We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Rachel Turgoose. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Rachel below.

Rachel, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear about a time you helped a customer really get an amazing result through their work with you.

When I hear “customer success story”, I don’t think of one customer, but rather an entire school district. I think of San Marcos CISD in San Marcos, TX. RMT Music has been working with the Fine Arts Directors and Coordinator to provide $125,000 worth of lessons and masterclasses to all Fine Arts programs within the district. This includes Dance, Music, Visual Art, and Theater. No one can deny that the education of our children has suffered greatly due to the many facets of the Covid-19 pandemic, with Fine Arts learning being among the most damaged. Although Zoom has been a wonderful learning tool, it is extremely difficult to teach a young 6th grade student the fundamentals of creating a beautiful sound on the trumpet, especially when the internet is shaky and the sound quality is poor. This is where we come in!

As of September 2022, RMT Music has provided lessons for over 530 students and masterclasses using the money awarded to the district. We have also provided over 40 masterclasses ranging from “Instrumental Fundamentals” for Band classes to “Shadow Puppetry” for Art classes. This private instruction, in combination with the outstanding dedication of the directors and staff within SMCISD, has helped the students to not only bridge the learning gap due to the pandemic, but to thrive! The San Marcos HS Marching Band is currently shattering their old records (GO RATTLERS!!), the Miller MS Jazz Band won first in Kingsville Festival, and every program are growing in size. It is an absolute honor to watch these students flourish and to work alongside the incredibly talented educators who make this all possible. These students hold a special place in my heart, and I am extremely fortunate to work with them.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I NEVER thought I would ever be a business owner, and love it!!!

I have always really enjoyed working with kids and wanted to be a music teacher. After far too many semesters (how many people actually get out in 4 years??), I earned a Bachelors in Music Education, but knew that I wanted to explore the world before settling down. I won an audition and became a vocalist and saxophonist on a cruise ship where I was able to both refine my musicianship and travel the world. Trust me, your musicianship grows by leaps and bounds when you are surrounded by talented musicians and have to learn to keep up. After leaving ships, I moved to Texas to pursue a Masters in Jazz, and the idea for RMT Music came just after graduation.

While in grad school, I started teaching private clarinet and saxophone lessons within the local school districts. It was here that I noticed that some private lesson teachers were phenomenal educators…and some were not. I also quickly realized that the Band Directors are some of the busiest people in earth. Not only are they in charge of their own ensembles and classes, but they are also expected to keep track of names and progress for 200-500 students, build their program yearly, work alongside other directors within the district, liaison for Band Boosters, run fundraisers, take on extra school duties, attend whatever mandatory meetings and events the district needed them to attend, and somehow have a private life. On top of this, they are expected to staff private lesson instructors, keep track of payments and schedules, and be a contact point for parents. It is all way too much!

I wanted to help create a platform that would take some of the burden off of the instructors and free up their time. RMT Music works alongside directors to help streamline their lesson program and keep everything in one place. We help with staffing, we create all schedules for lesson instructors, handle all payments and paperwork, create master schedules for Fine Arts directors, help create scholarship programs, contact all parents, work with the booster programs, and much more. We are also able to help eliminate excessive paperwork for the district simply because all instructors work under RMT Music, which means there is one point of contact and one set paperwork rather than 40 individual contractors with 40 individual sets of paperwork. We can (and have!) easily bring in guest artists and special clinicians, and handle the messy work of finding the right instructor for each student.

RMT Music would have never been successful without the guidance and help of those around me. After officially receiving the LLC paperwork in the mail, my first course of action was to find a business coach, and I struck gold when I found Malcolm Peace of IdeaLabs Consulting. I am also very blessed to have three very strong and talented women on staff: Elizabeth Thigpen, Stephanie Hulsey, and Anna Alejandra. Without those three, RMT Music would still be a pipe dream.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

Any business that has survived the pandemic has a story or two. We are no different.

RMT Music was created in September of 2019, just 5 months before students around the country went home for spring break and never returned. We very quickly figured out that we had to make RMT Music virtual. We were in constant contact with school district directors and administration, and began offering new classes and materials based on their needs. For example: many students started falling behind in their note reading and recognition, especially the younger kids. We quickly put together a team of instructors to give virtual masterclasses on various subjects that were specific to one instrument and offered these classes to the school (virtually, of course). We also started offering our virtual lessons, which quickly added to our own back of educational tricks. We experimented with various virtual platforms to find the right sounds, and worked to find new ways to get kids excited about their instrument.

The weird and wonderful thing about this story is that during this time, we did not lose a single student. In fact, our student population had almost quadrupled in size by the end of 2020 (still focusing in music at this time), and it was only growing! We were able to offer school districts a supplemental option for music education, and help hundreds of kids continue learning their craft.

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

Word of mouth! The Fine Arts Educational work is a very close-knit community. Everyone knows everyone, for better or worse. A very helpful way we have spread the word has been through music education conferences.

Texas is home to the biggest Music Education Conference in the nation: TMEA (Texas Music Educators Association). This yearly conference takes place in San Antonio during a February weekend. It’s a place where teachers not only participate in the hundreds of clinics and concerts, but also network and meet with friends working around the state and country. RMT Music has been working with ReedGeek (a great company specializing in reed tools, run by a pair of wonderful, kind humans), and we have been able to spread the word about RMT Music while helping to show their product in the showroom. This year, we will have our own booth directly next to theirs, so we can go back and forth between the two.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.rmtmusic.com
• Instagram: @rmtmusicllc
• Facebook: @rmtmusicllc
• Youtube: @rmtmusicllc

Image Credits
Erik Fossum