Phil Barrow: Providing At-home Music Lessons With the Best Local Music Teachers in Metro Vancouver

Resound School of Music provides at-home music lessons with the best local music teachers in Metro Vancouver, so you can relax and watch your kids succeed.

Tell us about yourself?

I discovered my own passion for music as a teenager when I started learning to play the guitar. A few years later, I attended the VCC School of Music where I studied jazz and contemporary guitar performance.

Fast-forward a bit and today I’m helping all kinds of people to discover their own lifelong love of music. As the owner and Director at Resound School of Music, I’m committed to building a company that strives for excellence, values artistic expression, and serves extraordinary people from all walks of life.

If you could go back in time a year or two, what piece of advice would you give yourself?

Success isn’t a linear path, so celebrate every small victory along the way. This sense of accomplishment will help sustain you when things get tough. This applies to any goal in your personal or professional life.

But how do you know that you’re making progress along the way? Start by tracking every single important metric you can think of. Whether it’s revenue, profit, advertising spend, employee satisfaction, customer retention and loyalty, etc. write down everything.

Now that you know where you stand in each area, try moving the needle just a tiny bit in a positive direction every single day. Do this slowly and incrementally, and much like compound interest, you’ll notice how small successes pave the way for even bigger successes over time.

Lastly, remember to celebrate the victories of others too. Let the people around you know when they are doing well and that you are proud of them.

What problem does your business solve?

We believe that most parents want to see their kids play music, but don’t have the time to drive them to lessons each week. We make it easy for students to learn their favourite musical instrument from the comfort and convenience of their home.

What is the inspiration behind your business?

The inspiration for Resound School of Music came from looking at busy families with multiple children enrolled in a many different classes and after school programs. We could see how much work it was to drive the kids around town to their various different activities, and we came up with the idea of a “mobile music school” as a way to make it more convenient for students to learn to play music.

What is your magic sauce?

We believe that every student is unique, and that the key to their success is finding the right teacher for their specific needs. Unlike other music schools, we have a proprietary student-teacher matching process that allows us to assign a teacher to each student based on their goals, musical interests, personality, and learning style. We provide this service at no cost as our way of putting our money where our mouth is.

What is the plan for the next 5 years? What do you want to achieve?

Over the next 5 years we plan to continue serving families in Metro Vancouver, as well as expand into new cities across the country. Our long-term vision is to become the leading provider of in-home music music lessons in Canada, elevating the standard by which all other music schools are measured.

What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced so far?

The biggest challenge so far has been navigating the uncertainty of the Covid-19 pandemic during the past 2 years. Not being able to see people face-to-face has been quite difficult, and it was easy to feel disconnected from what we were trying to accomplish as a company during this time.

That being said, our team did a phenomenal job of adapting to the situation and transitioning into online learning during the height of the pandemic. It might sound cliche, but this challenge brought new opportunities to grow, assess the way we’ve been doing things as a company, and continue to improve and implement efficiencies. This included streamlining the way we do business so that we can continue to serve everyone just as well as we did before while working remotely.

At the end of the day, our focus has continued to be about serving our clients as best we can given the unusual circumstances. Our team really stepped up to this challenge and we could not have done it without all the amazing people we have working for Resound School of Music.

How do people get involved/buy into your vision?

We’re always looking for amazing people who share our passion and enthusiasm for teaching music. If you are looking for a rewarding career and to make a meaningful impact through music, then I would love to hear from you.

To learn more about our company, please visit our website at https://resoundschool.com/