How To Become A Very Successful Guitar Teacher
Tom Hess, composer, guitarist in metal band Rhapsody Of Fire and trainer for guitar teachers around the world reveals the secrets to success in the guitar teaching business.
Did you ever stop to research the other local guitar teachers in your area? If you are like most guitar teachers, you have looked up your competition by checking out their website, newspaper ads or even calling them on the phone. After doing this you probably noticed that some of these guitar teachers seem to be very successful (with many students, testimonials, etc.). Most people assume that this success comes from the things that these guitar teachers do; however, there is much more to it than that. Fact is, what you do as a guitar teacher is only one part of the big picture.
After teaching over one thousand students as a professional guitar teacher and helping many other teachers learn how to become more productive in getting results for their students, I have spent a great deal of time figuring out the whole story behind what makes some teachers successful and others mediocre in order to best help my clients attain great results in their guitar teaching businesses. After much research, I have observed that most guitar teachers posses some kind of balance between two sides in their mindset. These sides consist of one side that focuses on strengths and another that focuses on weaknesses. The guitar teachers who have highly successful guitar teaching businesses have mastered the ability to channel the side of them that focuses on using their strengths to their advantage while guitar teachers who do not experience much success tend to think mostly from the side of them that focuses on weakness (more on this shortly).
In my previous guitar teaching articles I have explained the specific ideas around what to do to grow your guitar teaching business (if you have not read these articles just yet, download this free resource about < ahref="/links/?u=http://tomhess.net/EarnMoreMoneyInYourGuitarTeachingBusiness.aspx">making a good living as a guitar teacher). In this article, I would like to explain to you a very crucial part of teaching guitar that can make a significant difference between you achieving great success as a guitar teacher or not. This is one aspect of the guitar teacher training that I take teachers through as I coach them so that they can get the most out of the strategies that I teach them.
Understanding The Psychology Of A Guitar Teacher
As guitar teachers, we generally have similar goals we wish to achieve. That said, everyone has their own unique set of personality traits that gives them both strengths and weaknesses while taking action in any given situation. This effectively shapes and molds the growth of their guitar teaching business. In a similar manner, the skills you gain during your development as a musician will also determine your strongest and weakest areas of musical expertise. For each of the strong points in your personality, there also exists a weak point that can potentially cancel out the benefits from your strengths. Until and unless you identify and correct these weak areas in your personality, your strengths will most likely become overrun; leaving you frustrated by keeping you from accomplishing your goal. Fact is, this is an extremely common occurrence for all kinds of guitar teachers (and most of them are not even aware of it!).
If you have not reached a high level of success already as a guitar teacher, it is crucial that you learn how to get all you can out of your strengths while minimizing the unwanted effects of the weaknesses that accompany them. No matter what, if you do not take the time to do this, you will NOT be able to achieve great success as a guitar teacher.
Every guitar teacher will a successful guitar teaching business knows about this, and fortunately; you can learn this for yourself regardless of whether or not it is something that comes naturally to you.
To demonstrate my point, I am going to show you some of the most common traits I observe in the guitar teachers I train each day. In the chart below, I will show you how each personality strength also contains a weakness. The truth is, there are many more weaknesses per strength than what I have included, but I have narrowed it down to just one in order to keep this article from becoming too long.
Keep in mind that the strengths I have listed on the left side of the column are certainly beneficial and this WILL help you become a better guitar teacher. However, you must also understand that these strengths can also become your weaknesses until you take the necessary steps to prevent this from occurring.
Your StrengthOpposing Weakness
Your guitar playing skills are highly developed.A lot of great guitar players have difficulty identifying with the challenges of low level guitarists (who are by the way - the majority of guitar students). As a result, these types of guitar teachers are lacking in an area that affects most of their potential students. You must be able to relate to the challenges of your students who are just starting (or are not at a high level in their playing yet). Many guitar teachers with great guitar playing skills fall short in this area.
You have a passion to teach guitar and help your students achieve results.Being passionate about teaching guitar is certainly a MUST if you want to become a successful guitar teacher. However, many guitar teachers who are highly passionate tend to ignore the business aspect of teaching guitar for a living. As a result, they end up teaching (and helping) less students overall since they do not earn enough money to expand their guitar teaching business. The truth is, the more money you make, the more you can invest it into building the value of your guitar lessons in order to give more to your students.
You have already been teaching for a long time.These types of guitar teachers often have a difficult time when it comes to changing the teaching methods they are used to. As a result, their overall guitar teaching strategy lacks innovation and they experience greatly limited growth of their guitar teaching business. This is one of the biggest reasons that there are so many average guitar teachers who do not get BIG results for their students.
You play several instruments in addition to guitar.When guitar students look for someone to teach them guitar, they are much more prone to seek the help of an expert who specializes in guitar rather than someone who teaches many different instruments. By marketing yourself as a teacher of many instruments, you may actually end up doing more harm than good to your reputation as a guitar teacher.
You have a very disciplined approach to learning guitar and take music very seriously. Guitar teachers who possess this strength generally cannot relate to students who are learning guitar just for fun. The truth is that almost all of your guitar students will be interested in guitar as a hobby, and until you can relate to their basic guitar playing goals on their level, you will have a hard time getting them to come back for lessons.
You have achieved many things in your professional music career.As you invest a lot of time into your music career, it usually leaves very little time to improve your teaching skills so you can teach guitar at a high level. In fact, this is a major reason why many pro musicians who are already successful in their music careers are unable to help their students achieve BIG results.
You usually think out your plans and goals in advance.While it is useful (and necessary) to be able to create plans in advance for your guitar teaching business, do not make the mistake of over-planning. Remember, nothing in your guitar teaching business will start to fall into place until you take ACTION to make it happen!
You have a lot of ambition and many ideas for expanding your guitar teaching business.The guitar teachers in this category are prone to beginning many new projects out of strong enthusiasm; but end up leaving most of them unfinished. To them, it feels like they are working very hard, but in reality they are making very little progress.
You have a strong and persistent work ethic.It is common for people who are persistent to also adapt the trait of being stubborn. This can hold you back from cutting out ineffective teaching methods or approaches in the way you run your guitar teaching business.
You are very self-dependent.Self-dependence is a great quality to have; however many guitar teachers who are strong in this area feel a resistance to asking for help when they need it. In order to develop your guitar teaching business, you can steer clear of many common obstacles by learning from someone who has already been down the same road as you.
You often think of new and innovative ideas.These types will often take steps to innovate before they fully understand the fundamental way that things work (that work just as effectively). Being an innovator is a great quality to have, but only when innovation is used without sacrificing the conventional methods that already work well.
You enjoy offering all you can for your guitar students and making every lesson as enjoyable as possible.Guitar teachers who seek to give their guitar students as much value as they can have a tendency to overcompensate and give too much. Additionally, these types of teachers have a hard time with confrontation and struggle to enforce their teaching policies.
What do you need to do now?
You now have a detailed understanding about how the strengths and weaknesses of your personality work together to get you to behave in a certain way. Take advantage of this knowledge now by reading the steps below and taking action to begin growing your guitar teaching business:
1. Read again through the chart above to identify your own strengths and weaknesses as a guitar teacher and for running your guitar teaching business. Learn more by answering the questions in this free guitar teacher improvement assessment.
2. Determine a solid plan for how you will get the greatest benefit from each of your strong qualities while reducing the effect of all corresponding negative qualities. Begin this by identifying the ways that these negative qualities come out for you as you teach guitar. Think of this in terms of the actions you take, the thoughts that enter your mind and the strong beliefs you have currently.
3. Know that becoming stable and balanced in your guitar teaching personality means consistently planning ahead and seeking out the advice and training of an expert who has been in the same situation as you. It is very common for guitar teachers to act in the moment rather than take the time to map things out and plan ahead. Although they probably understand that it is important to make plans, they simply cannot get into the habit of thinking ahead. If this describes you, or if you are not really sure about what weaknesses you need to focus on eliminating, then you will get the most benefit from working with someone who can help you with this.
4. Make a commitment to refine your current approach in your guitar teaching business by keeping the above ideas in mind.
That said, you should certainly continue learning more about the things that you need to do as a successful guitar teacher. However, remember that learning new teaching skills is not the only piece of the puzzle. In order to quickly become a great guitar teacher, you must first assess your strong and weak qualities as described in this article. Only then will you be able to take full advantage of all the things you learn. Once you have the ability to utilize the full potential of all your strongest qualities, your success as a guitar teacher will quickly take off.
To get additional help for identifying your strengths and weaknesses as a guitar teacher, answer the questions in this special guitar teacher improvement assessment and download this guide for making a good living as a guitar teacher.
Did you ever stop to research the other local guitar teachers in your area? If you are like most guitar teachers, you have looked up your competition by checking out their website, newspaper ads or even calling them on the phone. After doing this you probably noticed that some of these guitar teachers seem to be very successful (with many students, testimonials, etc.). Most people assume that this success comes from the things that these guitar teachers do; however, there is much more to it than that. Fact is, what you do as a guitar teacher is only one part of the big picture.
After teaching over one thousand students as a professional guitar teacher and helping many other teachers learn how to become more productive in getting results for their students, I have spent a great deal of time figuring out the whole story behind what makes some teachers successful and others mediocre in order to best help my clients attain great results in their guitar teaching businesses. After much research, I have observed that most guitar teachers posses some kind of balance between two sides in their mindset. These sides consist of one side that focuses on strengths and another that focuses on weaknesses. The guitar teachers who have highly successful guitar teaching businesses have mastered the ability to channel the side of them that focuses on using their strengths to their advantage while guitar teachers who do not experience much success tend to think mostly from the side of them that focuses on weakness (more on this shortly).
In my previous guitar teaching articles I have explained the specific ideas around what to do to grow your guitar teaching business (if you have not read these articles just yet, download this free resource about < ahref="/links/?u=http://tomhess.net/EarnMoreMoneyInYourGuitarTeachingBusiness.aspx">making a good living as a guitar teacher). In this article, I would like to explain to you a very crucial part of teaching guitar that can make a significant difference between you achieving great success as a guitar teacher or not. This is one aspect of the guitar teacher training that I take teachers through as I coach them so that they can get the most out of the strategies that I teach them.
Understanding The Psychology Of A Guitar Teacher
As guitar teachers, we generally have similar goals we wish to achieve. That said, everyone has their own unique set of personality traits that gives them both strengths and weaknesses while taking action in any given situation. This effectively shapes and molds the growth of their guitar teaching business. In a similar manner, the skills you gain during your development as a musician will also determine your strongest and weakest areas of musical expertise. For each of the strong points in your personality, there also exists a weak point that can potentially cancel out the benefits from your strengths. Until and unless you identify and correct these weak areas in your personality, your strengths will most likely become overrun; leaving you frustrated by keeping you from accomplishing your goal. Fact is, this is an extremely common occurrence for all kinds of guitar teachers (and most of them are not even aware of it!).
If you have not reached a high level of success already as a guitar teacher, it is crucial that you learn how to get all you can out of your strengths while minimizing the unwanted effects of the weaknesses that accompany them. No matter what, if you do not take the time to do this, you will NOT be able to achieve great success as a guitar teacher.
Every guitar teacher will a successful guitar teaching business knows about this, and fortunately; you can learn this for yourself regardless of whether or not it is something that comes naturally to you.
To demonstrate my point, I am going to show you some of the most common traits I observe in the guitar teachers I train each day. In the chart below, I will show you how each personality strength also contains a weakness. The truth is, there are many more weaknesses per strength than what I have included, but I have narrowed it down to just one in order to keep this article from becoming too long.
Keep in mind that the strengths I have listed on the left side of the column are certainly beneficial and this WILL help you become a better guitar teacher. However, you must also understand that these strengths can also become your weaknesses until you take the necessary steps to prevent this from occurring.
Your StrengthOpposing Weakness
Your guitar playing skills are highly developed.A lot of great guitar players have difficulty identifying with the challenges of low level guitarists (who are by the way - the majority of guitar students). As a result, these types of guitar teachers are lacking in an area that affects most of their potential students. You must be able to relate to the challenges of your students who are just starting (or are not at a high level in their playing yet). Many guitar teachers with great guitar playing skills fall short in this area.
You have a passion to teach guitar and help your students achieve results.Being passionate about teaching guitar is certainly a MUST if you want to become a successful guitar teacher. However, many guitar teachers who are highly passionate tend to ignore the business aspect of teaching guitar for a living. As a result, they end up teaching (and helping) less students overall since they do not earn enough money to expand their guitar teaching business. The truth is, the more money you make, the more you can invest it into building the value of your guitar lessons in order to give more to your students.
You have already been teaching for a long time.These types of guitar teachers often have a difficult time when it comes to changing the teaching methods they are used to. As a result, their overall guitar teaching strategy lacks innovation and they experience greatly limited growth of their guitar teaching business. This is one of the biggest reasons that there are so many average guitar teachers who do not get BIG results for their students.
You play several instruments in addition to guitar.When guitar students look for someone to teach them guitar, they are much more prone to seek the help of an expert who specializes in guitar rather than someone who teaches many different instruments. By marketing yourself as a teacher of many instruments, you may actually end up doing more harm than good to your reputation as a guitar teacher.
You have a very disciplined approach to learning guitar and take music very seriously. Guitar teachers who possess this strength generally cannot relate to students who are learning guitar just for fun. The truth is that almost all of your guitar students will be interested in guitar as a hobby, and until you can relate to their basic guitar playing goals on their level, you will have a hard time getting them to come back for lessons.
You have achieved many things in your professional music career.As you invest a lot of time into your music career, it usually leaves very little time to improve your teaching skills so you can teach guitar at a high level. In fact, this is a major reason why many pro musicians who are already successful in their music careers are unable to help their students achieve BIG results.
You usually think out your plans and goals in advance.While it is useful (and necessary) to be able to create plans in advance for your guitar teaching business, do not make the mistake of over-planning. Remember, nothing in your guitar teaching business will start to fall into place until you take ACTION to make it happen!
You have a lot of ambition and many ideas for expanding your guitar teaching business.The guitar teachers in this category are prone to beginning many new projects out of strong enthusiasm; but end up leaving most of them unfinished. To them, it feels like they are working very hard, but in reality they are making very little progress.
You have a strong and persistent work ethic.It is common for people who are persistent to also adapt the trait of being stubborn. This can hold you back from cutting out ineffective teaching methods or approaches in the way you run your guitar teaching business.
You are very self-dependent.Self-dependence is a great quality to have; however many guitar teachers who are strong in this area feel a resistance to asking for help when they need it. In order to develop your guitar teaching business, you can steer clear of many common obstacles by learning from someone who has already been down the same road as you.
You often think of new and innovative ideas.These types will often take steps to innovate before they fully understand the fundamental way that things work (that work just as effectively). Being an innovator is a great quality to have, but only when innovation is used without sacrificing the conventional methods that already work well.
You enjoy offering all you can for your guitar students and making every lesson as enjoyable as possible.Guitar teachers who seek to give their guitar students as much value as they can have a tendency to overcompensate and give too much. Additionally, these types of teachers have a hard time with confrontation and struggle to enforce their teaching policies.
What do you need to do now?
You now have a detailed understanding about how the strengths and weaknesses of your personality work together to get you to behave in a certain way. Take advantage of this knowledge now by reading the steps below and taking action to begin growing your guitar teaching business:
1. Read again through the chart above to identify your own strengths and weaknesses as a guitar teacher and for running your guitar teaching business. Learn more by answering the questions in this free guitar teacher improvement assessment.
2. Determine a solid plan for how you will get the greatest benefit from each of your strong qualities while reducing the effect of all corresponding negative qualities. Begin this by identifying the ways that these negative qualities come out for you as you teach guitar. Think of this in terms of the actions you take, the thoughts that enter your mind and the strong beliefs you have currently.
3. Know that becoming stable and balanced in your guitar teaching personality means consistently planning ahead and seeking out the advice and training of an expert who has been in the same situation as you. It is very common for guitar teachers to act in the moment rather than take the time to map things out and plan ahead. Although they probably understand that it is important to make plans, they simply cannot get into the habit of thinking ahead. If this describes you, or if you are not really sure about what weaknesses you need to focus on eliminating, then you will get the most benefit from working with someone who can help you with this.
4. Make a commitment to refine your current approach in your guitar teaching business by keeping the above ideas in mind.
That said, you should certainly continue learning more about the things that you need to do as a successful guitar teacher. However, remember that learning new teaching skills is not the only piece of the puzzle. In order to quickly become a great guitar teacher, you must first assess your strong and weak qualities as described in this article. Only then will you be able to take full advantage of all the things you learn. Once you have the ability to utilize the full potential of all your strongest qualities, your success as a guitar teacher will quickly take off.
To get additional help for identifying your strengths and weaknesses as a guitar teacher, answer the questions in this special guitar teacher improvement assessment and download this guide for making a good living as a guitar teacher.
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