On this episode John Kozicki (Michigan Rock School and RockSchoolProprietor.com) and Mandy York (Music Time of Milford) talk with Lauren Bateman, a successful music educator and YouTube guitar teacher with over 600 thousand subscribers. They discuss the balance between running brick-and-mortar music schools and an online presence, the realities of achieving success on YouTube, and the importance of authenticity in content creation. Lauren shares insights on hiring, narrowing down niches, and navigating the challenges of algorithm changes. The conversation also touches on the role of AI in music education and the significance of coaching others in the industry.
In this episode:
- How Lauren finds balance running two music schools and a successful YouTube channel.
- How balancing multiple business ventures requires effective time management and delegation.
- Lauren shares insight about on how YouTube success is not guaranteed and often takes years of consistent effort, and that authenticity is crucial for connecting with an audience on YouTube.
- Hiring instructors requires looking for animated and engaging personalities.
- Narrowing down a niche can help attract a specific audience.
- Post-COVID, online learning has become more accepted, but competition has increased.
- Diversifying platforms can protect against algorithm changes.
- AI is becoming a significant player in education, but human interaction remains valuable.
- Coaching others can be a fulfilling way to share knowledge and experience.
From balancing her brick-and-mortar music schools to navigating the digital landscape, Lauren’s journey is a testament to hard work and authenticity. Lauren shares a wealth of knowledge in this episode on growing a thriving music school and online community.
Lauren’s website: https://www.laurenbateman.com/
Lauren’s YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/LaurenBateman
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Episode Transcript:
John Kozicki (00:01.505)
Welcome to Rock School Proprietor Podcast. My name is John Kozicki and my co-host is with me today, Mandy York. Hi, Mandy.
Mandy York (00:09.494)
Hey John, how’s it going?
John Kozicki (00:11.195)
I’m doing really well. I’m excited because we have a guest joining us. Our guest is the owner of two brick and mortar music lesson studios under the name LB Music School in Massachusetts. She is the creator of the seven level guitar system online guitar course, and she runs a very successful YouTube channel over half a million subscribers. Lauren Bateman. Is it half a million? Is it?
Are you closing in on a million?
Lauren Bateman (00:41.652)
Well, yeah, it’s like close to 600,000 now. It’s funny that the bigger you get, the less I keep track of the number.
John Kozicki (00:45.763)
All right.
Mandy York (00:46.551)
Nice.
John Kozicki (00:50.907)
Isn’t that funny? Success over success over success. That’s fantastic. So I know we’re gonna talk a lot about YouTube and that is kind of why I asked you to come join us today. But I also wanna know how you balance what clearly is a very successful online YouTube channel and you have your courses.
with your brick and mortar because I know for me personally, running the brick and mortar and you have two of them and even just doing this podcast, it can be a lot. So how do you balance? How do you balance that?
Lauren Bateman (01:34.728)
you know, it’s always funny. word balance. don’t think I’m very good at balancing. I don’t want to pretend that I balance very well, but no, I think it’s about, I think it’s about being, good about how you’re prioritizing your time. so say for example, with the, with the music school, I’m maybe spend.
John Kozicki (01:39.867)
There’s all right, we’ll just close on that Lauren.
Lauren Bateman (02:00.532)
one, maybe two hours a day, just checking in. Sometimes it’s like a 15 minute check in. I have a great administrative team, which I think is a key because I coach a lot of people who have brick and mortars and they’re like, how do I get out of doing everything? And I said, at some point you have to trust that other people are going to do their job. they might not do it 100 % all the time or they might not do it the way you do.
John Kozicki (02:08.645)
Mm-hmm.
Lauren Bateman (02:27.742)
do it, but if they can do it to like 90 % of what you’re doing, it will save you a lot of time so that you can focus on other things. like, I don’t even know how to sign someone up anymore. We have like a whole new platform. Like there’s things I don’t even know how to do in my business anymore because I’ve been so removed from the process. Now I oversee the process. Like I pay attention to the numbers. So say for example,
John Kozicki (02:41.189)
You
Lauren Bateman (02:54.8)
last year, it kind of like a slow year and I’m like, hey, let’s go back to the enrollment process. Like, why is, why are the numbers trending down here? Did something change? And I saw that like someone within the enrollment process had completely changed the enrollment process. And it was, so we went back and I revamped that, but I only did that because the numbers, I know my numbers very well. And it was telling me that something, something was not right, or I needed to pay attention to something.
So I think that’s, you know, when you become a manager in your business, it’s good to know your numbers because I believe if you input the correct information, numbers don’t lie to you. So you can learn a lot just by watching how the numbers move. And so that’s what I do. And I just hire good people who I trust that can do their job that make my job easier.
John Kozicki (03:21.797)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (03:46.907)
Would you at this point with two brick and mortars and everything else you have going on with your online courses, would you pursue opening another brick and mortar?
Lauren Bateman (04:03.072)
No. And I’ll preface, I did have three, know, before COVID, I had three separate locations. And, you know, I had a lot of teachers that kind of, you know, with a lot of people who had employees, they kind of moved home, they left the state. So we reduced down to two just to consolidate. But around that time, that’s also when, you know, I saw the potential of the YouTube channel and the online courses.
John Kozicki (04:05.186)
Hahaha.
John Kozicki (04:10.65)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (04:19.268)
Mm-hmm.
Lauren Bateman (04:31.348)
And just in terms of like bang for buck and where my time is best spent, it’s definitely spent better in the online business. So we’re talking brick and mortar businesses, know, service industry, we’re talking 10, 15 % margins on on services after you pay overhead versus an online business where I don’t have overhead where it could be, you know, closer to 50 % profit.
John Kozicki (04:47.418)
Mm-hmm.
Lauren Bateman (04:56.116)
So, you know, you need to make a lot less money to make the same amount of money. So for me, in terms of like time well spent, it’s definitely better spent in the online business. But I still operate and manage the music schools, you know, because they’re they’re profitable. And for now, you know, they’re they’re working for me. So why not?
John Kozicki (04:56.41)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (05:17.582)
This is, I think, great natural segue into where we’re going with the YouTube stuff and the online businesses. Because I’ve seen a, I would say in recent years, definitely post COVID, a bigger shift among guitar instructors in particular, just because I sort of pay attention to guitar instructors a little bit more, because I am one.
to pursue these online businesses for the same reasons that you just mentioned, the profit margins and the potential to scale. And there’s definitely that allure of, well, I can work less and make more money, which I think that could be true. But I also want to talk about the reality of that.
Lauren Bateman (06:11.614)
Yeah.
John Kozicki (06:12.716)
and really dig in because. And maybe this is my own personality clouding it, but both Mandy and I are really big into that in-person experience, right? So we tend to lean into that. So my head doesn’t necessarily go to that area of like, ooh, should I completely shift what I’m doing? And because I’m doing the same work and go to online, basically, I’m not naive enough to
to think that it’s that easy.
Let’s start there. I mean, I know you’re not afraid of hard work. And so let’s hear some statistics, right? Maybe some statistics on, if you have them, about successful YouTube channels versus not successful or…
Lauren Bateman (06:47.066)
Yeah, let’s unbox that.
No. No. Yeah.
Lauren Bateman (07:10.996)
Yeah, I think when you’re talking about people who are like my size, you know, that have big channels, probably over 500,000, I mean, there are hundreds of millions of YouTube channels at this point, there’s billions of users. And I would guarantee you that it’s only the top 1 % that are that are near where where I am in terms of even having probably over 100,000 subscribers.
It’s very rare. Most YouTube channels or most people who start a YouTube channel to upload content only have one or two long form videos and that’s it. They stop. So the success rate is very low. It’s really low. Only because YouTube is one of those things that it really beats you up. It’s just like any platform. It takes time.
John Kozicki (07:40.174)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (07:53.741)
Okay.
Lauren Bateman (08:04.766)
to grow. It’s not like you’re going to put a video out and a million people are going to find you. Granted, does that happen sometimes? I had a client, she put a video out, it was like one of her first videos and she got over million views. And I told her, was like, that is the exception, you are not the rule. Like I said, that rarely really happens. But I acknowledge that it does sometimes happen to some people. But the majority are going to be like me where it really took
John Kozicki (08:05.189)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (08:17.41)
haha
Lauren Bateman (08:32.692)
know, almost three years to make any real money. So the first my first two years on YouTube, I didn’t really make any money, which was fortunate that I have my brick and mortar business because I still had the income from that. And I was doing YouTube, you know, very part time compared to to what I’m doing now. And it’s just like you say, you know, oh, you know,
You got everyone has this idea of like the passive income from YouTube. YouTube is not passive income. have to you have to work. You have to keep making content. You have to keep doing input into that system. And my wife says my superpower is that I can do the most mundane things over and over and over again, knowing that eventually it will pay off. And she said there’s not many people
John Kozicki (08:58.895)
Mm-hmm.
Lauren Bateman (09:18.578)
who can do that because sometimes it’s exhausting and you’re not making money and you’re like, why am I gonna make another video? I’m not gonna make any money. Nobody’s gonna watch it. But I had a strong belief in the potential for what it could be. Because I knew the internet very well and I was like, this is something I think that could become something. So I just stuck with it for a very long time, longer than most people would.
John Kozicki (09:40.443)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (09:45.466)
Well, so it’s funny, I was gonna ask you about what are certain qualities that in a person that make for a successful YouTuber, but what I’m picking up on first is, as you mentioned, you can do the mundane over and over and over again. Maybe that quality is, it reminds me of the marshmallow test. You know about the marshmallow test? Where the researchers will give the four-year-olds
Lauren Bateman (10:07.432)
Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
John Kozicki (10:13.879)
a marshmallow in front of them. They say, if you don’t eat this, I have to leave the room. If you don’t eat this, when I come back, I’ll give you five marshmallows. But if you eat it, you get nothing. so I clearly Lauren, you would have passed the marshmallow test, correct? Yeah. Right.
Lauren Bateman (10:14.921)
Yeah.
Lauren Bateman (10:26.057)
Yeah.
did not eat the marshmallow for a very, very long time. But I think that’s the type of person it takes. I’ve never compared you two to that, but it’s the perfect analogy for it. Because it does take a lot of patience to get the reward. And you’re talking about certain characteristics. I do think the people who are truly genuine in themselves
John Kozicki (10:41.221)
Hahaha
Lauren Bateman (10:57.704)
do well because you’re not trying to be someone else. are trying to just be yourself. that’s I think, especially today with AI and everything else that’s going, people really want to connect with real people. People who are real, not just that they’re showing on Instagram that they’re driving around in their Ferraris and their Porsches and their big houses. And trust me, I love sports cars, nothing against them. But they want someone who’s real. And that’s something with my students that
John Kozicki (11:15.621)
Mm-hmm.
Lauren Bateman (11:27.398)
I get a lot of feedback. They’re like, I really feel like you’re in the room with me. I feel like you understand me. Being able to communicate with your audience. for me, I work mostly with educators. And you should have a genuine interest in wanting to help people do something. That’s it. Because if you’re doing it for money, that’s not going to be incentive enough to push through the hard work.
John Kozicki (11:35.088)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (11:46.789)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (11:55.363)
Mm-hmm. Do you think, yeah, do you think, and this is, I guess this is more about instructors and in-person instructors and does that necessarily translate to a good course creator or a good YouTuber across the board or are there certain, I mean, you hire instructors or you have hired instructors for your brick and mortar.
Lauren Bateman (11:56.148)
Because there is no money in the beginning.
Lauren Bateman (12:04.734)
Mm.
Lauren Bateman (12:24.552)
Yeah.
John Kozicki (12:25.246)
And I’m sure you look for specific qualities because it’s not just about what they know, it’s about how they present it and their personality. And I’m sure there are differences or I would assume that there are differences when it comes to taking that and putting it on a video for the world to see on YouTube. Do you think there’s any qualities that kind of stick out?
Lauren Bateman (12:32.838)
Right.
Lauren Bateman (12:46.579)
Yeah.
Lauren Bateman (12:51.688)
you know, and when I’m hiring, and I think this works on YouTube as well, I look for people who tend to be very animated. You know, I’m a fairly animated and energetic person. And I think on video that comes across, I feel on video, you have to almost be overly energetic and moving your hands. Because I always tell them, like, if you watch yourself on mute, and you don’t look exciting on mute, you’re probably not going to look exciting.
John Kozicki (12:58.468)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (13:10.394)
Mmm.
Mandy York (13:10.669)
Yeah.
Lauren Bateman (13:20.112)
on video when you’re talking. So I do think the personality plays a big, a big part of it because, you know, not many people are going to watch someone who’s monotone and like their energy is very low. You know, there is an entertainment aspect to YouTube. So you have to entertain, you’re educating, but you also have to entertain and you have to keep interest. So if you don’t have that personality type,
where you can kind of go with the flow, be energetic. It’s going to be much harder. I’m not going to say it’s impossible because I believe anything’s possible for anyone with the right strategy. And I think that’s an important part of it is a lot of people who get into YouTube, they don’t know much about business. They don’t know much about marketing and sales. And that was probably one of the biggest strengths I had is that I had a lot of sales and marketing experience before I even started.
YouTube. mean, I’d already owned my brick and mortar for almost 10 years at that point I’ve been teaching. So I went into this with a very good understanding of marketing and sales, which I say is a big strength to have, especially if you’re going to sell a course or you’re going to try and sell a program, you have to know how to sell.
John Kozicki (14:28.952)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (14:37.594)
I wanna go back to two things that you said. One was put the video on mute. Do you look interesting? Do you look entertaining? And the other one was when you’re talking about authenticity and people want an authentic personality.
Do you think, now this is where you had mentioned like, well, you can learn to do this. I’ve definitely seen that fake like excitement persona on YouTube and does that, is there something in us as viewers that we pick up on as inauthentic? know, is that a turnoff?
Hey guys, this is whoever, I’m gonna do this. Like it’s all the videos that my kids watch. It’s just overly animated in like kind of a cartoonish way. Does that work? I don’t know.
Lauren Bateman (15:36.03)
Right.
Lauren Bateman (15:42.81)
think it depends on your audience. So if you’re, if you have kids, yeah, you got to be probably really cartoony to keep their attention. I would say that works. But I think as, as adults, I think people have a really good sixth sense about when something’s not right. And when it is, they’re like, I might not be able to my finger on it, but something’s not right here. I’m not sure what it is. So I do think there can be an over the top, but there’s also people like people, there’s some people who are genuinely
John Kozicki (15:46.631)
Yeah, right.
Mm-hmm.
Lauren Bateman (16:12.264)
that animated. I’m talking about like, so when I introduce my videos, I always make sure to wave. Like I always like my hands. I’m pointing to the guitar. I’m not just like sitting here still like this for an entire video. Because obviously, I have editors now. So we have stuff that pops up on the screen to draw people’s attention. So there’s also that aspect of it too.
but I just think having your natural energy come out and just being really excited to talk to a camera, which is really hard to do if you’ve never done that before.
John Kozicki (16:42.67)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, for sure. So you…
Mandy York (16:46.382)
Yeah. I talk about these things in my classroom all the time too with my teachers because we are all group settings and you know, we’re talking to really we’re talking to adults the whole time. Yeah. Even though the class is for toddlers, we’re talking to the adults in the room the whole time. And I think authenticity is super important, but it can look different in different people too. You know, so you can’t always imitate what I’m doing if it’s not authentic to
Lauren Bateman (17:01.054)
Bye.
Lauren Bateman (17:15.784)
Yeah, right. Because if I do, then it will come off as fake. Because I’m trying to pretend to be someone else versus who I am. Yeah.
Mandy York (17:16.066)
to what you’re doing.
Mandy York (17:20.504)
Yes.
Mandy York (17:25.39)
Yes.
John Kozicki (17:26.264)
That’s a great point and I think it goes back to Lauren, what you were saying about your background in sales and understanding who your target market is, right? Because in Mandy’s case, yes, you’re in the classroom with babies and toddlers and their caregivers. In those situations, well, oftentimes you want to be more animated, right? You want those big facial expressions so the toddlers recognize what’s going on.
Lauren Bateman (17:33.812)
Mm.
John Kozicki (17:55.963)
But that would not work with a 45 year old adult guitar student who, Lauren, is your target market, right? And my example that I gave is like all those videos that my kids watch, yeah, that’s gonna land with a 12 year old. so, that’s very key, right? And so understanding when, so if you are going to,
If I was going to decide like, tomorrow I’m going to put out a guitar YouTube channel. mean, maybe there would be an experimental phase, I’m assuming at first to figure out who am I reaching and then start to lean more toward what is natural. Did you have to do that?
Lauren Bateman (18:38.129)
Yeah.
Lauren Bateman (18:44.724)
Yes. No. But that was my sales and marketing background. I speak to both perspectives because I, like I say, have clients and many guitar teachers I’ve worked with. And the hard part, particularly for musicians, is really pinning down what they’re going to do. Because as musicians, we hate being placed in a box because we have so many skills. Like, oh, I remember I was talking to a friend of mine and he was
John Kozicki (18:48.896)
Okay. Okay.
Lauren Bateman (19:13.14)
doing a lot of different videos on YouTube and we were talking, like, you know, he had a decent sized channel, but he’s like, I’m just not getting the traction. He’s like, your channel’s growing so much faster than mine, why? So I looked over at his channel and I was like, listen, I’ve noticed that in general, when you post a blues video or you post a Clapton, you know, a song, a lesson on a Clapton song or some BB King song, you get more views. I said, you should become the blues guitar teacher.
And he’s like, but I do so much more than blues. And I was like, I know, but you need a gimmick to get people in. I was like, get them in with blues and then you can teach them jazz. Like once you get people into your program, you can take them where you want to. And I think that’s very hard for musicians to do because they don’t want to limit themselves because they have so many skills. like, no, but I can do R &B. I can do rock. I can do metal. And I’m like, yeah, but pick one.
And I think a lot of musicians don’t like to that. Like me, I was just like, I’m going for, you know, people who are 50, 60, 70s, 80s. Like I’m going for older adults. I’m going the acoustic route and I’m going the singer songwriter route. Like, so I’m not really doing Led Zeppelin on my channel one because they’re very, they’re very heavily copywritten, but you know, they’re a lot of like…
John Kozicki (20:09.38)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (20:30.296)
Hahaha.
Lauren Bateman (20:32.988)
rock songs. have some acoustic songs that I could do. And if I did do songs, that’s what they would be. They would be the acoustic songs because I don’t play electric. I can play electric guitar. I have electric guitars downstairs and next door, but I don’t play them on my channel because I’m an acoustic guitar. Like that in general, that’s what I like. I really like the singer songwriter, finger picking, acoustic guitar strumming. Like that’s, that’s what I love to do. So I teach that because if I’m teaching something I love,
John Kozicki (20:43.758)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (20:52.238)
Mm-hmm.
Lauren Bateman (21:01.498)
will also come across in the video. I’m teaching something that I don’t really enjoy, you’ll notice my energy is not the same, but you’ll know when I’m teaching something that I absolutely love because the energy level just rises because I’m enjoying it too. So for musicians, I think that’s a hard thing is really what we call niching down into like what you want to do in the audience you want to help, but that’s marketing, you know?
John Kozicki (21:13.039)
Yeah.
John Kozicki (21:25.602)
Right, right. So your channel, I know you started channel in pre-COVID and my understanding is just before COVID is when you saw like kind of a significant spike. What would you say are the challenges for or what were the challenges for pre-COVID YouTubers?
Lauren Bateman (21:34.536)
Yes.
Lauren Bateman (21:42.077)
Yeah.
John Kozicki (21:53.145)
versus the challenges for post-COVID YouTubers, which I would assume there is exponentially more post-COVID.
Lauren Bateman (22:03.42)
You know, so the challenges, I particularly for me, the challenges were I just didn’t know the platform that well. So obviously lack of knowledge is a challenge even before and after COVID because it’s not like there weren’t places for me to go and get that knowledge. But I think post-COVID, the benefit of online learning, think people, not that people are opposed to online learning because obviously YouTube has been in existence for a while. Online courses have been in existence for a while.
John Kozicki (22:09.561)
Mm-hmm.
Lauren Bateman (22:33.396)
Um, but I think COVID made it more natural, even for the music school. It’s like, we do a lot more zoom lessons now than we ever did. Like when we have a snow day, we switched to zoom. Now we couldn’t do that in the past. Like no, no one would hop on zoom for a zoom lesson. So I think now post COVID, it, it, makes it just more reasonable that people are willing to, go online. Now the downside is.
John Kozicki (22:46.938)
Yeah, same.
Mm-hmm.
Lauren Bateman (23:00.616)
There is a lot of competition, but I would also say there was still a lot of competition when I first started too. Like there’s always going to be competition. And like I said, if you’re better with your marketing and your sales, you’ll more likely to be successful. But I also understand that, you know, post COVID and we’re five years out now that there probably is, you know, a little…
I don’t know how your Facebook feed goes, but I get so many ads for, $10,000 overnight. it like, you know, people who are trying to promote course creation and all of that stuff. So I do think there is probably a fatigue a little bit, but I mean, this last year was my best year, so I don’t want to say.
John Kozicki (23:34.627)
Ha ha ha ha!
Lauren Bateman (23:50.28)
I don’t want to say that it’s like it’s running out. think, you know, if you do the good job, you build the audience and you nurture that. And like I say, if you are authentic, can do really well, but it just takes time.
John Kozicki (24:06.362)
Now, one of the reasons I initially reached out to you was about a month or so ago, or weeks ago, you had shared a Facebook post. And in that Facebook post, one of the things you wrote, I’m gonna read this back, at the end of the day, you have to work for every single piece of success you have, and you are one algorithm change or tech glitch away from it all falling apart.
Is there a way for you to stay ahead of these algorithm changes or are there things that you can do because you’re at the mercy of whatever YouTube decides to change for the algorithm? Or if you’re promoting on Facebook, whatever they decide to change in their algorithm and then you don’t show up on people’s feeds anymore, you have no control over that? Yeah.
Lauren Bateman (24:48.168)
Yeah.
Lauren Bateman (24:57.052)
Yeah, or they ban your account. I’ve had so many people have had their accounts stolen or shut down. So it is a reality. I’ll tell you about a personal story, like how I got into the online space. actually started years even before YouTube, I was building informational websites. And I would put Google Ads on the website. And you would make money when people would click the Google Ads.
And I had like three or four websites I was working on all around different topics. And yeah, I was making like, I was making four or $5,000 a month just on Google ads, people clicking these little ad things on the website, which they’re still there. Google pop-up ads are still valid. So overnight, there was an algorithm change that I think happened in 2009, 2010-ish called Google Panda.
And if you’re in the IT world, you know what Google Panda was. Google completely changed their algorithm for search, and my business went from making $5,000 a month to like $500 a month overnight. So I learned like, crap, you shouldn’t have all your eggs in one basket. And I keep that in the, because I’ve experienced it personally, I keep that in the back of my mind with YouTube.
John Kozicki (26:03.3)
Ugh.
Lauren Bateman (26:16.904)
and it’s conversations that I have with my wife. I’m like, this could go away at any time. I don’t wanna say that this is forever because I know things change. There was even one day a couple years back that Instagram shut down for a day and people were going crazy. They’re like, no, they were, and I’m like, well, I also have Facebook and I have YouTube. So I think there is a diversification of platforms.
John Kozicki (26:28.346)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (26:41.358)
Right. Or the TikTok thing that happened earlier this year.
Lauren Bateman (26:44.996)
Yeah, look at TikTok when they were trying to shut down TikTok. Everyone was like, no, but that’s how I make all my money. And that’s where, you know, a goal for me is, yes, I use YouTube as a lead generator, but my goal is to get people off of YouTube and onto my mailing list so that they become part of my world and they become my customer as opposed to YouTube’s customer. Now I use YouTube. I also use Facebook advertising. I haven’t fully got into Google advertising, but
John Kozicki (26:51.087)
Right.
John Kozicki (27:00.954)
Yes.
Lauren Bateman (27:12.616)
At this point, you would start diversifying. And this is part of why I haven’t sold or gotten rid of the music schools, because I’m like, well, if the YouTube goes away tomorrow, at least I still have my music schools. If the internet shuts down, I still have a brick and mortar that makes income for me. So that was something I learned at a very young age about diversification, like true diversification. So that’s my answer to that, is just to be trying to get
John Kozicki (27:24.559)
Mm-hmm.
Lauren Bateman (27:41.374)
people into your world so that you own them as a customer versus them just watching you on YouTube. You have no clue who they are. You might have, you know, their tag name, but you don’t know who that person is. You have no way to communicate with them outside of maybe commenting back on YouTube. So if you can get them into your ecosystem, then they’re your customer that you can then market to and promote. And that is a much stronger place to be operating from than being
reliant on all these other systems and companies.
John Kozicki (28:16.044)
Yeah. So.
Mandy York (28:16.824)
That’s great advice. And I assume you don’t, you’re not relying on YouTube to store all your content either, right? You’re keeping, yeah. Yeah.
Lauren Bateman (28:25.296)
No, we have everything. Yeah, we have everything in Dropbox. Like, so every, I have every course, even though the courses are in my Kajabi, it’s like, we have everything saved. Cause you don’t know what’s gonna happen. And hey, if we have to re-upload content somewhere, well, we have it. Yeah.
John Kozicki (28:44.666)
in the spirit of getting ahead of that. And you don’t have to divulge future plans, but are you viewing AI as potential competition in either now or in the near future when it comes to people wanting to learn how to play guitar?
Lauren Bateman (29:07.442)
Yeah, think there is. Obviously it’s it’s strong competition. AI is getting smarter and I see friends who are using AI to like show them like flying airplanes and like it looks so good. Like obviously I know the person so can tell it’s fake. I’m like I know you don’t fly it flying airplane, but it’s getting better so I don’t want to say they they even have like I saw something on TV. They have actresses and actors now that they’re.
John Kozicki (29:26.369)
Hahaha
Lauren Bateman (29:34.944)
using for AI like these AI companies are creating movie stars that you can use in movies. So I’m not unaware of the fact that AI is becoming a big part of our world and it’s going to become bigger. But I do realize that there are certain people who would prefer a human interaction versus an AI interaction.
John Kozicki (29:40.826)
Yeah.
Lauren Bateman (30:03.06)
I think it’s the reason why I still have a profitable brick and mortar business because not everyone wants to learn online, even though, listen, you know, that there’s tons of people who are learning online. I know because they’re signing up for my programs, but there are still people who want to go in person, work with the teacher in person.
And it’s going to be the same with AI. There’s going to be some people who aren’t going to care. like, hey, as long as I get a quality product and I get results, I don’t care if it’s AI. And then you’re going to have the people who are like, I just want to make sure it’s a real person. Or I’m really skeptical of AI. I’d rather work with a real person. So I think there’s going to be that. So I don’t think it’s going to, it will be competition, but I don’t think it’s going to completely eliminate people wanting to work with people in person.
John Kozicki (30:37.325)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (30:53.497)
Do you worry that, man, I don’t want to scare you. I don’t want to push too far, Lauren. But do you worry that, not necessarily, I mean, yes, I agree with you 100%, but the amount of AI content could completely saturate the market and make it harder for YouTube creators to be even seen.
You know, like organic, organic YouTube creators, you know, that that would be one that I would be thinking about. OK, if if all of a sudden there are AI guitar lessons and one day there are five of them and the next day there are 500 because it can, you know, generate exponentially all of a sudden, you know, the the YouTube landscape is much larger. Right.
Lauren Bateman (31:44.169)
Yeah.
John Kozicki (31:52.323)
How do you find the stuff that, how do you reach those people that want the organic?
Lauren Bateman (31:58.836)
I think it’s the same way as when I started, because even though I didn’t have AI, I was a tiny fish in a giant pond of guitar teachers that already had millions of subscribers. I’m talking like the big wigs like Justin Guitar, Marty, Andy, every dude out there that teaches guitar on YouTube. mean, there’s hundreds. There’s probably thousands of guitar teachers over on YouTube.
John Kozicki (32:17.486)
Yeah.
John Kozicki (32:21.11)
No.
Lauren Bateman (32:28.596)
And how does little Lauren Bateman who like nobody knows other than I teach guitar at my local music school, nobody knows me. How do I get found? It’s the same question. How do I get found in this sea of content? And I didn’t for two and a half years. I get some people, they’d watch videos, they get a few hundred views on a video. If I was lucky, maybe I get 300, 400 views. Like that was a lot.
John Kozicki (32:40.151)
Mm-hmm, sure.
John Kozicki (32:48.397)
Mm-hmm persistence
John Kozicki (32:57.123)
Mm-hmm.
Lauren Bateman (32:58.022)
And then eventually YouTube was like, we’re going to show this video, this video that was two and a half years old. They’re like, yeah, we’re going to let people see this video now out of nowhere. And it went from getting like five or 10 views a day to getting 4,000 views a day in like a matter of two weeks, two or three weeks. So I think it’s the same thing. Whether you’re making the content yourself or AI is making the content, it’s really what the audience wants. Because everyone talks about the algorithm.
John Kozicki (33:14.723)
Mm-hmm.
Lauren Bateman (33:27.794)
And the algorithm, yes, there’s mathematical calculations and, you know, trust me, if all these YouTube gurus knew all the secrets of the algorithms, all their videos would have millions of views. And that’s just not the case. That’s just not the case. So they’re all lying when they say they know what the algorithm is. The algorithm is your audience. Because whether your audience likes the content or not is whether YouTube’s going to give it any validation.
John Kozicki (33:40.161)
Right, yeah, great point.
Lauren Bateman (33:55.324)
If in YouTube tells you there’ll be little markers like you’ll put a video out and you’ll be doing well and they’ll say this video is doing well because your subscribers or your normal viewers are watching it more. And this is making YouTube show it to more people because if your own viewers and your own subscribers don’t want to watch your content, YouTube’s like, well, this video must be crap. Why am I going to show it to other people? So I think it still comes down to that audience and your ability
John Kozicki (34:08.803)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (34:18.805)
Ha
Lauren Bateman (34:25.332)
to connect to an audience, whether you’re using it. I mean, I can go into chat GPT, I’ve got it on my phone, be like, hey, write me a script. Write me a script for a video on X, Y, and Z, give me a hook, a call to action. But like, I can have AI write a script for me. So like, I can use AI too. But it’s whether what you’re doing matters to your audience or not. And that’s ultimately what’s gonna get you discovered.
John Kozicki (34:42.371)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (34:50.562)
It’s there.
Yeah, it’s that authenticity again, right? Right. So the authenticity, and then passing the marshmallow test, and you waited for two years for the researcher to come back and present you with marshmallows in the form of views of 4000. Okay, so you also help other content creators, right? You do some coaching. How, how do people work with you? If someone would want to work?
Lauren Bateman (34:55.988)
Yeah.
John Kozicki (35:22.743)
with Lauren Bateman and learn all your tricks.
Lauren Bateman (35:24.274)
Yeah, yeah, I’m very active on Instagram. So the Lauren Bateman is Instagram if you ever want to chat with me, but I do have a website. It’s called the Creator Launchpad and I do mainly one-on-one coaching with clients because I feel like that’s the best space to work with someone, especially in YouTube. There’s general things like I have courses, obviously I have a YouTube course that people could go and take.
But if someone wants to really deep dive it on their channel, their audience and get specific questions, I do one-on-one calls with people all the time. Sometimes people will book a block of calls. Sometimes people will be like, can I do a call and then I’ll book with you again in like six months when I need help. So I’m like, I’m like, whatever you need as, a person for help, I’m not going to lock you into like some $50,000 package if that’s like not in your budget. My big goal is to just
is to just help people be successful. Because I’ve done it, I’ve seen it, I make enough money on the guitar teaching side of things that I don’t mind. People ask me questions all the time and I give free advice all the time to people. They might have a quick question, I’m like, absolutely no problem. And I’ll be like, no, you don’t need to book a call for me for this, don’t worry. So.
John Kozicki (36:45.22)
That’s the teacher in you, Lauren. So probably, I mean, as we kind of bring this home, I guess my last question is, and this can be either like how you teach guitar or even how you’re teaching other YouTubers. What is it do you think that makes you such a good teacher? I know we talked about authenticity, but there’s something else there. So what do you think that is?
Lauren Bateman (37:11.39)
Yeah.
Lauren Bateman (37:14.92)
Yeah, you know, and I talked to some of my students and I’m like, you know, everyone’s like, can anyone do this? And I was like, no, I actually don’t think any everyone can do this because I do think there has to be because you probably know you’ve looked in my background. I don’t have a degree in music and I don’t have a degree in education. It’s biology and archaeology, like not the two degrees you want when you’re going into education. But I have a very good
John Kozicki (37:40.258)
Mm-hmm.
Lauren Bateman (37:44.774)
intuition for other people’s feelings and emotions. And I think that’s the big thing that I get from students. They’re like, you make me believe in myself. You make me feel like I can do it. You don’t make me feel stupid. And I think for anyone that’s learning, that is a big hurdle everyone has to overcome is the confidence. And I think that’s something I’m very good at, even in a video format.
John Kozicki (38:10.17)
Mm-hmm.
Lauren Bateman (38:14.322)
of saying, hey, you make a mistake, it’s okay, don’t worry, it’s not the end of the world. I leave bloopers in my videos, when, you know, dropping a guitar pick is like a horrible thing to do as a guitar. So when I drop a pick, if I’m teaching and I drop a pick, we put like a little blooper reel and I just say, see, I’ve been playing guitar for 20 something years, I still drop my pick on the ground, you know? And people tell me that like that makes you feel human.
John Kozicki (38:36.26)
Mm-hmm.
Lauren Bateman (38:40.308)
You know, you make me feel like it’s not the end of the world if I make a mistake. Because some, you know, I’ve had some students that have been like, hey, I went and took a guitar teacher and they told me I should stop playing guitar and play harmonica instead. That was one of my online students wrote in and I was like, okay, that’s mean. But I think a lot of people have had experiences with teachers who were great players, but not really empathetic enough to be a teacher to sit.
John Kozicki (38:41.165)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (38:58.296)
Yeah.
Lauren Bateman (39:07.866)
listen and understand where the students coming from. Because we have to have a game plan, obviously, as teachers to progress people through this method in our head to get them from a beginner to an intermediate, so forth and so on. But I think we do need to have to listen to the student and how they’re feeling. Because not every week is a week to do something new with a client. Sometimes you have to review. So you have to be good at feeling the temperature in the room.
And I don’t know if you can teach that. I think that’s an instinct that you get from either growing up or, you know.
John Kozicki (39:47.798)
What this makes me think of is, I’ve read about this in Adam Grant’s book, Hidden Potential, the curse of knowledge. And the curse of knowledge in the book, how he presents it, is that the further you get to mastery, and this makes me think about what you said about like really great guitar players, or you didn’t study a guitar, you studied biology and archaeology.
Lauren Bateman (39:53.778)
Mm.
John Kozicki (40:17.592)
The closer you get to mastery of a subject, the further you are from that beginner stage. So it’s harder to relate to that beginner stage. And that’s exactly what it makes me think of. I think pair that with the empathy and the understanding and just the ability to listen to what your clients need. And I think you’re there. So great stuff.
Mandy York (40:44.174)
Yeah, that’s great.
John Kozicki (40:46.776)
Well, Lauren Bateman, I really appreciate you coming on the podcast. This has been fantastic. So we’ll bring this one home. And I will link to all of your links in the show notes so everyone knows where they can find you on YouTube and on your websites. And I hope I don’t miss all of them. So we’ll see you next time on Rock School Proprietor podcast.
Lauren Bateman (41:06.216)
Yeah.
Mandy York (41:12.345)
Thanks, Lauren.
Lauren Bateman (41:13.192)
Yep.
