By Tom Hess

Having no success building a thriving guitar teaching business? One of the greatest ways to become more successful is to look at how successful people think in other fields. For instance, if you have ever watched the Olympics, you know that there is an extremely thin margin for error that decides who takes the gold and who never make it to the podium at all. Only a precious few of these athletes win medals while the rest have to go home with nothing.

Truth is, teaching guitar in your local community is not so different from this. There are tons of guitar teachers around the globe, but only a tiny fraction of them build successful businesses and get significant results for their students. Everyone else works just as hard at becoming successful but are unable to realize their goals, make a great living through guitar teaching and produce great guitar students. How do I know? I’ve been in both positions. Many years ago (when I first began teaching guitar) I struggled while trying to put together a profitable teaching business before becoming the world’s leader in online guitar lessons and mentor to many guitar instructors all over the world.

Most guitar teachers who are struggling in their businesses think that successful teachers simply ‘know more’ about music or guitar instruction. There is ‘some’ truth to this, however, these things are NOT the greatest factors for why some people are able to build highly successful guitar teaching businesses why others don’t know how to help their students get big results and end up working full time day jobs just to get by. Over the years I discovered that the main factor for becoming the most successful guitar teacher in your local area is related to that which makes up the foundation of your teaching business (not simply ‘how you teach guitar’).

Of course, it should be understood that you always need to work on becoming a better guitar teacher by improving your teaching methods. However, if you want to achieve great success in your teaching career, you must focus less on working IN your guitar teaching business (by ‘only’ working on daily tasks relating to actually teaching lessons, preparing materials, etc.). and you must invest more time into working ON your guitar teaching business as a whole.

There are many things that make up the core of any massively successful guitar teaching business. Some of these things include: developing a specific guitar teaching niche, putting together student referral systems, creating a solid teaching policy, understanding the process for attracting new students on a consistent basis, building Win/Win partnerships and much more (you can discover what specific elements are needed for building your guitar teaching business by downloading this free guitar teaching eBook). Truth is, the majority of guitar teachers either ignores the elements mentioned above or do not develop them enough to quickly expand their business in order to overcome local competition.

If you haven’t already become the number one guitar teacher in your area, here is some good news:

1. It’s much easier than you would think to change the way you run your guitar teaching business. It just takes a strong desire to get started – the work is not actually very hard at all. Most of the guitar teachers I train are surprised when I show them how easy it is to become successful in this business.

2. The benefits you will get from doing this will be HUGE, both for developing your guitar teaching business AND helping your students.

This is how building a strong foundation for your guitar teaching business will help you ‘break through’ and achieve success that is far beyond what most will ever experience:

You Will Help Your Students Make Fast Progress And Get BIG Results In Their Playing

Here is why this will happen:

1. As discussed above, when you work hard to develop a strong foundation for your guitar teaching business, you will naturally attract more serious clients. These people will have a much higher level of motivation to get better on guitar and closely follow your instructions for doing so. This means they will get better at a much faster rate than other guitar students. As a result, all your other students will (usually unconsciously) become inspired to get better so they can reach the same level as your serious students. By applying what you learn from this article to develop your guitar teaching business, you will inspire all your students to get better results.

2. Once your guitar teaching business begins growing and you make a lot of money, it will be much easier for you to get better results for your students using unique approaches you never could’ve used if you were struggling to make ends meet (like the majority of guitar teachers).

You Will Naturally Attract Tons Of Serious Guitar Students

Any guitar teacher would prefer to work with serious, highly dedicated students who practice often, respect lesson policies and make the fastest progress. These kinds of students are fun to work with, but most guitar teachers are clueless when it comes to attracting them. In order to get these students to work with you, you must first create an environment that is optimal for these students to work in. Working on the elements above will help you do this.

Your Students Are Going To Take Lessons With You Longer

Once you are able to attract serious guitar students, you will also be able to keep your students taking lessons for longer periods of time. The reasons why this happens are a) serious students are more likely to study longer with you and b) finding creative ways to inspire your students to keep studying with you is a critical aspect of building a successful guitar teaching business in the long term.

You Will Make A Great Living From Teaching Guitar

When you start thinking of guitar teaching as a ‘business’ and invest time into developing the foundation that is required to run it effectively, it’s very likely you’ll be able to make a lot of money (100k+) while working relatively few hours in a week. However, before you can do this, you must do the things that most teachers don’t do. I talk about this in more detail in this free online resource on how to make money as a guitar teacher.

Your Guitar Students Will Tell All Their Friends To Take Lessons With You

One of the perks that comes along with having serious guitar students is the increased amount of referrals you will get compared to the amount you will get from ‘regular’ students. Chances are, your most serious students already know several other guitar players who are also serious about improving (and will be interested in working with someone who can help them get better). Once they find out that their friends are taking lessons with you, you will instantly be put on the top of their list when it comes to choosing a local guitar teacher to work with.

Now that you know the main difference between highly successful guitar teachers and mediocre teachers, it’s up to you to decide which group you want to be a part of. If you are 100% serious about becoming a highly successful guitar teacher, this is what you must do right now:

1. Get as much information as you can about how to build a strong foundation for your guitar teaching business by downloading this resource on how to make money as a guitar teacher.

2. Invest some time each week into working ON your guitar teaching career rather than only concentrating on preparing lessons, teaching materials, etc.

3. Take the same path as successful Olympic athletes: find an experienced trainer who helps other guitar teachers achieve the greatest success possible in their local areas and who will show exactly how to do this for yourself. Your trainer will not simply tell you what needs to be done, but will hold you accountable for completing all the necessary steps for building a successful teaching business.

When you follow the steps above you will put yourself on a whole new level above all the local teachers in your area and achieve more success in your teaching business than ever before.

Start making good money as a guitar teacher by reading this eBook about make money as a guitar teacher.

About The Author:

Tom Hess is a highly successful guitar teacher, recording artist and the guitar player. He helps people from all over the world learn how to teach guitar. Visit his website tomhess.net to get free guitar teacher resources and to read more guitar teaching articles.

Tom Hess is our resident author, for other information including how to become an online guitar tutor go to http://www.internet-guitar-lessons.com/