What Advice Would You Give Someone Who Wants To Teach Guitar Professionally?
The biggest misconception when it comes to teaching or mentorship—which I used to believe myself—is that you have to be “the best of the best” in order to do it.
This isn’t true in most instances. All you need to be is a few steps ahead of someone else or a group of people. Then that group of people, that were once where you were at, craving to learn guitar from scratch becomes your target audience.
Disclaimer: I know nothing about guitar so take what works or adapt it in a way that makes sense in your expertise. This advice could apply to a lot of different hobbies or interests.
Where Are You At For Knowledge Level?
I do think you should know the basics of how to read sheet music and the different notes of guitar so that you can teach students that. So if you know a few different songs, maybe an easy one, intermediate one, and a more difficult one, that’s a great start.
Who Are You Going To Teach?
You’ve got to get clear at where your at so that you can get clear about who your ideal client/student is. Do they already have a guitar? Did they just buy a guitar? Are they looking to buy a guitar? Are they a beginner or intermediate?
How Are You Wanting To Teach?
Is it going to be in person or virtual? This could be packaged in so many different ways and could include multiple offerings, especially if done virtually and teaching beginners.
If they don’t have a guitar, you could offer a digital ebook, mini course, or lead magnet (freebie that people exchange their email to download) explaining what to look for when shopping for a guitar. What brands are the most accessible/affordable, what’s the middle of the line, what’s the top of the line.
Then you could have a pre recorded video course teaching different levels:
A beginner course learning how to read sheet music, those notes on the guitar, and a simple song
An intermediate course potentially refreshing their knowledge and learning a more intermediate level song, whether this is a more lengthy or or complicated note pairings.
A more advanced level course where they learn more difficult songs, notes, etc.
Again, I know nothing about guitar so apply it in what would make sense but I do know that course options are definitely possible.
You could offer daily one on one 30 minute lessons.
You could also package this as a 1 on 1 teaching program.
The program length is difficult for me to say because I don’t know how long it takes to learn to read sheet music, the notes on a guitar, and the different level of songs. So you would have to adjust the following advice to what might be more realistic from your experience.
Is it possible to do it as a 3 week program or a month program?
Week 1 they learn to read sheet music and those notes on the guitar.
Week 2 they learn a simple song
Week 3 they learn an intermediate song
Week 4 they learn an advanced song
Or an 8-12 week program that spreads out the reading sheet music and learning notes to 2 weeks, simple song 2 weeks, intermediate song 2 weeks, advanced song 2 weeks. They work with you 30 minutes everyday, 1 on 1, Monday through Friday.
Start by teaching them how to read the sheet music and what those notes are on the guitar. Teach them the easiest song you know. Whether done in person or virtually with zoom. Provide copies of the sheet music for them, whether PDFs or physical so they can practice on their own as well.
Give them homework on the weekends/to practice daily. Maybe even have them record a short video of them playing the song over each weekend to send to you or post what they are learning on their social medias. Once they get the hang of that and can play the song well. Move to the next one, then the next one.
How Are You Going To Price It?
Pricing can vary, especially if you are looking to do this as a side hustle or full-time income.
The how to pick out a guitar ebook could be $7, if it’s not a freebie.
The beginner learn to read sheet music and guitar notes prerecorded course could be 97-197$
The intermediate and advance could be priced separately or together around 297$
You could do it all as one course or offer it as a bundle for customers to save when they buy all of them like get all of them for 197—397$
1 on 1 Single Lessons 17-27$
1 on 1 Packaged Program could be 497-1197$
For the 1 on 1 teaching package this could vary based on the length and whether or not you’re wanting this to be your full time source of income or a side hustle. Side hustle allows a bit more flexibility in pricing because you’re just looking for a bit of extra cash flow versus needing to replace a full-time salary.
Replace Your Salary and Leave Your 9-5
Professionally just means you’re getting paid for it. If you’re wanting it to be a full time income, you’re gonna have to do some math to figure out your bare minimum. Calculate your monthly expenses and price your package off of that as well as an acceptable amount of clients that you could realistically handle each month/each day for the lessons.
Let’s say your total expenses are $3,000 a month.
Say you’re doing 30 minute daily lessons say Monday through Friday and providing homework over the weekend
How many lessons can you comfortably give daily?
8 clients would be 4 hours of your time daily
16 clients would be 8 hours of you time daily
For this example let’s say 10 clients, so you’re working with clients 5 hours everyday. This potentially leaves some flexibility to offer single sessions on the side.
Your bills are 3k each month
So 3000 dollars divided by 10 clients is 300 dollars minimum per client for the month, not including what you may have to pay in taxes.
How long is the 1 on 1 teaching program?
Is it one month? Or do they need longer to learn? Do most people learn in a month and then you could offer a bonus month at a discounted rate for those that still need more time? Or does it take 2 months for them to learn the basics?
For this example let’s say it’s a two month program. Then you have to account for the fact that you might not be getting paid by new clients for a month, if you’re unable to take another 10 clients every month.
If you were taking 10 clients every month for 2 month program, you would be teaching 20 clients a lot of months, working 10 hours everyday Monday through Friday and you’d more than likely burn yourself out.
6000 dollars for 2 months in bills is 600 per client. This isn’t including money to put away for taxes.
So you would need your 10 clients to pay you at least 600 dollars minimum, one time, to pay your bills for two months. Personally I think that’s not a bad price for a guitar program at all, and if anything it’s quite low for a daily support program.
Let’s Include Estimated Taxes
Disclaimer: This is not tax advice.
I usually round about 30 percent for taxes, but this will vary based off of where you are located.
For the example of 3,000 dollars in bills each month, you would need to make about 9000 dollars in two months to pay your bills and have enough for your taxes, you could price it at 897$ for a two month package.
10 people paying for a 2 month program is 8970$, take 30 percent for taxes and you’re at 6,279$.
This would give you enough to pay your bills for 2 months. Then during the second month before you offload your current group of students, you open your signup and essentially “launch” again.
Prefer Only Single Lessons?
You could also offer pricing based off of daily lessons.
If you made 4500 hundred a month, that would potentially be enough with taxes, generally, plus your bills .
Are you able or willing to do more than ten 30 minute lessons a day? Or is that the most you feel comfortable doing a day?
And if you’re only doing business days, or working five days a week, we’ll say on average there’s about 22 business days/days you would be teaching each month.
10 lessons every day, for 22 days, that’s approximately 220 lessons total that you would be giving each month.
4500 (the approximate amount you need to make each month for bills and taxes) divided by 220 lessons, is about 21 dollars, so you would need to charge at least 21 dollars per 30 minute lesson.
Package Versus Individual Lessons
Personally, I would recommend doing it as a package because it allows you to have a bit more predictability and stability in knowing your income. It also allows your clients to progress better due to higher support and consistency.
At the price of 897$ per client for a 2 month program, you wouldn’t necessarily need to take additional clients the second month. You’d just have to focus on teaching and then launching for the 2 month program starting the following month.
Especially if you have the digital ebook and courses running on autopilot for people that don’t want to learn directly one on one. Although, some of these students may end up becoming one on one.
Having it as a course on autopilot frees up your time and is scalable so it allows your income to be limitless since you essentially set it up once and resell it over and over. You only have to handle customer service then.
While you may have repeat customers, it’s a bit more challenging to find potentially 220 individual people every single month to teach lessons to (easier if they are virtual though because your market is greater, but you also have to take time zone changes into account).
And you could also offer a couple single lessons every day or weekly on top of your coaching programs if you wanted to as well for people that don’t want to purchase a package and additional source of cash flow.
How Would You Deliver This To Customers?
Grab a domain (the url or website you type in like www.jordanhart.co for instance) from a provider like bluehost, google domains, or go daddy. It’s usually about 10-30 dollars a year.
I personally think everyone should buy their name for their domain, or the closest option possible. We are living in a digital age and everything is becoming more online. It allows versatility for whatever you’re doing as you grow. It could be a standalone resume you send to people if you’re in the corporate world, it could become a portfolio of your art, music, or designs, it could be a page for teaching guitar, that later turns into something else as you grow.
Of course you can always do something straight to the point as well that tells people what they are going to find on your website, like learnguitar dot com or your name and then guitar, or using my name as an example JordanHartGuitar dot com, or JHartMusic, JHartGuitarLessons dot com, LearnGuitarWithJHart dot com, etc. (Obviously, there wouldn’t be capital letters in it but so it’s easier to read the different words)
You could set up a simple website using squarespace or shopify under that domain to host your courses on, book the daily single lessons option, and take payments for your teaching program. Then link your website on your socials.
You could also skip the domain and just host it on a stan store and link that directly on your instagram, tiktok, or youtube profile. StanStore is a nice option because you don’t have to purchase multiple softwares or things such as a domain and email marketing. It’s all in one for one price.
How Would You Find Potential Students?
Start posting videos of you playing the guitar on social media–youtube, tiktok, instagram, doesn’t have to be all of them but it’s usually easy to post the same to each–doesn’t even have to show your face necessarily, could be a mid to close range shot of the guitar and your hands playing it.
Give free lessons in some of the social videos, like how to do a certain note. Give a call to action to sign up for lessons, or get your 2 month 1 on 1 package right now, or your ebook how to choose a guitar.
You don’t have to have a lot of followers to make enough income. You just have to have a clear message. If you only need 10 people to pay you 897 every two months, you could easily reach that with only 100-200 qualified followers.
Ask your most grateful and accomplished students to write testimonials for your teaching, courses, or programs and put them on your site. You can even come up with a template to send to them so it’s easy for them to write a testimonial for you.
Also, if students are posting their progress on social media, it can increase your word of mouth. Ask them to shout you out or if have them agree to allowing you to use your progress videos during the program for your business.
If you really want to go crazy and have more money to spend, you can run ads, hire an ad agency, print business cards or flyers with QR codes to your website, and ask local businesses if you can hang them in their shop if they have bulletin boards. Music shops, coffee shops, convenience stores, etc.
Other Insights I Would Add
Consider working Wednesday to Sunday instead of business days, or nights during the week. Or depending on where a lot of your customers are, go off of their time zone. Many students may work a normal job during the week but have Saturday and Sunday free.
Be sure to continue to improve your skillset as you go as well. This is extremely important. You end up becoming the best of the best this way and I’m a big believer that we need to practice what we teach.
I hope this article helped you! This is something I help clients do in my Hart-Led Life program. If you need advice, feel free to use the contact form at the bottom of every page to explain your situation and or ask your question.
So much love,
Jordan 🧡
