Why Your Guitar Teaching Policy Makes Or Breaks Your Business

Why Your Guitar Teaching Policy Makes Or Breaks Your Business

By Tom Hess

Having a weak guitar teaching policy makes running a successful business difficult. Here’s why and what to do instead:

Having a weak guitar teaching policy gives students power over your time and lets them walk all over you. This commonly happens when guitar teachers allow “make-up” lessons, don't express big expectations up front and charge their students on a lesson to lesson basis. This approach leads to the following problems:

Problem 1: Students Show Up Late Or Not At All

When your students haven’t paid for lessons in advance, they cancel at a moment’s notice or sometimes simply do not show up. To make things worse, they expect you to accommodate them by making up the lesson at a later date. This forces you to adjust your schedule for them.

Solution: Have your students pay for lessons in advance and enforce a no make-up policy.

Problem 2: Not Knowing If You’ll Get Paid Or Not

Nothing is more stressful than not knowing if you’ll get paid for lessons each week because your students are paying on a week-to-week basis.

Solution: Have your students pay on a month-to-month basis instead. This makes teaching guitar for a living much more stable.

Problem 3: Your Students Aren't Practicing

Some guitar students fail to improve not because of you, but because they don't practice. This happens often when you don't create a lesson policy that states that your students must practice on their own.

Solution: Express big expectations for your students as soon as they begin taking lessons with you. Let them know that you expect them to work hard/practice at home and explain how this is crucial for their progress. If you have students who consistently do not practice, stop giving them lessons and move onto another student who takes guitar more seriously.

Bottom line: use a policy that has students pay in advance, expresses expectations for practicing at home and enforces a strict no-makeups rule.

Want to grow a successful teaching business fast? Read this guitar teaching article and learn how to make a great living through guitar while avoiding common mistakes other teachers make.