Lessons Learned from 2012 #4: Give & love freely without expectation.

A month or so ago, I suggested to my fiddle teacher that she should charge more…and I was a little torn when I did it because, while I think she’s an awesome teacher, I didn’t have the cash to pay her an extra $20 an hour.  As the words came out of my mouth I thought, “Way to go, genius.”

My fiddle teacher asked me *why* she thought I should charge more, and again, countering my thought process, I laid out a series of well-reasoned ideas.

A little while later she texted me and said, “Hey, my husband wants to know if you’d like to be a part-time manager for our band.  He thinks you make us sound *really* marketable!”

“Sure,” I countered, thinking she was totally joking.

A few days before Christmas, my fiddle teacher and her husbnad were in town playing a show, and I drove out to see them.  After the first set, they sat at my table, and we caught up on random stuff.

“Okay, at the next break, we’re gonna talk business and get your advice,” she said as they headed back to the stage.

“Say what?!?!” I asked.

“You know, manager stuff...now that you’re our manager,” she said.

OMG, seriously, WTF?  Manager?!?!?  ME?!?!

And so, during the second set I furiously scrawled notes on their performance pretending to be a band manager.  When it was over I awkwardly laid out my suggestions to them, awaiting their impending eyerolls.

“Hmm,” they said, “we’ll try it in the next set.”

And they did…and I think we were all amazed when something about the third set felt different.

“Aww, man,” my fiddle teacher’s husband said as they were packing up their gear at the end of the night.  “I bet if we’d been doing that we would have had the number of fans we wanted on Facebook by now.”

“We wanted X number of fans on Facebook by the end of the year,” my fiddle teacher explained.

“Well, it could happen,” I told her. “Y’all have a few more shows left.”

Two days later my fiddle teacher texted me, “OMG, Ana!!! People from the Houston show went on our facebook page, posted comments and “fanned” us.  Instant results!! Plus, we reached our goal!!!! You’re awesome!”

Suffice to say, as a direct result of recommending that my fiddle teacher charge a higher rate, I’m now receiving free fiddle lessons…and referrals related to marketing other bands.