1. Inspiring and motivating your students – teaching guitar well is often more about inspiring your students than teaching a new scale, chord or song.

2. Teaching them ‘new things’ to play/practice – Most guitar teachers understand this basic concept, but often struggle to know exactly how much ‘new content’ is too little or too much for each student. Most teachers ‘overwhelm’ their students with simply too much material in a short amount of time.

3. Helping them to solve their playing/musical problems – The best way to improve your guitar teaching is to understand exactly how to help any student overcome any problem.

Each of these areas has its own challenges, but for most teachers it is the last category (helping students solve guitar playing/musical problems) that can be the most difficult to consistently do well.

When teaching guitar to solve problems and bad habits, the first thing to do is be clear about  the process itself:

Identify the true cause of the problem. Remember that ‘symptoms’ of problems and ’causes’ of problems are often totally different things. A misdiagnosed problem (just like a misdiagnosed medical problem) can make things worse than doing nothing at all.

Find proven solutions to overcome this problem. Yes, this seems like an obvious point, but often teachers ‘guess’ or use the trial and error approach to teaching guitar. Surround yourself with other experienced guitar teachers. Ask them for their advice on your specific challenge, doing so may save you and your student a lot of time and frustration.

Communicate the causes and your solution to your student’s problem. Again, this may seem like common sense, but fact is, most teachers do not fully explain the cause and solutions to the problems students have, they sort of skip this part and move directly into implementing the solution. The reason why communicating the cause and solution to your student is so important is that, without the student truly knowing what these things are, they often won’t truly practice your solution diligently at home.

Implement the solution (training). To be the most effective, you need to do more than ‘teach what to do’, you need to ‘train’ them to do it. The ‘teaching part’ can usually be done quickly, but it is the ‘training’ that takes the time. Think more like a sports trainer and less like a school teacher as you implement solutions while teaching guitar (more on this below).

Hold their hand – You do not need to treat all your students like children (unless they are children), but when teaching guitar, it is important that you monitor your students’ motivation level and help them to keep it high. A mediocre guitar teacher who keeps his/her students highly motivated will almost always get much bigger results than a great ‘technical’ teacher who does little or nothing to keep students inspired and motivated – yet this is an area most teachers don’t do consistently well in – because they underestimate its importance.

Because students typically have multiple problems in their playing (inconsistent articulation, weak sense of timing, excess body tension, inefficient hand movement, excess string noise, just to name a few common ones), and because there are typically multiple causes to each of those problems, the hardest part about teaching guitar, as it relates to solving students’ playing problems and breaking bad habits, is knowing the best order to deal with the causes of a student’s problems. Timing is critical and so is the order.

Many (well intentioned) teachers make the mistake of trying to use ‘linear logic’ to help students break bad habits and overcome challenges. There are many problems with this, the main one is we don’t teach machines, we are teaching people. Everything we do, and when we do it, has a positive or negative impact in the mind of our students. In theory it might make perfect sense for a teacher to make the student deal with the most basic problems first. That seems logical right? Well, those that follow this all the time will have a hard time keeping students long enough to help them become the guitar players they wish to be.

Contrary to what many guitar teachers believe, fixing the most fundamental problems your students have in the beginning (or trying to break too many bad habits at once) does more harm than good for most students. Yes, problems and bad habits must be dealt with in order for your students to reach their maximum potential, but too much of this at the same time may kill the will for your students to endure the natural frustration that comes with learning to play guitar.

Each student is different and you need to get a sense of how much tolerance the student sitting in front of you can handle in the present moment. If you overestimate this, the result is likely going to lead to massive amounts of frustration for your student and he/she may give up lessons and playing guitar completely.

How long does it usually take your beginning guitar students, as an example, to sit or stand with ‘perfectly correct’ posture, use perfect left and right hand positions, use the correct picking motions and articulation etc. etc. when playing and practicing? Sure you can teach this in a minute or two, but how long will it take that student to instinctively do this all the time on his/her own without you reminding them? For most students, it takes a long time.

Is it okay to let your students continue to play and practice guitar when you know many basic things are wrong and that they will form bad habits by allowing them to go on in this way?

Most guitar teachers would say, “no, it’s not okay” and then proceed to immediately try to correct all of them as soon as possible. Other guitar teachers simply don’t notice or don’t care enough to address these things. They figure as long as students keep coming back to lessons, everything is good.

The best approach for teaching guitar is neither. To be clear, your top priority should be to keep your student coming back for as many lessons as possible – not simply because you make more money that way, but because, if a student gives up lessons, you can do nothing to help him/her. Obviously, you must deal with problems and bad habits though (to not do this would be the same as only feeding kids candy and never real food).

When teaching guitar to solve a problem, avoid dealing with the entire problem and all its causes at once. Begin with the one thing you can do for your student that will be easiest for him/her to correct. This will help to build confidence that he/she can begin to overcome the problem and that doing so wasn’t extremely hard to start with. Pay attention to how much of this you think they can handle right now. If it looks good, then give them the next thing to fix.

Although some guitar playing problems and bad habits can be really big issues to deal with, try not to make the entire lesson only about solving problems. Most students need to get a sense of forward progress and even though solving problems is forward progress, they can’t always see that themselves even after you explain it to them, so give them something else that is fulfilling for them to play and practice.  A little sugar with the medicine helps it go down easier .

Test your guitar teaching skills.

About the author: Tom Hess is a highly successful guitar teacher, professional touring guitarist and recording artist. He coaches other guitar teachers on how to teach guitar

© Tom Hess Music Corporation All Rights Reserved

The popularity of the guitar continues to increase, so the demand for good guitar teachers remains strong. The question is, are you the right sort of person for the job?

Part of my activity over the last several years has involved the recruitment and training of a great many music tutors. I can say with certainty that the four items uppermost on peoples’ minds when they apply for a job as a music tutor are:

1. You have to be an expert musician
2. You should have some sort of teaching qualification
3. You have to be a university graduate
4. You need to be a music theory wizard

But these four items aren’t even on my tutor recruitment checklist.

I’d like to explain why:

Item 1. You have to be an expert musician

Of course you have to be a reasonably good musician for two reasons. First, you have to have credibility. Second, you have to know something about the territory into which you are going to lead your clients. After all, if you were hiring a guide to lead you up a mountain, you would want to hire someone who had climbed that mountain before, wouldn’t you?

But being an expert can actually be something of a liability when teaching guitar. This is because the vast majority of your work is going to be with people in their first year of playing. If you have played for twenty years and performed on stages all over the world, cut albums and written hit songs, you’ll have heaps of credibility. However, you are really going to struggle to relate to the guy sitting in front of you, with five thumbs on each hand, who is trying to understand why the ‘top’ string is at the bottom!

If you have been playing three years or more, are committed, and making good progress yourself, then you have every chance of being a better guitar teacher for beginners than any “expert musician.”

Oddly, people who themselves learn slowly are often better teachers. I think that’s because they’re conscious of the small details that new students often need help with, but that are invisible to people who learn like greased lightening.

Item 2. You should have some sort of teaching qualification.

If you have any amount of experience in teaching or training, you would definitely meet one of the requirements on my recruitment checklist. Expertise in teaching is undoubtedly gained from experience more than any other factor. But qualifications from mainstream education of teachers do not by themselves make you a good teacher. All of us can think back to our time at school and bring to mind teachers who were certainly qualified but perhaps shouldn’t have been!

Item 3. You have to be a university graduate.

A university education provides you with a chance to hone your intellectual skills and discipline your mind. These are fine things to do and there is little doubt that, when it comes to grappling with the intricacies of advanced music theory, an academic background is definitely going to make things more comfortable for you. But, to be honest, this is a relatively unimportant aspect of guitar teaching and generally overrated. What matters more is the ability to put yourself in your client’s shoes, to empathize, to understand and to accept people as they are.

So, if I had to choose between someone coming from four years at a university and someone who had spent those years travelling the world, working in a variety of settings, rubbing shoulders with rich and poor and generally experiencing contact with people from all walks of life, I would not hesitate to choose the latter, all else being equal.

Item 4. You have to be a music theory wizard.

Music theory is not something you need to understand in order to start teaching guitar. Music theory is something you will grow to understand as you teach guitar.

The process of teaching guitar puts a natural demand on you to continually think about the subject and work with its basic elements, so a deep knowledge of music theory is a result of being a guitar teacher!

Most of your teaching time is spent getting people to string a few simple chords together or playing some basic scale patterns. Every now and then a student will ask a question about what they are doing. You will either know the answer or not. If you don’t, and you believe answering the question is appropriate to the level of the student, be honest and say, “I’ll check that out for you and answer it in full next week!”

After a few hundred lessons your own knowledge and confidence with the subject may lead you to take on more advanced students. At this point you will need to have a higher level of understanding. You will find a wealth of resources on the Web to help you with this.

So if you don’t need to be an expert musician, qualified teacher, graduate or theory wizard, what do you need? What does it take to be a good guitar teacher?

I have isolated four essential qualities a person should have before I recommend taking up guitar teaching as a career. Here they are in order of importance:

1. Patience – an infinite amount of it

Patience is essential because you have to create a safe space in which people feel they have time to apply themselves to the tasks you set.

2. The ability to communicate with confidence

Students’ confidence in their ability to learn is the energy that you work with as a guitar teacher. Confidence is contagious, so if you communicate confidently then some of that rubs off on them.

3. The ability to play guitar reasonably well

As mentioned above, you are going to lead them up the mountain. So it helps if you’ve made the climb before!

4. Commonsense

Teaching is a specialized form of communication. The art of teaching is based almost entirely on the application of commonsense. Having said that, you can gain a lot of insight from reading articles by experienced teachers who have distilled their knowledge gained from many years of teaching experience.

Finally, here are some of the positive rewards of developing a career as a guitar teacher:

1. You’ll be doing what you love and – better still – sharing that love of music with others.
2. You’ll have the freedom to work the hours you want to work.
3. You’ll be in control of your income. Want more? Teach more hours or put up your prices. Need less? Allow natural fall-off to reduce your teaching hours.
4. You’ll be your own boss. You’ll have no one to answer to but yourself.
5. You’ll have plenty of scope to express your creativity, both as a musician and teacher.
6. Best of all, you won’t even notice you’re working!

I hope you have found this article stimulating. If you would like to look closer at teaching guitar as a career, or if you are already a guitar teacher and would like some support, then please visit my website www.teachguitar.com, where you will find a wealth of resources to help you.

There can be more than one reason why a student may struggle when trying to change chords smoothly. So the first thing to do when dealing with this challenge is to diagnose why the problem exists. You need to determine if your student has one of the following problems:

• A. A physical coordination problem
• B. He/she has not been practicing
• C. A lack of understanding of what needs to be done
• D. A mental processing problem

Most guitar teachers assume the reason is either A. (a physical coordination problem) or B. (little or no practice). Fact is, most of the time this is wrong. The majority of students actually do attempt to practice. And true physical coordination problems are rare.

For most guitar students almost all guitar playing problems are caused by their brains, not by their hands! This is why many efforts to help them may not work well.

As I mentioned before, there can many reasons why a student is struggling with this (or any other issue) so it is not possible to give a one-size-fits-all solution in an article. There are however three powerful guitar teaching tips that can help solve this problem with beginning guitar students.

1. Get your students to keep their strumming hand moving in correct rhythm no matter how far behind the fretting hand may be in forming the next chord. In other words, tell your students (when practicing this way) to not allow the strumming hand to wait on the fretting hand! Practicing in this way will solve a lot of other rhythm and timing problems in the future for this student! The student should practice this way about one third of their practice time until the problem is resolved.
2. Get your student to not use the strumming hand at all and simply change chords with the fretting hand quickly (rapid fire, one after another). The student should practice this way about a third of the time until the problem is resolved.
3. Make your student play a chord he/she needs to master. Tell him/her to grip the strings hard when playing the chord, then to relax totally (without taking fingers away from the strings/chord), then tell the student to squeeze again all fingers at the same time! Then relax.

The goal here is to train his/her brain to make all fingers move and relax together and not one finger at a time (which is how beginning guitar students make chords on their own – big mistake)… Repeat this exercise until the student can do it well.

Next, have the student move fingers off the strings but maintain the basic chord shape while hovering over the strings…. Then press down on the strings and make the chord… repeat this many times and then gradually move further and further away from the strings before making the chord again. Eventually from an open hand the student should be able to form the chord easily… but in each case you must be sure all fingers are moving and relaxing at the same time, not one finger at a time! The student should practice this way about a third of the time until the problem is resolved.

Notice that these solutions of the problem are all ‘physical’, but they are designed to overcome the student’s “mental processing problem” because the student has not learned to separate and isolate each motion. The beginning guitar student’s brain is overloaded with too much information to apply at the same time, this is why we work on method #1 and #2 above to free the brain from too much processing at once. The last method (#3) is designed in order to break the student’s mental processing habit of sending separate and linear messages to each finger of the hand. What we want is to train the brain to process and send one message to all fingers involved.

To get more help on teaching guitar and building a successful guitar teaching business, check out these fifteen free guitar teaching tips.

About the author: Tom Hess is a highly successful guitar teacher, professional touring guitarist and recording artist. He coaches other guitar teachers on how to teach guitar.

As the famous saying goes, “you do not get a second chance to make a first impression.”‘ And, as guitar teachers, this saying is paramount. As our business dealings are periodic, it is important that from the start students have trust and understanding in their learning which in turn will bring them back week after week.

Student goals

It is imperative to establish student goals early on so you, the teacher, are able to create an appropriate route to which they can be attained. When asking new students why they left their previous teacher I am often given answers like, “They had me playing chords when I wanted to play lead,” or “I like Punk but was learning Blues.” These answers show that the students’ goals were never explored and they were taught on the teacher’s standard syllabus.

Always start lesson one with a few questions such as:

• What made you want to learn the guitar?
• Have you ever played any other musical instruments?
• What sort of music do you like?
• Who’s your favourite guitarist?

These four questions will give you an overview of why the student wants to learn the guitar, allowing you to start planning the most appropriate route to take in achieving his or her goals.

What to teach?

All students will be different, each having his or her individual learning needs. But having a core teaching syllabus (consisting of essential scales, chords and exercises) is essential and most beginners will be happy to follow the same syllabus. Once the rudiments are in place you can then focus on their particular style of music and personal goals.

Remember “quality not quantity.” Many teachers will pile work on students in a vain attempt to “get their money’s worth,” hoping it will bring them back next week. But what usually happens is the student leaves feeling swamped and disheartened. The best thing to do is start slowly, gradually building the students confidence as you go. Start small by firstly introducing the instruments’ main parts and string names then introduce the plectrum and how to hold it. Next, look at the frets and how they are used to produce sound. The student will now not only better understand the instrument but more importantly feel confident enough to start playing it.

A good first song is “Horse with No Name,” as it only consists of two chords. It will not take long till they are committed to muscle memory and the left hand can happily go back and fourth between them. Next, introduce a few simple strum patterns to work in the right hand.

A good rule of thumb to remember here is “ears before eyes.” For example, have the student strum once, twice, three and four times on each of the chords and only when he has truly mastered that should you introduce the strum patterns in notation.

For the last part of the lesson I like to end with a guitar riff such as “Smoke on the Water” or “Sunshine of your Love.” It is a good way of introducing lead guitar and tab reading and gives them something cool to go home with.

Before they go

The first lesson is the ideal time to explain payment and cancellation policies and other terms and conditions, it is a good idea to have a guitar teaching agreement or studio policy, listing what the student can expect and also what you expect from your student. Having such a document leaves nothing to chance and everybody knows exactly where they stand.

Here is an example learning agreement. This document can be freely edited to include your details and also any extra conditions such as a maximum number of cancellations per term.

I hope this article has been of interest and given you a few useful ideas, pleas visit onlineguitartutor.com for more information on guitar teaching and loads of FREE resources.

All these things are very common problems guitar teachers have when teaching beginners.

I’m going to show you five mistakes that most guitar teachers make when teaching beginning guitar students and how you can avoid them.

But before I go into detail about this, I strongly encourage you to test how effective you are in teaching beginning guitar students. I have prepared an assessment where you can easily find out if you are giving your students the best you can. New teachers erroneously assume that teaching guitar to beginning students is easier than teaching more advanced students… fact is, this is totally false.

Teaching beginners effectively is very critical and assumes a great deal of responsibility. Get it right and these people will learn to love to play guitar and do well in the process, get it wrong and they will often leave disillusioned and discouraged to play guitar.

Before reading further, test your effectiveness on how to teach beginning guitar.

Avoid These Common Mistakes

Mistake #1 Using linear guitar teaching methods with beginners.

The vast majority of guitar teachers teach beginning guitar students in a logical linear way. The problem with this approach is that it doesn’t work well for beginners. Students progress slowly, or give up, leaving both teachers and students very frustrated. Reading this, you may think: ‘But all books for beginning guitar students are written in this way?’ You are right, they are written in a very logical linear way, and this is a huge part of the problem. The linear teaching approach makes perfect sense if you are teaching a topic that is linear such as mathematics or science, but you are teaching music – an art that requires a different method to teaching and learning. Yet the conventional way beginner books are written (and the conventional way beginning students are taught) is typically very linear. When some teachers realize that it doesn’t work, they start to not use any book at all and instead make their own attempt to teaching beginning students with their own version of the linear teaching approach. This often produces mediocre results… some teachers simply ‘accept’ those mediocre results, while others begin searching (again) for a better method of teaching beginners that will work all (or at least most) of the time. One of those better methods is the “geometric guitar teaching method”. With this approach students learn to apply and integrate a wider range of necessary musical skills from the beginning of their training.

Mistake #2 Teaching total beginning guitar students the wrong things in the first several lessons such as: music theory, finger exercises, how to read music notation. Although each of those areas are very useful for most students to know (especially music theory), it is simply not the right time to introduce those topics at this point. Why? Well, there are several reasons, but the main one is that most total beginners will become bored, quickly lose interest, and may hurt their confidence at this point. Of course there will be some students who can respond well to learning these areas from the very beginning, but many will not.

Some teachers feel they are being an irresponsible teacher if they don’t teach this stuff right away. They insist on teaching total beginners these topics, usually causing the teacher to make mistake #3, listed next. For the vast majority of total beginning guitar students, the primary teaching goal should be to build the students’ confidence by getting them to actually do some guitar playing as soon as possible – this will help you to also avoid mistake #3.

Mistake #3 Not building the critical self-confidence that all students need (especially beginners). New students of the guitar (total beginners) are totally clueless about learning to play guitar, guitar lessons, and most importantly, about ‘themselves’. Beginners don’t know if they will actually be able to ever learn to play guitar. They don’t know if they have any potential. They are wondering if they have any natural talent at all. They’re wondering if they actually need to have natural talent to play guitar. They worry that they might be too old, or too young. They worry that maybe their hands are too big, or too small. They don’t know if they will enjoy practicing or not. They worry they may not have an ‘ear for music’ or if they have any rhythm.

You must help your students to remove these self-doubts as soon as possible… but encouraging words are often not enough. You will need to use guitar teaching methods and materials which will naturally and quickly show your beginning students some very real tangible proof that they really can, will and are learning to play guitar well.

Mistake #4 Teaching beginning students using a similar (but more simple) approach to teaching intermediate and advanced students. As mentioned above, building self-confidence in the student should be the foundation with which to build your lessons upon, but after this is established and nurtured in your beginning guitar students, there are still aspects of your approach to teaching which should be different than it is for more advanced guitar players. For example, advanced students are more likely to understand, appreciate and be willing to practice a tedious exercise countless times in order to achieve something on the guitar – most beginners cannot (or will not) fully understand, appreciate these ideas nor actually be willing to practice in this way for long periods of time. Your teaching methods must match the general mindset of the type of student you are teaching. Focus on teaching ‘people’ more than teaching ‘music’… It’s all about your student.

Mistake #5 Using the trial-and-error approach to learn how to teach guitar. Fact is most guitar teachers try to learn how to teach guitar by treating their students like laboratory rats in an experiment. Of course you can learn some good things from hands-on teaching, but it’s unfair to your students to learn ‘only’ in this way. With all of the resources available for guitar teachers today, there is no excuse for teachers to gain all their teaching experience using the trial and error approach. Seek out proven training programs for guitar teachers, acquire guitar teaching resources, or at least read more articles on how to become a better guitar teacher.

When you avoid the guitar teaching mistakes mentioned above both you and your students will benefit in many ways. You will both experience a greater fulfillment during your lessons. Your students will make much faster, easier and better progress in their guitar playing. You will likely keep your students active in taking lessons from you for a longer period of time. And your reputation as a guitar teacher will only be enhanced in the process.

Since you are still reading this article, it is clear that you have a sincere interest in helping your beginning guitar students (that’s good!). If you have not already done so, test your effectiveness on how to teach beginners guitar.

About the author: Tom Hess is a highly successful guitar teacher, professional touring guitarist and recording artist. He coaches other guitar teachers on how to teach guitar.

©2009 Tom Hess Music Corporation.
All Rights reserved.

Most guitar teachers struggle with at least some of the areas mentioned above. Many years ago, I was no different. I used to have a difficult time balancing the challenges of trying to help more students, become a more effective guitar teacher, grow my teaching income, and have time left at the end of the day. When I began teaching guitar, I had only a few students and struggled to support myself on teaching income only. My biggest challenges were getting consistent results with different types of students, having reliable systems in place for attracting more students and keeping my existing students from quitting before reaching their musical goals. I also couldn’t see an effective way to increase my income other than increasing the number of hours I taught or raising my lesson rates to very high levels.

Unfortunately, I could not find much help from anyone on how to change my situation. Although there were some very good musicians teaching guitar in my area, very few had anything that I considered to be a thriving guitar teaching business, meaning one that ensures effective, powerful and consistent results for students as well as financial success for the guitar teacher.

It became clear to me that following the conventional approaches to teaching guitar was not going to bring me the results I was after, neither for myself nor for my students. It took a long time of studying successful business people (outside of music), and a lot of trial and error, before I finally began to understand why my earlier attempts to become successful teaching guitar were so ineffective. Eventually I realized what I needed to change in my approach before I would be ready to start a highly successful guitar teaching business.

In this article, I will share with you nine of the biggest mistakes I used to make as a guitar teacher and that I notice many guitar teachers make. By correcting these mistakes, I was able to completely transform my guitar teaching in very powerful ways. This article is focused specifically on how to improve the business side of your guitar teaching, the ‘teaching side’ of your teaching business will be discussed in a future article.

Before reading further, it will be useful for you to assess your current level of readiness to become a highly successful guitar instructor. Take this five minute guitar teaching test before reading further. It will help you discover if you are making one or more of the top nine mistakes guitar teachersusually make.

1. Having limited teaching models.

The vast majority of guitar teachers only engage in one form of teaching: one-on-one lessons. While this approach certainly has its place, it is not the only guitar teaching method that could be or should be used to maximize the benefit to both your students and yourself. Contrary to conventional wisdom, students do not “always” learn most effectively in a one-on-one lesson format. Unfortunately, very few teachers ever venture outside of this traditional method. Many teachers simply aren’t aware of the benefits that other teaching formats have, or they follow what other guitar teachers do. There are many cases where a group class could be a more appropriate model, or at least be a useful addition to private lessons. The wide range of group teaching formats (when designed and taught in the right way)allows your students to interact and learn from one another. This is obviously not possible in private lessons. Also, group classes are usually more focused on one specific topic, allowing students to master it in less time. Finally, including group formats into your teaching can make your teaching business much more lucrative, less time-demanding and add more value to your students (plus it becomes more affordable for them!)

2. Not achieving meaningful results with students.

When it comes down to it, the only thing that really matters is the results that your students get from you. If you are able to consistently turn out good or great guitar players, then your positive reputation will begin to spread and referrals will come to you. So if your business is not growing at the rate you would like it to, one of the questions you should ask is: “How effective am I in getting powerful results with my students?” If your students are not happy with the results they receive, then you need to take a closer look at your teaching methods and ask yourself: How can I teach more effectively? How can I add more value to my students? Do the lesson formats I use produce effective results? Do I inspire my students or do I simply give them “information” about guitar playing? How can I lead my students through a literal life transforming experience as their guitar teacher, trainer, coach and mentor? One great way to improve as a teacher is to find the most successful guitar teacher you can, and take lessons with him or her on how to TEACH. Remember that the more you are able to fulfill and transform people’s musical lives in genuinely empowering ways, the faster your teaching business will grow.

I explain more about the topic of getting powerful and consistent results with students in my free 7 day e-mail mini course about teaching guitar.

3. Working too much “in” your guitar teaching business and not enough “on” it.

It is very common for music teachers (and business owners) to get so caught up in doing the daily work of “teaching” that little action is taken to actively expand and grow the business further. As a result, a business owner doesn’t really own a business; he/she only owns a “job”. Of course your teaching may expand on its own to some extent, but it will grow MUCH faster if you invest some time each week into doing things that will speed up this process. Focusing on promotion, analyzing and improving your teaching effectiveness and business models, creating referral programs, joint ventures and partnerships all create opportunities for you to maximize the value you add to your students and expand your business! Schedule some time each week to plan the direction you want your business to take in the next three, six, and twelve months. By being proactive in this way, you will see many positive results.

4. Not knowing how to distinguish yourself from the competition.

The best way to distinguish yourself from your competitors is to not have any. Read the last sentence several times and think about what it means! How can this apply to your situation as a guitar teacher? There are probably dozens (or hundreds) of guitar teachers in your local area, so it may seem impossible to “not have competitors”….or is it? One effective way to make all competition “irrelevant” is to offer something that no other music teacher in your area does. Having several teaching models in addition to the standard one-on-one lessons is one such possibility, but there are MANY others.

The options range from changing the way you conduct lessons to thinking of innovative ways for overcoming objections of prospective students that will make them want to choose you over the competition every time.

Here is another common competition problem and something you can do about it:

Very often you may only be able to attract students who live close to your teaching studio. When a prospective student lives further away, that distance creates a barrier of inconvenience and the student is more inclined to find a guitar instructor who is closer. Most teachers would simply give up and allow the person to study with someone else. But have you ever thought about what that inconvenience really means? Most of the time, the “distance” isn’t the problem. The problem (the objection) is the “time” that the student feels is wasted each week as they travel to and from your guitar lessons. They may love your lessons but hate wasting an hour to travel to you. Have you ever thought about what that means for you and how understanding this difference can be of great benefit to both you and your prospective students? There are several things you could do to turn this situation into a positive one. The question on your mind should be, “How can every minute they invest into traveling to me be reinvested into something useful for them?” Asking this question will likely inspire you to create some powerful resources to offer to your prospective students that they can study while commuting to and from your lessons! This is one of many examples of how you can differentiate yourself from the competition. The more you set yourself apart, the easier it will be to grow your teaching business.

5. Not understanding how to achieve geometric growth rather than linear growth.

Most music teachers only know how to grow their business linearly. They take one action in one area, and achieve some result. Then they repeat that same action and receive more results. Of course there is nothing wrong about this, but such an approach limits the amount of total growth you can achieve and the number of people you can help. Here is an example.

Most guitar teachers have only one or two ways of acquiring new students. Perhaps the most common method is advertising locally (posting flyers or placing ads in newspapers). So to recruit more new guitar students, most teachers either increase the number of ads they release, or change the ads to make them more effective. Let’s assume that last year you were able to recruit twenty new students. To increase this number, you publish more ads than before. As a result, this year you recruit twenty-five new students. Certainly this is good progress (a growth of five students or 25% per year), but you have only achieved linear growth. What if, in addition to advertisements you also focused on keeping your existing students longer, establishing joint ventures with music stores, and focused on converting a higher percentage of prospects into students? Most music teachers are completely unaware of how these elements can contribute to their guitar teaching business, and miss huge opportunities for MASSIVE growth!

If each of these elements provided you with 25% more students, your growth would now become geometric! The growth in each of these elements would compound on top of the others. Instead of expanding by only 25%, you can now grow by 144%! If your current state of business is at level 1, and you expand it by 25% (multiply by a factor 1.25) from 4 different business elements, your total growth is about 144%! (1 x 1.25 x 1.25 x 1.25 x 1.25 = 2.44 or 144% increase!!!). This means that your student count can go from 20 to 48 instead of 20 to 25 in one year!

6. Not being able to think of unconventional ways of attracting more prospective students.

Even if all you do is post flyers in your area and take out ads in newspapers, what have you done to maximize the results you get from these efforts? If you simply try to copy what everyone around you is doing to attract students, you will get the same results as everyone else. But if you want to grow your business and help more people than the average guitar teacher, then you will need to use approaches that are better than average. Taking some marketing classes will help you to greatly increase the response rate to standard ads. But in addition to the obvious, it is often the most unconventional methods that bring the best results. Have you thought about partnering up with a music store around your area to refer students/customers to each other? This idea can result in much more business for both parties, and it costs nothing to set up! I have a guitar student right now (who is a professional guitar teacher) who does this in his area and almost all of his fifty-seven students came from this single idea!

7. Not having effective systems in place for converting prospects into becoming students.

Students will be so much more likely to take lessons from you when you can prove to them beyond any doubt that their life will be enhanced by having you as a teacher. One of the best ways to do this is to show the results you have achieved by helping other people. No matter what you promise “in words”, there must be clear proof to back up your claims. When it comes to conversion, there is little else as effective as solid proof of your success with other students. Some guitar teachers make the mistake of acting like salespeople, trying to “sell” the lessons to students. What you need to do instead is to make the prospect see on their own that you are the most logical and most viable solution to their musical problems. Nobody likes to be “sold” to, so you should let your massive evidence of success with students speak for itself. You must also find out as much as you can about your prospective student’s specific goals, musical challenges, and current playing level. After you know this, it will be easier to prove to the person that you can give them the help that they need. Most importantly, you MUST back up every claim you make. If a prospective new student asks to study with you, but you are not comfortable teaching in his/her style, skill level, or musical ambitions, then do NOT teach that student. The fastest way to destroy a business is to fail to deliver what you promise!

8. Not knowing how to keep students for a long time (years!)

Your students will continue studying with you as long as you continue to find unique ways to add value and enrich their musical lives. When you do this, it is possible to keep students for five, six, eight, ten or more years! One effective way to ensure that students remain with you longer is to have something to offer that will allow them to continuously advance as musicians. This becomes easy to do if in addition to private lessons you teach several group classes that go in depth on very specific topics. This will allow your students to learn more from you in a new setting while also learning from your other advancing guitar students. Think about the students you have now. You know them well (or at least you should). Ask yourself, in what ways might you be able to provide additional benefits and value to each person you work with? To be clear, I am not implying that you should create an environment of “dependency”. Certainly our goal as guitar teachers is to make our students grow so that they may become totally independent and not “need” us forever, but that does not mean you should not constantly look to add huge amounts of value to them for years to come! They should WANT to remain your student for a long time because of the benefit you provide them (not because you are holding them back). Although this might seem like simple common sense, the truth is the VAST majority of music teachers in general, and guitar teachers in particular, don’t do a very good job in this area, and that is why so many teachers and students struggle unnecessarily.

9. Not knowing how to motivate existing students to refer new students to you.

Growing your student base through referrals is a very powerful method of expanding your guitar teaching business. However, in order to encourage referrals, you need to have incentives strong enough to make your existing students to WANT to refer their friends to you. One of the strongest incentives is to consistently turn your students into great players and help them reach their musical goals. In most cases, the more satisfied your students are, the more referrals you will get.

Another possibility is to offer bonus lessons or bonus instructional items that your students can ONLY obtain when they refer their friends to you. There are many more possibilities, but these are just two to get you started thinking. Don’t simply rely on word of mouth to work for you! An effective, organized and systematic referral system will bring you exponentially more students!

It should now be more obvious why guitar teachers struggle with teaching more effectively and earning more money in the process. I hope that by reading this article you have seen that this situation does not have to be this way! Although the list above is not all inclusive, if you take action on each of the nine points discussed here, you will surely see your level of success and effectiveness as a guitar teacher begin to grow more rapidly. If you haven’t taken the test mentioned earlier in this article, I encourage you to do so now to find out how prepared you are to establish a highly successful guitar teaching business. Test yourself here.

Also, I highly recommend checking out the free 7 day e-mail mini course about how to become a truly exceptional guitar teacher.

©2009 Tom Hess Music Corporation. All Rights Reserved

Take it a little at a time, and let the student build up the calluses like the rest of us have! Even just strumming Em /A (the beginning of Somebody to Love, or Summertime) which may be easier to hold down may be ok. You can consider nylon strings for a year or two. They don’t sound as rich as the metal, but may be easier to hold down and strum. A luthier (if you know one, or if there is a good guitar store near you) may be able to lower the guitar’s action, making it easier as well.

Learning to read music is a good idea. Both of my kids learned to read music via the piano when they were 5 or 6, and I took lessons from that age as well. It’s a skill that will be useful for the rest of one’s life.

From the Editor: In addition to Laura’s comments, I’d also like to recommend a couple of things – first off, many teachers start off their younger students with partial chords, using just the first three or four strings. For instance, you can play a G like this: xx0003 and a C like this: xxx010. Another thing that one can do is to use an open tuning (usually G or D). This is especially good if the child it adept at strumming. You can show where to barre the frets (or even use a slide) for your typical three chord song and the two of you can have a blast.

For even more on teaching guitar to children check out Laura’s lesson How Young is too Young to Play. Laura’s latest article discusses children and musical instruments. How young can one start? What things should be taken into consideration? There’s some wonderful tips and advice here.