Benitez would play the drums while he was trying to sell them and had several customers ask if he could teach them, until he finally caved.
“This one customer will always come in and ask, ‘can you please teach me please?’” Benitez said. “That’s when I noticed that I actually enjoyed teaching... it was just natural to me."
The operation started out small, he eventually opened his own music school in Plano in 2013, and it hasn’t stopped growing since. Noe B. Music Studio started with only drum lessons, and the school now offers piano, guitar, bass, ukulele and voice lessons as well.
“People started asking me where they could find guitar lessons because I only did drums,” Benitez said. “There were a couple of schools that I would always refer to, and one day I was just like, ‘I should hire a teacher.’ We started to get busy with guitar lessons and then people started asking me about piano too... It just started getting busier and busier, and the rest is really history.”
And Benitez doesn’t plan to stop adding options for his students.
“I’m always open for anything,” Benitez said. “We've had people asking us about accordion lessons, trumpet lessons and stuff like that. So we're definitely looking into upgrading to more instruments in the future.”
Benitez credits a lot of the school’s success and growth to the relationship that has been built with students.
The school works with students that play at several different churches around the metroplex, along with students as young as five and as old as 76. Most of the students find out about the school by “word of mouth,” Benitez said.
“People will mention that they really like the way we teach because we really personalize the lessons and the experience,” he added. “We build this friendship with the student and the parent, and it’s amazing to see them grow because we have students take lessons not just for a few months—they stay with us for like years and years.”
And as Noe B. Music Studio marks 10 years of business, Benitez doesn’t expect to slow down anytime soon.
“It's just been an amazing ride,” Benitez said. “And we still have that energy to keep going.”
