We were lucky to catch up with Chris Farmer recently and have shared our conversation below.
Chris, appreciate you joining us today. The first dollar your business earns is always special and we’d love to hear how your brand made its first dollar of revenue.
I have an on line membership program where I coach and mentor adult singing acoustic guitar players on how to quickly grow their song lists and perform the tunes as good or better than the original versions. It’s extremely important when starting any business to identify who your ideal customer is and to include this detailed description in your business plan. Well I did just that – drove traffic to my website with paid ads – and landed my first cold sale soon thereafter. It was an amazing feeling! Very exciting to meet someone for the first time on a Zoom call, make that human and professional connection, and have them trust me by becoming my client!
Chris, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I’ve been a professional musician all my life, singing and playing with headliner groups like The Beach Boys, and members of the Eagles, oldies groups the Turtles and Jan & Dean. I’ve played with Motown and R&B legends Martha Reeves, David Ruffin, Sam Moore (Sam & Dave), Al Wilson, British Invasion artists Spencer Davis, members of The Rolling Stones, Badfingers, and Paul McCartney’s Wings, the list goes on (ha)! In between tours and concerts, I’ve had guitar and voice clients here in Southern California. I decided to move my 1 on 1 lessons to an on-line membership model, launching this month. We’re gonna have a blast solving performance issues like lyric retention, stage fright, strumming inconsistency, all kinds of problems that rip us up while we’re singing and playing.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
My journey from one-on-one in-person lessons to on-line coaching starts with the Covid lockdowns of 2020. My live event business was basically shut down, as corporate events and public concerts were postponed. Thankfully most of my guitar clients were still willing to meet in person, but the idea that my income could be shut down just like that was quite disturbing, to say the least.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
I started searching other online membership sites to figure out the best model to choose. After a few years of testing the waters, I decided upon creating a highly active, focused annual membership approach, where my clients and I get together twice weekly to solve various issues while quickly growing their set lists for live performances.
Contact Info:
Image Credits
Chris Farmer Music – Private Photo Collection