how to get music students [the math on earning $500k as a music teacher]

If you want to know how to get music students, there's really two important questions you need to ask yourself.

 WHY do I want more music students?

... and WHO are my ideal music students anyway?

The first question might seem obvious, but dig a little deeper.

If you're a guitar teacher as an example, your IDEAL students aren't just any Tom, Dick or Harry who wants to learn a few chords - it's the type of guitarist that you can most effectively, and the one most driven to work with you.

Left handed heavy metal guitarists who are learning as mature age students.

Saxophone players who love Clarence Clemons but want to play that style over pop music, not rock.

Piano players who already know jazz, but desperately want to be playing classical piano concertos.

Now, cut that down even further with how/when/what they are going to be learning, and how you come into that picture.

Now THAT is your ideal student right there.

Does your online content currently speak to this very specific person and the way they're looking to learn?

I bet that's a "no... but..." and you're about to explain why you're making content outside of your niche like an attempt to go viral, current trends, or even not wanting to alienate the casual viewer with such specific content.

But that's exactly what you want to do.

As a music teacher, your YouTube channel (or any other channel) isn't really the same thing as Netflix - where it's all about keeping butts in seats and eyes on the screen. What you really want, is to snap your viewers out of the YouTube loop by speaking to them in such a uniquely special and specific way that they simply HAVE to reach out to you personally about one on one coaching.

There's your first step.

If you want to increase the quantity of students you're working with, you first need to improve the QUALITY of your reach so that you get a direct reflection in the leads that reach out looking to work with you.

There's no such thing as bad leads - only a direct reflection of how you're putting yourself/your content out there.

Now, let's answer the second question; WHY do you want more students?

The real answer here is that you're not reaching your financial objectives, you've probably run the math on your hourly rate and decided you need an extra 5-10 students per week to hit that next level in your income and revenue, right?

Your financial objective might be as simple as earning $1000 a week, or maybe even $10k a month.

I'm going to use $500k a year as an example.

Now, if you're a piano teacher that charges $100 an hour for piano lessons, you'd need to give around 5000 lessons a year, 400 lessons a month, 100 lessons a week and around 20 hours of coaching each day 5 days a week (assuming you want to have a life on weekends and not just work 7-days straight the whole year).

20 hours of coaching a day.

That's a pretty psychotic amount of coaching to have to do - especially if you're a voice teacher like me.

It's not really possible.

So, let's cut that down to a more appropriate amount of coaching 5 days a week, to something like 5 hours of coaching M-F (still WAY too much one-on-one coaching, but it's going to make my point really well).

With a more realistic, if still a touch too heavy coaching load of 5 solid hours of teaching 5-days-a-week, your current business model is capped to around $120,000 a year in revenue, not including taxes or expenses.

We're a touch short of $500k wouldn't you say?

Now, if you doubled your hourly rate right now - you'd lose 90% of your current students right? If not right away, give it a couple of weeks of them paying $200 an hour for the same service they were receiving a week ago at $100, and they're going to get tired of working with you pretty quickly.

So if you can't work any more hours, and you can't up your prices - how the HELL do you earn $500k a year as a music teacher?

They key here is to understand that hourly coaching is really a pretty poor way to structure your business, and it's actually a pretty weak way to be an effective teacher too.

Your students are really doing most of their learning in BETWEEN sessions with you - and they're completely unsupported through that time.

And technically, you're not really being paid for the times where your students are making their biggest leaps and bounds.

"See you same time next week Steve?"

"Sure thing teach"

^ Steve isn't going to knock anything out of the park, let along his goals a musician with this lack approach to teaching.

Instead, let's talk about a music program.

Going with our piano example from earlier, imagine a 12 week piano intensive program that takes your students from Zero to Hero with their goals. A program that walks them through the whole process of translating their jazz technique into classical technique, and all the stagecraft and performance skills that it's going to take to get them on stage for a serious concerto in three months time.

Sure, there's going to be a 1-to-1 coaching element to this program, but it's really automated and 'toolized' (I'm going to copyright that word if it's not one already!) as much as possible so that your system and back end program handles most of the benchmarks and objectives needed to make this goal a reality.

- 5 online modules focusing on classical technique, style and aesthetic within your student's playing
- Credit to send you 10x audio files over the 12 weeks of the intensive for advice/appraisal
- Special tool that teaches classical chord inversions
- Special tool that improves left hand timing to get that tight classical style
- 5 hours of personal coaching with you
- 1 hour of live performance review
- Access to your private community of classical pianists out there performing under your tutelage
- 1 group call with your current roster of students also working on classical technique

Oh yeah, there's a killer guarantee on the program - if they don't make a significant whack out of their goals in the first 30 days, you give a full refund with no questions (well, probably a few questions).

You played concertos professionally before making the shift into teaching, and you've got a bunch of examples that you can share of your students out there succeeding wildly at their goals of performing classical piano at a professional level.

I mean, if that's really your student's goal - how could they possible say no to all of that VALUE?

Have you noticed I haven't talked price, and there's no mention of 'hourly' coaching or hourly rate anywhere?

This program is usually $3500, but you're offering it at an introductory rate of $2900 to the first 10 participants and you've already got 8 locked in.

If your content has done it's job up to this point, the answer will be a resounding YES despite being a $2.9k program - I mean, with all that value, it's really a steal for your student.

They are guaranteed to reach their goals once and for all, and it's also going to get them off the hamster wheel of online video content, and the wheel of weekly lessons they've been stuck on for the past 5 years.

Do or die for both of you, skin in the game if you will.

Now, let's run the math here.

You want to make $500k a year.

You offer a a $3.5k program to your students.

Even if you offer the first 10 students a discounted rate of $2,900 for the program, it comes in to about 3 students per week/3 sales a week of this program to blow $500,000 out of the water.

3 sales.

That's MUCH easier than making 100 sales a week at $100 each, right?

Selling a $1000 program to 100 people is much easier than selling a $100 program to 1000 people - now scale that up to your financial objectives.

We're simply not in the business of mass-sales and lower profit margins - you're in the business of TIME.

Now, remember those 3 students that sign up for your intensive aren't doing weekly lessons with you - it's around 5/6 hours of coaching time with you over the 12 weeks - so really, it's 30 minutes a week at most.

They're going to save that special time with you for REALLY important stuff that leverages your expertise, right?

The onus is really going to be on them to make use of all the incredible tools and programs you've created for them - and really make use of that community and the group call as their first port of call for support.

3 students working with you for 30 minutes each, scaled up over the duration of the intensive is at max 6 hours of coaching a WEEK even at your heaviest intake.

6 hours of coaching each week, and $500k in revenue for your coaching business.

Do the math - your hourly rate model sucks for helping your students reach their full potential in the same way it sucks for helping you reach your financial objectives.

First, you need to identify and speak to your ideal students so the RIGHT prospects walk through your door/turn up in your emails.

Then second, you need to make them a mouth-watering offer that they simply can't refuse.

... And this offer needs to be priced for value, not time.

3 x $3500 week = $500k a year

Now, how exactly DO you create engaging, entertaining, educational content for your prospects so they're salivating at the idea of working with you on a professional basis?

I use the Family Tree content system to turn 1 piece of content into a whole month's worth of valuable, converting, educational content.

Hit the link below to learn exactly how it works.