Many people think they are not creative, devoid of inspiration or don’t have the required skill or natural makeup to even improvise. Neil disagrees and believes that all of us are creative to a greater or lesser extent and it is a skill that must be practiced to be developed. He explains how he encourages and teaches his students to move beyond their own narrow definitions of themselves.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Everyone is creative at whatever age and whatever background. There is a natural drive in every human that seeks expression. 
• Give your students a safe place to express and just allow it to happen. Don’t judge it or allow your students to judge themselves.
• Give them technique and then encourage them to disrupt it to create something new.
• Creativity is often discouraged by mainstream education so it is up to individual tutors to fan that creative spark back into life.

BEST MOMENTS

‘You don’t learn much from what you already know and what you’ve proved to work, that’s a done deal. It’s when you make errors, when you try stuff out, that’s when you create something new.’

‘Make them curious. Get them to ask the correct questions of themselves.’  

‘There is no place for creativity in a great deal of the mainstream education system because that’s all about passing exams. It’s about compliance and conformity.’ 

VALUABLE RESOURCES

The Tutor Podcast

 www.Neilcowmeadow.com

ABOUT THE HOST

Neil Cowmeadow is a maverick peripatetic guitar teacher from Telford with over 19 years’ experience in the business of helping people. Learn how to start, grow and love your business with Neil’s invaluable advice and tips without the buzzwords and BS!

CONTACT METHOD

[email protected] 

Neil explains ‘The Great Escape’ or ‘The Great Retreat’ as a preventative measure for those who get swamped, overwhelmed or over absorbed in their business or work. Here is Neil’s method of getting back to the big picture, the long view, and strategic planning if you get caught up in the nitty-gritty, everyday grind of your business.
KEY TAKEAWAYS

• We tend to miss small details, trends and shifts in the marketplace, miss openings and opportunities. 
• Make regular time for your strategic planning. Take more than one day out from the business to properly consider it from a distance and see what you may have been missing.
• Disconnect from the daily tasks of the business to take real time to consider its direction and forward planning. 

BEST MOMENTS
‘We can end up neglecting the long view and this is absolutely normal because we’re working ‘in the business’, we’re not working ‘on the business.’’
‘I need to disconnect from the day to day running of the business. So I deliberately don’t do email. I also don't phone, I leave it at home.’
‘The big thing is to be away from my teaching work completely. And that means no scheduling, no admin, no taking calls..nothing.’
VALUABLE RESOURCES
The Tutor Podcast
www.Neilcowmeadow.com
ABOUT THE HOST
Neil Cowmeadow is a maverick peripatetic guitar teacher from Telford with over 19 years’ experience in the business of helping people. Learn how to start, grow and love your business with Neil’s invaluable advice and tips without the buzzwords and BS!
CONTACT METHOD
[email protected] 

A ‘brand’ is a product, service, business or even person that is easily identified and widely known. But what is it that makes a brand and how do you become one? Neil takes a look at how you can get started on the road to being well known for the services that you offer.
KEY TAKEAWAYS

• A brand is not simply a logo or a slogan. These are all just signifiers, signposts for the potential customer to follow. 
• A strong and unified idea of what the business or product is about is the brand. 
• If you can provoke an emotional response people will behave irrationally when purchasing products and services, allowing you to charge more.
• You need to be known for something positive and then make every one aware of it in exactly the same way. 
• Be consistent in what you offer, be the same person, if possible even in dress and behaviour. 

BEST MOMENTS
‘The brand isn’t the logo. That’s just a signifier. It’s a distinctive symbol designed to capture attention.’
‘It’s the widely held belief that the particular business or product is actually doing something special, perhaps even magical.’
‘To me ‘rock god’, ‘guitar hero’, I mean, how’s that for elevation of an ordinary person to a very high status? How’s that for pushing that high perceived value?’
‘Where I am, everybody knows Neil Cowmeadow because there are big banners on the fence outside of my house, with the stupid name on it! Cowmeadow! Its just daft, everybody knows Neil the guitar guy.’ 
VALUABLE RESOURCES
The Tutor Podcast
www.Neilcowmeadow.com
ABOUT THE HOST
Neil Cowmeadow is a maverick peripatetic guitar teacher from Telford with over 19 years’ experience in the business of helping people. Learn how to start, grow and love your business with Neil’s invaluable advice and tips without the buzzwords and BS!
CONTACT METHOD
[email protected] 

If you are in business for yourself your are in a significant minority with currently only 13.7% of working people self employed, the lowest since 2011. There is a lot of peer pressure to get a job and be miserable. However, Neil urges you to carry on with your own business and keep your time and happiness under your own control.
KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Avoid the ‘loser speak’ because that’s what you are going to hear a lot of and you are going to hear it from the majority of the people around you.
• Don’t take career advice from unhappy, unfulfilled, underpaid people.
• Some people will resent you in your freedom and success.

BEST MOMENTS
‘If you’re busy, they’ll tell you not to work so hard. They’ll tell you that you need to chill out. And I hate that term.’
‘Because we’ve chosen to leave the safety of the herd, break rank and separate ourselves from who we used to be, believe me, it changes you.’
‘Nobody else can live our life for us.’
VALUABLE RESOURCES
The Tutor Podcast
www.Neilcowmeadow.com
ABOUT THE HOST
Neil Cowmeadow is a maverick peripatetic guitar teacher from Telford with over 19 years’ experience in the business of helping people. Learn how to start, grow and love your business with Neil’s invaluable advice and tips without the buzzwords and BS!
CONTACT METHOD
[email protected] 

If you are listening in the UK this episode may trigger some of your British reticence. This ones all about negotiation and selling, so steel yourself to have the nerve to ask for what you are worth. Neil explains how good sales is actually providing a service that people really want and negotiation is just the pathway to it.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Sales is often seen as a shameful occupation dedicated to persuading people to buy things we don’t need in Britain.
• Negotiation is often perceived as adversarial and unpleasant. It is actually about leading the customer to the correct decision so they can get what they want while satisfying your requirements as a seller.
• Understand that the customer is trading something of lower value for them for something of higher value. 
• Once the intention to buy has been agreed upon then negotiation is just the details of the means of delivery.

BEST MOMENTS

‘We don’t big ourselves up. We don’t stand with our heads held high and proud. It’s really not the British way, is it? But if there’s one thing that we’re brilliant at here in Britain, it’s misunderstanding the ideas of sales and to a certain extent negotiation.’

‘Then enable them to exchange something that’s of low value to them, money, for something that is of enormous value for them ; understanding, technical skill, accelerated learning and time compression.’ 

‘I’m offering them, for an amount of money, a pathway to become who they most want to be.’

‘If you sell properly, ethically and effectively you’ll probably have a lot less negotiation to do when you present your prospective student or client to the solution they’ve always wanted.’ 

VALUABLE RESOURCES

The Tutor Podcast

 www.Neilcowmeadow.com

ABOUT THE HOST

Neil Cowmeadow is a maverick peripatetic guitar teacher from Telford with over 19 years’ experience in the business of helping people. Learn how to start, grow and love your business with Neil’s invaluable advice and tips without the buzzwords and BS!

CONTACT METHOD

[email protected] 

Neil talks about wealth, what it is and what it ain’t. Different people have different concepts of what it is to be wealthy, so what do they mean when we talk about wealth?

KEY TAKEAWAYS

•  Money is just a small component of the whole ‘wealth ecosystem’.
• Friends and people you love are part of a rich experience of the world. 
• Time is your most precious and your most finite resource.

BEST MOMENTS

‘Money is important. You can’t ignore it.’

‘I believe if you have just one pound more than you need, you are actually pretty wealthy.’

‘I think it's primarily a three way balancing act and every single one of us will have to find their own unique balance point.’ 

VALUABLE RESOURCES

The Tutor Podcast

 www.Neilcowmeadow.com

ABOUT THE HOST

Neil Cowmeadow is a maverick peripatetic guitar teacher from Telford with over 19 years’ experience in the business of helping people. Learn how to start, grow and love your business with Neil’s invaluable advice and tips without the buzzwords and BS!

CONTACT METHOD

[email protected] 

The easiest person to lie to is you. We tell ourselves reassuring stories of how great we are and how we are productive and doing our best while binge watching the latest Netflix drama. Neil gives his tips on how to avoid long bouts of indolence and denial and keep asking the right questions of yourself.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• We can all distort reality to reassure ourselves we are progressing. It is not easy to be real about how things are, constantly. 
• Ask yourself some serious questions. How am I doing in my business? Really? REALLY?
• Where am I going with things as they currently are? What’s your trajectory? Is it profitable? Is it sustainable?
• What are the opportunities I have not noticed? What are my risks and pitfalls? And what is the cost of action and inaction?

BEST MOMENTS

‘Where we can happily delude ourselves that everything’s peachy or everything is crap. That we’re right or that we’re wrong, that things are going up or down, or any other point on the continuum.’ 

‘As I’m writing this and then recording it I’m also running these questions back and forth in my own mind.’

‘I’ll try new things. If they work better than what I was currently doing then I’ll implement that as a policy. Test. Test.Test.’

VALUABLE RESOURCES

The Tutor Podcast

 www.Neilcowmeadow.com

ABOUT THE HOST

Neil Cowmeadow is a maverick peripatetic guitar teacher from Telford with over 19 years’ experience in the business of helping people. Learn how to start, grow and love your business with Neil’s invaluable advice and tips without the buzzwords and BS!

CONTACT METHOD

[email protected] 

As a guitar tutor patience is not only a virtue but a necessity. After being asked by his students how he never loses his temper, Neil shares his tips on managing your emotions in this episode. 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Recognise that you are having an emotional reaction and identify it. If you can’t recognise it, you can’t manage it. 
• What you call the emotion will affect your response to the emotion you’re experiencing. Rename it and interpret it positively. 
• Pause and reach for your next technique to overcome the situation.

BEST MOMENTS

‘Just like you, I have to manage frustration and impatience because if it gets out of control I might respond badly.’

‘Emotions never rest, they’re always moving this way, that way,’

‘I think this is why I’ve become such a fan of Neurolinguistic Programming, applied psychology, behaviour and linguistics and some of the techniques of hypnosis.’ 

VALUABLE RESOURCES

The Tutor Podcast

 www.Neilcowmeadow.com

ABOUT THE HOST

Neil Cowmeadow is a maverick peripatetic guitar teacher from Telford with over 19 years’ experience in the business of helping people. Learn how to start, grow and love your business with Neil’s invaluable advice and tips without the buzzwords and BS!

CONTACT METHOD

[email protected] 

One of the really interesting things you get to do when you are exposed to lots of people socially or via business is choose between the plethora of opportunities that come your way if you listen and connect with people. The possibilities are endless for business, pleasure or helping people if you keep your ears open and see the collaborations possible between those in your community. 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Problems, puzzles and challenges can be solved if you listen carefully. People share their challenges and you can ask yourself, is there opportunity for me, them, or how can I help? 
• If you cannot help them yourself, ask yourself, who do I know that can help?
• Think ; be useful. By helping people you will find opportunities to come to you.

BEST MOMENTS

‘Where is the way to make things better? How do I make things better?’

‘I wound up believing that life is like walking through a field strewn with diamonds.’

‘As tutors we have a network of contacts, students, parents, and all their associates, so who can we help? All we have to do is listen and be prepared to play. Maybe we can join the dots that they can’t see.’   

VALUABLE RESOURCES

The Tutor Podcast

 www.Neilcowmeadow.com

ABOUT THE HOST

Neil Cowmeadow is a maverick peripatetic guitar teacher from Telford with over 19 years’ experience in the business of helping people. Learn how to start, grow and love your business with Neil’s invaluable advice and tips without the buzzwords and BS!

CONTACT METHOD

[email protected] 

Teaching, coaching and mentoring people is about change. We are constantly shaping and changing their minds. Neil shares how he helps his students grow by bypassing their habitual psychological defences to teach new habits and techniques. 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• The teaching process is fairly consistent, it's about shaping and changing people's minds for the better.
• The students' sense of identity will embody all sorts of beliefs including morals, self worth and level of talent. It is the teachers job to slip past these defences and re-teach the students an idea of their limits.
• Pre held misconceptions of, for example, coming from a musical family and believing they must follow suit, perhaps ideas of their lack of talent or they have been playing for years, making little progress, and believe the task impossible.
• Having students read an affirmative statement that is the opposite of their preconceived idea of their shortcomings.

BEST MOMENTS

‘Before a student or a client can effectively absorb and use the information we are trying to put across to them the mind has to be ready to receive it.’

‘Where the mind goes the body follows.’

‘That will massively affect the outcome because the student, the client, is gonna try and make those words come true.’

VALUABLE RESOURCES

The Tutor Podcast

 www.Neilcowmeadow.com

ABOUT THE HOST

Neil Cowmeadow is a maverick peripatetic guitar teacher from Telford with over 19 years’ experience in the business of helping people. Learn how to start, grow and love your business with Neil’s invaluable advice and tips without the buzzwords and BS!

CONTACT METHOD

[email protected]