How This Musician Inspires Creativity as an Online Coach
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It has the same feeling as when I used to be at the side of the stage, looking in at the audience at their lit-up faces. That’s how I feel all the time now.
Although he’s not the famous musician who goes by the same name, James Taylor has gotten quite a following of his own for his talents. It’s such a big following, in fact, that he sold out a $2,000 creative retreat within 45 seconds of opening it for sale.
Creative retreats in faraway and lovely places such as Italy, Scotland and Singapore are just one part of James’ business, which aims to help people discover their creativity. He teaches online courses and has launched 25 online subscription-based music schools, including lessons with numerous Grammy award-winning artists.
A former musician himself, James connects with his clients in a way others can’t. Using his formal education, musical background and years of industry experience, he helps people and teams “unlock their creative potential” so they can share their value with the world.
Influencing others to actualize their creative dreams brings James a new, yet familiar rush of adrenaline. “It has the same feeling as when I used to be at the side of the stage, looking in at the audience at their lit-up faces,” he said. “That’s how I feel all the time now.”
When James was three years old, his 22-year-old father handed him a guitar and taught him to play. This young father, Martin Taylor, was pursuing a career in jazz guitar during the 1970s — a time when jazz wasn’t the most lucrative genre to pursue in the wake of the British rock and pop craze. Despite the odds, he went on to become a famous British jazz guitarist, playing with big names such as Eric Clapton and Stéphane Grappelli. James grew up a musician alongside his virtuoso father and became his father’s manager at age 20.
He continued his career in the industry as a manager for other famous musicians. Big name artists were always in and out of James’ house, but he didn’t take much notice because “they were just people.” It never really hit him until one day when he, his father, and Rolling Stones bassist Bill Wyman were, oddly enough, looking at a self-cleaning, foaming solution in some water.
“Ah,” Bill noted, “I’ll have to get that for the moat.” James realized Bill was referring to the moat around his private castle — a luxury very few will ever experience. James really began to grasp the magnitude of wealth in his social bubble.
“My job was to make wealthy people wealthier and famous people even more famous,” he said. “One day I woke up and decided instead of helping the 1% of music artists make even more money, I wanted to share my knowledge and inspire the 99% to generate, develop and market their own creative ideas.”
To do this, he founded C.SCHOOL, an online training program that teaches individuals and organizations how to monetize creative ideas, and The Music Businesses Institute to teach musicians what they need to know to excel in today’s fast-changing music industry. In addition to the creative retreats, he also provides business coaching and has become a prominent keynote speaker.
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Instead of helping the 1% of music artists make even more money, I wanted to share my knowledge and inspire the 99% to generate, develop and market their own creative ideas.
Helped thought leaders and experts maximize, market and monetize their message and generate over $21 million in the process | Launched four online summits, including International Speakers Summit and Event Professionals Summit, which attracted over 20,000 attendees from 120+ countries | |
Combined Ontraport automation with artificial intelligence systems to be able to generate over 250 leads a week for his keynote speaking programs | Streamlined his podcast show using Ontraport automation so it now takes less than three hours a week to produce a new episode | |
Launched 20 high-end creative retreats in USA, Italy, UK, France and Asia | Made over $100,000 in sales in less than 12 hours from the launch of a new physical product |
Product Launch Hype With Segmented Lists
James was able to sell all of his $2,000 creative outreach tickets in less than a minute thanks to pre-launch campaigns built in Ontraport.
“That’s about using Ontraport the whole way to build your pre-launch,” he said. “We built so much anticipation and gave our followers everything they needed, with the exception of the ‘buy’ button.”
For that 45-second-sellout retreat, James built interest with valuable educational videos and then used Ontraport to communicate to his three segmented lists — those who’d previously not watched the videos, those who’d watched some of them, and those who’d watched the majority of them. On the Friday prior to the Monday cart opening for the retreat, James provided all the info about it and elicited “scarcity” by explaining what day and time sales would open and that space was limited.
Streamlined Booking Podcast Guests
James uses Ontraport to eliminate the tedious back-and-forth previously needed to book guest interviews for his podcast series, The Creative Life. Every week, James’ assistant finds books coming out in the next three months on one of James’ speaking topics. He then enters the prospective guest’s name and email address into a form on a “Suggest a Guest” page on James’ site, which triggers an outreach email campaign.
The prospective guest then receives a personalized email asking him or her to schedule a time for an interview — along with a follow-up email fired off if they don’t respond within a period of time. If they do accept, a second set of automation goes off, thanking them for confirming their interview and asking a series of “pre-show” questions that help James better promote the episode. This allows James to “spend as little time as possible on the research stage,” so by the day of the interview, James can look through the questions 15 minutes before, host the interview, quickly edit for quality, and effectively complete an entire episode in less than three hours.
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How many more people can I influence? That’s what I’m looking at now, and the only way I can do that is by using automation.
Drip Content Campaigns
Playing off the creative storytelling aspect of his business, James’ lead funnels follow three “acts,” each with a different tone and a different angle.
No matter which segment they’re in, everyone who buys one of James’ products is placed on a 365-day drip sequence — a daily, yearlong coaching program with a tip or video or other content to build even more loyalty.
James plans to continue using that sequence for upcoming events and then some. “How many more people can I influence? That’s what I’m looking at now,” he said, “and the only way I can do that is by using automation.”
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