I go into MUCH greater detail about each item in the podcast, but here’s a rough outline for you:

Guitar Teacher’s Job Description

1) Job Responsibilities

• Conducting private lessons
• Skill and knowledge assessment
• Setting, tracking and reaching musical goals
• Controlling information flow
• Maintaining student motivation
• Prepare students for public performances

2) Job Qualifications

• Good guitar playing skills
• Good communication skills
• Good listening skills
• Good time management skills
• Humility

3) Compensation

• In a free market system, we are compensated according to how much value (both real and perceived) we bring to the table

Items Mentioned In This Episode:

• Van Halen – New album “A Different Kind of Truth”
• Tip Jar Link – if you find it beneficial, click to leave a donation for the Start Teaching Guitar podcast
• Free eBook: Teaching Guitar the SMART Way

To call in with a question, a comment or to leave feedback for the show, call the Listener Feedback Hotline at (719) 428-5480 and leave a message! I just might include your recorded message in a future episode.

If you have a quick minute, please click here to leave me an honest rating and review on iTunes. It will help the show and its ranking in iTunes tremendously! I would really appreciate it!

Take The Next Step!

Enter your name and email address below to get your FREE copy of my eBook "Teaching Guitar the SMART Way", and join the Start Teaching Guitar community:

Happy Valentine’s Day! Hope you don’t forget to pick up something nice for your “significant other” today

Interesting article (with video) about Travis Perry, who invented a cool product to help people learn guitar chords…and ended up on the “Shark Tank” TV show – http://www2.dothaneagle.com/lifestyles/2012/jan/31/musical-learning-tool-lands-inventor-shark-tank-ar-3147789/

Cool interview with Scott Paul Graham, a guitar teacher in Folsom, California – http://folsomtelegraph.com/detail/199073.html

A Surefire Way to Avoid Failure – http://internetbusinessmastery.com/not-afraid-then-failing

Turning iPads into 6 strings – http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/guitar-apprentice

Really good article about various music-related injuries and how to treat them – http://rhona-mae-arca.suite101.com/stretching-exercises-for-musicians-a174506

Got links?

If you have any links to interesting articles or news stories related to teaching guitar, please send them my way! Use this form to email them to me…I’ll include them in a future edition of the STG News Desk and make sure to give you credit for the submission.

Take The Next Step!

Enter your name and email address below to get your FREE copy of my eBook "Teaching Guitar the SMART Way", and join the Start Teaching Guitar community:

In the two previous articles in this series I talked about how to generate income in your teaching business by selling merchandise and by using affiliate programs. In this final article in the series, I want to tell you about how AWESOME information products are and why you need to be creating and selling them to your students and to everyone else!

This is the third article in a 3-part series…click here to go back and read part 1 (Selling Merchandise) and here to read part 2 (Affiliate Programs).

What are Information Products?

Information products are basically any kind of product you CREATE and SELL that teaches someone how to do something. If you have expertise in a certain area (like PLAYING GUITAR for example), there are people out there who would love to pay you money in exchange for teaching them what you know. After all, that’s how you earn a living as a guitar teacher, right? The only difference is that you would package that knowledge and expertise into some kind of PRODUCT, instead of delivering it as a SERVICE.

Examples of information products include books (physical and eBooks), audio training, video training, home study courses, newsletters, reports, case studies, articles, etc. I’m sure if you looked around your home and your hard drive, you would find numerous examples sitting right under your nose. In fact, you’re actually reading one right now!

The interesting thing about information products is that people aren’t paying you for the actual product…they’re paying you for the information INSIDE the product, which can often allow you to charge more for it (depending on the value of the information). A paperback book is really only worth a few cents in and of itself…but if you fill that paperback book with instructions on how to build a business, how to do heart surgery or how to defuse a bomb, all of a sudden that book gets a LOT more valuable. It’s the INFORMATION that provides the value…not the format it’s presented in.

You can sell either PHYSICAL information products or DIGITAL information products. Physical products include the things you typically find at a Barnes and Noble store (books, CDs, DVDs, training courses, etc). Digital products have the exact same information as their physical counterparts, but they exist as downloadable or streaming files on the Internet (eBooks, web videos, podcasts, downloadable audio files, newsletters, reports, case studies, checklists…etc.).

I definitely recommend going with DIGITAL information products (I’ll tell you why in just a minute)…but you do need to be aware of something called “perceived value”. For some reason we humans tend to think something is worth more if we can actually hold it in our hands. If you have a set of DVDs for sale, the exact same videos might have a lesser “perceived value” if you stream them from a website. Just something to be aware of and consider when you decide how much to charge for your information products.

What can Information Products do for me? Why should I care?

So here’s the part where I explain why information products are so awesome, and why you need to jump on the bandwagon. With the emergence of the Internet 20 years ago, the world became a much FLATTER place…you now have the same technology sitting in your smart phone that an entire nation had at it’s disposal only 1 or 2 generations ago. And because of that technological advantage, you can compete with large companies and make pretty good money selling information with almost NO overhead.

Here are some of the cool benefits of making and selling your own information products:

• You create them once, and then you keep making money over and over after that…it’s like having your own little “money tree”

• It doesn’t cost anything to create them…you can create a money-making product for only the amount of time it takes to write it and put it together

• There are no inventory problems to mess with (one of the major hassles of selling products)

• There are no shipping hassles to mess with (the OTHER major hassle of selling products)

• Your customers can get INSTANT DELIVERY of your products…no lag time or waiting

• With almost no overhead cost to create and sell information products, your profit is pretty much 100%!

Information products also do wonders for your market positioning…they magically transform you into an expert in the eyes of your students. A teacher who’s written some “books”, even if they’re self-published, is more professional in the eyes of prospective students than 10 other teachers who’ve never written anything. I’m not saying it’s RIGHT…I’m just saying that it’s TRUE.

With all of these advantages, there’s no reason why you can’t create at least one guitar-related information product to supplement your teaching income. Here are some ideas for products you can create.

Types of Information Products you can sell

1) eBooks

eBooks are a great place to start with information products. All you need is a word processor and a way to export to the PDF format. You can sell your guitar instruction eBooks on your website, or even give them away for free as incentive to join your email list.

Here are a few guitar-related topics that would make great eBooks:

• “How to play guitar from step one”

• “How to practice effectively”

• “What every new guitar player needs to know”

2) Training courses

You could even take the eBook concept a step further and turn that information into a full-blown training course. You would just expand your material a little bit, include some exercises, audio/video files and other supplementary content, and then publish the whole thing to a secure WordPress site. You could charge a one-time fee to access the course, or even do a monthly subscription model.

Here are some example training courses your students would probably buy if their guitar teacher made them:

• “Understanding the modes of the major scale”

• “How to learn, play and use triads”

• “Music theory fundamentals for guitar players”

3) Instructional videos

We’ve all seen (and probably owned) some of those guitar instructional DVDs they started putting out in the 1980′s. I had that one video by Paul Gilbert where he pulls a rabbit out of his guitar (pretty cool trick)! Just because you don’t play like Paul Gilbert doesn’t mean you can’t make your own instructional videos…there’s probably SOMETHING you’ve learned along the way that you could make a video series about, and again, you could host it on a WordPress site and charge money to see it.

Here are a few ideas for instructional videos your students might find useful:

• “Ear training for guitar players”

• “Sight reading fundamentals”

• “Licks in the style of (insert popular guitarist)”

4) Pre-recorded lessons

The last information product idea I want to mention in this article is doing a series of pre-recorded lessons. You could record these as audio or video files (although video is probably better) and sell them as a series on your website. You could maybe even video some of your live lessons (with your student’s permission, of course) and resell them as an information product.

Again, here are a few examples to help inspire some creativity:

• Series on building picking speed and technique

• Series on improvisation

• Series on the basics of soloing

I’m obviously just scratching the surface here…there are a bunch of other formats you could use and the actual content is only limited by your imagination and your expertise. These are just a few examples to help get you thinking in the right direction.

Getting started

All it takes to get started with creating your first information product is for you to make up your mind and DO IT. Take a few minutes right now and brainstorm some ideas…it doesn’t have to be anything elaborate. You can even “steal” one of the ideas I listed here in this article. Just start small with something you think your students might be interested in…you can even do a short survey to find out what they might like. Then create an outline for the product and list all the different concepts that need to be included. The last step is to fill in all the details and then polish things up a little bit…but the important thing is to just TAKE ACTION! Make up your mind to try to create something this week. You can always expand it and improve on it later.

Information products are a great way to generate some extra income in your guitar teaching business…and you have nothing to lose by giving it a shot! If you create a small product every 3 to 6 months, before long you’ll have a whole catalog to offer people, and you’ll probably have a nice little stream of revenue coming in, too. Again, once you set it up, it runs pretty much on autopilot after that and your influence as a teacher and a guitar expert will grow exponentially.

Got any questions or personal experiences with creating and selling information products in your teaching business? Let’s talk about it in the comments below!

Take The Next Step!

Enter your name and email address below to get your FREE copy of my eBook "Teaching Guitar the SMART Way", and join the Start Teaching Guitar community:

I go into MUCH greater detail about each item in the podcast, but here’s a rough outline for you:

2012 Winter NAMM Show Highlights For Guitar Teachers

1) Introduction to NAMM

• What is NAMM?
• The Winter NAMM Show
• The Summer NAMM Show

2) My trip to the NAMM Show

• I guess the biggest lesson I learned from my trip to the NAMM Show was that the music industry
  is just like any other industry…some people work behind the scenes and some people get to
  wear stretchy pants.

3) Benefits of attending the NAMM Show

• See the latest gear before anyone else does
• Meet celebrities, get autographs and photos
• Business contacts
• Training sessions
• Free stuff
• Amazing live performances
• Great vacation opportunity

4) How to get into NAMM

• Music Education Days
• Music-related business
• Know someone
• Open-to-Public Days

Photos from the 2012 Winter NAMM Show

Eric Johnson and me at the Fender booth

Alex Skolnick, Bruce Kulick, me, George Lynch and Cesar Rojas at the Seymour Duncan booth

Steve Morse, me and Dave LaRue at the Ernie Ball booth

Lita Ford, my wife, me, Seymour Duncan and Warren DiMartini at the Seymour Duncan booth

My guitar teacher, Leigh Williams, and me at the Dunlop booth

Items Mentioned In This Episode:

• The official NAMM website
• Article: NAMM 2012 – 6 Products Every Guitar Teacher Should Know About
• NAMM Music Education Days
• Tip Jar Link – if you find it beneficial, click to leave a donation for the Start Teaching Guitar podcast
• Free eBook: Teaching Guitar the SMART Way

To call in with a question, a comment or to leave feedback for the show, call the Listener Feedback Hotline at (719) 428-5480 and leave a message! I just might include your recorded message in a future episode.

If you have a quick minute, please click here to leave me an honest rating and review on iTunes. It will help the show and its ranking in iTunes tremendously! I would really appreciate it!

Take The Next Step!

Enter your name and email address below to get your FREE copy of my eBook "Teaching Guitar the SMART Way", and join the Start Teaching Guitar community:

Interview with Emil Werstler…good section about teaching guitar lessons – http://guitarinternational.com/2010/07/04/emil-werstler-avalanche-of-worms/

10 ways to practice WITHOUT using a guitar – http://www.jemsite.com/blog/10-ways-to-practice-without-a-guitar/

Good article by Scott Imblum about how business networking can improve your teaching business – http://scottimblum.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/music-lessons-to-networking-guru/

Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation & EVH: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/eddie-van-halen-guitars-different-kind-of-truth-david-lee-roth-280475

Here’s another good interview, this time with the president of the National Guitar Workshop, Dave Smolover – http://guitarinternational.com/2009/11/16/interview-with-national-guitar-workshop-president-dave-smolover/

Got links?

If you have any links to interesting articles or news stories related to teaching guitar, please send them my way! Use this form to email them to me…I’ll include them in a future edition of the STG News Desk and make sure to give you credit for the submission.

Take The Next Step!

Enter your name and email address below to get your FREE copy of my eBook "Teaching Guitar the SMART Way", and join the Start Teaching Guitar community:

I thought I’d write up a quick article to tell you a little bit about the trip, and also share some of the cool new products I discovered while I was there. These are things that can help you as a guitar teacher, and products your students will want to know about…and now they can hear about them from YOU FIRST!

NAMM Trip: A Quick Recap

I won’t go into too many details about the trip here, because I’m devoting episode 16 of the STG Podcast entirely to NAMM…including stories from my trip and how you can go there yourself next year. One of the fun parts about the NAMM Show is getting to meet some pretty high-profile musicians…here are a few photos from the show (click the thumbnails to see them full-size):

I also got to talk to some great people in the music book publishing industry, some folks that work for the major guitar magazines, and the owners of some cool new music-related businesses that are just starting up. It was a great trip, and I’m really grateful that I was able to attend. Again, check out episode 16 of the STG Podcast for more info about my trip to the NAMM Show.

The Products

Let me start by saying that most of this new stuff isn’t available in stores yet…NAMM is where the manufacturers introduce their latest products to all the music retailers for the first time, so you’re getting this info before the general public does. I’ll include links back to the manufacturer’s website for each item below, so you can get more information about release dates, etc.

Yamaha THR Series Amps

The Yamaha THR series won awards at the NAMM Show, and it’s something many of your students might be interested in. This new “practice amp” looks kind of like a light-up electric lunchbox…it’s small enough to fit on your coffee table or desk, it runs on batteries (as well as AC power), it connects to your computer via USB and has great hi-fi stereo sound (similar to an iPod dock). You can play your MP3′s through it (or any audio you like), and also plug in your guitar and jam along.

The unit is small, portable, sounds fantastic, and best of all…it’s affordable. Until your students start to gig, this might be the only amp they need. It would also be a great addition to your teaching studio, and would work really well for teaching lessons. Check out this quick video that runs through some of the tones you can get out of this cool little amp:

Traveler Guitar

The “Speedster” series from Traveler Guitar is really cool. These instruments are small enough to fit into an airline overhead compartment and they have a built-in Pocket Rockit headphone amp, but they still have a full-size neck and they play and sound great. Perfect for students who travel a lot and need a small guitar to bring with them so they can practice while on the road.

This model isn’t technically “new”, but I hadn’t heard about them before…so they were new for me! I got to play around a little bit with one of these, and I really liked it. I still try to practice at least an hour each day, but I couldn’t do that at NAMM because I didn’t want to pay extra baggage fees to bring a guitar along…one of these would have solved that problem. I’ll definitely be buying one soon! Here’s a quick video about the Traveler Speedster guitars:

Pocket Strings

PocketStrings is a cool new practice tool that lets you work on chords, scales, hammer-ons/pull-offs, etc. and also lets you build up your callouses without needing to have a real guitar in your hands. They come in a variety of colors, they use real guitar strings and like the name implies, it fits in your pocket. The current version has 4 frets, but there’s also a 6-fret model coming soon that will be better for practicing things like 3-note-per-string mode patterns.

For around $20 you can do some pretty realistic left hand training and practice without making any sound at all and you don’t have to carry around any gear. Not too bad! I’m pretty sure some of your students would really like these. Check out this video that shows the PocketStrings product in action:

Musicreed “Modality”

Modality from Musicreed is a great way to teach your students music theory. It’s a series of small cardboard wheels that work just like a pocket music theory calculator. There are two versions of the product, a large “classroom-sized” version for teachers and personal version for students that’s small enough to fit into a guitar case…and it only costs around $10.

I can’t really do this system justice here, so I’ll do a product review for you later with a video demonstration…but let me just say that I was really impressed! I spoke with Amir Perelman at NAMM, who’s a music theory whiz and the brains behind this product…and he told me about some research they did using Modality. The theory students who used it actually did 20% to 25% better than those who didn’t! I’ll have some more info about this product for you soon.

NoteMap

NoteMap for Guitar is a really simple learning tool to help your students master the guitar fretboard. It’s like a small mouse pad that fits right on top of your acoustic guitar, and it has a labeled visual diagram of every note on the fretboard, so you can just look down and see what note you’re playing anytime you want.

They also make a full sized “mouse pad” version you can use on your desk, music stand or tabletop…and there are also versions for bass and ukulele. This would be something good to give your beginner to intermediate students who are having trouble with fretboard memorization.

Chord Dice

Chord Dice is a unique little product that helps you write songs more easily. It’s a set of 5 green “dice” that are labeled with a chord name and a scale degree…you just roll the dice and a random chord progression appears before your very eyes. All the chords that appear are from the same “chord family” and will work together nicely. If you don’t like one progression, just roll the dice again to get a brand new one.

Currently the dice only come in the key of G, but more keys will be available soon. I can see using these in your guitar lessons to kind of mix things up when you’re teaching chords to your beginner and intermediate level students.

There were obviously thousands of products on display at the NAMM Show, but these are just a few that I thought would be interesting to guitar teachers. I’ll do more in-depth reviews for some of these in the near future, and hopefully even do some giveaways…so stay tuned!

What do you think? Leave a comment below and let me know what you think about the NAMM Show, these new products and how you might use them in your teaching business!

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This interview is with Miguel Bonachea, originally from Cuba, but now teaching and performing in South Florida in the USA. This is the first interview I’ve been able to publish by a teacher who focuses on classical guitar, and there are some great teaching insights here.

Guitar Teacher Interview

Tell us a little bit about yourself. Where do you live? What’s your background?

I’ve been teaching classical guitar for more than 20 years, first in Cuba, my homeland where I studied, and then in Colombia where I lived for more than 15 years. I have spent my entire career teaching in three main venues: Higher Institute of Art (Havana, Cuba), a conservatory named after “Antonio Maria Valencia” (Cali, Colombia), and University EAFIT (Medellin, Colombia). I’ve played as a soloist with symphonic orchestras and have performed recitals in Europe, South America, the Caribbean and the United States. I recently moved to the US, and I’m currently a freelancer, a teacher and a performer living in South Florida.

Tell us about your guitar teaching business. Are you doing it part-time or full-time? How many students are you currently teaching?

I’m currently starting a new life as a guitar teacher/businessman, since I’ve always been mainly an employed instructor of private and government institutions back in Colombia and Cuba. When I originally moved to Colombia, there I ran my own little school of music for three years and at the same time a taught at the Conservatory. It was really a very exiting experience as I would combine my expertise teaching guitar with some new skills I had to develop in marketing, managing and so on. All of that would become an important asset later when I held the position of Dean of Music at the Conservatory in Cali for roughly eight years.

My classes have been focused on classical guitar: technique, repertoire, chamber music, analysis, interpretation, etc. At the university I used to tutor around sixteen students, one hour each, on a weekly basis and additionally I did a weekly two hour seminar/workshop class which all the students attended together.

What’s been the biggest key to success in your teaching business so far?

I’ve realized that it’s very important to provide the opportunity for the students to gather in one or more activities, other than private-tutorial classes as the main stream for them to learn. I’ve put that into practice since the time I had my own little school of music and also when I taught both at the Conservatory and the University. The results were encouraging since the students used to stay highly motivated, whether they would go to an ensemble rehearsal, to a workshop, or a seminar.

I couldn’t say I’ve had only one key to success, since to deal with different individuals requires different strategies to keep each of them engaged with the subject matter. I think that you ought to be able to have, at the same time, a sort of clear “big picture plan” to guide your own work as a teacher, and also to be flexible enough to bend some of your preconceived thoughts now and then in order to fit the personality and particular interests of each student.

But according to my humble experience, having the students playing together on a regular basis (once a week, twice a month, etc.) is a very effective key to success, not only because that allows them to confront themselves with their peers and socialize, sharing a feeling of complicity, but as an effective way to enhance knowledge, boost skills and overcome shyness…among other things.

What’s been your most effective way of attracting new students?

I think there are many ways to attract new students. Maybe the most effective one is, like in any sales business, referrals. But undoubtedly the greatest motivation for a prospect to become your student is watching you perform…either formally or even not formally. There is no question about that the teacher is a model, and since one of the many ways to transmit knowledge is imitation, in the business of teaching a musical instrument it gets a huge relevance; therefore, when a student goes to your lessons it means that in some way he or she wants to be like you.

I’ve had students – some of them today accomplished performers in the international arena, who literally knocked on the door asking for lessons. Among them, some came in after a performance I had given, while others were referred by current or former students of mine.

What’s been your most effective way of keeping your existing students from quitting?

To mention the most effective way of keeping students from dropping out (if there is one), according to my experience, I have to hark back to the plausible reasons those of them who quit earlier had. So I can identify three main reasons that usually cause students to quit taking lessons:  1) He or she gets bored; 2)He or she feels ignored or offended; 3) He or she doesn’t have enough money to pay for the lessons.

Therefore, the most effective ways I’ve experienced to keep the students attending my classes are:

1) I do my best to assist with the purposes that originally led a student to choose my class. I not only focus my attention on what his or her goals are about playing the guitar, but also I pay attention to his or her general subjects of interest, as it allows me to relate his or her particular way of learning with intellectual and emotional motivations. Thus I can effectively select pieces, exercises, music examples, and even stories which can challenge him or her both technique-wise and intellectually.

2) I try to create a sincere rapport with the student as I understand his or her feelings, know his or her personal background, show him or her that I have a great regard and respect for his or her beliefs…and let each of them know that there is no other student more important than he or she while in the class.  I also keep myself away from making any comparisons with other students, neither for the best nor the worst.

3) If a student is highly motivated and I realize that he or she is really, truly having problems with money, I try to reach an agreement with the student for a temporary discount.

What helps to keep you motivated to continue when things don’t seem to be going as well as you would like?

Well, that’s the place where I’m at currently, since I’m starting the business in a new country where no one knows me, and where I’m also learning the language!

So, my main stream of self motivation is knowing that I’m pursuing something that I really love and which I’m prepared to do as well as the next guy. I try to identify my strengths and weaknesses, enhancing the strengths and trying to fill the gaps related to the weaknesses. I prepare myself on a daily basis practicing, learning new pieces, and reading all the stuff I can get related to teaching and learning…sharing with colleges and trying to make myself to be known.

What advice would you have for someone who would like to get started teaching guitar lessons for the first time?

I’d say that someone who is planning to get into the teaching guitar business must feel, as a prerequisite, confident of him or herself accomplishing the task. To get some students doesn’t seem to be very difficult at all, but growing as a reliable teacher could be very hard if you are not prepared enough. I think it is important to have a plan to teach. Knowing how to address the first lessons with a beginner is very important, as well as to be prepared to answer some of the questions new students or student’s parents usually ask about methods, books, type of pieces, etc. When you are able to show that you have a plan, like a kind of big picture about what your work will be, before your first class or lesson, you create the necessary first (unique) good impression that you are a pro who knows what is the path to get that person playing the guitar the way he or she wants.

Can you share one tip that has worked for you to help your students get better results on the guitar?

Sincerely, if I had just one tip to help the students get better results, I would be millionaire!

People don’t like to be told they have to practice. That’s the season the world is in, because there are such huge sales of books to learn guitar effortlessly, just like there are many beverages for people to lose weight without exercising. I think that the challenge you have as a guitar teacher is to help to help the student to learn to enjoy practicing. It could sound kind of old fashioned but it isn’t.

Are there tips? Yes, of course! There are many tips, each one of them for a different purpose at very different levels. A few days ago I read in a novel about conquering Mount Everest something that I related immediately with learning guitar. They, the mountaineers, used to say: “Go high, sleep low”. For them it means: “reach a higher place every day, but get back and sleep at the place you got to yesterday”. I’d say that when practicing guitar it’s very useful to do something similar: challenge yourself with a new skill, a new piece or even a new concept and then go back and practice what you have learn before and you have already become familiar with.

Well, that’s it for today’s Guitar Teacher Interview. If you’d like to be considered for a future interview, enter your name and email address below to join the Start Teaching Guitar community. I send out occasional interview requests to this mailing list.

If you have any questions, comments or feedback please leave a reply below!

Take The Next Step!

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I go into MUCH greater detail about each item in the podcast, but here’s a rough outline for you:

Time Management Tips for Busy Guitar Players

1) Managing Your Time

• Plan out your days in advance
• Prioritize
• Focus

2) Organizing Your To-Do List

• “Getting Things Done” by David Allen
• Using a GTD mind map

3) Getting Some Help

• Things you can delegate
• Secretarial tasks
• Website tasks
• Bookkeeping
• Administrative tasks
• Sources for help
• Online
• Virtual assistant
• Bartering with students

Items Mentioned In This Episode:

• Book: “Getting Things Done” by David Allen
• Mind Mapping Software:
• MindMeister.com (web-based…up to 3 mind maps for free)
• Freeemind
• Freeplane
• FREE Sample GTD Mind map (requires one of the above programs to open and use)
• eLance.com
• Virtual Staff Finder (Virtual Assistant placement service)
• Tip Jar Link – if you find it beneficial, click to leave a donation for the Start Teaching Guitar podcast
• Free eBook: Teaching Guitar the SMART Way

To call in with a question, a comment or to leave feedback for the show, call the Listener Feedback Hotline at (719) 428-5480 and leave a message! I just might include your recorded message in a future episode.

If you have a quick minute, please click here to leave me an honest rating and review on iTunes. It will help the show and its ranking in iTunes tremendously! I would really appreciate it!

Take The Next Step!

Enter your name and email address below to get your FREE copy of my eBook "Teaching Guitar the SMART Way", and join the Start Teaching Guitar community:

This interview is with Daryl Tomas from Tamarac, Florida in the USA. You can find out more about Daryl and his teaching business by visiting his website at dtguitarstudio.com.

Guitar Teacher Interview

Tell us a little bit about yourself. Where do you live? What’s your background?

I live in Tamarac, Florida which is just outside of Fort Lauderdale. I’ve been a professional guitarist for about 30 years and have been teaching for about 10 of them. I’m married with children now, so I try to stay as local as I can when it comes to playing. Also, my wife is a singer, and all my kids are involved in music in one capacity or another.

Tell us about your guitar teaching business. Are you doing it part-time or full-time? How many students are you currently teaching?

I’ve been teaching for about 10 years. I just recently exited a music store where I had been teaching for the last nine years and have ventured out on my own. I’ve got about 25 students, and am working on building that back up to what it used to be before the economy down here got so bad. At one time I had between 40 and 45 students a week. My students range from 7 to about 50 in age, and I teach beginners to advanced. Right now I am only doing private lessons, but I have plans of offering group lessons and workshops as soon as I get the details ironed out.

What’s been the biggest key to success in your teaching business so far?

I am not only the guitar teacher, but to my students I am also their friend. I lead by example, and I never would expect any student to do anything I haven’t already done myself to improve.

What’s been your most effective way of attracting new students?

By far – Word of Mouth. Having my students and parents of students recommend me has been essential in getting the majority of my new students. I just put up my website, and got some new marketing materials, and I am hoping that (along with some of the things I have learned from exploring startteachingguitar.com) will also help.

What’s been your most effective way of keeping your existing students from quitting?

By keeping their interest. I custom tailor their lessons to their individual needs and goals. I try to get them up and running so they can start playing the kind of stuff that made them want to play guitar in the first place, along with things they need to know to be self sufficient.

What helps to keep you motivated to continue when things don’t seem to be going as well as you would like?

I am blessed to be able to play music and teach for a living. Even if things aren’t going so well, I am thankful to be able to do this, and it beats doing anything else.

What advice would you have for someone who would like to get started teaching guitar lessons for the first time?

First – do it because you love to do it, not because you want to be paid to do it. Second – Check out the multitude of resources available to help you be a better teacher so that you are doing your students justice. Third – Take a few lessons from someone who is a better teacher than you and learn from them.

Can you share one tip that has worked for you to help your students get better results on the guitar?

Realizing everyone is different, and you have to take that into consideration when teaching them. You must use different methods for different people.

Well, that’s it for today’s Guitar Teacher Interview. If you’d like to be considered for a future interview, enter your name and email address below to join the Start Teaching Guitar community. I send out occasional interview requests to this mailing list.

If you have any questions, comments or feedback please leave a reply below!

Take The Next Step!

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The biggest thing I learned in 2011 was how to identify and deal with the negative “tapes” that keep playing back in my head…those “voices” that try to keep me afraid and stop me from living the life I dream about.

I know…I know…you’re probably thinking “Wow, Donnie’s hearing voices again!” The truth is that we all have this problem to one degree or another…psychologists call it “negative self-talk”. Alanis Morissette even wrote a song about it. It’s almost like there’s some kind of ENEMY sitting on your shoulder (or even living inside your own head), whispering self-defeating things into your ear, trying to undermine the bold actions you want to take to be more successful. I’m sure things like this sound familiar to you:

• “I SUCK at being a guitar teacher!”
• “Who would ever want to pay ME for guitar lessons?”
• “I know if I try to start a business teaching guitar lessons, I’ll just FAIL, so why should I bother?”
• “I can barely PLAY the guitar, much less TEACH someone else!”
• “When a guitar lesson doesn’t go well, it’s always because I SCREWED UP!”
• Etc.

These stupid, negative voices are just like “tapes” looping over and over in our heads. They got recorded way back when we were kids, and each one is a customized message designed to keep each of us from reaching our full potential in life. I know for me, the same tapes are still playing in my head that I used to hear on the playground when I got picked on as a kid…over 30 years later! I don’t know exactly WHERE they come from or WHY they exist in the first place, but I learned this past year that DEALING WITH THEM means the difference between success and failure in my life.

The good news

The good news is that the things on those tapes ARE NOT REAL and ARE NOT TRUE! Some of you really need to read that again, because the real damage is done when we BELIEVE that stuff. If you can’t tell the difference between the truth and the negative tapes playing in your head, you tend to believe the tapes…and you never take the risks that can open the doors for success.

For example, what would you do in your teaching business if you KNEW YOU COULDN’T FAIL? Would you start teaching group lessons? Would you expand your teaching business into a new location? Maybe hire someone to work for you? Whatever that cool thing is that you dream about doing, but have never had the guts to attempt…there’s probably a negative tape playing in your head RIGHT NOW trying to talk you out of it.

How to turn off the tapes (or at least turn them down)

I’m not a therapist or anything like that, but what worked for me was to start with just RECOGNIZING the negative voices for what they are. It’s not a valid fact about who I am or what I do…it’s not a feeling I need to act on…it’s not a helpful suggestion from my subconscious mind…it’s just a stupid TAPE. For me, realizing that simple fact is half the battle.

Once I realize this and understand that what I’m thinking and feeling isn’t REAL, I can choose not to believe it…not to act on it. I can dispute it with the TRUTH. And then, I can TAKE ACTION in spite of it! In the words of the late, great John Wayne, I still feel the fear, but I recognize it for what it is and choose to saddle up anyway.

Of course, I’m not suggesting that any of you do something stupid just because you’re afraid of it…make sure you keep your brain engaged in this process and seek out the wise counsel of people you trust. But in my own experience (and in the experience of MANY of the people I know and talk to), this is the single biggest thing that keeps us from being successful. We simply talk ourselves out of it…

 The difference between successful and unsuccessful people

I also learned that doing exactly what I just described is the real difference between SUCCESSFUL people and UNSUCCESSFUL people! It’s not about your money, your education, your connections or even dumb luck. The primary thing that separates SUCCESSFUL people from UNSUCCESSFUL people is that successful people refuse to listen to the negative voices in their heads and they ACT ANYWAY.

So, here’s my challenge for you: start making an attempt to IGNORE those negative tapes playing in your head and take some bold ACTION that can propel you to a whole new level of success in your teaching business in 2012. Yes, you will hear voices…yes, you will feel some fear…you’ll probably even call yourself “crazy”…just recognize those thoughts and emotions for what they are and let them go. You deserve to be successful, and the only thing holding you back is YOU!

A guidebook for the journey

I’ve been working on my thinking for a long time, but the process really sped up this past year when I started reading a book called “The 6 Pillars of Self-Esteem“. If you’re interested in working on this stuff, I would highly recommend picking up a copy for yourself. Special thanks to Jay and Sterling over at Internet Business Mastery for turning me on to this amazing book. And EXTRA special thanks to Kat Lessin, my Lifestyle Design Coach, for the guidance and inspiration to help me walk it out.

So for me, at least, the biggest lesson of 2011 was the realization that I’ve spent most of my life living in an imaginary prison made up of my own fears, and that those negative “tapes” are the prison guards, trying desperately to keep me there. If I stop listening to them, I can walk right out and be free.

What about you? If you’re ready to make some changes, then here’s your first assignment: leave a comment below and tell me a little bit about the negative tapes playing in YOUR head!

Take The Next Step!

Enter your name and email address below to get your FREE copy of my eBook "Teaching Guitar the SMART Way", and join the Start Teaching Guitar community: