Guitar Lessons in Tulsa | First $1 Lesson
This content was created for Curtis Music Academy
Curtis Music Academy does a special offer for anybody that is interested in taking the best guitar lessons in Tulsa. The way that we want students to come into our door is by offering anyone’s first lesson for just $1. We offer that first lesson for just $1 and what that does is it encourages somebody to just come and see what it would be like to learn an instrument. Some students, especially younger students, the parent may sign them up so that they could see if it’s a good fit, if the instructor that they’re given is a good fit for the kid. If the environment is clean, they want to know exactly what they’re getting into before actually committing to lessons. And so that is something that is also important by offering that first $1 lesson. Students and the parents can come and check out the space, check out the instructor and figure it out to see if this is something that they would enjoy doing for a long period of time.
But another reason why a $1 lesson is really helpful to get people in the door is that we are able to now reach people, especially adults that have never in their life learned an instrument and if they have to commit to a month or a year or whatever it is that they have to commit to, the chances of them pulling the trigger on that endeavor is so small that you are limiting your academy or your music school significantly of different people that could be taking lessons because an adult that doesn’t even know what instrument is like, they don’t know what it’s going to be like and they don’t know what lessons even look like. They don’t know what type of format it would be to take lessons and so by providing a $1 lesson for anybody, whether child or adult to come and try it, hi, you were music lessons out is so important so that they can come and you can get people in the door and see if they enjoy taking lessons with you.
Now, the other side of that is you are going to waste a tremendous amount of money and your resources and time if you are a bad music school or if you aren’t a bad instructor. Because if you are offering a $1 lesson and you are terrible at teaching or perhaps even just mediocre, what you are providing is the opportunity for people to come in and check out your music school or your studio space. And then they are going to realize, man, this guy is really not that good and they’re out scot free because you’re only offering a $1 lesson. So the way that this works is by providing excellent service by providing absolutely phenomenal operations in which as soon as somebody comes in the door, they know immediately this will be a good fit. That’s how you lock them in you, you didn’t make them have to fill out a commitment before they walked in and then they walk in and then they think, Oh man, well I’ve already committed. So I guess I just have to ride this out over a month. And so if you are a music school that you are not confident in yourself as an instructor or your
studio space looks bad, whatever it is, a $1 lesson probably isn’t for you. But for Curtis Music Academy, we are absolutely 100% confident that we are worth every single penny that we charge our students. We are absolutely confident that every single student that walks in our door will love their first lesson and that’s the reason that we offer a $1 music lesson. So that’s very important to juggle and weigh the options to figure out what would work best for your school and for your situation. Now the problem that Curtis Music Academy faces by offering a $1 lesson, the most often downside of this offer is that many people who aren’t committed to guitar lessons in Tulsa like I had previously discussed,
they’ll sign up for a $1 and they either will not show up for that lesson or they will cancel and they will flake out on the very first lesson that didn’t cost them a penny. And the reason for this is because if you offer anything that is free, people do not value it. People do not value things that are given to them. They don’t value things that are offered to them at scholarship, and this is the majority of people, not every single person, simply the majority of people. And one example of that, this is the fact that through the course of teaching lessons, one of the things that we as a family, my wife and I and our kids, we discussed giving free lessons to a student that did not currently take guitar lessons in Tulsa. It was a different student. Anybody figure out a scholarship to provide free music lessons for an entire year.
We thought this would be such a great idea. It would provide somebody the opportunity that didn’t normally have the means to take lessons. And what ended up happening was we provided a student a scholarship. We gave this student a scholarship for free music lessons and Tulsa. And what ended up happening was this student never practiced. They didn’t value the music lessons. In fact, in that one year period of time where they were offered free music lessons that were valued at $30 and if you multiply that 50 times 30 is a scholarship of $1,500 over the course of a year and through that year they missed over 25 lessons. That is a 50% show up. Right. And the reason for it is because they weren’t paying for the lessons. I am confident that is the reason they didn’t come and attend their lessons. The student wasn’t practicing because there was no motivation to practice because there was no money behind what they were doing and then they weren’t attending their guitar lessons in Tulsa because there was no money behind the situation. So if you offer a $1 lesson, the biggest difficulty here is that as Curtis Music Academy, like I said, we are confident that this is worth it. But the problem is as you are going to get many no shows, you are going to get many people who are unwilling to actually come and attend that lesson because it’s only $1. So if they don’t show up, they’re thinking, oh, it’s just $1. That’s it. I’m just not going to come to this thing and it’s only $1 of consequence. But the fact is is that that it’s a life long goal that they are sacrificing, assuming they don’t actually end up making up that lesson later, many students will cancel and then reschedule their lesson and you can pretty much know whether or not the student is actually going to take a lesson. If they cancel the first one, the likelihood of them actually coming to their second $1 less than that is scheduled is about 50% so if they don’t show up to the first lesson, there’s a 50% chance they will end up canceling the second lesson. After that, it’s pretty much a 0% chance they’re going to come back. So anyway, that’s the deal with a first $1 lesson.