David Cormick, owner: Hillside Music.

• Author: Gallion, Mari
• Position: View from the Top

Throughout his youth, what David McCormick most wanted to be was a member of the Rolling Stones. Recognizing the unlikelihood of this dream being realized, he settled instead for a career as a newspaper and magazine correspondent and ended up working in Washington, D.C., as national editor for the Newhouse Newspapers chain.

Enchanted with Alaska after a vacation visit, he moved to Anchorage in 1994 with the intent of establishing himself as a freelance writer while playing music around Alaska's many campfires in his spare time. He never imagined that music would become his business until he decided to place a tiny classified ad offering guitar lessons. The phone rang, and a second career was born.

After several years of teaching solo, David opened Hillside Music as a commercial teaching studio in 2005. He relocated in 2007 to the O'Malley Centre area, which was just beginning to develop its present concentration of retail and services businesses.

Today, Hillside Music has 12 teachers and an enrollment of more than 350 students. The school offers lessons in piano, guitar, violin, bass, cello, mandolin, banjo, ukulele and more.

HONING IN When I first opened, I imagined being sort of a cultural center for the folk music community I'd always been a part of. I sold and rented instruments, promoted a couple of concerts and workshops, and tried a few other sidelines that didn't quite work out. The core of the business was always lessons, and for the past several years that's been all we've done.

SELLING PLAY My goal for students was for them to have fun playing their favorite music, whatever that might be. After years of students and parents telling me that this was exactly the approach they were...