AP 1242: How Do I Serve Multiple Avatars Who Consume My Content?

AP 1242: How Do I Serve Multiple Avatars Who Consume My Content?

Pat Flynn: What's up everybody Pat Flynn here and welcome to episode 1242 of AskPat 2.0. You're about to listen to a coaching call between myself and an entrepreneur and business owner just like you. And today we're talking with Bill Henry, the founder of Mr. Henry's music world and the Music for Kids podcast, which guess what was recently featured in the New York Times.

But Bill has a little bit of an issue cuz he's had multiple people and groups of people find his work and now he's having a little bit of a, of a curiosity on, well, how do I best serve the different parts of my audience, right?

There are the kids who watch, but then there's also the piano instructors who use my stuff, and there's like the music educators who I can help as well. It's an interesting dilemma that actually is fairly common. Once you start to continue to grow, and this is something that you could run into too. So I don't want you to miss out on this one.

This will be a great one. And a big shout out to Bill and what he does for kids and, and music educators, too. Music has been a huge part of my life still continues to be, and I wouldn't be where I'm at today without the band directors and music educators that have had in my past. So thank you Bill. And here he is Mr. Bill Henry from Mr. Henry's music world.

Pat Flynn: Bill, welcome to Ask Pat, thanks for joining me today.

Bill Henry: Hey Pat, thanks so much for having me. It's great to be here.

Pat Flynn: I'm excited that you're here and why don't we start off by asking you, what do you do? Tell us about yourself a little bit.

Bill Henry: Yeah, sure. So I am, I'm an elementary music teacher for the public school system, I've been doing that for 16 years, but I also give private lessons. So mostly piano lessons and that's all online. But then I also run a YouTube channel called Mr. Henry's Music World and website as well, Mr. Henry's Music World.

And so on that channel, there's a couple different audiences kind of going on with that channel, which I think is maybe part of, you know, what, what I wanted to talk to you about. So most recently the channel has been for elementary music teachers. That's what I've been, you know, making videos for. Cuz I started to notice that teachers were, were using the videos within their classroom.

And I too was using them in my classroom. So it, you know, just started to naturally catch on that. That's what they were being used for. But originally the channel was used for offering like piano lessons for kids. And the, the biggest reason for that was because I did create like an online piano course for kids.

And it's for like the elementary age student, who's a very beginner and there's some videos like on YouTube that gotten traction from, you know, the, those piano videos have, have gotten some traction and it's created, you know, some students to enroll into the course. And I do like biweekly group sessions with them and things like that.

So it's a whole program, so that's kind of like one thing that's going on right now, but the channel, but then, then there's the music teacher side and I do offer I've products that teachers can purchase that go along with these videos. So like for example, like I have won a video called the back to school rap, and that has a, a variety of activities, but then teachers can get a free resource that goes along with that. And then from there I do like an email marketing kind of thing to say, Hey, do you wanna upgrade, you know, save time there's lesson plans and things like that. So that's, what's going on with the YouTube channel. And then I've, I've even had people then start to contact me to do affiliate work.

So there's like that whole part of it too. So I've done some, some affiliate things with different companies, and that was just basically people emailing me and saying, Hey, would you want to do a review on this keyboard or this, this guitar tuner and things like that. So it's taken that route as well.

It's been really neat. And, and I I'm, I'm not complaining about or anything. It's just part of me is wondering if I'm starting to get pulled in too many directions. So another thing that I do, I also have a podcast and that's called the music podcast for kids. I do it with a friend of mine, Bruce.

And that show is kinda like a story based show and that's what, that's what this is, but it's like the music version. So we're teaching kids about music through storylines and, you know, there's sound effects and music and all that stuff.

So it's like a highly produced show that we do. And we've done that for a couple years now. So there's, there's that, it's just, I I'm starting to feel like there's maybe like I'm starting to do too much. And then most recently, and, and this was something that was kind of in the works for a couple years, but with the pandemic hitting, it, it, you know, dissolved that, but now it's starting to come back.

And what that is is I was in communication with another podcaster who does, he has a podcast called music lesson business academy. And what he does is help other music, business owners who have like a private studios that offer lessons. And he helps those, those people out. And he was looking for a group piano program that I also created and I messaged him and said, Hey, would you be interested in doing this group program?

Of course, group stuff got put to the wayside with the pandemic. And so here we are like, you know, two and a half years later where it's, that's starting to ramp up again. And he came back and said, Hey, I'd like to do this, this program. So there's, there's that opportunity as well to where I, I might be.

That's like a, just a whole other audience, right? So, I, I just, I just feel like there are many directions I'm getting pulled in and I'm trying to figure out like how you rank it, you know, how do, how you figure out maybe how to manage it in a way that is, is not gonna take as much time as I I'm pretty sure I need, you know, in order to, to really do it effectively.

That's kind of where I am.

Pat Flynn: Got it. Thank you for that background. First of all, congrats on the success that you're having. I'm on the YouTube channel right now that back to school rap video is like a one and a half million views and it was only published a year ago. That's that must feel awesome.

Bill Henry: Yeah. It was pretty wild seeing that.

Pat Flynn: Yeah. . And now that we are going back to school soon, it's probably going to blow up even more. So well done on that and, and what you've done for yourself very common when you become a consistent content creator. When you find out what's unique and you just keep pushing into that is you now have created several new opportunities for yourself.

It opens up a lot of new doors, but I'd love to ask you from a scale of one to 10, one being not compelled at all, 10 being, I am drawn to all of these things. And I feel like I have to say yes to them. Like how much are you compelled to, because these opportunities are in front of you, to do them all?

Bill Henry: I enjoy doing all of it. Really. I think the thing I, I love doing the most is creating the actual video, you know, creating the music for it, making the video. So I, I think I look at myself as more of a creator in that, in that realm, but then, but then there's also a really fun aspect to trying to construct a really good email that people are going to relate to and, and click on and, and want to engage with.

So I like that business side of it as well. And then there's the financial part of it too. Like, is there. A better opportunity financially to go for the private lesson, you know, licensing this group piano program to a music business, right? I think in the end, what I've just been doing is just trying to experiment and kind of seeing what, you know, it's that throw this spaghetti on the wall, he with sticks, right?

Pat Flynn: And a lot of it is sticking, right.

Bill Henry: Well, I mean, Yeah, it's hard to say because it's, I think a lot of it is still kind of new. Like the affiliate stuff, for example, it was fun to do. I like making those videos. I'm not getting like a ton of sales from that. And, and if you, if you were to look at the channel two, you would see there's a clear difference in how many views those particular videos get versus, you know, one of the raps that I do, you know?

Yeah. Mm-hmm but I'm also kind of like, but they're new. So do I keep engaging with that? Or do I just stick with what's working?

Pat Flynn: Yeah. I mean, you wanna read the signals from YouTube for sure. There's a guy, his name's Brady, and he created a load of videos over the last, you know, decade of all this random stuff.

And recently he filmed a video titled, can you raise a grocery store lobster as a pet? I don't know if you've heard of those videos, but Leon the lobster is the guy is the lobster and that video is 18 million view. And he goes back to his other videos, right after that his motorcycle reviews or native American stuff, it's, it's all over the place.

But then the next time the Leon the lobsters brought back for an update it's like 9 million views on that video, right? Okay. So it's clear now that he's starting to notice that oh, Okay. YouTube and not just YouTube, but people want more of this. And it's just read in the signals with the analytics and so on, on, on the YouTube side of things, despite there being an affiliate opportunity, because it's not your main thing.

It is one of those things that you can say to yourself, although I have this, I'm gonna opt out because I wanna do more of the fun stuff and the stuff that is working on YouTube. So again, it's up to you, but if I were in your position, I would focus more time and energy on the stuff that's fun. Because I mean, how much fun are you having, creating those videos versus the raps and, and, and the other things?

Bill Henry: Well, I mean, the, I, the affiliate videos, I, you know, I try and be creative with it. So like the one guitar tuner one I had I did like a little spoof of back to the future stuff. You know what I mean?

Pat Flynn: Yeah. I mean, I would like that, so, yeah.

Bill Henry: When I look at those, I try and make them fun. Like I do enjoy doing them. And I'm just wondering if maybe down the road, those, those could be something that is an opportunity there. One, one thing that I was approached by someone to do an article for their music education website, I ended up doing that and found out it was with a company called west music and they provide a lot of they're it's music instrument for like music educators and ended up saying, Hey, here's an affiliate video that I did. Are you guys, you know, familiar with doing this or, you know, working with the influencer side of, of marketing. And they said we're actually, yes, we are actually interested in doing something like that. And this would be like the pinnacle of that video.

So. You know, here, here's me saying to myself and I should be focusing on other things, but then I come up with this idea of, well, maybe I could make an affiliate partnership with this company and they are interested, but you know, it's just like, Should I have not done that, you know?

Pat Flynn: Yeah. Again, I think you're still in experimentation mode with, with something like that, which is okay.

I mean, you'll find over time that you'll begin to start to, as long as you're conscious about it, if you're just creating videos to create videos without looking at not just like your channel and your analytics, but like your goals, where do you want to be? What, what do you want to do? You're at a point now where you can make decisions and say no to opportunities.

You can say no to money here to make more money here and do more fun things here. And a very common place for an entrepreneur at your stage to be in is just, this is brand new territory for you. I would imagine. So oftentimes you people either say yes to every opportunity because we've never had these opportunities before.

And we're also, you know, suffering from FOMO. We're afraid of losing out on these opportunities, but when you grow to this size, you can always get these opportunities again, later, if you were to put them aside. But most of all, what often happens is it's an energy thing. It's a burnout potential it's it's time management and something is bound to break or be left behind.

If we were to say yes to all of these things, right? So then to your original point, it's like, how do we rank them? How do we, how do we prioritize them? And that's gonna be the big key here is to figure out what is a 10 outta 10 must have, must do is always gonna be a part of my situation. And what, what are the things that are lower in the prior priority list that, yeah, sure.

If I had the opportunity, it made sense and I had energy for it. Sure. But if I didn't, then I'd be okay saying no to them. And there's a couple ways to determine that you can sort of create you don't have to get super algorithmic with it. I mean, you can just kind of think about it, but you know, there's multiple components that you can determine that are important to you.

You can determine if the financial part of it is, is, is important to you. The fun part, the you know, the time aspect of it, you can sort of create some sort of like internal rankings about each of these things. My favorite thing to do based on you're back to the future common earlier is to actually hypothetically make a decision on these opportunities that you have available like this private lesson group training one. Let's just say, you said yes to that fast forward into the middle of all that going down. What is required of you on, on the daily? How much time is that gonna take? How much is that bringing in for you?

And is that enough or, like many people when I run this exercise, we go through scenario where it pans out the way they want it to. And we, we go into the Delorean and we fast forward into the future. It works the way they want it to, if they were to say yes, and they're still not happy, or they're earned out in the, in the future or they're, they're like, wow.

Even if that were successful, it actually doesn't fulfill me. So why would I say yes to this now? And that way we can have some forward thinkingness to this. And then I say, okay, come back to present day. Now, go the opposite direction, say no to it. What does that do for you? How do you do, do you in the future regret that?

Or what does that open up for you here? Because the truth is when you say yes to something, you're also saying no to something else and vice versa. And what I don't wanna see happen is you take on all these things and then your YouTube channel starts to suffer, right? Because you're so focused over here or you're, you know, not helping the music educators, which I know is important to you because you are focusing more on affiliate stuff and the making money part of it.

And sure, you might be making more money, but maybe you're less fulfilled because you just put aside the music educators that we're, we're getting a lot of help from your videos. So again, a lot of things to weigh, nothing that we could sort of determine right now, because it's gonna take some sort of thought from you and some honesty with yourself about these things.

How does that like resonate with you in terms of like exercise and, and whatnot?

Bill Henry: Yeah, it's good. And part of, I think something that I'm always trying to do is figure out how to do like, you know, make a video. But then how can I do like a kill two birds with one stone kind of thing? Like, one thing that I did was it was a, a rhythm play along that teachers can use in the classroom, but it featured a product that was also part of an affiliate.

And so that was something that I was kind of like trying to figure out you just describing that whole thing up for some reason, brought that into my brain. That that could be a way to fulfill that where I'm still helping those music teachers, but then, you know, Hey, here's a cool product that, you know, you might also be able to use in, you know, in your personal life or, or in the classroom.

Pat Flynn: I like that those are my favorite videos. Like, like many video channels I watch. Include sponsorships, right? And it could either be just like a, okay. Let's take a break from everything and talk about this product for two minutes and it just doesn't even relate, I dunno, cat food and I'm a dog person, or it's actually injected into the content used and it just naturally fits in.

There was the video I watched from a woman named Michelle, who does these really cool videos, where she challenges herself to do something like she'll learn how to be a police officer one day or how to do the 9 1 1 calls or be you know, a, a ballet dancer. And she spends time with like a professional to teach her.

And she was doing a video yesterday where it was, she was learning how to do parkkour. And she was learning from like a, one of the top parkour people. But she also mentioned the beginning that she was bringing in this LG phone that flips out and does really cool things. She's like, I'm gonna use this camera during my training to show you some of the cool things this camera can do.

And it was like, it was pretty epic because she was taking like slowmo video and you saw the camera in use. And it like, even though I'm an Apple person, I'm like, Wow, that phone's really cool. And I didn't come here to watch that phone. I came here to watch Michelle and do parkour, but the phone is injected into the content really naturally.

And it doesn't even feel like an ad, even though it was obvious it was one, right?

Bill Henry: Yeah. I, I think for me too, like getting that creative, I, I just. The, the creative part of it is, is the most important I think for me, and I agree that the YouTube channel just can't suffer. Like I still want to create that content cuz that's really the core of it all.

That's how any opportunity came. The one thing that the, the new opportunity with the private studios, so the, the curriculum that I wrote for the online piano lessons so if you were a parent and you wanted to, instead of having your kid do private lessons with, with someone, because it might be more expensive you could do this online piano course.

Well that online piano course, which is a digital curriculum, right. Is something that's gonna be a part of this group piano program. And it's really kind of a, it's a new idea in that world. Typically group piano programs are done, you know, in like sessions, you know, your child would go in and they'd be with a group of five or six people.

They would, you know, go through the course and be done after a couple months and then they do the next session, something like that. Right? So this is kind a different kind of way of where kids would be going in and actually going through the digital curriculum. So the reason why I wanted to explain that is because it is kind of like a new idea and I am working with his name's Danny Thompson.

He has a music school in California, so he's gonna be implementing that. And then discussing it on his podcast and, and all of that good stuff. And what this triggers for me is this idea of, and, and what I'm doing an affiliate with him. So he'll be an affiliate of the group piano program. And so I'm wondering if that could be a way to connect with people more like Danny, where they could essentially promote the course to the music lesson, business folks who are looking for group piano, which is a big thing right now, especially with the shortage of labor. They're, they're finding that within the teachers, within teachers as well, doing private studio work.

So to have a group piano program is really great. Cuz you can have one teacher with, you know, six kids. I look at this as it's a new opportunity. I do know that from a financial standpoint can be good, but I wanted to see what you, what your thoughts were on that being kind of the approach. Because the thing I, I know that I definitely don't have time for is to create content for music, lesson, business owners.

Right. I mean, that's just, that's a whole other, that could be a whole career in itself.

Pat Flynn: For sure. So you're killing two birds of one stone here because you're using content that already exists. You're not creating anything new. So I like that idea. You just have a different way to put people through it. In 2016, I took people through no 2000, maybe 2017.

I took people through my digital course, Power Up Podcasting in person. Then later in 2019, we did a boot camp version, which was a, and, and this is what's known as now cohort based courses where you have like a digital version that people can go through, but you meet up once or twice a week in person or virtually to discuss those things or to have people turn in homework and then kind of have office hours, maybe one of those days of the week.

And all the content, the lecture based stuff is all the digital stuff that you just assign during you know, the week essentially. And it was really great. Like I loved, I loved that, but it was the interactions that were actually more valuable than the content itself, right. As one would expect in this situation.

So it still took time. And I'm curious about how much of your time would be required. And if it's still manageable, then what's neat is you can, again, run an experiment. You can do this once only without a commitment to do it many times over until you prove that A this works and you can get people in.

So you validated it, but also validate it for yourself. Do, did it take way more time than you thought? Did you not like it? Well, okay. Good thing we didn't commit to a whole year of this. We just did it for two months or, or six sessions and, and that's it. Or maybe it worked out fantastic. And you can then optimize and take yourself out of it even more, or even down the road, hire some other people to sort of manage that process or, or be there live.

And then it's just, you're just kind of, you know, managing as far as the partnerships, I mean, that's by far gonna be the easiest way to get more people in front of it is to use other audiences and, you know, you're providing value to them because you have this curriculum and this coursework, and they're providing value to you in the sense of, of a brand new customer.

And then you kind of both can, can win off the top of that. So again, I like that idea. It's just time management part is gonna be the most important thing, because again, time and time again it's oh yeah, that sounds like a good idea and that, so does that, and so does this, and then something breaks and many times it's the contents get stopped, like stops getting published because these other things are taking up more time and that's what we wanna try to avoid.

So I like that idea to, you know, increase the finances, cuz that's definitely gonna be a lot more profitable than at the current state of the YouTube channel, probably with, with ad revenue and such. So I like that. And to do it as a micro test to start, could be a great thing to either keep doing it later or, or, or not. But then you would know.

Bill Henry: Right. And, and as you're talking to, 'em just thinking about, you know, like affiliate videos, that's something that I could put to the side, right? So while I work on getting this going with, you know, talking with other influencers who are plugged into people who are looking for information on how to run a music lesson business, would, would you say, maybe try and do something of that nature with this music lesson business, group piano program, maybe six months or a year, or?

Pat Flynn: I mean, those, those are long periods of time. Okay. To submit to, for sure. I would say at a max, like personally, I would say three months. Okay. And then. If you like it and the students enjoy it, then you go, Hey, let's continue working together. I'm gonna increase my price for the next group of students.

But for you, if you wanna come back for the next three months, I'm gonna grandfather you in the old price.

Bill Henry: Well, you know what, actually, I don't think I explained it very well. So the program is actually, so it's actually a program that I would license to a music lesson studio. And so the, the program is, is completely finished with all the resources that a music school would use.

So I, I'm not a part of it at all in terms of teaching. All the teaching is done online. It's already done. So the online course is already finished, right? And so, and I even have like teacher training. I have owner training within this whole group piano program. So if you were a music school owner, you would pay a monthly amount to have access to all of these materials.

And you would actually hire a teacher in your studio to teach the group piano, but you're using my curriculum, which is a digital curriculum

Pat Flynn: Got it. This is the Dave Ramsey model, right? A lot of people teach financial piece university on his behalf, essentially. Exactly. Yes. So, okay. So, try it once with, with one owner first.

Yeah. So you can, you know, somebody that, you know, already, you can knock out all the kinks and all the friction that might be there, or the, you answer all the questions and you essentially become you, you're almost like franchising this in a, in a way, but we don't know what other can of worms this could potentially open, which is why, again, we wanna microt test this first.

And then when, when you were asking like, well, how for, how long should I do this? I would say you have them pay a monthly fee to get access to the material and is when they stop paying that monthly fee. It's it's done. or they pay maybe a larger upfront cost to get kind of have lifetime access to it, if, if you will.

And this is kind of cool, cuz then you can have some recurring income coming in and predictable income coming in as well, right? If it's zero extra time on your end for teaching and the time on your end would still be required to you know, help them, them through that material or, or help teacher, maybe like a special training for their teachers or something that you might offer or something, but it's, it's far less time. So therefore it's definitely worth your time to, to potentially put that together.

Bill Henry: Yeah. Mm-hmm okay. Sounds good.

Pat Flynn: Yeah. Nice. I like that opportunity. And the cool thing is like you could even have it to a point where they could pay extra to, to white label it, right. To put their own brand on it. It's like not even associated with you anymore, but they just take it on their own. Typically that happens in a lot of industries where you can pay to, to essentially take your brand off of it.

And you deliver them sort of just a out of the box version that they can put their own brand on top of and use and license. So there's a lot of things that you can do. I would definitely look at how people are franchising, their digital assets to others for sort of like how to, to manage and run this.

You want like good contracts into place, right? That, that sort of thing. Okay. Very cool dude. Wonderful opportunities in front of you. I'm excited to see which direction you go. We'll have to connect with you again in the future to see where things end up and, you know, your channel at this point, just for a timestamp is at 32,700 subscribers.

And you only started your channel like less than three years ago or about three years ago. So congrats on that success, looking forward to see more rap videos and we'll have to rap about the success that you have from this point forward the next time.

Bill Henry: Sounds good. Awesome.

Pat Flynn: Where can people go to all your work?

Bill Henry: Sure. Yeah. So if even if you just Google Mr. Henry's Music World, the YouTube channel should pop up. And then of course, the website MrHenrysMusicWorld.com. So there's a lot of fun, fun content there for kids and also the music podcast for kids. And that was actually featured in the New York Times not that long ago. So that was pretty cool.

Pat Flynn: That's awesome. So we'll put all the links for everybody on the website and, Bill, congrats and keep up the good work.

Bill Henry: Thank you so much, Pat.

Pat Flynn: All right. So I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Bill. Again, you can find him at Mr. Henry's Music World. Just looked that up on Google. You'll find everything. And then also his podcast, the The Music Podcast for Kids. I think I may have misquoted that earlier, but The Music Podcast for Kids and well done on everything, Bill, I hope this was helpful to you and to you, the listener, make sure to subscribe if you haven't already, we got a lot of other great coaching calls coming your way. And I look forward to serving you next week.

Cheers, peace out, and, as always, Team Flynn for the win. And head on over to AskPat.com if you'd like to potentially get coached here as well. AskPat.com. Have a good one. Cheers.

Thanks for listening to AskPat at AskPat.com. I'm your host Pat Flynn. Our senior producer is Sarah Jane Hess. Our series producer is David Grabowski. And our executive producer is Matt Gartland. Sound editing by Duncan Brown. AskPat is a production of SPI Media. We'll catch you in the next session.