We were lucky to catch up with Melvin Mariano recently and have shared our conversation below.
Melvin , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today The first dollar you earn in a new endeavor is always special. We’d love to hear about how you got your first client that wasn’t a friend or family.
So this actually happened by default/Desperation. What started with a video of me helping people learn how to play the guitar in my style which is called (Bachata) think about it as the blues of the Dominican Republic a small country in the Caribbean. Evolved into me teaching thousands of people all over the world and now helping creators and business find their place in this creator economy by leading with their Identity as their brand. But lets track it back to June 2014. After 6 years of posting videos one particular person had contacted me and asked if i gave personal lessons, prior to that time I’ve had many people request for lessons but I never agreed to doing them because one i was insecure and i was also focused on working my bank job. thing was that by this time, i had quit my job a year before because i was going to pursue music and commit to finishing my degree and my svings were gone so of course i was broke. lol Also very quickly i realized that having a degree was not going to solve my life problems since i graduated a month prior. anyways once i agreed to the lesson the man showed up to take a lesson with his son 13 years old. A small detail i should add is that i lived in queens NY the man lived in New jersey so to meet up half way we agreed to meet outside in the campus of The City College Of New York where i had just graduated in the middle of a day. lucky it was not raining otherwise we would have had to cancel. giving the lesson was nerve wrecking because for the first time it was not talking to a camera and i had no other way of making money other than going back to the 9-5. I even went over time to almost 2 hours just because i wanted to wow the man and make sure he came back again. That day was the first day I realized that not all jobs felt like a waste of life points.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
If I could describe myself in two words, I would say I am a Flawed Perfectionist who is obsessed with clarity, creativity, and helping people express who they really are (Storytelling). On paper I’m a musician, educator, and brand strategist. I started my journey in music, posting my first videos back in 2008 and eventually building a reputation as a very precised guitarist within the world of Bachata. But over time, I realized that my true gift wasn’t just in playing music, it was in teaching others how to find their own voice through it. I realized that the biggest issue I came across, had nothing to do with technique and it went beyond the frets. It often had more to do with their mindset. After years of travelling even up to 2 hour each way to give a one hour lesson and working with people of all ages. I had enough lived experience to turn that teenage channel into what is now Mariano Music.
This has become a transformational learning space where I help guitarists express their ideas and emotions through the guitar and tell better stories both musically and emotionally. I’ve taught hundreds of students one-on-one and through live lessons, helping them overcome not just technical blocks, but also the self-doubt, confusion, and perfectionism that often keep people stuck. My method combines emotional insight, creative structure, and strategic guidance which I’m proud to say it’s helped students reconnect with their creativity, even if they felt like they were “too late” or “not talented enough.” To hear someone say that their dream has always been to play the guitar on a stage and then seeing that happen multiple times, has really shown me the power of desire and perseverance.
As I built that platform, I didn’t realize that I was also unintentionally building another skill. You see, I had grown my music teaching business through content crafting emotional hooks, Posting close to 1000 pieces of content, designing offers that succeed and many that didn’t, and using education as my primary method of client acquisition. All those reps and countless hours learning to record both professional audio as well as video, studying trends, looking at logistic charts, studying email, trying different types formats and even almost abandoning what worked for me just to chase the algorithm and finding my way back, helped me to get here today. The same way that just playing videos and teaching in front of a phone camera Helped me to learn how to teach guitar, surviving the chaos of content creation helped me develop the ability to understand and find clarity in Branding and storytelling. That journey led to launching Mariano Creatives, where I now help creators and businesses clarify their brand identity, craft messaging that connects, and build content systems that actually convert.
In both of my worlds of music and consulting, my mission is the same: to help people find clarity and express it with purpose. Whether you’re a musician learning to tell stories through your guitar, or a business trying to articulate your message in a crowded market, my work is about turning chaos into rhythm and helping you share something real.
What sets me apart is the blend of emotional depth and execution. I’m not a hype coach or a surface-level content creator. I go deep into identity, story, and systems — whether I’m teaching someone to improvise or helping a company refine its brand.
What I’m most proud of is that my work genuinely changes people — not just their skills or sales, but their confidence, their sense of self, their ability to express what matters. that is the impact that all of this has had on me and is what i wish i can do for others.
What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?
In the words of Myron Goldman “Success is discovering, developing and deploying your purpose” Since I was a kid, I’ve always been creative and fuelled by imagination and a deep curiosity about other people’s stories and how we’re all connected. Today I find myself in a place where through my skills and experience I can help others strengthen their own identity and use that as fuel to solve problems and serve the audience they are trying to help with their business. Whether it is with music or business my goal has always been the same, to express myself and serve others in my own way.
How did you build your audience on social media?
I started doing covers of a very niche genre of guitar playing. I had two things that i always brought to my channel, the best quality and effort possible. Every year I would improve my quality and did more than anyone on my field for free. That was what caught my audience’s attention, what got them to stay was my ability to help them understand what I was teaching. I brought a more universal or school like approach to teaching where understanding was just as important as executing. When I first started doing this, I had another important thing going for me, which was that i was one of the first to do what I did in my field and I implemented different tactics than my peers.
Advice,
If you are doing content for yourself, then be honest to yourself about it and don’t expect to become viral, make a lot of money or become famous. Virality vs impact! Not all viral videos are great for you, some videos with far lesser views can have a bigger impact on your main audience, so learn the difference between the two. If you are making content for others or serving a problem, then become more interested in the people, how what you do impacts them and the problem that you are solving for them. Study the things that the successful people in your space do and add your personality to it.
