Hi, it’s Neil Cowmeadow here EPISODE 210 of  The Tutor Podcast, the weekly show that’s all about how to Start, Grow and Love your tutoring business... whilst staying sane and having fun in the process.

In today’s Episode 210 - Free Introduction Sessions

Specifically, how I do it now (not how I used to) and the reasons why I think this is the sanest and best business way of finding the right students for you.

First up – I’m a guitar teacher: 23 years in and loving it!

Who else can say that?

How do I do it?

Two rules:

1. Don’t do stuff that makes you unhappy  - DDSS
2. Don’t deal with tossers – DDWT

Simple. 

DDSS takes care of itself: 

• figure out what you love to do
• what you’d do for nothing because it is so much fun (teaching guitar)
• figure out how to get well paid for doing it
• spend as much time as you like doing that thing.
• You’ll never do a day’s work again!
• Your enthusiasm rubs off on your students

DDWT is another story:

• Initially you’ll work with anyone – just check for a pulse!
• Before long the tosssers will begin to grate on your nerves.
• Fire them.
• That’s the hard way, and most people start that way.
• Now I do this instead:
• When taking the sales call or answering an email enquiry I invite them to come for a free half-hour one-to-one
• I can find out what they want
• Can I honestly hep them?
• Do I want to work with this person?
• Do they want to work with me – am I a tosser in their view?
• Whatever happens, this is being done for the best reasons: if they are not our tribe we can steer them towards another person who would be a better fit for them.
• I try to solve their biggest problem right there and then, for free. (usually bar chords and awful biomechanics – go hand in hand)
• Why do I do this?
• Because I can give massive, life-changing benefit on day one, for free!
• If I only do that – get over a 34 year obstacle in 2 minutes, like I did today (chuck Berry Bounce with Matt, who’s played in bands since he was a teenager but couldn’t do this thing) they’ll automatically assume that if I can give THAT secret away, for free and with NO OBLIGATION I must have a ton of other great stuff, because what i’ve just done is clearly the tip of the iceberg.
• I ask them if it helped – they say yes, more than anything they’ve ever done – and (if I want to work with them, I’ll ask them if they’d like to work with me.
• Of course – having just had a decades-old problem fixed in a few minutes – they are desperate to work with me – I’m clearly a screaming genius!!!
• They will then gush enthusiastically to their friends about this miraculous teacher and what I did in a free session.
• What would happen if I’d held back and not given them a free consultation and the gift of what they want most?
• Maybe I’m salesy
• Don’t display expertise and generosity
• They wouldn’t leave in a better state than they came in
• Maybe I’d be so-so...?
• I didn’t Wow! them
• What would happen if I didn’t eliminate the undesirables at an early stage??
• I might have to spend time with unpleasant people
• That might ruin my day
• Might undermine the joy of teaching for me
• They might be stuck with someone who doesn’t get them
• Potentially problematic relationship for a long time

So that’s how I do it, and why I do it. I think it’s completely ethical, honest, generous and the very best way to turn a prospective student into a screaming fan and an enthusiastic advocate of my business.

I can’t think of a better way to do a free intro consultation - How about you – got any ideas to throw into the mix?

I’d love to hear from you, because I’m here to learn, too.

Just send them to [email protected]  And Remember to subscribe to The Tutor Podcast and get all the updates and more tips to help you to Start, Grow and Love Your Tutoring Business.

And you can find me on Twitter where I am @tutorpodcast

So, until next time – Have a Fabulous Day!

What do you say when someone asks “What do you do?”. It is time to have your Elevator Pitch ready. Employ an interesting, detailed, and productive reply that truly shows what you do for your clients and what, potentially, you could also do for them. Neil explains how and why.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Plan and rehearse your speech so you can use it off the cuff in conversation when your occupation is enquired after. It is much more than just ‘I’m an accountant”, and should be an approximately 30 second advertisement of you, your business, and the skills that you offer.
• A perfected Elevator Pitch will give you confidence in social and business situations as you can be assured of a positive response. There will be no further questions as you will have been comprehensive in your response and you could possibly have gained a potential client. 
• Develop, enhance and evolve your Elevator Pitch. If part or all of it falls flat, don’t be afraid to rewrite or tweak it until it is perfect.

BEST MOMENTS

‘I think Elevator Pitch is a pretty good name. An elevator is a lift in the states and a pitch is a sales presentation that attempts to interest someone.’

‘It should be crafted, tested and revised. It’s an iterative process.’ 

‘Well. Officially I’m a guitar teacher but what I really do is hang out with my friends and play guitar all day, infecting them with my love affair for the guitar and helping them to learn quickly and make music of their own, using a  unique back engineered teaching system to bypass boring old fashioned music teaching and do what really works right from the get-go. But best of all, I make it fun and part of that is I’ll only ever work with people I like.’ 

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 recalls an experience when a seemingly impossible task was suggested to him, with apparently very little chance of success. Having said yes anyway, a surprising unforeseen resulted in a few life lessons learned, and Neil recounts them in this episode.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• It is important to say ‘yes’ and then to say ‘it’s possible’. Never discard an opportunity.
• Children all have the initial spark of creativity before they have it removed from them.
• Make the lessons fun and they will be successful. 
• Even if time is an issue, get the basics in place first. 
• Have a firm faith in your students and they will develop faith in you.

BEST MOMENTS

‘Is she playing acoustic, electric or bass guitar? ‘She wants to play ukulele’ says the voice down the phone.’ 

‘It’s a completely unreasonable request. It’s crazy. In fact you couldn’t make this up. So naturally I said yes.’

‘They’d given her one of the highest musical aptitude scores they’d ever awarded. Wow. I knew she’d be ok but that top score was a total surprise.’

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] 

Write a book! Neil has written two, one on time management, ‘Elephant Sandwiches’ and the other on guitarists, ‘9 Weird Things Guitarists Do’ (both available on Amazon). Being a published author showcases your expertise in your field and can be fine marketing tools but how should we go about achieving this? Neil shares his advice on how to create your first written work.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Set aside a good amount of time, a minimum of three slots a week at fixed days and times. It is a matter of discipline to show up and do the work.
• Plan your writing. Think about what you are most eager to share. 
• Define your audience. Create yourself an avatar, an imaginary representative of your target audience for you to ‘speak’ to in your writing.
• Outline the book. Define style and length. How many chapters, titles and in what order? Plan with pen and paper and mentally dump all your ideas for each chapter.

BEST MOMENTS

‘Always write in the same place in the house. I have two offices. I have my business office, where the teaching company and the property business operate out of, and then there’s my writing office, my little nook.’ 

‘The aim for me was to help other people get past themselves to solve the problems that I used to have.’

‘Where are they? How much world experience do they have from their position in the world? Then think about their goals. What do they want out of it?’

‘I’ll outline the chapter titles. I’ll put the chapter title at the start of a page and then I’ll mentally dump all the points I can think for that chapter title.’

‘And seriously guys do this on paper, don’t do it on your PC. Generally speaking the PC is too slow. If you want to write a book on your phone good luck with that. I can’t. I write on the PC but I outline and plan on paper.’

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 details how we communicate with our students can help us to gain their trust and confidence. Using his training in Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP) techniques, Neil identifies the mode of expression his students use and matches it, increasing not only the speed and efficiency of learning, but his likability as a tutor and mentor.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• In Neils experience as a tutor, NLP has been an invaluable tool in communicating with his students and improving his interactions generally. 
• By observing how people are expressing themselves you can gain insight into the ways that they think. 
• People often use phrases such as “I can’t see it, that doesn’t look right” or, “It doesn’t sound right”. These identify them either as a visual language user or a auditory language user. Others may be smell based or sensory, someone who “feels”.
• By matching your language to theirs, using visual imagery for instance for a visual language user, you can improve your relationship and influence with your student.

BEST MOMENTS

‘When I began to listen more acutely to what they were saying, it gave me a window into the way they thought.’

‘Conversation used to be me waiting for my turn to speak, but as NLP got into my system I started to really listen to what people were saying. ‘

‘There are just an odd few people who are what I call “taste mongers”. These are generally known as olfactory or gustatory sensation streams, or language types. They’re all about taste and smell.’

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] 

Many of us have a very unhealthy and self abusive relationship with the concept and acceptance of failure. Neil discusses why it matters to tutors and business people and how, instead of using it as a mark to your detriment, you should try seeing it as a learning step and opportunity.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Remember, failure is an interim state unless your response to it is to give up.
• Encourage failures to your students as the necessary steps towards success.
• We are often taught from an early age that we should avoid failure no matter what. However this can just be a block to learning that can eventually prevent us from acquiring the skills and knowledge to achieve success. 

BEST MOMENTS

‘I work with lots of students and mentees who are terrified of failure so they hold back, either never try or half arse it and kid themselves. Imagine showing up for a guitar lesson and being so afraid of failure that you cant even play any note.’

‘Just about everyone who has ever done anything to better mankind failed before they succeeded. Lots of their efforts didn’t work , so they paused, reviewed what went wrong and what went right, then got on to develop another approach.’

‘Remember, by avoiding the risk of failure you are also avoiding the risk of success.’

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 nature of money and your attitude towards it can be complex and difficult and can affect all areas of your life. Neil shares his own ideas and beliefs about money which have allowed him to achieve success in his own field as a guitar tutor, and will also assist you in your endeavours by understanding moneys nature and its place in your life.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Money is a tool. It’s a construct for storing value and a neutral social convention. 
• Gold used to be the social equivalent of its value in gold held by the countries and institutions that press or print it. This hasn’t been the case since 1931.
• With money, skills and services that would never fit into a barter system can be given value.
• Your beliefs about money directly affect how you acquire it. Distrust of money will stunt your efforts to gather it. 
• Be aware that your attitude towards money may have been manipulated by outdated religious ideas spread to pass your money to them and has resulted in the concept of money as evil.
• If you are wealthy you then have the freedom to express your inner self unfettered by lack of funds.

BEST MOMENTS

‘Moneys not good, its not bad, its just a tool. Like a blade you can use it to harvest food or slice people up into little pieces.’

‘Because it’s not actually backed by anything, money is not worth a damn thing. It’s made up and agreed upon and that’s fine as long as everyone agrees…’

‘I’m struggling at the moment to imagine carrying enough teaching to the bakery to go and buy some bread.’

‘What I now know is that people who tell you that money isn’t important don’t have any.’

‘Don’t take money advice from poor people.’

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] 

In this episode Neil tackles the thorny issue of pricing. The issue of how you set your price is often tied into how you actually feel about your product and can be the biggest clue to your client about the level of quality they can expect. Neil details the possible results of high, medium and low pricing.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Your price you charge will tie very closely to your sense of self worth. If you feel that your product or service is high quality you will charge a high price accordingly. 
• If you believe you are average you will be uncomfortable charging a high rate so will set your price medium range. 
• If you feel you are low quality you will struggle to charge anything above low wage levels. It is very common to undervalue our skills because we find it easy but ease does not mean easy. You will attract custom that does not value the service you are offering and thus will be a poor student.

BEST MOMENTS

‘Person one believes they are worth top dollar. Person two believes they are okayish, average and then there’s the person who believes they are not that great. Three different belief systems that will give you very different results.’

‘That higher pricing gives them automatically a higher perceived value in the eyes of the customer. It also gives them more status.’

‘If they an get you to argue about your rates they’ll get you to argue about everything else.’

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] 

In this episode Neil talks about saying no. Sometimes we have to say no for the betterment of our mental health and to guard our wealth but often saying no can be difficult and socially awkward. How and when should we say no to save ourselves from taking on tasks which disadvantage our resources?

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• We can say yes to the wrong thing, job or person and quickly get out of our depth. We must get good at saying no and not replying yes by default.
• Pause when presented with an opportunity or request. Look a few years ahead and see if it will affect your real goals. Will it eat up your time or money? Will it require you to compromise your standards or ideals?
• Bluntness is the clearest way of communicating but you can be careful with your refusal to save hurting feelings. You can always point them in them in the direction of someone who can help.

BEST MOMENTS

‘Saying no to people can make us feel uncomfortable. We are perhaps afraid we might hurt their feelings or we might say not to a “bright shiny penny” of an idea that looks great but might just leave us in the wrong place.’

‘Perhaps a better tack is “not yet” or “not now”. You could say “that’s not really what I do so I’m out of the game on this one”.’

‘There are always loads of ways to say no. Be creative. Be courageous.’

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]