How to make good honest-money doing what you love – teaching guitar and inspiring others.
Teaching guitar at a professional level starts simple. If you are interested in becoming a part-time or full-time professional guitar tutor, you need to start by considering your branding, unique selling points, price points, marketing strategies, target audience as well as many other elements covered in my series on how to make money teaching guitar.
In this post I want to focus on the idea of expanding your guitar teaching business whilst maintaining security.
Experience Making Money Doing What You Love
Most guitar teachers only teach at a low level for extra money to supplement their main income. Most people are looking to secure a secondary income stream to support themselves through harder times. If you play guitar for enjoyment and think you have the ability to teach guitar, guitar teaching can be a great way to do this, as it allows you to have extra money and inspire others to play guitar.
Inspiring others
What I have realised over the years is that the most rewarding jobs are the ones that allow you to have impact and inspire others. If you are driven by seeing your hard work have an impact on others but you rarely experience it, then you should start considering getting your first guitar student. My experiences of teaching guitar are the most rewarding experiences of my working life. Seeing one of your students grow and develop as a player is a fantastic feeling. My favourite moments are when you get to perform or create music with a student which you have taught from the beginner level.
Part-time guitar tuition with growth
If you have the desire to teach guitar and grow a steady client base but you are scared to take the leap and quit your day job, you need to expand but maintain security by hiring someone else to take on students for you. If you live in a city you will find a suitable guitar teacher relatively easy after some casual interviews. If you live in a small town then it may be harder to find a guitar teacher that is a professional and meets your expectations. My advice would be to put an advert on Gumtree with a headline like “Guitar Teacher Wanted to Join Small Guitar Teaching Business”. You will be surprised how many people contact you. Then the challenge will be what you are looking for in a guitar tutor. Consider their style and your target market, and how they may bring value to your business.
How do you benefit from hiring a guitar teacher to work for you?
The benefits of hiring a guitar teacher to work alongside you are great. You get to give another guitarist an opportunity to develop as a guitar tutor and support themselves. You will also benefit by taking a % cut from the guitar tutor you have hired, so you will earn money whilst not having to spend more time teaching. Another great thing about hiring another tutor, is that you can spread your brand and determine how much demand there is for your service. If you find that you are able to provide full-time teaching work for your hired tutor, then you may be able to gauge if you can quit your day job and take teaching on full-time.
The beauty of expanding in this way is that you can remain secure and develop your business. You must however, factor in the time to secure new students for yourself and to market your business to ensure you can keep new business coming in.
If you are a guitar tutor looking for advice from an experienced tuition business then contact me with questions and I will be happy to help out. If you would like consulting time with Your Guitar Tutor then please don’t hesitate to contact me.
Image credit to Howard Lake