Full Transcript for Aaron Davis | Building a Community Through YouTube

Bourquin (06:29) always left for a year. I haven't looked in this for a while. What is the threshold with YouTube where you actually start seeing some ad revenue from them? Aaron (06:40) Alright, so to become a monetized YouTube partner, you have to have thousand subscribers. I think they just changed it. ⁓ It used to be 4,000 watch hours. Now I think it's 3,000. Or you have to have 10 million ⁓ short views within a calendar year. So all of that is within a 12 month period. So... If you right now it's it's July so between July 2024 and July 2025 you have to have 3000 watch hours. ⁓ and a thousand subscribers or again the ten million ⁓ So if you fall within that threshold you can be monetized and then you become a YouTube partner and then when people can place ads on your videos You then in return make ad sense through Google ⁓ for every time someone watches a video and that ad comes up you make you know X amount of pennies and then hopefully it adds up so Chad Bourquin (07:39) Are you working towards that or are you there? Aaron (07:43) Yeah, I've been there for like five years or so. ⁓ Chad Bourquin (07:45) Okay. Aaron (07:47) And the reality is, it's kind of a good segue. You know, a lot of people are like, hey, I want to be a YouTube star or I want to be YouTube influencer. And the reality is you don't make a lot of money off AdSense. What you make money on is the call to actions that you can ask ⁓ your audience to invest in. So for instance, I have about three videos that have almost around 200,000 views, which is not viral by any means, but that's a lot for, you know, a lot of people. So like a 200,000 view video I made 600 bucks. So it's not like you're pulling 10 grand a month. just off of a few videos even if they're reaching a million. So you know people that have five million subscribers and they're putting out a video every two three days you know yeah they're making a decent income just off of AdSense. But those of us that have under a hundred thousand subscribers you're not going to make a huge income revenue just through ads. You're going to try to capitalize on that group that's following you and then drive them to ⁓ whether that's like some type of digital product that can provide value to them if you want to reach into that hey I want this YouTube thing to be my my side hustle you know Chad Bourquin (09:15) So are you driving people to something right now? Aaron (09:18) I do. have multiple like digital products. ⁓ I'm pretty. I have some notes over here. So if you see me glance over, that's what I'm looking at. But ⁓ yeah, I have multiple PDFs. like ⁓ I just released a few months ago, a ⁓ basically if you want to learn how to play court, like lead guitar chord shapes. ⁓ Kind of it's basically rooted within the cage system and the number system but learning patterns that you can transpose in any key ⁓ I use it pretty much every time I play so I was like hey I need to Take this create some type of product and then offer it to people ⁓ And I think that's the best way to do it you know if you have something that can provide value to people and that you have expertise in Chad Bourquin (09:47) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Aaron (10:13) capitalize on it, you know offer it to the people that find value in yourself and your your content and See how it goes, you know, I've also done some of the like funnel strategies where I've done basically a paid ad and then if someone clicks on the paid ad that I was advertising whatever product it was, they go to a landing page and then, you know, it basically I'm offering them something for free that gets them in a mailing list. I can then follow up and try to upsell to a different product to be like a mid tier product and then so and so to a premium product. So if you, you know, if you're interested in any type of entrepreneurship, you're probably have seen ads. Chad Bourquin (10:40) Mm-hmm. Aaron (11:01) of those funnel strategies online where people are trying to get you into their digital product academy and all that kind of stuff. But that's basically the simple structure. You have a product that is free that can provide value. You try to offer it to people and then if they like it, hopefully they follow up and they want to buy the next thing. Chad Bourquin (11:26) And so ⁓ are you doing anything, are you doing anything in addition to that with affiliate type links like with ProductsU? Aaron (11:36) So I'm like an Amazon affiliate member, know, so pretty much in all of my videos, I tag all of the gear that I'm using below. The great thing about that is it's if someone clicks on that link, even if they don't buy that specific product. Chad Bourquin (11:38) Yeah. Aaron (11:51) If they stay in Amazon and they buy something else, you get a commission for it because because you got them to Amazon. So the other day it was crazy. I made, forgot how much I made, but someone clicked on one of my affiliate links. They ended up, they didn't buy my, my product, but they ended up buying like $3,000 worth of Amazon stuff. Chad Bourquin (11:56) really? That's cool. Aaron (12:14) and I made a good little chunk of change because they just got on there through my link. So it's worth doing all those little small things that in the long run add up. And again, I'm on a smaller scale. I don't have five million subscribers, but out of 10,000 people, you can find a good amount of people that want to buy your stuff. Chad Bourquin (12:40) Yeah. Yeah. When I was first getting into booking the, the, agent that I was working for said something to me that I never forgot. said, never, never downplay the small low paying gigs that you're booking. He goes, cause those add up and they also build credibility in the market and they give you and people will, if you take care of them, people will refer you to other things, which could lead to the bigger ones. And I assume it's a similar thing here. You know, once you get known for something, Aaron (12:54)

Yeah. Chad Bourquin (13:10) than people are talking about it. I I own a quad cortex today because of you. And so does Colin, I think. I think it was a big reason. ⁓ And who knows else? Now, we were fortunate because we're friends. We got to do this demo in person with you that you made zero off of. ⁓ By the way, are you doing a demo in quad cortex yet? Aaron (13:16) Yeah. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I have not man. I'm going to I need to the Yeah, I think I think it's just really important to like if you want to make money through digital products or even just make content online like do it in something that you enjoy and Do do it something that you can actually provide value? like Chad Bourquin (13:39) I think you're missing it. Yeah. Aaron (14:05) there's so many people out there, know, they're, hey, you can make $10,000 your first week selling, you know, this digital product. And they, they're like, you don't have to be an expert in this, just, you know, and I understand that to an extent, but I don't know. I don't, I don't like knowing that there's people out there selling informational products when they don't know anything about it. And all they did was Chad Bourquin (14:14) Mm-hmm. Aaron (14:33) put in a prompt in ChatGPT and had them write out a ⁓ PDF for X, Y, and Z. I think if you're going to get in this... I think you need to find your niche and in that niche you do need to be an expert. You need to know what you're getting into so that you can truly provide value. Like that should be the heart behind it. Are you helping people ⁓ develop their skill by providing the value and the expertise that you have gained through your experience? Chad Bourquin (15:09) Yeah. You know, I read one time when I was trying to decide whether I was going to start coaching or not, because I was feeling like what, why would I do this? Why would he may listen to me? What's my thoughts? You know, and then I read something said, doesn't matter what you know, you know, more than somebody else that's willing to pay for that information. And that one statement was freeing for me because I was like, okay, I don't have to know at all to start this. Aaron (15:19) Yeah. Yeah, totally. Chad Bourquin (15:33) You know, I just have to know what I know and be willing to share that with somebody else. And then I'll learn as I go. And then as I learn more, I'll share more. But I mean, you're built like back to the quad cortex. When you, when you laid that out for me, it was so clear. I mean, I was like, there's, there was no way I was leaving there without buying that thing. You know, I think I ordered it that afternoon, you know, and that. Aaron (15:39) Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah Yeah. Chad Bourquin (16:00) So that your ability to make things really clear for people I think is really important too in how you present things. And now you've got a new book out as well, right? In the last year or so? Yeah. Aaron (16:12) I do. Yeah, last year I released a book

and I was kind of in the same mindset as you said. was like, I feel like I have this topic that I want to write on. ⁓ And it is a Christian based book. ⁓ So it was something that I felt like the Lord was asking me to do. But I had that insecurity of like, who am I? You know, why would someone want to read a book that I wrote? But really trying to overcome that insecurity. Chad Bourquin (16:33) Hmm. Aaron (16:40) ⁓ And just follow through, know grind and do it. Yeah, it's called create and activate. It's about Creatives so kind of the heart behind it is you know, there's a lot of people that don't view themselves as a creative and ⁓ Throughout the book. I'm trying to convince people that God has created every single person on this planet to have the capacity to create and he's inviting you to partner with him in that creativity or whatever skill set it is ⁓ and then how to do that well in partnership with him. So that's kind of the heart behind the book. It was a great learning experience if anything, you know, the I think being able. to work hard and actually execute something and finish something that's hard is never wasted, you know? So I haven't made a whole lot of money off of that book. That was never really the goal. But ⁓ I learned a lot from it. And I gained a lot of experience. And I expanded my thought process through writing ⁓ that will help me even in other areas. So I'm really glad that I did it. Chad Bourquin (17:32) Hmm. when you crowdfunded the project, right? Aaron (17:53) I did. went through fun, ⁓ whatever the fundraising side, go fund me. ⁓ So I had a lot of people ⁓ that support me go in and invest in the mission of the book. And it was, was a blessing because I didn't have to put, that was kind of the thing that I, that I told the Lord, I was like, if you want me to actually follow through and get this printed, you're going to have to fund it because I don't have the money for it. Cause it's expensive to, ⁓ Chad Bourquin (17:55) Go fund me. Yeah. Aaron (18:22) I was even doing a self-published route. It's expensive to get it edited, get it formatted and actually printed. Way more than what I've done in the music scene. If you produce your own album and put it on Spotify, you can do it for not a lot of money. Chad Bourquin (18:30) Mm-hmm. Aaron (18:44) but doing a book was way more expensive than I anticipated. But I did not have to put a dollar down. yeah, everyone that funded me also obviously gifted them a book. But yeah, I didn't have to put a dollar down. So it was awesome. Chad Bourquin (18:49) Nice. Well, and I think what what's cool about that go fund me if it's done right. And I feel you did do it right. Was it brings your, your, your, uh, village, I should say along for the ride, you know, includes them in the process. So they feel part of it, you know, and, and, know, you can go back to this imposter syndrome syndrome thing. Why would people want to invest in it? But you don't know until you try. Right. And you tried and sure enough. Aaron (19:14) Yeah. Yeah. Chad Bourquin (19:31) It went, it got paid for, you know, so that was, that was awesome. what, I mean, there's a lot we've hit very quickly. We missed anything as far as everything you've got your hands on or in. Aaron (19:33) Yeah. Yep. Yeah. I that's really where I'm at right now. in regards to music, yeah that's kind of where I'm at. I have been trying to work up a repertoire of... My main training is in classical guitar. So I've been trying to bring that back up and get the chops back and develop kind of a... a repertoire list of that if I wanted to start playing that a little bit more. But yeah, that's kind of where I'm at right now. So. Chad Bourquin (20:20) Do you have anything on the horizon that you wanna do besides that that you haven't done? I mean. Aaron (20:25) Yeah, I've had some, you know, try to dream big in regards to the music scene. ⁓ Obviously, I would love to do... just more of that online training even do like a course a tone course a theory course ⁓ just keep building upon that ⁓ that digital real estate if you will so that if I do gain more followers there's more content for people to engage with I would love to do that I'd love to play out more but something that I really have vision on, would love to, and this is, you've listened to some of my music that I've put out and it kind of has the cinematic rock vibe. I would love to ⁓ create a set list that is basically all music from movies. So movie scores that is arranged through more of that cinematic rock context and ⁓ have visual and lighting, you know, production. that supports the music. you know, if you came to a show, you would hear live music from, you know, John Williams, Hans Zimmer, stuff like Star Wars and Pirates of the Caribbean and Inception and all sorts of that kind of stuff where, you know, I like, I'm not a vocalist. I like instrumental music. Not everyone likes instrumental music. You know, people want to go and they want to be able to sing along. But if you can provide, ⁓ set list that is instrumental that everyone knows. I think it could still be engaging and ⁓ can hit different generations. So I think that will be a fun project to start working on. Chad Bourquin (22:13) Well, it really resonates you talking about just knowing your gift set. I mean, if he's going to, anybody's going to put that thing together, even down to the video content. I mean, you're the guy that can do it. mean, I mean, this is how trans sub-urban orchestra started, wasn't it? I mean, it was just an idea and instrumental idea. And here, what are we running? I mean, 20, 30 years on that thing, maybe more. And it sells out every year. Aaron (22:23) Yeah. Right, yeah. Yeah, totally. Yeah, I've always loved them. I've followed them, you know, for years ever since I started playing guitar. I love those guys. So yeah, it'd be kind of similar format, but more of like ⁓ cinematic scores transcribed to like

rock music. So. Chad Bourquin (22:50) ⁓ I haven't heard anybody doing this, have you? Aaron (22:53) I'm not really. So I was like, this could be cool, you know? So. Chad Bourquin (22:58) It's unique from an agent point of view. It's something totally different. You know, one of the, one of the questions we get asked sometimes is what, what do you have that's different? You know, that's an experience and all that. And, I have a few answers for him, but I don't have enough. You know, everybody's looking for that next experience as a, as an audience, you know, man, this might be it. And everybody, everybody just heard it here that you're starting this thing. Right. Aaron (23:01) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, well, you know, I don't know if that's confirmation whether it's going to happen or not, but I would I have worked on some arrangements of like some like Beethoven stuff where you take a symphony and I've done like excerpts from it, you know, ones that you would recognize whether you knew if it was Beethoven or not. And that's the cool thing about classical music and even movie scores. People. Chad Bourquin (23:27) Hahaha. Aaron (23:52) would recognize it and even if they don't know what it's from they they know the melodies you know and that's the cool thing about movie scores is they're recognizable melodies and that's really the the deciding factor of I feel like good music is if you hear a melody and you recognize it I mean you can sing it back it was written well you know Chad Bourquin (24:14) When you explain something to somebody like your guitar cage system that you did, when you explain that to on video or to an artist, do you have a kind of a formula in your head of a path you go through for that to make sense? Or how does that work for you? Aaron (24:33) Yeah, I think the biggest thing when you're teaching is to explain the why. You know, so it's like if I'm talking about what you just referenced, my chord shape system, I'm sure we've all been there where we come into a set. We learned a song for an artist and the vocalist says, I'm struggling today. Can we lower half of the step? And you're like, crap, I learned it in A and now I have to learn it in A flat, which is not the most friendly guitar key. Chad Bourquin (24:59) Yeah. Learn it with open chords. Aaron (25:02) Right, right. know, so Chad Bourquin (25:03) Yeah. Aaron (25:05) being able to transpose on the spot without a capo or without a transpose pedal ⁓ and being able to visualize patterns to where you can just instantly transpose and play in whatever key you want, just knowing the number system and the progression that you're playing is invaluable. especially as a musician that if you're ever coming into a studio context or you're going to play live, you have to be able to do that on the spot. If you can't, you're not going to get called back, you know? ⁓ So being able to tell someone you need to learn this if you want to be a professional player, here's a really easy way for me to solve your problem. So like really just trying to tell them I'm about to show you an easy way to fix your problem. That's my view of teaching. And then they're going to be invested in it and they're going to listen and they're going to want to implement it. So even if I execute my teaching style, my communication to them poorly after that, they at least want to try it. You know what I mean? Like they have to want to learn. If you cannot inspire people to work hard to learn, they're not going to try. It doesn't matter how good of a teacher you are. If you do not inspire people, they're not gonna implement it. So that's kinda my process of how to get started. Chad Bourquin (26:35) ⁓ Have you considered the idea that you also know how to teach somebody to do these, put these systems together? I mean, like these programs? Have you considered teaching that as well? Aaron (26:51) I have, know, ⁓ that market is pretty saturated and not that, that's not a good reason to not do it. Like, there again, there's always someone that can learn from you. Like you said, right. Chad Bourquin (27:05) Yeah, I mean like niche it, maybe niche it right to music though. You know? Aaron (27:09) like how to teach music online. Yeah, I thought about it, you know, ⁓ there are a lot of different veins where I feel like I would love to invest in, but yeah, yeah, I have thought about creating a course, yeah, for just how to teach teachers online. Yeah. Chad Bourquin (27:26) No. When you, so your main driver is YouTube, but are you using the other things like TikTok and Facebook and all that to drive traffic there? Aaron (27:37) I do. So if I'm going to, let's say I'm going to do a paid ad, ⁓ you know, I'll do it on Instagram and Facebook. ⁓ paid ads on YouTube is a little different. The thing you have to think about for paid ad on Instagram, let's say you go online, on YouTube you say I wanna learn how to change a spark plug and then here comes a paid ad. What are you gonna do? You're gonna skip that ad as fast as you possibly can to get to that video that you clicked on to watch. A lot of times, know, if you're looking at a guitar video you'll get an ad about guitars but usually because on YouTube you are going to a video specifically for a specific reason, a lot of times you'll skip an ad. and ⁓ and actually end up utilizing just my platform of my subscribers on YouTube more than the paid ad. And again, back to why I want to invest in more of YouTube is because that community aspect is more beneficial in the long term than just trying to push out a bunch of paid ads on other platforms. Chad Bourquin (29:19) Yeah. So on your paid ads on the other platforms, you then, where are you trying to drive them from the ad? Is it to YouTube? To your website, okay. Aaron (29:26) So I drive them to my website. So I create a landing page that is catered towards that product, obviously. ⁓ So that way, when they click on it, it goes straight to ⁓

that page. It obviously has some type of CTA, or call to action, for the person. Chad Bourquin (29:49) Man dude, it's great. Aaron (29:51) You know and it's it's a it's an easy strategy to implement and my why for all of that is Again, my time is very limited, you know with with my kids and my other full-time job so being able to own digital real estate that I don't have to manage and then I do I don't have to trade time for dollars after I've already created it is Great, you know, it's that evergreen income you make it it's there Chad Bourquin (29:56) Mm-hmm. Yeah. Aaron (30:20) When people encounter it, boom, they buy it while you're sleeping, you know, which is a great model for those of you that are like wanting to do kind of a side hustle thing. I mean, it can be obviously your full time thing, but if you really need that like side thing where you don't have to constantly, you know, add 20 hours a week to your full time thing, it's great way to start. Chad Bourquin (30:42) Yeah. Well, we haven't talked about the tax benefits. You know, I mean, because you're now you're now most cases doing this in your home. So you're your your room that you're recording in. You can write off percentage that a percentage of your utilities. I mean, so you're keeping more money just by doing it. Yeah. Aaron (30:47) yeah, totally. Yeah, yeah. totally. You know, I'm not a tax professional by any means. I don't take anything that I say to, you know, take it as a grain of salt. Yeah, I, I count off, you can count off paid ads as advertisement. You know, you can write them off. You can write off, like you said, everything in your home, any new gear that you're using ⁓ for those videos. Like, yeah, everything, everything's a write off. But yeah, it does make a difference. So. Chad Bourquin (31:13) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Well, what's, unrelated to any of this. What are you listening to right now? Aaron (31:35) Hahaha. man. ⁓ You know me, I'm a huge like Cory Wong fan. ⁓ I've been listening to the new... I mean, he's coming out with new stuff all the time, but I love the Flyers album that ⁓ he and Mark Letire and the bass player from Vultpec, ⁓ they come out with great stuff. So I'm always kind of in that instrumental lane. Chad Bourquin (31:44) Yeah. Aaron (32:08) ⁓ For other stuff, I listen to a lot of just old music. mean, I love Pink Floyd, huge David Gilmore fan, love Eric Johnson, ⁓ Andy Timmons, know, good guitar players. I'm always, always listening to those guys. Chad Bourquin (32:29) And so what is your main acts right now? What kind of guitar or guitars I should say. Aaron (32:34) I mean I'm still a strat guy. I've had my same strat for 20 years and that's still my go to guitar. ⁓ for acoustics I have my Gibson, my Got Gibson, my SJ-200, yeah that's kind of my main acoustic acts as well. But it's hard with electric guitars because ⁓ it's fun having, you know, have tons of electrics, it's fun. to just, especially when you haven't picked one of

them up in a while to pick it up and you're like, man, I forgot how much I love this guitar. You know, like, like the Duesenberg, it's kind of a one trick pony. But every time I pick it up, cause it has that single P 90, I'm like, man, I this guitar, you know? Chad Bourquin (33:10) Yeah, right. So which guitar were you playing when you got that huge compliment from your idol? And that was through the, idols, that's right, from somebody you were, the guitar player, I can't remember the name of the group. Yeah, okay. Aaron (33:30) Yeah, StuG, if you've ⁓ ever heard of him, ⁓ he plays for a band called Delirious. They're probably one of the biggest Christian rock bands that's ever come out. I mean, they've toured with some of the biggest secular bands in England. I mean, massive, massive players. ⁓ But StuG came to my church for a conference and I got to play in front of him. Chad Bourquin (33:40) you Aaron (33:59) and afterwards he came up and was like, bro, your tone was awesome in his British accent, which I'm not going to try to, ⁓ to copy. ⁓ I was using the quad and I was playing a telly. So, Chad Bourquin (34:07) Yeah, that was the quad, right? Yeah. Okay. And what captures were you using for that? Aaron (34:18) same ones you use my friend or the ones that I gave you at least the the the matchless ones I always use my my my matchless ones with the DC 30 on one side and the lightning on the other side and a stereo image and then I use the brown protein for everything I mean the brown protein is the one of the best drive pedals I feel like that has come out in a long time so I use it for everything yeah Chad Bourquin (34:21) Would you give me? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, not only did you help me decide to buy the quad cortex, you gave me the skeleton patches to use that I now, when we go, when we go play with a new sound company, they, every time they come up to me every time and they say, man, what are you using? You know, they all want to know, cause they're not used to those. Aaron (34:54) haha Yeah. Yeah. Chad Bourquin (35:12) modeler sounding that good, that realistic. I mean, what I noticed about it also is just the, mean, when I dig in, it feels like an amp, you know. Aaron (35:15) Yeah, yeah, the great thing... ⁓ Yeah, yeah, it that's the thing. We're like there's so many good sounding modelers out there, but not all of them nail the feel. So the cool thing is like, you know, you and I, we love modelers, but we also love really nice amps and we've owned them and we played them. ⁓ So like, you know, I had a matchless Chieftain, which is kind of my go. I love anything matchless. But when I would put a pedal, Chad Bourquin (35:32) Yeah. Aaron (35:51) in front of the Matchless. You know, you can feel the compression, can feel the dynamics change. There's a lot more dynamic range. ⁓ When I would capture that amp on the Kemper, it sounded, I mean, just like it. But it felt way more compressed. The dynamic range was way smaller. ⁓ When I would capture that in my quad and then I would hit that same pedal it felt just like when I hit the real amp and when I compared those two I was like whoa there is something special here. ⁓ So I'm yeah I'm a big quad Cortex fan because of the feel so Chad Bourquin (36:40) Yeah. And then of course, moving the stereo ears, you know, from mono ears was game changer for me. Cause I'm panning that quad in my ears, hard left and hard right. So I get the full effect of what I got going on between those two amps. Aaron (36:49) yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, mean running stereo like in this day and age, I feel like is imperative. Like if you have to run mono, like that's okay. But running stereo allows you to run more effects effectively. Cause if you're running really, especially, know, I'm in the church world and if you've ever listened to worship music, guitar tone is drenched in reverb and delay. And if you're gonna do that and you want to be heard, you have to have a stereo image. If you're summon all that to mono, it's really hard ⁓ to hear it distinctly. So I'm huge about running stereo amps and a stereo rig if you're gonna use all those wet effects. Chad Bourquin (37:48) Yeah, for sure. Right on man. Well, thank you, Aaron. This has been awesome and enlightening. last words of advice that you give somebody wanting to pursue any one of these paths that you're on or a combination of them? Aaron (38:05) Again, I think your motivation always, if you're gonna go like a teaching route or trying to sell people something, start with, how can I provide value? How can I serve these people that are wanting to learn something from me? And, gain trust that way. People are going to buy stuff from you because they trust you and because you're providing a solution to their problem. So if you can approach it that way and not just how can I sell people things? How can I just make products that are people are going to buy? No approach it. How can I help people? And in the long run, In the long term, you are going to have a larger following because they trust you and you helped them and they will return back to you for their next problem in that niche. Chad Bourquin (39:01) Yeah, that's good, man. Well, we're gonna make sure everybody has all your links in the show notes so that they can find you, they can check out your YouTube, any of your products as well. So man, thanks, Aaron. Appreciate you. All right, you've been listening to Gig Soap. Aaron (39:12) Of course, thanks for having me, Chad.