Anish Nadh’s Blog

Jason, who I was working with, spoke to another friend of mine, Vinay after watching the Klimblim video I posted that it would be nice if I played with Allegro Fudge. This was an acoustic folk rock band.   I learnt 3 of their songs and nailed the auditions. We just played along, there was Shalini and Saahas as the auditions. We never really had a drummer. It was sometimes Kishan or otherwise it was Shreyas. But I enjoyed playing in this band! We did a lot of originals and a few covers.  

 I was now with two jobs, one with Jason’s school and the other my own. Travelling to Indiranagar everyday was tedious. So I called it quits and it was not paying me well. I was now with about 20 students earning a normal living and I was quite happy with this. I must say my relationship back then took a toll on my lessons. It was quite an expensive mistake, but god guides you through it all. 

 The common problem that parents had was to bring their kids home for lessons, so I set out to target home tuitions. The first call for home Tuitions I got was from Mrs Valli, she enquired if I can teach Emma, Priyanka and Anishka! 3 students! I was elated, this meant I had more students and I also charged a little extra as my travel allowance! I knew if I was a good teacher, I would get more students. But then group lessons couldn’t work, as I felt I was not giving my best, so I decided to take individual classes! 

 I collected about ₹10000 giving out lessons and this gave me enough money to start my music school website. I got in touch with Shreyas and he put me through his sister Shilpa, she helped register. Then I made the website, I coded it all by myself by taking a template from online and tweaking the html. Mahesh also helped me to code the Java script at certain sections. Now I was ready to reach out and grow my business. 

 I was playing my guitar one day and two boys from my neighborhood enquired if I can teach them. I agreed to teach them for free. We had a few classes. I just wanted some students to kickstart the lessons. After much thought I named it Exodus.  These students asked me if I can teach another guy who stayed next lane. This was Ashwin! I asked him to pay 1000 bucks and the other students began paying me 500 each, so that was ₹2000. I was elated to watch my school grow. 

 I now wrote to Derek Sivers, founder of CD baby, because I was considering going abroad to study music, but Derek told me that all that I wanted to study was online for free. So I felt it was wise to skip the expensive college, and self teach music.  I got in touch with Jason Zac, for lessons, but, I ended up teaching and playing in his band, Allegro Fudge. Now, I had two jobs as a music teacher. I learnt about the business of organizing lessons, maintaining records etc from Jason. I learnt all I could.  My piano playing was bad, I figured it was because I didn’t have the attention to read music. So, I decided to teach little kids to read. I knew I would learn while teaching. Derek who was mentoring me through his emails and blogs also agreed that this was an amazing idea! 

I figured I was an ok teacher, having worked with some of the music schools. So, I decided to teach music. I spoke to Ranjit, who ran a school called Total accuracy. He said there was no vacancy, so I started a school all by myself. I wrote down lesson plans, the name of the school, logo etc. I even got a website made, because I felt people searched for lessons online and I was right! The music school picked up! I had a lot of time to learn and teach music. So I made it my life motto to, learn, teach and play music.