AP 1169: How Do I Take My Unique Talents to a Larger Audience and Monetize?

AP 1169: How Do I Take My Unique Talents to a Larger Audience and Monetize?

Pat Flynn:
What's up everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to episode 1169 of AskPat 2.0. You're about to listen to a coaching call between myself and an entrepreneur just like you, somebody who's trying to grow their business, who's trying to grow their brand and reach more people, teach more people, inspire more people, monetize at the same time as a result of the service they're offering. And today, we're talking with Cello Joe. Yeah, Cello like the instrument, CelloJoe.com. This man is a man of many talents put together in a very entertaining package, and he actually is a street performer, he's a beatboxer, he's a cellist, and he puts them all together and makes it fun and entertaining. And he does a little show, and it's just awesome. And you should definitely check him out. You can find him on YouTube or his website, CelloJoe.com.

Today, we talk about what he's doing and how to expand, how to actually reach more people, how to take his talents to the next level. And it's a very interesting conversation. One of the most fun conversations I've had just in general with somebody super interesting in a really long time, in fact, and I'm really excited for you to listen in on how we discover what his next steps might be. So how do we go from Cello Joe today to Cello Joe tomorrow? Well, let's listen in. Here we go.

Joey, welcome to AskPat 2.0. Thanks so much for joining us today.

Joey Chang:
Thanks for having me, Pat.

Pat:
I'm excited to learn a little bit about you and I'm sure that audience is as well. Why don't you take a quick minute to share what it is that you do.

Joey:
Well, I'm a cellist, I'm a beatboxer, I'm a looper, a songwriter, a singer, and I perform music.

Pat:
All my favorite things, by the way. That's so cool.

Joey:
Yeah, so every time you've had people on that pertain at all to anything to do with performance, I've been super keyed in on that.

Pat:
That's cool. How do you perform this? Are you online doing this, or are you on stages? How is this a business for you?

Joey:
Well, before the pandemic, I was on a lot of stages. I was at private events, corporate events, weddings, every kind of live, in-person event, and then as soon as the pandemic hit, I switched to livestreaming and teaching music. The bulk of what I'm doing is now just working with people over video to teach music, and then here and there I'm doing some performances for companies and things like that.

Pat:
That's so cool. I think the audience who's listening would send me angry emails if I didn't ask you right now to just drop a quick beat for us if you could.

Joey drops a beat.

Okay. Nice. Dude, sick. Okay. Cool, the real deal here. So Joey, what's on your mind these days? How can I help you?

Joey:
Wow. Like I said, every time you have anybody that pertains at all to public speaking or performers or anything like that, I'm always super keyed in on that. And I've always wanted to know and ask you how to level up in the online music business game? Because I see all these people with their ads in the Instagram feed and the Facebook feed that are like, "Get my course. It's only $10,000 and then I'll teach you how to sell other people courses about how to do music business."

Pat:
Mm-hmm.

Joey:
You know? So I just want to know what your thoughts are on... you talk a lot about growing community and how that's super important. You talked about that with the Circle thing that - your SPI Pro community. And I just wanted to find out, I know you're not in the music business, but what is your outlook on somebody like me that's a solopreneur, no team, I'm doing it all myself. I'm trying to organize online concerts and getting 10 or so people to show up. What's the difference between me and somebody that is making a ton of money doing music online? How do I go from where I'm at to where they're at?

Pat:
If you were to pick a niche that you were in - because music in general is so wide. There's so many different places. But music is a solution to people. It's an outlet. It's something that people would pay for. It's entertainment as well. There's so many attributions to music that actually can make it even more interesting and better than something dry, for example. So there's a lot of opportunity for sure. But if you were to choose, what is your niche? What do you - helping people with with regards to music, what would you say that is?

Joey:
I think I'm helping people with whimsy and novelty. Just not being bored. I totally get what you're saying, and I've actually asked myself that question, because I have a friend that's a cellist that does a morning livestream and it's all new age-y and sort of spiritual music for people to meditate or stretch and stuff. And I feel like I could do that, but that's not really... I can do that. I've played for yoga classes and stuff like that. And I like doing yoga. But it's not really what I am all about. I try to do an interactive improv, freestyle jam with cello and beatboxing and electronic beats too, and I try to get the audience involved in that process.

I would say if I had to pick a niche, it would be, that is the niche. It's the Reggie Watts or Mark Reveley or Beardy Man, or these artists that get feedback from the people that are watching them and incorporate song ideas into what they're doing.

Pat:
That's cool. I mean, that's entertainment. So you are an entertainer. You said you teach music as well. If you were to choose your path in music, in whatever path that was and it became successful, it sounds like you want to be the entertainer, on stage, virtually or in-person who can interact with an audience, make people laugh, make people have a great time, and do it in that sort of way. Is that correct?

Joey:
Yeah.

Pat:
So I'm reminded of Lin-Manuel Miranda.

Joey:
Yeah.

Pat:
He came from an upbringing of improv rap. When he became known as an artist and then he wrote Hamilton, and part of what made that extremely popular was how it became a pop culture thing. I don't know if you saw it on Disney Plus, but it came back after it came out on Broadway and now we're in the pandemic, but it came back and Lin's been in the spotlight again. There's been a lot of documentaries about his story and how he's then provided music and entertainment for Disney with Moana and other incredible work that he does. But then when you go back into his history, he's on stage with these guys and they're just rapping and they're taking advice and taking thoughts from the audience. I think that's so cool, and it's something that there's always room for more of that because there's different styles, there's different ways to go about it.

I think that if you were to do that with something... how are you putting yourself out there in that regard? Are you doing this on YouTube, or are you kind of finding individual people or companies who might want to hire you? How are you going about trying to get known for that right now?

Joey:
I've done it through Restream to YouTube, Twitch, Facebook, Periscope, Instagram, all simultaneously. So I can see the chat from all of those at the same time. But I've also done this for companies a few times. I've done it for big tech companies.

Pat:
Okay. Here's how I would approach it if I had your talents. I've seen this with other people in different spaces too. There was a band named Boyce Avenue. I don't know if you know or have heard of them. But Boyce Avenue is just this independent band. They make their own music. But the way that they got put on the map was they did cover songs for very popular... Whatever was in the top 40 billboards, they would just make that song. But they would do it in their own style. They would do it in their own way. It would catch wind because it was the top songs at the time. So people were looking up those songs. They were finding them. People were in love with those songs. So what was happening was people would find the Boyce Avenue version and go, "Yo, hey guys, check out this version of it. It's really cool." The algorithm would take play, and anybody who watches the regular YouTube video from the actual artist who sang that song then gets recommended this other version. So they're getting fed from those people who actually created those songs.

I'm wondering if there was a way... Ffor example, it's similar to - have you seen Bad Lip Reading on YouTube? They're so good, not just because they have great talent and they create these really funny stories of people's mouths saying things that they didn't actually say, but it's because when the Super Bowl's out, they're doing an NFL one. When the election's happening, they're having the two candidates say funny stuff together but that's because that's what's happening in the news right now.

So if I was in a position like you, I would experiment with how could I take advantage of the things that are happening that are interesting to people in the world right now and make an improv rap about them and have people who are in that world, that little world who are interested in that come and want to play around and have fun with that too. Whether it's live and/or prerecorded, maybe it starts with some prerecorded stuff that is improv. There's another person, his name is Chris I think who is from England, who's doing a lot of funny improv stuff based on a lot of crowd interactions. He's just known for being a super nerdy UK... His stance is he's the white guy who knows a lot of knowledge and trivia but then can rhyme things really well.

Joey:
I think I know who you're talking about, I've seen this guy. He's like, "I'll rap about anything," and he does all kinds of events. Yeah.

Pat:
Exactly. That's his style. He takes a super nerdy approach to things, but it's very clever. He can't beatbox, and he can't do a lot of the things you do. So you can incorporate a lot of that stuff, and you said looping. Dude, looping is so engaging when it's done correctly on video or live. So I can imagine some videos where you take a topic or something that's hot right now. For example - I'm just pulling this out of thin air right now, but this is the 25th anniversary of Pokemon. So everything is huge in the world of Pokemon right now. So I can imagine a video about Pokemon where you loop a beat, you beatbox, and then you actually rap using all the clever things that you can do with the names of the Pokemon that sure, people on the outside have no idea what that is. But people who are on the inside of Pokemon are going to... Their minds are going to be blown, because they probably have never seen anything like this about something that means so much to them.

Yes, it would probably take some research and whatnot, but that's how I would approach it. And then what else is happening this year?

Joey:
Twitter trending. Dude, every day look at Twitter, what's the top trending five things, and then make something based on that.

Pat:
Exactly, exactly. Like there was a woman in the news - and I'm not saying find something bad that happened to somebody and then make a rap about it. Obviously with comedy and entertainment, you have a little bit more room for that than somebody who, like myself, is like, "Let me teach you about business using this example of somebody that..." It was an unfortunate situation this woman had used a Gorilla Glue spray on her hair. That was a huge meme.

Joey:
Yeah, yeah. I heard about it.

Pat:
Maybe it's a song about other things you shouldn't use on your hair or body that is inspired by that. That would be a way to sort of, what they call news-jack. You're taking these things that are very popular, creating something entertaining and fun and lighthearted out of it, not to poke fun but just to bring some joy to that situation, perhaps. And those are the things that people spread around and share.

What are your thoughts on this? I'm just trying to see what I would do if I had that kind of talent.

Joey:
No, this is great. And this is all stuff that I'm being reminded of because I know the story of Pomplamoose and Jack Conte, the guy that started Patreon was in this band called Pomplamoose, and that's how they blew up was doing interesting covers of the most popular songs of the moment. So I've known that I need to do that, and then I'm always like, "I don't like doing cover songs. I do original music." But it's really just me having this internal resistance to it. I know that I could easily do it, and the more times I do it, the better I'm going to get at it. So it's more just a matter of can I do the work and make the stuff?

Pat:
You'd probably crush it, honestly. Approaching it as not, "I'm going to be the cover guy." You might be seen as that, and that's fine because you know that that's how you're going to get people into the ecosystem. Because uniquely with you, unlike Boyce Avenue or these other bands who then play their originals and people are like, "Sure, but can you play another cover?" You get to engage with the people who found you and pull ideas from them. That's even better because now they come from the outside, and now they're involved. Now they feel like they can be a part of it as opposed to these cover song artists who then create originals and nobody cares about the originals. I mean, the super fans do and that's still worthwhile to do it for.

But you have this amazing way of engaging and then maybe people coming in watch your prerecorded videos, very on topic, very specific about certain things that are happening. "Hey guys, I'm going to be live this Friday. Come and you can play. You are going to give me ideas. I'm going to do this on the spot. We're going to have fun, play some music, invite the family. You can just do this on a Friday night with me." And that has nothing to do with the covers. That's just all about interaction and engaging. That could be really neat.

Joey:
The covers are really just more of a net to catch them.

Pat:
Exactly.

Joey:
The other thing I wanted to ask you about is, I have for years as well known that I need to create instructional video series about how to improvise on the cello because a lot of cellists play just straight classical. And I've known for years, I got to make a video learning series to show people that are classic cellists how to do improv on the cello. I think I've been hitting this hurdle of where do I start? How do I get that going? Do I just get my phone and record the first video of, "This is how you do improv on the cello. Let's learn how to play the blues scale in G," or something like that?

I've hit this block of how do I start a series? How many videos should it be? How do I know that people want to buy it? So I know that there's people out there that would want to buy this because I myself as a cellist was like, "How do you improvise on the cello?" And I had to teach myself and I went to music school and that's some of the ways that I learned to do it. So what's your advice to people that have a lot of expertise in something, want to do a subscription-model course or start doing one-offs or eight week courses and selling that at a pretty high value? I don't know what it would be, like $500 or $1,000.

Pat:
Yeah. Definitely charge for something like that eventually because that's years of schooling, years or experience, years of work that you put in to help make somebody else's life easier and fast forward through that process. So that is a value for sure. So I'm glad that you're already thinking of charging for that because that's something of value for sure.

My question before we dive into how you might go about doing that would be, where would this fit in to everything else? Is this a separate side gig based on... Because we just had this amazing conversation of stuff that you might do to gain more of an audience and improve the attendees and the number of people who come to the livestreams, and we didn't even talk about potential YouTube revenue from that and all those kinds of things. But where does the cello improv fit into everything else? Is it, in fact, something sort of separate on the side?

Joey:
I would say that it's pretty separate, but there is overlap in that the audience of people that want to watch a cello playing, beatboxing improvisor, includes some cellists. Like one out of every few hundred people that tunes in -

Pat:
Sure, I agree.

Joey:
... is very interested in cello, and the reason that they're watching it is because they play the cello or they want to learn how to play the cello.

Pat:
Or they heard from somebody, "Oh, there's this rapping beatboxer cellist. I play cello. I got to see that." So they kind of make their way there.

Joey:
Yeah, but I think of it as a separate side business that more of the revenue is coming from because I don't know how to level up my YouTube game. I have like 1,000 subscribes and change, and I really need 100,000. So how do I get from 1,000 to 100,000 and make the YouTube revenue that you're talking about more reliable? Like, people downloading music and actually paying for it.

Pat:
Well, on our ideas from earlier with the covers and all those kinds of things and your improv, even taking recordings of your lives, putting them there, that can all add to the livery that you have that will eventually snowball the income that can potentially come in from there. So that's one revenue source, and then over time people will subscribe, especially if you're consistent. Consistency on YouTube is going to be probably the most important thing. Continually showing up so that when people who subscribe know that every time you come out with a video, it's going to be in that realm and something that they can look forward to.

Definitely check out that rapper guy from the UK. He's doing it right in terms of YouTube and how to use YouTube if you want to follow an example of that.

Joey:
Okay.

Pat:
But when it comes to the cello stuff, I can imagine once the audience is - and even sooner than later, once you start to become known for the rapping cellist and maybe even you start to brand yourself as such. Like, "I'm the beatboxing cellist," or however you want to say it. And you say it in every video, people will know you for that. Now they're sharing you in that way. You have a video on your feed that just goes, "Hey guys, I want to take you behind the scenes and show you how I do this. This is what I needed to do to learn this. First I start with a blues scale like this and here I am using a looper. So now this is playing. So now I can beatbox over that." You show people behind the scenes. It's not like, "Learn how to cello." It's how you do what you do because you become known.

And then at the end of the video, you say, "Hey, by the way, if you happen to play cello, I'm looking to help people. So I have a link below in the description." That could be the way to funnel people in who come from this wider audience, and then you find the cellist. Like you said, if you know they're coming to you already, then that's a good sign. Now they're funneling into an email list from people who are warm, who want to learn more from you, and now you have exactly what you need, which is people who want the learn more in a specific spot, like an email list. You can start engaging with them in conversation. "Hey, what are you looking to do? What are you looking to try to do?"

And then you can then be able to start to craft something that makes sense for real people as opposed to - what many people do is they have this idea, like I'm going to create a course to help people learn how to improv with cello. They create the course and then they force people into it or try to figure out how to get people into it. The approach that you want to take, and this always works much better - and again, you have the benefit of having an audience of some kind already. This is a Seth Godin quote. It is, "Don't find customers for your products. Find products for your customers." So get to know who those customers are, who those people are first, and then you'll be able to see exactly what it might be like.

And then what I would do from there more tangibly would be to find one person that you can help within that group, and just go, "Hey, I'm just going to mentor you for the next three weeks, and I'm going to help you..." Even if it's for free. Maybe you can get paid for it; maybe not. But that's not the point. The point is that's going to force you to figure out how to relay the information that you have in a way that it can be recorded and shared with one person, which guess what, if that works, it could be also shared with thousands of others. That person will guide you. "I didn't understand that," or, "Hey, I'm not getting this." Okay, well, good thing you're learning about this now from one person before creating the whole course for everybody because you can fine tune it as you go and almost build it with them.

And then at the end, you have this amazing, not just course ready, but you have a testimonial from somebody who's not you who you took through this process that now everybody can see, "Oh, I want that course that she took because she's doing it now. She didn't before. I want that now too." That's how I would approach it.

Joey:
The difficulty I see is that some of these things are not a three-week process. It's - to learn how to do these intricate musical tasks, it's like you have to practice it and sometimes you don't get it for eight weeks, you don't get it for 12 weeks. It starts clicking after six months or a year.

Pat:
So if that's the case, then yeah, you're right. I would approach it with a cohort of students, maybe a small group that can work with you for quite a bit of time. You would essentially be their mentor, their coach for that process. It would be something I would charge for. You don't have to build it yet. You could just pre-sell it to see if people are even interested and that's how you know. That's how you can get the messaging right. You pre-sell it and you go, "Okay, guys. For the next however many months..." Again, you would have to create that curriculum, and that's probably what people would want to know beforehand before even investing. But I think that that might be the first step, to come up with the curriculum. How long would it actually take? What would be the process like? So that when you go to these people who eventually come your way, you can present them with something, almost like a prototype that they can then get access to with you and become a part of that first cohort.

And the cool this is even if they're not all the way through it, if it is a longer thing, I've seen this. If it maybe takes a whole year or nine months, after three months, you see they're at least making progress. You can invite another group of brand new students in, and now you have cycles and people can have their students here on Zoom calls with them or whatever. And you're kind of listening to just a small group, like cohort one and then you know that the next day you have a meeting with cohort two. Then they're only one month in while the cohort one is four months in. You can kind of stack them. You don't have to keep adding them on. It may just provide you exactly what you need with just the one. But that one will teach you so much and it'll help you figure out how to make it work as you're going.

Joey:
That's great advice. When you say a curriculum or making it, are you talking about a single sheet of paper with an outline that's like, "These are the topics that we're going to go over on each week," or are you talking about an actual 30 minute long-

Pat:
Like a course, course.

Joey:
Yeah.

Pat:
I'm talking about-

Joey:
When you're pre-selling it to people.

Pat:
Yeah. I'm talking about a sheet of paper that helps me as a potential customer know what the journey's going to be like once I start working with you.

Joey:
I see. Okay.

Pat:
Then at week one, we get on a call, you teach me, and then I have the whole next week to work on it. Maybe you're available during office hours at some point or I can email you, however accessible you want to be. And then I come with you the next week with my other friends who are taking this with me, and maybe you do a little session where you listen to everybody and you can comment on it to see everybody's progress. Then you teach us the next one right there live, if you will. The cool thing about that is you could have those recorded and used later, or you can just know the process and refine it for the next group who you run through live with. So that's how I would do it, yeah.

Joey:
Wow. This is all really good, helping me get clear on just action steps, how to get it started, because I feel like I've been on this treadmill of, "I got to do this. I got to do this." Then like, where do I start? I don't know how to pre-sell a course. Never done it before.

Pat:
Yeah. But you're seeing the benefit of doing that, right? It'll help you even know if you should even start designing the actual homework and all that stuff later. I'll tell you, when you pre-sell something and know that people have paid you money for something that's not there yet but just the idea of it, you get moving. You start making decisions finally and then you can start to see the results. And that's where the magic comes in.

So I'm really glad this was helpful. I cannot wait to see where this goes from here. If you wanted to drop a link for everybody or a couple links as far as where they can go and find you or how they can see your work, where would they go?

Joey:
Oh, my website CelloJoe.com. It's spelled like jello but with a C, then J-O-E. And all my social links are right at the top. So I'm on SoundCloud, Bandcamp, Spotify, YouTube, Facebook, all of them, and Twitch as well. Thanks so much, Pat. This is really great.

I do have a tagline for myself. It's I'm the wildest beatboxing cellist in the West, because I live in California.

Pat:
Yeah. Awesome. Dude, I can't wait to dive in to some of the videos. I'm on your website now. So thank you so much for that. CelloJoe.com. Check him out.

Thank you so much for today. I appreciate you.

Joey:
Hey, appreciate you, Pat. Thank you.

Pat:
All right, I hope you really enjoyed that entertaining interview and conversation with Cello Joe. It was a coaching call, not really even an interview, but I just felt like it was because I was just really interested in what he was doing and how he's doing it. And you should check out his website, CelloJoe.com. I'm really looking forward to what he's doing to do with this information, how he's going to put it into action. And we talked a little bit about some stuff related to some experience that I've had with other people who are also very talented in using platforms that we have available to us. In addition to what we talked about, I think things like Instagram and definitely things like TikTok could go very, very, very long way for you, Joe. So I hope you're listening in. I appreciate you and best of luck to you.

If you'd like to get coached here today, like Cello Joe, you can go to AskPat.com, fill out an application there, and I might reach out to you. I'd hope to hear from you sometime soon so we can potentially connect. I'd love to help you out because I love to do this for free. In exchange, all I ask is hey, let's share it for everybody to inspire, to educate, to entertain, and Cello Joe, you're amazing. Thank you for helping us do all those things today.

So thanks everybody. I appreciate you. Thank you so much for the reviews. They have just been absolutely incredible, and I keep the energy going because of you. So thank you so, so much, and if you have a sec, leave a review on Apple Podcasts. That'd be really helpful, and make sure you subscribe so you can catch next week's episode too. You don't want to miss it.

Thank you so much, take care, and as always, Team Flynn for the win. Peace.

Thanks for listening to AskPat at AskPat.com. I'm your host, Pat Flynn. Sound design and editing by Paul Grigoras. Our senior producer is Sarah Jane Hess, our series producer is David Grabowski, and our executive producer is Matt Gartland. The Smart Passive Income Podcast is a production of SPI Media. We'll catch you in the next session.