Ben Talks Harmonica

Here’s My Lockdown (NEW Business) Story - What’s Yours?

Today I want to tell you a story, my lockdown story. What’s yours, by the way? Schools closed, so my business teaching children collapsed. A few years ago, in its heyday, we had 600 children having weekly harmonica lessons. Gigs stopped, private students could no longer come to lessons, corporate team building gigs got cancelled, and one day workshops in schools also got cancelled, so what to do? BEN TALKS Two things happened: the government was kind enough to come to the aid of self-employed people like myself, and HARMONICA secondly, I was suddenly able to free up a huge amount of time by handing over the HarmonicaUK Chair. Ben Hewlett So there I was with temporary financial support, but not much other income. On the plus side, I also had lots of free time, Vice-President skill, desire (ok, desperation!) and knew lots of people in the harmonica world. What to do? The answer - obvious now - was to go 100% digital. I set up HarmonicaUK coffee mornings and handed them over to David Hambley after a few weeks, and I started doing open Sunday Zoom sessions on April 5th 2020 with three guests, all free of charge. We had pretty good turnouts and some cracking sessions - maybe you came to a few? This was all well and good, but there were mouths to feed, so I embarked on full time study - learning how to create a brand new digital harmonica business. All the years I have been producing book, audio, and, for the last ten years, video tuition got me thinking about how people learn, and I came up with an excellent plan: coaching and mentoring. So now I have a system where the growing group of students (currently 35) meets daily for a limited number of months on Zoom and Facebook. They have daily harmonica challenges to carry out and also weekly and monthly harmonica targets to reach. Each member gets five hours of live coaching and mentoring with me every week, and the whole group, including me, gives each member daily comments and helpful suggestions on their progress within the private Facebook group. I really can’t think of a better way of learning - you get constant support, motivation, engagement, feedback, friendship, challenges, fun, nurturing, and camaraderie as you work through the 90 hours of video and audio book training.

This is EXACTLY what I wanted to have when I first started learning music - continual support from skilful teachers showing me the way, giving me doable challenges, and watching my back through coaching and mentoring. The current students are men and women from the UK and North/ Central America, so we get a wide range of interests and skills. Some are great players, and some join the program without even having a harmonica. Most are semi-retired or retired, so they have an hour or so a day to play their harmonicas and study hard. It’s daily, intensive, and time limited - I think that’s why it’s proving to be so effective.

Why am I telling the HarmonicaUK members? Two reasons - 1. It’s becoming clear that I am starting to need help to run the business. Talking to potential new students is something I need help with, and planning and admin are also on the list. I will certainly need to pay people for this help in due course.

Interested? Good at sales? 2. It might be that you are interested in joining an intensive learning programme (diatonic only) to really get to grips with your harmonica - finally. HarmonicaUK members get a 50% discount. Here’s what some of my students say: 3. https://benhewlett.wistia.com/medias/mmv2ww20ou

Email benhewlett@me.com if you are interested in either, please.