We recently connected with David Taub and have shared our conversation below.

David , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

Way back in the early 200os I had my own business teaching private guitar lessons. I taught students of all levels and was doing well. I had 20-35 students at any time and my weeks were very full teaching privately, lesson planning, rehearsing, and playing gigs with various bands. However, I wanted to reach more students. I knew teaching private lessons and with all the lesson planning that goes with that I can only teach 30 or so students each week. Remember that this was before the internet really kicked in with video learning.

So I decided to make some instructional DVDs and would market them to reach more potential students and customers all over the world. Back then DVDs were in. One of my students was a pretty big time video-ographer so I got him on board and I started producing DVD videos and learning all about video production and editing.

Shortly after I started filming the instructional DVDs I had another private student, who ended up being my business partner, who had a background in computers and marketing. He asked if he could film one of our private lesson segements and post it online. Back then the biggest video platforms were google video and yahoo video which are not around today. So I said sure and he posted a short lesson we filmed on a small camcorder.

After a few weeks we checked the video and it had thousands of views! It was pretty crazy and like I mentioned earlier, this was in 2004 and there wasn’t much video stuff happening. It was really in its infancy.

So after seeing how that video was taking off we were like, “hey, I think we may be on to something here”. So we discussed the idea of a whole video curriculum teaching guitar where I would do the teaching and artistic end and my business partner would handle the computer and marketing end. There was clearly a need for this kind of service and back then there were only a handful of people teaching guitar online – just a few of us. This was pre crazy YouTube days.

So my business partner and I started filming me teaching lessons every day for hours and hours. We worked non stop and built up an archive of hundreds of video lessons. We built up enough to start the curriculum up online and open an instructional guitar video memebership website.

So we were of the first to start an online video guitar instructional learning curriculum. We just kept building the site bigger and bigger and added DVDs for sale also as at that time many people still didnt have internet connections and preferred DVDs. So we did both website and DVDs to meet the need.

And my business partner is very savvy on the marketing end as we started building a niche email list of guitar players and musicians so we had a very viable list to market our products to. YouTube then exploded and we were already on there so we were very lucky to get in on the ground floor and build a big following early before the market got pretty saturated.

So much of it was timing believe it or not, as well as lots and lots of hard work and many all nighters filming and editing video. We learned as we went along and even though we took risks we just knew that we had something special and we were lucky to hit at the right time and with solid content. We had our challenges of course like any small business and so much of this was uncharted territory. But we both kept hammering away and trusted our process.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I have always loved music and guitar. Right from the first time I strummed a guitar in 6th grade I knew there was something special about it. I started getting serious about the instrument in my teens and eventually studied privately, joined bands, started teaching guitar and eventually took the leap and quit my full time job to start my own business teaching guitar.

Teaching guitar privately led to me creating instructional DVD products in the early 2000s which led me to my business partner and online video instruction and the start of my business Next Level Guitar Inc.

Our products include the video instructional membership website, DVD and digital download courses, eBooks, Jam tracks, and two large YouTube channels teaching acoustic and electric guitar and bass guitar.

We were of the first to offer video online guitar instruction starting way back in 2005, even before YouTube was really on the radar. We have taught hundreds of thousands of students all over the world via my online video curriculum at NextLevelGuitar.com, my digital download and DVD instructional courses, and via my YouTube Channels.

I have two YouTube channels and my main YouTube channel is always listed in the top ten of guitar instruction channels and combined they have over 185 million views and 450,000 subscribers – and counting!

I have always tried to produce and post the best content possible – the best possible guitar lessons. I never wanted to cut corners when it came to quality content. Plus I always try and keep the lessons light and fun. I learned early that you cant come across dry and stiff on camera so I tried to let my personality shine through.

The other thing is I try and help as many students, customers, and players as possible. I take the time to answer emails every day and get back to people within 1-2 days, often same day. Our customer service is top shelf and you can always call us and get a real person on the line. Right when we started the business I wanted to make the point of always having the best customer service possible.

So we answer every email and I also take the time each day to answer questions online, respond to YouTube comments, FaceBook comments, TikTok comments…etc. I think business owners who dont take the time to answer comments an questions are really taking their eye off the ball. Customer service and getting back to people fast is key! You need to be reachable – and I am reachable for every student and customer we have.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

I think it was a few things. One was quality content – putting out the best possible product, the best possible lessons. And its an evolution for sure as you go thru the stages and learn as you go. Remember that we were of the first to have a video online curriculum – so much was novel and not done before. Lot of trial and error – see what worked and what didn’t. But through it all the quality content was key. Having value there for customers – HUGE!

Another thing is customer service. Right when my business partner and I started the business we decided to have the best customer service possible. We get back to people fast – often same day or within 1-2 days max. And we are reachable – being reachable is huge.

Customers or potential customers are always amazed when they call and I pick up the phone. They were expecting to get a VM or an automated system. That has become the norm now for business. But I have always come from the model of having a human voice, a real person answering the phones. People notice that and people respond to that. Thank about it – is any customer ever excited when they call a business and get an automated response? But when a person answers the phone and can walk them through their questions and needs – now you have something. Its a simple thing but huge – people want that personal connection to what they are thinking about investing their time and money in.

Does your business have multiple or supplementary revenue streams (like a ATM machine at a barbershop, etc)?

Yes, we are able to market our instructional products and video across different platforms. Its almost a necessity in today’s ultra competitive and saturated crowded business spaces. You need multiple revenue streams and much like how you can splinter one video into four videos, you can splinter your products across multiple platforms.

We have build up a pretty big niche email list, (another must for a small business – building that niche email list), so we have a large list to market our products to directly. And that list is always growing and we have multiple funnels dumping into the list. So we have that.

Then we have the video online instructional website which is a paid membership site where students can join for a month, or three months, or a year – so there is different membership plans. We also have condensed focused courses and sell them individually if students want to purchase a certain course. Those are digital downloads but we also have many of those in DVD format. We dont sell nearly as many DVDs as we used to as that format isnt as viable anymore, but we still sell some.

We also have some courses on external courses where we sell them – like on Udemy for example. Many people out there rather one stop shop and like the convenience of Udemy. So we go there too – you have to sniff out and find where you potential customers are going and see if its a viable place to connect.

And of course we get a small stream from being a YouTube partner. So in this business, as with many other small businesses you need to have multiple streams coming in.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://nextlevelguitar.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dtdminor2007/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nextlevelguitarlessons
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/rockongoodpeople
• Other: https://www.youtube.com/c/EpicGuitarInstruction https://www.tiktok.com/@davidtaub1