John: What's shaking, Fire Nation? JLD here with an audio master class on how musicians and artists can create sustainable careers using digital marketing. This is a must-listen if you are a musician or an artist. But Fire Nation, there are so many takeaways for entrepreneurs as well, it's mind-blowing.

I have brought Leah McHenry on the mic. She's a homeschool mom of five kids, the lead composer and singer of the band Leah, and the founder of Savvy Musician Academy. After being broke, Savvy Musician Academy exploded in 2015 and went on to seven figures in six months.

We'll be talking about how to determine your micro-niche and stop trying to be famous and how we can understand what our brand really is, how to create culture around your music and art, and the five launch phases for an artist. We'll be diving into all this and more, Fire Nation, when we get back from thanking our sponsor.

Leah say, “What's up,” to Fire Nation and share something interesting about yourself that most people don't know.

Leah: Hey guys. My name is Leah. I'm happy to be here. I think it would be, I had to think about this because I share a lot about myself but I think it's that I spend a lot of time studying and learning about health and people don't really know that side of me and I never planned to get into that industry, but because of some of the struggles I faced, I know a lot more about the human body than I ever wanted to.

John: I've taken a similar route myself over the years. Actually, just got a certification as an Integrative Health Practitioner, which –

Leah: Oh, wow.

John: Yeah, because you know, for me, I'm definitely focused on the business side of things but health and wellness, if you don't have that, like what else, you know, can really be enjoyed? It matters.

Leah: So true, absolutely.

John: Fire Nation, as I was talking about in the intro. We're going to be talking about how musicians and artists can create sustainable careers using digital marketing, and we are brought Leah on to talk about that.

So let's talk about that a little bit. You know, how can musicians artists and just creatives in general use digital marketing specifically to sell more music, merch, arts without actually touring? You know, getting out and traveling around the country or world.

Leah: Yeah. That is the big question and it was the question that I had to ask myself. Your audience has probably never heard of me and I'll explain why, but you know, first and foremost I'm a wife and I'm a mom of five kids. I have kids ages 4 all the way to 13 and they're all homeschooled. So we're all those weird homeschoolers that you always see.

And yeah, I had to ask that very question because I had this really backwards music career. I've been a singer-songwriter most of my life and I didn't get serious about my music career until after I was married and I had kids in diapers and you know, I'm cleaning spaghetti off the floor and all of that. And so I realized if I ever wanted to really do this, I'm not gonna be able to go on tour for a long time. I can't just hop on a tour bus and you know, we're a single income family at the time, my husband's in the construction business, and I'm at home with the kids.

And so I had to ask myself, “How can I make this work?” Because if I don't figure it out, I just know I'm going to look back with regret one day and I have to figure out how I can do it. And so that's when the whole thing just started for me and I was like, “Okay, so I've got this EP or have this little album, what am I going to do with it?”

And so I just started studying everything I could get my hands on. I started studying the music business all the guru's that I could find out there – there wasn't too many back then. This is about 10 years ago. And of course we were right – this was right after Napster. Do you remember Napster?

John: Big time.

Leah: Yeah, like it was just like the whole industry was flipped upside down because of Napster. And for those, if you have like a younger audience, they might not even remember Napster or know about it, but it was like the first file – like peer to peer file-sharing program app, whatever you want to call it, where people could upload the music they had on their computer and just share it with other people.

And it went kind of viral to the point where it completely just decimated the music industry. It hurt labels, it heard artists, it hurt the whole industry, and nobody knew what to do. They were totally freaking out about it. And so, you know, sales just like went kaboom like in a bad way.

So, you know, this was the era that I was starting in. I was like, “Okay, what do I even do?” Like I can't just sell CDs. Even at gigs, like I wasn't even gigging. So I started studying what I could in the music industry, but nobody had any ideas of really what to do. And so at that point, you know, it wasn't very helpful.

And so then I stopped studying the music industry and I started studying business and marketing. And actually, I didn't even know what I was going to do with it, I just thought maybe there's something in like the online marketing world that could help, you know? Because there are a lot of online businesses that are having a lot of success. So maybe there's something there, there's a golden nugget or two that I could take from that.

And so, I took the little royalty money I had that was working for me organically and I had started investing that into courses and training. And so I also stopped resisting streaming and file sharing and just the whole digital world and I started asking myself, “How can I make it work for me?” You know?

And so just – there's some pivotal changes that happened there. And then the next thing that happened was after I started learning a few things and applying them, I was like, “Oh my gosh. This is totally working.” Now not without trial and error – like a ton of it – but it was doing something and I was earning more revenue. And I picked a number. I remember sitting in my living room and telling my husband, “I want to make a hundred thousand dollars with my music.”

I have no idea. Nobody knows who I am. I have this really obscure niche which is Celtic Fantasy Metal, by the way – like nobody knows what that is except for my fans – and I picked this – you know, I want to make a hundred thousand dollars. If I could do that that would really change our lives. Even after like costs and investing in the things that you know, the expenses of it.

I just knew if I could do a hundred thousand, I could do it again and I can do it again after that. And so I just started reverse-engineering the ways I could get there, right?

So I thought, “Okay, I could do merch, I could do physical music, there's digital music, I could do a fan club.” I started serving my fans and figuring out – letting them tell me how they wanted me to – like what they wanted me to offer them, and then I started giving that to them.

And so now, five years later, instead of just doing like $100,000.00 a year, which I hit by the way in a very short time after that, now I'm doing $100,000.00 album launches in addition to what I'm generating all year long. And what I want people to keep in mind is that, that might sound awesome, and cool and I have room to grow – by the way, I feel like I'm just getting started in this – but I have a really tiny weird niche like we talked about Celtic Fantasy Metal. Like what in the world? And if anybody doesn't know what that is, if you put like Lord of the Rings and Enya and like Evanescence in a blender, that's kind of my stuff.

So yeah, so that's kind of just like how I got started in this whole thing, was like this was me the artist trying to figure out how can I do it and apply principles that are working in other areas and make it work in the artist and creative arena. And to be honest, it's a very awkward transition at times. Like trying to think, “Well, like I took this course and they're talking about real estate and like how do I even make that work in art?” I mean, it's music, you know, it's art. Like people don't need it like they need shoes. You know, like how do I sell that? It was just very awkward to try and figure that out.

So that's why I'm here because I'm not the only one who's had a really difficult time trying to figure that out.

John: Now, everybody wants to be famous and you are all about the micro-niche. So kind of talk to us about that, about determining a micro-niche and really basically stopping trying to be famous.

I mean, you kind of alluded a little bit to your niche a few times. So maybe talk to us about how you got there and why the micro-niche is so powerful, and why we should stop trying to be famous.

Leah: Yeah. So this is a revolutionary concept and I think in some of those studies as I was just, you know, eat, breathing, and sleeping – just studying business and all of it, I came across the whole niche marketing concept. I was like, “Wait a minute. You know, what I do is pretty unique already and not a lot of people know about it but what I'm learning here is that I don't have to market to everybody in the whole world. I don't even have to be famous to everybody. I don't even need to be a household name at all in order to make a sustainable living.”

So that's the first thing, I changed the idea of what my dream even was. Because when I grew up, it was like, “Yeah, I want to be a famous singer and I want to be famous and MTV and like all the music videos,” and I grew up with that. And so I had to change my idea of what the dream really is.

And so I was like, “Wait a minute, if I can have a sustainable music career where I'm able to raise my own funds to create the albums and then I'm able to, at the end of the day, profit a little bit and grow my fan base and do it from home and tour if and when I want to, that would be the dream for me.”

And so everybody needs to kind of define what does that dream look like for them. And so this whole idea of the micro-niche is basically stop trying to appeal to everybody and go deeper into your niche – niche depending on where you live – and it's like that blue ocean theory, right? Where you know, what makes you, your art, or your music totally unique from everyone else?

And it's the same question you have to ask when you're in business too: what's your USP? Your unique selling proposition. It's the exact same thing but in music. And so in doing that, what you're going to do is help people who are super fans of that niche, like they're going – first of all you're going to be easier to find and they're going to have so much of an easier time finding you on Spotify and YouTube and all these other different platforms

And second of all, the type of people who tend to cling to micro-niches are real collectors. So when I say like collector, collector fans, think of like Star Wars or Star Trek nerds, like the people who go to all the conventions. They have all the magazines, all the little figures in their house, and they've got everything, they just collect everything about it and that's because they love it, right?

John: And by the way, like you mentioned that people they need shoes. They might not necessarily need art but hey, these people that you're talking about these micro-niches they would buy this art, these Star Wars collectibles, before they would buy a pair of shoes.

Leah: Oh, yeah, absolutely. Like they'll – yeah, they probably – some of them go as far as, I mean, they would buy some of these collectibles before paying their bills to be honest with you.

John: Exactly.

Leah: Yeah. I mean, some of them are crazy. I mean, and this even applies for mainstream artists too. Like you think Michael Jackson fans, like the people who are real die-hard Michael Jackson fans, wow, they have like a ton of paraphernalia in their house.

John: Yeah, how did you get to your micro-niche? That's what I'm curious about.

Leah: First of all, you got to start with asking like what makes your music actually unique? This is the hard part because when you're so close to your own art, it's hard to see that. So I've got a little bit of a process and we kind of start with like an umbrella genre and then a sub-genre and then a niche and then a micro-niche if it makes sense.

So like an umbrella genre would just be like everything like rock, pop. You know, if you go on Amazon and you look at the main big genres in there or Spotify even, it's really apparent what the main umbrella genre is.

And then from there you're going to ask, through a series of questions, like what sub-genre is this? And so you can ask, you know, the three Fs: your friends, family, and fans for some feedback on that which can be really helpful. And you can even ask like, “Hey, is there a band that I sound similar to? Like give me the top three bands that my music sounds similar to.”

And then from there you can research those bands and look into like well what genre are they? Go look at their Wikipedia Pages. Do a little more research on it and over time – like sometimes people will figure this out in five minutes, other people will take months to like figure it out. Either way is totally fine.

But eventually, you're going to come down to figuring out your identity. This is really important because it's important for the marketing. You've got to know your identity. So know who you are, figuring out that micro-niche, if it makes sense to even go – to be honest, there are some people where they just have basically a sub-genre maybe a bit of a niche and they did they don't go so far as to go into the micro part.

So like for me, my umbrella genre would be heavy metal and then my sub-genre would be like symphonic metal, which is like these orchestra instruments in there, and then below that kind of like female-fronted symphonic metal because that's kind of like a thing where it's not as common in metal for female singers or little fewer and far between, and then below that I have like this Celtic fantasy metal which is like a total unique twist on it. So I've got specific instruments, I sing a certain way, and then all the imagery and you know, my album artwork it looks like something from Game of Thrones, right?

So it's all of it. It's the sound. It's the culture. It's the imagery. It all forms this micro-niche.

John: So let's kind of break this down real quick. Now, you said three Fs, I'm going to actually add a fourth because I love how you added the fourth F without even maybe knowing it. But it's the friends, the family, and then the fans, and then it's their feedback. So really four Fs – friends, family, and fans, and getting their feedback, Fire Nation, on what exactly they think you're unique part is or who you sound like and what that might be. And then you just keep on niching down until you have this incredibly unique specialized niche and that's the process that Leah just took us through.

And you know, to kind of even go a little broader to step back, you know, about that whole famous thing. Like if you're trying to be famous, Fire Nation, you're literally in a race with 1 million people and there's one winner. Like is that really a race that you want to run? I mean, Leah is running a race right now where she might be the only contestant in that race. So of course, she's gonna win that race.

I mean, when I launched Entrepreneurs on Fire in 2012, guess what, I was the best daily podcast interview entrepreneurs from day one. I was the worst. I was the only. I was the only one who had niched into all those things: a podcast, a business podcast, a business podcast interviewing entrepreneurs, a business podcast interviewing entrepreneurs seven days a week. I was the only person hitting all of those things. That was my micro-niche. What is yours?

So Leah, how can we create a culture around our music and art? How have you done it and how can others do the same?

Leah: Yeah, this is really important. This is actually a big part of what has created the success that I have now and you know, first of all you have to ask what is culture? And the way culture is defined, the way I define it is it's a set of beliefs or common interests that bring people together in a community. And so music and art has this amazing capability to almost become the soundtrack to a movement. And I don't mean a political movement. I just mean like it can be so light-hearted in a way.

So for example, let me just tell you about my culture. The culture around my music – this is basically, I know everything about my fans. So it's in a way it's your avatar. But with you know, your product, your service, right? So my culture around my music is this: it's Celtic culture – so picture, you know, Ireland, Scotland, UK, these beautiful landscapes, castles. My fans, they love Game of Thrones, they love Lord of the Rings, they play things like Dungeons and Dragons, and Magic – they're geeks basically, complete geeks – and I know all about that. I know all about them.

And so I've created this culture around my music. And so, I've done that through the music itself, through all the the media that I put out there, any videos, any lyric videos, music videos, my Facebook group that I have were posting the kind of content that matches that culture, and people now associate my face, my name, my brand with this culture so it becomes so much bigger than just the music, just the art. So that is a huge part of them buying into wanting to support me as an artist and also become that collector fan that gets all the merchandise and all the paraphernalia.

John: Fire Nation, culture. Culture is so key for you to create around this brand that you're creating because you want your fans to be all in. You want to be able to plant that flag that they can rally around and they can rally around something that they're passionate about, that you're passionate about. That's you know, you are creating great content around. That culture is so key and we have so much more great stuff around this topic coming up when we get back from thanking our sponsor.

So Leah, we're back and I want to talk about treating our music and arts like an e-commerce business. How have you done this successfully?

Leah: This is another really important key to creating this kind of success, especially if you're an artist or a musician, anything like that. When I realized that I'm – wait a second, I'm not just in the music business, I'm actually in the e-commerce business here. A huge light bulb went on for me and it totally changed everything I was doing – all my strategies, the way I was doing email marketing, the way I was doing everything.

So you know, one thing I realized is it's not enough to just have a website and like have something for sale on it. There's a whole lot more that goes on that helps create those conversions. You know people going from random strangers to now engaging with you and then taking some kind of action or making a purchase.

And so I needed to become an expert in not just marketing my own music but you know, what is the e-commerce process? What's the psychology in e-commerce? And so there's a whole lot that goes into this. You need to understand like what's a good sales conversion rate in the market and then what's a good conversion rate for you? You know?

And that comes over time when you have data and so you need to be engaged in these activities where you have this data for a long period of time so you can kind of understand what's a good bench line for me?

And then you need to become an expert on things like product pages, product descriptions. You know, a lot of our students at Savvy Musician Academy, like we work with them on this because it's like what is there to say really about a t-shirt? Really? How much can I go on about a t-shirt? You know?

And there's one website I love to go to for inspiration and it's called thinkgeek.com. I don't know if you've heard of it, but they sell all kinds of like geeky paraphernalia like everything from t-shirts and lamps and just all kinds of stuff. And they have done such a great job at their product descriptions and I love to go there to just show like, “Okay, It's like sell me this pen.” Right? “Sell me this pen.” Like what can you say to make this fun, entertaining, inspiring, enlightening, and then give me all the bullet points on this amazing pen and sell it to me.

And so just learning how to do that kind of thing – price psychology, you know, should I price my CDs high or low and like will people buy this and how do I bundle things in a way that people want to purchase that instead of just a single items? And button colors and page layouts and the checkout experience is huge. You know, like this is another thing that – and this is why we go very deep into this – is because people want a familiar experience in their checkout. If anything is strange or unfamiliar in that process, you will lose the sale and they'll bounce, right? And they'll abandon their cart.

And so learning like what's a good checkout experience? What's a familiar experience? What are you know, the things that could be stopping them? Is the shipping price is going to stop them? And then knowing things about dropshipping or print on demand.

It's amazing, the things that are involved and also the things that are available to us to help create those sales. And so, that might sound really overwhelming to any artists that are listening or to people listening. It sounds like a lot because it is, but you know, everything worth doing there's going to be a learning curve to it and I think we all know that. My job, what I've taken on is I've decided to learn everything that could possibly make us musicians, creative people successful and then boil it down to the most simple processes so that anyone with talent can put that into practice.

John: And now you've used both Facebook and Instagram to really just become an expert at marketing. So you figured out the ad side of things, the organic side of things. What are some like tips, tools, and tactics you can share with our listeners that you've learned through being in the trenches?

Leah: Yeah, so that's another thing is, you know, I'm sure you have other amazing podcasts on advertising so I don't want to spend too much time here, but I think that it's important for creative people to get really good at this. And I think that they can actually be amazing marketers.

I think musicians and creative people can actually be some of the best marketers because we have like – we're totally creative and we've got full access to our left and right brain, and we have a soul. So we're not completely greedy and I think that we really care about people. We really, really truly do care about every single experience that every fan is going to have, like it matters very deeply to us, and because of that, I think we can be very powerful marketers.

So, you know, there's the Facebook platform, the Instagram platform, they're changing constantly. The algorithms are changing. The bottom line is like learn the fundamentals of what good advertising is. Learn the platform.

Of course, we have tutorials and there's tons of stuff out there on it, but learn what's a good offer, what's a good price, you need a good product, you need good copy, you need a good landing page, you need a good creative image video. Those are the fundamentals and when you have those fundamentals, it doesn't matter if Facebook goes away, you don't have to worry about putting food on the table. You're going to know how to do these things.

So I think that's the most important thing I could communicate.

John: Now, you are saying that people who are creative and artists and musicians, they can make the best people when it comes like creating ads and trying to sell things but, you know, the first and foremost thing, Fire Nation, is you've got to come across with an obligation that your art is worthy. Like, you've got to feel that in your soul.

I mean, that's the thing. If you really love what you're doing, then you want to get it in front of other people. And to do that, you've got to be comfortable with selling. You've got to be excited about selling. You've got to be willing to put your artistic and musical talents into selling not just producing and creating.

Like I do love that fact that Robert Kiyosaki always says, “Hey, I'm not a best writing author, I'm a best-selling author,” because he figured out how to sell his books just like you need to be able to figure out how to sell your music, and you figure out how to sell your art, sell your products, your services.

And I love a phrase that you do use Leah which is, “learn the fundamentals of copywriting and you'll never be a starving artist.” What do you mean by that?

Leah: Yeah. This is a big game-changer for me as well as I was learning all of this is like, listen, if you can learn the art of motivating people to action through your words and your messaging, you never have to worry about putting food on the table because you know how to sell. You know how to sell. You know how to motivate people. And that means you can sell ice to Eskimos. You can sell ugly Christmas sweaters. It really doesn't matter what you're selling. You're always going to have enough money in the bank because copy-writing is the most powerful skill you could ever develop.

And I think you know, as artists what we do is communicate. We communicate every single day through our art and all we have to do is learn how to put that into a messaging or a platform that is going to be effective at selling. And so, learn how to sell and again, it won't matter how the platforms change or if Facebook disappears or the algorithms change – it doesn't matter. You have a skill which will make money anywhere. So it's just so important that people understand that.

John: Now, Fire Nation, according to Leah, six-figure launches aren't that difficult. So she's going to walk us through the five launch phases for an artist, which makes the math really simple. What is that?

Leah: It is really simple and you know, if you have a thousand people who buy a hundred dollars’ worth of stuff from you in a year, that's $100,000.00. That's the most simple math you could possibly have.

But you know, there are five different phases. There's amazing people out there teaching launching strategies out there, and this is kind of what I found worked really well for me in the music business.

So the first phase is building a buzz. And this is kind of like reverse-engineering the whole launch. But building the buzz happens about two to four weeks ahead of your album launch or your art launch, whatever you're doing. It's where you're sharing clips of new content, usually some kind of lyric video or music video is happening, and you are showing people behind the scenes, getting everybody ready, and of course, I recommend having like ad campaigns kind of going along with this. So it's kind of an organic and a paid traffic strategy that's happening while you're building this buzz.

And I will say before you ever think about doing this kind of launch, you want to be building your email list year-round before you ever do this to really make it effective. So I like to have a six-month runway before I have a launch. And like I'm doing a new album this year, kind of like a winter-ish Christmas type album. And so I'm giving myself like now, I'm like, “Oh we're six months out until the release! I gotta start putting more budget toward my email list to prepare for this buzz phase.”

So phase one: building this buzz. And of course, I'm also letting the fans in behind-the-scenes the entire time during the making of this album too so that's an important thing. So you're kind of building a slow-burning buzz the whole time but when we get serious, this is like two to four weeks out.

And then the second phase would be the pre-sale phase and this is about a two week period where it's like doors are open, you can now pre-order this album, this merch bundle, whatever it is, and of course, you want to have, if you can, some scarcity and some urgency in there. So maybe there's some kind of perk that people get if they purchase that bundle before the actual release date, and so that's going to incentivize people and help the sales a lot more.

And then, of course, you have your launch day, which is hooray, you know, it's out and the campaigns are out, the emails are going out, the ads are out, you've got your press release happening, your organic social media. It's a big deal. And of course you're going to see a big boost in sales that day.

And then after that, I call it the momentum phase where we're really pushing hard for the next four to six weeks and basically releasing more content, more clips behind the scenes kind of thing, we have a continued ad campaign going out, maybe we're changing the offer to offer something different that we didn't have before, and we're really going to maximize the sales

And then the fifth phase here would be the evergreen phase. What most musicians and artists have no idea about, they don't even think about this, is that they think, “Well, you know, my album that's 10 years old is no good and I can't do anything with it.” I'm like, “That is gold. That's a gold mine! Like that album that you released five years ago or whatever is brand new to new people every single day and so we're going to use – that album now becomes incredible evergreen content. And so we're going to repurpose it and you can either relaunch it or reuse it to build our list. There's so much we can do with that.”

So the fifth phase is evergreen, we have an evergreen campaign going forever. So that's what I say, your old music is new to new people. And this concludes the six-figure album launch. There you go, it's all in a nutshell for you.

John: I do love that, that your old music is new to new people. I mean, Fire Nation, it is so true. I mean, a lot of people are saying, “John, like six years later you're still running PodcastersParadise.” I'm like, “Yeah, because somebody wakes up every single day deciding they want to start a podcast today. They didn't want to five years ago, but they want you today. So PodcastersParadise is still super relevant to them because for them it's completely brand-new and they have just woken up to the fact that this is what they want to do”

So build that buzz, build that urgency, crush that launch day, get that momentum phase going, and then evergreen, Fire Nation. You want to make sure that you are continuing to offer this as new people are experiencing your content.

So Leah, there's a lot of great wrap up information you can give us here, but what's the one takeaway you want to make sure Fire Nation really gets from this entire chat today?

Leah: Yeah, I think the biggest thing I want you guys to understand is that you've got to take extreme ownership of your success. We're still trying to lay the groundwork here for creatives and musicians that you know, you don't need a record label anymore. You don't need to be discovered. You don't need to leave your destiny in anyone else's hands. Like you have the potential, you have the ability to create this outcome, this destiny that you have been dreaming of.

It's a matter of learning the skills, that's literally it. Learn the skills, how to do it, and then turn the switch on that nothing is going to get in your way and you will be unstoppable.

John: Fire Nation, you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with and you've been hanging out with LM and JLD today. So keep up the heat.

Leah, how can we find out more about you, about what you have going on? How can Fire Nation connect?

Leah: Absolutely. Well, we are on all the socials. Savvy Musician Academy is our company so you can go to SavvyMusicianAcademy.com, and we also do have a PDF for any musicians or artists listening. If you are interested in the way some of these different fan funnels look – what I'm doing in my music business – we've got that for you. You can go to SavvyMusicianAcademy.com/fire and go and grab that PDF and yeah, I would love to connect with you guys.

John: Fire Nation, if you head over to EOFire.com and type of Leah – L-E-A-H – in the search bar her show page will pop up with everything that we've been talking about today. Best show notes in the biz, timestamps, links galore.

Of course, head directly over to SavvyMusicianAcademy.com/fire for that gift. And Leah, I want to say thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today. For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side.

Leah: Thank you so much. It was an honor talking to you.