🟠 BECOMING A DRIVING INSTRUCTOR · 10 MIN READ
I originally thought driving instruction might be something I could do until retirement. Looking back now, my only real regret is that I didn’t discover it sooner.
I didn’t grow up wanting to become a driving instructor.
It wasn’t some great career ambition I’d carried around for years.
I’d spent much of my working life in other businesses, worked for companies and also experienced working for myself. As I reached a different stage of my career, I started thinking about what I might enjoy doing for the years leading towards retirement.
I knew one thing about myself already.
I preferred working for myself.
But the idea of becoming a driving instructor really started somewhere much closer to home.
It started with my daughter.
Teaching my daughter planted the seed
Like many parents, I helped my eldest daughter learn to drive.
I wasn’t a driving instructor then. I was simply Dad sitting in the passenger seat trying to help.
But something about the experience clicked.
I enjoyed helping somebody develop a new skill. I enjoyed communicating and finding ways of explaining things. And it made me start wondering whether some of the skills I’d developed throughout my previous working life might transfer rather well into a completely different profession.
I liked people.
I liked helping people.
I thought I was a reasonably good communicator.
And I’d spent enough years dealing with customers, colleagues, businesses and all sorts of different personalities to know that working with people was something I was comfortable doing.
So I started looking into it properly.
I didn’t go into it with rose-tinted glasses
I’m naturally someone who researches things.
Before committing to becoming a driving instructor, I wanted to understand what I was getting into.
So I didn’t imagine that I’d spend every day happily driving around in the sunshine while grateful pupils hung on my every word.
I knew there would be difficult days.
And in terms of the basic working pattern, there weren’t too many surprises. Three or four lessons during a working day was roughly what I’d expected.
What I probably underestimated was something else entirely.
The people.
Or more accurately, just how different every person sitting beside me would be.
You’re teaching driving. But you’re really working with people.
No two learners are quite the same.
Different ages.
Different backgrounds.
Different levels of confidence.
Different personalities.
Different experiences.
Different ways of learning.
Some people arrive desperate to get behind the wheel.
Others arrive carrying the baggage of a previous bad experience.
Some need challenging.
Others need reassuring.
Some will tell you exactly how they’re feeling.
Others won’t.
That’s one of the things I genuinely love about the profession.
Working around Ely in Cambridgeshire gives me the opportunity to meet a wonderfully varied mix of people.
Since changing to teaching automatic only, I’ve been particularly surprised by the number of older learners I’ve worked with too.
My own marketing seems to attract quite a few people in their mid-twenties and upwards, including people who’ve perhaps tried learning before and haven’t had a particularly positive experience.
My reviews frequently mention things such as patience, calmness and communication.
Those aren’t clever marketing words I’ve invented.
They’re what pupils have told me they value.
And over time, I’ve realised something important:
The way you work gradually attracts people who value the way you work.
You become more invested than you might expect
This was probably one of my bigger surprises.
The emotional investment.
You can spend many hours sitting beside someone while they learn a completely new life skill.
You see the difficult lessons.
The frustration.
The nerves.
The moments when something finally clicks.
You see confidence grow.
You talk.
You laugh.
And somewhere along the way, while you’re teaching someone to drive, you often get to know the person too.
That means the good moments matter.
And sometimes the disappointing ones do as well.
I’ve certainly had times when a pupil failing their driving test affected me more than perhaps it should have.
Earlier in my career, I could fall into the trap of judging how good I was at my job by my most recent test result.
Pass?
I’m doing well.
Fail?
What did I do wrong?
I’ve gradually developed a much healthier perspective.
A driving test matters, of course.
But my job is bigger than preparing somebody for one drive on one particular day.
I’m trying to help create a safe, independent driver who hopefully continues learning long after they’ve stopped having lessons with me.
This can be a stressful job
There are moments when this job can be considerably more stressful than somebody watching from outside the car might imagine.
You’re sitting beside someone who is still learning to control a vehicle in a live environment.
You’re watching them.
Watching the road.
Watching other road users.
Listening.
Teaching.
Anticipating.
Making decisions.
And always being prepared to intervene.
I’m fortunate that around my area most other road users are relatively patient with learners.
But it doesn’t change the responsibility you’re carrying in that passenger seat.
There are also pressures that have very little to do with teaching.
Control the controllables
Driving-test availability is a perfect example.
I qualified towards the back end of the pandemic, so I’ve never really known anything different from the test availability problems we’ve experienced in recent years.
Longer-serving instructors tell me about a time when you could get a pupil ready for their test, tell them to book one and perhaps six weeks later they’d be taking it.
That isn’t the world I’ve experienced.
Today, test availability can make managing pupils and diaries considerably more complicated.
When will someone actually get a test?
How long will they remain in your diary?
When will space become available for another learner?
It can be frustrating.
But an old saying from my retail days has followed me into this business:
You can only control the controllables. You can’t control the uncontrollables.
I can’t personally solve the national driving-test situation.
I can decide how I respond to it.
And there are plenty of other uncontrollables in self-employment too.
The economy.
Fuel prices.
Weather.
Government decisions.
Other road users.
Whether somebody has a brilliant or terrible 40 minutes on test day.
Worrying endlessly about things I can’t change doesn’t improve any of them.
I’d rather concentrate my energy on the things I can influence.
You’re not just becoming a driving instructor
There’s another part of the profession that anyone considering it should understand.
If you’re going to work for yourself, you’re also starting a small business.
I had a reasonable amount of business experience before becoming an instructor, so that side didn’t come as a great shock to me.
When I started, I had franchise support available. But even though I was paying for that support, I didn’t want to hide behind somebody else’s business and expect them to build everything for me.
From day one, I started building my own.
My reputation.
My customers.
My reviews.
My marketing.
My way of doing things.
Over time I’ve become increasingly convinced that this matters.
That doesn’t mean everybody needs to become an entrepreneur.
A franchise can be exactly the right choice for someone who wants more support and less responsibility for certain aspects of running the business.
But if you choose self-employment, you need to recognise that being a good instructor is only part of the picture.
There are customers to find.
A diary to manage.
Prices to set.
Costs to understand.
Cancellations.
Vehicle expenses.
Tax.
Marketing.
Customer service.
And ultimately, hopefully, some profit.
A full diary alone doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve built a good business.
Your brand isn’t just your logo
I’ve also come to think differently about what a driving instructor’s brand actually is.
Yes, there’s a business name.
There might be a logo.
There will probably be a website and social media.
But your real brand is being created every day.
Did you turn up when you said you would?
Were you professional?
Did you listen?
Did you remain calm when something went wrong?
Could you explain something another way when the first explanation didn’t work?
Did the pupil feel comfortable asking you a question?
Did you treat them as an individual?
That’s the stuff people remember.
And eventually, that’s the stuff they tell other people about.
One size doesn’t fit all
If somebody asked me what qualities make a good driving instructor, I’d probably give quite a long answer.
Patience.
Empathy.
Communication.
Reliability.
Calmness.
A sense of humour certainly doesn’t hurt.
Sometimes bringing a smile into the car genuinely helps somebody learn.
But perhaps one of the most important qualities is adaptability.
If you enter this profession thinking:
This is how I teach. The pupil either gets it or they don’t.
I think you’re going to struggle.
We need to observe.
Listen.
Ask questions.
Notice body language.
Work out what’s helping.
Recognise what isn’t.
And then adapt.
The learner shouldn’t always have to fit our teaching.
Sometimes our teaching needs to fit the learner.
Qualifying isn’t the end of learning
This has become increasingly important to me.
I know considerably more about this profession now than I did when I qualified.
And strangely, the more I learn, the more I realise how much more there is to learn.
Sometimes it feels as though I’m still only halfway there.
This year alone, I’ve attended training focused on helping nervous drivers and another event exploring AI for driving instructors.
Why?
Because the profession keeps changing.
People change.
Technology changes.
Cars change.
Business changes.
And hopefully we change too.
Passing the ADI qualification matters enormously.
But I don’t think qualification should mark the end of your education.
In many ways, it’s where another kind of learning begins.
Every day really can be a learning day.
There will be bad days
I don’t want this to sound like a recruitment advert.
Not every day is brilliant.
You’ll have difficult lessons.
You’ll meet pupils you find harder to connect with.
You’ll have cancellations.
You’ll have days when the traffic seems determined to make life difficult.
You’ll experience test failures.
You’ll occasionally wonder whether you’ve handled something as well as you could have.
You’ll make mistakes.
I certainly have.
But there will be other days too.
Someone who arrived terrified drives independently for the first time.
Something a pupil has struggled with suddenly makes sense.
Someone recommends you to their friend, partner or child.
A lovely review appears.
A pupil you’ve spent months working with comes back from their test holding a pass certificate.
Or perhaps you simply have a really enjoyable lesson with another human being and share a few laughs along the way.
Those things matter too.
The profession can take you somewhere unexpected
When I started this journey, my ambition was relatively straightforward.
I wanted to find something worthwhile that I could do through to retirement.
What I hadn’t fully appreciated was where becoming a driving instructor might eventually lead.
Teaching learners can be a rewarding career in itself.
But there are other possibilities too.
Instructor training.
Supporting PDIs.
Fleet training.
Business development.
Education.
Technology.
AI.
I’ve seen instructors take their expertise around the world.
That doesn’t mean everybody needs to do those things.
Somebody may spend their entire career happily teaching learners within their local community.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.
But I’ve learned that becoming a driving instructor doesn’t necessarily determine where your career has to end.
There are opportunities if you remain curious enough to notice them.
So, would I become a driving instructor again?
Yes.
Absolutely.
Knowing what I know now — including the difficult days, test frustrations, stressful moments, business responsibilities and everything else — I would make the same decision again.
In fact, I have one significant regret.
I wish I’d done it earlier.
Because this profession has given me something I value enormously.
Independence.
The opportunity to run my own business.
The chance to continue learning.
The opportunity to meet people I would never otherwise have met.
And, most importantly, the chance to make a difference to people.
The rewards aren’t solely financial.
You’re helping somebody gain a skill that can give them independence, employment opportunities and freedom for many years to come.
That’s quite a privilege when you think about it.
So if I could go back and talk to the version of me who was wondering whether becoming a driving instructor might be a good idea, I think I’d keep my advice fairly simple.
I’d tell him to research it properly.
Understand that it’s a people profession as much as a driving profession.
Recognise that self-employment means building a business.
Be prepared for good days and bad ones.
Stay curious.
Keep learning.
Control the controllables.
And then I’d probably tell him:
Get on with it. You should have started years ago.
Wayne Smith
Founder, WS Driving Collective
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