251 How to Turn YouTube Viewers Into Email Subscribers

2-10x your email list size in just 3 steps 📩 https://datadrivenmarketing.co/guide

Bethany McBride started her business because she needed to make a thousand dollars to cover some bills. That was it. No grand plan, no marketing strategy, just a Facebook group and a love for teaching worship music. A few months later, she and her husband had replaced his income entirely.

This week I sat down with Bethany, the creator behind Simplified Piano, an online piano education community helping beginners, mostly people in their 60s and beyond, learn to play worship songs using a simple chord-based method. She built the whole thing around four chords: C, F, G, and A minor. That's genuinely it.

What I loved about this conversation is how much of Bethany's business was shaped by constraints. Health challenges that made a 9-to-5 impossible. A toxic mold situation that forced her family into her parents' basement. Five kids. And yet she and her husband built something with 450,000 monthly YouTube views, around 160,000 email subscribers, and a model that's mostly evergreen and automated.

We talked about how she gets 4,300 new email subscribers a month from a lead magnet so simple it's almost obvious in hindsight, why she switched a one-time offer to a recurring membership almost overnight and barely noticed a dip, and what she wishes she'd known earlier about getting in front of real students and listening to them properly.

Bethany is warm, honest, and genuinely funny. I think you'll like this one.

Check out Bethany's work:
🌐 https://www.simplifiedpiano.com
▶️  https://www.youtube.com/c/simplifiedpiano

Transcript

The Numbers Behind The Channel

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Around forty three hundred new email subscribers a month. I think our email list is up to maybe one fifty, one sixty. Ninety percent of our options are that way. YouTube has been our primary force. We could give this away for free. Just put the link in the description, but I realized I've got to capture that some way to continue to re-engage with this student and offer them more value. I've soon learned about that strategy of how to capture people's emails, get them into an email list, and then be able to serve them later to the email list.

SPEAKER_02 0:30

Hello, and welcome to the art of selling online courses. We can win perhaps the top performance in the online course industry. My name is John Acebert, and today's guest is Bethany McBride. Now, Bethany is the creator behind Simplified Piano. They're an online piano education community built around one simple idea. Anyone can learn to play the workshop songs that they love. It's got a background in classical piano, and it was the coding method that truly unlocked Bethany's love of playing. He built Simplified Piano to share that same breakthrough with students of every age and skill level. Now through video tutorials, chord sheets, live QAs, and a thriving online community has helped students go from total beginners to play full worship songs in a matter of days or weeks. And then off the bench, Bethany is a devoted wife to Matthew, her co-creator and editor, and a busy mum to five kids ranging in age from two to fifteen. When she's not teaching, you'll find her thrifting, spending time with her family, and finding new ways to serve her students. Bethany, welcome to the show.

Teaching Retirees Who Want Fast Wins

SPEAKER_00 1:30

Hello. Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_02 1:32

So who is it that you're helping with your courses? Is it mostly beginners? Is it is it a kind of a range of skill levels?

SPEAKER_00 1:38

Yeah, absolute beginners. It's kind of the uh age range of 60 plus that have always dreamed of playing piano and now they're kind of having the time freedom and kind of coming back to that love for wanting to learn the piano.

SPEAKER_02 1:51

Nice. And what is it that's different? Is it is it that you're teaching a different type of song, or is it also that your method is different to what other people are teaching as well?

SPEAKER_00 1:59

Oh yeah, I think it's our method that captures that age audience. Uh, you know, a lot of them that we hear from like, hey, I don't have 30 years to learn. I'm I'm reaching that age of retirement. Like, I've got to learn this quick. You know, they're in their fourth quarter. We hear that all the time. We're in I'm in a I'm in my fourth quarter. Like, I've I don't have years to learn, and I don't want to learn, you know, classical music. I want something simple and I just want to be able to sit down and worship Jesus.

From Facebook Lives To YouTube Growth

SPEAKER_02 2:24

And what what have you found? And how when did you start making YouTube videos? Was that the uh right?

SPEAKER_00 2:29

Kind of on the cusp of COVID, like 2019, 2020 is when we kind of started into the YouTube world.

SPEAKER_02 2:36

Did you get into this with an idea of selling a membership and courses or did you start with just the videos?

SPEAKER_00 2:41

Oh yeah. So we actually started originally in a Facebook group and I put out a Facebook post saying, anybody wanna, you know, we needed to make a thousand dollars actually back then to to cover some bills. And I was like, hey, I could just do this. I love teaching people worship music, so maybe I'll just come up with a little four-week course. And so we did them live on Facebook in a group, and then pretty soon everybody's like, we want to keep going. And I was like, Well, I don't know if I want to keep teaching, and I don't want to be I I realized really quickly, like, I don't want to redo what I just did. Like, maybe we could just record them. And so my husband just recorded it really quickly, and then we put them recorded into the Facebook group so that new people that came in they could just watch the recording. Because I had at that time I had really itty bitty babies, what felt like itty bitty babies.

SPEAKER_02 3:24

Yeah, I was I was one of four, and I at the time just thought of that as just normal. I was just like, why does everyone else have such small families? Why has everyone else just got like two of them? And then I look at people now who've got like four or even five kids like you, and I'm like, oh my goodness, how on earth does anybody manage to do that? Like, what was my mom and dad thinking? Yeah. So, so okay, so you had the Facebook group, you posted stuff in there, you were teaching for a while, people wanted more, more access. Then what? Then, like, when did when did you could YouTube come into it?

SPEAKER_00 3:51

Yeah, I mean, kind of right after that. I just started, I was like, man, I want to learn how to not have to recreate everything I just did live and require my time. My brain was just like clicking, like, this makes no sense for me to redo what I just did. And so I started learning from podcasts of you know, different people that were doing this online courses and memberships and, you know, YouTube channels. And I just started learning and soaking this information up. And I told my husband, like, we've got to be able to figure out how to sort of recreate this in a different way because I still love teaching, but I didn't want to be live. And so um, then we kind of just started that we had already had a YouTube channel that was kind of reflecting our homestead lifestyle of homesteading, like growing our own food and you know, having animals and things like that. And so we put a couple videos on that current channel, which was not the same name at the time. And then all of a sudden we, you know, kind of on the cusp of COVID, we started noticing like views just started going crazy and we're like, whoa, what is this? And then people started asking us for courses. And I don't know, it kind of just sort of just organically evolved, I would say. Um it's hard to look back that many years ago and see think about all the incremental steps that got us to this point, but I think that's kind of the gist of it.

SPEAKER_02 4:58

Yeah, that's a very it's a very common kind of story, especially in like music course creators. I'm finding it's like a lot of people they were teaching something, they were like, I don't want to say the same thing again. They recorded the video, but it's like I was just talking to two or three people in the last couple of weeks who it's like that's also their same similar kind of story with the way they got started. At what point did you are you all in on this now? Like obviously you've got five kids, so it's uh it's only a certain amount of time you got. Is there anything else that you do job-wise? Or is it like, no, this is the focus now from financially?

SPEAKER_00 5:27

Right. Yeah. I mean, when COVID hit and our we we put we quickly threw together a course called our workshop, which is still sort of our signature course, or it was kind of the money-making course that we started making so much money in like as soon as we launched that, and then COVID hit and everybody's home and they're finding themselves, you know, wanting to pick up these skills that they've always wanted to learn. And so we started making a lot of money, which all of a sudden sort of replaced my husband's income. He was working as a labor, you know, for my dad farming and ranching industry. And uh, and at that point we found ourselves sort of homeless because of toxic mold in our house. And so we had moved into my parents' basement. Yeah, we've been through quite a health journey. And so we were living with my parents right when this stuff started picking up. And so we started replacing his income within, I don't know, two or three months of putting videos online and creating that fast course. Um, and so then we realized, huh, okay, if he if we could replace his income, maybe you should build our next house that we need to build because the one we're currently we're living in was, you know, killing us slowly.

SPEAKER_01 6:30

Yeah.

Replacing An Income During Covid

SPEAKER_00 6:31

Um, so we just made the choice. Like overnight, he's like, well, okay, I'm gonna just build full time. And if this replaces our income and keeps going, I guess I'll just build as long as we could keep making money so I don't have to work full time. And we haven't looked back, and that was 20, 2020, kind of in the early months of 2020. My husband and I have been doing this full time.

SPEAKER_02 6:48

Wow. Oh, that's dope. Okay, right. So talk me through like the method that you use when you're teaching people, because it's it's quite a specific way that you're teaching people how to play, isn't it? What's the approach you're using?

The Four Chords Method Explained

SPEAKER_00 7:02

Yeah. So I mean, I had a classical environment where you're learning classical music on a sheet, and you know, that takes years to develop that ability to be able to play classically, kind of um, it's much more beautiful sounding than the way that we teach in the beginning stages. And so that was a really frustrating journey for me. And so when I was in my 20s, um, we had newly married and somebody said, Hey, we need some help on our worship team. Can you sing this week? And I said, Yeah, absolutely. And then right after the service, they said, Hey, we actually, our worship team leader is actually moving. Can you lead our church next week and worship? And I'm like, I mean, I could sing, but what are you expecting? I don't know an instrument. And they're like, Oh, I'll just teach you four chords. And I'm like, What's chords? And so they taught me what was called C F G A minor, and the rest is history. That was that was when I was 22. And they and he took me to his house that week and he showed me what chords were, and it just was like a light bulb moment, like, what? You mean to tell me? Like, I took classical environment for seven, eight years, and I could never play a song that I wanted to play. And all of a sudden he was showing me the simplicity of these four chords, and it just took off from there. And so it it's sort of like accompaniment where the backdrop, you know, if you listen to American Idol or you listen to any most people, you know, guitar players, they play chords. And so it's kind of the backdrop. You don't hear the melody, you don't hear like amazing grace, how sweet the sound. You don't hear the individual notes. It's sort of the backdrop that the melody or with in which people can sing along. It's kind of the foundation. And so I learned that really quickly, and it sort of I I led our church in worship for many years doing sort of this choppy, offbeat pattern of figuring it out as I went. And then eventually I learned all these tips and strategies to make it sound more beautiful. And that's kind of what I've recreated with Simplified Piano is the ability to just sit down, hear a song on the radio, and know the fundamentals to be able to sing and play along to that song in their own home.

SPEAKER_02 8:52

And you mentioned particularly the C F G A minor. Is that like a recurring theme within worship songs?

SPEAKER_00 9:00

Is that why I mean it's it's just song chords that are in the key of C. And so uh it could you with those four chords, you could play any song in the world because any song can be transposed or or changed keys to that particular key. And so you could just sit down and with that chord progression, you know, they'll be changed from maybe it's C A minor F G or maybe it's C C F G or whatever. You know, the chord, the arrangement of those chords changed, but really for the basics of what every music artist is playing is just four chords for the most part.

SPEAKER_02 9:30

I was just watching you teach, uh, I'm gonna f I've forgotten the name of the song now. Uh one of your recent videos, and then it was just like I'd seen it was like C, F, G, A, minor, and I was just like, I didn't know that that was the f the four, you know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:43

Well, and those those are the four that I just realized hey, not everybody needs to learn to be able to play in all 12 major and minor chords and and get so lost in the theory. They just really need to play a lot of songs over and over using those four chords. It's the easiest key to play in musically because there's no black notes on the piano being played.

SPEAKER_02 10:02

Oh, okay. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 10:04

And that's, I mean, honestly, when I s when I looked at our competitors over the years too, I was just like, boy, they're teaching really hard keys for the majority of people to be able to learn because, especially given our generation that we're that we're targeting, you know, they might have arthritis, they might have a backache, they might have frustrations with cognitive ability at times. And so I just needed to continue to strip it down to the absolute basics of what it is that they need to be able to get off the round, ground and running.

SPEAKER_02 10:29

That's awesome. I love that. How did that so I suppose you learned that when you first started learning to play at the church, and then you just took that and was that really obvious to you? I'm gonna just take that and then teach that to other people in the same way. Or did you did you get more clever and then have to get more simple again, you know?

SPEAKER_00 10:49

I mean, I I really do think it took me a long time to get to begin to sound more beautiful in my playing in kind of that improv and just using those four chords as kind of the foundation to be able to add things in here and there to make it sound pretty. But then when I started creating simplified piano and in in particular our workshop, I was like, man, I my journey seemed to be so convoluted. And I would go to YouTube and I'd find somebody say, Hey, you can play this song, it's so easy. And then all of a sudden they'd go from A to Z. And I was like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. What what did you just do there? Like, no, you went way too fast. I have no idea what you're playing there. You say it's easy, but it's not. And so I started realizing my brain really works in incremental small baby steps to get to the end goal. And I was like, I've got to be able to shorten this distance um so that people aren't just caught in that overwhelm and frustrated season, and then they just want to give up and quit, you know?

Simplifying Through Student Feedback

SPEAKER_02 11:40

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That makes total sense. Okay. So the reason I ask about that, one of the things I I think a lot about like how to think about business. And one of the things I've noticed with myself is that I have a tendency to come up with lots of very clever sounding ideas. And then eventually you end up like simplifying something all the way back down again until you get to the point where it's like, okay, this is so simple that it's almost impossible to fail with it. Like, so for example, with with email marketing and funnels, when we started out, it sort of been, I don't know, working with course creators was probably like 10 years ago, something like that. And I was building out all of these like complicated funnels for people of like webinar funnels with all kinds of, you know, if they attend, you send this campaign, if they don't attend, you send that campaign, all this kind of stuff. And it works, right? It's it's not that it doesn't work, it's that it's too complicated for most people. And so what I did for about a year, what Yosip and I did was we would every campaign that we ran for anybody, we would track how long did it take to build, did it work? Like so for that particular client, did it work and what results did it get? And then we analyzed at the end of it, we said we basically we only want to have the campaigns that work every single time. That it doesn't depend on, well, it's kind of complicated and they have to have done this and no, it always works. And it ideally doesn't take very long and it gets good results. And so we boiled it all the way down to that. And what I found from years, like I've I've done this podcast for like five years or something, and I I know people will come to me and they'll say that they they listen to it and they really like it, but then they still don't necessarily implement everything from it. I'm like, okay, so even that that I thought was like the absolute simplest thing, it can still end up being too complicated for people. So it's like if I tried teaching through this, the the really complex stuff, it's like I'd I feel like it would have been almost pointless, you know. And so I'm always trying to figure out like how can I get better at like simplifying stuff down. And you've done that, right, in what you did. So I'm really curious about that kind of process. That's why I'm asking particularly about it. Did you have you found that because you presumably then have further layers in terms of like what you're teaching people to do, more more complicated, you know, start with the really simple stuff and kind of build the way up. How did you figure out what how to structure those?

SPEAKER_00 13:59

I mean, I really go back to that live teaching and having, I mean, I used to have a piano studio teaching a completely different method at the time when I first got married before I learned about courting. And having people next to me on my piano bench gave me such a greater understanding of the real struggles and frustrations that they were having. So I have that background of actual piano hip to hip, so to speak. You know, they're sitting right next to me. Well, then I did the Facebook thing and I did that live and pre-recorded kind of thing for several months. And I was just hearing constant feedback from our students live or, you know, and many of those people that took that original several courses knew me personally. And so then I would just get on the phone call with them and I'd be like, what are your frustrations? Where are you, where are your roadblocks? Where are you falling off the train? You know, and where can I help and support you? And that really helped me get a greater understanding of how to create what I didn't know at the time, but all these course content and layering in, you know, systematic ways for them to be able to learn one little simple tool at a time, to be able to look back and see all their musical skills that they were developing. But it almost felt so natural because I was allowing it to just be real slow and steady and building that strong foundation from it first. But really hearing from my students um verbally, getting on the phone with them, getting on FaceTime with them, having them right next to me on the piano bench for that period of time helped me get such a greater understanding of um how I could support them and how I could simplify that journey for them.

SPEAKER_02 15:24

Nice.

SPEAKER_00 15:24

And if I were to go back and redo this entire process, and even when I talk to other people about business strategies, I'm like, get in front of people's faces. You know, in the beginning, you can learn so much more about how to serve people's needs if you actually are hearing from their actual audible voices in this generation where we're so connected, you know, through social media, you know, it's like you miss out on kind of the real like hangups for people if you're not audibly hearing their voice fluctuation or their body language or you know, being able to just listen and hear more about, you know, where their struggles are and their goals too, you know, where they want to head.

SPEAKER_02 16:00

And how about where are you now? What what are you doing in terms of like how many videos do you put out a week? Uh what's your how many views are you getting on your videos nowadays?

SPEAKER_00 16:10

Yeah. Um so up, I mean, for five, six years in a row, we were pr at the big really beginning, we were putting out two a week. And then life happened and I was having so many health challenges that I was like, this is not sustainable for us right now. So we scaled back to one a week, which was still a lot for where I was at health-wise. Um, and honestly, like the flexibility of learning how to automate things and the way we have structured our business was so structured around my health and the factor, the fact that I couldn't be somewhere at 2 p.m. and somewhere at 10 a.m. And, you know, I just everything was so unpredictable health-wise that I had to create this business that was going to be sustainable for where we were at in our health journey of getting free of, you know, the toxicity that we were living in. Um, so speed it up to now, you know, for really four or five years, we just used YouTube as our marketing strategy of creating these free tutorials. And then in the description of the video, they would be able to give us their name and email. I soon learned about that strategy of how to capture people's emails, get them into an email list, and then be able to serve them later through the email list. Um, and so where we are today, uh we actually kind of did a test from January 2026 to March here to just see, okay, if we stop doing YouTube channels, because we just have a lot going on right now. We're now building another house from the one that we were building six years ago. We've we we've outgrown our house with the amount of kids that we had. And the one that we built at that time was almost cash um flowed because of simplified piano funding that. So we just built it really small at that time because we only had three kids. Well, now we have five. And so we kind of did a test run January.

SPEAKER_01 17:43

Only three. Yeah, only three years, actually. Exactly.

Email List Growth And Re-Engagement

SPEAKER_00 17:47

So in twenty, you know, in 2026, we're like, okay, we're we're gonna full-time build this house again. Let's just scale back and see if our numbers dip at all and just see is that the, you know, is our email list gonna drop? Is our YouTube subscribers gonna drop? Is our income gonna drop? And really, we hadn't um seen really much of a drop. In fact, in March, that was our highest, I think, uh, record um number of YouTube views. And I know that maybe is not a sustainable thing for a long time, but it was just kind of a test we wanted to run to see how it really changed our channel. Um, but yeah, if that answers your question, that's kind of where we're at. Uh like a majority of our income or all of our income is completely um sort of evergreen, I guess if you use that word, where it's all coming in through memberships, recurring memberships, one off off, one-time offers of courses. Um, but two different uh memberships that we have is kind of like I would say 80%, 80, 90% of our income right now.

SPEAKER_02 18:36

Okay. And what's the number of views you're getting a month at the moment with YouTube?

SPEAKER_00 18:40

Uh I would say like an average of 450,000.

unknown 18:44

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 18:44

I believe.

SPEAKER_02 18:46

Solid, right? That's great.

SPEAKER_00 18:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:48

Um and how big should now you've done a really good job, I think, with the growing your email list. I think that's one thing that you've really you've like, obviously your YouTube channel, fantastic. But the next thing you've done is is growing that email list. So how many new subscribers are you getting a month at the moment?

SPEAKER_00 19:01

Uh I think around 4,300 new average a month um email subscribers. And I think our beautiful. Yeah, I think our email list is up to maybe 150, 160, 160,000. But I think of those, we've kind of realized since working with your company that, you know, we definitely have an active list and then we have kind of a list that of maybe people that we need to re-engage with in a different way.

SPEAKER_02 19:22

Yeah. Yeah. And that's doable. Like re-engagement campaigns. I'm going to check if I've ever done a podcast episode on that because uh that's something that a lot of people don't don't realize that is available to them. I know a lot of people who tell me very proudly that they trim their email list regularly and keep um to make sure they've only got people on who are like opening all the emails. But I'm like, Yeah, but did you re- did you run a re-engagement campaign first? Because if you didn't, then you just got rid of a bunch of people who absolutely would have been delighted to stay on your list and would have opened and all of this. So re-engagement. It looks like I have never run oh here we go. How to run an effective re-engagement campaign. Episode 63 um from November 2022. Um if you want to learn more about re-engagement campaigns, go check that one out. Okay, cool. So you've got this great email list. And then kind of what's the next stage there for you? Like, are you sending um email promotions out to them? Are you sending like regular content emails? Like, how's the how do you interact with the email list?

Welcome Sequences And Light Promotions

SPEAKER_00 20:20

Yeah, I mean, so when I learned about nurture sequence or welcome sequences, getting people, you know, off of just watching your YouTube tutorial into an email list, I I sort of built that up over time. It started with a three email, you know, just like, okay, I got to learn how to write email now. Like, I don't even know what this looks like, you know, to write engaging emails to capture their inform uh information, but then to sort of capture their attention and draw them into our story and how they can maybe see themselves in my story of learning how to chord and play worship songs. Um, and so then we kind of created what we call our tribe sequence, and it ends up being like a seven to eight month um email sequence that's just continue, it could be um student testimonials, it could be ways that we can serve them through a particular course, it could be a frustration that I've seen from our community and or it could just be a teaching element of a certain question that I hear over and over and over. And so those emails just automatically are created once a week. They drop into their email uh inbox. And then after that, really um we've just kind of made it up as we went because it's just you don't know what you don't know kind of thing, and you just keep learning and evolving and and adding new elements as you learn how to build strategy into you know this whole digital marketing. Um, so really we haven't focused a whole lot on like big, big, huge um email campaigns or funnels or any of that stuff because we really hadn't known how to do all of that stuff. So product launches, like if we if we happen to have a cre you know new created product, we just like send out a random email and whoever opens it opens it and whoever wants to buy it buys it. But we hadn't really had a whole lot of um strategy, I would say, up to that point, beyond just that email nurture sequence, you know, dropping an email and then we you know we Just once or twice a month, send out a random email, like a way that, hey, we'd love to offer you a seven-day free trial into this membership. These are the things that it can help you achieve. And yeah. So a lot of times in our set you know, six years of doing this, we really haven't known what's really moving the needle because we really haven't known how to gather a lot of that data.

SPEAKER_02 22:19

I think. So, first of all, that's a very common story. You are not on your own in being like just kind of figuring out as you go. It's like like virtually everybody who who comes on the podcast or everybody that we work with, um that's that's kind of where they're at. It's like people became a course creator because they were really good at something, then they like teaching it, and then they got good at creating content about that and creating YouTube videos and creating courses. And those things do not inevitably lead you to also be good at sales pages and email promotions. And there's actually surprisingly little out there uh in terms of teaching specifically for for course creators. How do you actually do this? There's a few of us doing it, you know, like as uh uh Jack Hopkins, um who he's been on the he's been on the podcast a few times, and I've been on his a couple of times, and we kind of we've got different methods, but he's also working with uh course creators, and there's like a couple more, but it's not it's not that many. So episode 84 was with Jacques. Um if anybody wants to go check that out, and then episode 20, very early on, and episode 207. Um, and he teaches uh um he's got a piano course himself, and then he also uh coaches people kind of mostly just to get started in in running a course business. Um so the reason I mention this is a couple of things. One for you, but two for anybody listening. If anyone's feeling like, oh man, that's me, I just don't know kind of what I'm doing. I I hear people that tell me about it with almost a feeling of angst, as if like I shouldn't have been in this situation, like I should have been able to figure it all out, whatever. It's just like, no, this is just what everybody how everybody is, right? This is just normal. This is like this is why I started um data-driven marketing, is basically to because I saw this was so common that people with courses didn't know how to do all of these things. And it's like, great, let's just let's let's help, you know, let's help people figure this all out. Because there's loads of like internet markety type marketers out there who want to teach like quite aggressive, salesy kind of techniques that I know almost no people who are uh course creators who've got like who are really proud of the their audience and their um and their courses and everything, none of them want to use those kind of techniques. And it's like, okay, we need to be able to do this in a way that is wholesome, that feels good, that the audience likes, that the content creator likes, that everyone's just like, okay, this is good, this is sustainable, I like this, I'm happy with this, I don't feel bad, my audience likes it, and it makes me money, and I'm serving my audience all at the same time, kind of thing. So if if anyone's listening, if that's you, then just like just dial down the cortisol levels in your body, just chill out a little bit and be like, okay, this is fine. I'm allowed to feel like this. Okay, cool. But I think that what you've done though, going back a step, what you've done with your email list, the fact that you've done so well with getting the opt-ins, you've got about a 1%, a little bit more than a 1% opt-in rate, which for a music, um a music YouTube channel is is pretty solid. I've the highest I've seen average is about 2%. Um, but a lot of people are much lower. So you're doing really well with that, and that's allowed you to build out this big email list. So what is it that you're doing? I I I know, but I want you to tell the audience like what what kind of lead magnets are you using? Where do you mention them? All these kind of things.

Lead Magnets That Fit The Lesson

SPEAKER_00 25:38

Yeah, I mean, YouTube has been our primary force. I've uh I've just realized through my health journey, like I didn't, I wasn't able to do YouTube and TikTok and Facebook and Instagram and I I didn't want to do those things. I've always been against the grain of thinking that you always have to be on, you always have to be doing reels and beating the algorithms and you know, like wasting your time trying to spin your wheels in ways that don't seem it just seems like more like bondage to me to be able to have to build a business that way when I truly want time freedom and financial freedom in the process. And so we've learned through YouTube, like, wow, we really can, you know, create great content, um, put belief in people that maybe they don't believe in themselves, of being able to say, you can do this. If I simplify it down to C F G A minor, you can play and sing along to this song within a matter of hours, weeks, months, whatever it may take. But I just realized, uh, see, sorry, back to your question. What was it again? Sorry.

SPEAKER_02 26:34

Like the opt-ins, like growing the email list.

SPEAKER_00 26:37

Yeah. So we just realized, like, okay, we could give this away for free and just put the link in the description. But I realize I've got to capture that some way to continue to re-engage with this student and offer them more value, um, create content, uh, engage with them, hear from them what their fr frustrations and struggles with, and also let them know about what it is that we do have to offer beyond just these free tutorials on YouTube, you know, how we could take that simplified tutorial that they're learning and be able to go deeper with it and give them more strategies to be able to play it more beautifully. So, yeah, the YouTube description gives up that's where they're finding it, is in the YouTube description. They click there, they give us their name and email, and then they come into our email list and then they find more about our courses. That's that's really our, I would say 90% of our strategy or more has been just through that avenue alone.

SPEAKER_02 27:22

And then what are you offering as the um as the lead magnet? What's the what's the different kind of lead magnets you've got oh, so they're they're called chord sheets.

SPEAKER_00 27:30

So in order to play the song that they see that, you know, they see the chords on the screen, the way my husband edits them on our YouTube channel, um, they could see it on the screen, but if they want the printout, that's what the opt-ins are, is all of these free simplified tutorial chord sheets as we call them. And they're just, you know, the title of the name of the song, and it gives us give them the verse and the chorus and the bridge and all the the lyrics and all the things, and that's what they're getting for free when they give us their name and email. Yep. And that's I would say like 90% of our opt-ins are that way.

Turning Freebies Into A Membership

SPEAKER_02 27:59

And that's I think that's one of the things in our music channels that is just it's so perfect, it works so well, it's such a great um integration between uh teaching the song and then what people want as the next thing. So I've got a a friend Jack, he's been on the the podcast before, he teaches banjo. And they uh I'm gonna see if I can find what what episode he was on. He will basically do an arrangement of the the song to try and make it a little bit easier. So he'll do like a sometimes a beginner, middle, and and difficult version of it, and then you can just download the the is it tabs for him? It might be it might be tabs when it's on banjo. I forget the the different terminology for different ways that it's lined up. It's episode 172, if anyone wants to go listen to Jack. And he does a great job with his opt-ins. He's the one who's getting the the the 2% opt-in rate. He does really well with that. Smaller channel, um, but uh but he's really good with his opt-ins. And that's what he's got. And then you look at, we've got people who are teaching uh guitar, and that's basically what they're doing as well. It just it works so perfectly because the person who's watching the video obviously wants that as the next step. Do you sell the collection of all of those chord sheets anywhere?

SPEAKER_00 29:11

Yeah, so that was our starting membership. Was I soon realized I'm like, this is really frustrating for our students. And they kept saying it in our email inbox too. Like, I wish I didn't have to just go to your, you know, YouTube channel and look for the description and print it out and then go find it in my email and then download it and save it to my computer. And then I can't figure out and then really our age group was just frustrated because it would get saved and they didn't know where it got saved and what's copy, what's paste, you know, all this terminology where that was just not their generation of learning technology, you know? And so I was like, that's really frustrating for them. And plus, we're not making any money by not organizing this. And so I learned about courses, you know, I learned about memberships, I learned about compiling all this information and soon was birthed the cord sheet library, which is just a compilation of 450 plus cord sheets with the coordinating tutorials. And so that was our starter membership. And we started that. It's kind of funny looking back, you just start with something and it was$10 one-time fee, lifetime access to it. And and we just sold it, they just flew off the chat chart. I mean, they just flew off the shelves. We are selling, you know, hundreds and thousands at that time of COVID. Everybody was signing up for this membership for$10 one-time fee. And then, like, I don't know, a year later, I was like, huh, we have to refind a customer every single time and we don't get any more money but$10 from them. Like, what if we changed it to$10 recurring membership and then we continue to grow this particular membership in more ways than just that library? And so pretty much overnight we just changed the cart to say$10 recurring fee, you know, instead of a one-time fee. And we really didn't see a dip in sales. And all of a sudden we had this membership start growing and$10 were starting to rebuild. And we're like, wow, that's really nice for the paycheck, you know. Just all of a sudden it was like, I didn't have to go find that customer again. They they now are sticking with us, and we started learning about long time, you know, retention and and engaging with them and pretty providing value so that they stick with you a longer period of time.

SPEAKER_02 31:07

Nice. So it's ten dollars uh a a month, a year. What is the$10?

SPEAKER_00 31:11

Yeah. Uh so that kind of membership has now evolved into other things, but it was ten dollars a month, and it still is. If they just want that particular membership, it's ten dollars a month, eighty dollars a year a year, or I think it's 180 lifetime is now we have three different packages for that particular membership.

SPEAKER_02 31:27

Now, one thing I like, I just went and signed up for one of your chord sheets, and I saw that you've got, I'm just gonna share screen here. Um, if we look at your confirmation page here, then you've told people yes, it's on your way to your the resources on the way to their inbox, but then you've also got an offer for them straight away, which I love. Do you know how well this converts? Because memberships as a tripwire funnel is kind of a trickier one to get um to get to work. And I'm curious how well it's working for you.

SPEAKER_00 31:58

Well, it's so funny you've you must have found this because this is the way that we built our business for a long time as what you call tripwire. I didn't know that terminology until working with your company. But then we kind of started running into deliverability issues with the company that we're using to give them the cord sheets, and then we started getting a huge influx and people that were frustrated, they say it's free, and then I don't get it, and you know, and then it wasn't even in their spam, and we couldn't figure out why things weren't going to their membership. So then we went away from that pop-up page that you just shared, and we went into like just automatically giving giving them the cord sheet.

Fixing Deliverability And First Offers

SPEAKER_02 32:30

And then the confirmation page.

SPEAKER_00 32:32

Yeah, the confirmation page was not this page as you just showed me. So then um, working with your team, they said, you have got to have a, you know, kind of going back to what we were doing and we felt like it was working, but then we couldn't get people to get their court sheet and we couldn't figure out why. And since then we've worked on a lot of back-end stuff, realizing things that we didn't have set up in our email in uh email, I don't know, company.

Getting Help With Funnels And Data

SPEAKER_02 32:55

Oh, okay, like DMARC and all this kind of like the boring behind the scenes stuff. Yeah, yeah. If I if anyone wants to know about uh DMARC and all of that stuff, if you don't know about that for your deliverability, I'm gonna try and find. I had a guy on who was like an email deliverability guru, and I'm like, oh, this is the team do a lot of work on it and they know they know what's uh what's going on with that, but I don't personally kind of get into all the details of it. We had episode 156, we had Matt Brown on, and I think there's another guy, um Andrew Savage or Savage, I've never known how to say his last name. Um let me see if I can find here you go. He was on episode 44 and 126, talking about basically how to stay, keep your emails out of your customers' spam folders. Um so okay, so you've only just put that back into place again. I'm really curious to see what the team uh kind of figure out with you in terms of the best offer there. Because what you've got right now is probably just taking what's what you had and just putting something in place. But you've got like a free seven-day trial for the membership. And generally, this isn't a hard and fast rule, but most of the time, like 80% of the time, memberships are tricky to sell as a first offer. Like they're easier to sell through through email once someone's built up more trust. Obviously, some people will have watched 20 of your videos before they get to this point, but a lot of people, this will be the first time they've kind of seen an offer from you. And the thing that I've seen work really well consistently at this kind of place is having an offer of like$27, let's say, for um for access to a whole, a whole big group of things. Now, the thing is, you've just told me that what worked for you was going from having it for one-time fee to a recurring membership. So I'm not saying this is like you should go change this tomorrow. I'll I'll kind of ask Yosep what his thinks, thoughts are about it. But um yeah, as a as a first offer, that's kind of it, it's it's a bit more to ask of somebody to sign up for a recurring thing. So I'd be really curious to see what's your conversion rates and how well is that doing for you as an offer at that point. Okay, so where have we got to? You've got a big YouTube channel, 400,000 views a month, you've got a big email list, you're now working with a team on like your on your your funnels. What's that been like? What caused you to kind of reach out? I know that originally we reached out about the podcast uh a little while ago, but what caused you to reach out to the team about having a conversation about working together?

SPEAKER_00 35:19

Well, this has been kind of a non-stop conversation that has been between my husband and I, who, you know, are kind of the co-creators of Simplified Piano. And then we have one more employee who does all of our virtual assistant work and um she does so many behind-the-scenes things uh for our students, customer service, that kind of thing. And we just have known like though none of this data drive driven marketing type stuff that I learned on your website and listen to some of your podcasts and things like that. It's always been a hole in ours. Like you said, a lot of people come in, they're really good course creators, they're really good content creators. They're really good at music, but they aren't good at marketing and strategy and funnels and you know, learning all the tech stuff, like you know, the stuff that makes my hair just want to pull out. Like I just want to pull my hair out, you know. I just want to teach. I don't want to know about DKIM and DMARC and all these things. But when you sign up for entrepreneurship, you have you're just wearing all the hats and you have to learn to wear all the hats, whether that's you know, blood, sweat, and tears, you're figuring it out as you go and you're saving the money there while pulling your hair out, or you learn how to, you know, start integrating other people in. And so we've always known this as a really big hole in our uh in our team strategy of like it's just nothing that we've come in having this, you know, experience or knowledge or know-how. But we've always just figured out what we've learned up to this point by just grit, you know, just figuring it out as we go. And so we just after listening to that podcast, I think you sent me with uh a girl kind of selling uh piano courses as well, traditional piano lessons.

SPEAKER_02 36:47

Ashley, I think so. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:48

Yes, it was her. And I was like, wow, that those numbers are nowhere. I can't even fathom the amount of money that she makes monthly on her courses. And I and I've always thought we're leaving money on the table. I really know that we have more reach to be able to reach more people, serve more people, and grow our income. And really a lot of that has been, you know, just realizing like we've got to fill in these holes with higher, you know, hiring um some people in those places to be able to serve us in that way to help come alongside what we already are good at and then channel it, you know, to be able to learn the things that we're not good at.

SPEAKER_02 37:20

Yeah, yeah. And it's I think it's a sensible way around to do it because it's like we need we're only good at helping people it's not quite true. But we're the best at helping people who've got two things in place already. They've already built a big audience on YouTube, gen it's almost always on YouTube, not ex not 100% of the time, but like 80% of the time, it's YouTube. And they've already got courses that their audience love to buy. And then they're not good at funnels and data and and email marketing and and tracking this kind of thing. Like that's our sweet spot, right? That's the people who we're kind of most set up to help. But if somebody's in that is in that position, then it's like, okay, so you've already learned how to do two things. You've already learned how to big a build a big audience, and you've already learned how to make good courses that people like. That was difficult. It's like you don't have to keep doing it on your own after this. It's like you've now got to the point where it's like, okay, you've got enough momentum that you can get someone in to help, as long as it's the kind of, you know, the right kind of person. Um okay, so what's that process been like? So you've been you've you've had this feeling that you needed to have support with this. Uh you had a chat, I think, with maybe Nicola, first of all, was it? What's that kind of experience? What's the process been like of talking with him and talking with Yosip?

SPEAKER_00 38:34

Yeah, the process was um really great. You know, I think what's been my hesitancy of working with people that have all this knowledge is they're gonna have all this head knowledge and they're not gonna have the bedside manners. It's kind of like going to a doctor and he knows all this stuff about your condition, but he does not know how to break it down into simple steps that you can understand. Because of my natural, you know, drive towards simplifying things. I'm like, I cannot listen to somebody's terminology and somebody talks so hard far over my head and you know, these kinds of things. So really quickly I learned that was something that I could relate with. Like, okay, he puts it in terms, you know, everybody we've worked with so far with your team has been great about taking all this sort of nerd knowledge.

SPEAKER_01 39:12

Uh things that I'll take that message, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:16

That's fine. Two air quotes. I mean, things that you guys just, it's your it's your life, livelihood. You just breathe it and you eat it, you know, and it's your wheelhouse, you know. And that is not something that has ever been our wheelhouse, but you could take that knowledge and still sort of uh break it down into manageable steps that made it sound like, okay, we can do this. And I do think this is a right fit for our team because they can teach in a way that we can learn. And we weren't really looking for somebody to come over and do 100% of it. Um, and so I appreciated uh so much like you guys asking so many questions about what it is that we're looking for and just putting the ball in our court of like what it is, what is what is your struggles? Where where are you really needing support and guidance and help and how we how can we come alongside you? And that's really kind of what we've needed over the years, too, is somebody to uh sort of look at our business, give us a lot of data, give us some baby steps to move forward and then like collaborating, collaborating together to be able to get this goal accomplished.

SPEAKER_02 40:14

Good. Okay. If anyone's listening and is like, oh, I'd like some of that kind of help, feel free to drop me an email. Um, we're always around to have a chat if that'd be useful, or can can chat by email. Um my email address is john at datadrivenmarketing.co. And just going back one step, the the episode that we mentioned with Ashley is episode 220. And she's a firecracker, Ashley. She's like, she is very on it with the marketing and the sales and the mindset and all this kind of stuff. So that was a good fun episode. So what's what's next for you? Where do you where would you like to get to? Obviously, you you're building your new house, which is very exciting. Where would you like to get to with the business?

Goals Built Around Automation And Margin

SPEAKER_00 40:54

Um, another thing that was really helpful hearing from Joseph about his strategy of, you know, okay, if we're gonna work together, these are the things, you know, one to two to three steps that we're gonna work on with you over the next two to three months, which felt very doable for us. Um but it also he was giving these humongous goals that are so far outside of where we're currently making that it's like it's sort of a little bit unfathomable to me. But yet there's still like he's not blowing smoke. Uh, like I really do believe in what the is potential for simplified piano. So I'm really excited to uh also the fact that what he was saying isn't like, okay, I'm gonna put, I'm gonna set you up so that you can work 50, 60, 70 hour weeks for the rest of your life. Whereas that's what I kept hearing from a lot of entrepreneurial journeys that I would follow online and podcasts and YouTube videos is like they would say that, oh, it's time freedom and it's musical freedom or sorry, time and financial freedom. And I'd be like, Yeah, but you're you don't seem to have that in your own life, but yet you're pitching that, you know? Yeah. And what I what I loved so much about what Joseph said is like, okay, we're gonna work really hard for the next two to three months and then we're gonna get things on automation, which is really the heart of why we have done what we've done is to create that margin and that um freedom in time uh to be able to, like I said, I'm still, you know, working through health challenges even years later of trying to heal. And so I still have to moving forward, I'm not just willing to dive back into wanting to work 50, 60, 70 hour weeks for the rest of my life. That's not the goal. And so that's the exciting part of it is that okay, we're gonna work really hard. We're gonna do these simple things that we have, you know, working together. Um, and then we're gonna sit back and watch it go on autopilot and kind of look at some data based on what the things that we implement. And then let's kind of readjust and come back and uh say, like, okay, what worked, what didn't. And then let's move forward with another strategy. So that that's really exciting about what we're um excited to work with you guys moving forward.

Authenticity On Camera And Starting Scrappy

SPEAKER_02 42:47

I yeah, I'm not I think that you're sitting on you've got the potential to grow the revenues like significantly. And I I worry sometimes about freaking people out when I tell them like how much. I know that Yosep and you already talked about this, right? In terms of where you can get to, but it's like I think a couple of things. One time, what sometimes when we we tell people that the number that we think they can get to, it's just it sounds too good to be true and it it kind of makes people think, uh no, where's the where's the catch? Where's the whatever? Yeah. So that's one thing I kind of worry about mentioning it. Um and the other one I think is if someone has kind of ex like put a lot of work into accepting, like, okay, I've worked this hard to kind of get to this level, and you say a number that's so much higher, it's almost like it's it's kind of difficult emotionally, I think, to like be like, oh, well, can I if I can? But then you kind of, well, what if I get disappointed and it doesn't happen? And it's like kind of a so it's sometimes better just to kind of, okay, let's just kind of do this gradually. But yeah, I think you guys have got potential to grow revenue like significantly based on everything, everything that we're seeing in terms of like all the bits that you've got in place and um the bits that are missing and where the potential is to kind of do stuff about the stuff that's not as good. Um what's what's any imagine you're talking to somebody, like one of the one of the listeners to the podcast and who's early in their in their process, right? They're back maybe where you were in I don't know, 2021, something like that. A year in, you're just kind of getting going with it. What's some advice that you wish you'd had back then that maybe would be useful for someone listening?

SPEAKER_00 44:16

I mean really stick to I I think what has made us um so appealing for our generation of people that we're attracting is just our authenticity and staying true to who we are and not really like, yes, our videos are polished, so to speak. They're edited and they're filmed and they're created in a way that makes it much more easier for them to learn in the way that my husband edits them. But yet when we go live with them in our communities and in our memberships, it's still raw, it's still authentic, it's still me. And I think sometimes in this superficial generation, so to speak, we can have filters on and we can try to you know feel like we have to be superficial or be somebody that we're not and and maybe that happens over a period of time where people all of a sudden find themselves, hmm, I'm not sure if that's who I really am or even the the filters like I I come in and I don't filter anything. You you see my blemish, you see my wrinkles, you see my gray hairs coming through. And I think that makes us relatable I'm looking I do not I don't see them.

SPEAKER_02 45:11

So I think you're fine but they're coming through they're coming through.

SPEAKER_00 45:17

But I think just continuing to stay authentic and true to who you are you know even with learning about AI like I've I've been fighting against this whole AI thing in my own content creation because I want it to be coming truly from me and I love the I love the creative outlet to be able to just write content and build courses and you know write copy and write emails. I don't want it to be coming from a place of AI. Not that it doesn't have its place and I know you know you guys probably use it and my husband's starting to learn how to use it and integrate it into our business but I think that's just really what draws people in this sort of um generation that's going so fast and so you don't even know what's truly real online anymore with videos and content and what's real and what's not. And I think just continuing to show your face when you don't feel like like it's awkward, you know, at times to just get online and have people see your you know your ums and your blinking and your oh why did why am I saying that thing over and over and over. But I think that's just what allows your students to see themselves in your journey is for there to be an unpolished look at it, you know, like approach to it. So blending that yeah we want to do the best that we we very can and we and we want things to be edited and critiqued in a way that you know gives them faster results so there's not as many distractions. But yet bringing that human element um so that they can still think that they're next to me on the piano bench learning alongside of me. And so yeah whatever industry you're in I think just trying to continue to stick to who you are and and your own voice and your own personality and not shy away from that.

SPEAKER_02 46:47

Did you always find that easy to do on camera? Because I think a lot of people like struggle to how can I be myself be natural when I'm also trying to do it on camera.

SPEAKER_00 46:57

Well for years I mean really because of my health and and I really we only created videos where you could only see my hands and really it was like well I am teaching piano it's easier in a way yeah it was so much easier to look to learn how to do that because then I didn't have to see my face and critique myself like why am I not blinking and why what what am I doing with my nose and my face?

SPEAKER_03 47:16

I had that with the not blinking thing. So I had uh I was working on on I think it was YouTube content.

SPEAKER_02 47:21

It might have been a webinar or something and I was trying to be like look at remind myself look at the camera keep eye contact with the person who's watching and what Joseph watched one of the videos back and he's like why do you look like a sociopath?

SPEAKER_03 47:36

And I realized I was I wasn't deliberately not blinking. And it's like because I was trying to maintain I was trying to like always talk to the camera and not look away and not blink and all of this. And he's like you look like a real crazy person. I was like oh my God I'm trying so hard to like do this right and I'm ending up making it looking crazy here.

SPEAKER_00 47:54

I know. Well it's it is hard to balance all that because I'm trying to extrapolate what the knowledge I have in here and then put it onto the piano and then still talk to nobody into a screen. You know it's like it is such a weird thing to learn how to get better at, you know, but really repetition. I mean I look back to videos that we still are making money on and courses that we we created six years ago with limited you know uh mic and audio and great video quality and that kind of thing. And it's still we're still making money on those things six years later, you know? And yeah, we've improved things over the years, but sometimes I don't want to I don't want to improve some of those things I because they're still making money and they're still getting people results, you know? And so sometimes I'm like, oh it's kind of like the bread and butter of the way we started is like you know the the off kilter you know video placement and the the mic that sounds like I'm in a well and you know things that you just don't you just I'm I'm always like uh I I feel like so many entrepreneurs like they're either scrappy and they're gonna just put things out into the world because they're they realize they're not gonna get it perfect right away. And then there's people who just never start you know they they like have this idea and they're really great and you know creative and all this stuff but they're so waiting for it to be perfect and you know curated in a way that then they just never really release it. You know? And I've always been that I'm I'm just gonna do the best that I have with what we have and then we'll improve as we go, you know? And that's been proven to our success really is like that's why we're making money is because we just haven't given up. You know it's not like we're great, grand and wonderful any more than anybody else could do what we're doing, you know?

Final Thanks And Sign-Off

SPEAKER_02 49:21

Yeah. I was talking with somebody this morning who was saying um he said there's there's a message out there anybody could start an online course business and he said and I don't think anybody could and I was just like okay is he saying that because not everyone's an expert in something that people want to learn about and he said no it's it's more that you have to be willing to just do it when you suck, to do it when no one's listening and to to to be shouting into the void when you're not building you're not building audience as fast as you wanted to and to keep going anyway and in order to do that you have to he felt you had to have a mission you had to be driven you had to be like okay I'm really trying to achieve something here because otherwise you just wouldn't make it through that and I was like oh ooh I don't know if I a hundred percent agree but I think there might be ways to make it easier but that's there's something there about like the the you like you're saying you have to be willing to do it when it's when you're like oh this isn't as good as I would like it to be and it's like it's not it's not what I wanted to have out there but you just don't give up you just keep going anyway. Yep yeah Bethany this has been amazing uh I love your story I love what you've been doing um and I think you're doing fantastic work so thank you so much for coming on the the podcast today I really really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 50:33

Yeah thanks so much for having me.

SPEAKER_02 50:35

As always everybody we will uh see you next week and if you want to go check out any of those other podcast episodes that I mentioned then then please do. They're all crackers. Thank you very much. I'll see you guys soon