Business For Musicians
You came to the right place if you're a skilled musician looking to break free from the 9-5, the public school system, the gigging trading time for money, and the one-to-one teaching studios.
Here at the Business For Musicians Podcast, you'll learn all the tips, tricks, tools, and knowledge that have allowed me to build a MULTI-SIX-FIGURE music education Business online.
Business For Musicians
Revolutionizing Music Education: Integrating Technology with Katie Argyle of Midnight Music
Are you looking to integrate technology into your music teaching practice? Then, join us as we sit down with Katie Argyle, the mastermind behind Midnight Music, an online membership program revolutionizing music education. Katie's journey from a music student working in a retail music shop to a technology educator for music teachers is filled with fascinating insights and practical advice. We get into the nitty-gritty of her transition from live workshops to the digital space, her obstacles, and her secret to overcoming them.
We spent much time unpacking the robust marketing strategy propelling Midnight Music to succeed. Katie sheds light on content-driven marketing, the power of a solid email list, and her approach to growing her membership program. We also dive into the intricacies of running an online business—creating engaging content, managing specialized teams, and delegating responsibilities. With a knack for adapting to changing landscapes, Katie shares her experience of tweaking business strategies amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.
Our conversation with Katie also delves into the challenges of finding the right team members for a virtual outfit, her method of batching tasks, and her innovative approach to creating content for her courses. Katie also shares her insights on handling the 'teaching technology' aspect, emphasizing the importance of not assuming knowledge and not making people feel inadequate. This insightful discussion brings valuable lessons for anyone interested in blending music education with technology, running an online business, or learning from a unique success story.
Check out Katie's website: https://midnightmusic.com/
Welcome to another episode of the business for musicians podcast. In today's episode I sat down with Katie Oregal, who is from Australia, and she runs a membership program named Midnight Music, and this is basically where she teaches technology to teachers, to music educators. If you're a music educator and you're looking to incorporate technology into your curriculum, your classroom, your teaching, Katie specializes in that and we're living at a time now where especially AI has become a big part of how we do things and it's only going to get more integrated into our lives and also in music. And so, as a teacher, you definitely need to be on your technology game and Katie has found a space right there where she's the bridge between technology and you know the old fashioned way of teaching music in the classroom and she's incorporating that. So in this episode I ask her everything about how she came about this business, how it works. You know challenges, all of that great stuff. There's a lot to learn from Katie about how she runs this online business full time. You know pretty successful business doing over six figures in revenue, teaching teachers how to incorporate technology into their classroom. All right, so stick around. That's what we're going to be discussing today with Katie Orgile.
Speaker 1:Six years ago, I took my teaching skills online and now I make multiple six figures in annual revenue, teaching piano to students worldwide while working less than eight hours a day. My name is Warren McPherson, the founder and CEO of Piano Lesson with Warrencom, and if you want to learn how I broke free from the nine to five piano studio teaching, the late nights and weekend gigging schedule, you came to the right place. At the business for musicians podcast, I'll share tips, strategies and tools to help you break free from the trading time for money hamster wheel so you, too, can build a profitable online business while working fewer hours and from the comfort of your home. Well, welcome again, Katie. It's a pleasure to have you here on the Business for Musicians podcast, and the goal here is just basically to share our skill of how we were able to build an online business in the music industry space. So that's what we do over here at the Business for Musician podcast. So welcome again.
Speaker 2:Thank you Great to be here.
Speaker 1:So I actually met Katie in the Membership Academy, sort of online platform groups, which is an online membership for people who run membership site, and after communicating with Katie, I asked her, invited her hey, would you like to come on my podcast and share your, your, your niche and your skill and ideas with us? Seeing that you're in the music industry space, but very different than what I do, which is kind of unique I wanted to get some insights on that and that's why I invited Katie on. So my first questions for you is how do you have any background in music performance or music education?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so my parents actually are both music educators and they're pretending to be retired at the moment because they're both in their 70s, but they can't help themselves. They both still teach, or they're not. Or my mum's actually an accompanist who plays piano, and she does a lot of accompanying and repetitive kind of work and accompanies kids at exams and all sorts of things. So she's still doing that. My dad's still teaching as well, anyway, but growing up, me and my brother were surrounded by music and music education things, and so I think it was inevitable that we would both do something along those lines ourselves.
Speaker 2:But I did a music degree. So I went to the University of Melbourne here where I'm based and I chose to do education. So I came out with a teaching degree in music education and my instruments through school. I started piano when I was five so I've always played piano and done a lot of singing over time. We were a big choral family so done a lot of that. But at school I did oboe and bassoon so I double reads. And then at university I actually did early music. I did recorder and did like Baroque and Renaissance music, so very different and there was only a couple of us doing that through through university at the time but but yeah, performing was never really my thing.
Speaker 2:I was much more into arranging arranging music, I think and I love to. I love to perform in some ways.
Speaker 2:So I've sung in acapella groups and things as well, but that's not like professionally on stage at great length or anything Played in musicals and the band of the musicals and stuff that my parents were putting on, and so that was the extent of that. But it's been, it's been good over the years. But then I never ended up fully going into teaching as such. I sort of decided to see what else was out there and what else I might do, because I knew if I took a teaching job in a school teaching music, I would not explore anything else. I knew that I would just go and do that and that would be it. So I thought I'll just, you know, see what else is out there.
Speaker 1:But so you pursue other interests outside of me? Yeah, I just.
Speaker 2:I just took like a. I did a retail music shop job for a while. That was fine. Oh you, can you learn how to deal with the general public? So that was good, good skills to pick up Good sales skills and, ironically, working in a music shop, I actually worked in the sheet music department and the funny thing about that was, in order to properly help the customers in the sheet music department, it was a lot of classical sheet music and teachers who were ringing up about repertoire for their students and things.
Speaker 2:You needed to have a music degree in order to communicate with those people. Quite well, but the salary you were paid was a retail music shop salary. I mean, this was nothing so that teachers would expect. They're like, can you go and check what key that piece is in? Or they'd hum a bit of some classical melody and like, do you know what this is? I need the sheet music. And I'd be like, ok, well, we've got a book with themes, I can go and look it up and transpose it into C and with the thing it's anyway, it was crazy. So that was for a while. But I moved into sort of other areas, but always really connected with education in some way and eventually, after a number of jobs, a friend of mine who worked for the Sibelius software company, you know just a music notation.
Speaker 2:He rang me up and he said do you, do you want a job working with Sibelius for a couple of days a week? And I was like, yeah, that'd be great.
Speaker 2:So that was how I got that job and he and I were doing a bit of sort of copying work and passing jobs back and forth to each other with typesetting, music and things, and so I worked for them and that's how I really got into technology and I was totally thrown in the deep and I knew nothing much about computers. I just barely got by really and learned so much in that job.
Speaker 1:So that was a great way Approximately what year this was.
Speaker 2:It was? What year was it? It was Sibelius version two when I started working for the company. I could probably look up a lot of work out what year that was. It would have been Well actually no, it was around the time my son was born, so 2005,. Maybe it was a bit later than Sibelius version two. Anyway, around the time my son was born I did have another job and I ended up sort of just just leaving that and working for Sibelius so I could look at my son.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So even in 2005, music technology still wasn't that it's no longer advanced.
Speaker 2:It was as it is now, so that was still kind of like early days of music technology.
Speaker 1:That's good. That's good, it was hard work.
Speaker 2:So the part of the job and this is why I ended up sort of where I am now is that the part of that job that I liked the most was that we were part of the job was teaching people how to use the software a little bit, but mostly teachers were using the software that was. The biggest market in Australia was music. Teachers were using Sibelius, and so I ended up presenting at conferences and running workshops for the teachers in how to use Sibelius software and that was the part of the job I really liked. The part I did not like was the tech support that I had to do one day a week I had to answer all the tech support questions and that was not fun, although I learned a lot as well.
Speaker 2:But yeah, the part that I really liked was working with the teachers and presenting. Presenting at workshops and conferences was just great because you got to see the help that you could give the teachers first hand. You know I could see suddenly the light bulb would come on or they'd say, oh, I never realized you could do it that way and that was so much quicker than what they were doing and I just love. I loved that so much.
Speaker 1:So yeah, so you took that knowledge for a into technology. And you were able to create a business later on that you called Midnight Music yeah, which is an online membership.
Speaker 2:Yeah, everyone wants to know about where the name came from.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so when I was working, for Sibelius.
Speaker 2:I was doing copying and arranging work and working for Sibelius and sort of doing some other workshops on the side, not for Sibelius itself, but just, you know, myself. And so much of the work I was doing was late at night. You know. You know what it's like. You've got deadlines to meet. If you've ever done type setting for people like orchestras and stuff, people ring you up and they're like I've got this job. And the first question doesn't matter what the job is, the first question is what's your deadline? And they say yesterday. You're like OK, I can't fit that in right now, so I have to pass. But I was doing so much late night work and I really wanted a business name that wouldn't pigeonhole me to a specific thing, so I wasn't quite sure where it was going to go, so I thought something generic, ish, you know. So midnight music was what I came up with, working late at night.
Speaker 1:I bet there was no competition getting that domain.
Speaker 2:Well, it's funny. You say that I registered midnight music dot com dot a you because I'm in Australia and you needed to have a business, an official registered business name, to get the AU, which I did. I don't know if I even looked for just the plane dot com at the time, but someone someone bought it and has been squatting on it for years.
Speaker 1:And you know right that kind of thing Wow.
Speaker 2:If everyone listening Warren's face does went into this. Oh my gosh, look, yeah, I know, right Midnight music. Dot com Like who wants that? I don't know. I guess it's a good sort of general name for something. So for years I didn't worry about having it, I just had dot com, dot a you. But from the very early days of having my business it became very apparent that the majority of visitors to my website like 70 or 80 percent are from the US. Wow, I then really kind of started wanting the dot com, because it just makes more sense. It's you know the US people prefer.
Speaker 1:If it's notcom, it gets sketched out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, so yeah what is this?
Speaker 1:So you're buying the, the Wow.
Speaker 2:I'm not kidding, only I think it was last year, only last year, and I've had this business name. I've had my business going since 2008 or nine, like I've had it that long. So I only just just we had someone negotiate and had to pay. It wasn't, you know, like 20 bucks for the domain, like it. I figured it was, you know, I don't know a couple of thousand, a few thousand or something, but I thought it's time just to get it.
Speaker 1:And so we moved the whole. That's deductible, right it was another whole yeah, yeah, exactly. That's good. That's pretty cool. So when did the bulb click for you working for Sibelius? When did you decided you're going to start an online business based around technology and helping teachers with that?
Speaker 2:How did that came about? Yeah, it's not through my shows.
Speaker 1:It's still new.
Speaker 2:Well, like, and I didn't really have it then. So in the very early days I was just running live workshops in person workshops at that time. And my surveillance job ended. There was a whole shift with the company. They got rid of a whole stack of positions. Mine was only part time, so it just went, you know.
Speaker 2:So I thought, well, I just need to replace that income like part time income and I thought, well, I'll just run workshops in Australia for Sibelius. But also I thought I better expand my repertoire and add some other software in and other technology stuff and and technology at that time, for teachers, was the thing where schools were starting to say, you know, you really should be looking at using technology more and this is going to be the future and you really need to get on top of it. So, so those workshops were good and I did live workshops for a long time and then in 2012, I started I mean, like you probably, I started listening to a lot of podcasts, particularly which talk about online business, and I heard this. I heard a few people talking about you know, online courses make a lot of sense because you can record once and then people can watch the course whenever and pause you and repeat the workshop and go back to it. And because I had so many visitors to my website who were from all different countries, not just the US, but lots of different countries. Everyone's in different time zones and people were starting to ask me do you ever come to the US or do you run any online courses and I'm like, oh no, but I think I need to look at that.
Speaker 2:Online courses was what I started doing in 2012. And that was live online courses and that was the Wild West man. That was terrible back then. It was really hard work. It wasn't wasn't like Zoom today. Zoom didn't exist back then. I had to use WebEx. You couldn't. The biggest issue I had at that time was it was basically impossible at that time to share your system audio, your computer audio. So if I wanted to show music, software programs, I couldn't play the sound of the software program at a high quality. It had to go out of my speakers and back in through my mic and that's just horrible. Like it sounds horrible. It's terrible. But that was. I remember being on support to WebEx. Like I was on phone to WebEx support trying to explain what I wanted to do and she's just like just turn the volume up, you know, so it comes out louder if you speak, because I'm like you don't get it. That's not what I want. I want this good button up. It was really hard. So that was the early days, just running these online courses.
Speaker 1:You mentioned that you got a lot of traffic from the US, so I'm curious what would it? What searched home were they using? Send them your way.
Speaker 2:It's funny. I'll say it because that's that's something I struggle with all. I still struggle today with keyword research because teachers don't know what to look for, they don't know what they don't know, they don't know what they need to know. And it was because I was writing blog posts. It was all content marketing and I think people just found it accidentally. So I wrote articles about tech tools that I was using, tips, how to use Sibelius, how to do things. I had a handful of YouTube videos and I started just writing about stuff and then sharing things and you know, just exploring ideas or sharing lesson plans and that that was the sole reason for all of the traffic to the website.
Speaker 1:I think, really that's good and still is today. Yeah, we've talked about paid advertising. Yeah, yeah, it was. Just it was working.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was really good so. So that was the reason, and because there were all these visitors, they're like, ok, you're doing these online courses, which are great, and they were live at the time and they were in my evening time, so that worked OK for the US sort of. But then people are like I can't get to that one. When are you running that course again? And I was like I think I think I need to start selling the recordings. So I saw the recordings as replay passes essentially to the to the workshops that I'd done live over time and that worked quite well as well. And I was selling all one off, one off payments, individual course sales. So I know you were sort of asking about that too, like is it individual sales or why choose a membership over the individual sales?
Speaker 1:Oh yeah. So what those downloadable materials? Or were just like a place to log in online? And, yeah, a place.
Speaker 2:Yeah place to log in. So they were hosted on Vimeo and then I'd embed them in my website. It was not very sophisticated. At the time I had a. I had a plugin that allowed pages to be password protected. Yeah, that was about it. I'm sure people could have hacked their way in there if they knew what they were doing. But the teachers bless them are not totally, you know, not Uber's sex.
Speaker 1:So it was OK, yeah, so one of the biggest things people talk about with online or just any sort of business is niching. So your thing niche is teachers and technology, but do you need further like that? For example, like what type of teachers is your target audience? Middle school, high school, colleges? Is there a specific that works for you?
Speaker 2:Yes, it's all school based ones. Let a smaller subset would be private instrumental teachers. You know, private piano teacher or saxophone or trumpet or whatever, but mostly school based teachers. So elementary, middle school, high school, band, orchestra, chorus teachers, all of those music teachers that are teaching at a school, really. But then on the side a few sort of private, private instrumental teachers as well, and some pre service teachers, sort of ones who are about to become teachers. That's a big area that I'd like to cover more, actually, because I think they don't quite get taught the right things that they need to know. By the time they get into a school they kind of think oh, where am I? You know what's going on. But yeah, that's most of it, and it's funny because there are so many different types of music teachers. People think it's all just one big bucket of you know of people, but no, there's very specific types. So, yeah, a lot of lesson plans for teachers.
Speaker 1:Do you help them with lesson plans as well?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, lesson plans. My theory, though, is it's funny because the teachers that I've worked with over the years, they, they, really like to have everything given to them. Done it, done, just roll it out.
Speaker 1:Just want to shop and teach.
Speaker 2:Give me the stuff, yeah Exactly Give me the stuff and I'll just run the lesson, but my, my theory is that I feel like I prefer to teach the teachers the skills so that they can then go forth and, you know, work out how to implement things into their lessons. So I do a bit of both. I was pretty adamant that I wasn't going to provide, like teachers pay teachers materials. You know where you can go and buy everything really made like a package of stuff, you know. But I do do some of that, particularly with. So basically, things like Sagrange band.
Speaker 2:I have a series, I have a course which teaches the teachers how to use GarageBand, specifically with regard to in the classroom. Here are lesson units of work, lesson plan ideas using GarageBand with your students, or Soundtrap or Bandlabel, whatever it is. And then I do actually have a series of videos that they can play for their students in class. So I teach the class for them. All right, get out GarageBand, open up a new project, add a drum track and then we're going to record this rhythm. Here's the rhythm, count four, you know, and it's me talking through step by step for the students, broken down into short videos. I do do some of that where it's handed out to the teachers, but I do prefer the idea that they're learning themselves rather than just getting me to teach their class for them.
Speaker 1:What would you say is the main thing teachers come to you for? Because I'm sure there's a lot of different technologies up there and stuff. What's the main thing they come for, like as soon as they come into your ecosystem, you're like Katie.
Speaker 2:X, help me with this. It's really quite different for a number of the different types of teachers because they all have differing needs. If it's a band teacher who's you know, I got grade nine band or something that's quite different to the needs of the elementary music teacher. Sometimes they come with a device in mind. I have Chromebooks, my students have Chromebooks. What can I do with Chromebooks? That that'll be sometimes the thing they come for. Or I need lesson ideas for my general music classes and so they'll come with that. So it's a big variety and a lot of what I do is so content driven. Like my marketing is very content driven. Like here is a course which is GarageBand, soundtrap and Band Lab Lesson Plans and people will join my membership because of that one course. Or I've got one about creating teaching materials with Canva. That's one of my most popular courses. It's not even music software, it's Canva.
Speaker 1:But the girls have a very general profile to shop. Is that interesting? That as well?
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely Love it.
Speaker 1:To do what, what do they do with it.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, create posters, create concert programs, create oh yeah. Graphical organizers, worksheets, social media posts, because the teachers even need to promote their program, advocate for their program. Social media, you know short videos and stuff. I have a whole course on video creation and editing.
Speaker 1:So you're literally doing everything tech with these teachers? Yeah, exactly, exactly. That's amazing.
Speaker 2:Exactly Because you know when I just came across your website.
Speaker 1:Looking at it from the membership academy, I was curious about, ok, technology and teachers. But now I'm realizing that, oh yeah, it's really technology and teachers every second. Wow.
Speaker 2:Do you want to know about one of my most popular? I do live webinars. I was doing them free and open to everybody. Now I'm just I've taken it back to just they're just for members only. So if you want to join the webinar, join the membership.
Speaker 2:But one of the most popular topics that I've done in live webinars where I will get like a thousand people sign up is about digital organization how to organize your files, because it's a hot mess for most teachers and they honestly don't know where to start. So in my course videos, when I'm teaching about GarageBand or other programs, I'm like OK, so here's how you'll save your project, save it to some place that makes sense to you. Someone commented and she goes here's where I get stuck. I don't know where to save my files and I'm like OK, let's talk about that. There's some basic computing skills. I think that teachers do not get taught when they're studying or even at work. I think everybody assumes that you should know all of that stuff, but they really don't. So I just did a two part webinar series on organizing your digital files and it was really popular. It's just crazy, yeah.
Speaker 1:Do you have a primary marketing platform?
Speaker 2:Well, email, just email my email list is emails.
Speaker 1:How do you build your email list? All content marketing no, well, yes, you do that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, blog posts. So pretty much every blog post has an opt-in. On my website, Every single one has an opt-in.
Speaker 1:Would you say that's your strongest source?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, definitely, Absolutely yeah we get about 600 new email signups a month coming in through yeah, through my blog post.
Speaker 1:That's my weakest source of anything. I recently only started looking at blog posts, like a year ago. Wow, even though I've been online, my primary marketing source is YouTube, videos, youtube yeah, and that's my weakest.
Speaker 2:That's where I'm about to.
Speaker 1:I've always been curious for folks who make the blog post thing work. It's like, how did it do it? So I'm looking on that now. So that's cool, that's cool.
Speaker 2:If you've got something you can, tangible, that you can give us a download for a while, I think we probably will dial it back a bit For a while. We were basically offering every blog post as, if you want to take away a downloadable version of this blog post, click here. He's the PDF version. But honestly, the biggest options are where they get something extra. Excuse me, they get something extra, like an extra thing which is associated with that blog post. And the biggest options that I have, I've got sort of five big ones which are an annual guide that I put together which is about free tech resources for teachers. It's just a huge list which I started 11 years ago or so and every year I update, I add more things in and take things out which have disappeared, and it's just free tech resources, free online programs and it could be anything, including things like Canva, which is you can use for free. So that's a really big option. But also I started to create like digital clip art libraries, so I've got a library of music notation, individual notes with transparent backgrounds that teachers can use in their teaching materials, like they can put into the Google slides or Keynote or PowerPoint or into the Canva doc and create their teaching materials using these. You know triple clefts and base clefts, and sharps and flats and everything. So collection of that clip art they can download for free from my website. So that's a huge option.
Speaker 2:Eucalyle chord diagrams. Guitar chord diagrams. Kodi Sulfo hand signs I made a whole set of those and give those away.
Speaker 2:But yeah, it's huge. That's the biggest source of traffic and options for my email.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. And you don't do you promote? Do you do any paid ads towards your blog post or those orders or all organic traffic?
Speaker 2:All organic. Yep, everything's organic.
Speaker 2:And the social media side of things, funnily enough, instagram. I've had a couple of goes with Instagram where we've really concentrated hard on Instagram and I have a content manager who works with me and after we killed ourselves getting really good, high quality Instagram posts out for a period of time like, say, three months or so, we looked back at our Google analytics and we're like 0.2% of people who see us on Instagram come to the website. It's not worth our time. It's just not worth our time. That's not where I'm getting tangible results. Like, for the amount of time we were spending on it, it just wasn't worth it. So the biggest referral traffic comes from Pinterest of all places Wow, yeah, like and Pinterest. If you look at the Google analytics, pinterest accounts for like 80% of the social traffic and Facebook's next at like, I don't know, facebook's pretty good for me, but it's still, you know, 10% compared to Pinterest, 80 or 70%.
Speaker 1:It's just so interesting how these different platform works, because I was like, yeah, let's try to Pinterest thing, and I posted a few videos just like shorts and stuff. Yeah, I don't think I got any traffic at all. I think I'm interested. Yeah, I think.
Speaker 2:I also don't know how it works really I still haven't figured it out.
Speaker 2:I think the teachers are there a lot, especially this time of year, because they're all in there going back to school mode at the time of recording. You know teachers that have just started the school year or are just going back and they do a lot of over the summer. They do a lot of looking at, looking for resources like lesson plans and stuff, and Pinterest is one of the places they go for my audience, and so we have blog posts up there. You know eye catching visual. They're pinning it, they're visiting the website, they're downloading stuff, they're signing up for the list. That's cool.
Speaker 2:It's just insane.
Speaker 1:Have you been on Tech Talk yet?
Speaker 2:Oh, so, okay. So here's my plan. This is where I think we'll do a reverse interview and you can help me on that. So for years and years I make videos all the time but they're nearly all for my membership community, you know. So I'm not afraid to make videos, but I really, really, really want to get regular YouTube videos out and then make a short version for Tech Talk Reels and shorts. You know just, I just want to make one.
Speaker 1:That's what I do.
Speaker 2:And then we'll upload to each of the oh good, yeah, each of the platforms will add captions. I guess on I don't know, do you do it on the platforms the captions for each one.
Speaker 1:So I have a video editor. Yeah, I shoot my videos for the week, or cause I? Try to do one YouTube video week when like 15 to 20 minute video she edits that, but then she also then take same video and turn. She will pull like from five to 10 shorts from that one video. And so then I'll have to do just Uploaded to the different platforms.
Speaker 2:It's the same one I upload all over the place.
Speaker 1:So that's why I Grow my tiktok, my Instagram and then also put it on Facebook as well, because you know, facebook does this cool cross thing where they're sharing the same reel on Instagram and shame Instagram real on Facebook.
Speaker 2:So it's pretty cool. Yeah, that's my plan and I think I'll just have to get a bit. We'll talk later about video, yeah.
Speaker 1:Videos, but I just get it's hard to keep up if you want to be consistent.
Speaker 2:Exactly, I'm not editing it.
Speaker 1:It's like I need to outsource this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I can't do it either. I find it hard. I think for me the hard thing is that All of my videos not all of them, 80% of my videos I Want to do screencasting like it's. It's involves me showing my screen and the problem with the vertical format is.
Speaker 1:There's solutions for how you can do it, but it's none of them are great for doing the screen on tiktok, you know you gotta show a slice or you do it yeah, you know, split the screen vertically in half or something, but yeah, there's a woman in my mastermind, that is, she does a lot of stuff with paint shops and scrapbooking and she's also Trying to find a solution. I said how do I do this short thing when I I got a screen that yeah, it's hard.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna try a few things. I'll. I'll, yeah, experiment with a few options, but that's my plan, for I had to sort of decide to concentrate on Retention for a bitch. You know, with the membership and I didn't even say really that the membership ended up growing out of the fact that I couldn't keep up with running live online Courses. It was too much. You know, people wanted this course again and I'm like, well, I've got to do these other three courses and then how do I? Anyway? I ended up with a library of recorded courses and then selling them individually just didn't make sense after a while, and people asking all these questions via email, and I'm like I just need some way, better way of managing this. And I actually went to an online Entrepreneur event. Chris Stucker ran an event called tropical think tank the first one that he ever ran was in, I think, 2014 and I just saw him mention it on Twitter and I was like, oh my gosh, that sounds amazing.
Speaker 2:The podcast heroes were going to be presenting at this event, like Pat Flynn and Amy Porterfield and like there's always amazing people. So I went to that. It was a life-changing event totally and it was great. And then the second one I went to there was a few of us there and we all entered up starting memberships, based on James Tramco, who presented at that second one and he is all about memberships and he said you got to get a membership going, like you, you're just working too hard Selling individual courses all the time. Yeah, one membership, one price, one payment, you know, and everyone gets access to everything. They're not having to pay for all the separate things, like yeah, he really does simplify marketing with a membership simple and simplify the marketing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he was like this price and just get everything Including access to me.
Speaker 2:And actually the access to me that that was one of the best things To start for me, starting a membership. I was getting so many questions via email and I was in the early days I was answering and then after a while I'm like I cannot answer all these Individual questions, like, and I felt terrible, like but I'm like I just I had, I had my VA, we had a like a standard reply saying so sorry, but Katie just cannot, you know, answer all these individual questions. But now we have that standard reply which says Can't answer individual questions by email. But if you join the membership, go for your life.
Speaker 2:You can ask as many, I will actually, I make a video recording of my answer. Usually, showing the screen like this is how you can fix this problem click here, click here, click here. And the members loves that. They're like oh my gosh, I wasn't expecting a video. And like, yeah, well, it's quicker for me to make you a video showing you the thing rather than write it all down in a forum post.
Speaker 1:So she do use like something like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, and because Loom easily records the system audio. Hello and and my voice and I can be on the screen or not, if I choose, and I Welcome all my new members. I just have me on the screen, camera only, and I just welcome every new member that posts and says hey, I'm a new member from such and such plays. I will record a quick hi, it's great to have you, you know. Thanks for letting us know what you're teaching and if you've got any questions or I'll answer a question if you've asked it, and it's just a great communication.
Speaker 1:So when did you make midnight music into? When did you make the full-time leap? How long did?
Speaker 2:it take you from when you decided gonna start a membership to hey.
Speaker 1:This is going so good. I need to dive in full-time to be able to keep up.
Speaker 2:Well, it was kind of backwards. It was the membership got going after what I was already doing, the business full-time. So after my after my survey is job ended, I had the business going and it was only equivalent to a part-time you know salary that I was earning really through the business in the early days and Then as my kids got older, because you know I had babies, so as the kids got older they're now 18 and you know it's 16 and a half so they can fully take care of themselves really. But now that they're a bit older it's much easier. But yeah, I just started really part-time and then the membership grew out of all those live workshops that I was running.
Speaker 1:So it wasn't hard to make the transition from face-to-face to online, you just start telling everybody hey, you need to continue, follow this.
Speaker 2:URL. Yeah, I still, it's funny, I still prefer. I still do do live workshops in person, you know, in Australia particularly, or New Zealand, which is just Not far away, but I still prefer the live in person on, you know, seeing people's reaction and stuff. I much prefer that.
Speaker 1:Are these live events that you host or people invite you to?
Speaker 2:Sometimes. Yeah, I haven't done any like that since COVID, you know, since before COVID. But I'm thinking about going back to that actually because they can be quite, they can work out quite well financially because I get a school to host the event.
Speaker 2:Which doesn't cost me anything, the school that's hosting, can I say Send whatever teachers you want for free to the workshop for the day. We invite teachers from around the area to come and attend and they pay a fee. I will organize, or someone organizes catering for lunch, you know. So it ends up being quite a nice day. I mean, I worked out that if I can get Minimum of like 12 to 15 people preferably closer to 20 or 30 people there, that well and truly covers my costs for travel and presenting. You know, minimum presenting fee, and the more people I get there, obviously the better off it is financially.
Speaker 1:Usually one day events.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah one day I like a school day.
Speaker 1:I've been thinking about doing an event. I've never done a live event, but I'm just like I don't know where I would start.
Speaker 2:It's great, it's great, I'll tell you what you have to think. The thing you have to do, the biggest tip, is that you start advertising and telling people about it well before you've worked out what you're actually gonna do. That's what I like. A few months like.
Speaker 2:For me, the teachers really need a lot of warning because if it's on a school day, they have to get a sub and they have to plan for the day. Sometimes I do it on a weekend because actually some teachers just cannot take a day off school and at the moment We've got a huge shortage of substitute teachers in Australia at the moment. So it might be a Saturday, but anyway, they need time to organize. So I will just I'll get a description up of what I'm planning on doing, but I may not have actually worked it out and I would just literally say here's what we're doing for the day. It's gonna run nine till three. There'll be a lunch break in the middle, foods provided. This is the cost bookings here set up that and then, as it gets closer, I'm like what did I say I was gonna do? Oh, yeah, yeah, you can get help with that Ticket bookings and stuff, just yeah.
Speaker 2:Cuz I was trying to do something for 2024, but we'll see, yeah, and using one of our services, like event, bright or you know equivalent, where Tickets are done through that system. It's much easier than Trying to send out individual payment things. You know PayPal, whatever, yeah, just through event bridal or something like that.
Speaker 1:Single link. That's where it's really well.
Speaker 2:Mmm.
Speaker 1:So you mentioned a content manager and a VA, so do you have a full team and so how many people? How does that work?
Speaker 2:sounds Well, sounds like a lot. Nobody works full time. I used to have a full-time VA but we we she's left the business now so I don't have her anymore, but I have well, I have a customer support VA person. Yeah, she does, she's great. She does email. She does all the I can't lock. I've lost my login for the membership. You know, I've lost my password or whatever. She does deals with all of that. She's fantastic.
Speaker 2:She also does a little bit of help on the like Publishing blog posts. Like she'll put the blog post into WordPress and when we've got an email sequence that's going out, she she'll put the emails into. I use on report for my email, you know, in CRM. So she'll put emails in and she'll do formatting and stuff. But so she does that the content manager separate. She does Um blog post. She does social media stuff for me, which is great. So like she writes the stuff, she writes some blog posts. I write some she writes on we have some guest writers who do a few as well, but she manages the guest writers if we have those working for us. Yeah, so she, she's really good. You know handling all of that. How did you find?
Speaker 1:that person.
Speaker 2:Oh.
Speaker 1:We've got to do like an online platform, or is it someone local in your Community?
Speaker 2:no, through an online platform. We put an advert out. We've gotten better at writing the ads, so I think it's about how to write the ad and to incorporate some kind of and this is with all positions some kind of test tasks that they're gonna do or Scenario gives them a scenario. This has been. It's the biggest way to the quickest way to weed out people who are not suited to your business.
Speaker 2:We have like there'll be a couple of questions in the the application which will say if you were in this scenario, what would you do? Or whatever it is. You know that quickly you narrow it down. Okay, we're down to two people now, that's it great, yeah, and then then after that getting them to do some kind of sort of practice thing, like a little task or a test or something.
Speaker 2:Particularly with the admin positions, I find where you really need people who you know. Everybody says they've got attention to detail, but until they do a task for you and you go, I don't think you really do have attention to detail, because you've misspelled this word and that's wrong, and that person, it's like it's just all over the place. So again, you can easily weed them out. But I've had a good gut feeling. When applications come through, I can Often identify who I think is going to end up with the position even before we've done anything like second round interviews or anything. So, yeah, yeah, just online, sometimes word of mouth. Over the years I've had different people doing different stuff for the business. I have those two. I have a business manager type person online business manager person.
Speaker 1:What does that person do?
Speaker 2:She kind of oversees Things she had we talk about, like what promotions are we going to do in the next few months? She is the interface between thank goodness me and the bookkeeper, like all that stuff that I just like. Oh my gosh, anything technical. If there's website issues, she will. She's actually very skilled with website stuff herself, but she will manage with. You know the guys that look after my website who do all the updates of plugins and stuff. She will interface with them and just go okay, we need this to happen. Or this is broken, or you know, this is fixing one of those full-time position.
Speaker 2:No, every single person who's working for me is doing at most, ten hours a week.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sometimes I feel like I need that a business manager, that decision.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a while back I had a friend who took a friend who I actually met at that tropical think tank event, who has their own online business. She she kind of moved into that role for my business after a while of us knowing each other and it was just fantastic.
Speaker 2:And then she really needed to like concentrate on her own online business. And so the person I have now is a friend of hers who you know she's known for some time. But but this person who I've got now her name's Tamsen she she also has her own business and she works a lot to find VA's for people, so she's very good at narrowing. So if we need anyone in my business, she says that's fine, I got it sorted, you know she doesn't go often, yeah, she does the high and she does the avid, like she's really good at.
Speaker 2:She just knows all those people. She knows how to find people based in the Philippines or in America or Australia. Sometimes we have different needs depending on time zones and you know language skills or whatever it is. So, yeah, so she's been great. And the fourth person I have working for me regularly is Ryan, who knows Entroport, who my CRM, who. He just knows that inside out and he's really done a lot of great things.
Speaker 1:Funnels and all that.
Speaker 2:Oh, he's so good. So we've had that software forever and I knew for a long time that we were not doing things like the most effective way. It's such an enormous program like it's just there's so much to it, it's so complex and there's so many moving parts and in the early days I was doing it all you know and then I'm just like I can't do anything. You could literally just do this all day and he's so good at doing. You know he has now split testing happening and you know we have all these things in place now.
Speaker 2:It's just amazing and I said to him the other day I'd have him full time if I could afford it. I can't afford it, but yeah, again, he does. You know, Handful of ours as well. So so it sounds like I've got this huge team, but really people are only working, you know, Up to 10 hours a week for the business and they all do special, it's very specialized areas that they each do and it's Really to allow me to to try and get things done that I want to do or need to do for the business and it's almost impossible doing it on your own.
Speaker 1:You just it is and it's a real realization that's hit me hard over the past two to three years, where I realized that I'm not able to produce the things that I want to because I'm too bogged down in other areas and, like I mentioned, video editing was one of them I produced so many videos so much video content a month To sit and crank out quality editing.
Speaker 1:You know that looks professional with text flying here and all this I was like this is. This is itself is another full time job. My thing is teaching piano. I need to focus on that.
Speaker 2:That exactly. And I find it hard because I actually really enjoy video editing. I also really enjoy graphic design related stuff, but it is not where I should be spending my time. I love it but I shouldn't be doing it. And the thing I find hard with hiring a video editor, I think in terms of having a YouTube video that I've already done and then someone chops it down to, you know, for shorts and stuff. That would probably work. But the initial editing of the YouTube video it's so screencast based, it's so software based that unless that person also knew the software as well as I do, I don't think they could do the editing for me. I think I would need to do that initial editing and then they could maybe make the little short snippets for me. So that could work well. But yeah, I don't know that I could let it go Like all the online for the camp. Of course I just relaunched my camp. Of course I made 115 videos over four weeks. Wow, 115. Like I was really efficient. It's got the wrong time. That's a lot.
Speaker 1:So how do you like use screencast to do all that? They didn't go in and do additional editing with a software.
Speaker 2:It depends how I've screencast in the first place, and I have a couple of different ways. If it's me talking over slides, they are so quick to edit, so quick to, I don't put myself on the screen, which instantly reduces the time taken, you know, and that's for that reason that I don't put myself on the screen. And I've actually polled my audience. I've asked them do you like to see my face on the screen? Because some people like to make the connection, whatever Most of them go, we just want to see the screen. We just don't want, you know, covering up of parts of the screen. So I'm like, fine, great, so it's me really well, don't have to do my makeup in here for that, but for those ones it's quick. But when it's screencasting, I do it a couple of ways.
Speaker 2:I either hit record and do everything at once Talking and the screen part, or, if it's kind of complex, if it's the music, software stuff, audacity, garage band surveillance I tend to script and record my audio first and then I make the screencast with I know how I set it in the recording. So I'll have that in my head and I kind of you know, hope that the timing's vaguely okay. But then I go through and I edit the two together and synchronize. This is why no one could do this for me. I don't think, and that takes so much time. And when you look at my video timeline, there's chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop. It's just like all these tiny clips which are synchronized together.
Speaker 1:It's really really, really good. How often would you have to do that kind of complex form of editing or recording?
Speaker 2:For a course. For most of the courses I'm doing that. So the Canva course videos were much quicker than the music software ones that I've done. So because it's Canva, I don't know, it's just a lot more straightforward, I think, because in the music ones you're dealing with the moving playback line a lot of the time or sound that's playing, you know, in the background and it's harder to edit that, like you need to be more careful about how you shoot it in the first place and then how you're editing it. Rather than Canva it's just a poster, it's just a picture, it's not moving or doing anything. So it's just by its nature it's much more complex. So sometimes a three-minute video for a music software program, I mean it can take five or six hours to put that together sometimes. But if it's me talking over slides, I can do it once through live and maybe not have to edit at all, apart from fade in, fade out at the logo at the end, like we're done, you know.
Speaker 1:So it really varies, really varies. So what's your goal for midnight music? Do you see it as something that you're going to do until you're 90, or you do like 10?
Speaker 2:years.
Speaker 1:I'm trying to sell this thing. Get out, do something else. Have you thought about that?
Speaker 2:I have been thinking about it. I didn't think about that until probably the last 12 months or so, mainly because I didn't want to think about doing anything else. I was just so enjoying, like what else would I want to do anyway? But then, you know, I'm 51 and I'm kind of like, well, at some point that was the thought I had Am I going to be doing this when I'm 60, when I'm 70? Like, am I Maybe? Maybe I will, and I don't really know the answer to that. I'm only in the I'm thinking about it state at the moment. I don't want to move on from the business anytime soon at all.
Speaker 2:I did have a period of time where I think I was just you know, it was probably COVID related in a very down kind of place and struggling with everything, and for that period of time I was like I want to do anything. I'd love to go and paint houses, like you know, walls, wow, that was all I wanted to do. Yeah, just for a while. Now I'm kind of back into. No, I'm good. I'm good on my business again now.
Speaker 1:Have you ever thought about bringing in someone else to work alongside you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, maybe and I do oh there is another person I have who works with me. Actually, he doesn't, he doesn't. I've got a lot of that.
Speaker 1:Teach courses and stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh, okay, that's great. Sorry, amy, if you're listening to this at some point.
Speaker 1:So she does.
Speaker 2:She, yeah, she's, she's a teacher in the States. She is a full-time teacher and I don't know when she sleeps. She says the same thing about me but honestly, don't know when she sleeps. She has two young daughters and a husband and she works full-time. She works for me and my community. So she is in the forum answering questions. She does posts in the forum, you know, sharing something. She has a YouTube channel where she makes and shares, you know, videos about stuff music, tech stuff, whatever and teaching things, and she also sometimes presents a webinar for me, you know, for the business.
Speaker 2:When we did the course which is for, we've got this one course which is for GarageBand and Soundtrap and BandLab it's the same, the same materials for all three of those software programs in a single course, because they're all pretty similar. She made the Soundtrap videos for me, so, and she's done a couple of other courses for the inside of the community too. So, yeah, so she does work alongside me, but she was also a full-time music teacher as well, wow, so, yeah, so it's funny. And as for selling it, I don't know, it's a hard one because my business is very wrapped up around me really, and it's not to say that I couldn't be handed over. I think it could be handed over, but it would need to morph and then change. You know, I'd have to morph like take myself off the homepage of the website, for instance.
Speaker 2:You know, which I don't love.
Speaker 1:anyway, it's an interesting thing because that's a similar business we run. We're kind of like the guru style business, where we almost we are the product. People come to us for our knowledge or expertise, but also our personality, you know.
Speaker 2:And that's the thing. It's the personality.
Speaker 1:So how do you solve that up? Absolutely the thing.
Speaker 2:I don't know, and I think that's the biggest thing for my business. That is what teachers say to me and it's probably the same for you. It's the thing they like about me and my business, is my teaching style and my personality. Because I made a, I mean, I was doing it anyway. But I also say this to people that I don't care if people know nothing about technology and when I explain things I never assume knowledge and I never make them feel like they should have already known that I don't care. What do I care? And I say look, I always weave it in very subtly.
Speaker 2:It's like I'll show something and I'm like and if you've never done that before, this is what this is why we do it this way, or this is what you should do, or this is how you know it's best to go about it. Whatever, I'll just weave it in in passing. And people have said to me I'm so happy you said that because I never knew that, or no one ever showed me that, or no one taught me. Teachers experience at their own schools. When they don't know something to do with technology They'll go to maybe the IT person or a colleague, and the other person frequently will say, oh, you just do it like this and they'll take the mouse and go, click, click, click for them.
Speaker 2:What's the point of that, like, why should they have known that they just if they've never been taught? I think it's because I didn't grow up with I'm from the era of not really growing up with technology. I had to learn everything in my 20s and 30s and 40s and now 50s, like it's just, you know, I'm learning as I go still, so I still remember what it was like to not know and I just never assume that and so, yeah, that's the part of it. I would need to find someone else who just is the same in that regard. At least you know, just doesn't make people feel silly.
Speaker 1:One of the reasons why I ask about that because it's something I've thought seriously about is would it be? I've seen another competitor of mine that has completely removed himself and replaced and he did it like 10 years ago. Wow, and he seemed to have done it successfully because the business is still going. Not that I don't like what I do, but I feel also, if I'm able to bring someone in, even if it's just a part time, that can help to create content. I feel like that would help significantly and me even just sort of being able to focus on other areas of the business. So just curious how, how you found Amy and then to be able to forgive her, even though it might be a meaning key to the kingdom, so to speak, in terms of yeah, you have someone creating content for you.
Speaker 1:How did that come about?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and there's actually I have a couple of other people who I know, who are also along those lines, who I could see in the future that I might get them in, and even already Teresa, another great teacher in the state. She has been one of those people, but Amy and I match. I met a number of key people in the in our tiny niche of music, technology and education. We all met on on Twitter of all places back in 2009, where Twitter was kind of it was like a happy place to be back in the day. The app logo anymore. I hate seeing that X. I feel like it's I don't know.
Speaker 1:I won't even say what I feel like on my phone.
Speaker 2:It doesn't look like a place I want to go anymore. But back in back then I Thought what is this Twitter thing anyway? And jumped on and there was a fantastic core group of music teachers, music educators, who were tech savvy. They they were the only people on Twitter at that time really and the use of hashtags was really Effective back then. I don't know so much anymore, but there was a lot of hashtags which you would follow. It set up your software to follow in our use tweet deck and I've set up a column which was Two or three of these hashtags that I was following and a core group of us connected.
Speaker 2:So it was me in Australia and probably 10 teachers who happen to be all US based and they all knew each other from Music education circles and being at conferences and presenting and things over there. All of these key people we all present at conferences, so they're kind of leaders in their field and I knew it was one of those. So we just connected there. In the end I eventually, after six or seven years, went over to present at this conference in Texas, which is one of the biggest music educator conferences there's, like I don't know, 10 or 12,000 music educators.
Speaker 2:Plus an additional 20,000 students and their parents and entourage who are they're performing in bands and choirs and Mariachi band, like all this amazing performance stuff going on that every year there's this conference in Texas. So I went there in 2016 and I met these people for the first time. We felt like we knew each other from Twitter Just for all those years and we'd probably by then had maybe a couple of like I don't know zoom calls together and stuff like that. So we had really connected, that we all met up there and Amy and I and a few others just we were in contact. And then eventually I Said to her I need some help. I had someone else helping me out with the forum part and he had to move on. He was doing a PhD, so previous guy Martin had to move on.
Speaker 2:And I said that Amy, do you want to like, would you be interested in just doing a few hours a week in there? And she's like, yeah, it'd be great. And so she did that, but then also started doing a bit of content creation and she does a stack of content creation herself anyway, regardless of whether it's for me. So she's well practiced with, you know, screencasting, logic, logic and final cup, pro and all of these, you know, programs that we need to use. So so she's a great, a great asset and she's an elementary teacher, so she really helps out for my business with that. That side of that sort of small subset of teachers in there, that's great. But yeah, fine, it's very deep. I find it very difficult to find people who teach the way I want them to teach in my community. That's the key for me is how do they teach? How do they teach?
Speaker 1:Yeah, really cool. So another question I have for you is what is your biggest struggle with the business? If you were to pinpoint one thing like it's time to do things.
Speaker 2:The YouTube channel I've been wanting to like okay, this is the year that I'm gonna just concentrate on YouTube, like that's no kidding for being for about four years now. And so I just said this morning to my content manager I'm like next week, next week I'm gonna sit down and properly plan out the YouTube videos and just get it going. You know I've got a. I have no shortage of ideas. Idea generation is not ever, ever, ever an issue for me. I have spreadsheets full of ideas for videos and Courses and all sorts of things, blog posts, everything, so that's not an issue.
Speaker 1:What I'm finding the time yeah, I do is I take old YouTube videos and I have someone that's been converting them into blog post, yes, so maybe you can go the reverse.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm actually gonna do the reverse. So I have a lot of blog posts which I'm gonna make into videos. They'll be different format, that and also I have Hundreds of conference presentations that I've done over the years and again Small parts of those can each be a video, like just one section, one set.
Speaker 1:So sounds like Opening right there for a video editor. Yeah, it created work, then it might be easier to then incorporate a video editor, especially if you want to keep it consistent, because that's where the burnout hits.
Speaker 2:That's it. It's consistency. I know my podcast is a good example. Yeah, and I'm just back on that. The thing I I Do in periods of time and I know it's the, it's the best way for me and for anyone else with an online business is to do batching. You know you, I need, you know it's. So everything goes better when I sit down and I script or bullet point five podcast episodes in one sitting or over a day or two, and then the next week I record the first couple and then the next couple, and you know, and then we edit them like it's so much better if I can get a few done. So my main aim this week is to record three podcast episodes by the end of Friday, so that I've now got Six weeks worth of podcasts because, like every other week, I'll be released.
Speaker 2:But what's one of your I want to get done with the YouTube videos to just do that yeah what's the name of your podcast? Music tech teacher.
Speaker 1:The music tech teacher podcast is it different formatting from the blog post or the stuff that you do with videos?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I found that because it's an audio only format and you'll hear me say in some of the episodes like it's hard to describe this in an audio format because often I'm talking about software programs or websites, you know.
Speaker 1:Video like yeah.
Speaker 2:I don't want to do video for the podcast because it's just. It's much quicker for me to just edit audio.
Speaker 1:This is being recorded because I do video, so then I chop them up and I put them on tiktok. Real Instagram stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that that's, that's, fine.
Speaker 1:Maybe because I came from the video world, so the idea of just doing an audio only podcast is like I'm gonna try, I gotta do the video thing. But also I've seen so many other podcasters. That successful one that I follow from the UK is called the Diary of us Is it called diary of a CEO, something like that, and his YouTube channel is like million plus and it's it's a podcast. Well, I mean, that's mentioned.
Speaker 2:Joe.
Speaker 1:Rogan and just other people who their main thing is podcast but their video portion of it is still so popular, so I was like I was well just turn the camera on right, but anyway yeah.
Speaker 2:I think people have both options and you know, yeah, and I did think about it, maybe down the track, but for now, you know, I thought no, I'd rather spend video time and effort in Like YouTube videos where it's me teaching a skill or showing some sort of software tool, something, but yeah, it's, it's hard, yeah. But the other, the podcast, is it's good. I mean it's I enjoy it just talking, but yeah, it's, it's slightly different Content. You know, I mean it's the same content but it's a different approach because I'm just talking about it rather than Showing things on the screen. So I have to be a little bit strategic. Some topics doesn't work well on a podcast, and Then other ones I can just talk about, like productivity tips. That's a great one for a podcast, yeah.
Speaker 1:You were to start midnight music again from scratch. What would you do differently? What would you do differently?
Speaker 2:It's hard to say. I think I probably waited a bit too long. Everybody says this, that they probably waited a bit too long to hire extra people. So everybody listening that's just starting out or hasn't yet hired anyone, just bite the bullet and get someone. Oh, and I have to say we did this pretty early. But if you are starting out and are about to hire someone or just have hired someone, the best thing you can do is to write every single process down. We have we've had for years in my business.
Speaker 2:I set up a spreadsheet and in the spreadsheet there's a column which has the name of a procedure in in one column.
Speaker 2:So it'll say like how to update someone, someone email record, or how to fix their login issues or how to Add them to the mailing list or how to, whatever the thing is in the business.
Speaker 2:You know how to, how to send an invoice from zero, whatever in that.
Speaker 2:In the next column there is a link to a Google doc where the instructions for that procedure are, and in the next column there's often not always, but often a screencast video. So whoever knows how to do that thing hits record one day when you're doing that job, hits record and records that task and just says okay, this is how you will update someone's email record in on trip, or you'll go in here and you'll click here so that if Michelle, who does my customer support stuff, is sick for a week, she has never been sick for six years working for me but let's just say she is one day and we can't get a hold of her and we're like we need to really get someone's login fix. Like you know how do we do that. Someone else can go into the spreadsheet and look it up and go, oh yeah, so there's a whole we call it the training catalog. So there's about you know a hundred things in this training catalog and the sooner you write that down, the sooner you can hand it off to someone else.
Speaker 1:Have you read the book the eMeth Revisited?
Speaker 2:No, I know of it.
Speaker 1:That's exactly what the books talk about. Yeah, that's crazy. So who showed you that process?
Speaker 2:I had started in a certain way and then I heard a podcast episode where someone talked about some aspect of doing that. And then I heard another friend who I've met at Tropical Think Tank. She has great online business and she said that they do this spreadsheet thing and I'm like that's it. I'm doing the spreadsheet. It's very unpretty, it's not pretty, it doesn't need to be. It just needs title link to information done and I haven't followed you actually for oh, you should totally.
Speaker 2:So good, because one of the best things I heard someone say on some podcast back in the day was If you can write the steps down for something that you can do, then that is something you can delegate. If you can write it down step by step, like the things you can't delegate would be I can't delegate the plane, the keyboard and the video in the keyboard.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and for me same thing.
Speaker 2:I can't delegate the teaching of the software or how I'm going to do that. But if I can write down how to go into Canva and update, you know, whatever it is, how to, how to switch out the text on an image that we're going to use and update, yeah, someone else can tell me to do that.
Speaker 1:That's something you can say. I read that book three, four years ago. That I'm just like I've been doing this thing. All wrong because I wasn't documenting anything down.
Speaker 2:And when I mean that was one of the things.
Speaker 1:Why didn't I took me so long to hire? It's gonna be taking too long for me to Sit there and explain. Yeah, no one should be writing things down.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so when we had the VA that I had who's not working with us? But when she was working for the business, when she started, we did a little bit of training with her for her, like she had some training but not a lot, because we kind of said, look, just this is what we need to do every day or every week. Go into the spreadsheet and take a look at the process, do this thing today, have a go at it, report back and say you know, could you do it? Okay, what was missing? Or if you've got questions, do not hesitate to ask. But then she could really follow the steps, because there was someone teaching her on a video anyway and showing her the process, and the only time probably there was many issues is if that had not been updated soon, you know, recently. So that's another thing. We actually have a column which says when it was last updated. So if you go, that hasn't been updated for five years. Maybe that someone needs to go in and look at that.
Speaker 2:That's a very straight, clean process to me it's really good Once you build it up. I think the thing is because I think in my mind I would feel overwhelmed if someone said to me you need to document everything in your business. You don't need to sit down and do it in a day or two, just the next time you do that thing. The next time you whatever yeah, you just hit record on Loom, screencastify whatever and run through the steps and talk it through. Don't just need to be fancy, you can amunar, you can pause the video and come back and yeah, the next time you do it and then you add it to the thing and then, after a month probably, you pretty much run through my things that you'll do, yeah handed off.
Speaker 1:Handed off is quick as possible. I got one more question here for you. So what advice would you give to anyone in the music industry who wants to start an online business in their expertise? How Anything to get them going, anything?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think you have to just get started. Really, you have to just do it, and this is what I'm trying to tell myself. With the YouTube thing, like you know, part of me wants to make it perfect from the get go and it's just not going to be. But you know, with online business generally, you just have to start doing something like get your website happening. Maybe that's the first thing. Just use WordPress, you know, don't use all these other tools that are popping up. Wordpress is just. Most people in the world are using WordPress. All the plugins available are for WordPress and you can hire 7 million people to help you with your WordPress site if you don't want to do it yourself. So, yeah, just get started with that.
Speaker 2:And everyone, I know again, talks about consistency, and it really is. It's consistency. Whatever you're doing, whether it's blog posts or YouTube videos, you know, don't try and do everything at once. Just pick one thing. The biggest struggle I have is keeping up with all the different things. Like you know, youtube really is where I should concentrate my time, because that, for me, is going to be beneficial. I can teach, I can show people teaching, and there's sort of ever growing videos, as opposed to social media, which disappears up a stream, you know, eventually.
Speaker 1:And the search engine quality of it. It's a search engine. It's a search engine. When I'm trying to learn something new, that's the first place I go.
Speaker 2:Yeah, same with me. I didn't use to. How do I do this in Photoshop? Yeah, the first place I go, I don't even Google it, I go to YouTube first, and I think people are like that too. But yeah, I think just starting small and being consistent is probably the best place to start. It's a bit boring and fast.
Speaker 1:Everyone said that, yeah, but it's actually just it's the best thing because, you know, I have a lot of colleagues in the music field, people who tour the world with artists, and they're like you know, I want to get out of this thing, this touring thing or this classroom thing, but I don't know how to start. How did you do this online thing? I was like, is it too late, because you know you started in 2014. I'm like it's not too late, it's never too late.
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:Forget about what camera you want to watch. The best camera what's the? None of that matters.
Speaker 2:I was using my MacBook Camera.
Speaker 1:And I started and you know I was like what? Iphone 3 at that time or something. Yeah, you know, just the basic iPhone. That was what I have. I didn't have any fancy nothing, no fancy microphone, I was just using the belt and speaker into my computer. Yeah, and it's funny, some of the videos that I created then has the most views even today. I look back and I wonder. Those videos have 1.5 million views.
Speaker 2:Oh, and it was like video number five. Yeah, my fifth video where I looked terrible.
Speaker 1:On camera was awkward. The lighting is probably, but yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, that's pretty good advice. I actually think, yeah, that is such a good point about just getting started with what you've got. Every single type of video I watch which teaches you about things. That is the question that everybody asks. So if it's for music stuff like live loop I love live looping you know you record yourself, you lay down a loop, you record straight away over the top, straight away. You're doing it all live the first question people ask is what technology, what pedal are you using? Or what app are you using on the iPad? It's like, yeah, that kind of matters, but not really when people see video editing, like something that's well edited for video, which video editing software? So I've been lately getting into drawing. It's sort of pattern based drawing called Zentangle. It literally involves a piece of paper and a fine line of pen. What's the question? Everyone asks which pen are you using? It doesn't matter. Pick up a burrow. Like draw me. Yeah, it does not matter what you're using, like just, yeah, start.
Speaker 1:People would be like I want to learn the keyboard, but there's so many different brands which keyboard. Which one is the best All?
Speaker 2:of them, it's the keyboard, if it makes a sound it is the best you know.
Speaker 1:So what it comes on is how much do you want to spend? You want to spend $5000 on a keyboard or $500.
Speaker 2:You can still achieve the same.
Speaker 1:So yeah, people get obsessed with the gear and the gear is going to make me better, and no, it doesn't.
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:You don't need to know Get practicing first.
Speaker 2:Get practicing, yeah, or practicing in whatever thing it is Practicing video editing or video recording or Zentangle drawing Just get started and then you actually you're in a better position to make a decision about what to buy. Because then you go, oh, I love this one, but I wish it had another octave, you know in terms of key, number of keys. Then you go, okay, so I need to upgrade. My next keyboard will be a bit bigger, or whatever. People have touch sensitivity, yeah.
Speaker 1:You learn what you need as you go along, and that's one of the biggest problems. They're thinking that they need to be able to see the end. I need to be where Warren is, so what do I need to get there? And I said I can't tell you that. You're going to have to figure it out as you go along because your path is going to be a little bit different in mine. When I just started, I knew nothing about websites.
Speaker 1:I was like how do I upload a video then sell it? You know, wasn't that straight forward and it was just. Every time I had a question I would just go to Google.
Speaker 2:How do I do?
Speaker 1:this and then I find out or blog post or a video and you, just you learn as you go along, based on what you need, because the knowledge I have now had someone poured it out on a piece of paper, it would have scared me. Yeah, absolutely Something, just not ready yet, for you know you have to grow into that position. So, yeah, thank you for that. You really have to learn by doing. Well, that's it, katie. That's pretty much what I wanted to discuss with you.
Speaker 1:This was an amazing discussion Midnight music, where technology meets teaching.
Speaker 2:That's such an awesome thing. Such an amazing thing.
Speaker 1:Thank you for coming on and sharing your knowledge with the folks over here at Business with Musician, because I didn't know this was possible. So to see that this is actually a thing that is so in demand for music teachers around the world, it is truly a thing. So I'm glad, maybe I'll be reaching out for you to for some tech skills as well.
Speaker 2:How do?
Speaker 1:I connect some of these things. My entire music teaching business is all tech, all online. So that's great. Yeah, it's insane.
Speaker 2:And it's hard with music as well, because it's just. You know, music isn't that much more difficult than anyone else who's working in the online space.
Speaker 1:People are like you.
Speaker 2:Just get on soon. Oh my gosh, you have no idea Like sharing audio through an online platform is hard work, but yeah, you can do it.
Speaker 1:Great, so thanks again for coming on and for sharing your knowledge with us.
Speaker 2:No worries.