236 How to Build a Course Business Around YOUR Life

🔥 Ready to double your course sales? Book your call at https://datadrivenmarketing.co/call

Liam Ward is a blues harmonica player, teacher and founder of learntheharmonica.com. He's built a course business with 240,000 YouTube subscribers and millions of views... and he barely checks his numbers.

In this episode we get into why Liam thinks your business doesn't have to run your life, how he's built a passive income school that fits around his life as a musician, and why joy might be a more useful metric than revenue for a lot of course creators. We also have a genuinely good debate about data, because I'm not going to pretend I just agreed with everything he said.

It's a different kind of conversation to what we usually have on the show, and I think that's exactly why it's worth your time. If you've ever felt like your business is pulling you away from the reason you started it in the first place, this one will resonate.

🎶 Liam's harmonica school: https://learntheharmonica.com
🎶 Check out Liam's music side of things: https://liamwardmusic.com. 

If you want to find out how to grow your own course business in a way that actually works for your life, head to datadrivenmarketing.co/resources where you can get access to a range of free tools and guides to help you do exactly that.

#OnlineCourses #SalesFunnels #CourseCreators #DigitalMarketing

🤝  Get In Touch
If you'd like to talk more about how you can grow your course business, email me at john@datadrivenmarketing.

Transcript

Welcome And Big Themes

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I don't want my business to control me. The business should be a tool I use rather than something that sort of takes over my life. My overarching goal is to have a comfortable life supported by income from music-related activities. I achieved that years ago, and I'm still living that life. I close to my heart, the happier I am in life. I wanna build a business still look to life. My value by my own metrics and audio living three.

Teaching Beginners Through Advanced Players

SPEAKER_01 0:35

Hello and welcome to the art selling online courses. We are here today winning strategies at top performance in the online course industry. My name is John Ainsberg and today's guest is Liam Ward. Now Liam is a blue harmonica player and teacher. He runs an online harmonica school, learntheharmonica.com, and a YouTube harmonica channel as well. He has appeared as an artist, teacher, and competition judge at the World Harmonica Festival. He's performed across Europe, USA, Canada, Mexico, and Australia, and he's won the National Harmonica League Player of the Year. Now today we're going to talk about why Liam thinks your business doesn't have to run your life, why you should turn your phone off, why to focus on stuff that genuinely excites you, and why he doesn't believe in looking at the numbers. Liam, welcome to the show. Thanks a lot. It's uh lovely to be here. So talk us through a little bit. Who is it that you're helping with your courses? Obviously, people who want to learn the harmonica, but is it like all levels, or kind of how does that work?

SPEAKER_00 1:31

Yeah, so I I teach all levels. I think uh by the very nature of any educational platform and instruments, maybe especially so, you get a lot of beginners because uh people take take up something for a bit of fun, and obviously some of them really get into it and some of them it's not for them. So a lot of my content is aimed at beginners, but I also have some really specialist content both on YouTube and in my school, and the choice of content is really from my own passion and what I want to teach. So I haven't kind of zoomed in on a specific niche within within Harmonica's students. I'm just doing stuff that I love to do.

SPEAKER_01 2:20

Nice. And can you give people like some idea of the size of your business? It could be revenue if you're happy sharing that, but otherwise like number of customers you've got or or anything that gives people an idea of it.

SPEAKER_00 2:31

Yeah, so I think I we've kind of talked about this prior to the interview, but I'm very much someone who uh avoids the numbers, and there are reasons for that, and we'll get into that. But I think my YouTube channel at the moment is about 240,000 subscribers, and it's had I think I think it's getting up to 30 million views, something like that. And that's my main kind of online platform outside of the school itself, um, which is a subscription service uh where people can, you know, come and come and get the serious stuff, the step-by-step lessons, whereas the YouTube channel is broader and a bit more scatter gun approach.

From Skype Lessons To Subscriptions

SPEAKER_01 3:13

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's your main offering, right? The the school. You don't have like courses that you sell individually as well, it's just selling the membership?

SPEAKER_00 3:21

So I do have courses that sell individually, but it's it's I do that very quietly these days. That's kind of how I started. So at first I was giving private harmonica lessons, as a lot of musicians do, and I was doing that in person and online. At the time it was uh Skype, it was before Zoom took over. Yeah. Back in the day. Yeah, I know. I used to so I used to do lots of lessons and I was doing kind of long days. I was teaching early in the morning to late at night, because I might have students in Australia, in America, wherever, you know. So I was doing these terrible hours, you know, uh running myself into the ground. Uh but I I decided maybe it would be good if I created some some kind of digital version of lessons. So I I created some standalone lessons for certain blues harmonica songs and techniques, and I was I was selling them for a few quid online, or I've always done it in US dollars, so a few US dollars um online as individual downloadable lessons. And technically, I still have on my my website all of these lessons you can buy individually and download. Uh but it's a lot cheaper for students to join and subscribe to the school, you can get access to everything. And it's kind of moved the way of the streaming and the and the subscription uh base because I've noticed people can't they kind of don't want to be downloading lessons anymore, and also they want the variety and the choice of all of my different lessons because it's grown from just a few standalone lessons on a few songs to step-by-step courses that I've created on all different sorts of techniques and for different levels. So people kind of want that choice.

SPEAKER_01 5:09

Got it. You know what? I'd been poking around your website before we started, and uh all I could find was the membership. And then when you said about the fact you have got the courses, I was like, well, I must where are they? And I've managed to find them. So I've uh I found them on the uh it's very much hidden away there. It was like in the bottom of the the bottom of the homepage, there's a little tiny link that says store, and if you go there, then you have to choose pay once, and then you get access to where all the courses are. So you got a lot, dude.

SPEAKER_00 5:37

Yeah, so that uh and everything at everything on the store is is also part of the school. And actually there are there are a few things that are part of the school which aren't on the store because there's and this is a really stupid reason, but I built the site with Wix many years ago, and Wix is built-in systems for digital downloads in your store. They only allow a gigabyte um file, and some of my some of my course, you know, some of the lessons, some of the courses are bigger than that. So I can't sell them. I'd have to chop them up and sell them individually as but that would be less than one lesson, it wouldn't make sense. So there's actually a few things that you can only get exclusively in the school, but it's not because I'm I've done that on purpose, it's because I just couldn't do it. Um but I but it is a conscious choice to kind of hide it, as it were, so it you know, yeah, it makes sense that you couldn't find it because I decided I'm not ready to completely get rid of them because I I I think I still sell sell a few of them, and there are some links to those lessons that dotted around in deep dark corners of the internet. So I l I've left it all up, but it's not really my business anymore. Yeah.

Keeping Work From Taking Over

SPEAKER_01 6:46

Cool. Okay. One of the things that you'd said before before we jumped on the call was that you think it's really important your business doesn't have to run your life. Have you run into it before where it was running your life in the past, or is this something you've kind of had as a philosophy since the beginning and managed to stick to?

SPEAKER_00 7:05

I would say that my my approach has kind of ebbed and flowed and and and uh and has had twists and turns over the years. But the basis of this is is one thing, is well, two things. One, I'm lazy and I don't want to be working all the time. But two and you mentioned in the introduction, you know, I'm a teacher, but I'm also a musician, so I've never wanted this side of my work to take up all my time. Because at the very most it should take up 50% of my work time because I I want to be performing and writing and and recording music as well. So so the teaching side of things is only one part of what I do. And at certain points it's taken up more of my time, and and at other times it's taken up less of my time. And I know that I'm happier and healthier when it isn't eating into so much of my life that I feel that I'm not a self-propelling sort of object, and and instead this thing is is taking control of me.

SPEAKER_01 8:17

Is that what you think of yourself as a self-propelling object? Well, I I you know I I've never I've never heard that term. I get what you mean.

SPEAKER_00 8:26

I do understand, but I'm I've never said it before. Here we go, this is fresh. Um you never know what you're gonna get with me, John. I was thinking about this earlier, actually, and I do think that it I am innately um innately independent-minded and innately sceptical of of sort of outside influence or authority influence. And so I think I think this might feed into part of the reason that I don't kind of follow any specific rule book or or maybe part of the reason I don't follow the numbers because I feel like it's something imposing on me. Um but yeah, it it it's definitely informed the fact that I don't want my business to control me. The business should be a tool I use rather than something that sort of takes over my life.

Joy First Then Data Second

SPEAKER_01 9:18

I was thinking about at an interview the other day with a guy called Mark Smith, and he is a bird photographer, so birds in flight, and he runs in-person workshops about this, and he'll go off on safaris and what have you. And he does sell, he has a very popular YouTube channel, like a massive YouTube channel, and he does sell courses, but he basically doesn't want to do anything that's going to mean he's spending time at his computer. He wants to spend as much time as possible taking photos of birds, he wants to be outside, near wherever the birds are with his camera, and everything else is like, okay, well, how do I kind of fit that in around it? And it's it's fascinating because it's worked so well for him because he's it's meant he's got so good at bird photography, and then he he creates these gorgeous videos because he's got his great bird photography, and um, and that has led to lots of popularity and lots of uh money off the back of it. And it kind of reminds me of what you're saying as well. And I was chatting yesterday with Benny Lewis, and Benny's fascinating. He um I get to interview a lot of fascinating people. Benny um is a polyglot, he speaks like six languages and he gets by and a whole load of others. And what he likes to do is go to a country and go to the place in that country where no one speaks English and just travel around, and he might spend three months in wherever, Malaysia, but just speaking Malay and kind of getting by as best he can until he gets better and better and better at it. And then he makes courses for people and he coaches and tutors people and whatever, and that's how he makes his money, but it's not the thing that actually drives the business. The thing that drives the business is that he really does this, he really loves this, and he gets other people inspired, and then he writes blog posts about it and he does coaching about it and he makes YouTube videos about it and so on. And it's kind of similar to what you're talking about. So not I think there's a real I think there's a real magic in that, you know, like you as the creator trying to get away almost from the business side of things, like you're saying about like not thinking about the numbers. I like I think the numbers are incredibly important because it allows you to see how are you going to make more money from this, what is it that's working, what is it that's not working. But I but on the flip side, I think that there is something, there clearly is something that's really important about this, the creative element of it. Um that's just a bit of a a brain dump for me. What do you think about that?

SPEAKER_00 11:35

Yeah, I mean, I I think regardless of how much you look at the numbers or don't look at the numbers, I think the important thing is to remember why you started. Because I think businesses in general, but course if you're thinking about courses, course businesses often drift from I want to teach this thing really well, or I want I want to share my passion for this thing with people to help them. And they drift to I want to scale this asset efficiently. Um and and for me, I love music. I love the harmonica, and that's what I I want to share with people. So it means that a lot of the activity I'm spending my time doing is several steps removed from what might be the most efficient income driving activity. So for example, before we got speaking today, I've been tabbing out and recording some play-along videos for Christmas songs.

SPEAKER_02 12:35

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 12:36

And and I, you know, I'm doing stuff way ahead of time, but I love I love Christmas songs and I love teaching them. But it's probably a terrible business choice in in one sense, but because they're only going to be viewed for a few weeks a year. Yeah. The the the songs I was doing as well were uh like I've already done the biggest hits, so I've started doing I've doing the you know the deep cuts now. And they're not gonna bring in that much money. They're for YouTube videos anyway, which uh don't earn me money. And my YouTube channel isn't, even though it's my biggest online presence outside of the actual school itself, it it no longer really drives my main customers to the school. Most of my customers now, as far as I can tell, are coming through direct Google searches for keyword-related stuff. I've got a lot of uh articles, blog posts essentially on the website. And the people are coming through just finding out information about the harmonica rather than watching my YouTube video on Stop the Cavalry, you know. I don't even know what that song is. Well, exactly. Okay. It's an absolute banger. See, this is what I mean. It's a deep cut of a Christmas song. Check it out. Uh so there's not really there's not a good business reason for me r recording those songs today, other than zooming out and thinking of this broader approach to kind of why did I start this business, and that's to share things I'm passionate about. And and I've found over the years that the truer I stay to who I am and and the reason I started the business, and the the stricter I am, if you like, in terms of the activities I the activities I do being as close to my heart as possible, most importantly, the the happier I am in life. Yeah. But I do think probably indirectly the better and healthier my business is because it's authentic and people know they're getting something real from me. It's never going to be for everyone, but there will be a market for that amongst people who who like what I like.

SPEAKER_01 14:46

Here's my pitch, right? Yeah. And I'm not I'm not try I'm kind of trying to convince you, because I think it's important. Yeah. But own but I I'm mostly just interested in hearing your opinion back on it. So here's what I find. Most course creators say to me, No, I hate spreadsheets, I hate maths, I hate numbers, I don't want to look at the numbers. I just want to they they like doing two things. They like teaching the thing that they uh are passionate about, whether it's language or harmonica or or blues guitar or learning mandarin or whatever it is, right? And they're like making content about it. So like making courses and making content. So from a business point of view, that's the thing that they want to do. And they're like, I don't want to look at uh sales, I don't want to look at uh spreadsheets, that's not comfortable to me, I don't like it. And the if someone's totally happy with their life, like way everything in their life is set up, then I'm like, well, wicked, that's just grand. You know, there's no there's no problem here. But a lot of people would like to make some more money because they want their family to be able to go traveling with them to interesting in new places, or they want to move to a larger house, or they would like whatever, you know, people want to spend their money on whatever they want. And maybe, maybe they were enough of a type A personality to start a business that they just have drive to grow it just because, you know. And I think course businesses have got like three, three main parts to them. One is you've got to grow an audience of people who are interested to hear from you who like what you've got to say. And then you've got to make the courses or the membership for selling to them. So they've got some great product that they, if they get it, they're very happy with it, and when they've parted with their money, they're delighted. But then there's got to be the bit in the middle where you go, well, how am I going to explain to these people that this thing exists in a way that I feel good about, that I feel happy that I've that I've sent these email promotion or I've done this webinar or whatever. Like I don't feel icky, I don't feel salesy, I don't feel like a used car salesman, and you make money from it at the same time. And what I mostly see is a lot of course creators are are convincing themselves that they're happy with making a quarter as much as they could do from the audience that they've built and the courses they've built. Because they don't they either don't believe that this is a thing that is doable, or they don't want to to to um do the work because it's it's not the thing that they like, it's not the thing they're comfortable with. And I think looking at the numbers is a part of that process and going, well, what is it that's working? What is it that's not working? Where is it we need to change something? So that's my kind of philosophy on it. But what's your let's say somebody listening is like, I don't know, John, I don't know if I agree, but they don't have a voice in the podcast today. You do. Like, what's your what's your take on it? How do you feel about what I just said?

SPEAKER_00 17:28

I mean, what I would say is I'm not anti-growth and I'm not I'm not anti-data. I I don't mind a spreadsheet, and I and I was good at maths at school. I quite I like numbers. Yeah. I just find that it my personal experiences, once I get too close to the numbers in my business, it starts to sap my joy. And that's the thing. I I'm I'm not data driven. I don't knock anyone who is if that works for them. I'm joy-driven. And and I have to have that as my first metric. That doesn't mean that there's no place for numbers. For me, I I pro I'm probably especially uh number avoidant because from my experience I find that works for me. But I'm not saying that no one should ever look at those numbers. I just think that the important thing to remember beneath it all is that you're gonna have to have a core enjoyment of of your your work to keep it going. So it's if if you find that the the part of your business that you really, really despise is the only part that makes you money, maybe it's not a business you want to be part of. Maybe you don't want that business anymore. Now that every business has parts of it you don't particularly want to do, and you can't just say I'm gonna throw the baby out of the bathwater. But my I all I would say is you have to have a more holistic, broader approach than just let's look at the numbers and then drill down on those. And and I I would also say, and I'm sure you've you've thought about these things a lot yourself, but I would also say that I think the numbers can be psychologically dangerous in and and misleading at times because it is very hard. Anyone can give you a statistic about anything to prove their own point right, because we're basically we're instinctive beings and we justify our opinions after the fact. So we can do that in any way. And along with that, what's the uh is it Goodhart's law when a measure becomes a target, it ceased to be ceases to be a good measure. You can spend your life chasing algorithms that have changed by the time you're chasing them and get into this cycle of chasing things. And and I don't want to spend my life chasing things. So as long as you can look at numbers and calmly analyse them and say, that's really interesting, that aspect of my business takes up a lot less of my time and brings in loads more money and is is rewarding for me personally as well. Uh uh therefore I'll focus on that and I'll cut away all this slack that I didn't want to spend my time doing anyway. Great. I'm not saying there's no value in that. I just found that personally myself in my life, I'm much happier and much able to keep my enthusiasm for my teaching, which I've been doing for many years, by getting away from too much of that.

Work Boundaries And Introvert Energy

SPEAKER_01 20:46

There was something you said in the conversation earlier that I was I I You're English, so I kind of have to interpret it through a self certain amount of possible self-deprecatory humour, right? That if I if you're American, I wouldn't have I wouldn't have uh had that filter in my head. But like you said, I don't like to do a certain thing because I'm lazy. Now, I don't necessarily see lazy as like a uh a slur, you know, like a um and I I don't quite know how how serious or joking you were when you said that. Because I think that's like I do know business people who they've turned their laziness into a strength. And I'm just kind of curious how you meant it when you said it.

SPEAKER_00 21:23

I think what I meant was there's only so much of my life that I want to spend working, and there have been times in my life when I've been working a lot. There they really have. And also, depending on how you define work, you could say I work a lot. I mean I'm going to record in a studio tonight after this this uh chat, but it doesn't feel like work because it it's that's always been my fun time. So you depending how you define work, you could say I work a lot. But I certainly don't want to be spending all of my time teaching. So if I can streamline that and spend less time uh doing it, then I'm I'm very happy. So I at one point was teaching a lot privately and I kind of got sick of that and I thought well maybe I can do this online and then that progressed to courses and and I'm very much happy that most of my teaching now is passive income because it frees up so much time to to be doing other stuff that doesn't kind of tie me out so much. And then feeding into this as well is that I'm an introverted person. So I love social interaction. I I'm you know very happy to meet you and chat today and uh chat to anyone. But social interaction drains me whereas with an extroverted person it energizes them. So I there's only so much of of that that I can do anytime. I need uh my free time to to go walking to spend time with my wife to go traveling to write and record music to cook to read you know all of those things. So I can't be spending all of my time kind of just just constantly working. I feel like I've gone way off I'm not really sure what we were talking about.

SPEAKER_01 23:04

I think that's really good. It's like I think I mean it ties back into what you said earlier about you have to remember why you started the business in the first place. You know like a lot of people I know who run online businesses, they read the four-hour work week, they went that sounds dope. And then they went I'm gonna quit my job, start a business and travel the world. And then I know a lot of those people who've then become very successful who then actually got really into like growing the business and traction and entrepreneurial operating systems and SOPs and all of this. And some of them are loving it and some of them are like I almost kind of they got caught up in it. And I feel like I kind of got that to a certain extent I was scaling the business more and it's like I do want to still grow it but within certain constraints you know like it's got to be that it still serves me in this these ways. I've got to be able to uh make sure I'm not miserable from it. It's not exhausting me. I've got to make sure that I've uh got time to go to the gym with my mates and uh see my girlfriend and all of that is like the most important bit. And earning more money is like, well it's cool. I w I'd like more money that'd be great. But not if it stops me from having those things anymore. Like what's then the what's what's the purpose of uh as a as a guy tomorrow I worked with he's been on the podcast and um he was a coach and I he said to me like what's your what do you want your life to be like and I felt very smug because I've I've thought about it a lot and I'd written out everything about like I want to be able to uh see my girlfriend this often I want to travel this much I want to have the business grow this much and whatever and I showed him the list and the and the top stuff on the list was the business and at the bottom was my list of like what emotions I wanted to feel. And he's like why is the business stuff at the top and I said oh I don't know it's just in a random order. He said I don't think it is I think it's because the business stuff is easier to measure. Whereas the emotions are at the bottom and emotions is the hardest probably to measure out of any of these things. You know, with fitness stuff I could say how many pull-ups I want to do but with emotions like how do you define how proud you feel or how calm you are or whatever. And no one else is really tracking it. No one else is ever asking you how calm have you been this last month or something? And so he challenged me and I I've moved it around and I put the emotions at the top of the list and then the business stuff is at the bottom. But I really feel like what why would I push myself more with business in order to possibly feel happier later if it guarantees that I feel less happy now. Like that's that's no that's just crazy. And yet it's quite easy to do that. And I think that some of the stuff you were saying about like you know you want to make sure it all fits around your life you don't want to work too much you want to be able to do the things you really like to do. You want to be able to spend time with your wife go for walks play music it's like well if that's why you started it then that's got to be top of the list as to how the business fits.

Freedom And The FIRE Mindset

SPEAKER_00 25:44

I mean essentially by my own metrics I'm already living the dream. So it's kind of it it's kind of like important not to forget that and make sure it's like yeah my life is dope now. Yeah and also like you can you can take steps to make sure you don't forget that. So I have uh I do them every few months I can't and I've done this since since I started working as a musician and teacher 15 years ago. I have these little business meetings which is me uh talking to myself and drinking a cup of tea and uh eating some biscuits. But but part of these is I have a document that I update with short-term goals that can be anything. They might be numbers focused or income focused but I'm more likely to be wanting to spend more time doing X, Y, or Z because I feel I'm not doing it enough. But at the top of this document at all times is my overarching goal which is to have a comfortable life supported by income from music related activities. And I achieved that years ago and I'm still living that life and so as long as that's there at the top in bold everything else is just a part of supporting that. And also I'm sure you're familiar with the fire movement. I mean I I'm at the point where I'm probably probably going to reach financial independence soon and I I live relatively frugally I have simple tastes and minimal needs. The most important thing to me is my freedom and and that's what I see the financial independence movement as useful for essentially buying your own freedom. So nothing matters to me as much as that. I don't think there's anything as as valuable as as that freedom um and and also I'm kind of a little inherently sceptical of of fire. So anyone who hasn't read about the fire movement, it's all about building up enough money so you can essentially live off the interest of a savings pot so you're no longer required to work. You can continue to work if you want to but you've you haven't got the financial imperative to work. Now some people go from a relatively lean calculation to a fat fire where they want to live a a really sub opulent life um I've never really wanted that and I'm not it I'm not impressed or uh interested in big shiny things. I don't care about cars. I've got a lovely house which I own it's it's fine it's great. So the business is all part of serving the pursuit of freedom in and of itself it's it's kind of just a tool. So I'm never gonna I I think it'd be very unlikely that that I would get too drawn into earning more and earning more. As much as I see other people in my world doing better than me and and earning more than me, it's it's not my prime driver so it's never going to be the thing that is sort of taking up all of that that time. And that's one of the reasons I'm not paying so much attention to the numbers because if you're not careful and I'm sure you've got uh strategies and tips for people for how to do it the right way but if you're not careful it can just depress you you know because you did you'll always be someone else doing better. But are but they're not living your life. You're the only person living your life.

SPEAKER_01 29:25

Uh I don't think of I don't know if I ever said this on the podcast before but I was on holiday with my brother once and I was uh I was bitching to him because I joined some new mastermind and everybody in that was making more money than me and uh it was it was not very thoughtful of me because he's like you know uh earns less I was bitching about this and uh something else and he he turned to me and he said uh you complaining about your life is like going to the park and lying down next to the only dog turd I like that he's a journalist he has a beautiful way with words and it stuck with me as just like uh oh fuck I'm being a dick here yeah I really really really need to remind myself to like appreciate what I've got a lot more and stop getting upset that I don't have even more that I'm not comparing no that I don't have as much as some other somebody else so what what is the what are any goals for you with business? Do you have like are you just like I'm just kind of happy with the way things are going and just keeping doing exactly as that is there anything that you are trying to improve with it that you're trying to grow uh or does that not kind of fit into the way you see it?

Being Yourself As Marketing Strategy

SPEAKER_00 30:36

I mean I would always be happy if the if the business were were to grow and and improve and um if you know if if I could convert more potential customers that would be great but my goals really with the business are to m more based around the things I want to offer people. So like at the moment I'm learning to play Irish tunes on the harmonica which is a relatively new thing for me because I've mainly played blues in the past and I'd love to offer a an Irish course. So at the moment I'm spending a lot of time learning jigs and reels and it and it's a an amazing challenge for me because it's so different from what I'm doing. So offering other content is the kind of thing that I'm focusing on and and I realise it's probably so far removed from this idea of of kind of paying attention to the the the numbers and and then driving this aspect of the business because it's working but I I really am more focused on these uh my own metrics of of what it is I want to give to the world and and then I kind of have a blind call it stupid I don't know trust that the universe will provide. I I was thinking in the in the run up to this kind of what what rules if you like I I have when it comes to work and I and I thought of a few things. I'm wary of confirmation bias so I um I try not to get arrogant about kind of this is work so it's it's gonna work. I take baby steps each day and I and most of all I try and be myself. And I when I was thinking about these things it dawned on me that not only are these things I try to do in work but they're kind of life rules as well and I think again that feeds into the fact that I d I I don't see my business as a as an independent thing um outside of everything else in my life. It's just one aspect of my life and it has to be consistent with who I am and and what I want to do. So I want to build a business that still no matter how large it is still looks like my values when it succeeds and I just this this is nothing like what you've asked so I'm sorry again but um I want to go back to you mentioned something about sort of self-deprecating Britishness but I I think it's important to talk about this because for people watching or listening if you're thinking maybe I don't have the personality to be an online teacher or if you're thinking well maybe you are British or from some other culture where you feel that selling yourself online is braggy, is arrogant is pushy. I have found that my business works when when I really am myself and I am a self-deprecating neurotic Englishman uh but whenever I've tried to be anything other than that people can tell and I found this as a musician as well on stage you have to have the core of yourself in your performance. That doesn't mean you can't be a slightly warped version of yourself but you have to be yourself at the base of it because people are not stupid. Don't think that you'll get away with tricking people we're we're all instinctive beings and we can tell when someone's bullshitting us. So the best thing I think you can do is is be yourself and it doesn't matter if you don't think that you're a good salesman or someone who's can go out there and be the alpha personality and and kind of smash all the the competition because you don't have to be because I've managed to get a a an audience and a business by being my neurotic English self. You know it's possible.

SPEAKER_01 34:47

And I and it it it's a blessing you know you know yeah I think it's one of the beautiful things with YouTube personality comes across so strongly that by being yourself you attract the people who like someone like you. If you try and do it somebody else's way then you you're a a mediocre version of somebody else instead of being like a a really good version of yourself. And I'd I'd worked for a while on my YouTube game and was starting to get the hang of how do I do that on video because there's a lot there's a lot to it. It's almost like a whole load of bits you've got to learn and then let go of or something I don't know exactly I was kind of getting the hang of it. Like podcast I'm been very good at it for a long time interestingly presenting live like doing uh uh presentations at a conference no problem at all but somehow with YouTube I kind of I was working on like how do I get my personality to to come through in the right way I think I might have listened to too many coaches too many people who are like this is the way to do it because that was their way to do it or something like that, you know. Um and uh that I might have needed to kind of like back away from that a little bit. But yeah yeah I think I mean so many course creators who come on the podcast say that. Like it's so important to be genuine. It's so important to be yourself. It's like it's very clearly true. The people who don't think that anybody's trying to figure out how do you kind of you know finagle your way through it I think are not the kind of people who I generally want to have on the podcast and talk with you know as there are some out there and there are some that've made it work but it's like oh it's a bit grim.

SPEAKER_00 36:17

Yeah and and I think like the important thing for me is to get across to people who maybe are like me who who doubt themselves who who are who don't think of themselves as a as a big personality if you like to get across to people like that that that's fine and you can still have a successful business and actually an online business online courses are probably better suited to you if you're more introverted if you're someone who likes to take your time and and think things through rather than kind of go get them, smash them in your face kind of person because you can build a business that is curated to suit your life and is presented the exact way you want it to be and spend as much time on that as you want to and that can also become a passive income business. So you don't have to be doing as much direct interaction with people all the time. And going back to this sort of your personality being part of of what you do I you know kind of weekly reply to YouTube comments and whatever and the thing that I think comes up again and again and again is what people like about my videos is the stuff I can't help because it's just part of who I am. And that doesn't mean everyone likes that the people who don't like that don't watch my videos but the people who are watching my videos enjoy that they're not perfect and that I'll kind of I'll say I'm not sure about this bit and and and and it's clearly humanizing it for people. Now that's not a conscious choice of mine that's just who I am and it's it's almost been left in by accident or just because I can't seem to help being like that. But that is now part of my appeal to a certain subsection of of the the world that you know peep there there is a market for someone like me. And there's a market for everyone out there whatever your personality there will be a market for you as you are you don't have to be that that other guy who's doing really well by being themselves but they're very different from you.

Outsourcing And Light-Touch Metrics

SPEAKER_01 38:20

Yeah yeah totally. Liam this is awesome.

SPEAKER_00 38:22

I really really appreciate you coming on today and talking to us about all of this one day I might figure out how to get you excited about numbers I mean I so I I would I will I will admit that I used to look more at numbers and I've kind of so I I mean I've read the four hour work week and there's aspects of it I liked and aspects I didn't but one thing that that I have implemented outsourcing to a degree so I now have a video editor because I got sick of editing videos myself and I wasn't very good at it. But also I do have someone who is closer to the numbers um so they're kind of they're there and and they can be looked at if if I want to I just don't you know and it it might be dangerous in the sense that perhaps I'm being too reactive with my business. Maybe by the time I look at them it'll be too late because the business is crumbling and my empire is gone and I'm penniless and on the streets.

SPEAKER_01 39:27

But the they're still there and they're still accessible if I want them to be the right instrument for that situation though, isn't it? Well exactly you know on the street and you're gonna be golden man.

SPEAKER_00 39:37

Exactly you know it's probably the life the life I was born to live sorry I interrupted it just seemed like a such a perfect visual but yeah no so it's anyway although all I all I was getting at was there's the numbers are still accessible if I were to to want them and and there is it's kind of like there is someone looking at them just like there is someone doing my video editing because if I stopped editing the videos they wouldn't be released and that the business would just stall completely. So um and someone's got to do your accounts haven't they? Like you know someone's got to see I just don't like to see it. So um I'm not what as I said before I'm not advocating I'm not I'm not prescribing my way to every single person and I'm not advocating that people should completely ignore all data. But I do think that it's one it's important maybe if you're you know a a subscriber to this podcast or you're just obsessed with numbers or maybe you're looking into lots of drilling into the numbers and and not getting where you want to with them. I do think it's it's useful sometimes even just as an academic exercise to play devil's advocate or to think what what else what else do I need to consider here? And hopefully you know even though I'm probably a little bit different than than a a lot of your guests hopefully some aspect of the way that I approach things might help people it might even help them use the numbers better and more effectively because it maybe just is a mindset thing switches something in their head and makes them shift the way they're thinking about the numbers they're looking at, you know? That's awesome.

Where To Find Liam Online

SPEAKER_01 41:18

Let's call it there. Uh if Liam if people want to go check out maybe one Learn the harmonica or maybe they want to just kind of see well how are you doing? How are you running your business where should they go? Where should they check you out?

SPEAKER_00 41:28

Uh so the website's learntheharmonica.com you'll see all of my uh school stuff on there and loads of free harmonica related stuff and then the the YouTube channel is also learnTheharmonica and if you want to check out my my music side of it you can go to liamwardmusic.com as well. I am on social media but I'm no good at it.

SPEAKER_01 41:49

Um so I wouldn't bother amazing thanks so much Liam for coming on today I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 41:57

You're very welcome thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_01 41:58

As always thanks so much for listening and we will see you guys next time.