Step By Step Growth Isn’t Just For Your Students…Set Incremental Goals To Grow Your Guitar Teaching Studio
As a guitar teacher, do you ever feel like your studio is stuck? Maybe in the number of students you teach, or your earnings, or the amount of time it takes you to prepare lessons? Or do you even sometimes feel stuck in the quality of how much you enjoy teaching or the impact you feel you are having?
At NYC Guitar School, our mission is “Coaching Personal Greatness One Lesson At A Time”, and one of our core values is “Relentless Improvement.” Improving isn’t just something we help our students do, though–we know that every member of our team desires to grow in their own life.
One way we foster the improvement and greatness of our team members is to make sure that every team member, from teachers to program managers, is working to accomplish meaningful goals which move them in a positive direction at the school and in their life.
These goals are a continuation of my own tradition when I started teaching guitar door to door in New York City. I first set a goal of 5 lessons a week, then 10, then 15, and so on all the way to 40. After that I set a goal to hire a friend to teach, and to grow his schedule to 5 lessons, then 10…and so on. I’ve also set goals about marketing activities, the numbers of students playing in shows, opening locations, and many more. In fact, today as I write this blog we have over 3,000 students in our 5 NYC locations. It really is amazing what can happen over time with one goal at a time!
That’s why, approximately every 60 days, each team member meets with a director to set an appropriate written goal for their own studio, teaching or personal growth.
In order to grow your own guitar teaching studio, you must be keeping track of at least one important metric, and you must set a goal related to it!
If you aren’t yet keeping track of anything, I suggest starting with how many lessons you teach per week. Figure out your average over the past month and then set a goal to grow that number by 10%.
Once you have set your goal, switch your focus to how you will achieve the goal.
Will you advertise more? Will you schedule more proactively? Will you use a standard curriculum with your students to help them stay on track and get more traction?
Other examples of teacher goals from NYC Guitar School teachers include:
- “Add a studio day.”
- “Consolidate from three programs to two programs.”
- “Teach 20 lessons per week.”
- “Help 10 students perform in a showcase,” and
- “Cut email scheduling time in half.”
The good news is that no matter how busy we are or how much fun we are having, there will still be opportunities to improve our outcomes and our processes. And knowing that you are gradually improving your studio is so fun!
So don’t delay–set a goal for your studio today!
Have An Awesome Day!
Dan Emery
Founder, NYC Guitar School
“Success is the progressive realization of a worthy goal or ideal.” –Earl Nightingale
PS If you are a guitar teacher who is interested in growing your skills and studio with a great organization, visit www.NYCGuitarSchool.com/join-our-team for more info.
