Tulsa Guitar Lessons | How to Dominate Lessons
This content was created for Curtis Music Academy
Alright. In this third podcast I wanted to talk about how exactly do we dominate every lesson of every single day that we have at Curtis Music Academy. The, I briefly talked about the importance of being consistent lea ads consistently dominating every lesson that we have with every single student. It makes you happy as an instructor. It makes the student happy that they’re taking Tulsa guitar lessons here at the academy and it makes the parents happy. It grows the business, it makes others want to and inspires others to want to take Tulsa guitar lessons here as well. So it grows the business. It’s just all around an awesome thing. And a today I wanted to discuss how to dominate every lesson. How exactly do we dominate? Every lesson and everything starts with principles. Principles help us to have success when we apply them. And the first principle I want to talk about with dominating consistently Tulsa guitar lessons is preparing prep, pare, prepare, prepare.
It is so important and so vital that you prepare for your Tulsa guitar lessons because preparing will give you confidence to knock this lesson out with flying colors. And when it comes to preparing, you have to ask, what am I preparing for? Is it a guitar lesson? Is it piano, is voice? What am I looking at? What instrument or what, you know, yeah, what instrument am I preparing for? Who am I preparing for? is my student young, is my student middle-aged, is my student old, you know, taking into consideration all of the things, all the elements, every, every term in the scenario Ritterman the equation. And preparing one way that I prepare for my Tulsa guitar lessons is first of all, learning the student’s age name and, previous experience with music. I want to know kind of where they’re at so that I know where to start.
And so you want to gauge as much as possible a good feel for where the student is currently, what they know about guitar already, what they know about music already. Do they come from a musical family? Are they naturally talented? Are they not naturally talented? Will they maybe have to work more for during practice time or will they have to work less during practice time? And my view on when it comes to practice time is that everyone should practice as hard as they possibly can. So there’s no favorites there necessarily. So preparing, you know, I definitely want to get first get a gauge for where the student is, what they know, what they don’t know, what they’re naturally good at, what they’re naturally not good at. how fast they learn, how slowly learn things like that, what their learning style is. Everyone learns differently.
And so it’s important for us to kind of tailor our Tulsa guitar lessons in that way for them and figure that out upon the first lesson. and give all of those questions answered at the very first lesson. And next thing I do when it comes to preparing is making sure that I have a way to document where we started, where we, what my topic or my lesson was and then taking note of also where we left off in the lesson. I do that for every single student that I have every single week. I’ve been doing it for probably like three, four months now and it’s been super, super beneficial and it’s helped me stay on top of the game and stay on top of my a game. my extra a game. Because I never want to walk into a lesson saying, all right, what did we learn last week that kind of throws darts and Kinda kills the momentum that we’re having with our students.
We want them to know that we care about them so much that we don’t forget anything about them whenever they step into Curtis Music Academy that we’ve been thinking about them all week, we’ve been talking about them, we’ve been thinking about their lesson and we care and we care enough to care about the details. So that’s the second thing I do. I just track, you know, the start, what I teach and then at the end where we left off so that I know where to pick back up on the next lesson. So I have an entire system that I use to program that I use to track all of that. I haven’t tracked the start date as well, the day we started, how long our Tulsa guitar lessons are, things like that. secondly, I’m sorry. Thirdly when it comes to preparing is I make sure that I do everything in my power to arrive at least five to 10 minutes early from my lesson.
Sometimes I mess it up. Sometimes I’m there two minutes before the lesson starts and that is never good. Sometimes there’s been occasions where I was late and I’m not proud of that whatsoever and have been doing everything in my power to make sure that never happens ever again. Why? Because it looks bad on me, but not only does it look bad on me as an instructor, it looks bad on Curtis Music Academy. It makes it look like we didn’t care enough to show, to show up on time. And that is a bad start if you start off late. And so you only get one first impression and we want to make sure that that first impression is it’s very full potential. So arriving, preparing for the lesson just involves, in my experience is finding out the kind of basic knowledge about the student. secondly, gauging where they’re at, with their knowledge, you know, so that I can in turn start where they need to start, plan what I want to teach and then track where we left off.
And then lastly, I want to arrive 10, really 10 to 15 minutes early. A lot of our first lessons arrive 15 minutes early. So you want to kind of be 30 minutes early on the very first lesson. And then for the rest of the Tulsa guitar lessons, it’s just vital at least that you’re there 15 minutes early, for each lesson and thereafter. And so this provides consistent, consistent experience and consistent reality for them. You know, their perception is their reality. Everyone’s perception is their reality, right? So we want to help them, our students perceive the right things that we want them to perceive about us because that is what’s real to them. That is how they know who we are by our actions. And so, being on time is super important when it comes to being on time. Having a calendar to document and to check which students are there that you have during the week, which students you need to be early four, which ones are first Tulsa guitar lessons, which ones are our recurring students.
You want to have a calendar where all of that goes and you want to print it out. You want to print out your day calendar. This goes for really anything in life. This is not only a tip for helping you become a better instructor, but it is a tip for your everyday life. I’m having a day calendar as well as a to do calendar a to do list. So you have a to do list and a day calendar with all of your tattoos, with a specific time on them so that you get everything done that you need to and have time for friends, family, fitness, fun, faith, finances, all that jazz. And I’m the six F’s of life. And so with being on time, it’s vital that you have a calendar where you put all of your start times for your Tulsa guitar lessons. You get to put on there also, which ones are first lessons, which ones you need to be 30 minutes early too, and which ones you need to be, 15 minutes early to.
It’s just a great thing that you want to apply to your life that will just help make your life a lot easier so that you don’t have to go and remember everything by yourself. And so our memories fail us where human beings, we fail sometimes and we don’t want to fail. Let’s use technology and leverage technologies to help us become better humans. Thirdly, energy from your inner G. I got this from Jonathan Kelly. He is an amazing guy at thrive 15, one of the best, the best marketing firm in the world. He says, you get your energy, your energy from your energy, and this is a confidence statement saying that you are the g, you are the gangster otherwise, and that you get your energy from your inner gangster energy, your inner confidence. You know your inner person. And so you are you are amazing.
You are a great instructor. You are a talented musician, you are a knowledgeable musician and you should take confidence in what you do know because you know more than the students you’re teaching most likely. And so as long as you are one step ahead of your student and know one more thing, head of your student, you are always going to be a good teacher. well that’s technically not true, but you will be head of your students. So there’s of course way more that goes into teaching than just knowing a step ahead. There’s other technical skills of communication, but it’s important that you are at least one step ahead at all times of your student and a so energy. It’s important that we have incredible energy because energy is what transfers. If we’re excited, it makes others excited. It is contagious. And so go ahead and do whatever you need to do before your lesson. If yet, if that’s turned on some awesome pumped up rock music before you arrive, go ahead and do that. It’s going to help you get pumped up and be excited and stay excited for your lesson, and if that’s what gives you energy from your energy, than that is what happens, and that’s okay.