Excellence Is a Habit: Jason Land on Building a Music Teaching Business (Episode 15)

You learned how to make music. Nobody taught you how to make a living making music.

Jason Land is the founder of Guitar Ninjas, a guitar school with a method that gets kids and adults playing songs within weeks. When he sat down with Nomad for Episode 15 of The Career Musician, his Burbank location had just flooded. An inch of water everywhere, guitars salvaged, artwork and furniture lost. They were back in business in one day.

That is where this conversation starts: with a team that doesn't flinch under pressure. From there, Jason and Nomad cover how a guitarist builds a music teaching business, why you can't act out of desperation, and the habit that runs his life.

The paradigm shift: act like a business person

Nomad put it plainly. We got into music because it moved us spiritually, not because we wanted to be business people. But once you decide to earn a living at it, you have to make the shift and start acting like a business person. Make Music Your Business.

Jason picked up guitar at 13 after seeing Jimmy Page in a cloud of fog in The Song Remains the Same. He graduated from Full Sail, moved to California to be an artist, and spent about four years in a band. His plan was simple: get a manager, get an A&R person to see the show, go on tour. It didn't work like that at all.

How many times do you have to hear no before you give up? Nomad's answer: trick question. Never, if what you are chasing lines up with your core values.

Find the thing you're naturally good at

Burnt out, Jason took a year off and became a personal trainer. That gig taught him kinesiology and coaching: getting a client from A to B on a measurable goal. Back in music, he tried everything. Hired gun gigs, session guitar, a stretch of songwriting between LA and Nashville.

Then a friend opening a music school asked him to teach. On his first day, the owner put him in a room with a student and said "just figure it out" and closed the door. That was the pivotal moment. Teaching was the flow he'd been looking for, and it lined up with everything he had learned as a trainer.

His advice: decide what you really want to do as early as you can. If you are out of alignment with your values, you are always chasing, and your happiness is at somebody else's mercy. Once he made a concrete decision to stop trying to be the sideman and build around teaching, everything went upward. That is Talent and Savvy from ETHOS: know what you are good at, and know how to use it.

East Coast hustle

Knowing your lane doesn't pay the bills by itself. Jason and Nomad, both from the Northeast, bonded over the work ethic that comes from shoveling snow in February and mowing lawns in the heat.

"Nobody's gonna make this stuff happen for you. I went out and I hunted that thing down and I brought it back to the cave, and that's what I do every single day."

Jason Land, 14:24

Five students became ten, then fifty, then about 220 at the Burbank school with seven coaches. When his top instructor asked to open a second location, the owner of a guitar store called him the very next day offering space for a studio. They built a satellite location on the store's second floor. Opportunity met someone who was ready. That is Luck = preparation + opportunity.

Excellence is a habit, and failure hands you keys

Jason's guiding philosophy is "excellence is a habit," a line usually credited to Aristotle. He tells it to himself ten times a day. It's written in his house, his studio and his email signature. His school doesn't accept laziness. It looks for a growth mindset: a student who can't make the G to D chord change isn't "can't," they are "how."

He compares himself only to himself, and treats failure as part of the plan. Every failure gives you a key, and one day one of those keys opens the door. He also feeds his head on purpose with podcasts and books, from Tony Robbins to Tim Ferriss to Earl Nightingale.

"We fail upwards. Failing produces the keys to success."

Nomad, 22:45

The habits go beyond the guitar. Jason exercises every day and eats what he calls 95/5, mostly vegetarian, without guilt about the rest. He does a weekly reflection every Sunday, answering the same questions against three or four core goals for the year. One question: what did I do this week that moved the school forward? Even one step is progress. He also uses meditation, and he brings that focus into lessons. He says he has played better guitar in the last year and a half than in his whole career, because he is connected to every note.

Don't act out of desperation

Jason gets to pick the gigs he wants now, including a Led Zeppelin tribute band he plays with a few times a year purely for love of the material. How? He focused on one thing first and created his own freedom.

"You can't act out of desperation, because people are gonna pick up on that. They don't want to work with that."

Jason Land, 32:31

When you are self-sufficient, you aren't desperate, and people feel the difference. Everything you do is an audition, including the tone of your voice when you call about work.

Tipping points and doing a version

Around 50 students, Jason's school hit a tipping point. Referrals took over and he didn't have to spend as much on marketing. He points artists to the idea of a thousand true fans: get enough people who believe in what you do, and they spread the word for you. Work begets work.

His Achilles heel is overthinking, like spending seven hours on a little treble in a guitar tone. His fix: do a version. Let it ride, step back, come back with fresh ears. When he was juggling a conference, a new location and more, his wife told him to stop. Self-awareness says take a timeout. The truth is in your instincts, and when you want something too badly, you block them.

The takeaway

Decide what you are built for, then hunt it down every day. Build a team that holds under pressure, make excellence a habit, use your failures as keys, and never let desperation do the talking. Break big goals into steps, and do a version. If your next step is getting hired, start with the free Get the Gig guide.

Get the gig. Keep the gig. Build the career.

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