Are you interested in becoming a music teacher or finding a good music teacher? This blog tells the story about Matthew Rusk. The founder of mgrmusic, an online platform where music teachers and students meet. Matthew started as a guitar player in a band and ended up to be the owner of one of the UK’s biggest online platforms for music teachers. Nowadays he has over 113 websites which are used by 152 music teachers across the U.K.
The ideal solution for a luxury problem
Matthew used to be a guitar teacher in Leicester. When he moved to a different city to go to university he wanted to continue teaching people how to play the guitar. However Matthew did not know anyone. That’s why he decided to make his first website. Matthew said ‘the website worked so well that after a while I was teaching over 25 hours of guitar lessons a week’. After his first website was a success Matthew decided to expand his business by searching for music teachers across the UK and making websites for these music teachers. Now Matthew runs 113 websites and has enquired over 32,500 enquiries for music teachers since 2011.
Matthew Rusk at the Business Awards 2016.
Matthew runs two types of websites. First of all he has many small websites which are personal websites for one guitar teacher. An example of such a website is Guitar Lessons London. Another website Matthew runs is called MGR Music, this is a centralized website where many music teacher who teach all kinds of different instruments are signed up. On this website teachers can sign up, make a profile about themselves and get inquiries from students.
How to become a good music teacher
According to Matthew being a good music teacher requires patience and teaching skills. Furthermore, Matthew says that having experience in teaching and being a good musician helps a lot. The database of Matthew consists of many famous artists like the guitar player Hawi Gondwe who used to be the guitar player in the band of Amy Winehouse.
Matthew runs a strict quality control to make sure the teachers who sign up on his websites are qualified teachers. First of all every teacher has to send a qualification form including their qualifications as a teacher. Then Matthew checks these qualifications by contacting universities or the issuing body's. Then teachers are asked if they got testimonials from students to confirm that they are good teachers. After this is done Matthew often has a personal conversation with the teachers in which he asks questions about their teaching. He also uses data models to assess how many students a teacher should generate from enquiries passed to them - ensuring that Matthew knows whether students enjoy lessons with that teacher and want to keep coming back for more.
Hawi Gondwe teaching one of his students.
Matthew believes that any artist which has passion and interest to become a teacher is able to become a good teacher. Besides connecting music teachers with students Matthew also provides the opportunity to learn how to become a music teacher. Matthew says ‘The most important question to ask musicians who want to become music teacher is: do you have the motivation to become a good teacher?’.
A sneak peak in the future of the company
In the future Matthew wants to be able to provide Skype music lessons for students. Although there is a high demand for music lessons in the U.K., music teachers are not able to make full working days. Most people want to get a music lessons between 4 pm and 8 pm. This means music teachers often don’t have many music lessons between 10 am and 4 pm.
By creating a platform which can generate Skype music lessons, teachers can teach students from all over the world. Due to the different time zones music teachers are able to work the whole day and to become full time music teacher. If you interested in learning how to play an instrument, continue an old hobby or into teaching music, pay a visit to the website of Matthew.
