Dan Emery is dedicated to bringing the thrill and pride of guitar playing to all who desire it. He is the founder of NYC’s friendliest and fastest growing guitar schools, New York City Guitar School, Brooklyn Guitar School and Queens Guitar School.. He is the author of the Amazon best selling guitar book “Guitar For Absolute Beginners” and several other books on guitar playing and deliberate practice. He has a Masters in Education from Columbia University Teachers College, and extensive performing experience as songwriter and guitarist for The Dan Emery Mystery Band. Besides loving to play guitar and teach guitar, he enjoys coaching new business owners in the Entrepreneurs’ Organization Accelerator Program, learning about music from his three kids, going for long walks with his wife, and reading books. His official life mission is “coaching personal greatness, one lesson at a time.”

Top Five Recent Books, kind of randomly chosen:
–“The Compound Effect” by Darren Hardy. I love this book, I just read it for the fourth time. The secret to big results? Taking care of one day at a time. Totally applicable to getting better at guitar playing! (…or to running guitar schools.)

–“Leadership and Self Deception” by The Arbinger Institute. My friend Danny Mizrahi of Contango IT recommended this book to me. It’s one of those novels set in a business, with gripping drama such as: “As dawn broke, Martin looked over his spreadsheet. Then–the phone rang! It was Julia, from Operations…” You would think that such a book would be mindnumbingly boring. Not so! It is about the real challenge of working with people who happen to not be you–and how to get free of the illusions that cloud our relationships. It applies also to family life, by the way.

–“2 Second Lean” by Paul Akers. I think I’ve given away over 50 copies of this book. This is all about cutting through to what matters the most in business and in life–and making it way more fun! I’ve read so many books on processes and systems–this one is the most applicable, as in, easy to apply!

–“I Am Legion, I Am Bob.” by Dennis E. Taylor. YES, I LOVE sci fi, and through the first person perspective of Von Neumann self-cloning space probes, we get to combine first encounters, Armageddon, the Exodus, space battles, etc, etc into one fun narrative.

–“The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up” by Marie Kondo. A great companion to “2 Second Lean”. I implemented this book page by page in my personal life. “Miriam” I yelled, “I’m gonna go through all my shirts! I’m only going to keep the ones that give me joy!” She said, “You don’t have any shirts.” But I went ahead and did it anyway–I looked at each shirt, held it in my hand, and thought “does this bring me joy?” It turns out that only four brought me joy–so I gave the other one away.

–BONUS: Any book by April Henry. I actually haven’t read any of them myself–but my 10 year old daughter went from being not that interested in books to voraciously devouring them. So…I’m a big fan!

Learn “Hey There Delilah” with Dan!

Lick Of The Month – “I’ve Got A Feeling”

Dan rocks out on The “Chuck” Lick Of the Month

Guitar ate your pick? Dan shows you how to get it back!