Guitar teacher success stories? Learn from horror stories instead
Why the world loves success stories
You see them everywhere. The person who made a million dollars from a simple home business or a person making six figures because of x. There are countless books written about success stories and how the creators managed to overcome all obstacles and through sheer determination achieve ultimate success.
But there's a big problem with success stories.
The problem is that what worked for one person may not work for you. Worse, by reading or hearing about a success story, you might be thrown off course from what you really need to focus on to succeed. It's really inspiring to hear how a guitar teacher went from zero students to a full schedule because of YouTube or from email marketing, but the problem is that the methods or strategies other people use may not be relevant to you and your goals.
The worst advice somebody can give you is "x worked for me so you should try it". That's terrible advice because it doesn't take into account your situation, your goals and your strengths/weaknesses. In the financial industry there are strict regulations on what finanical advice somebody can give a person. You've probably heard many disclosures along the lines of "this advice is general in nature and does not take into account your personal needs". That type of warning needs to be printed on every success story.
A success story might fill you with ambition and determination, but it can also lead you down the wrong path and take you away from the things you really should be focusing on.
A better alternative to success stories
While it may be really interesting to hear how somebody made a million dollars with a simple idea, it can be damaging to your future if you try and replicate their strategy or methods. So instead of reading about success stories, what if you read about horror stories? Horror stories are when a person tries something out and fails miserably. Maybe they spent thousands of dollars developing a business idea only to lose it all. Or maybe they work on an idea for six months only to find out nobody wants to buy it.
Horror stories are excellent from a learning and development point of view. They're far more valuable than success stories because they prevent you from falling for the same mistakes.
If you read a horror story and can figure out what decisions caused the person to fail, you can avoid making similar decisions in your own life. So while horror stories are incredibly valuable, they're also incredibly hard to find. The reason is that people love sharing their story when they succeed, but they don't like admitting to failures. You will read plenty of success stories in newspapers but you will never see a story about somebody's failure.
The last two episodes of our podcast have focused on guitar teacher horror stories. Over the years we've had teachers come to us after failing at something and with no idea what to do to recover. We're sharing these stories (with each teacher's permission of course) so you can learn the valuable lessons these teachers learned the hard way.
Failing hurts. But the lessons learned from a failure are incredibly valuable. These horror stories will give you the lessons without having to go through the painful experience involved with the failures.
Episode 19 tells a story of a guitar teacher who found out the hard way what you're really giving up when you buy into a franchise. It was incredibly tough for this teacher and a valuable lesson for every other guitar teacher out there.
Episode 20 tells a story of a guitar teacher who spent $600 and four months of time and effort trying to use webinars to promote her business. Even if you have no interest in webinars, the lessons from this teacher's story will apply to you.
We'll be adding more horror stories over time because there's a lot that can be learned from them. While we would love to share success stories - as explained above they can often cause more harm than good. So take the next ten minutes to listen to one of the above podcasts and protect yourself from falling for the same traps these teachers fell for.
Next time you read about a success story, remember that it's incredibly hard to replicate that success - especially if you have different goals.