#3 The Six Figure Guitar Teacher's Own Story

Hmmm, I see that I left my laptop open and the ever opportunistic Pragmatist snuck in and started posting articles on my blog. I’ll have to take some extra measures to ensure he doesn’t get to it again. That guy is way too soft and doesn’t have what it takes to be a Six Figure Guitar Teacher. You’ll never get anywhere with little wimpy numbers like $25 a month or $10 a day.

 

I couldn’t help but laugh at his example either. What kind of idiot would buy lunch at a restaurant when they were already struggling financially, don’t have any investment accounts or retirement savings and are already stuck with compounding debts? There is no way that they would waste the money on convenience food once a week let alone daily, especially after seeing their credit card debts start to grow. He might call himself The Pragmatist but he sure has an unrealistic expectation of what the average person spends on a daily or weekly basis.

 

What I want you to do is start thinking of REAL savings. Not socking away $5 to $100 per month, but more like $5000 per month. Not everyone can do that, but a middle class couple or family in Australia, America, Europe and any other first world country with both adults working a standard job should easily be able to get close. No-one with a double income household should be struggling to make ends meet and not investing, THEY SHOULD BE PUTTING AWAY THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS EVERY MONTH! NO EXCUSES!

 

Here is my story so you can see how I did it:

 

When I was a kid I grew up in a family that was comfortable and didn’t want for anything. My parents had their own business and worked a lot. There were times when business wasn’t great and we were stretched thin, even having to live with our grandparents for a year because we didn’t have a house of our own, and times when business was booming where we got to go on expensive holidays, live in a big house and treat ourselves to every gadget or gizmo we wanted.

 

I had a mother who was very frugal, was never wasteful and always saved as much as she could to invest into important or quality things. I had this counter-balanced with a father who spent money freely and gave us everything we wanted when we could. He would often buy important things and products to make life and business more convenient, but we also had two shipping containers full with junk we never used and no investments outside of getting a bigger house every couple of years.

 

You see there are generally two schools of thought when it comes to getting rich.

 

 

Fortunately I was able to experience both of these from an early age, and the approach I took fell somewhere in the middle...

 

What if we were able to embrace frugality and significantly cut our expenses and cost of living WHILE working harder, increasing our income and creating multiple streams of income?

 

The answer for me wasn’t embracing one or the other, rather using both approaches synergistically to get the best of both worlds.

 

But back to my story.

 

I used to umpire football on the weekends as a kid and early teen. I’d play my game of football, and then do the umpiring for the games after mine or the next day for my brother's and mother's games (or both). I’d run around for 2 to 4 hours in the freezing cold, rain, hail or shine and at the end I’d get $5, a hot dog and a killer python. It wasn’t much in retrospect ,but as I kid I had nothing to compare it to.

 

You can imagine how happy I was when I got a job at my local supermarket working the register where I started earning $9 an hour. All of a sudden I went from earning $10 a week max running around outside to $36 a day and bringing in a whopping $120 or so a week. Better yet, I was in a nice controlled climate, comfortable all year around, and could even sneak a read of the newspaper if things got quiet. I was rolling in it and life was good. I was making around $500 a month while going to high school and by the end of the first year I had $5000 saved up in my bank account. When my friends hung out at the local shopping mall every day after school, I went home to study, saved my money, and practiced my guitar.

 

One of the points I am getting at is that in Australia, American, England and other rich countries you don’t know how good you’ve got it. If you’re working at a supermarket, a department store, even fast food then you’re making a decent amount of money and have great working conditions. Do you really want to be digging holes on the side of the road in 40 degree heat? Or doing other backbreaking or mundane jobs like paper rounds for the rest of your life? We often do make enough money to get by, but often have really bad lifestyle and spending habits that quickly has our spending outpacing our earnings. Now back to the story...

 

From here I went to university but didn’t pick a top of the range college where I would overpay on tuition. I continued to live at home to keep my expenses low and I worked two additional jobs on the side of my supermarket job to keep money coming in. I worked at a fast food chain called Nandos for $15 an hour and started teaching guitar at the local music store for $30 an hour...but every now and then I would get a private student who would pay me $50.

 

This is when I first got the taste of working for myself. I could make more money in one hour teaching from my (parents) house than I could working two or three hours in some of my other jobs. If I could only get more students to come and visit me privately I could replace the underperforming income streams that I didn’t like as much with ones that I enjoyed. I sure enjoyed showing people how to play guitar a lot more than flipping burgers in a hot, humid kitchen for hours on end.

 

My plan at that point (which in retrospect was an idea planted in my head by my own highschool teachers) in time was to finish my music degree at uni (a $50,000 commitment) and then go and do a masters of education (another $60,000 commitment) so that I could get a stable classroom teaching job that pays from $40,000- $60,000 a year. If I could be earning enough money to just get by but could keep on playing guitar in a band and performing after-hours and on weekend, then I’d be happy.

 

But the idea of being stuck in a 9-5 teaching a majority of kids who didn’t want to be there and only playing to a handful of people at weekend gigs wasn’t sitting with me right. I wanted to be a rockstar touring the world, selling millions of CD’s, teaching only highly motivated students who wanted to learn with me. Looking at every single music teacher or professional musician I knew, none of them were doing what I wanted to do. In fact they had abandoned their dreams for the 9-5 grind and were just running on a treadmill. 

 

I didn’t want to accept that for me.

 

I didn’t want to invest $110,000 into further education (after 12 years in the current education system) only to be trapped in a job with a ceiling of $60,000 a year for the next 40 years...

 

This is when I made a decision that I would be rich, that I would take control of my destiny, and I would do whatever it took to become successful.

 

So I started reading books on money, finance and investing. I started taking myself seriously as a business. I set goals and I worked towards achieving them. I became obsessed with success and creating a life of time, money and freedom.

 

Between the ages of 18 and 25 I never earned more than $18,000 in a single year often working two or three jobs.

 

At age 26, 18 months after discovering success principles and re-shaping my mindset I earned $120,000 in a single year teaching guitar.

 

The next year I earned over $200,000 as a solo guitar teacher with no other income stream other than teaching music lesson.

 

I had learned how to make serious money teaching guitar, and was well into the process of constructing my ideal life. A key lesson I learned was “Spend less than you earn and invest the rest”.

 

That one phrase was what I thought was the key to true wealth and I focussed relentlessly on making more money, yet I was totally focused on the word earn, when instead I should have been focussing on the ’spend less’ part.

 

I was never wasteful with money, however I didn’t realise how much additional money I could have been saving and freeing up for my investments had I been aware of the concepts of Frugality and the FIRE movement  (Financial Independence Retire Early).

 

When I combined the two approaches of aggressively increasing income while minimising my spending with extreme frugality, I had discovered a super method for creating wealth.

 

When all my friends were eating lunch out every day, I was brining my sandwich from home.

 

When my friends were drinking and partying on the weekends, I was at home practicing guitar and working on my business

 

When most musicians are hoping and preying that they would get famous, I was networking and building relationships with the right people in my scene.

 

When most people were just accepting life for what it was, I was actively taking action to improve my life and achieve my goals and dreams.

 

Things didn’t fall into place for me until I was 25 but once they did I was able to move forward with relentless momentum. If you’re reading this at age 18 and you’re just starting out, following the advice here has the potential to make you a millionaire before 25 and definitely by 30. If you’re aged 30, 40, 50 or higher, don’t worry, you still have plenty of time to change your situation and start getting ahead in life.

 

They say the best time to plant a seed is 20 years ago, but the second best time is today! Come on this journey with me and I’ll show you how you too can be earning $100,000 or more teaching guitar while lowering your expenses and increasing your revenue streams so that you become a financial powerhouse!