What's this site about?
Hi, Brian here.
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Let me tell you about how I was able to quit my job and make the shift to freedom.
I'm probably the least "qualified" person to be a worldwide guitar instructor, businessman, social media influencer, etc. I barely made it out of high school and never finished college. In addition to that I'm an introvert and full of self doubt! How's that for an opening sales pitch?
So why am I telling you this? Because I want you to keep that in mind as I share how I was able to quit my job and make millions of dollars doing something that I love!
I also want to encourage those of you that have self doubt (we all do) to focus on the things that interest you, and to imagine a world where you are making a living revolving around your interests!
Playing musical instruments - especially guitar - was enthralling to me ever since I was a teen. Music was always just a fun hobby to me. I knew the odds of making a career in the music industry where 1% of the talent makes 99% of the income.
A hobby is something you do for fun, right? It is wholly disconnected from making a living. In fact, your hobby should always take the back seat to your "job", otherwise you're just being irresponsible, aren't you?
This was my perception well into my thirties. I had a family that was dependent on my income and the last thing in my mind would have been to think of using my love of the guitar as a means of providing income. It was a struggle, a constant battle between my passion and my responsibilities.
It wasn't until I hit my breaking point that I was forced to think outside of the box.
I had marketing position at a publicly traded company and was preparing for a presentation that I was supposed to give, keep in mind, as I mentioned, I'm an introvert and have MAJOR anxiety when it comes to any form of public speaking. I worked on my presentation, and was completely miserable.
I decided to start writing down things that make me happy. Why did I do this? I honestly don't know. I just wanted something in the moment that was tangible and had the ingredients for my happiness. A mental escape I suppose.
I didn't keep that list (I wish I had!), but I remember a few things on it:
- Social Media (it was still new then and exciting)
- Online communities
- Teaching something I enjoy
- Playing guitar
- Entrepreneurship
There were several other disconnected things on the list like my favorite ice cream, riding bikes, etc. but I remember writing it all down very quickly. A brain dump.
As I stared at the list, a few things seemed to jump off the page. What if... I could teach guitar (I enjoy that), and I could build an online community of enthusiasts, market myself via social media, and build an online business around that?
It hit me like a bolt of lightning, a moment of clarity and realization: I could start an online music business! I didn’t have to take out a bank loan, or quit my job. I could just start building some kind of a guitar course and sell it! It was a moment of empowerment and self-belief. I did just that,It was an overnight success! Well, not quite…
I spent close to 6 months developing a beginner guitar course. I built the e-commerce website, filmed and edited all the videos, and created all support materials.
I used my back-of-the-napkin math to determine that I could make hundreds of thousands of dollars with this course. All I needed to do was get people to come to my website and, they'd see how fantastic my course was and would be buying it in droves!.
I launched the website one Saturday morning, and waited… and waited…and waited some more. I knew enough about SEO to know that Google would need to crawl and index the pages of my site, and once they did, it'd be a matter of time before customers started buying this thing. But to my disappointment, nothing happened.
So I decided to pay for advertising (which I found out gets really expensive, really fast). Ran ads, still nothing. After 3 or 4 days, and several hundred dollars spent, I sold one course. ONE! (queue sad trombone sound here)
You can imagine how frustrated. I was. I had spent half a year of my life - nights and weekends - pouring myself into a side hustle, only to find out it didn't really stand a chance.
I sulked for a while (seems like it was around 2 weeks or so), but then decided to try a different approach. I made a handful of short instructional guitar videos on the type of music that I like to play, teaching a few of the basic techniques that I use when it comes to improvising on guitar. I uploaded them to YouTube and started getting a little traction right away. People were watching and leaving comments.
So wait a minute, this was FAR easier than trying to put together a full course, it was fun and the type of stuff I liked to play, and the videos were actually getting views. Why didn't I start here instead of a beginner course?
I then continued to upload videos to YouTube (in my spare time) and decided to take those views and divert them to my website. I added a blog section to ActiveMelody and started giving away additional material for each video that I added to YouTube. Think of it like a Part 2. That created a situation where people would watch my uploads on social media each week, and then come to my website to get the rest of the material.
Eventually, this strategy lead to my website business being born. This time, it had a pulse, it had purpose, and (most important) it had potential customers! The feeling of seeing my hard work and passion translate into a successful business was indescribable.
The best part of this story is how big things got. I eventually switched to a subscription model where people make either monthly or yearly recurring payments for access to premium guitar instructional content. I made that switch back in 2013 and it's still going strong to this day, with new people signing up every hour.
I want show you how I created a multi-million dollar a year business doing something that I love. I want you to experience the feeling of true freedom: being your own boss, and carving out the life that you've always wanted. It's totally possible.
I’ve helped other online entreprenuers in the creative space launch their own successful businesses - even other guitar instructors. I can help you bypass some of the big mistakes that I encountered and share valuable lessons I learned along the way.
I'm going to be creating weekly posts (with videos) on various topics that are designed to help you and encourage you to create your own business.
I'll be giving everything away for free, all you need to do to view the entire post each week is signup for my free membership. To be fully transparent, I'm doing this so that down the road when I put together a course or two on various topics, I'll be able to email and let you know about them!
So just like I did with the start of ActiveMelody. I'm going to be weekly posts (with videos) on various topics that are designed to help you and encourage you to create your own business.
I'll be giving everything away for free, all you need to do to view the entire post each week is signup for my free membership. To be fully transparent, I'm doing this so that down the road when I put together a course or two on various topics, I'll be able to let you know about them!
