Blooming Melodies: An Entrepreneur’s Story
My name is Akshara, and growing up in a world of creativity inspired me to delve into the vast field of entrepreneurship. With a strong passion for teaching and playing violin, I founded Blooming Melodies (a music academy) in seventh grade. I work with children of all ages and grew my business, learning so much along the way. It wasn’t long before I began hosting recitals, group lessons, and fundraisers to help the community!
Since elementary school, I have loved to teach. In fact, I used to pretend to be a teacher so much that my parents painted my entire wall with chalkboard paint. I would use my free time to go to my room and teach my “students,” who were all stuffed animals and my dog Buddy. At the age of seven, I was exposed to the world of music and quickly fell in love with it. As I grew older, I felt a strong calling to share my music knowledge. This led me to begin my adventure of starting a business.
Initially, this was difficult. I was thirteen years old, and I did not have any background knowledge of running a business. To learn more about how a music academy works, I shadowed a professional violin teacher who ran an academy. From this experience, I learned many important lessons, such as the structure of each class and how to change my lesson plans based on the student's capabilities.
Using this knowledge, I felt very confident to teach violin to children in my community. I reached out to multiple parents, hoping that at least one student would be interested in learning a new instrument under my instruction.
However, many parents were not ready to have a middle school student be their child’s violin instructor. Nevertheless, I did not give up. To attract students, I developed a marketing strategy to promote my business by designing a website that included significant information about lesson structure and the benefits of enrolling in Blooming Melodies, advertising on social media, and performing violin. By doing this, I proved my qualifications as a teacher, which resulted in my first few students enrolling in my violin program.
At first, I was very excited, but nervous as well. My setup was just having a music stand, a violin, and a few pieces of paper. After the first few lessons, I realized that this was not enough. I needed to find creative ways to engage my students so that they are motivated during the lesson and when they practice at home. This led me to do more research and try multiple interactive and engaging learning techniques with my students. After months I found the best strategy. Being persistent and not giving up paid off because my student and their family had recommended me as a teacher to countless other families. I had grown from having one student to ten and had many others on a waitlist.
To retain these students, I developed a strategy that provided incentives for both the parents and students such as offering various lesson packages at a reduced price. Furthermore, throughout a student’s learning journey, I created a pathway to earn rewards such as stationary items that had the Blooming Melodies logo on them. Doing this helped to continuously market my business to the relevant target audience. Using these strategies increased the profit earned, resulting in having a larger budget to enhance the learning platform and experience for my students. Additionally, I began donating large portions of the revenue earned to Project Future India, a nonprofit organization that helps people in need in underprivileged communities. This led me to develop important skills such as finance management, understanding the value of money, and developing a core value of my business - giving back to the community.
In the future, my goal is to expand this business and make a positive impact in my local community as well. I want to help people as much as I can. Additionally, I am very interested in expanding the team and hopefully adding more teachers to the business.