Instead of just teaching everything I know. I don't care about what I know. I care of what you can do with what I know. - Den López
Intro: Did you know that 95% of people who start learning guitar quit? That's a 5% success rate. Den Lopez, a guitar coach, knew that and wanted to change it. So he decided to quit his job and create an online course that helped more people learn guitar by focusing on the basics, giving them quick wins, and actually doing the work with them. The result, higher completion rates, and he's become an incredibly successful instructor in an extremely competitive niche. And today, you're going to learn exactly how he does it.
Welcome to the Streamlined Solopreneur. A show for busy solopreneurs to help you improve your systems and processes so you can build a business while spending your time the way you want. I know you're busy, so let's get started.
Joe Casabona: All right. I'm here with Den Lopez, guitar coach. Den, how are you today?
Den López: I'm doing fantastic, Joe. Thank you for having me on, man. It's a pleasure.
Joe Casabona: Likewise. While we were saying in the preshow, your pitch was great. I'm really curious about your business, so I wanna dive right into it. I usually don't start with the origin story, but I think this is gonna be a very important bit based on what we're talking about today. What made you launch your online business?
Den López: Okay. So the first thing, great question, Joe. The first thing that the first spark that I had while I was a car mechanic and that made me think I need to build something of my own was during COVID. You know, I come from a employee mentality family where job is your most important thing. You gotta do what your boss says. You can never fail to go to work. Right? And during COVID, I was 1 here in Barcelona where we live in Barcelona, Spain, everyone was locked down for 58 days. Like, in their apartments, they couldn't go out.Right? But I was one of the ones that could go out and had to go to work. So every day, I went to work, and we just had a newborn. Right? He was 7 or 8 months old and a 6 year old. And my wife had a really rough time in a little apartment for 58 days by herself taking care of 2 kids. You've got kids. You know what that is. Right? Imagine that.
And I remember coming from a employee mentality mindset. My heart was so divided between I gotta go to work, and I gotta take care of my family. Right? My wife literally sobbed every day when I went to work. Like, every day. And every day when I came back, the first thing she said is, the kids are yours. I'm going to the bedroom. And the only thing that brought her out of the bedroom was music.
So, yeah, playing the guitar, dancing to music, stuff like that. That's when she came out of the room. We had a good time, and it was amazing once I got home.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. Wow. Well, thank you for sharing that. I like we had a little bit of role reversal here, because I was self-employed at the time. My wife is a nurse, and so she had to go to work. We had 1 then 2 then 3 kids over the course of the pandemic. And, yeah, it was I mean, we like, luckily, right, we bought a house in May of 2019. So we did have the house, but, you know, I had a 3-year-old and a 5 month old or whatever, you know, and and and towards the end of the 1st year, and it was it was hard. I was, you know, I was struggling with anxiety and stuff like that. It's, I give a lot of credit to single, I learned how hard it was on a very micro level to be a limited time single parent. I give them a lot of credit.
So, yeah. But, I mean, like, kudos to you for seeing this and understanding because, like, you know, I mean, I guess we're living in a different time, but there used to be a time where the man would go to work and come home and sit on the couch and watch TV and not really be involved.
Den López: Yeah. But when I came home, Joe, and I got my guitar or we played music in the stereo, right, and I could see how much my family needed me, that was like, I gotta take control of my time. I gotta, I gotta do something where nobody tells me where I have to be at what time I have to be. Right? Did that make sense?
Joe Casabona: Yeah. I mean, absolutely. That's, like, again, like, very similar. When I left my I was a Web Developer for a long time. I left my agency job when my oldest was 3 months old because they were telling me I had to work nights and weekends. And I was like, I'm not gonna miss my kids' first steps because I was working late for you. Right? So, again, like, I really I feel this story.
So what was the final straw? Or what made you what was the final push, let's say?
Den López: Okay. So do you want me to tell you how I chose guitar, which you say is a very competitive niche?
Joe Casabona: Yeah. Yeah. Like, what like, when were you, like, okay, I'm leaving my business, and then, it's probably you chose your business first, and then you were, like, okay. I'm leaving my job. Right? Yeah.
Den López: Yes.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. So let's, let's yeah.
Den López: Cool. I chose guitar one day. A friend of ours came to visit, and I was playing. I was practicing my legs and my chops for an album I released. Right? And she's like, wow. That's so cool. You know, I'm actually, I'm actually thinking of signing up my daughter to guitar classes, and her daughter was 5 at that time. And the first thing you're you're a drummer, and you're a musician. So music is important to you, and music is like, guitar is a part of my life. If you take it away from me, like, I'm lost.
And the first thing I thought about, Joe, was don't sign her up. Don't sign this kid up for guitar because I could see this kid holding a huge guitar, learning Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, getting frustrated, and then abandoning that. What a waste. What a tragedy it is that that kid is interested in learning an instrument. And because the way guitar is taught, she fails. Right? And at such an early age, I mean, that's, did you know that 95% of people who start playing the guitar fail?
Joe Casabona: I didn't know that. It's believable because I tried once, and I was like, I can't, I can't do this.
Den López: Why do you think you failed? Do you do you think you failed because of you? Like, it's, to me, it's almost insulting that 95% of people fail. Because with those statistics, it has to be the system. Right? It has to be the way guitar is taught. Like, for example, let me put you this example. If you go to a go kart, have you ever gone go karting?
Joe Casabona: Yes.
Den López: Have you failed at giving at least one lap to the track?
Joe Casabona: No.
Den López: But nobody fails. Like, there's not a single person that fails. But if you go and try to fly an airplane, now many people fly fail. Right?
So what I tried to do with guitar, what I thought about at that very moment that friend of mine told me I'm gonna sign up, my kid to guitar lessons was, wait a minute. This kid is gonna fail. Is there a way for her not to fail? And instantly, I thought, what's the most difficult thing to play in guitar? So chords. Right? That's, like, the toughest part. What if there was a way to take chords out of the equation? And that's when I came up with my first program. I got so excited. I'm, like, people are gonna be able to play instantly, and it is. It's called the Guitar in 1 Hour Method. Still selling that today.
Joe Casabona: That's amazing. And so you came up with this basically from I love this. Like, you get a question, you're presented with a problem, and you immediately see, or you see a solution. Right? Because it really shows how well you know your craft. Right?
And so I really I love this. So you came up with this idea. How long after that were you like, okay. I'm not a car mechanic anymore. I'm now, I'm now a guitar coach.
Den López: So, I was trying to build a business, trying to, record courses, put out content. It was very stressful. I was working 8 to 9 hours a day, Monday to Friday, plus the 2 kids, plus trying to build a business, coming from an employee mentality, which has nothing to do with building a business. Right? You know this.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. Yeah.
Den López: And it was super stressful. I wasn't really making any money. And then I thought, okay, what if I get a month and I leave my job for a month, build the courses I need, build all the sales pages, build all the content, and then come back to work, and then my business will be, “running more or less”. And then I can just maintain it, grow it, stuff like that. Right? So I went to my boss and asked him for a month off, and he said, no. And I'm like, what do you mean no? Like, this is my, this was the 2nd strike after the pandemic. 2nd strike to where I gotta get control of my life. So what do you mean no? Like, this is I'm passionate about this. I'm building this. Like, I'm helping people. You know? Like People are playing guitar. You don't understand this. Like, I need to do this. Right? And he said, no. And if you and if you ever try to do it, you would have to pay me for doing it. And I'm like, this this doesn't make any sense. Right?
Joe Casabona: That's insane.
Den López: I got a, kudos to my boss because he's been very good to us, to my family and me. But he had business expenses. I was the only mechanic in the shop. Like, I understand his situation. But, again, my situation was I needed to do this. Right?
Joe Casabona: Yeah. And It's I mean, at some at some point, right, if it's this is what frustrated me about one of my previous full-time jobs is, like, I wasn't allowed to take vacation on a certain week because I was the only developer. And I'm like, you're like, what my personal time should not rely on your failing to properly staff. Like, I like, it was that was very frustrating to me, and I feel it's probably the same for you. Like, you can't take any time off because you're the only mechanic. That's insane.
Den López: Yeah. And vacations are when your boss tells you like, everything is regulated by another person. Right?
Joe Casabona: Yeah.
Den López: And that to me, just at that point, I was like, this has to change. I can't take it anymore. You know? I've I've been here for 16 years. It's time to change. You gotta do what's inside of you. Like, my passion is to fix things. I pursued that with cars, and then I saw my opportunity with guitar. I know the like, that day when that friend came over, I instantly knew the system in which guitar start is completely broken.
Den López: And I saw an opportunity to fix it, and I'm like, I'm going all in all into this.
Joe Casabona: I love that. So okay. So what happened then? We opened up a thread. I need to close it.
Den López: Okay.
Joe Casabona: You asked for time off. Your boss said no. Were you just like, I quit? Or were you like, I'm taking the time anyway? Or what happens?
Den López: I was so frustrated, Joe. Like like, my wife could tell you. It was just, like, nerve-wracking and because of the anxiety of being the one that brought the most money in the household. Right? Having my kids, having to go to work every day. I listen to business podcast, like, 8 hours a day on work. Right? And I came home. The only thing that really calmed me down was playing guitar. That was, like, every time I got home, my wife was, like, go in your studio and play guitar. And I'm like, why? Just go. And I came out with another mood.
Music has that ability, Joe, right, to change your mood instantly. And you can either put sad music and feel sad or put happy music and feel happy. Right? And then what I what we did was think about it. Think about it some more. And then finally, we take we took the decision. We asked for a little loan just to cover our expenses, not for business, just to be able to maintain our style of living for a year, and we went all in.
Joe Casabona: I love that. Now, I you know, I think I wanna this was not, planned, but I do wanna touch on this, though, because I feel like a lot of these, a lot of what we hear about when starting a business these days is, like, you can bootstrap. You don't need to take any funding. You know, just like, hustle and work hard. But I'm like I one of the reasons I do this show is to be the anti hustle culture. Right? Like, hustle culture is incompatible with family life, and I don't think there's enough advice for parents who have businesses.
So you took out a so you you and your wife made the decision to take out a small loan to make sure you could still make ends meet while you while you bet on this business.
Den López: Mhmm.
Joe Casabona: And I'm gonna guess that this instead of you having to stay at the full-time job for another year and then save every penny so you had runway, this accelerated your journey a little bit.
Den López: Yep. Yeah. It just gave me the confidence that I could work for a year and try to make it work. Like, I could all the time that I was putting into being a car mechanic, I could throw into my business. I'm like, so many times let me just talk about this. Maybe I take a little tangent. But one thing that makes things possible, Joe, is having faith. Right? Faith that you're gonna be able to do it.
The problem is that our surroundings and what we believe inside holds us down. So breaking those false beliefs and seeing other people I teach my beginners this. They're like, ah, my fingers are crooked. I have arthritis. Like, I have short fingers. I'm not musically talented. All these false beliefs around what you want to really do, which is inside of you. Right? And you gotta let it out.
So finding people that have already overcome those obstacles and being like, oh, and getting inspired by them really, really helps. Like, for example, I don't know. I talk about Django. Right? He only had 2 fingers after a fire, and he became the best gypsy jazz guitar player ever to live with 2 fingers. Right? You've got 4
Joe Casabona: Yeah.
Den López: Or 5. You can do at least something. Right? So, yeah, finding those people what you say, listening to interviews on podcast and researching through the web and finding people that were parents that have always been employees, and now they have thriving businesses really, really got me going. Like, yeah, I can do this. Right? Gave me that faith.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. I love that. I that's that's amazing. Like, you do need to look for inspiration. This is this is again why, like, I hate the hustle culture. Right? Or, like, you know, most of the business advice, you know, this most of the business advice you get is for people who aren't tied down or don't have kids. It's like, you know, they are single and can work their weekends and whatever, whatever. And But it's just that's just not for everybody. I also I smiled when you said, like, short fingers because that's that was always my excuse for not playing guitar As I say, I have meat hooks. But then your story about Django reminded me of Rick Allen, the drummer from Def Leppard, who has one arm. Right?
Den López: one arm?
Joe Casabona: Yeah. And plays for, like, you know, of at least an extremely popular rock band in the eighties. Right?
Den López: Yep.
Joe Casabona: So incredible. Right? Like, you there you obstacles are meant to be overcome. So I love that. You did what you had to do, and you made it work.
I do want to get into what made you choose to become a Digital nomad?
Den López: Mhmm. Okay. So what you're asking is why did I build my business the way I did?
Joe Casabona: Yeah. So, like, well, I guess let's define Digital nomad first for those who don't Okay. Really know what that is, and then we can kind of get into the decision-making behind that.
Den López: Mhmm. Do you wanna define it, or should I give you my definition?
Joe Casabona: Give yeah. Give me your definition. I'm very much a not Digital nomad. I'm very, I have very strong roots where I am right now.
Den López: Okay. So to me, Digital nomad, basically is that you can work from wherever you are as long as you have an Internet connection. Right? What you built is not dependent on where you are, on who you're with, or the tools you have. You can just get a phone out, record something, and sell it.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. Love that. So let me ask you, Den. Do you travel a lot, or do you live in various places for an extended period of time?
Den López: No. We've been in Barcelona for many years now. My family is from the States, but we're here in Barcelona. We're located here. Basically, you know this about schools and stuff like that. Once your kids grow up a little bit, they make friends. Harder to move them from their friends. They're comfortable and stuff like that. So we do travel, but we we're located in Barcelona.
Joe Casabona: Gotcha. But you do have that flexibility to to travel and, you know, not have to put your business on hold.
Den López: Not only that flexibility to travel, but to be where you want to be and where you think it's important to be. Right? So, for example, my kid was sick the last couple days, not going to school. What would I have done being a car mechanic? Take him to my grandparents to my parents' house. Right? I wanna be with my kid. I wanna take care of my kid. So, I can choose, okay. I'm not gonna work while my kid is here, and then I'll work at night or stuff like that. Right?
Joe Casabona: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Right? This is, I like this flip on what being a Digital nomad is because I think, like, again, I come from the web development space. I know a lot of freelance developers who were Digital nomads. And, like, their definition was basically, like, living in an RV or, like, living in Airbnbs. Right? Like, moving from city to city every month.
Den López: Yeah.
Joe Casabona: But that's not necessarily the, when we apply it to, like, having a digital nomad business, it means that you have the flexibility. But like you said, you have kids. Right? And so, like, you know, they they have school and, you know, it sounds like you're not homeschooling them. Right? So that's like I think that's like a big contributing factor for people who do travel a lot is they homeschool their kids because they have to. This is, I think I like that we defined this. And so it sounds like the reason you chose this kind of business is again, for the flexibility.
Den López: Yes. Let me just tap into a little bit of, I don't know if you're gonna find this interesting, but the you mentioned define, and I think outcomes is a really good word for that. No matter if you're trying to play a guitar, if you're trying to build a business, or if you're trying to build a podcast community, whatever you're trying to do, the word outcome is a word I like a lot. Like, for example, to my beginners that I wanna play guitar, that's not an outcome. Right? That's just something in the air. Playing guitar can have many, many shapes. So what do you wanna do? Oh, I wanna play 3 songs before Christmas.
Okay. Now we can work towards that. Right? And when I build my my business, I knew I wanted something that I had. I didn't have to (what's the word I'm looking for?), I didn't have to do constantly that I could build, like, for example, a course. I could build a course for a month, record the best course possible, and now sell that course without me having to teach personally how to play it. Right? I could break down the system, create the recipe in the course, and then someone could follow that course and get the outcome. Right? Does that make sense? And I wouldn't have to go there and teach you personally because you had the course. And I could sell a 1,000 courses in a day instead of giving 2 classes in a day. Right? So the leverage you get from that is a lot higher.
Joe Casabona: Yep. And I should point out here, right, that I mean, depending on the type of coaching or teaching or that you do, of course, is very conducive to that. I think, the move for a lot of online businesses is like, oh, yeah. I'll do a webinar, and then I'll do a course, and then I'll do, like, a done for you thing, which is what I do. Right? But, you can't really have a done for you product. Right?
Den López: Yeah. Nope. Nope. That's why, that's why I believe the the the system is broken because coaches and instructors and YouTubers are they just follow the same path that they followed. Like, I don't get me wrong. There's I have many guitar coaching friends, and many of them are great. But most people I see just follow the same thing they followed, which is a 3 year journey just to play a song. Right? And they don't think, okay. This is an online course. How can I make it inevitable for this person to get the outcome they desire? Right? So thinking in that mentality of where they at, what are the little nuggets, the little things, the little positions, the little things they need to understand, plus the exercises. I don't know if you've ever taken an online course, Joe.
Joe Casabona: Yes. I'm bad at completing them, but I have taken. So…
Den López: Okay. I think the problem with completion and with online courses, books, all that, is that they don't have the do part. They have the no part, but they don't have the do part. Right? So for example, you're reading a book or going through a course, and they're teaching you how to, I don't know, how to start a podcast. And they teach you all the cool stuff, but they they don't show you how to actually do it. Right? For example, guitar. I can teach you how a c chord is played, but are you gonna do it? No. You're gonna jump to the a chord and then to the d chord and then to the and then you're so far in the journey of the course, you got nothing done. You didn't acquire that skill. Are you gonna go back to the c chord again to start over the course? No. You're gonna buy the next course. But have you learned anything? You know a lot of stuff, you know, but you can't do it. Right? So I think that's a big problem with books, online courses, YouTube tutorials. They're not there with you showing you how to do it and doing it with you while you do it. Right? Does that make sense?
Joe Casabona: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is I stopped reading business books, like, a year and a half ago for that reason. Right? I was just kind of, like, collecting quotes. Right? I wasn't, like, implementing anything. And so…
Den López: Exactly.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. I think, I love this approach. I love that we've fallen into this topic because, again, you have have found success in a competitive niche by looking at it differently. Right? You mentioned, like, the how to I of course, I'm a podcaster. Therefore, I have a how to start a podcast coach, course. Right? And I go through pick the format and, you know, I have a video on how to set up a microphone. I think I'm a generally good teacher, but what I don't have and I, you know, I have videos on how to set up hosting and stuff like that.
What I don't have is how to tell a good story or how to be a good interviewer. Right? And this is really the thing that sets good podcasts apart from bad podcasts. I'm very deliberate in not just telling a founder story or having a casual conversation. We went through the whole format of this interview before I hit record because….
Den López: Exactly.
Joe Casabona: I want the listeners to get something, Right? Which they are they're getting and they're about to get more. So stay tuned, dear listeners. So I like that you looked at this and put a different spin on it. I would say, I'll wager a guess, that that's what sets you apart.
Den López: It's one of the things. Yeah. People really enjoy it. Like, for example, can you, well, can you hear this?
Joe Casabona: Yeah.
Den López: Can you hear that? Okay. So if I show you, you know this, 1, 2, 3, 4. Right? 1, 2, 3, 4. And then the video ends, what do you wanna know? You wanna know 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. Right? But if the video doesn't end and I tell you, okay, grab your guitar now, and let's do it together. We're gonna do this for 5 minutes. Just that. 1, 2, 3, 4.
Now, I mute my guitar, there's a click track or a drum track or whatever, and it's going 1, 2, 3, 4, and I'm counting for you 3, 4, and you're going, oh, I get this. 1, 2, 3, 4. What happens at the end of that video, Joe? You got that skill. Right?
And now you can move on to the next layer of the cake with a solid foundation on what you just learned. And now let's do the next thing and the next thing. Let's build layer upon layer without knowing so many things. By the end of the course, I'm gonna show you a lot of things. Right? But if you can't play them, there's no point in creating a course.
So that's my mentality on how to create things that actually work instead of just teaching everything I know. I don't care about what I know. I care of what you can do with what I know, if that makes sense.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. That's so good. I mean, that's the mark of a true teacher. Right? It's, I didn't, I taught in the classroom for a long time. Right?
Den López: Mhmm.
Joe Casabona: And I think we both have this mentality of, like, it doesn't matter that like, how much I know is irrelevant to you. Right?
Den López: I'm not the important person.
Joe Casabona: Right. The student is the important person.
Den López: Exactly.
Joe Casabona: Yes. Yeah. So, like, who can like, no one needs to know how smart I am. Right? I as much as I like that people know if I'm smart, that's not the point of teaching. Right?
Den López: That's right.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. So this is great. I mean, so I'm gonna, so I'm gonna take a quick pause here and reinforce what you just said about how you structure your videos because I think this is something that not enough people do. Right? And this is you show and then as, you don't just say, okay. Now go do this. Right? Here's the end of the video. Go do this. You say, now get your guitar, and we'll do it together. Right? This is really, really good stuff. And I think that no matter what people are teaching, this is something that you should implement into your courses.
Den López: Yes. For sure
Joe Casabona: Man, I love that. Yeah.
Den López: Just to make a point on that, like, now the way I read books is I know I need 6 months for that book. Like, one thing is just reading it and being like, ah, that was awesome. But if I really want the knowledge from the book, I need to read the first three pages, golden nugget. Close the book, implement the nugget. Right? Come back. Because a book is a framework. It's just like an online course, like just like your courses, how to start a podcast. It's a path. It's 50 steps in a straight line that take you to a desired outcome. Right? But if you don't implement them, you're never gonna get there. You're gonna get lost. So now I open a book, read 3 pages, close the book, implement, open the book, and that's the process I go through. And that's the process I try to go through my courses too with the videos embedded, the exercises embedded in every video.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. This is I think this is another mindset shift a lot of people should have. Right? Because, like, with Goodreads and other websites, you are celebrated for how many books you read, but, like, who cares?. I read you know, there was a year I read 24 books. I literally cannot tell you those books. Right? I can't tell you those books. I can't tell you what I learned from them, But, like, the year I read 10 books? Yeah. I oh, oh, I read Profit First that year, and I actually implemented that for my business.
Den López: Oh! Great book.
Joe Casabona: Right? Yeah. Like, yeah, I read the Alexander Hamilton biography, and I can tell you all sorts of things about Alexander Hamilton. Like, it's again, I keep going back to the term, like, quote, collection or knowledge collection.
Den López: Yes.
Joe Casabona: But books and courses are not things to collect to put on a shelf, like my LEGO or my Yankee pictures. Right?
Den López: Yep.
Joe Casabona: It’s knowledge is something that you should actively use.
Den López: Yes. It's a skill. You need that skill. And the only way you can get that skill is by actually doing it. So having someone by your side doing it with you, I believe is essential. If not, you're left to willpower, and willpower never works.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. Absolutely.
Den López: It just never works.
Joe Casabona: No. I mean, it doesn't. Right? I mean, like, every morning, I'm like, I'm gonna eat healthy today. And then every night, I'm like, or I can eat ice cream. Right?
Den López: Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. But if you had a you had an app to where they cooked with you, they prepared. They gave you the tips. They they even went to you with you to the supermarket. Right? Like, I'm gonna get this. I'm gonna get that. I'm gonna and you just felt like somebody was doing it with you. Now it's a lot easier to implement. You the only willpower you need is open up open up the video. Right? And then it's just following the video. If you're dependent on going to the supermarket by yourself, making your grocery list. I mean, what you just said. You wake up being, like, yes, I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna play guitar. I'm gonna learn drums. I'm gonna eat healthy. But then something gets in the way, and then you don't do it.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. You get stressed. It falls apart. Right? I mean, like, you know, my, food trigger is usually stress. Right? And it's, as we record this, it's baseball playoff season. So, I'm a little stressed. Not as stressed as, like, Philly's fans, but, you know, still very stressful.
So, I love this. This is such great advice. I wanna wrap up here with your setup, right, and building a flexible business because I watched some of your videos, and it looked like you are basically recording these lessons. And if y'all are watching the video, you can watch these interviews on YouTube now. I'll put that in the show notes. But it looks like you record in this room maybe on your phone, with your guitar. Is that accurate?
Den López: Facebook posts and stuff like that, I do. Because, I mean, if I gave you unlimited electricity, the the way to get unlimited energy forever for the entire humanity on a napkin, would you accept that? Right?
Joe Casabona: Yes.
Den López: You don't need a golden plaque or a fat big book with golden bindings. You just need the recipe. Right? You just need the information. So for me to be able to deliver information constantly to whoever needs it, I need something that's quick. Like, you'll even see me on my Facebook post turning on and off the camera because it's not edited. I just go for it. You know? I know my stuff. I know how I can help you, and I just hit record, post, hit record, post. I need it to be quick, and I need it to be effective. So that's why I use my phone. Easy setup. Right? Same same as like, making things easy is so vital. Joe, in my opinion, get 3 chords, play 10,000 songs. Three chords. Why make it more difficult? You can make it more difficult if you want. But you don't need to make it more difficult. And the person listening to that song is gonna love it even if it's just 3 chords. You don't need to throw in a 1,500 chords. Right? That person doesn't need it. So keeping things very simple is I think is essential. Yeah.
Joe Casabona: I mean, I listen to a lot of pop punk. Three chords is basically every song I listened to as a teenager. Right?
Den López: Like Right. You don't need it anymore.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. That's exactly right. I mean, Ringo Starr said the same thing about drums. Right? He's like, I never tried to do fancy fills. Right? I played along with the song and kept the beat and it sounded good. Right? Yeah. I really Oh my gosh. I know. It's like he has a he has a course on master class and I'm just like, I ate it up. Like, it's not even like Oh my gosh. It's not even like how to start drumming. It's just like his drumming philosophy. It's so good. Like, I loved it. Right? Yes. So good.
So, this is this is great. Right? Because it it reminds me of I used to play paintball. Right? And I had, like, a, one of the most common paintball guns was the, Tippman custom, 98. Right? It was fine. Right? I didn't have many modifiers to it. And one time I went paintballing with this this guy with our college. It was me and my brother Phil. We were a good unit, but this guy was decked out in, like, speedball gear. Right? So we're in the woods. We're all in camo, and he's in, like, bright red. And he's talking about how he has, like yeah. He has this spider, and it could shoot, you know, up to 20 paintballs per second or whatever. Like, well, it sounded like maybe it was, like, 60 per minute. And I looked at him, and I said, you only need 1 paintball to get a dude out.
And you know what? We he was not good. He he just, like, stood off to the side wasting paint. He had all this fancy gear when all he really needed was a paintball gun that would reliably shoot 1 paintball at a time. So, like, you need you need it to be quick and effective. I think we can be our own worst enemies. It needs to be perfect. It needs to look perfect.
I don't know. I'm reminded again, like, during the pandemic, you know, you had Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers recording, you know, from, like, their laptops so that they can keep making content. And, you know, I mean, people like me at the time were like, it doesn't cost so much to get a good camera and a microphone. But, like, they know they they knew they didn't need it. All they had to do was make stuff and put it on the Internet
Den López: Yeah.
Joe Casabona: And keep their show going and keep their staff paid.
Den López: Exactly. In their case, keep people entertained. My case is coaching people how to play the guitar. I don't need, I do have it, but I don't need a $1,500 camera. Right? I can do it with my phone. The message is the same. Why should I set up everything super fancy and then record one video if I can record 50 videos in the same amount of time and help 50 more people? Does it make any sense?
Joe Casabona: Yeah. And you know what? Those videos feel more approachable, I think. Right? Like yeah. If you're, like, a thought leader and you're trying to talk to CEOs or people who wanna make 1,000,000 of dollars, like, yeah, you probably need a setup like mine because it looks professional and people, you know, you you digitally dress for the job you want or whatever. You are trying to help as many people as possible play guitar. And if you come in like a suit and the fanciest camera and, like, a telefunkin' microphone and, like, a custom fender or whatever, like, they're gonna be like, I can't do this. Right?
Den López: Yeah. Exactly. Now I switched to this to this Gibson, but I like, the first year and a half of my business, I, on purpose, used a cheap guitar just to demonstrate, hey, you can make this sound good. You know? Yeah. Like, many people can afford a gypsum. Okay. Let's play with the $300 guitar, see what we can do. It sounds fantastic.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. My daughter's learning how to play cello right now. She's 7. And, yeah, I know. So she's, like, so much cooler than me. But, you know, like, I mean, the place that she's getting lessons from, you know, they rent little kid sized cellos. And it's probably not the best cello, but it's a lot cheaper than us having to buy a $500 instrument that we don't know if she's interested in.
And, you know, now thinking back, they didn't teach her chords for the 1st month. They taught her technique and how to read some music and how to play along with music. Love that. Man, full circle. I love that.
Okay. So the last question I have here is, I do wanna talk a little bit about tech stack and, like, how you sell your courses because we talked about a lot about flexible business and delivering content. But you do need good, you, like, you do need tools to do that. And I, my toxic trait is over engineering because I was a software engineer for a while, and I know everything that's possible. How do you how do you record your course videos and sell your course videos?
Den López: Yeah. So I use, free editing software. So I record it with my camera. I use free editing software, which is called CapCut.
Joe Casabona: Okay. Nice.
Den López: Which is really easy to use. The best I found.And then I use click funnels to sell my online courses for my sales patients and stuff like that. And I use active campaign for my email automations. That's it.
Joe Casabona: Nice. So it sounds like if I have the pricing in my head right, ClickFunnels is probably the most expensive thing in your stack.
Den López: ClickFunnels, you can get offers for, like, a $1,000 for 6 months. If I believe it's, like, $300 a month. The most expensive thing is the, is the emails. They just got, like, they've tripled.
Joe Casabona: Have they really? And they charge you per subscriber or not, like, per subscriber, but subscriber level?
Den López: It has, like, some kind of you can send so many emails to so many people and stuff like that. I mean, I understand because I get spam email all the time. I always try to deliver even though I'm always selling because I'm a marketer, and I know that if you buy my course, you're gonna get the desired outcome. I know that for sure. Like, I'm if you go through the course, you're gonna get better at guitar for sure. Right?
Joe Casabona: Yeah.
Den López: So I always sell, but I always try to deliver value on top of what I sell. So, if I'm selling you a course on courts, I show you different things that you can do with course. I show you different approaches, different stuff. And then I tell you if you want more, go and buy the course. Right?
Joe Casabona: Yeah. Yeah.
Den López: So it's normal that they're charging so much just because they're trying to filter out people who spam.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. Yeah. I that makes perfect sense. Right? And I mean, it's you know, I pay for ConvertKit. It's like I mean, for a list of my size, I think it's about $500 or $600 a year. I make more than that from my email list. Right? So it's, like, it's easy to justify that, like, return on investment.
Gosh. This is so interesting. I know we're, like, we're a little over the time I usually shoot for this episode, or for these episodes. But I do wanna ask you one more thing. Because you do, I think a lot of people struggle with what do I give away for free and what do I include in the course or how do you know? And I have a very specific way I think about it, but I'd love to hear your take on that.
Den López: Awesome. That's an awesome question. So I one of my lead magnets is this. It's a book. Right? And it's a digital book. I just printed this one out.
Joe Casabona: I love that.
Den López: It comes again to break in, I think, the corem the false belief someone has. So, for example, I get a lot of lead magnets just to see what people are doing. And the lead magnet is 30 pages of just words. I'm not gonna read through it. Right? I need something that's immediate, that hits me right where my problem is now. Right? For example
Joe Casabona: You've given me a project. Right?
Den López: Yeah. Look at this little picture. Right? That chord right there, B minor, is one of the toughest chords there is for a guitar player, for a beginner guitar. I'm telling you, the first page, you can play that with one finger. So that immediately goes like, what? Why didn't anybody tell me? Okay. Keep reading. Right? And pictures and diagrams and videos embedded in the book, It's just what keeps people reading. So, yeah, get that immediate hit, solve an immediate problem in 30 seconds if you can more than 30 minutes, and you've got a successful lead magnet. Is was that your question, Joe?
Joe Casabona: Yeah. But that was part of it. Right? And first, let me like, there are a lot you could probably the way you just flip through that book makes me think you could probably sell it. There's the, it looks very information rich and dense. Right?
Den López: Mhmm.
Joe Casabona: But this is what you say you're delivering a quick win. Right? Now you also have, you have a pretty active YouTube channel, I think. Right? The last time I didn't clock any of the published dates, but I saw you had a lot of videos on there.
Den López: Mhmm.
Joe Casabona: So how do you choose what to put on YouTube versus, like, maybe something you'd keep back in a course, or is there a kind of a different formula for that?
Den López: Yeah. So many people are are afraid of that, of I'm giving away my best stuff. I give away for free my best stuff. Everything, I give out for free. Right? The thing with with courses and lead magnets. So for example, inside of that book is a lot of stuff. Like, it fills in the gaps that beginner guitarists are struggling with, the mindset, everything. Like, the the knowledge that they don't teach you is inside that book. Now that's this part of the equation.
Now I can expand on every topic and make it bigger. Go more in-depth. Go through the exercise we just we just talked about. Like, now we're gonna play it together. Right? Inside a lead magnet, nobody's gonna play with me. Right? They just want the information. So now let's do it together inside an online course. I'm gonna get a chapter from their lead magnet and blow it up. Right?
The next thing you could do is okay. Same thing. Now we're gonna do a workshop, or we're gonna do on, an event where everyone gathers together at one spot, and we do it together. So, thinking that you're giving away your best stuff is a mistake. It's not a mistake. Once you create something, in my opinion, it's not yours anymore. Why didn't you create it for yourself? You create stuff for other people. Right? Give it to them.
An online course is just the path with a with a desired outcome. Now, nobody's gonna watch from a lead magnet 6 hours of a course. They need to buy it because now they're invested, and now they're gonna watch it. Right? So it's a different approach, but the the the materials, the knowledge is the same. One thing is this small, the other thing is this small, and the other thing is that big. Right? It's just expanding on the same thing, if that makes sense.
Joe Casabona: I love that. Yeah. That's perfect. That makes perfect sense. This is what you said was perfectly crystallized for me the first time I sold an online course. And the very first comment was, why would I pay for something that I can find on YouTube for free? And I thought, hey. If you wanna spend your time looking for those videos in the right order to teach you things, by all means. Or you can pay a $100, and it's in the right order for you already. If you don't value your time, then I can't help you. Right?
So, yeah, I love that. Right? I put out I'll put out videos about what I'm thinking about today. And in a month, I'll have all of those reordered a certain way and, of course, to go, like you said, to go deeper and to teach a certain way.
Man, Den, this was an amazing an amazing discussion. I'll tell you. I do a bunch of research, and I think about how I'm gonna structure this conversation. And we went in a totally different and way better direction, than I could have thought. And I think it's because you're an educator. I'm an educator. We wanna teach, and I'm really glad that we got to talk about our teaching philosophies. And so if someone wants to learn more about you, maybe they wanna learn guitar. Where can they find you?
Den López: They should. So I would recommend everyone downloading this book, and you can get it at learning guitar secrets with [go.learningguitarsecrets.com/free] because it's free to download. And either if you're starting out or you've been struggling for a couple months, years, because guitar, the way it's taught is hard. This is gonna fill in the gaps, and it's gonna give you a lot of insights. So you can go and download that book for free. You'll enter my email list, and from there, we can keep chatting.
Joe Casabona: Love that. I will have that and everything we talked about in the show notes and over at the episodes website or the episodes link, [streamlined.fm/442]. That's for Episode 442. I don't think I've said that yet.
Den, thanks so much for joining us today. I really appreciate it.
Den López: It's been a pleasure, Joe. A great conversation. Thank you so much.
Joe Casabona: Likewise. And thank you for listening. Thanks to our sponsors. And until next time, I'll see you out there.