Natasha Mason couldn’t wait to learn Spanish so that she could escape her job as an English teacher in Madrid. That was before she fell in love with her new career.

Five years ago, Natasha Mason moved to Madrid with only one thing on her mind: to learn Spanish as quickly as possible. “Without it, I knew my only real option for work was teaching English,” she says. “And no way was I going to be an English teacher. I couldn’t imagine anything worse. So I was determined to learn Spanish and get a real job as soon as I could.

However, her plan had one major flaw. “About halfway through my first teaching class, I realised something – I actually loved it.”

With a background in training and development, finding work after her training course was not a problem for Farmborough-born Natasha, who gave up her life in Britain to be with her boyfriend (now husband) Giles in Madrid. Within a couple of years, she had built a reputation as a business English teacher and was director of studies for an in-house programme with a major consultancy firm, training and managing teachers as well as looking after the needs of 140 students.

It was meeting so many of her peers and hearing their disappointment over their teacher training, along with her own experiences, that started Natasha thinking about setting up her own training college. “Back in the UK, I would never have dreamed about owing my own business. But that’s what I loved about coming to a new country – suddenly your book was blank again. It’s like being 12 and thinking, ‘Oh, what can I be when I grow up’. Pretty much after finishing my TEFL course I knew I’d set up my own business, just because I could.”

Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) is a major business in Spain and while once being a native speaker was all that was needed, now many training agencies and academies are demanding their staff are qualified. However, says Natasha, with demand comes the cowboys. “It’s a really shoddy industry with a very bad reputation,” she says. Many teachers complained of gaining little from their four-week course in terms of real experience, while pastoral care, such as helping the arrivee prepare for their new life in a different country or giving advice on how to find a job, was non-existent.

“I thought I could do it better,” she adds. “I’d got into teacher training and thought, ‘There’s a better way than this’. And I knew it would be something I loved.”
So TtMadrid was born – and with it, the first of many headaches Natasha has had with Spanish bureaucracy: registering their name. “We had to go to a little government office, pay three euros and find out if the name we wanted was taken. It was. So we had to pay another three euros for the next name. Then the next, and the next. Eventually we managed to find one that hadn’t been used.” And it was? “Totally Toptastic Madrid,” she laughs.

Her own experiences as a teacher gave Natasha, along with her new business partner, Tamura Lee, valuable insight into what student-teachers need to learn to prepare them for the TEFL market. Business English is a must, along with teaching on the telephone, individual classes and how to teach children. “Most of our student-teachers are planning on settling in Spain, so it makes sense to give them the skills they need in this market,” Natasha says.

Knowing the market so well has also given TtMadrid extra insight into how to market itself fully. “We advertise in several newspapers on the Costas and from this, we’ve had quite a few expats who realise teaching can give them an income now that Spain’s no longer the cheap paradise it was. Sometimes it’s a retired person or sometimes it’s a husband or wife who’s come across with their partner and they’re not ready to retire yet or their partner has already got a job and they’re looking for a little bit of extra money or just something to do with their time. Telephone calls cost the same all over Spain so agencies have realised that they don’t need their telephone teachers to be in the same city as their student in order to do their class.

“We’ve had students from Murcia, Cádiz, Tenerife who’re now back home either teaching in academies – who are falling over themselves to get native, qualified teachers - or giving telephone classes. We have one graduate who sits on her terrace, looking over the sea, with a glass of sangria in one hand and a telephone in the other talking to people all over Spain. She loves it.”

As well as this, all clients are given help with their new life, from setting up a bank account to getting a telephone line. Not only that, Natasha arranges regular graduate fairs where representatives from top training agencies visit the school and interview student-teachers past and present.

“The whole point of what we do is small, friendly and personal. We haven’t just made a TEFL factory or a ‘party’ course. You come here for good education. It’s only a four-week course and we give you as much in that course as possible so you can go out there and be a good teacher.”
Creating a structure for the training programme was the easy part. Setting up the business proved more difficult. “I should have got an accountant the day I opened the business but it wasn’t the first thing on my mind,” Natasha says. “So three months down the line, when I finally got one I liked and was close to here, everything was already behind and it took a while to unravel it.”
Even when Tt Madrid was up to date with its administration, delays from the accountant and their lawyer almost saw the business fail before it had truly begun.

“We got a phone call from the bank one day saying they hadn’t received everything they needed and wanted the overdraft paid back in full that day. We had filed all our paperwork, but the lawyer and accountant hadn’t done their part. Tamura and I ended up having to go round the tax offices on our hands and knees, begging them – even ‘bribing’ them with chocolates! – to move our paperwork through otherwise we’d have been finished. The bank gave us until 2pm to have everything. We managed to get it through by 1.40pm.”

It taught Natasha an important lesson: small businesses have special requirements. “At first, we went with big companies for everything – accountants, banks, everything. But then we realised that we were so little, we were meaningless to them. Now, most of the firms we use are other small companies and our business is valuable to them. Our accountant is now in the office on his own so we can phone him and he knows exactly who we are and we’re moving to a smaller bank where everyone knows everyone. That personal service has changed everything for us, working with someone who cares.”

As if starting a new company wasn’t enough, Natasha and Giles decided to add to their workload and organise a marriage.

“We were on holiday in Lanzarote and it had turned into a nightmare. I’d fallen and broken my ankle so my leg was in a plaster cast. Giles must have felt I needed a bit cheering up because, after nine years together, he thought that was the perfect time to propose!”

The couple chose a venue just outside Malaga for their  ceremony last September. “It was perfect: sand, sea, sun. Friends and family came and stayed for four or five days, so everyone was very relaxed and comfortable. Needless to say, that also meant lots of eating and drinking - except for me, as I was then three months pregnant and already struggling to get into my dream dress.”
With bookings for next year well underway, the arrival of Giles and Natasha’s first child in March is yet another challenge - albeit a lovely one at that.

“Obviously there’s going to have to be some changes – we’re going to have to find a space in the office for a crib! – but it’s my business and if I ever have a problem with childcare, I can just bring the baby into the office if necessary. That’s the great thing about working for yourself – I don’t have to ask permission!

“Right now, we’re consolidating the business and building up on what we have. As for the future - we want nothing less than global domination. But seriously, the future is looking very bright and we have lots of things going on. It’s stressful, but when I walk through that door every morning, it’s worth it.”