Music teacher magazine recently interviewed us and the piece can now be seen online to all of their subscribers. Here is a flavour of what was mentioned in the article by Hattie Fisk – With 40 years’ experience of teaching the guitar, the CEO of Become A Music Teacher Simon Devlin is lending his business nous to music teachers up and down the country. Hattie Fisk finds out more
HF: How did you first start teaching music?
SD: After working in sales and marketing I got to the stage in my life where I wanted to do something new. I was constantly asked to teach guitar to people as I could play to a decent standard, so I decided to knock all the business side of things on the head and get into music teaching. I had a lot of experience in IT (as I am from the sector) and I grew my business in about six months to a state where I was achieving as much revenue as when I was working for some of these big companies, purely through teaching guitar.
HF: Where did you go from there?
SD: I certainly wasn’t the cheapest music instructor, and I certainly wasn’t the best, but I had more clientele than most of the other teachers around me. So, I set up a number of my friends with the things I had put in place in my own practice, and within a few months they achieved a major amount of success, and probably increased their income three- or four-fold! It was amazing to see, and I suddenly thought: I am onto something here.
SD: Essentially, yes! I developed a whole business for people who either wanted to get into music teaching, or people who wanted help getting more students in, or getting a DBS check, or help with their marketing and so on. It started with guitar teaching (which covers bass guitar), and then expanded to also include drum teaching (encompassing hand drumming, acoustic drum kits and percussion), piano, and singing lessons. We also launched a certified accreditation for music teachers: anyone can take it and there are different levels for different experiences and abilities, which are all available through the website.