The Art of Selling Online Courses

239 How To Actually Build an Evergreen Course

• John Ainsworth • Season 1 • Episode 239

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James Testani has built Good Guitarist into a channel with over 600,000 subscribers and nearly a million views a month... and he did it without chasing trends or trying to game the algorithm.

His whole approach has been evergreen from the start. He releases lessons, they get a trickle of views, and then a year later they're just quietly bringing in people who searched for exactly that thing. It's a slower build, but it compounds over time in a way that trend-driven content just doesn't.

In this episode we get into how that translates into course sales... because the journey his students take is pretty different from what you might expect. They don't usually opt in and go straight through a funnel. They watch his lessons for months, build trust, and then one day decide they want the full structured path. That changes how you think about your email list and your promotions.

We also talk about the switch from selling individual courses to a subscription model, how he's thinking about quarterly promotions now, and the challenge of building a team around a business that's very much built around one person's teaching style.

And we get into hiring... specifically how hard it is to find people who actually think about your business rather than just applying a formula they've used before.

🎸 Check out James's site: https://goodguitarist.com

Slow And Steady Growth Mindset

SPEAKER_00

I've kind of always had that slow and steady wins the race kind of approach. You just get one or two percent better every single month and you will be doubling your sales. It happens. It's compound interest. It's consistent and it just kind of grows consistently. My whole setup is more evergreen. I'll release a lesson and it will get very few views off the bat. But then you look at it like a year later and all of a sudden it's like just trucking along. People are just constantly like looking up how do I do this? How do I play this? It's not like people are waiting for the next episode of it to come out. It's that people are just kind of looking through the database. I just focus on having the actual highest quality things I can have so that people find a lot of new stuff. People who do commit, they just find themselves learning from me on YouTube for a while and they're like, I want to organize it. I don't want to just take random YouTube to build it.

Meet James And His Students

SPEAKER_03

Hello, and welcome to the Art of Telling Online Courses. We are here to share winning strategies perhaps top performance in the online courses. My name is John Aspert, and today's guest is James Tanley. James is the founder of Good Guitarist, where he helps everyday people learn guitar through simple, structured, and encouraging methods. He's got a background and music education. He focuses on real progress, teaching full songs, building confidence, and helping students actually enjoy playing. He's got a YouTube channel with over 600,000 subscribers and nearly 1 million views per month. And what they do there is they feature clear, song-based tutorials and step-by-step courses which guide students from beginner to confident player. James, welcome to the show, man. Hey, great to be here. Thanks for having me. So who's your kind of focus with uh with the YouTube or with courses? Have you got a kind of a target audience in mind? Is it more beginners? Do you do the whole way through to experts as well? What's your kind of focus?

SPEAKER_00

Um It definitely focuses on beginners. That wasn't necessarily my intention, but something I just discovered over time. You know, um when I first started teaching, it was one-on-one lessons in person. And um going into it, I thought, like, okay, what if I can't play this Metallica thing that they want to play? Or da-da-da. And then pretty quickly I realized, like, oh, everybody's either just getting started, or even though they've been at it for a while, they just need some help, you know, getting to like the intermediate kind of level, right? So the actual material I realized like 99% of what people want to do is the beginner stuff. And then that's been reinforced by my YouTube channel and by what kind of lessons resonate with people. Nice.

SPEAKER_03

And how long have you been how long have you been running this for? When did you get going?

From Lessons To YouTube To Courses

SPEAKER_00

Uh 2014 is when I uh uploaded uploaded my first video. Okay. Yeah. I've been you know, um a friend of mine told me a long time ago, persistence is key. It was like before I even started my channel, but that's something that's just stuck with me just in general. And um, you know, with this whole thing, I'm sure you know, like it's a lot of ups and downs. And um, if you just keep putting work in, things do work out, you know. Like I'm I'm kind of I've kind of always had that slow and steady wins the race kind of approach. And yeah, I've been at it forever. So, you know, it's yeah.

SPEAKER_03

And when do you start selling courses? Like, because I was just chatting with somebody who is uh he teaches harmonica and he said he just he put the videos up, he didn't even kind of know why he was exact he was like he's hoping that someone would hire him to play harmonica at uh you know at Games and whatever. And then people just started asking him for courses and lessons.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it's funny. I actually have like like I didn't start my channel because I, you know, read about online marketing and I wanted to do the whole like hustling thing, you know. Like I actually realized I was teaching the same things a lot, and there were a lot of things that I didn't necessarily need to be present for. Like my students just needed to work on these exercises and whatnot. So I just made videos to supplement my one-on-one courses, or not one-on-one courses, sorry, my one-on-one real life lessons.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And then uh they started getting views. And, you know, I was like, whoa, this is this is cool. So I just kind of uh went with that, but it I didn't really uh get super into it and I didn't start selling courses until 2017. So three years after I released my first uh lesson on YouTube, and at that time I felt like, whoa, it took me forever. I should have released a course right away. I should have done this right away. But you know, hindsight's 2020, right? If I could do it all again, I'd make like 10,000 times better choices. Right. You know, it's not even comparable. Just because especially because now um since COVID, like YouTube's just gotten so much more competitive. Like I I don't have first mover advantage, but I am one of the earlier people. And if somebody wanted to start a YouTube channel today and is like, how can I get you know my YouTube channel going? Like, I definitely would have some great advice to give, but it wouldn't be as easy as it would have been seven or eight years ago because so many people are are trying so many things now, and AI is really like plugging up the works. Luckily for course creators, I feel like AI just isn't good at teaching, especially guitar. Like I try, I go on ChatGube G and I'm like, what do you think about this? And it just spits out the weirdest things.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. We had the only person I've had on so far who's really got into using AI and teaching is a language course creator, Lydia Marachova. And she's gone through and built like a an AI version of her that gives people input on how to learn a language. The thing she's doing, interestingly, is she's not teaching people a language, she's teaching people how to learn a language. So she like speaks 11 languages, and she's got a way that she learnt those languages. But what she noticed, she went out to a um a polyglot meetup, I think it was, uh but people who speak lots and lots of languages, and um they'd all got a different way that they'd learnt languages. And she's like, Oh, that's interesting. So then she started trying to figure out like how do you figure out your way of doing it? So I don't know if it would work with the AI for teaching the language, but it works for her thing. And it definitely, like you're saying, it's like it's a long way from teaching music.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, that's the thing. Like, even like what you were saying, like that. Um after teaching so many beginners one-on-one, like I realized these are the things that everybody kind of needs to know, et cetera. Like you notice trends, and that's what goes into my videos. But at the same time, with uh, you know, just with how hands-on guitar is, like that's been one of my biggest challenges, especially when it comes to it, it kind of relates to the whole thing, not only teaching, but also the marketing side of things, is that with guitar, it's not just something where you know you can just take a pill and then you're instantly you got the results. Or, you know, you buy clothes, you you look better because you're wearing nice clothes and you all you have to do is put on the clothes. Guitar, you have to actually work on the skill. You can learn about it all you want, but then you have to practice it. And it's like going to the gym, you know? And um that's that's one of the things that's uh like it's it's kind of like a two-part thing. First of all, it's like convince somebody that guitar is actually worth learning, convince them to put in the work, then it's convince them that you know you have the right way to get there as fast as possible, right? Yeah, yeah. You know, so there's a lot to it.

SPEAKER_03

It's been really interesting for me. My I I play bass and I kind of practice intermittently. Like I'm sometimes I'm really into it and sometimes I'm I'm putting in less work. And my flatmate, he used to play the trumpet and he now is learning piano. And he just every day he does the practice, and just like so consistently, so reliably, so like he does exactly what he's supposed to do. I'm like, damn, that's better than what I do. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And you know, um, something that somebody in music school told me that really resonates is that it's like a leaky bucket, you know, and you it's always leaking and you got to keep putting stuff into it. You know, if you let yourself get rusty, it's like any muscle, you know, you will lose strength. Like you can hit a certain point and just your baseline is forever here. But yeah, like I myself, right now, I have two young kids. I am running my whole business. It would be really nice to have time to play guitar. It's not like I have any problem with motivation, it's that I have a problem feeling okay sitting down and doing something for myself. Right. It's just not the time in my life to do that, you know. And I have plans once my kids are a bit older and I have some more time. But, you know, it's it's just yeah, so I feel you on that one. It's tough to get that practice time in.

SPEAKER_03

Once you got to the point when you were starting to sell courses, what was it that What was it that got you to start? Were people asking you for it? Was that the the driver? Or was it you heard from someone else this would be a great idea to do?

Lead Magnet Strategy And First Funnel

Email Lists And Deliverability Problems

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it's sort of a mix of things. I um started my channel in 2014, and then like six months later I went to uh on a trip, you know, just to go experience life and stuff during my 20s while I was still young. And uh I left my channel for six months and a lot of videos picked up during that time. I came back, got a job screen printing t-shirts at like a little shop, but it was with my it was at my sister-in-law's place, and she was starting her business, right? So like the boss was my no, she wasn't my sister-in-law then, but I married her sister eventually, right? And um, and she was like kind of gave me advice and kind of got me into this world, showed me Amy Porterfield podcasts, yeah, you know, that kind of stuff, right? So I started listening to it and just getting ideas from that. Uh, I made my lead magnet, I believe, that same year or maybe early 2016, I'm not sure. That I'm still using now. Like I still use really it's just a it's a guitar ebook. Um I and I made it like not to be arrogant or whatever, I made it really good first time. I didn't like like one time I hired a marketer to help me out and they got me to pare down the ebook because they're like, you're giving away too much. And it actually did worse. Like it is good to just with guitar, you know. Like I said, people have to work on it. So giving them lots of information is almost, you know, it's fine, right? But um, yeah, from there, the lead magnet, which uh I realized I because I made it so robust, I could have just charged like two or three bucks for it and it would have started to be making money sooner. And then I just took it and I made a bigger version of it, made a big course out of it. Uh, and it took me a long time to get that going because I didn't really at that time this was still just like a, you know, it wasn't a big thing like it is now. Like in 2017, like, you know, people were still focused on the real world a lot more than now in it, like courses and like the online space is taken way more seriously. You know, like somebody who learned guitar online. Like I remember in I took piano lessons because I wanted to like get a background in music theory and stuff. And I went to one of the recitals, even though I was like 17 or 18 years old and like there's a bunch of little kids in me. I just went to a recital just to play piano in front of people. And she introduced me as he's learning guitar online because I was using like early websites, and it was just such a like novel thing for people. Like he's not learning from a teacher, he's learning online. And um, you know, but now it's just take it's the de facto thing. Learning online is like the best, and everybody's realized it, right? So uh, but at the time, yeah, I I didn't really take it too seriously. And uh and uh it took me a long time to to hustle it out, but I did. And you know, it's it's been a step at a time since then. How big's your you said you got the same lead magnet. How big's your email lists now? Um it's like the people that I'm allowed to email, it's like 60,000, but then I have like an additional 30k contacts for people that sign up for my free course. Uh-huh. And I can I can put stuff into the course to kind of contact them. I can't do the whole email thing because of spam laws, obviously. Um but I I'm always paring down my email list too, right? So I have about 60,000 like just in a spreadsheet somewhere that I told, you know, you're cold. I don't like you anymore. Not really. There I was just like, hey, if you don't want to hear my hear about me. And I'm about to do that again, actually. So I'm gonna I'm gonna take my email list down again because I'd rather have a really tight email list. Especially, I don't know if you you obviously are aware of all this. Like uh this morning my newsletter went into the promotions folder on my Gmail inbox, but it didn't for like somebody else. And you know, it's all like it's customized now because of like AI filtering and I never opened newsletters. So Gmail knows that about me and and all that stuff. So email is just such a it's the biggest fight, you know, for me. Like like the balance of like how hard do I hit people up versus like uh getting it to land in their in their inbox, you know? And uh on top of like the content of it, there's also the technical side. Like um, I use Kajabi, and Kajabi is kind of like they're they wrap it according to you know, when I like take the email source and I'll like copy like the actual HTML of it and like use a spam checker and stuff, and it's like, ah, you have this padding at the beginning, you shouldn't be doing that, blah, blah, blah. Use a more plain text thing that's like this is as plain as it gets on Kajabi. And there's there's it's just such a like, I don't know. What what are your what are your thoughts? What's your advice for me in this regard? Because this is definitely one of my one of my biggest battles.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, I think I mean there's a lot of things you can do. There's a lot of little details to it. I think Kajabi's email market, if I understand right, you're saying you're sending the emails from Kajabi. Yeah. It's I I'm very torn because it's not the best. Kajabi's I agree. It's a great place for hosting your course. It's an okay place for the funnels, and it's pretty mediocre for the email marketing. That's that's my impression too.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

I'm very, very wary of ever suggesting to be to change tech because the problem with it is it takes a lot of faffing around. And uh is that an English expression, or do you guys say that as well? I understand. I'm Canadian, so I forget it all.

SPEAKER_00

I I grew up with British TV.

SPEAKER_03

So it's like it takes so much longer than you think is reasonable for it to take. And then starting again in the new email marketing system, there's real disadvantages to that. You don't have the same reputation with the company, whatever. So I've seen people spend just eight and then you might have a bunch of tags that you've got to move over, and you might go, oh, I forgot I had this thing set up and now something's broken and whatever. So I probably wouldn't change that. I think if you're doing a if you're thinking of deleting some people from the list, definitely do a re-engagement campaign. I don't know if you're planning that already, but to try and get them to for sure.

SPEAKER_00

It's they're they're written, they're scheduled. Okay, cool. Right, yeah, great. Yeah. I'm gonna uncold people.

SPEAKER_03

The thing that I suspect you could probably make a lot more progress with more easily is it just seems like the number of people on your email list compared to the number of views you're getting a month, you could probably get a lot more opt-ins. I haven't looked at your YouTube channel to kind of see how you're how you're doing it. Because you're you're teaching songs on your YouTube channel, right?

Opt-Ins Versus Direct Sales

SPEAKER_00

I teach songs, techniques, you know, but I don't do like the edutainment thing much. I want to get into it where it's more just like you're not actually learning anything, you're just kind of getting entertained by guitar stuff. Uh that is something that's always been on my mind, but I'm quite good at teaching, so I just do what I'm good at. And like, you know, being like a TV host or whatever is I'm on skill. Yeah. Yeah, it's exactly. And I'm used to being on camera, but uh, you know, that's definitely something. And I also feel like um my whole setup is more evergreen. Like I'll release a lesson and it will get very few views off the bat. But then you look at it like a year later and all of a sudden it's like just trucking along because people are just constantly like looking up how do I do this? How do I play this? You know, so that's kind of it's not like people are waiting for the next episode of it to come out. It's that people are just kind of looking through the database, so to speak, and being like, that appeals to me, that appeals to me. And the bigger you make the collection, you know, it's not like everybody's like, let's check out the latest Wikipedia article. You know, it's it's it's that sort of thing, right? You you know, like when something's relevant to you, you will look it up. And I just focus on having the actual, like highest quality things I can have so that people find a lot of use out of it. You know, so that's kind of yeah, and a lot of people playing guitar, they just want to know how to do that thing. They aren't necessarily interested in like, let's make James my teacher, you know. But I I obviously, you know, those are the reasons why my opt-ins might be low compared to the views, but uh they're steady. And obviously I'm always looking for more input on how to increase that kind of thing. But it's a balance. Like, how many people do you want to opt-in versus just putting straight to the free trial of your product?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, what we've found from a lot of testing is that about 99% of the time, 95, 99, whatever, something very high, it's better to go to the lead magnet first. Like I we've had we've we've had people that we worked with where it did work better to go to paid, but it's very few and far between. And nearly everybody, when you're selling courses, if you get them onto the email list, then you've got a massive advantage. If you if you think about like um what you were just saying about people aren't uh they're not thinking, right, how can I make James my teacher? They're not like going and looking at the next video immediately whenever you want them to, they're looking at it whenever they happen to come across it, right? W that's how it works with YouTube to an extent. Like you can't control when someone sees that message that they get that's promotional as part of the video. You can't control whether they get to the end of the video where it's maybe mentioned or they look at the description where it's mentioned, whatever. But if you get them onto your email list, yeah, you can't guarantee they open the email, but you can at least guarantee when you're sending it, and that you that the time that you're sending it to promote something is out to to everybody all at once. And that generally, like nearly always works much better. So um the the approach that we always take is really focus in the the description, maybe in the pinned comment, you can't put I think you can't put links in the pinned comment anymore. I don't know, I I heard that from someone, but I was looking at one of your videos and it's got a link in there and it's totally fine. And then mentioning the the lead magnet in the video as well. One of the massive advantages that when you're teaching songs in music is that you can then give away the the download that goes with it. You know, if it's teaching bass, then you're giving the tabs. I don't know if you is it sheet music or what would you what is the the way the notation for guitar? Sheet music has a lot of copyright stuff around it.

SPEAKER_00

So for real songs, it's not something that you can just uh like give out in that way. You have to go through like another organization and then you're in their ecosystem and it kind of like you know muddies the waters. Um I do worksheets for certain lessons, but that's all just stuff for people who have my all access pass. So if you're a member, you get that stuff. And if you're not, I tell you that you can be a member and you'll get it.

Copyright Risk With Tabs

SPEAKER_03

You know, that's like I've got a friend who's teaching uh ukulele and no, wait a minute, banjo. Banjo. And I've been helping him with his opt-ins quite a lot. And so he's giving away tabs, I think, would be the right term for for ukulele for banjo, sorry. And it's the it's the highest opt-ins that he gets on any kind of video by far. It's like if he's doing a video where he's teaching a technique, he might have like a 1% opt-in rate. If he's doing a video where he's teaching a song, he's getting like a six percent opt-in rate. And he's just giving away like a real tab from a real artist. Well, his arrangement of it, it's very, very normal on banjo to do your own arrangements. For sure.

SPEAKER_00

And I can do my own arrangements on guitar, but I spoke to a music copyright lawyer, and you can still get nailed for a lot. That's why I I used to do it. I used to to give out the tabs, and I was threatened by I was I was uh sent like a letter in the mail. So there's a reason why. That's why I'm pretty hesitant to like lose everything. 150,000 US dollars per infraction. Right. Okay. Yeah, that's it's it's it's a tough thing. It's a bit of a sore spot. But I am coming up. I'm always working on some workarounds. But um essentially, like whoever owns the copyright to that sheet music, they don't want it to be part of a library. They want each piece to be bought so they know who gets what thing, right? Yeah. So, like, you know, Bob Dylan and Paul Simon and whatever, you can't just give access to all their stuff in the same book unless you make an agreement for them to put all their stuff in the same book. And then it's like, how much goes to each guy, da-da-da. And it they make it really, really complicated. And the bigger you get, the uh more eyes are on you. And it was fine when I had like less than a hundred thousand subscribers and stuff, but then I hit a point. It was actually the day my son was born I got that letter, which was really crappy. Oh, great. It kind of ruined ruined my day. Am I getting sued? No, not yet, but I'm being told to cease and desist. Um, yeah, so that was that. Um, but yeah, back to the whole like uh, because I was kind of interested. Like I I totally am on board, like I've been, you know, researching uh marketing and stuff. But something I've realized in terms of opt-ins is that like, yes, while having like an ebook or whatever opt-in thing, sheet music, like people just print it, they have it, great, they feel kind of indebted to you, they have that whole psychological thing. But at the same time, like if somebody's using your YouTube channel for a long time, that kind of is like your opt-in. And that is kind of your warm-up. You know, they've taken a lot of your lessons and they're seeing you a lot, they're getting samples of your teaching. And that's some one of the things that I've kind of discovered because I have tested, you know, which what do I plug in the video? Do I plug my lead magnet? Do I plug my opt in thing? Do I, you know, what do I do? And I've one of the conclusions I've come to and just in surveying people, you know, every month we interview uh people like I use Riverside for a while, but now we do. Zoom because it just works a bit better for our purposes. And uh we just kind of ask them about their journey and all that. And like the people who do commit, they just find themselves learning from me on YouTube for a while. And then they're like, I want the organized path. Like, I want like this guy's like full thing. I don't want to just take random YouTube lessons anymore. So that's kind of been what we've discovered. So it's really that balance. Because yeah, I like the idea of like it would be so clean if it's like they opt in email sequence, buy. And I'm sure that happens with people that sign up for me. But there's a lot of just direct, like take a bunch of YouTube lessons and then just they just sign up for it.

Promotions Membership Model And Pricing

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, the jet, I mean, generally, what we've found, and like through a lot of testing, and we have to look at it for your business, right? I'm not saying this is the answer. I'm saying this is likely to be the answer. Like every like there's a lot of nuance to these things. But like normally about 80% of the potential revenue in an online course business is in the email list. And so it's just like giving up some sales short term of people getting from the uh YouTube directly to buying tends to be much, much more than made up for by uh by getting on the email list. But what I'll do afterwards is I'll I'll have a chat with Josep. He's like my head of funnel strategy, um, and and get his thoughts on it as well. And he might ask you some some questions about something so we can come back and be like, right, here's here's what I is most likely to be the best next step for you. Because it just it just seems like I don't I don't know what your your revenue is, but it just seems like if you had a much bigger email list, it's very likely that you would have a much higher revenue next time you do a promotion. Do you do promotions regularly?

SPEAKER_00

Well, I used to just do one promotion a year at Christmas time, and it does really well, but like now I'm doing four a year. So I'm about to do my first spring sale and actually gonna film the ads tomorrow and uh I'm setting up the landing page and all that. And uh yeah, we're gonna test it out because um I'm just thinking that uh it'll do well because the Christmas sale does really well. So why not? Right.

SPEAKER_03

Do you it do you have any way that people can buy individual courses, or do you just sell the membership as the only option?

SPEAKER_00

Uh you can uh get like a membership to individual courses, but I find that it's just such a better deal to just get it all. And um, I used to sell like one-offs when I switched to subscription about a year ago, and it's much, much better. Why is that? What's been better? Well, it's consistent and it just kind of grows consistently. Whereas when you're selling one-off courses, you can have off months, and I just don't like that. That's that's all there is to it.

SPEAKER_03

So my philosophy on it is generally I think it's better to have both. Because when you've got the membership, you've got that, you know that money's coming in, you know you've got like whatever your churn rate is, you've got a certain amount that's coming in each month. You can do the downside to it is you can only really do promotions with discounts of a membership like four times a year maximum. Because if you promote the same thing every month and people are like, Oh, there's no there's no urgency to get it this month, I can just get it next month, there's no big deal. But if it's every three months, it's like, okay, that that pretty much works. That's long enough time period, there's enough new people on the list, there's enough people who kind of built up interests. But in the months in between that, then you've got nothing else that you can promote if you don't have something that you're selling. Do you know um uh Scots Bass Lessons? You come across them? No. No, okay. So they're like doing, I think like five million a year, something like that. And we've been working with them quite a lot recently on like, okay, well, how do we how do we help increase this? One of the things is you can do a higher priced offering, and it's not not for everybody, but they're doing like a$10,000 a year coaching offering as well. Wow. He doesn't do the coaching, but he has a coaching team who's doing it. And that does about a million a year, something in that kind of ballpark, just from just from that part. So there's there's other things you can have besides selling individual courses, but he's selling the membership, he's selling the individual courses, and he's selling that high-ticket thing. And each of them is a different opportunity for different segments of the the audience.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, different mindsets of people. Not everybody wants to be paying a little bit every month or an annual fee. Yeah. I do have lifetime, but that only comes up at the sales. Right, right, right. Yeah, yeah. You know, the sales are like, this is your chance to get lifetime.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, one of the things I've found is like pretty much all course creators do like the vast majority, it's like two to three promotions a year. And if you look at people's income, they have two to three big spikes in revenue per year. Yeah. And they met exactly with the email promotions. And the reason generally that most people don't want to do promotions more often is because they don't want to be too salesy. But it's like if you can find a way to send email promotions that isn't too salesy, that you feel comfortable with, that your audience feels comfortable with. Like one of the things that we do, for example, when we're doing promotions for someone is we'll include links in every single promotion email saying, if you don't want to hear about this course, you don't want to hear about this promotion, just click this link. And it's like big and obvious and at the front, and saying, like, you might want to stay on the email list, but just you don't want to hear about the beginner course this month. Maybe you're intermediate, maybe you just don't want to get it, whatever. Just click this link and you just won't hear us from us for the next two weeks, and then you can kind of get back onto it. And so that helps. And then there's the way you write the emails, and that helps, and then there's what offer you have to kind of mix those up, and that will so all of these kind of things. If you can make it so that your your audience is happy to receive the emails, then you're generally happier to send them, and then you're generally able to make more money from it, which is you know, yeah, yeah, fair enough.

SPEAKER_00

You know, so putting it out there, food support. It's definitely something to think about. It's funny because I've kind of like uh haven't done that exact strategy, but I've just been through so many different uh things and different ways of doing things. And like I've, you know, uh at this point hired like probably five or six different uh experts. And they always have like a different opinion that contradicts the other. And it's like it's all just I realize it's just a matter of testing it out and seeing what works, right? And um that's the the tough part, right? Is that you can't just like willy-nilly, like let's just test this out because you can always kind of burn bridges if you just do everything like in so you have to do it in a really systematic, clever way. And there's just so many like nuances to the whole thing, right? And um, yeah, you know, like I I'm definitely always open to learning and to improving it. And it's definitely something I'd like to look into.

Webinars Communities And What Works

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, it's been really interesting. I was a friend of mine, Jack Hopkins, he runs another podcast in the space, like um the online course show, I think. Um and he has a business where he teaches guitar. Sorry, he teaches piano. He teaches uh piano in 21 days or tw piano in 30 days or something like this. And um, his model he teaches other course creators like how to get how to get going. And he teaches people to run a webinar. And I'm like, I was having a long conversation with him about he came on the podcast a while back and I was having a conversation with him about it. And I'm just tying into what you'd said about the uh everyone's got a different opinion and a different approach. And it's like I love webinars, I think they are the best converting marketing tactic for online courses. I think they're absolutely fantastic, but like you say, there's nuance, right? So you have to know well, when do you use them? What price does the offer need to be? How good does the webinar need to be? How well there's a lot of detail around it. So I don't generally like I I will help people to build them and do them, but I don't teach it that much on the podcast, I don't teach it in the course because you've got to get it right. If you do it wrong, then it's a it's a nuisance and a pain in the arse and you feel frustrated and it took loads of work and you still didn't get that much result. Whereas an email promotion is really straightforward. It's hard to do it well, but even a bad one does okay. Yeah. And it's like, okay, well, I can definitely make sure if I talk about that in the podcast, that I can help people to do it slightly better than they are now and make some more money from it. Whereas webinar, I'm like, oh no, we need to we need to talk about this properly. Like I need you to do it right. So it's like, and that's just two people, right? So he's got his model, I've got my model, then a third person will do it kind of a different way as well. And it's like it all depends on yes, they do that, but then they also do this and they do this and the other. So you've got to think a lot of it through and make sure it fits for you.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Yeah, I've tried a couple of webinars and they did okay, but no better than email marketing. And it's just so much more work that you know, I just didn't load more work.

SPEAKER_03

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and honestly, it just doesn't necessarily work for who I am and for what I do in particular, you know. Like, um, there's a lot of things that you realize, like like people will tell you you need to have a community. And like I learned through asking people because I tried a community thing. They don't want to see each other struggle to learn guitar. They just want advice so that they can get better at guitar. Yeah. So I converted my community into like ask James, and you can just post stuff there, and I will go there and I'll answer your questions. And every day I check and I'm just like, oh yeah, you got to move your fingers here. You have to do this, you have to do that, you know, and um it's uh it just gives them that little bit of one-on-one time. It kind of boosts sales because they know that that I have their back and they can be more confident signing up, you know, and like it's it's just kind of done that as opposed to uh sharing with each other because my students are mostly a little bit older and they, you know, they don't want to get social. They probably have their own friends or whatever they do with their own lives, right? They just want to sit down and relax and learn guitar, you know, kind of like reading a book on your armchair. It kind of fills that sort of space, you know. And and in your evening when you're you get out your book and your tea or whatever, and you're sitting in your armchair, you're like, you don't want to talk to anybody. You know, there are some social people, but yeah, I've I've discovered just I do a lot of talking to my students, right? So just seeing what they're all about, and that's who resonates with me. You know, for some reason, like my my uh the people that I really speak to are all around, you know, 50 plus or minus 20 years.

SPEAKER_03

That's kind of that is a great audience to attract. And I I think a lot of music channels do attract that kind of age group. It's great because they have time on the hands, they've got some money. And I don't know. They just seem to I I think they're a great audience. It's less trend driven. So it's like more the stuff that you do now is probably gonna work in a year, is probably gonna work in two years. That's the thing, right?

SPEAKER_00

Like I like old music too, right? Like I don't listen to like the latest. Like, there's a few bands that have come out since you know the 90s that I that I'll get into.

SPEAKER_03

But uh Is that your last music reference? Okay.

SPEAKER_00

Pretty much. Because you know, all the like cool guitar stuff from like the 70s and stuff, all the you know, guitar idols and all that, like the people playing epic solos, like that stuff's eternal. And these people grew up with that, and you know, that's I guess where we connect, right?

SPEAKER_03

I used to live right by a um famous uh venue in London, the Hammersmith Apollo, and I would walk past it every day on my way home, and every day there would be a band playing there, and there'd be people queuing up outside to get in first, to be at the front, and I would try and figure out what kind of band it was and what year it was from. Almost everybody who watches it is the same age. Like they're all like, okay, this is guys with grey hair, they're probably in their 60s, they've got ponytails and goatee beards, and it's just like, okay, right, it's gonna what kind of style is that gonna be? What's this one? It's gonna be a guitar-based band mostly, and it's like, oh no, this one today is a bit punk, or this one's like only teenagers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And uh, I went down one time to to watch a band with my girlfriend, and she um she's German and she's really into this band that was uh I assumed going to be liked by other women in their 30s. And I thought everyone here is gonna be women in their 30s because that's that's her. It's gonna be a women in their thirties kind of band. And I turn up and it's all teenage girls, like 95%. And a few of the of the other five percent, a lot of them are the the parents of the teenage girls because the girls are too young. And I was just like, what's going on? And it turns out this band was really popular 20 years ago, and then really popular again, like in the last few years.

SPEAKER_00

Must have been in uh TikTok or something.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, they're on the German version of the voice. Oh, okay. Uh yeah. And I thought at first I was like, this is amazing because I can see everything, I can see over their heads, no problem at all. Yeah, I know, that's always good.

SPEAKER_02

And then I hadn't I wasn't prepared for the screaming. Oh teenage girls just would scream they get so excited. It's like, oh my god.

SPEAKER_00

That's why they're so little uh live beetles.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Like the the equipment back in the day literally couldn't compete with the screaming teenage. And even now, you know, it humans are loud when you put them in a big group.

Scaling Beyond Founder Capacity

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. And I thought I've been to like loads of rock concerts and metal concerts, and this won't be a it's like, no, I wish I'd bought earplugs, man. This is this is brutal. Yeah. What's what's next for you with the business? Like, what do you want to do? Are you like ambitious and you really want to grow it? Are you just like, I'm fucking happy with how it's going? What what do you want to do?

SPEAKER_00

My uh like overarching concept, I guess, is just uh continually grow it, you know? Um, I've been sold the dream of like, if you do this, it'll make this and da-da-da. And it's never quite worked, and I've beat my head against a wall trying to do it. But then one of my friends who he worked at Thinkific a long time ago, you know, they're like a course platform, and uh he did quite well helping people boost their funnels, but now he's in finance and he has a really cool business where um they basically collect money privately and then they pick a startup and they fund it and they get like the startup pays like a 20% loan or something, and then that becomes the dividends, and like it's like a really it's a good investment for people uh who have you have to like start pretty high. Regardless, his whole thing was like he told me, he's like, Yeah, that whole like you know, you are gonna double your sales in a month thing. He's like, Man, you just get one or two percent better every single month, and you will be doubling your sales, you know, like it happens, it's compound interest, right? And that was kind of the one piece of advice that I've uh stuck with. It ties in with one of the first things I said here persistence is key. You know, so right now I'm just really trying to refine my data, refine like the direction that I'm going in, refine the products I'm offering. Um I've been really big on just like if you build it, they will come, you know. So I'm just always trying to make the best lessons that I can and make the best experience instead of thinking from that angle of like what's gonna sell better, like will a webinar, da-da-da, because I've tried all that. And, you know, at this point, yeah, like I'm more interested rather than being like, let's start a new thing, let's optimize my email stuff. That interests me for sure. You know, I actually just changed my opt-in sequence uh from one that was more I felt like I was hitting people up too much. You know, my email sequence was like an email a day for like a week, and then it was like every two or three days, and it ended up being like a 40-day long email sequence, and I felt like that was just too long. So now I'm testing like a shorter one. It's just 10 days, six emails, and then a monthly email that just kind of tells a story. And everything, instead of being about getting them to uh like buy my thing or whatever, is more just keeping them trusting me that I'm actually there to provide them with the good lessons. And then when I hit them up with my sales, they'll be like, Well, this is obviously gonna be worth it. So that's my strategy going into this year. Obviously, I have no idea how it's gonna go, but uh, you know, I've shifted into more that like my opt-in sequence is there to just warm, warm people up and show them that I'm actually there to help them learn guitar and not just there to take their money. And then uh, you know, quarterly or quarterly sale to to just say, hey, this is the chance to to get the thing that's really gonna take you to the next step, you know, where I'm gonna hold your hand through the whole thing. You know, and and I'm really focusing on delivering that. That's that's been my my uh thing. But at the same time, there's always those tiny optimizations and stuff that you know I'd like to make and learn learning more. Um in the long run, I uh I realize that there's a lot of me in my business. And that while it's fine, it's fine right now. Like if I really want to get things hitting the next next level, I need to get somebody who can teach like me. You know, I need to like get people to go on my community and help my students. I need to like, yeah, start a coaching thing, you know, I need to do that sort of thing because I can't do it myself. I'm maxed out. I'm done. Like I have as many hours in a week, unless they increase every day to 48 hours a day somehow. I am not gonna be able to do more for it, right? So I've kind of peeked at how much work I can do. And so I have to kind of shift my role to being more supervising and and then having, you know, the tasks that I do right now, creating videos. Uh, you know, I do a lot of that. Like I've I don't know if it what you have to say about this, but I feel like there's no such thing as like a YouTube expert. And it's just people like me who just use YouTube all the time. Like it's tough. I've found people that are like, yeah, I know all about YouTube, da-da-da. And then they actually don't. And it's like, well, I know more than you. Like, why I'm not gonna hire you. You know, it's it's tough to find somebody that actually likes like because if they did, they'd have a huge channel too, right? Like it's it's one of those catch 22 things, right? And it's it's tough to find somebody who's like gonna who can just like help you in that way. That's been an another another thing for me.

SPEAKER_03

Well, one guy, so I'm not an expert on YouTube at all. That's like traffic is not my thing. Like, I mean, I I work at it. I have a YouTube channel, and I I was spending a lot more time doing um doing videos on there, and I kind of got like a bit better, but I'm a long way from an expert on that. I had a guy on the podcast though who um who that's kind of his shtick, and he does have like a million and a half, one and a half million YouTube channel, and then he coaches other people on how to grow your YouTube channel, and seems to be really good from what I was eating. Scarowins. I'll send you through. We had a uh give him the podcast. I'll send you through the link to the to the episode afterwards. The other thing that you mentioned when you mentioned about like maybe hiring other coaches and what have you, I think it'd be worth checking out Scott's Base Lessons, because that's kind of he's managed to do that in a way that feels right. Like there's a guy who he he also comes on YouTube videos with him, does some of his own ones, who he's kind of like an American version of Scott. Scott's English, and uh and and I forget the name of the other guy he has on the channel, but that guy does a bunch of the coaching, does a bunch of the YouTube videos, does some of the courses, and is very kind of in in the the same style as Scott is, and it seems to work really well. So that might be like worth checking because most course creators are not doing that, right? They're not hiring other coaches who kind of match their style and whatever. They're just like, no, no, I'm the face of the brand, and this is it. And that's the easier way to do it somehow in in some ways.

Hiring Help Without Cookie Cutters

SPEAKER_00

It's easier, but it just uh, you know, in the same way that like once upon a time I did everything. I did every single bit of my business. But now, you know, like web dev is handled, and yeah, uh I have like uh video editing handled and a lot of things are are taken care of, and they're taken care of well, and it took a long time to find the right people. Yeah. Uh you go through 10 of the wrong people before you find one of the right ones. I find at least, you know, before you can find somebody that really like doesn't need you to make all the decisions. Yeah, that's the biggest thing, is that it turns into making decisions. Like that's my life right now. It's just like I'm just making decisions all the time, and then I'm on top of that creating content, right? And uh finding people who can make the the same good decision that, or at least what you would perceive as a good decision. That's that's one of the toughest things.

SPEAKER_03

You know the way I fuck shit up? I want you to fuck that shit up the same way. I guess so.

SPEAKER_00

I guess so. And um, yeah, that's cool that you're into the email marketing because I've never found somebody who can really put in the thought into it. Like, I don't know how you go with this, but I'll just be like totally uh straightforward here. You know, a lot of the time I hire somebody and they're they have all these promises and they're gonna be great and this and that. And then I see what they're actually up to, and I can tell that they just do enough work to present me with something to sh to seem like they're doing work, you know? Whereas like my video editor, I realized like this guy thinks about this stuff when he's not on the clock, you know? And then I was like, okay, you're gonna be in charge, like you're gonna be an operations manager, and he's like in charge of a lot of other stuff now because he has such a great work ethic. And you can tell that, like, you know, he'll come back at me and be like, hey, what do you think about this? And you can tell that's a thoughtful question. He must have watched my latest video and he must have thought about well, he's obviously watching them, he's editing them, but like you know, there's a lot of people, virtually everybody else that I've hired to do like marketing, quote unquote, you know. Um, they it's hard for them to actually get into it and to get into my mindset because they're busy thinking about their own thing, right? And it's like, no, no, I need, you know, so that's why like when when it's like um, you know, somebody is like a YouTube expert or whatever, it's like, yeah, I'm gonna learn about it, but I still have to do the work or find somebody who can learn about it and do the work, right? It's like I want to find somebody who's just gonna be like, this is my life now, and I will accept your money and in exchange, I will treat this like my own thing. And it's so hard to cause because what how can you expect that of somebody, you know, like to treat it like their own thing. But if you find those people, it's it's incredible.

SPEAKER_03

Oh, yeah. My this might be a little brutal, but I think virtually everybody is shit. Like when you try and hire, uh I would say at least. At least 99% of people are shit.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Even ones who have like great ratings on app work and they've made like hundreds of thousands of dollars and da-da-da-da-da. And it's like they're just good at selling themselves. That's one of my biggest things with marketers is once they've hired, once you've hired them, their real job is done. Because they are, they marketed themselves to you and they're done. They've they've made their thing. And now they're just going to apply their formula. Yeah. You know, whatever, whatever formula they do, they're like, whoa, I found this. This is the one thing I learned. I'm a webinar guy. I'm a blah, blah, blah guy.

SPEAKER_03

So I think there's something to that, right? But I think that the problem is not necessarily having the formula and applying the formula. It's are you taking on clients where that formula doesn't fit?

SPEAKER_00

That's exactly it. And they don't learn enough about your business to think what you actually need. You know, they just think like, oh, I'm going to apply the 80-20 rule, pros principle, blah, blah, blah. And you know, they throw out all these words and books that they've read about marketing. And they're just basically saying, I've read these books on marketing. I know about this stuff, and I'm just going to try it all and see what sticks. Whereas, like to find somebody who is actually like, yeah, I know how a guitar business works. I know how the email thing works for a guitar business. I know exactly what your customers are like. I'm going to look it up to make sure of that. I'm going to, you know, and it's like you you realize that's just a lot for a lot of people, but that's the kind of person that I am.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

You know, when somebody's like, I want to learn guitar, it's like, I'm going to make sure you learn guitar. I don't care. You know, and and and it's and it's tough to uh, you know, to find somebody who's not just gonna be like, I'm gonna apply my formula, do my thing, job's done, you know.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I one of the things for us is has always been how do we make sure that we figure out exactly which people we should be working with, which ones we shouldn't. Because there's a whole lot of people, even in the course space, who they aren't the right fit for us. Like we will only uh in the agency, they only work with like course creators who've got a big size YouTube audience who have already got courses or a membership that are successful, because building an audience isn't our expertise and finding product market fit isn't our expertise. It's like how do you then get the audience who are already buying the course but just to buy more of it? And then really we do we do some stuff in like B2B space occasionally, but the hobby space, like learning an instrument, learning a language, that kind of thing. That's like our right, that works really, really well with our system. So it's like, okay, cool, let's go talk to people who are doing that. And like, do you know um do you know Dave from Guitar Zero to Hero? Yes, yeah. So like we've been working with him recently, and it's just like, yeah, that was the perfect fit. It's like he started working with us. We like, okay, we know our formula works, and then it and then it worked great with him. Um I can't remember if he came on the podcast. I don't I don't know that he did. I might yeah, I don't know him personally, I just know of him.

SPEAKER_00

I just you know I've seen his his stuff.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, but I think that's the I think that's one of the problems. So look like you said, sometimes you go to hire people and the problem is they're just like they're just talking nonsense and they're just saying fancy words. And sometimes it's they're just kind of lazy. But I think I think the thing with I see people who are running services, and I know that they have got some people really good results, and then they've got some other people terrible results. And it's like what I think is missing for a lot of people, a lot of people won't do, is then go, which were the people it worked for? Only say yes to them as clients. Like, why are you saying yes to the ones where it won't work for them? And if you don't know whether it's gonna work, figure that out. Like that I obsessed about that because I I fucking hate it when people don't get results.

SPEAKER_00

Just like this is not cool. That makes perfect sense, you know. Like that's what I do for my teaching. Like, I specifically teach a group of people that my lessons work for, you know, and I just I'm just myself and whoever it works for, I'm gonna go for it. I'm not gonna say, like, you know, the best market is teenagers, so I need to like adjust my lessons for teenagers and da-da-da. Like, that's just just be yourself and at least you know somebody's gonna like it, right?

SPEAKER_03

Like it's I think it's it's a recurring thing that comes up a lot on the podcast is people talking about authenticity and being like, you know, it's got you've got to be yourself. If you're gonna be doing YouTube, you've got to be yourself because people can tell, they can figure it out if you're not, if you're trying to trying to put on some kind of a front. And um, you've got to do the same thing when you're teaching your courses because it's got to be in your style, it's got to be your way of teaching. And like and a lot, I think, of course creator, USP or whatever the term you want to use, is about you, your style, who you are. Like, I was just interviewing somebody earlier who he teaches um uh sorry, end of the day, main scamp like uh harmonica, he teaches harmonica, and he was saying how like his style of of teaching is like very self-deprecatory, and he kind of like will it say when he's not sure about something, and he'll kind of oh I kind of messed that up a little bit, what have you. And he said loads of his audience love that, but probably there's a whole load of people who hate it, but it's okay because it got filtered out by watching some of his YouTube videos going, I don't like him, won't watch it, and then they never made it into the to the training.

SPEAKER_00

Exactly. Hone in on who who like works for you. You know, and that's yeah, that's a great approach.

SPEAKER_03

James, this has been fucking awesome. I really appreciate you coming on today, man. Um if people are interested just to go learn more about you or if they want to learn guitar, where should they uh where should they go?

SPEAKER_00

They can go to goodguitarist.com and uh just kind of get started there. Everything's everything's there, whether you want to uh you know, just dabble in my I have a crash course, a free crash course for beginners that teaches you how to play your first song right away. And like you straight up could learn a song like on your first day of of playing guitar. You know, it's not gonna be like the most intricate thing, but you'll at least get the general idea and um yeah, and just kind of explore, see if my teaching style works for you. That's awesome. Thanks so much, man.

SPEAKER_03

I really, really appreciate your time. Really appreciate you coming on.

SPEAKER_00

Thank you so much for having me.

SPEAKER_03

As always, thanks so much for listening. Really appreciate you guys. Um, and if you want to check out that episode that I mentioned with Scott, it's episode 117 Building a Five Million Dollar Music Education Business. So go check that one out as well. And we'll see you guys next time.