We were lucky to catch up with Lauren Anderson Bustami recently and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Lauren thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.
When I first started my own lesson studio, I did it because I knew I could offer more to my students and also become more profitable than it was working for other people. This was not a new concept or anything radical. What was new to me was when I finally started using a marketing budget & people from all over the country started asking me if I could teach them over an online video call. The early days of this were 2018/2019. Little did I know these people were very early adopters of what everyone would be forced to adopt in the early days of 2020. As those online students continued to study with me, I started to really believe in the power of online teaching- especially with singing. I could see and hear my students, and offer them productive feedback. They were getting results! Now I could speak with confidence on this offer that my own clients had to convince me to try. Then came the inevitable- Covid 19 shutdowns. I remember being on a call with the teachers from another studio I was still working very part time at. One of the older teachers refused to move his lessons online and would simply “wait til the pandemic was over.” I offered a couple tips to the other teachers that I had learned from my very first online students. Personally, the decision was obvious, move everyone who was willing to online lessons immediately, and try to convince the others to try it out as time when on, By the end of summer 2020 I had quit all my other jobs and was fully booked, teaching nonstop–it was the busiest summer I had ever had to this day. People were so bored that they were signing up for online voice and piano lessons in droves. I was starting to have to turn people away when I got my crazy idea– what if I started bringing other teachers on the team as independent contractors. This is very common in the music world because most people who teach are also performing professionally and also gigging. I was scared to make the step-which is why it took me a couple months of saying I was fully booked and turning people that had come down my marketing pipeline away before I took the leap. I brought on my first two teachers in September of 2020. This is how my current business model began to take shape!
Lauren , 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’m the founder of the Online Music Lesson Studio SWL! My background training is in classical singing and I’ve been teaching all genres of singers for 10 years now! I have earned two singing degrees- Bachelor of Music from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, and a Masters of Music from Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University.
As a professional opera singer, I’ve been a featured singer at the Kennedy Center and at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC. I have also performed in concerts and recitals in many different places, Wisconsin, Maryland, Texas, Arizona, Illinois, New York, Greece and Italy. I’m really fascinated by the process of premiering new works as well, and love collaborating with living composers to bring their newest works to the stage.
During the pandemic, we brought all voice lessons online and have people love them so much we have kept lessons online! This has allowed me to teach students in many different states and time zones. I have also expanded our team of teachers across the country and am proud to say we have 11 other amazing teachers who work with the studio. Our students have been heard on Broadway, Apple TV, Netflix, music festivals, and Top Performing Arts schools across the US. Our offerings have now expanded to include piano, guitar and bass guitar online lessons as well!
We teach all ages of students from 5- our amazing retiree crew. It’s so fun as a teacher to be constantly reminded that not only is studying music timeless, but it is also a life-long activity.
In our lessons, we strive to help people become the musicians we know they can be, no matter what instrument they choose to study with us. We help people find confidence in themselves through music. Our students often report that in addition to loving their lessons and hearing improvement with their voice or instrument, they feel they are achieving personal self-growth in other areas of their life.
How did you build your audience on social media?
I started my music teacher presence using Youtube in 2018. At the time I had a lot of ideas brewing, but had absolutely 0 audience other than friends and family who followed me on instagram. It was before tiktok, reels, and shorts, so I knew long form video would be the best way to advertise myself as a teacher. The first year was slow and I eeked my way to 1000 followers and getting monitized by asking new students to follow me and publishing lots of warmup exercises. I slowly figured out that Youtue is one big search engine, and that in order to really grow on it I would need to start creating content that people were already searching for. I had noticed a couple poeple doing “voice teacher reacts” videos and and first I totally shut it down. I thought it was corny and when I watched a few it mostly just consisted of gasping at the high wistle tones and making crazy faces. Nope. Uh uh. This was not for a classically trained self proclaimed “serious” voice teacher like myself. It took a couple of months and starting to realize that just because thats how those teachers chose to do their videos, it was not how I had to do it. But this was the content that the world of music lovers was searching on YT, and that was something I could not change. I decided to give it a whirl and react to a very famous singer- Dimash Kudaibergen. Within an hour of posting it, I could hardly believe it. It was getting views and comments like crazy– nothing I had ever experienced before. This was about 10 months into my youtube journey and the video got more views in the first day than all my other videos combined.
In the almost 5 years since I now have around 60K youtube followers! I always tell people youtube is a very long game. I have a full time Virtual Assistant Luanne who edits all my videos- or else at this point I would never be publishing anything new! Thanks Luanne! You have to consistently put out content on constantly ask yourself what do my viewers want to see- not what do I feel like making! And then of course making sure your YT SEO is on point- or no one will be able to find your videos no matter how well they are made.
What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?
Building out our student base is the most important way for my business to continue to grow and make money. Investing in a marketing budget was one of the scariest things for me, because I never knew any other voice teachers who paid to advertise. When I turned that specific marketing faucet on, it became extremely important to figure out what the rest of the pipeline consisted of. When someone reaches out to me, whether it’s a paid or organic lead, the first step is offering a 15 minute free phone consult. No matter which teacher will ultimately get the student, it’s important for me to set the stage for the potential student on what we do as a studio and how we can help them. I also lay out the purchasing process- which consists of a discounted trial lesson with the teacher they will have and how pricing and packages work moving forward. I feel this helps take the surprise out of the process and if people take the step forward to schedule a trial lesson on that call, the changes of them taking regular lessons with us goes up a ton. I can also tell when I’m talking to people who aren’t really that serious about taking lessons, so it saves us all time in the end. We get them signed up in an account with our scheduling software called Fons which sends out automate lesson information, reminders, and integrates payment with stripe. Once they take the trial lesson my team reaches back out and asks if they want to continue on! At that point over 70% of people move forward with regular lessons.
Contact Info:
- Website: Singingwithlauren.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/laurenandersonbustami
- Youtube: youtube.com/singingwithlauren
- Other: Email: [email protected]
Image Credits
MAIN SHOT- DANI LEIGH PHOTOGRAPHY (https://danileighphotography.com/ https://www.instagram.com/danileighphotography?igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==)
OTHER TWO PROFESSIONAL HEADSHOTS- ALTERNATIVE STANDARDS SHOT AT PIANO IS A PERSONAL PHOTO