Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle Review
I have had many people email me over the years about my association with the Tom Hess Music Corporation and my involvement with the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle. While the review I left back in 2010 was accurate in my assessment at the time, I have to fully retract my recommendation and testimonial.
I will share my reasons in my updated review below.
Because I know the Tom Hess Music Corporation will not remove my testimonial from their website, I feel obligated as a music teacher and business owner to make an updated analysis of my 8 year involvement with the Tom Hess Music Corporation and my involvement with the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner circle.
Lauren Bateman’s Elite Guitar Teacher Inner Circle Review
While growing my solopreneur business of teaching voice and guitar out of my home, I felt that the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle was very helpful in helping me grow my business. As someone who had no experience in building a business and someone who didn’t even have a degree in music, having some guidance was super valuable for me as I started building my voice and guitar teaching business.
While the Elite Guitar Teacher’s Inner Circle did help me grow in the early years, I found that being a part of the group became more restrictive than beneficial to my business over the years. I found that I wanted to focus more on multiple flows of income and financial freedom. As I started expanding and opening my music school, it became clear that it wasn’t ‘acceptable’ to teach anything outside of guitar. Building a music school or offering multiple instruments became a shiny object and definitely had an overall tone of negativity to it.
Despite that, I continued to build my music school business to about $450k in revenue. After years of operating my business one way, I started implementing new strategies and ideas presented in the EGTIC program. Even though we were generating more leads and business, our retention plummeted.
I knew something had to change.
I started following another business mentor who quickly made me realize that some of the things I was being taught were not the best way to run a business. I instantly started removing every aspect of the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle culture from my business and student retention improved massively.
Not only that, I am a big fan of financial freedom and multiple flows of income. I knew from my other mentor that the online market was something you needed to participate in to truly grow your business into the future. The global Corona virus pandemic has proved how true this statement was. As a member of the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle, I was banned from participating in the online market. We were even told we could not use online Facebook ads to advertise our business because it competed with the online market of the Tom Hess Music Corporation. I felt I was limited in reaching the full potential and vision of my business.
At that point, I knew it was time for me to leave the group.
Knowing that I needed to be in the online space to realize my vision and dreams for my business, I made the decision to leave the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle. This was a very hard decision for me because I knew the culture of the Tom Hess Music Corporation. I knew this would mean that I would lose contact with many people I had built relationships with over the years. Despite that, I made the decision to remove myself from the group. Since leaving the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle program, I opened a third music school location with the business as a whole earning up to $90,000/month in revenue. In addition, I also built a separate online teaching business via YouTube that has earned me over $120,000 in revenue in 2020 alone.
This is during the worst economic crisis and pandemic the world has seen in quite some time.
If I did not make the move to leave the Tom Hess Music Corporation back in 2017, I feel my business and livelihood would have suffered greatly. By going online, I was able keep all of my admins and employees working through the pandemic. Not only that, at the end of 2020, my music schools actually grew from where they were in 2019. Something I know would not have been possible if I had kept the culture and ideas taught to me in the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle.
I hope you found this updated review of the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle helpful in making your decision on whether or not to participate in the program. Again, I will reiterate that I did find this group helpful in the beginning, but the culture changes that took place over the course of my 8 years of involvement with the group would make me NEVER recommend anyone get involved with the Tom Hess Music Corporation.
Final Verdict: DO NOT RECOMMEND