I built the software I always wished existed.

Hi, I'm Ben. I've been teaching guitar for over two decades, based in Angel, London. Before that I spent five years signed to a Hollywood major label with my band Alien Breed. We toured across the USA, playing classic venues like CBGB in New York before it closed and the Whisky a Go Go in LA, as well as festivals including Coachella, SXSW, the X Games and Blue Torch.

One of the proudest moments of my career was getting to work with Andy Wallace, the Grammy-winning mixing engineer behind records by Nirvana, Rage Against the Machine, Jeff Buckley and dozens more. One of my genuine heroes. I also had music placed in major TV shows and games during that time.

I tell you all this not to brag, but because it explains the strange path that led me to building software at midnight: music has been my whole adult life, and teaching it is one of the most rewarding things I've ever done.

Admin? That's a different story.

Problem one

Who's paid what, and when?

With 30+ students, all paying different amounts, at different intervals, some in advance for blocks of lessons, some behind. Keeping track in a spreadsheet becomes a part-time job in itself. And when you're not sure, you don't chase it. You don't want the awkward conversation without being certain.

So you let it slide. And it slides further.

When I finally got SkillBill tracking everything properly, I went back through my students and realised some of them were a couple of months behind on payments. I hadn't noticed because I had no easy way to see it. I sat down with those students, showed them the lesson history. Every session, dated, right there on screen. Not one of them argued. They paid the same day. That moment alone was worth building the whole thing.

Problem two

All those hours making resources, vanishing into thin air

I spend a lot of time creating materials for my students. Transcriptions, chord sheets, custom tabs. Each one can take an hour or more. For years, I'd hand over the sheet at the end of the lesson and that was it. Gone. If another student needed the same thing, I'd make it again from scratch.

I got smarter about it over time. I started photographing everything, saving to Google Drive folders. Then during COVID I made over 300 tutorial videos so my students could still progress between lessons. Three hundred. But with no proper system, it became almost impossible to remember what was in each one, let alone which student I'd already shared what with.

SkillBill has a resource library at its core. Every tab, video, PDF and link goes in once. Then I can attach any resource to any lesson, for any student, in seconds. When a new student needs the same material I made two years ago for someone else, I find it and assign it. It's genuinely transformed how efficiently I teach. The work I put in once keeps paying off.

Problem three

What did we actually work on last week?

The more students you have, the harder it is to walk into a lesson and remember exactly where you left off. You try to keep notes. You sometimes forget to write them up. You end up asking the student, which isn't the most confident start to a lesson.

Every lesson I log now becomes part of that student's permanent learning history. I can see every piece we've worked on, every resource I've shared, every note I've made, going back as far as records exist. At the end of a term, I can pull up everything a student has learned over the past three months, with links to the videos and tabs, and send it to them. Students love it. Parents especially love it.

Some of my students I've been teaching for years. SkillBill also lets me keep notes on the things that matter to them beyond guitar. Birthdays, a spouse's name, kids. Small things that make a big difference to the relationship.

Problem four

Finding new students, and the grind of every enquiry

It used to be easier. Gumtree was once reliable. I'd get ten enquiries a week without much effort. Now I'm lucky to get one every couple of months, so that's essentially dead money. These days the main route for most UK teachers is platforms like Bark, where you're competing with several other teachers for a single person looking for lessons, and each contact costs nearly £10.

Every enquiry, whoever it comes from, requires a proper personal reply. Their instrument, their level, what they're hoping to achieve, where they're based. A rushed reply loses them. So each one would take me at least 30 minutes. Digging through old messages, copying a previous email, rewriting it for this person, and still maybe never hearing back.

SkillBill has a lead tracker built in. I can store enquiry templates for different types of students: beginner adult, teenager, exam prep. and send a personalised message in a couple of minutes. I can track every follow-up, set reminders to get back in touch, and see at a glance what's in the pipeline. And because I track what I spend on each source, I can actually see whether Bark is worth the cost this month or not.

Why I built it

I stopped looking for the right tool and built it myself

I tried everything I could find. Booking systems made for salons. CRM tools designed for sales teams. A few things marketed at tutors that looked promising right up until I actually used them. None of them understood how independent teaching actually works.

So I built SkillBill for myself first. Solo, mostly late at night after a full day of teaching. Every feature exists because I lived the problem it solves. I still use it every single day, and that's the most honest recommendation I can give.