He didn’t even want to teach after his enlightenment (see the Brahmāyācanasutta (SN 6.1), excerpts below).
“This principle I have discovered is deep, hard to see, hard to understand, peaceful, sublime, beyond the scope of logic, subtle, comprehensible to the astute. But people like attachment, they love it and enjoy it. It’s hard for them to see this thing; that is, specific conditionality, dependent origination. It’s also hard for them to see this thing; that is, the stilling of all activities, the letting go of all attachments, the ending of craving, fading away, cessation, extinguishment. And if I were to teach this principle, others might not understand me, which would be wearying and troublesome for me.”
It was the Brahmā, Sahampati, who showed up to change his mind.
By the way, it’s worth noting that Sahampati has a tendency of showing up to have a talk with the Buddha when he is at some sort a crossroad, see below.
Then Brahmā Sahampati, knowing what the Buddha was thinking, thought, “Oh my goodness! The world will be lost, the world will perish! For the mind of the Realized One, the perfected one, the fully awakened Buddha, inclines to remaining passive, not to teaching the Dhamma.”
Sahampati is a a good Dhamma brother
“Sir, let the Blessed One teach the Dhamma! Let the Holy One teach the Dhamma! There are beings with little dust in their eyes. They’re in decline because they haven’t heard the teaching. There will be those who understand the teaching!”
He has more to say on this, and there is a beautiful verse that follows that excerpt. Nevertheless, after a quick talk by Sahampati, the Buddha had a change of mind:
Then the Buddha, understanding Brahmā’s invitation, surveyed the world with the eye of a Buddha, because of his compassion for sentient beings. And the Buddha saw sentient beings with little dust in their eyes, and some with much dust in their eyes; with keen faculties and with weak faculties, with good qualities and with bad qualities, easy to teach and hard to teach. And some of them lived seeing the danger in the fault to do with the next world, while others did not.
So, it wasn’t until after Sahampati had a talk with the Buddha, did he decide to turn the wheel of the Dhamma.
When he had seen this he replied in verse to Brahmā Sahampati:
“Flung open are the doors to the deathless! Let those with ears to hear commit to faith. Thinking it would be troublesome, Brahmā, I did not teach the sophisticated, sublime Dhamma among humans.”
This is an awesome sutta, I recommend it to anyone interested in how, and when, the Tathāgata decided to share the Dhamma with the rest of us.