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It's not very nice booking lessons with a school when you have no idea what kind of random weirdo is going to turn up to teach you. What will they look like? How old will they be? What if you've paid lots up front and then you don't even get on? I made this page so you can find out more about me and my school. There's only one instructor at 1stDrive because i believe in quality, not quantity so if you book with 1stDrive then this is what you get!
Meet Paul
When i was learning i had an awful instructor who shouted and taught me things that were totally incorrect. They said they'd booked me a test but they hadn't, they just wanted to drag my lessons out for as long as they could. They even sold me a car that i spent £2000 on and it blew up after 1 week. What a cowboy. Instead of teaching me properly they bodged it up and only taught me enough so i could scrape through the test. Shortly after passing i had an accident. I rang up another local instructor and arranged for a lesson to see if he could help work out what had gone wrong. He was shocked at what I'd been taught and explained to me why it was wrong. It wasn't that i'd made a mistake, i'd been taught to do something that was dangerous and incorrect. My instructor had missed out entire topics because she couldn't be bothered to teach them, it's something i come across all the time myself now. At the time this happened i was taking an I.T course at college, I was a computer whizz kid and I'd been writing video games since the age of 11. I used to give the I.T classes in secondary school because the teacher knew nothing so even back then i was getting teaching experience. What had happened to me at this driving school made me so annoyed that i decided to give that up and become a driving instructor myself. I vowed that i would never purposely teach people incorrectly as had happened to me. I could have been killed because of someone who was just too lazy to bother doing their job properly and i didn't want this to happen to anyone else. I had to wait over 4 years after passing my driving test until i could teach, mainly because i wasn't old enough! That's one thing that makes me different to any other instructor, most people see an advert for this job in a paper or on TV and just end up doing as a job with no real interest in it. It's far more than just a job to me and i don't know of anyone else who's ever waited years before they could even start training. I remember phoning up schools and asking if there was any way i could start sooner and i think they got pretty tired of me calling up but i was very keen. After years of waiting i finally got to start training. I was working as a delivery driver at the time so i could practice my driving all the time but i didn't tell them i was going to be an instructor. I had to get my instructor trainer to meet me round the corner from work so nobody would know! When i did tell my current workmates and employer what i was planning they laughed and said i'd never do it. I should just give up and resign myself to a life of minimum wage because i was too young and i'd never make it.
I'd finally done what i'd waited years and years to achieve. I was so happy that day i felt like nothing could go wrong so i went and put £50 on a horse. It won and the next day i was on a plane to San Francisco to celebrate. While i was over there i had the idea of starting my own school and that's how 1stDrive began. I spent most of the plane journey home thinking up ideas of how i could start the school and how to make it different to all the others. <---- Me looking out over the Golden gate bridge where i first had the idea for 1stDrive. Once i got back from holiday and everything had settled down I started off working for national driving schools. It soon became obvious to me that these schools were only interested in making money and not helping people learn. Every instructors dream is to have their own school and i'd had the same wish ever since i passed my driving test so i decided to leave and designed a school with a real difference. I designed a school that focused on teaching people to drive and offered an honest and affordable service. There had to be no rip offs, no catches, no tricks. It had to be a proper driving school, not just a bunch of people renting cars with logos on and having a go at teaching as with other schools. The school I created was was 1stDrive.
1stDrive begins! 1stDrive launched on 1st April 2005. I'd spent weeks thinking of a name and i just couldn't think of a good one. Names i considered were Dragon, Quick drive, One way. I even considered calling it something really offensive that would upset people and get me on the local news for some free advertising! Eventually i was so sick of coming up with names I just thought of the most basic thing, "1st" so it'd be listed early in yellow pages and the main word that i wanted, Drive. 1stDrive? Surely that name had gone, it was so obvious. I remember looking it up online and when it came back as available i fell off my chair! I grabbed my credit card and registered it quickly. Since then i've been offered thousands of pounds by big schools to sell the site. Not bad for a £5 investment. I've survived the recession, the terrible winter of 2010 where i was teaching in temperatures of -8, floods, swine flu and i even did a lesson once where we drove through a tornado that ripped the roof of Iceland in Kings Heath! I've also had people cut and paste my website and had to take legal action to get it taken down. I've had instructors using my name and pretending they work for me. Despite all that, 1stDrive.com just keeps rolling on. In 2008 i moved to Cornwall and launched 1stDrive there. It was a huge success and i had work coming out my ears. I had a great time teaching by the sea and it was certainly very different to Birmingham, especially when i could drive for 10 minutes and not even see another car. I started to miss the city though so i came back here with renewed enthusiasm and i enjoy it more than ever now. 1stDrive wasn't all just about me. When i was training to become an instructor i met my good friend Rob and he had a big input to the launching of 1stDrive too. Together we had a great time running 1stDrive but after years of teaching, Rob started a family in 2011 and decided to become an examiner instead to have a more steady and reliable income.
Paul and Rob with our first 2 cars way back in 2005 Now in 2012 i remain as committed as ever to teaching people not to just be good enough to pass the test but far beyond that. I can't imagine ever doing any other job and i enjoy every day that i'm out on the road teaching. Well, most of them. And in case you're wondering whatever happened to that terrible instructor i had then don't worry. They went out of business soon after 1stDrive began.
Paul
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Copyright 2005-2011 1stDrive.com
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I told them what to do with their job and spent all day, every day practicing. When the day of my advanced test came i passed without even trying. Now the final and hardest test of all to pass - the teaching test where you have to give two driving lessons to a senior examiner. I went all the way to Manchester because the waiting times in Birmingham were so long. I failed that time but it only made me more determined and i passed the next one in Birmingham.
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