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The traditional model to teach music lessons involves an exchange of time for money. You teach a music lesson for one hour and you get compensated with a lesson fee. The problem with this approach is that it cannot scale. There is only one of you and only twenty-four hours in a day. In addition to the limitation of your time and energy you will find that the [...]

On April 13th we had a live session with teachers from around the world. We covered topics including software and hardware, ensemble techniques and workarounds, copyright issues, moving to online courses and marketing your own teaching. If you have questions please feel free to write them in the comments below.

https://youtu.be/IrOsHrldR5U Bridget called in from Scotland where she is the Director of the Merlin Academy of Traditional Music. We discussed some potential ideas for working with groups online. www.merlinmusicacademy.com

I grew up in Australia. Like other countries the high schools would have a school motto. Some were bold, some were brave, and some were downright aggressive! My school had the stupidest motto of all. Or so I thought. Every Monday morning the students would assemble in the main courtyard and essentially get an update for the week. We sat for 30 minutes in an uncomfortable cross-legged position (we used [...]

Many aspects of online teaching are counter intuitive. One that I personally grapple with is the idea of competition. If someone is teaching your topic online, they are in competition with you. Right? Well, it is not as simple as that and in the long run, these fellow teachers will likely be benefiting your business more than anything else. Competitors are validation that there is an active audience for you [...]

Paso por paso. Step by step. This is what I always say to others when it comes to learning music, but I often forget to say it to myself. Creating an online business and teaching curriculum can be overwhelming. It is easy to get scattered with your work time and even after a full day of work, it can feel like you have accomplished nothing. It takes time to build [...]

One of the biggest draw cards for online business is the ability to leverage resources and scale the size of business as a whole. For instance, as an individual guitar teacher, I would struggle to maintain a studio of 50 students a week, but online I can easily manage an entire school of over 600. There are several elements that help the leveraging process and one of them is automation. [...]

Traditionally, when we study with a teacher, we meet with them privately or in a group, pay them for their time and leave. This business model essentially trades time for money. The student pays $x for an hour of the teacher’s time. If they want more, they pay more. This is a wasteful use of our time. All artistic practices have core fundamentals that students need to learn. Repeating this [...]

Derek Sivers, the creator of CD Baby, writes in his book Anything You Want that your success is directly related to the amount of people that you help. I believe in this idea, and I feel that guiding your efforts with the aim to help first and foremost will result in a successful business. After all, what businesses really do is solve problems. There is a time and place to [...]

When creating materials for online education, add what is necessary and nothing more. Bloated courses can become confusing and cumbersome. Long videos take a long time to watch and too much text is taxing. Padding things out to make them seem substantial doesn’t benefit anyone. Keep it simple. There is power is simplicity.

There are many attractive features to online teaching but there might be a few more gems that you don’t know yet. Your Audience Is Interested In You, Not Just Your Teaching Once you have built an audience you have a group of people that trust you and that have given you their attention. This is a privileged position. From this place you have the ability to serve your audience in [...]

It is tempting at the outset of your online endeavor to try and make things “perfect”. Editing and re-editing every blemish, every hiccup, and every mistake. Perfection is crippling, and if you don’t deal with it quickly, then you might give up. This would be a tragedy because you have the ability to help people. I am a classical musician, and in our world the advent of recordings, more specifically [...]

If you try and please everyone, you will end up pleasing no-one. The internet is getting better and better at curating material for you. This is purely because of advertising. If you create something with a broad appeal, something that could apply to a large audience, you will make little to no impact. In the late 20th Century you might have received some attention with a broad message, but as [...]

There are several key reasons why you might not take the leap into online teaching. Fear is a big one. In this chapter I will show you why your fears are misguided and mistakes are useful. Lions, Tigers, Bears. Oh My! Dating girls was always a daunting prospect for me when I was younger. Well, let me be more specific. I was petrified of asking girls out. Rejection, embarrassment, humiliation… [...]

The Musician's Advantage Online There are many aspiring online teachers out there who face a large hurdle from the very outset of their project. The first hurdle is not knowing what they are going to teach. Perhaps they have some specific skills, or a general knowledge in a few areas but rarely have they mastered a skill to a level where it becomes an obvious choice. This is the musician's first advantage. [...]

Leverage your teaching and help thousands of students rather than just a handful. The traditional model of teaching music, in a private studio setting, is to exchange time for money. A 30 minute lesson costs Z and a one hour lessons costs X. This is a simple proposition and it makes sense on several levels. The student gets personal attention, it is easy to keep track of time and also [...]