up and stop or quit is because the parents are not there at home, helping them with their practice and supporting them.

How can we make this easier? And I was giving them lots of advice and, you know, one teacher said, “That’s great advice. You should put it into a book or something that we can give to the parents to read.” And great idea. Bang. Let’s do it. So, we got down and it was really three of us that worked on it. When we put this parenting guide together, nine to ten-page guide for parents on how to work with their child, from young children – three to four-year-olds – up to sort of teenagers, and that all came together in a matter of a couple weeks. And that wouldn’t have happened. You know, the amount of time and work that goes into putting something like that together. You know that. You know, putting a book together or something like that takes a lot of time and effort to get it together.

And to know that all the guys in the network can now benefit from that without having to do anything. You know, they can even just make a suggestion and if it’s a good suggestion, everyone agrees on it or a few of us agree on it, then we can have them. So, it’s the prime thing that G4 will do for teachers. Number one is leverage. The second thing that I would say is the network effect. And the network effect is often severely underrated and underestimated as to the power of the network effect. You and I are here, speaking on Skype today due to several layers of the network effect. The Internet is the first example. The Internet wouldn’t exist without the network.

You know, if there was only you and me, this connection would cost millions of dollars to setup.

Donnie: Yeah.

David: But because there’s millions of people, around billions of people around the world using the Internet, the Internet comes to us at a very low cost, very cheap, and that’s the network effect. So, the more nodes that come into a network, the more value it offers for each person and at a reduced price. So, you know, mobile phones are an example. When mobile phones first came out, the first ones were big, chunky things that were very expensive to run and were only privileged to the royal family and perhaps the US President, and a few people like that. But then, now, look at today. You’ve got guys in Africa, who, on one hand, are starving and on another hand, they’ve got a mobile phone in their hand. Like that’s how cheap the mobile phone has become.

So, this is the network effect at work, and that’s really the effect of G4. As more members come into it, the cost is lower for us and the effects and the benefits go up. So, yeah.

Donnie: Yeah, that’s great. You’re doing some really great things. Yeah, I can honestly. Just from getting to know you over the last several months and learning more about what you’re doing with G4, I would highly recommend any guitar teacher out there, who is interested in taking things up to a higher level and kind of adopting a franchise model with systems and everything kind of pre-built that you can just plug yourself into, you guys have the perfect solution for that.

David: Thank you. Yeah, thank you.

Donnie: Yeah. So, kind of just to wrap the interview up a little bit, what advice would you have for somebody who would like to get started teaching guitar lessons for the first time? Maybe someone who is a player and looking for ways to kind of monetize, you know, their guitar habit like we have. What kind of tips would you have for someone just wanting to get started?

David: Okay. The first tip that I’d give is to go and observe other teachers in action. And this is something that, you know, I was late to the game on, but by watching other teachers, I had an experience of where I met a Suzuki violin teacher who was actually the parent of one of my students. This is way back in my 20s. And she taught me an enormous amount, and through her, I started looking at Suzuki and the kind of things, and I had a lot of inspiration from Suzuki and I have the greatest respect for Mr. Suzuki and his whole program and what he’s done. And that’s where I really got the initial seeds of structure. You know, having a structured program.

But when I started bringing in other teachers in part of this sort of running of schools is that I was able to observe piano teachers and, you know, violin teacher and cello teachers and drum teachers, and just different teachers from different backgrounds, doing different things. And a lot of the teachers that I had were, you know, University grads that were working in high schools and so forth, and doing teaching after schools or on weekends. So, I was able to. I learned so much from observing, and this is something that I think a lot of teachers don’t do. I don’t think that they go out of their way to observe.

Go and watch some early development classes for kids. You know, go and spend time in a classroom. There are some amazing school teachers out there. And you know, there are a lot of videos you can watch online as well without even having to walk out of your house. But observing, yeah, really will make a big difference and build your confidence to be able to teach, especially group teaching because I promote group teaching a lot, which I know you do as well because, again, that’s an example of leveraging. You’re going to earn more money and you’re going to be able to help more people. Even if it’s not about money for you, that’s fine. If you’re a great teacher, then you should be helping as many people as you can, and that’s where group teaching.

So, a lot of guitar teachers: “Oh, you can’t teach guitar in group. You know, you’ve got to give everyone one-on-one. You know, it’s all about what they want to do, etc.” Well, go and watch some groups and go and watch them in action. Watch schoolteachers and you’ll see that they very successfully teach almost anything that you can imagine in a group scenario.

The other tip that I would give is to dive into your marketing. Don’t wait for your marketing. This is, I find, kind of a classic where a lot of teachers will say, “Look, I just want to work on my teaching and learn, you know.” Sometimes when they come in, you’ve got, “I want to learn about your program for a while. So, I don’t want to let anyone know. I don’t want to tell anyone what I’m doing until.” And my thing is, is you’re going to learn much faster. It’s like learning to swim. Get in the pool. You know, you’re going to learn. Don’t stand on the edge of the pool and watch. Even if you get in the shallow end, it’s better to be in the pool and to start, and that’s with your business. Marketing is where you’re probably going to have the biggest challenge, especially in the early stages.

You’ve got to get students. You’ve got to get them through the door. And then, once you get them through the door, then you’ll be presented with the problems and the challenges, and that way, as you solve them, that’s where you improve in teaching. And also, you’re learning the marketing at the same time. So, you’re learning the essential skills of marketing, selling, and teaching. You already can play guitar, I’m assuming, so yeah, these are the areas – marketing, selling and teaching – that you need to be working on.

So, they’re probably the two best tips I would give.

Donnie: Okay. So, how can people get a hold of you, David, to get the latest updates and to find out more about G4? How do they kind of get looped into your communications?

David: The best way is just for G4 Guitar, and you can go to G4GuitarMethod.com, and that’ll take you to the website. And on there, you’ll see teach. At the top, there are a couple options. Just click on the teach, and that will take them to the page where they can subscribe and get more information. And there’s a free book there, which is the Essential Guide to Teaching Guitar, which they will get access to when they join, plus they’ll get a whole series of emails and free information on teaching guitar generally and the business involved. And if they want to email me directly, they can do that as well. G4Guitar1@Gmail.com. That’s probably the easiest way to get me.

Yeah, so easy pretty to find. Just search David Hart Guitar or G4 Guitar. You’ll find me.

Donnie: Great, and I’ll put a link to your web page in the Show Notes as well. Make it a little easier for people.

David: Thanks.

Donnie: Yeah. So, do you have any parting advice for the guitar teachers who are going to be listening or watching this?

David: I think yeah. My sort of final advice would be if you’re going to do it, then do it full on. Be passionate about what you do. I think the reason people struggle, and especially a lot of guitar teachers, is because they’re not really committed to what they’re doing. They may want to be musicians and they’re just trying to teach to make a bit of money, which is cool, but you know, if you’re really going to succeed at something, the way that I see it, you know. You see, for lack of a better example, you know, if you look at war. When they go into war, the first thing they do is they set up supply lines. So, they go into a place and they set up a supply line, protect the supply line, so then they can sustain their position.

And so, from a strategic point of view, if you do this with your guitar playing, and a lot of guitar players go: “I want to be a session player. I want to do this or do that.” Well, you’ve got two choices. Of course you can just full on being a Joe Satriani, but Joe Satriani was a teacher, by the way, and still is. He still loves teaching, and his mother was a schoolteacher I think. But the idea is that by setting yourself up, you know, with something that’s going to keep the money coming in and keep you at a secure position, then you can focus on your guitar playing and all that.

So, especially if you’re young and you’ve got plenty of years ahead of you, if you just spend a couple of years setting up your teaching business, which is an easy, secure way to earn money as a guitarist, opposed to becoming a rock star or a session player, which is highly competitive, highly risky, just spend a couple of years setting up your business and what I do is I will actually show you how to setup your business and even put a teacher in there, so then you’re free to do whatever you want. You can operate from the Internet if you like and be anywhere in the world. You can be touring, but you need to focus those couple of years on doing it. And you know, it’s the same with the guitar students. If you look at learning guitar, it’s like a guitar student coming to me and saying, “I want to be a rock star,” and I go: “Well, that’s great, but first you need to learn to play guitar.”

So, how about we just focus? Spend all your time. You know, four hours a day, practicing guitar. Get really good at guitar. Let’s do that for a year or two. You’ve got your guitar skills down. Now you can start becoming a rock star because you’re solid. You don’t have to think about skills. And that’s the kind of approach to the G4 Guitar Method, by the way, but with the business approach, it’s the same. Just focus a couple of years. Get your teaching business up and running. Get one hundred students. Have one hundred grand coming in. Use 30 to 40 grand of that to pay another teaching. You’re still making 50 or 60 grand, and then you can do whatever you want, rather than trying to do both, which is what I see all the time. I made that mistake.

Donnie: Yeah.

David: You know, doing gigs. Practicing guitar. You know, running a school. And all these things, trying to, and I never got very good at any of them. Focus on one mountain climb. That mountain first. Set up a supply line, like I said, and then go from there.

Donnie: That’s excellent advice, and I love that plan. Get one hundred students. Make one hundred grand. Hire another teacher to work for you, and then you can do whatever you want.

David: Exactly. The entrepreneurial mindset.

Donnie: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, cool. I just want to say a lot of people might think that I’m crazy for having you on the Start Teaching Guitar podcast because looking at it on the outside, we might appear to be direct competitors, but we really do kind of offer two separate things to two separate groups of people. I mean if someone is looking for a business model and a franchise that they can join themselves up to and become a part of a larger network, you know, where a lot of things are done for you, then G4 is perfect for that, whereas I kind of focus more on the individual, one-off teachers out there who are struggling, and who just need to learn how to operate a business.

And you know, they really just want to maybe not be the best fit for something like what you’re doing, but want to try and make a go of it on their own. So, I think we really compliment each other very well.

David: Totally. I think, you know, and it sort of goes both ways because, in your case, there are a lot of teachers out there and probably the great majority of teachers out there who don’t want to be part of franchise, who just want to run their own little guitar school, and that’s great. And that’s what you do. What I do is I’m about franchising. I’m about, you know, playing on the G4 Team, and that’s not for most teachers. It is for some teachers, but not for most. And you know, I come back to never fear your competition. You know, your competition are your allies and your best friends. They’re the people who are going to be of the most value to you overall because I go back to the days of, you know, when I had my early sort of music schools. I bring up a local music school down the road and say I’ve got a student for you, and they go: “What? You’re the competition. What are you doing, sending students to us?”

And I said, “Because the student is not right for us. They’re not suitable, but I think that you can look after them.” But you know, it’s all about making the pie bigger. It’s not about this one pie and then we’re fighting for this pie. It’s that by working together we make the pie bigger, and I would urge any guitar teacher out there to make friends and connect with the other guitar teachers in the area because each of you have different strengths and together your big competition is YouTube. That’s where all your students are. YouTube is your competitor if anybody. It’s not the guitar teacher down the road.

Donnie: Great. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, so I think we’re kind of modeling that with our relationship and with kind of the cross-pollination that we’re doing. You had me on your weekly show that you do, and now I’m having you here on mine. So, hopefully the guitar teachers who are watching this will take cues from that and go out and network with people, and be more successful as a result.

David: Excellent.

Donnie: Yeah. So, hey, I just want to thank you for taking the time to be on the podcast. It was great talking with you, and catch you next time.

David: Absolute pleasure, Donnie. Absolute pleasure. It’s great talking to you every time. You know, the last thing I’d say to the guys out there is that we catch up about once a month and yeah, we’re always sharing ideas. And yeah, it’s always good talking to you.

Donnie: Great. Thank you, David.

David: Thanks, Donnie.

Thank You For Listening!

If you enjoyed this episode, or any of the other of the episodes of the STG podcast, and you haven’t left a rating or review yet on iTunes, I would really appreciate an honest rating and review from you. It’s one of the most important parts of the ranking algorithm in iTunes, but more importantly, it’ll show future listeners that this podcast is (or isn’t) worth listening to.

To leave a quick review, open up iTunes, search for Start Teaching Guitar and then leave a rating and review as shown below. You can do this from your mobile device as well, even if you’re not subscribed, and even if you listen on another platform – this is where I’d appreciate you leaving your review.

Feel free to use the comments section below to let me know what you think about this episode, to suggest a topic for a future episode or just to join in on the conversation with other guitar teachers.

Money is usually a big factor when you’re thinking about getting started with teaching guitar. How will you be able to afford to rent teaching space? How much new gear will you need and how much will it all cost? What about furniture? Setting up your website? Advertising? There are lots of things you could spend a bunch of money on when you’re just getting started, but the good news is that it doesn’t have to cost you a small fortune to get started with your teaching studio – you can get started for as little as $100 and the value of your time.

In this episode I’ll give you some great tips on how to build or expand your guitar teaching studio on a shoestring. I’ll cover how to save money on teaching space and gear, how to get great deals on services you need to start your business, how to get your online marketing going on the cheap and how to get your first students for free. There are lots of obstacles to starting your own teaching studio, but money doesn’t have to be one of them. Listen in to find out how to save a bundle when you’re just getting started.

This PREMIUM episode of the Start Teaching Guitar Podcast is available exclusively for STG All-Access members!

To give your teaching business a huge advantage and get TONS of cool benefits INCLUDING the full-length, commercial-free version of this episode, click here to purchase a LIFETIME MEMBERSHIP to STG All-Access today!

STG All-Access members get access to the following VALUABLE RESOURCES:

• Full-length episodes of the STG Podcast with no advertising or commercials, including a mind map outline containing my PRIVATE NOTES used to record the episodes

• Access to PREMIUM EPISODES that nobody else gets to listen to with more in-depth “how-to” information

• Q&A call recordings where you can get ANSWERS to your QUESTIONS about teaching guitar

• Access to the STG Podcast Archive, and the FIRST 25 EPISODES that are no longer available to the general public

• Access to the STG Community Forums, where you can interact with other guitar teachers from around the world
  

• Much more!

Give yourself a shot of ENCOURAGEMENT and MOTIVATION and the RESOURCES you need to help you build your guitar teaching business! Click this button to purchase your own STGAA LIFETIME MEMBERSHIP:

There’s an old saying in marketing and business: “You can’t manage what you can’t measure”. The best way to manage your teaching studio and make sure you’re on the path to profitability is to keep track of a few important metrics, including how much a single student is really worth to your business. That metric is known as your CLV (customer lifetime value). There are ways to increase your “CLV” so that you’re making more money from the students you already have, and then you can spend less money on bringing in new students. Put those two factors together and your studio can become a lot more profitable a lot more quickly.

In this episode, I’ll explain exactly what your “customer lifetime value” is all about, along with another related metric called your “CAC” (customer acquisition cost). I’ll teach you how to keep your acquisition costs down and how to increase your student lifetime value…and I’ll give you some very specific strategies you can start implementing right away. The most important first step is to understand these two important numbers and to learn how to calculate them for YOUR business…once you know where you ARE, you’ll be ready to start making improvements, and your studio will have a much greater chance for success.

This PREMIUM episode of the Start Teaching Guitar Podcast is available exclusively for STG All-Access members!

To give your teaching business a huge advantage and get TONS of cool benefits INCLUDING the full-length, commercial-free version of this episode, click here to purchase a LIFETIME MEMBERSHIP to STG All-Access today!

STG All-Access members get access to the following VALUABLE RESOURCES:

• Full-length episodes of the STG Podcast with no advertising or commercials, including a mind map outline containing my PRIVATE NOTES used to record the episodes

• Access to PREMIUM EPISODES that nobody else gets to listen to with more in-depth “how-to” information

• Q&A call recordings where you can get ANSWERS to your QUESTIONS about teaching guitar

• Access to the STG Podcast Archive, and the FIRST 25 EPISODES that are no longer available to the general public

• Access to the STG Community Forums, where you can interact with other guitar teachers from around the world
  

• Much more!

Give yourself a shot of ENCOURAGEMENT and MOTIVATION and the RESOURCES you need to help you build your guitar teaching business! Click this button to purchase your own STGAA LIFETIME MEMBERSHIP:

There are two basic approaches to marketing for new guitar students: you can go after them (using push marketing tactics) or you can try to get them to come to you (using pull marketing tactics). The big difference is who is making the initial contact…you or the potential student…and that makes a huge difference in whether your marketing efforts will be successful or not.

In this episode, I’ll tell you all about the difference between push and pull marketing. I’ll give you good examples of each approach, along with some of the pros and cons of each one. I’ll also explain how to know when you should be aggressively trying to get the attention of potential students and when you should be trying to entice them to come to you, instead. The answer might surprise you!

This PREMIUM episode of the Start Teaching Guitar Podcast is available exclusively for STG All-Access members!

To give your teaching business a huge advantage and get TONS of cool benefits INCLUDING the full-length, commercial-free version of this episode, click here to purchase a LIFETIME MEMBERSHIP to STG All-Access today!

STG All-Access members get access to the following VALUABLE RESOURCES:

• Full-length episodes of the STG Podcast with no advertising or commercials, including a mind map outline containing my PRIVATE NOTES used to record the episodes

• Access to PREMIUM EPISODES that nobody else gets to listen to with more in-depth “how-to” information

• Q&A call recordings where you can get ANSWERS to your QUESTIONS about teaching guitar

• Access to the STG Podcast Archive, and the FIRST 25 EPISODES that are no longer available to the general public

• Access to the STG Community Forums, where you can interact with other guitar teachers from around the world
  

• Much more!

Give yourself a shot of ENCOURAGEMENT and MOTIVATION and the RESOURCES you need to help you build your guitar teaching business! Click this button to purchase your own STGAA LIFETIME MEMBERSHIP:

There are lots of guitar players out there who would love to turn their love of music into a source of income, and maybe even do music as a career some day. Teaching is one of the more rewarding and more lucrative ways to have a career in music, but many people who would make great guitar teachers never consider the possibility because all they see are the obstacles that seem to be standing in the way. The truth is, if you can learn how to play you can learn how to teach, and although it’s not always easy, it’s not as difficult as you might imagine.

In this episode, I’ll be answering some actual questions sent in by beginning guitar teachers that will hopefully give new guitar teachers the confidence they need to take action and get started with teaching lessons. I’ll cover things like how to attract your very first students, how to put together a curriculum, and how to deal with some of the common mindset issues beginners usually face, like “am I good enough” and “is it OK for me to charge money for lessons”. Sometimes just getting some basic questions answered is a good motivator, so that’s what we’ll be doing here.

Items Mentioned In This Episode

Link – Recommended Teaching Books

Podcast Transcript

There are lots of people out there who would love to start teaching guitar, but who haven’t taken the steps to actually get started yet. If you’re listening to this podcast, chances are you might be one of those people. And maybe it’s because of fear. Maybe you’re just afraid to take that step, or maybe you just don’t know what to do first to keep moving in that direction, but there could be a number of different reasons, but I get a lot of emails from people and a lot of them are what I call pre-teachers or aspiring guitar teachers and they ask me questions.

And there are several of them that get asked really often. The same questions over and over again. So, in this episode, I’m going to cover some of these frequently asked questions I get from aspiring guitar teachers, people that are thinking about teaching, but who haven’t actually gotten started yet or maybe who are just getting started. So, if you’re thinking about teaching or just getting ready to kick off your teaching studio, hopefully this information will give you a boost of confidence so that you can begin taking those steps to get started and to get more established with your teaching business. So, let’s jump right into the questions.

Question 1: I’m a Self-Taught Guitarist; Is It OK To Teach Other People?

The first question is, and by the way, I’m not going to give you the names of the people. I am going to protect the privacy of the people who asked these questions, but I am going to read some of these questions kind of verbatim. So, first question is: “The biggest struggle for me right now is that I’m a self-taught guitarist. I hope that, therefore, teaching guitar will help structure my own understanding of the guitar into an organized compilation rather than bits and pieces I’ve learned from random sources. It also worries me that it will be a hindrance in my ability to teach. So, the basic question is I’m a self-taught guitarist and I don’t have a comprehensive knowledge of the instrument yet. Is this going to be a problem for me when I want to go and start teaching other people?

And my answer to that question – actually I get asked this question or a version of it pretty often – is there are a lot of self-taught guitar teachers out there. There are also a lot of guitar teachers that have music degrees and who’ve gone through guitar training programs and things, but they are just as many that are self-taught. And being a self-taught guitar teacher, it’s only a hindrance, in my opinion, if you think it is, if that’s what you believe. Self-taught doesn’t have to mean second class. You know, I think there’s this stigma that we place on ourselves. I mean I’ve taken a lot of lessons and I’ve also done a lot of self-taught and self-directed study, and you know what. Whatever it takes to get you where you want to be as a guitar player is fine.

There’s not one path that every single person has to follow to reach success as a guitarist or as a guitar teacher for that matter. Self-taught doesn’t have to mean second class. There’s a stigma that we put on ourselves where it’s like, if I didn’t graduate from the Berkeley School of Music or I didn’t go to GIT or I didn’t study with a teacher for ten years, then I’m somehow less qualified to be a guitar teacher than someone who has done those things. And I’m just going to say if you’ve managed to develop a level of competency on the instrument on your own, then you have skills. You have knowledge and you have experience that you can share with other people.

Now, if you’re completely self-taught, does that mean that you’re going to be able to teach advanced jazz guitar or classical guitar, or something like that, for example? Well, probably not. Those specific focuses of teaching require years of study and practice and some formal education to a large degree, but if you’re a rock guitar player that’s managed to learn how to play really well and you’ve been playing in gigs and you’ve been playing in bands and doing different things like that, and you’ve been successful at it and you’ve developed your skills to a pretty good level, there’s no reason why you can’t be a guitar teacher.

One area that’s going to be challenging though is having a good understanding of how guitar lessons work, because if you’ve never really taken any guitar lessons yourself, it might be hard for you to put together a good mental framework for how to communicate this stuff. So, fortunately there’s an easy solution to this problem. All you’ve got to do is sign up for some guitar lessons yourself. Find a teacher locally or find someone online if there’s no one local that you can study with. Someone who has some of the skills that you’d like to learn, even if you just want to improve some things that you’re already doing, and then start taking lessons.

So, that’s going to do a few things for you. Yes, you’re going to improve your playing skills. You’re going to learn how to play better when you study with a teacher yourself, but the main reason I want you to do it is because you’re going to get a better understanding of what it means to teach guitar. It’s simple. Just sign up for some lessons and then pay attention to what the teacher does and how they operate. You could probably even ask them some questions and they’ll give you some tips and pointers. But the person that asked this question is completely right. The process of putting your own curriculum together, kind of categorizing all the different aspects of music and playing guitar teach so that you can teach it to other people is definitely going to take your understanding of the instrument to a whole new level, and I’m going to talk more about that in a second, when I answer another question, but teaching that curriculum that you put together to your students is going to reinforce the stuff you already know. It’s going to create new mental connections for you. It’s actually going to help you be the best player that you can be.

So, this kind of touches on mindset stuff a little bit, and I just want to encourage anyone out there. If you’re a self-taught guitarist, don’t let that disqualify you from teaching other people. You can be a successful guitar teacher. As long as you’re a few steps ahead of the students that you’re teaching and you care about their progress on the guitar, you know how to help them reach their goals. There is a lot of stuff that you can learn as you go. So, just because you’re self-taught doesn’t mean you can’t be a guitar teacher. It actually could even be an asset for you in some regards. So, yeah, that’s a common question that I get, and yes, if you are self-taught, it doesn’t disqualify you. You can be a guitar teacher.

Question 2: Can I Charge For Lessons If I Don’t Have Formal Training?

The next question is: “Do I have the right to charge a fee for guitar lessons if I do not have any formal training?” So, this leads right into what I just talked about. For some reason, if you’re a self-taught guitarist, then some people think that you don’t have a right to charge money for lessons. Maybe I could teach people for free, but because I don’t have a college degree in music or I’m not licensed as a guitarist or something like that, then I don’t have the right to collect money. And I’m going to say that’s not true. Yes, you do have the right to charge a fee for lessons.

Let’s think about this for a second. What is involved in being in business and charging money for a service? All you’ve got to do is provide value that’s worth paying for. If you can provide value that’s worth paying for and you find people that are willing to pay it, and you actually deliver on that value once they pay you for it, then there’s nothing to be concerned about. There’s no problem here. Yes, you do have the right to charge a fee for lessons. The value that your students would be paying for in lessons with you doesn’t require a music degree. It doesn’t require any formal education. You have a lot of knowledge and skill as a guitarist, even if you’re self-taught. You have a lot of knowledge and skill to impart to other people, and the person who asked this question sound like the kind of person who cares. I’m sure that if this person started to teach, that their students would get great results from studying with them and in my opinion, that’s a benefit that’s worth paying for. There’s value there that’s worth paying for.

So, having said that, that doesn’t mean that right out of the gate you should charge a hundred dollars an hour for your lessons or something like that. You can start out with a lower rate if confidence is a problem. If you feel like you’re not sure if you can deliver the value that you think you can, you can start out charging less. And that can help you build your confidence and you can always raise your rates a little bit more later, but again, this is a mindset thing that a lot of people thinking about teaching guitar deal with it and it stops them dead in their tracks because they’re like: “Because I don’t have a music degree, because I don’t have formal training, why would anybody want to study with me or why would anybody want to pay money to study with me?” And I’m just going to say that those two things are just negative beliefs that you have to deal with. You have to come to the point where it’s like: “I may not have a degree from Juilliard, or something like that, but I am qualified to teach other people because I do have value that I can bring to the table that’s worth paying for.”

That’s the bottom line. It’s not your qualifications and your credentials. It’s about do you have value that people are willing to pay money to receive. And if you’re a good player and you have a good understanding of how the guitar works, and you care about people and you have basic communication skills, you can be a guitar teacher. You’ve just got to believe that you can be a guitar teacher. That’s the important thing. You can’t let thoughts like this, these limiting beliefs and these myths that a lot of people tend to believe. You can’t let that control the situation and determine what you do. You have to believe that you can do it. So, the answer to that question is yes, you do have the right to charge a fee for guitar lessons even though you haven’t had any formal training.

Question 3: How Do I Attract My First Guitar Students?

The next question. So, I kind of tried to organize these in a progression that kind of makes a little bit of sense. So, the mindset stuff is settled. So, now, once you’ve settled that and it’s like: “I deserve to be a teacher. It’s okay for me to be a teacher. I have permission to be a teacher. Donnie said it was okay for me to be a teacher,” okay, we’ve settled that. You can teach. You can charge money for your lessons. Now, the next question: “I’m new to teaching guitar and I don’t have any students yet. I have a website. I have business cards. I’m wondering what’s the best way to get the ball rolling and get my first students. If you have any advice, I would appreciate it.”

This is another very common question that I get asked pretty often by people that are thinking about teaching. And my advice is I would suggest that a good place to start is to send an email to everybody that you know explaining that you’re teaching guitar lessons now. So, the best thing to do first, with any kind of business venture, is to ping your social network first. So, your family, your friends, your associated, your co-workers – anybody that you know. Send out an email to them, and social media makes it extremely easy to do this. So, if you have a Facebook account and you’re connected to everyone that you know that’s on Facebook, then you could easily post something on your Facebook page and tell everyone that you’re teaching now. And the reason you want to do that is you’re asking them to spread the word for you and to tell everybody that they know that you’re teaching as well.

The idea is that you may not have some people in your immediate circle that would be interested in taking lessons with you now that you’re just getting started, but they may know someone who is. So, by posting this to everyone you know at one time and asking them to let everyone that they know about what you’re doing, there’s a good opportunity that someone in that circle of connections is going to be interested in taking lessons. So, here’s the kind of stuff that you want to put in that post so that your family, friends, and other people know what to look for. So, you want to tell them what kind of students you’re looking for, so say, “Hey, I’m going to be teaching blues guitar, for example, and I’m really looking for some good beginner-level students. People that are interested in learning blues that have never really played before, and I’m also looking for people that live in the Denver, Colorado area,” for example, if that’s where you’re teaching.

You want to be kind of specific about what kind of referrals you’re looking for, and then you want to also mention what you can do for those referrals. So, you could say, “I have this really cool approach to teaching blues that cuts down on the learning curve and helps people get started really quickly playing songs and stuff.” And talk about the benefits of studying with you and what makes you unique. Kind of put a little bit about that in that email that you send out or that social media post so that you also give them some reasons to recommend you. Not just hey, my friend is starting to teach guitar lessons, but hey, my friend is teaching guitar lessons, but he has a really cool approach that can help you with [blank] or that can help you with one, two, three. That kind of helps give some weight to those referrals and give people more incentive to contact you.

And then obviously you want to say how they can get in touch with you, so at the bottom, at the end of it, put something like: “Email me at [your email address] or call me at [your cellphone number],” or whatever as a call to action. And then just put that together as a social media post or an email, and then send it out. And you might be surprised at how many people in your extended circle, maybe not people you know immediately, but people that they know that you may not have met yet – how many of those people might just be interested in signing up for lessons or at least talking to you about it. So, that’s a great first step; is to ping your social network.

If you can reach out to everyone in a circle of acquaintances of everybody that you know, that can be quite a big group of people. It could be surprisingly big. And usually your friends and family are going to do this for you at least once when you’re just starting out. Now, this is the kind of thing you can’t really do more than once. You can ask them the first time. Maybe three or four months later you can ask them again just to remind them, but if you start doing this kind of stuff all the time, people are going to ignore it and it’s going to make you look desperate. So, this is kind of just an initial thing that you can do to kind of help launch your business when you’re just starting out, and it’s just a good way to help you spread the word and get some early traction.

So, that’s my advice. Then you have other types of marketing that you can get going. Your website. You know, search engine marketing and you could do paid ads online, and things like that, that will help, but leveraging your social network is a great way to actually get some traction when you’re first getting started. Now, if you’re completely new to this, there’s another kind of twist that you can take on this social networking thing. You can offer to teach a few lessons for free in exchange for feedback and, most importantly, testimonials and referrals. So, you could put a spin on it and say, “Hey, I’m offering three free guitar lessons to the first ten people that contact me,” or something like that, and you agree to teach three or four lessons to a few students.

And at the end of that time period, they’re going to do three things for you in exchange. Number one, they’re going to give you a review of how you did, so they’re going to tell you the good, the bad, and the ugly of their experience taking lessons with you so that you can learn from that and make improvements. Number two, they’re going to write up a testimonial for you that you can use in your marketing. You use it on your website. You use it in your ads. You maybe even get them to add reviews on Yelp and Google, and places like that. And then the third thing is, in exchange, they’re going to recommend three friends that they know who might also be interested in taking lessons with you, assuming they had a good experience.

So, you give three free lessons away. You get feedback, testimonials, and referrals in exchange. That’s not a bad way to get started either because it helps you on multiple levels. Another thing you could do is if you belong to any clubs or groups or organizations, like maybe you’re the member of a church, you play on a sports team for recreational purposes, or something like that, then you could also spread the word there and see if anybody is interested too. Ideally those people would be included in your social network, but maybe you can put something on your church bulletin or you can put up a flyer at your church, or something like that if that’s something that you’re a part of. But if you’re a part of any kind of club or group, that’s also another good source of potential students or referrals.

So, those are just a few ideas off the top of my head. Ways to kind of get students quickly when you’re first starting out. Now, you probably won’t be able to fill your studio with this tactic, but you should be able to get three, five, maybe ten guitar students out of it and it’s a great way to get started.

Question 4: What Location Should I Use To Start Teaching?

The next question is: “I don’t have a lot of money to start my teaching business, to invest when I’m just starting out. And I’m a little bit leery of bringing strangers into my home, so do you have any ideas for startup locations for my teaching studio?” That’s an excellent question.

So we’ve established the mindset stuff. We’ve talked about how to attract your first group of students. Now, I don’t want to teach out of my home. Where do I do this? Well, I can see the concern that some people might have about opening their home to essentially what are strangers. Especially if you’re like a female guitar teacher or you’re a younger person, maybe a teenager that’s interested in doing this, could see the concern there. But what you really need to do before you bring anybody into your home is to pre screen them before you give them your home address. This is kind of the same tactic that you use whenever you post an ad on Craigslist to sell something at your house.

Like for example, we’re trying to sell something not too long ago and I didn’t put my home address in that Craigslist ad, simply because I don’t want people, total strangers, knowing where I live and just showing up at my house unannounced. So, what I did was I put the nearest cross streets that we live on, which happen to be about a mile and a half away because I live out in the country. Kind of the nearest major cross streets, so that way people have an idea of where you’re located. They kind of know the general geographic area. They can determine whether it’s going to be convenient for them to go there once a week or not, but they don’t know exactly where you live.

Now, if you have a commercial space that you can go and teach out of, then you could put that address out there. That’s fine, but if you’re teaching out of your home, I don’t recommend that you advertise your home address as your studio location. Instead just put the nearest major cross street so that people can know where you are. That’s important for marketing purposes and stuff like that. So let’s say that someone responds to your ad. Now you want to pre screen them before you give them your home address. Eventually, when you meet with them, you’re going to have to tell them where you live and bring them into your home, but there’s no reason to do that until you screen them first.

So, maybe talk to them on the phone first to get a feel for them. Maybe if you want to meet with them, if you’re really concerned, maybe you can just meet with them at a coffee shop or something to talk about lessons, or at a music store, or at another place, but you can kind of get a feel for people before you bring them into your house. And if you don’t feel comfortable with that person, then you don’t have to teach them at all and you don’t have to tell them where you live and you don’t have to bring them into your house. But unfortunately the reality is, just starting out, you’re probably going to have to teach out of your home, unless you know somebody who would rent you some space for cheap or if you have, like I mentioned before, a membership in a church or some other organization or a school that would let you use one of their rooms. Your home might be the only reasonable option. So, that doesn’t mean you have to just totally put yourself out there and be dumb. You can screen people. You can be a little more cautious and make sure that the people that come to your house are people that you actually would want to have in there in the first place.

Hopefully that helps kind of give you some wisdom to follow about bringing people into your home, and 99 out of 100 people are not going to be a problem anyway. Most people that are interested in guitar lessons are going to be great people that you’re going to want to work with and stuff, but it never hurts to kind of be on the safe side. So, I mean that kind of answers that question, any other ideas for startup locations. I mentioned a few. A lot of times you can work out deals where if someone wants to study with you, you can maybe even barter free lessons in exchange for space that they may have or may know about. There are different things you can do if you think it through, but nine times out of ten your home is going to be the best option when you’re first getting started.

Question 5: Are There People I Can Teach During The Day?

Okay, next question. “What kind of adults would be available to learn guitar during the day and would it be safe as a woman for me to open my door to strangers, particularly males, when nobody else is home?” So, this kind of feeds into the same question that we just talked about. There are actually two questions here. The first one is the part about, as a female teacher, bringing men that you don’t know into your house when nobody else is there. Probably not the best idea. What I would recommend in that case is to try to find some place other than your home to teach. I mean depending on the climate, you could even teach in a public place. Some teachers teach guitar lessons outside, and that works really well. You could teach in a public park. There are different things you can do.

Another option is if you are going to be teaching from your home and you’re concerned about this kind of stuff is to find someone that can be there with you so that you’re not by yourself. You’re not going to be teaching lessons, you know, back-to-back all day long. They’re going to be scheduled ahead of time, so see if you can get a friend or family member to come over to your place and do it with you while you’re there. That can kind of help alleviate some of those security concerns.

Now, the second part of that question is: “How do I find people to learn guitar during the day,” and it sounds like this person was interested in teaching adults. I would suggest maybe broadening that a little bit and, for adults, try to find some retired people that don’t have day jobs anymore, that have the flexibility in their schedules that they could come during the day. Another group that might be a possibility is college students, because just like they schedule their classes during the day, they could schedule their lessons with you too and a lot of times fit those in, in the morning before class or in the middle of the day, or something like that. College students typically have a pretty varied schedule of their classes and things that they have to do, so that might work.

For working adults, you have some options. You could do some 7AM to 9AM lessons and catch people before they go to work. You would only obviously have a couple of slots available that early, but there might be some people that would be interested in taking guitar lessons before they start their day. You could also check with some local businesses in your area and see if they might let you teach some guitar lessons onsite during their lunchtimes. So, maybe you could rent or use a conference room and teach lessons to employees that work there, or something like that, during their lunch breaks. It’s just an idea.

Probably the best way to do this though if you only want to teach in the morning hours, for example, if you really want to control your availability, then offering lessons online using Skype is a great way to go because you can match your daytime working hours to students that are in a completely different time zone from you that matches your availability. So, I don’t have the math in front of me as far as which time zones are which, but let’s say that you want to be able to teach from 9AM to noon mountain time, which is Greenwich Mean Time -7. That’s my time zone. And you can’t find a lot of people in your local area that are available in the mornings to study. So, what you could do is you can pull out a time zone map or use a website that helps convert time zones. There are a few of those out there. You can Google to find them and say, “If the best time for people to take lessons is between 6PM and 9PM, Monday through Thursday,” for example, then figure out what area that time zone would line up with yours.

So, you know, maybe it’s an extra six hours ahead or something like that. So, what countries are in a time zone that is six hours ahead of you? And if the ones in there are English-speaking countries, which chances are pretty good that they will be in some cases. Maybe not time zones that include Russia and China, and things like that, but you could do marketing online to try to reach students in that time zone so that those are the people you teach and then, when it’s the morning for you, it’s the early evening for them and it’s a perfect match, and you can try to get all your students from that time zone. That’s another way you can do it.

There are a lot of different options. You have to be kind of creative with some of this stuff. Any time you run into challenges when you’re starting a new business, there’s almost always some kind of work around that you can come up with to make it feasible to do. You’ve just got to think it through a little bit. So, those are just some ideas of how you could be a little more flexible with your lesson times.

Question 6: How Do I Put Together A Curriculum For My Lessons?

And then I have one last question, and this is a big one. “Can you help me to make a good study plan/curriculum for my guitar students? Should I teach theory first or should I just teach them songs in the first month? How should I put my curriculum together?” That’s an excellent question because, you know, if we follow our progression here, you take care of your mindset and beliefs. You found your first students. You found your place and your times to teach. Now it’s like, what do I teach these people? I’m going to give you some of my thoughts on this topic.

I definitely recommend teaching songs and the building blocks that make them up first, before you get people into music theory, sight reading and other more advanced musical topics. People take guitar lessons because they want to learn the songs that they love. There’s a small group of people that are interested in guitar for academic purposes, but I’m going to say probably 90 to 95 percent of the people out there want to play songs. And if you help them learn how to do that as quickly as possible, they’re going to be a lot more likely to get hooked on the guitar and become a student of the guitar for life.

Now, once they get hooked, they’re going to be more interested in things like music theory, sight reading, and all of that later on, but for beginners you really want to make sure you give them what you want first. You want to turn them into guitar players. Once they self-identify as guitar players and get hooked, then they’re going to be more open to more technical, more dry, more advanced-type stuff that requires a little more work and effort to learn and understand. You can help them become accomplished musicians later. Musicianship is important. I’m not negating that at all, but you want to turn them into guitar players first, and then later on you can turn them into well-rounded musicians.

All that music theory and all the fundamentals in the world aren’t going to matter if that student gets bored or they get overwhelmed and they quit taking guitar lessons and do something else. So you’ve got to lead them along a little bit with the stuff that they want first. So, to put your curriculum together, what I recommend – I mean there are some different options here. Some people teach you that you should just go out and use a premade curriculum. I’m not one of those people. What I really recommend is that you put your own curriculum together and that you do that by starting out with making a list of all the things that you’ve learned about the guitar yourself.

So, you take out a pencil and a paper and you make a list of all the stuff that you know how to do, so you break it down into styles, into techniques, into concepts, and kind of organize everything into a list. And then kind of shuffle that and prioritize everything chronologically from beginning to end, and then you should end up with what should be a logical progression of musical concepts for the guitar that you can use with beginners. This is going to kind of be your road map, the curriculum path that you lead your students through as you teach them in your lessons. Now, I have done this. I have a document with this all broken down that I could give you, but the real value in doing this is that it helps you start to think about playing guitar in a linear fashion.

So, it helps you organize it in your own mind a little bit better, so you know what to start with and then what to do next and what comes after that, and all the way down the line. And this thinking work here actually helps you to become a better teacher. It helps you understand what you’re doing a little bit better, so that’s why I recommend that you do it yourself. Now, if you have a list of concepts like this already laid out and you want to compare it with mine, I’d be happy to share it with you, but just giving you my list is not going to be as beneficial for you as if you take the time to do it yourself. So, that map is important. It’s just kind of a skeleton of what it means to learn the guitar over the period of three, four, or five years or more.

So, now that you have that skeleton in place, now it’s time to kind of fill in the gaps. So, next you want to take each step, each item that you put on that list represents a step of the musical journey. Take each one of those steps and then put together a basic lesson plan for it. It doesn’t need to be complicated. It doesn’t have to be all polished. Just write down, under each one of those things, how you plan to teach it. How did you learn how to do it? What kinds of things really helped you to learn that better? Fill in each category that way, and then that’s going to give you a game plan when you get to your lessons so that you don’t have to worry about feeling lost. You know, you could also pull supplemental materials from some guitar method books that you like and actually use those materials to fill in the gaps too.

So, that way you have the best of both worlds. You have this customizable curriculum that you put together yourself, but you have the best teaching resources out there incorporated into it so that you don’t have to completely reinvent the wheel. So, if you’re looking for recommendations on good method books, I have a list of them on my website. Recommend teaching books under Free Stuff. I’ll put a link to that in the show notes, so you can check it out.

So, I mean this may sound a little bit overwhelming. It may sound like a lot of work initially. And I’m going to be honest with you. It is a little bit of work, but it will really help you to understand what it means to play the guitar and it will make you a better teacher than if you just use a beginner’s method book for every lesson with your students and flip them through the pages. You’re not going to get as good results if you do it that way, so put your own thing together. And the work that you put in now is going to make you a better teacher for the long-term and it’s going to help you be more successful in your studio and with your students, and it will also help you teach guitar the way you see it and help you be unique more so compared to the other teachers in your area.

So, you want to pour your personality into this. You want to pour your perspective into this. And if you just teach through a method book, you know, you’re teaching somebody else’s perspective. So, why not put together your own? You can take lessons from the method books and use them from time to time where they fit best, but people want to study guitar with you. They don’t want to study guitar with Mel Bay. So, put your own curriculum together. You know, take a few hours and sit down and do this exercise, and you’re going to really benefit from it and so will your students.

To wrap this up, if you’re interested in teaching guitar, I just want to encourage you. Don’t let fear stand in your way. Don’t let any obstacles that you perceive that may not even be real – don’t let those stand in your way and don’t let any other hang-ups stand in your way either, whether it’s space or curriculum or finances or marketing, or anything like that.

Thank You For Listening!

If you enjoyed this episode, or any of the other of the episodes of the STG podcast, and you haven’t left a rating or review yet on iTunes, I would really appreciate an honest rating and review from you. It’s one of the most important parts of the ranking algorithm in iTunes, but more importantly, it’ll show future listeners that this podcast is (or isn’t) worth listening to.

To leave a quick review, open up iTunes, search for Start Teaching Guitar and then leave a rating and review as shown below. You can do this from your mobile device as well, even if you’re not subscribed, and even if you listen on another platform – this is where I’d appreciate you leaving your review.

Feel free to use the comments section below to let me know what you think about this episode, to suggest a topic for a future episode or just to join in on the conversation with other guitar teachers.

One of the biggest reasons students quit taking guitar lessons is because they start to feel overwhelmed. Interestingly enough, this is also one of the biggest reasons why guitar teachers give up on their teaching studios and decide to do something else for a living. Overwhelm is like a two-edged sword that can wreck your teaching business from two different angles at the same time, but if you can understand why people get overwhelmed and learn how to operate your business in a way that minimizes it, you can be more successful and a lot happier as a guitar teacher.

In this episode, I’ll cover some of the historical science behind why people are a lot more prone to feel overwhelmed in today’s modern world than ever before, I’ll give you some great tips on how to erect a “safety zone” around your business and your life so you can avoid getting overwhelmed yourself, and I’ll give you some advice about how to protect your students from too much information and thereby keep them in your studio longer. Understanding and avoiding overwhelm can be one of the best steps you ever take for the development of your business…this episode will teach you how.

This PREMIUM episode of the Start Teaching Guitar Podcast is available exclusively for STG All-Access members!

To give your teaching business a huge advantage and get TONS of cool benefits INCLUDING the full-length, commercial-free version of this episode, click here to purchase a LIFETIME MEMBERSHIP to STG All-Access today!

STG All-Access members get access to the following VALUABLE RESOURCES:

• Full-length episodes of the STG Podcast with no advertising or commercials, including a mind map outline containing my PRIVATE NOTES used to record the episodes

• Access to PREMIUM EPISODES that nobody else gets to listen to with more in-depth “how-to” information

• Q&A call recordings where you can get ANSWERS to your QUESTIONS about teaching guitar

• Access to the STG Podcast Archive, and the FIRST 25 EPISODES that are no longer available to the general public

• Access to the STG Community Forums, where you can interact with other guitar teachers from around the world
  

• Much more!

Give yourself a shot of ENCOURAGEMENT and MOTIVATION and the RESOURCES you need to help you build your guitar teaching business! Click this button to purchase your own STGAA LIFETIME MEMBERSHIP:

There are lots of myths floating around out there about teaching guitar lessons. They sound logical, so most people who’ve never experienced anything different just accept them at face value and operate their teaching studios accordingly. The problem is that when you operate based on wrong information, the results you produce are usually messed up, too, and your business is never as successful as you want it to be. In fact, some of these common myths can actually wreck your teaching studio if you base your decisions off of them!

This episode is the final part of my three-part series on the common myths many guitar teachers tend to believe. In part 3 I’ll cover things like how to be successful even when the economy is bad, how to know whether or not “the customer is always right”, dealing with students who cause you problems (and using lesson policies to solve them) and how to stop seeing your competitors as enemies. Whether you’re new to teaching guitar or you’ve been at it for a while, do yourself a favor and listen to this series…the truth can set you free!

This PREMIUM episode of the Start Teaching Guitar Podcast is available exclusively for STG All-Access members!

To give your teaching business a huge advantage and get TONS of cool benefits INCLUDING the full-length, commercial-free version of this episode, click here to purchase a LIFETIME MEMBERSHIP to STG All-Access today!

STG All-Access members get access to the following VALUABLE RESOURCES:

• Full-length episodes of the STG Podcast with no advertising or commercials, including a mind map outline containing my PRIVATE NOTES used to record the episodes

• Access to PREMIUM EPISODES that nobody else gets to listen to with more in-depth “how-to” information

• Q&A call recordings where you can get ANSWERS to your QUESTIONS about teaching guitar

• Access to the STG Podcast Archive, and the FIRST 25 EPISODES that are no longer available to the general public

• Access to the STG Community Forums, where you can interact with other guitar teachers from around the world
  

• Much more!

Give yourself a shot of ENCOURAGEMENT and MOTIVATION and the RESOURCES you need to help you build your guitar teaching business! Click this button to purchase your own STGAA LIFETIME MEMBERSHIP:

There are lots of myths floating around out there about teaching guitar lessons. They sound logical, so most people who’ve never experienced anything different just accept them at face value and operate their teaching studios accordingly. The problem is that when you operate based on wrong information, the results you produce are usually messed up, too, and your business is never as successful as you want it to be. In fact, some of these common myths can actually wreck your teaching studio if you base your decisions off of them!

This episode is part 2 in a three-part series on the common myths many guitar teachers tend to believe. In part 1 I’ll cover things like making a living teaching guitar (and how much money you can realistically make), finding new students, planning for your lessons instead of “winging it” and I’ll even give you a 5-part strategy for growing your teaching business to the point that you can sell it and retire on the proceeds. Whether you’re new to teaching guitar or you’ve been at it for a while, do yourself a favor and listen to this series…the truth can set you free!

This PREMIUM episode of the Start Teaching Guitar Podcast is available exclusively for STG All-Access members!

To give your teaching business a huge advantage and get TONS of cool benefits INCLUDING the full-length, commercial-free version of this episode, click here to purchase a LIFETIME MEMBERSHIP to STG All-Access today!

STG All-Access members get access to the following VALUABLE RESOURCES:

• Full-length episodes of the STG Podcast with no advertising or commercials, including a mind map outline containing my PRIVATE NOTES used to record the episodes

• Access to PREMIUM EPISODES that nobody else gets to listen to with more in-depth “how-to” information

• Q&A call recordings where you can get ANSWERS to your QUESTIONS about teaching guitar

• Access to the STG Podcast Archive, and the FIRST 25 EPISODES that are no longer available to the general public

• Access to the STG Community Forums, where you can interact with other guitar teachers from around the world
  

• Much more!

Give yourself a shot of ENCOURAGEMENT and MOTIVATION and the RESOURCES you need to help you build your guitar teaching business! Click this button to purchase your own STGAA LIFETIME MEMBERSHIP:

There are lots of common myths about teaching guitar lessons floating around out there. They sound logical, so most people who’ve never experienced anything different just accept them at face value and operate their teaching studios accordingly. The problem is that when you operate based on wrong information, the results you produce are usually messed up, too, and your business is never as successful as you want it to be. In fact, some of these common myths can actually wreck your teaching studio if you base your decisions off of them!

This episode is part 1 in a three-part series on the common myths many guitar teachers tend to believe. In part 1 I’ll cover things like effective planning, being more selective with the students you teach, dealing with rejection and difficult students, how to compete with the latest technology for learning guitar and whether or not the general interest in guitar lessons is waning. Whether you’re new to teaching guitar or you’ve been at it for a while, do yourself a favor and listen to this series…the truth can set you free!

Items Mentioned In This Episode

Article – “Is It Still Possible To Make A Full-Time Living Teaching Private Guitar Lessons?”

Podcast Transcript

Now, there are a lot of myths floating around out there about teaching guitar lessons. They sound logical, so most people who’ve never experienced anything different just accept them at face value and operate their teaching studio accordingly. The problem is that when you operate based on the wrong information, the results your produce are usually going to be messed up too and your business is never as successful as you want it to be. In fact, some of these common myths can actually wreck your teaching studio if you base your decisions off of them.

So, this episode is part one in a three-part series on the common myths many guitar teachers tend to believe. In part one, I’m going to cover things like effective planning, being more selective with the students you teach, dealing with rejection and difficult students, how to compete with the latest technology for learning guitar, and whether or not the general interest in guitar lessons is starting to wane. Whether you’re new to teaching guitar or you’ve been at this for a while, do yourself a favor and listen to this series, all three parts of it, because the truth can set you free.

This podcast is sponsored by Music Teacher’s Helper – the best way to manage your private music lesson studio. Music Teacher’s Helper is online scheduling and billing software that you can access from your computer, your laptop, your tablet, and your smartphone that saves you hours every month, enables you to generate reports for taxes, and ensures that you never lose track of a payment. Once you add a student, which is super easy, you can choose to automatically send them custom invoices that can be paid with a credit card even if you make that an option. Automatically email lesson reminders to your students, send them late payment notifications, and copies of their lesson notes. You can use the free easy-to-build website templates to help market your studio online, and so much more.

There are actually so many cool features in Music Teacher’s Helper that I don’t have time to get into all of them right now, but the thing I like best about Music Teacher’s Helper is how it makes your teaching studio run almost on autopilot. Students can book lessons and they can request reschedules of their lessons through the tool. They can login with their own account and they access important information, like lesson assignments and progress reports, and they can log their practice times, and do that at any time of the day or night. So, whether you have five or 50 students, Music Teacher’s Helper works for music teaching studios of all sizes. I originally discovered the software and started using it myself several years ago, and I highly recommend giving Music Teacher’s Helper a spin so you can see for yourself how useful it is.

They offer a 30-day no-risk trial, where you can test it out to discover how much time you’ll be saving. If you use this special address that I’m about to give you to sign up, StartTeachingGuitar.com/MTH, then you’re going to save 20 percent off of your first month if you choose to continue after the free trial. So let’s jump into today’s topic now, Busting Some Common Myths About Teaching Guitar Pt. I.

If you’re new to teaching guitar lessons or maybe you’ve even been teaching for a while, you might have some inaccurate assumptions about what it means to be a guitar teacher. It could be a lot of different things. There’s a lot of information floating around out there that we tend to believe and take at face value that’s not necessarily true. A lot of these common myths are floating around out there, and a lot of teachers consciously or maybe subconsciously buy into them and believe them and act on them unfortunately. Sometimes you can make decisions based on these inaccurate beliefs, and then the results from that can mess up your business and keep you from making progress with your teaching studio.

So, you’ve probably seen that popular TV show, Myth Busters. Well, this episode is part of a three-part series, and I’m going to be busting five myths in part one here today about being a guitar teacher so that you can build your business using accurate information so that you can avoid a lot of the common mistakes that teachers tend to make based on the wrong information, and then so that you can be more successful with your teaching studio by not buying into and acting on any of these myths about teaching guitar. So, let’s jump into part one.

Myth #1

The first myth that I want to bust in this episode is the belief that whatever you need to know you can figure out as you go. Now, doesn’t that sound awesome? Doesn’t that sound just like so cool and daring, and – I don’t know – kind of romantic I guess in a weird way? Whatever you need to know you can figure out as you go; that kind of plays into the whole idea to me of the self-taught guitarist. You know, someone like Eddie Van Halen or whatever that never really studied formal guitar, but all of a sudden turned out to be an amazing virtuoso guitar player or whatever, and whatever he needed to know he figured it out along the way.

You know, there are exceptions. There are probably a few people that just had like a golden road paved before them when they started teaching guitar lessons and everything worked out right, everything went perfect, and they didn’t know a whole lot when they got started, but they picked it up quick. Whatever they need to know they figured it out as they went, but I’m going to tell you 99 times out of 100 that doesn’t happen. It’s not about just jumping into starting a teaching studio kind of haphazardly. There are some planning and things that need to be involved.

Some things, yes, you are going to keep learning. You are going to keep learning. You are going to keep figuring things out as you go, but you can’t have that as a foundation of your business. So, there’s this quote that you might have heard. I’ve used it before. It’s out there a lot, and it’s simply three words: ready, fire, aim as opposed to ready, aim, fire. When you’re holding a firearm, a gun, ready, so you get it ready. Aim, you point at the thing that you want to hit. And then fire, you pull the trigger. But what a lot of people do is they do ready, fire, aim, fire, aim, fire, aim, fire, keep aiming, keep firing until they hit whatever it is that they want to hit, and that’s a great way to pull yourself out of things like procrastination and patterns of inaction.

A lot of times you just spend so much time on the ready and aim part that you never execute with your teaching studio. You never try that new program or you never reach out and open up that new location, or you never get started teaching people at all. Get that first student. So, sometimes yeah, you’ve got to ready, fire, aim, but if you make this the way that you operate all the time, it can mess things up. Sometimes you do need to aim before you fire, particularly if you actually want to hit something intentionally. You definitely need to aim before you fire. You know, if you don’t aim before you fire, you never know what you’re going to hit. You could hit an innocent bystander or something.

So, I mean this is an analogy, but in your business too yes, you’ve got to get started. Yes, you’ve got to take action. Yes, you could keep learning as you go. But before you jump into starting a new teaching studio or implementing some kind of big change, you have to start with a solid plan. Yes, you can keep learning as you go. You don’t need to know everything upfront, but you’ve got to make sure that you are ready. And the best way to do that when you’re starting a business is to put together a simple business plan. I mean that’s like a dirty word to a lot of people that are just kind of free styling, trying to be a business owner, trying to open up a guitar teaching studio.

It’s like business plan. You know, they picture this hundred-page thing full of charts and spreadsheets, and math calculations and paragraphs of information about this and that. Well, it doesn’t have to be that complicated, but let me tell you. If you want to succeed, you’ve got to have a plan. If you want to hit something, you’ve got to get ready, you’ve got to aim, and then you’ve got to fire, in that order. So, put together a simple business plan. It doesn’t have to be a hundred pages. It could be five pages, or you could even break it down to one page, but that business plan should explain exactly how you’re going to make money, exactly how you’re going to get students, and exactly how you’re going to pay your bills.

If you don’t figure that out, especially those three critical areas; there are others too, but those are the three big ones. How are you going to make money? How are you going to get students? How are you going to pay your bills? If you don’t figure that out, then there’s a very low probability that your business is going to be successful. So, here’s a good word of wisdom, a good tip, a good piece of advice for you to take with you. Never start a business without proving that it will be viable first. It’s so easy to start a business today. All you’ve got to do is put out an ad on Craigslist and, you know, then you can start teaching guitar. You know, you can throw an ad in the newspaper. You can post something on social media and say, “Hey, I’m looking for guitar students.” I see that all the time on Twitter.

And you might get some responses. You start teaching. You start collecting money, but that’s cool if all you want to do is just teach a few lessons here and there and make some extra cash. But if you want to get serious about this, if you want to be successful, if you want your business to last and you want it to grow from level to level to level and become something that can provide for your family for the rest of your life, then you need to start out with a plan. If you don’t, anything beyond starting out with a plan and proving that your business is going to be viable first, anything less than that is not a business. It’s a hobby. Even if you get paid a little bit of money, it’s a hobby that brings in extra cash until you put together a plan.

So, for those of you listening to this that have believed that myth that says whatever you need to know you can figure it out as you go, there is an element of truth in that, like there is to every myth, but honestly if you want to be successful as a guitar teacher for the long-term, you need to put together a plan so that you can get ready, so that you can aim, and that you can fire and you can be successful. So, that’s the first myth I want to bust. Don’t jump into this ignorantly or haphazardly. Put together a plan first.

Myth #2

Here’s the next myth, and this is one that’s kind of a pet peeve of mine, but I can totally understand why people buy into it. Myth number two is you can and should teach everybody. I’ve done entire podcast episodes about this topic, but so many people don’t understand that you have to be selective in the students that you teach. You can and should teach everybody is the mindset. You know, it seems like common sense. Hey, somebody comes to my studio. They want to give me their money. I should take it.

But too many teachers out there operate out of a mindset of scarcity and the belief that there are not enough students to go around. That’s kind of the root of this. You can and should teach everybody. Well, I’m going to tell you that that is a myth. You should not. You can’t teach everybody and you should not try to teach everybody. There are plenty of students out there, and you will be better served in the long run if you are selective about who you take into your studio today, even when you’re first getting started, even when your studio is small and you’re just looking for any student you can find to help you increase your income.

If you will be selective and you’ll be careful about the students that you accept, there are a lot of benefits to that. Before I get into that, I’m getting ahead of myself. A lot of teachers make this mistake. They accept any student who walks in the door, even if it would be a terrible fit. A lot of students are a terrible fit for your teaching studio. They don’t show up. When they do, they don’t show up on time. They don’t pay. And when they do, they don’t pay on time. They don’t practice. They don’t work. They don’t put in effort. All of those things add up to a recipe for disaster and huge headaches for you as a guitar teacher, and nothing good comes out of that for your teaching studio, for your business, or for you or for the student.

I’m of the opinion that you should only be teaching the kind of students that allow you to do your best work. Now, think about that for a minute. You should only be teaching the kinds of students that let you do your best work. Whenever you’re doing your best work, when you’re in the zone, when you are at your absolute, one hundred percent best as a teacher and a business owner, you get more fulfillments and more satisfaction out of what you’re doing with your life, which is hugely important. You get more referrals because you’re doing such a knockout job with the students that you have. They can’t help but go out and tell everybody that they know about what’s happening, what you’re doing for them, and it just organically generates all of these extra word-of-mouth referrals. When you’re doing your best work, you become remarkable.

You give your students better results, they learn and they grow, and they just expand their musical ability so quickly when you’re doing your best work, when you’re working with someone that you have a perfect connection with. And if you put all of that together, you have a more successful business overall, just by choosing the people that you work with. Working with poor quality students that are a bad fit just to get a little bit of extra money today can really wreck your business in a lot of ways. One of the obvious ways is that when you deal with someone that you don’t want to teach, but you’ve got to sit in front of them every week, you’ve got to track their payments down, you’ve got to track their appointments down, you’ve got to track their practice and assignment stuff down, and you’re always trying to get them to do what they need to do to be successful, the first thing that’s going to happen is your motivation is going to get damaged.

You are going to start to dread sitting down to teach lessons to these people, and then pretty much, after a while, you’re going to start to dread teaching guitar at all and you’re going to try to find something else to do. Whenever you work with students like that, your good reputation in the community doesn’t grow, so that word of mouth thing, you know, that works in your favor doesn’t happen if you work with students that are a bad fit, hardly at all. And if it does, you’re just going to get more students like them and it’s going to make the problem worse.

Another thing that’s kind of sad and insidious is that mediocrity starts to creep into your business. It starts to infiltrate your guitar lessons and you start to kind of develop this mindset, if you’re not careful, that if my students don’t care, why should I care. If they don’t want to put in the work, why should I put in the work? And you might not be saying that out loud or thinking that directly, but a lot of times it happens, all because you work with the wrong people. And then eventually, like I said before, you start to hate teaching guitar. You’re like: “Why did I ever want to do this? Why am I wasting my time with people that don’t appreciate what I’m trying to do? And you know, it’s not working out. I’m going to find something else to do.”

So, most of that stuff could be avoided if you just choose more carefully who it is that you’re going to teach. So, I’m kind of beating this to death, but hopefully you’re understanding where I’m coming from and you realize that what people say that you can and should teach everybody is just a myth. It’s not true. You really do need to be selective. You need to put together a process when you’re doing your marketing that lets you screen out the crappy students. Not to offend anybody. I know that some people are better students than others. But you want to weed out people that are going to have a problem paying you and people that are going to have a problem with their time management. You want to screen out people that don’t really want to be there and don’t really need to be there, and then only work with people who meet your standards.

If you just make that commitment to yourself, identify who you want to work with, and then make a commitment that says okay, if anybody doesn’t meet this standard, I’m going to refer them to someone else, it’s going to pay off in spades in the long-term. Your business is going to be a lot more successful six months and a year and five years from now. It may take you a little more time at the beginning to get momentum rolling and to build your business, but if you are very careful about who you accept over time it’s going to pay big dividends for you. So that’s myth number two busted.

Myth #3

Your students will always like you. Whenever I got into teaching, I always tried to stack the deck in my favor and work with people that I knew would be easy to work with and would be nice to me, would like me, and would do what I say when I was a younger person, you know, and I learned pretty fast that your students aren’t always going to agree with you. They’re not always going to affirm you and they’re not always going to listen to you and follow your instructions.

People are people. You know, that’s just how it is. If you go into teaching knowing that it’s not always going to be a bed of roses, you know, I just talked a minute ago about bad students. Well, even if you have the best quality students that are a perfect fit for you, some days they’re going to challenge you. Some days they’re going to make you rethink some of the things that you’re doing, and that’s not always a bad thing. But if you go into it knowing that there are going to be days when things are difficult, whenever you’re not going to be able to solve a problem, when you’re going to have communication problems, those happen between the best of people.

You can prepare yourself for those days when it might not be the best. And luckily, if you work with the right people, those days tend to be few and far between. But yeah, it’s kind of crazy when you think about this because a lot of people subconsciously think: “Oh, all of my students are always going to like me.” Well, we all want to have a good relationship with our students. It’s very important, but sometimes you can’t be a teacher and a friend at the same time, just like you can’t be a parent and a buddy to your kids at the same time all the time. Sometimes you just have to put your foot down and lay down the law, and things like that.

But some guitar teachers – I know this is true because I used to be one of these kinds of people. I’d done a lot of work on myself to try to overcome it, but some guitar teachers are approval addicts. Like I said, I was an approval addict. I always could not handle rejection from people when I was a younger man. I could not handle it when I felt someone was displeased with me or didn’t like me or didn’t think I was doing a good job, which led me to being a perfectionist and to filtering out people that I thought would threaten my false sense of self-esteem. As a guitar teacher, it’s easy to do that, but it’s not cool. Some teachers are approval addicts. They can’t handle it when a student is displeased with them, because what happens if you operate that way, number one, you’re never going to be happy until you kind of go in and fix that deep issue that’s causing you to seek that approval from everyone around you.

I know from experience. When teachers feel like that, they are super cautious about everything that they do. They don’t take risks, and then they tend to give their students anything that they want. So, it’s almost like every student who walks in the door, they get to write their own lesson policies whenever they become a student, or they get to write their own curriculum. It’s like yeah, whatever you want to do, we’ll do it. You know, you want to change that. Oh, sure, we’ll change it. Yeah, you don’t want to pay me this week. Oh, that’s fine. You could pay me next week, and then it turns into the week after that and, you know, the guitar teacher becomes like a doormat. Not cool.

If you need approval from everyone that you come into contact with, you’re probably not going to make a very effective guitar teacher, or maybe you will, but you won’t stay in business if you don’t have clear policies and know how to enforce them. You know, boundaries and consequences are so important in every relationship to make it structured and to make it something that’s beneficial for everybody involved.

So, the thing that helped me is when I finally realized that if somebody doesn’t like me, it’s not personal. I mean if they have a problem with something I’m trying to teach them or they don’t like the way I run my business, or there’s something about me that they just don’t connect with, it’s not personal. You know, your lessons don’t define you as a person. The number of students you have doesn’t define you. Your monthly and annual income as a teacher doesn’t define you as a person. You are not the way you teach. The way you teach doesn’t make you who you are. Your identity as a human being doesn’t change just because you’re having conflict with a student or with someone else that you’re working with.

It’s not personal. Once I learned that there’s difference between the way that I interact with people and my identity as a human being, as a person, my value and worth as a person, those are two separate things, then my life got a lot easier and I was able to start doing a lot more cool and exciting things because I wasn’t afraid to take risks. If something didn’t work out, it didn’t crush me at the core of who I am and shake my entire sense of being. It was just a setback or it was just something that I could learn from, to do better the next time, but it doesn’t change who I am. So, like I said, if you want to be successful, you really need to implement some good policies in your studio and you need to enforce them.

Your students may not always like it. They may not agree with you one hundred percent, but that structure that you provide in the way that you build your business is going to make them feel safe and it’s going to give them a good environment to learn the guitar in so that you can, again, do your best work. If you’re constantly making exceptions for people, if you’re constantly bending over and giving people whatever they want, then it’s going to be really difficult for you to have confidence in what you’re doing, for you to be comfortable with what you’re doing as a guitar teacher, and people are just not going to respect you. They’re going to walk all over you. It’s not a good situation to be in. So, have good boundaries. Have good consequences. And when there’s a legitimate reason to make an exception, that’s fine; do it. But in general, as a rule, always enforce your lesson policies no matter what your students think about it. So that’s a myth there that’s busted. Your students will always like you. They won’t. Everything is not always going to be a bed of roses.

Myth #4

I’ve got two more myths for you. Myth number four: technology will put you out of a job. That’s a myth. A lot of guitar teachers out there, a lot of people email me. Several people have emailed me lately about new technology developments and they’re like: “Donnie, what do you think about this?” And I’m like: “It’s awesome.” You know, you don’t have to be threatened by technology. There are lots of new guitar teaching technology things coming out these days. Software. A couple years ago, Rocksmith came out, and before that it was Rock Band and Guitar Hero. You know, I remember when those came out. People were like: “Oh, is this going to be the end of guitar lessons, because people can just learn on their video games.”

It’s like what? No, it’s not going to be the end of guitar lessons. It’s just a cool way to get involved with the guitar. They just came out this week. Apple came out. It’s not an Apple product, but they’re going to be selling it. It’s called Jam Stick. It’s a little, short guitar-like thing with real strings that plugs into your iPhone or your iPad, and it’s like a controller for guitar software. And you can record using that. You can play along with songs, and there’s even lessons that’ll show you on the screen where to put your fingers and kind of teach you some of the basics about playing guitar.

And you know, I was asked, “What do you think about that,” and you know what. I think it’s freaking awesome. I think I want to buy one myself. For one, it’ll be a perfect travel guitar. You know, it’ll fit in a backpack and you can take it with you places and have something to use to practice certain things and to record with, and stuff like that. So, it’s awesome. I think I want one. Is it going to replace the need for a guitar teacher? Absolutely not. You know, and then ten years ago they started coming out with websites, like JamPlay.com and GuitarTricks.com, and sites that have all this video recorded lesson content that you can access for a monthly fee and get all this cool stuff under different topics and genres of music and things.

I have a JamPlay.com membership. I love it. I go through every time I start to get stale in something. I want to learn something new on the guitar. I’ll go out in there and start working through one of their video lessons, and learn something new or brush up on something that I need improvement on. So, you know, the sites are great, you know, but I still take lessons sometimes. I still teach people that are members of GuitarTricks and sites like that. You know, so it’s real easy to feel like these technology breakthroughs are your competition. You know, some people are like: “Oh, the writing is on the wall. It’s only a matter of time before nobody is going to need a local guitar teacher anymore.”

Well, the truth is technology like this does not replace the need for a guitar teacher. Software and video sites are like a gateway drug. That’s the best way I can describe it. It’s like a gateway drug that can get people interested and hooked on playing the guitar. It’s like taking the cookie jar and putting it on the bottom shelf, you know, so that people can reach it. And they get in there and then they get hooked, and then all of a sudden there’s all these other cookie jars up on the top shelf, so now they’re motivated to climb up there and reach for them, whereas before it would seem to high, lofty of a goal. It was too intimidating. It seems impossible. Too hard. Too difficult.

But if you can plug your guitar into your Xbox and you can play along with Rocksmith and learn the basics of how to fret notes and how to pick and how to play the parts to songs, and it’s a fun and engaging way to do it, sure, you’re not going to learn everything you need to know about the guitar. Sure, you’re going to make some mistakes that are going to need to be corrected in your form and technique. That’s why guitar teachers exist. But if it wouldn’t be for a game like Rocksmith or product like Jam Stick or video sites like JamPlay and GuitarTricks, where you can learn some basics at your own pace and get interested in the guitar to the point that you want to pursue it further, there would probably be a lot less guitar students out there for us to teach.

Gateway drugs. Think of them as gateway drugs. Ways that people can get interested and hooked on playing the guitar. Then eventually they’re going to need a real teacher to get structure, accountability, feedback, troubleshooting, inspiration, you know, connection with other students and musicians. They’re going to need all of that stuff and you and I are going to be the teachers that they go to, to find it. So, things like this don’t replace guitar teachers, but what you should be doing is you should embrace technology. You should look for ways to incorporate these kinds of things into your studio, but don’t feel threatened by them. Leverage them instead to be more successful.

I’ve always said that putting together like a Rocksmith group class would be something so fun to do, where everyone who has a copy of Rocksmith at home can come into your studio and you can work with everybody on the songs that are in the software so that they could do better, and then go in and do better at the game. You know, and their practice times consist of playing Rocksmith. I’m sure you can do the same kind of thing with Jam Sticks. You could have everybody bring their Jam Stick and their iOS device into a group class, and everyone uses the Jam Stick together. You could do really cool stuff like that. So, leverage technology. Look for ways that you can incorporate it to make yourself more successful, but don’t feel threatened by it. So, that’s myth number four, and it’s busted.

Myth #5

All right, the last one. Myth number five. Kind of ties in a little bit. Myth number five: nobody wants to learn guitar anymore. Some people are starting to believe that. Nobody wants to learn guitar anymore. The truth is people still want to learn guitar. They just don’t want to learn the way that they used to. So, things have changed because of technology, because of different generations of people. A lot of things are changing in society. The way people want to learn guitar has changed a bit too. So, it’s not that nobody wants to learn guitar. It’s just that the ways that they are looking to learn are not always the traditional ways that we have come to know and expect.

So, if you’re a subscriber to the STG Newsletter that I send out every Thursday, I actually wrote about this in the newsletter last week. Bill who’s a guitar teacher, a member of the STG community, sent me a link to a blog post on the Music Composition Blog. And he asked a very important question in that blog: “Is it still possible to make a full-time living teaching private guitar lessons?” So, I’ll put a link to that in the show notes, so you can read it, but the author mentions a noticeable decline in the number of people asking about guitar lessons.

So, in his own teaching studio, he noticed that there were fewer and fewer people inquiring about lessons, so he did some research to see if anybody else was experiencing the same thing. So, he posted to some LinkedIn guitar teacher groups and the responses he got back showed that at least 45 other teachers on those groups had the same experience. And I know several of you listening to this have experienced the same thing. It used to be really easy to get students and you had more students than you could teach. You know, you had a waiting list, but now it’s like you’re getting fewer inquiries. Things aren’t as hot and exciting as they used to be. It seems that there are less people interested.

So, it’s obvious that things are changing in the guitar teaching space, but thing you’ve got to understand is that things always change. Everything happens in cycles. Nothing stays the same forever. So, that’s only a problem though if you don’t change too. Whenever you stay stuck in what was working three or four cycles ago, then you can’t expect to have the same success today that you had back then, because people have changed. The market has changed. You have to change and adapt along with it. So, I think what’s happening here is that music and the lesson market for guitar lessons has changed, but many teachers haven’t adapted to the new changes. They’re still doing things the way that they did 10, 15, or 20 years ago and they’re wondering why it doesn’t work anymore.

Well, maybe, you know, there’s just no point in teaching guitar because I can’t get students using my Yellow Pages ad anymore. Marketing isn’t a typical strong point for most music teachers anyway. Almost every music teacher I talk to, probably 99 out of 100 of them, don’t have the knowledge and plans that they need to make their marketing successful. It’s a weak area for a lot of guitar teachers. That’s why I started Start Teaching Guitar, to help with that. But you know, it’s already a weakness and besides that you’re trying to get the same results you got ten years ago, using the same tactics from back then. That’s not going to work today.

You’re going to see a decline in interest. I mean word of mouth is still going to be there, but all of the other stuff is probably going to go away to some degree if you keep doing what you did ten years ago, expecting the same result today. It’s more important than ever to keep your finger on the pulse of what your students need, what they prefer, and for you to do what you can to adapt your studio so that you can stay up with the times. So, a perfect example is what I just talked about with Rocksmith and Jam Stick. So, instead of complaining about it, instead of commiserating the end of guitar lessons as we know it, why not bring those tools into your studio and build a program around them?

Leverage them. Adapt your studio to the changes that are going on around you that fit with teaching guitar, and then you’re going to be able to bring in students and ride those waves of change, where everybody else is going to just be, you know, swamped over by them. So, look for ways that you can elegantly integrate technology into your studio. I just gave you some ideas. There are a lot of other ways. Look for ways to do it. Create opportunities for social connections between your students. It’s another very important thing that’ll add a lot more value to what you do as a guitar teacher. Put together events, where you bring all your students together and give them opportunities to get to know each other.

Do open mic nights. Do jam nights. Do student recitals. Do barbecues. I mean do something so that everybody can come together and get to know each other, and do ice breakers and try to cross-pollinate all of your students with each other. It’s going to create an incredible sense of excitement in this awesome social atmosphere that’s going to make them want to keep learning and growing and bringing their friends. Another thing you could do, well, that you have to do is you have to know where your potential students are in 2014, the year that I’m recording this. You knew where they were in 2004. Where are they today? Your potential students are out there somewhere. Find out where they are, and then make sure that your marketing efforts reach them there.

If they’re not looking at flyers hung up on telephone poles, you know, then don’t put them there. If they’re looking on Facebook, then run your ads on Facebook. Reach your potential students where they are. Figure out where they are. Figure out who they are, figure out where they are, and then make sure your marketing efforts reach them there. Anything less than that is not going to be successful. And then another thing: consider specializing so that you’re not just another guitar teacher. If all you are is somebody that offers guitar lessons, then you are seen pretty quickly as a commodity. You don’t want to be seen as a commodity because people that are looking for a commodity, all they shop for are price. All they’re going to want is the lowest price because it’s not going to make any difference if I study with teacher A or teacher B or teacher Z. So instead, consider specializing on one particular group of people or in a specific genre or a specific area so that there is something about you that is different and unique. Then you won’t be seen as much as a commodity, because they won’t be able to find the same thing from some place else.

But anyway, back to that article. The author of that article summed it up pretty well. He said, “The future isn’t bleak. It’s just different.” And I agree completely. It’s not that there are fewer people who want to learn guitar. The problem is that there are fewer teachers providing lessons in the way that students want to consume them. So, something to think about. I don’t have all the answer. You know, I can’t tell you exactly what to do to get around this. You just have to look at what’s going on in your local market and adapt to it. A big secret to success in any kind of business though is keeping an eye on your market and reinventing yourself in small ways and sometimes even big ways whenever it’s appropriate to do so.

But this comes back to you. You have to be willing to keep learning and growing and to pay attention to what’s going on around you if you want to be successful in any business. Teaching guitar is no exception.

So those are the five myths I wanted to bust in part one. I’m going to do five more next time in part two, and then I’m going to wrap it up with another five in part three. But next time I’m going to cover five more common myths about teaching guitar and why they’re wrong assumptions and what the truth is. So, if you can learn the truth about this whole world of teaching guitar, you can be more effective, you can make fewer mistakes, and you can be a more successful guitar teacher.

Thank You For Listening!

If you enjoyed this episode, or any of the other of the episodes of the STG podcast, and you haven’t left a rating or review yet on iTunes, I would really appreciate an honest rating and review from you. It’s one of the most important parts of the ranking algorithm in iTunes, but more importantly, it’ll show future listeners that this podcast is (or isn’t) worth listening to.

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Should you be trying to work with every potential guitar student who knocks on your door? Is being a successful teacher really about working with anyone and everyone, whether they’re a good fit for your studio or not, just to get more money coming in? Of course, the answer to both of these questions is NO! There are some potential students out there who have no business being in your teaching studio, and the right way to handle them is to DISQUALIFY them from your marketing process before you invest too much time or resources into them.

This episode is all about how to identify the kind of students you DO want to work with and also how to identify the people who would cause problems, hurt your business or just be a poor fit for what you do. I’ll explain in depth why you need to disqualify the wrong people, I’ll point out the #1 mindset problem that causes teachers to devalue their own services, and I’ll give you some action steps you can start taking right away to “thin the herd” and filter out the people who would keep you from doing your best work. It takes courage and the belief that abundance is all around you, but this is something that every guitar teacher needs to understand in order to be truly successful.

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