How To Leave Your Day Job & Teach Guitar For A Living In The Least Risky Manner Possible

By Tom Hess

Wish you didn’t have to work 40 hours every week at a job you hate? If you’re a guitar player, this kind of job will both keep you from playing guitar, and stop you from pursuing a music career. However, you can change this if you really want to. Fact is, teaching guitar for a living is by far the greatest way to do something you love while also making good money.

Why should you teach guitar rather than working at a normal 9-5 job?:

-When you teach guitar, you can easily earn much way money than you ever could at a regular full-time job (successfully guitar teachers can easily earn $100k or more annually).

-Guitar teachers do not have to work full time to make good money, unlike at a regular job where working full-time is the only way to pay your bills and survive.

-You get to make your own time when you are a guitar teacher. Want to take a trip out of town? You can do it. Want to start working on growing a music career? No problem. Additionally, you will actually make money for your time off. Contrast this with working a normal job where you have to request vacation days (where someone else decides when you can or can’t take time off).

-Teaching guitar is a risk free job. Every single one of your students is like a separate source of income. If one of them happens to leave, you’re still okay because you’ve got plenty of other sources of income coming in from the students who’ve stayed. At any regular job, you get one check, and if that check doesn’t show up, you’re ruined.

That said, so many guitarists completely look past teaching guitar because they believe they simply are unprepared for it. Truth is, probably are ready to teach even if you don’t think you are. Here is a tiny list of the frequent complaints (fears) guitarists have about being able to teach guitar, that are NOT valid:

Guitar Teaching Fear #1: You don’t have good enough guitar skills.

Reality: You don’t need to be an incredible player to teach guitar. If you want to, you can make an excellent living teaching guitar by teaching exclusively beginners.

Guitar Teaching Fear #2: You don’t know enough to even make it through one lesson with a student.

Reality: You don’t need to be an expert teacher to get results for your initial students. Your skills will come to you over time and you’ll just keep getting better.

Guitar Teaching Fear #3: You aren’t sure if you have enough things to teach over a long period of time.

Reality: It’s not necessary to know the entire year’s lesson plan just to teach your first student. In fact, you should NOT overwhelming your students with new information during every single lesson.

Guitar Teaching Fear #4: It’ll be too hard to support yourself financially as you transition from your day job into teaching.

Reality: It’s not as hard to quit your job and teach guitar for a living as you might think. Developing a new guitar teaching business requires almost no cost – in other words, you can start earning money teaching while you are still working at your current job with absolutely NO risk of losing money in the process.

Discover more about what you must do to get ready for teaching your first students by filling out this free guitar teaching ability assessment.

How You Can Phase Out Your Day Job To Get Into Teaching Guitar Full-Time.

For tons of guitar teachers, leaving their day jobs might feel very risky. Fact is, there is nothing to be afraid of, it’s actually very easy to phase out your day job without putting yourself in financial ruin. The following is what you need to do right now to start transitioning away from your day job and begin teaching guitar for a living:

1. Make it a point to attract "serious" guitar students only

-Pack your weekends with students, then save the income you make from doing this. After saving enough money to cover half a year of expenses, leave your job and start growing your teaching business even larger.

-Build a website for your teaching business and advertise there in addition to using paper flyers in local music shops (with permission), supermarkets, parking lots, recreation centers and neighborhoods.

-Try to better understand how to convert the potential students who contact you into paying guitar students. This is actually pretty simple, learn more checking out this free resource about getting new guitar students to take lessons.

2. Consistently Work To Develop And Improve Your Guitar Teaching Skills

Even if you are new to teaching guitar, you CAN get great results for your students. Go through the following steps to start improving your guitar teaching skills:

-Focus on your main area of expertise (i.e. playing jazz chords, metal technique, whatever it is etc.). It’s likely that there is someone out there who needs help in this area.

-Learn how to successfully begin teaching beginning guitar students.

-Find a guitar teacher trainer who can show you effective strategies for transforming so-so students to great students, plus effectively teaching students of all kinds of learning styles.

Now that you have read the ideas in this article, you are much closer to actually teaching guitar for a living. To prepare yourself for quitting your day job forever and teaching guitar instead, fill out this free guitar teaching ability assessment.