Once you have your first few pupils then ask them for referrals and PAY THEM

Have you had people ask you for favours and then never do anything in return? How does that make you feel? If you do something for them uninvited you do not expect anything in return but of you are asked there seems to be a transaction under way.

Often businesses will ask for referrals but they either offer nothing or something that is unwanted (think about this when you offer a teenager a free guitar lesson that means nothing if the parents are paying so that needs to be offered to the parents. What you offer MUST have perceived value to the person who is receiving it that will make all the difference when it comes to referring other people to you.

How many bands do this when people get them gigs? Not many; getting a booking referral fee out of the blue of £100 could be a very powerful incentive for them to get you more.

I have a friend who comes to see me ONLY when he needs help getting work and although I am happy to help him he never returns my calls at other times when I leave messages about things that I am doing, only if it means he can get work out of it. Shame really because there is only so much that people will take, so be careful to make sure that you are not doing this.

For all the problems that money causes and I am the first the use other forms of transaction than money, trading time for time etc. money is a powerful transactional force which needs to be fully understood.

Remember that money as such is just an idea which we all agree on but as such it is imaginary especially now as it does not relate to the Gold Standard and numbers are just created by banks. However the idea is VERY powerful and that is what you are using, the idea of the transaction. If you are paying a lot for the referral you must value that transaction. If you offer £5 for every new referred pupil that will work against you but £25 to £50, that is substantial and it means that the referrer could earn a lot of money from those transactions if they get motivated.

Now if you think that is a lot of money stop for a moment and ask yourself how much money does a new client bring you over the lifetime of lessons, gigs etc.? Then think again about how much you are willing to pay!

So giving someone a book that they do not want to say ‘Thank You’ for a referral which could make you £400 to £1000 a year is an insult, and not offering anything but just asking is a travesty to any good will that you have with someone.

Be generous and it will be returned.

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk check out the video

It’s all about communication, if you are good with people skills, teaching is made a lot easier and so is being a good front man/woman for a band.

I had a comment left recently on a YouTube video that I did about developing a teaching practice. This person said that he would really like to get into teaching but ‘hated’ young children and the thought of teaching, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star to young kids who didn’t care and weren’t interested would be a problem for him however he really thought that teaching teenagers in a secondary school would be okay. In my experience the ones who are disinterested and really don’t care tend to be teenagers not young children who are the ones often flushed with enthusiasm of doing something amazing but by the time they reach thirteen or fourteen years of age all of that disappears into the stupor of the teenage brain.

I am not suggesting that it’s impossible to teach teenagers because it is not but it takes a certain amount of patience to do that and the ability to create goals and things for them to aspire to, because you are not only dealing with the teenager but also the environment that they find themselves in, the pressures of school, academic life and what is expected of them from their parents either implicitly or explicitly.

My take on this is that you build a good friendship with people that you teach and in that way you can encourage them to learn and also understand where they are coming from and if you do this well you can encourage them to pass your name around to their friends and thereby develop the work that you do.

All of the above applies to performance as well, the most dedicated followers of a band or personality often resides within the young person’s age group. This is proven by the extraordinary numbers of people who follow bloggers and vloggers. Some of the video bloggers have numbers of followers that a successful band would kill for and they have an intimate knowledge of what goes on in the life of the blogger that used to happen when I was younger regarding pop bands. Magazines such as Smash Hits used to do features that were a day in the life of whoever was famous at the time such as the Bay City Rollers, Showaddywaddy, Slade, or Marc Bolan.

So friendship is the key to developing a business and in the world of business this would be termed as goodwill, which is something that you could put on the balance sheet but it is very much a guesstimate.

So the first area for developing a client base is speak to your friends and get their friends on board and you would be amazed how many people that could potentially be.

Vic

Www.bluescampUK.co.uk for three days of music magic, learn to play in a rock band learning the tricks of the trade.

Business Model

I was in Amsterdam for a seminar with a well known writer.I had never been to Amsterdam before and it certainly lived up to its reputation of the beautiful laid back city.

I found the roads so confusing with bikes and cars coming at you from almost every possible direction that to be safe I looked in every direction when crossing the road including up.

What I did find fascinating was the red light district and that rather sordid and tacky are side by side with the beautiful and picturesque and numbers of people on bicycles going about their business.

The ladies in the windows plying their trade made me reflect on the statement that most business plans that we adopt are the same business plans of the prostitute.

Prostitution is rightly regarded by some as the oldest profession and I think we should look at it from that perspective for the moment whether you agree with it or not, that it also  follows it must have the oldest business plan as well.

I know I have made mention of this before but I am fascinated by the echoes of processes like this.

So for the ladies in the windows in Amsterdam they are using the business model adopted by most small businesses around the world and through time which is ‘ I have something that you want and if you want it enough you will pay for it’ also the basics of the marketing work on this principle.

Make it look appealing and make it accessible and to some extent exclusive. There are many cases with prostitution that women will have regular clients sometimes over many years as an exclusive deal.

So what can we learn from this? Well maybe that the fantasy of the experience, being a rock star. the dream needs fulfilling and that is why they come to us to spend their we need to recognise that.

I think the most telling aspect is that to make money we do need to be ‘client led’ which is very P.C. is it not? However it comes directly from the most un P.C. and the most ancient of all of our trading practices.

So to wrap up there is much to learn here from the ladies who want you to pay for plucking their instrument; see we are even closer than you think! 

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk   three days of learning to be in a band