by Tom Hess

You’re probably aware of how there are much less student inquiries during the summer than any other season. In most cases, guitar teachers have no solutions for this issue, leading to an added struggle tomake good money teaching guitar. With this in mind, just because there are less inquiries, does NOT mean you can’t get tons of students in the summer!

There are several reasons why guitar teachers can’t keep students during the summer. Here are these reasons and what you must do to not only ‘get’ students but grow your guitar teaching business as a whole:

Reason 1: Not Enforcing A STRONG Guitar Teaching Policy

Having a weak guitar teaching policy is a huge mistake for your guitar teaching business. Without one in place, your student base will quickly deteriorate because they will have the power to walk all over you, stop taking lessons without notice or take time off (without paying you for it). The most common teaching policy that leads to these things is a policy that lets people pay lesson-by-lesson. This kind of lesson policy leaves the door open for students to reschedule when they feel like it, arrive late, not pay on time and (in the summer) go on vacation for months at a time.

Truly successful guitar teachers charge their students per month, NOT per lesson. And if you want to get paid on time and not get taken advantage of… you should too! In addition, you don’t need to accept it as a loss when your students leave for summer vacation. To get ready for this situation, think of creative ways to train your students when they are unable to meet with you in person for a lesson. Discover tons of ways you can do this by checking out this free resource about earning a ton of money teaching guitar.

Reason 2: Giving Up On Even ‘Trying’ To Promote Your Guitar Teaching Business During The Summer Months

Because most guitar teachers understand that there are less student inquiries in the summer, they often give up on their promotional efforts during this time. This opens the door for you to market yourself to all the students that everyone else is ignoring. There are always students seeking teachers regardless of the time of year (even if there are ‘less’ in the summer). By being one of the only teachers to increase marketing efforts in the summer, you will effectively raise the percentage of students you are able to attract. This will essentially transform the summer months from your ‘worst’ time for attracting students to your ‘best’.

Reason 3: Not Having Good Promotional Ability To Begin With

In the other articles I released on how to teach guitar lessons, I discussed why most guitar teachers are completely unaware of how to promote their business. This prevents them from making a lot more money and helping their students in a much greater capacity. When you are unable to promote your guitar lessons very well, you will struggle even more during the summertime when you are being contacted by less people. This will make it extremely hard to sustain your guitar teaching business for a long period of time.

To make sure you keep your guitar students during the summer, work together with an experienced guitar teacher coach who will show you how to keep and attract students year round.

Reason 4: Not Telling Your Guitar Students In Advance About The Value Of Taking Lessons In The Summer

Guitar students generally have a host of non-guitar activities that they want to participate in during the summer. As their guitar instructor, you must help them understand why guitar is so much more important than all those other things. You must help them realize:

A) The specific reasons why getting better at guitar is more valuable for them than any recreational activity they could be doing.

B) How important it is to continue learning guitar in the summer so that they do not ‘lose’ all the skills they gained, only to have to relearn everything again in the fall (costing them tons of additional time and money in the process). This is the same thing that happens every year for your students who go to public school, so they can understand this concept clearly (and know that you make a good point when you explain it to them).

C) How taking lessons with you during the summer will be a very unique experience that they MUST be a part of. Here is one way (of many) you can give them this realization:

Create a unique event that only takes place in the summer months. For instance, you can create a lead guitar technique mastery program, hold live performance coaching or even host a road trip for your students to go see a cool band. Then you can show them how to play guitar like the guitarist in the band (as a standalone program). The creative ideas you can think of are boundless – promote these events well in advance and your students will be ‘pumped’ when the summertime finally comes around.

[Notice: The worst thing you could do is ‘reduce’ your lesson rates to try to keep your students - THIS is exactly how most guitar teachers lose their students during the summer because the students perceive guitar lessons to be of lesser value than the other fun things they could be doing.]

Now you know how to retain your students for the summer, learn how to get more guitar students during any season.

About The Author:

Tom Hess is a highly successful guitar teacher, recording artist and the guitar player. He helps people from all over the world learn how to teach guitar. Visit his website tomhess.net to get free guitar teacher resources and to read more guitar teaching articles.