How much do your students spend on learning guitar?

Your average student will spend $1000 or more this year on learning guitar. Your students knows this is money well spent because your lessons will in fact saved them possibly hundreds of wasted hours spent in inefficient practice methods. As an experienced guitarist you can help your students avoid the mistakes you made. So how about you? Are you studying teaching? Business? Marketing? Are you investing in your education to avoid expensive mistakes or to increase you income and efficiency? When I started teaching back in the 80's my teaching methods were based on what I had learnt from my own teachers. This included guitar teachers, drum teachers, school teachers, football coaches as well as my parents and family members. I was a teenager at the time and had spent my life being coached so I was an expert right? The sad truth is that once I left school my education came to a halt and this happens to most of us. We think because we can play guitar we can teach it and even worse we believe we are natural born business people. My family were in business so I definitely had an advantage but once I left home my education stopped and it wasn't until I found my business in serious financial trouble that I began to seek out coaches. Let me tell you this made all the difference. Like our students we need to always be learning and seeking out coaches. Self taught teachers are like self taught guitar students. A select few manage to succeed (usually the hard way) but most fail. 95% of small businesses fail but those who have a coach or mentor tend to be in the 5% who succeed. I think as teachers we owe it to our students to be continually learning and this means investing in successful coaches.