In my first of 24 startups in 12 months challenge, I decided to work on my music membership site on Patreon.
To date, I’ve create courses revolving around playing the piano, and classify them as collections in my Patreon site.
In this blog post, I break down what I do in each day of my challenge, what I learn and what I’ll do going forward.
What’s covered in this Blog Posts
1. A Detailed Breakdown of Each Day of the Challenge
2. What I Learn from #1 of 24 Startups in 12 Months
3. Will I Go on to #2 of 24 startups in 12 months?
Journal from Each Day of the Challenge
Day 0: What I start off with
I have so many projects in progress that I don’t really need to start from scratch. I used what I already have and add on to it. In this project, there’s one main product — my piano music membership site on Patreon.
This is what I have on Day Zero on my patreon site.
It is not an empty patreon site, but one with already 182 posts, with more than 90% of them being videos (as I use patreon mainly to host my video courses).
The 182 posts make up the 3 courses I currently have:
- piano basics
- scales and arpeggios
- Canon in D for piano beginners
I also created 1 digital product in my Patreon Shop where I sell the Canon in D score that I arranged, together with an mp3 file of it:
I also have a Youtube Channel, which I used to market my patreon membership. At Day 0, this Youtube channel has 7 videos (with 3 of them being Shorts), and a total of 15 subscribers. This channel was actually started 5 years ago, and I uploaded 2 random videos on music. Recently, I decided to revamped this channel and use it to market my Patreon site.
What I want this Patreon Site to Become
Basically I want this patreon site to be a membership site where I members (adults) can self- learn to play the piano and music theory by themselves. I want the membership site to be a library of piano courses, where people can choose and learn what they want.
I divided the things I want to do into must have, should have, and can have.
Must Haves
These are the things that I feel are must haves for my Patreon site:
- How to read sheet music for piano beginners
- A few piano tutorials
There is no point of creation if there is no traffic. Hence, I’ll also need my this Youtube Channel to promote these courses. Preferably creating 52 videos so that I can upload 1 per week for the next 1 year.
Should Have
These are the things that I would like to have:
Create 5 music method books for people to get started with piano. The video course that accompanies the music method books will be hosted on Patreon.
For all the courses that I have created on Patreon, create a book to accompany it.
Can Have
The can have is basically a website that is used put all the things I have created for this project in one single page. Currently, I have a page under this domain that links all my music stuff, you can find the page here. But I’m thinking of giving it a page on its own, either a new website or a subdomain. But I’m also very okay with it staying as what it is now.
Day 1:
Today I started creating Prelude in C by J.S Bach Piano Tutorial from scratch. It starts with me typing the piece into Musescore. This took quite long.
“typing” the Prelude in C into MuseScore
After I finish typing, I made some simple videos to kickstart the course. Uploaded one to youtube:
Then I spend the rest of the time planning the course. For this piece, it may be hard to split into A, B, C sections like what I did for the Canon in D piano tutorial. Because it’s quite short, I decided to do it bar by bar, while pointing out the similarities.
Didn’t manage to finish this today.
Day 2:
In day 2 of my 24 startups in 12 months, I started filming the entire course. I film it this way using a stand that I bought online above my piano. The typical cameral stands are no good for piano shots above the piano, as I need to extend the camera (or phone) away from the base. Hence, this stand serves its purpose for my videos. It is able to film the entire piano keyboard, while being stable and keeping my face out of the camera, since I want to remain private. p/s: Phone removed from stand to take this photo.
If you are interested in the above stand, you can find it here (affiliate link).
Finally completed filming the entire tutorial, and it’s time for the most time consuming one, which is editing, as every single video needs to be edited.
Here’s a screen shot of each raw video captured:
And I turned each video to something like this below:
Took the WHOLE DAY before I managed to complete all editing. Worked way more than 12 hours today. Posted it up to my Patreon site and also to Udemy. When I rewatch the videos, there are some parts that I want to add, like introducing some music theory, by explaining the rhythm, and also talk about the dynamics.
Day 3:
Day 3 was a public holiday in Singapore. So, I spend time with my family. No work for the day.
Day 4:
In day 4, I put in the parts that I felt are needed to make the Prelude in C piano tutorial more complete. And after adding these 2 parts: Rhythm and Dynamics parts to the course, I am finally satisfied with the course. Tidied up my Patreon site for this course, and created a course outline for this.
Finally, I’m happy to say that this course is completed to my satisfaction. You can find the full course here.
It’s already Day 4, and I’ve just completed 1 course. Seems like I’m behind time.
To make matters worse, I went on to work on the CAN HAVE, like creating a new website which you can find here. This website is essentially a subdomain from rlwong.com. I’ve decided to use a subdomain instead of a new domain name because I’ve labelled at the bottom of ALL my Videos with rlwong.com, and it doesn’t make sense that I make a new website with a different domain name.
I also spend time updating this blog (yes, I wrote Day 1 to Day 4 ) on Day 4, spending time away from my project.
By Day 4, I created my website, and finished my Piano tutorial course on Prelude in C by J.S Bach.
This is how my Patreon Collections look like on Day 4:
If you look closer, there are now 232 posts, up from the previous 182 posts when I first started this challenge (see Day 0).
It becomes obvious to me that I can’t finish the entire project in a week. I can’t make 1 startup in a week, and then rest for 1 week. Instead, I’ll need to use all the 14 days to finish this project.
More time wasters, I went in, yet again, to edit this post here, and create a Youtube video on my progress till Day 4. LOL.
And so with 4 days down, I refined what I want to complete for my Patreon site to adding an additional course:
- How to read sheet music for piano beginners
Day 5:
In day 5, I started on with my How to read sheet music for piano beginners. I made the first slide to cover what I would like the course to be about, and identified 7 components of reading sheet music. There after, I’ll be creating 7 sections for this course.
Day 6:
Completed the slide pack of the first component I wanted to cover.
Day 7:
Day 7 is a Sunday, and I took a break.
Day 8:
In day 8, I completed the first part of my “how to read sheet music” course. Unlike a lot of courses that go through one note at a time, I wanted one where we could read any notes long term. So, I go through the concepts of how notes are written on the music staff.
The first component of reading sheet music, which is note reading, is itself a course. I also compiled it as a single course on note reading.
Day 9:
In day 9, I continued with the course. With 1 component down, I still have 6 more components to create. The next “big” component of my reading sheet music course will be understand the notation for rhythm. I know once rhythm is done, the rest of the components are “easy” as my other courses have these components.
Day 10:
Today, my daughter has her dance exam, and after that it was celebration day. We went to a nice restaurant for lunch, and then watched a movie. No work done.
Day 11:
In day 11, I completed the rhythm course, and also the other components for the learn to read sheet music course.
Day 12:
Day 12, the learn to read sheet music course is completed, and I have also completed the upload to patreon.
Learn to Read Sheet Music is a comprehensive course on how to read sheet music that brings you through the essentials of reading sheet music.
Day 13:
Day 13 is a Saturday. It’s a day where I send my kids for enrichment classes, like a typical Singaporean parent.
Day 14:
Day 14 is launch day!
It’s a Sunday, hence a family day. Hence, I did some edits to my Piano Music Website, and called it a day.
The number of courses in my Patreon page at the beginning and end of the #1 of 24 startups in 12 months challenge. Each collection in my Patreon page is considered a course on its own.
The number of posts on my Patreon page has also increased from 182 at the start of the challenge to 271 posts, a total of 89 posts.
What I Learn from this Challenge
Here are some of things that I learn from this Challenge.
- I Found A Job That I Truly Love
I enjoyed creating the piano courses and tutorials A LOT. And it didn’t feel like work. It’s more of a hobby, where I do it whenever I have the time. It reminds me of Naval Ravikant’s tweet:
And this — making the courses, uploading my Patreon page just feels like a hobby rather than a job. Even though I gave myself a 14- day period for it, I never felt the pressure to create, but rather the urge after my family commitments are met.
2. Piano Music With RL membership site will be here to stay
Because I love what I am doing, my Patreon site is here to stay. And going forward, I will be working on it continuously to provide more tutorials and courses for my patreons.
3. Use what you already have
I didn’t start this project from 0. In fact, I already have some reviews, and 182 posts, and 3 courses to start with. I have this problem that I often when to start something from scratch again, although I have many things already available to kickstart my journey, and I realize I do really like many of the past items that I have created. In the first place, I’ve already spend a lot of time on them, so why should I not make use of these things that I’ve painstakingly made in the past?
4. Time is the limiting Factor
While I finished my courses, I did not add much to Youtube which is essential to drive traffic. This is mainly due to limited time, and also me going on to do less important things like the website — something that I’ll put more effort on in time to come.
4. I want a Lifestyle Business
A lifestyle business is one where you run a business based on your passion to sustain your lifestyle. If you look at what I’m doing over the past 14 days, it’s basically creating courses on Patreon based on the schedule of my life. The schedule to work revolves around my life commitments, rather than the other way. When it’s weekends, I spend way less time on it. During public holidays, I don’t work. I don’t work too when I want to spend time with my kids.
And that’s alright for me.
The reason why I quit corporate was to do what I always wanted to try, and also to spend time with people I love when I want to.
Will I Go on to #2 of 24 startups in 12 months?
So, the next question is whether I will be going on to the next startup, now that I know I love my first “startup” and want to continue with it.
And the answer is — YES.
Yes, I will be still working on my patreon site here, but I will still be going on to the next startup.