Michael Walker: Yeah! Let's go. Excited to be here today with my new friend, Aurelie Couble. Couble.

Aurelie Couble: Hey. Hi. Thank you for having me. Thanks for being here. Really excited, yeah.

Michael: It's great to have you here. I love that intro. It's the best. Literally the only thing I have this for is just to go, "Yeah!"

Aurelie: I love it.

Michael: So, let me give you a quick intro. Aurelie built a six-figure music business helping self-taught creators earn income without relying on streaming royalties or record labels. She grew an audience of 44,000 YouTube subscribers and 43,000 Instagram followers entirely through organic content, and she's helped music creators build client-based businesses and land high-paying clients to turn small, loyal audiences into sustainable income.

We've been talking backstage a little bit before getting started, and it seems like there's a lot of peanut butter and jelly. Sort of like peanut butter and jelly. So, looking forward to having you on the podcast and having a conversation today.

So, Aurelie, thanks for being here. Maybe, just to kick things off, you could share a little bit about your journey and how you discovered what we're about to talk through on the podcast today. The question was just if you could share your journey—your journey of how you discovered your expertise that we're gonna talk through today.

Aurelie: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely, yeah. I mean, I started this journey... I was just sharing me learning music production from zero. I started in January 2021, so I did not know or think I would end up doing this. It just sort of happened. But yeah, I was just sharing. Like, I was in a good place professionally.

I was a visual effects artist before on movies, which was great. I was super creative, but I don't know, I was missing something, you know? I was missing having a little bit more positive impact in others' lives. And so I started to use my free time to learn a new craft, and I always had that dream of learning music and releasing my tracks on Spotify and all, and singing.

So I went into that journey, and just at the same time, I was really getting into self-development, business. I always had this idea of having a YouTube channel, but never did it because I was afraid of judgment. Same thing as releasing my songs on Spotify. So I didn't, but I was working through a book called Gary Vee's Crushing It.

And he said, "Document, don't create." And he was saying something along the lines of how cool it would be to have been able to see how The Beatles came up with their songs or learned music, right? Obviously, I'm not saying that's what I was hoping to do, but I was like, "Oh yeah, that's cool."

And I was actually checking YouTube channels of my favorite artists, their previous videos, to see how they learned and how they got good. But obviously, artists were not showing that. Like, no one was showing that, really. Every time, even educators on YouTube, they were just showing up as, "Hey, I have 15 years of experience. I'm here to share my knowledge." And I was like, "Cool, but I wanna see the beginning, the messy start," you know?

Michael: Mm.

Aurelie: And so I decided to do that as a channel, documenting my journey learning music production from scratch, and I guess I got good at making videos. I got good at growing an audience.

I think I was just at the beginning of the wave of being super authentic, and people liked it. I had also this external factor of self-development mindset. I was not only talking about music. So people really vibed with it, they connected with it, and over time I started to look into how to monetize this, 'cause I did start with the idea of, if I could go full time with YouTube and music, that would be awesome, right?

Michael: Mm.

Aurelie: So I started to monetize in different sorts of ways, and at some point people just started to ask me... At first, I had coaching sessions for learning music production, 'cause I got good at this. But 80% of people were coming to me for monetizing their music skills and growing an audience on YouTube and Instagram as a music creator—producer, composer, singer, guitarist, whatever.

And so I was repeating myself a lot, and so this is when I was like, "You know what? I really like, actually, this music business thing." It's not something that a lot of people talk about, especially the client-based businesses—producers, composers—that don't really necessarily want to tour and don't really want to rely on royalties.

So I just got into this, and then decided to package everything that I knew into a mentorship program called Music Creator, and that's what happened. That's my journey six years later—or five and a half years later.

Michael: Okay, cool. So, what I'm hearing you say is that really it started out through your own journey of you documenting and becoming a creator, becoming a music creator. And putting it out on YouTube, you started to connect with people and have conversations, and they told you what they were struggling with, what they needed help with, and that's kind of what organically led to you building the programs that you offer today.

Aurelie: Exactly.

Michael: I'm curious, what would you say are some of the biggest challenges that artists are struggling with when they first come to you, and how do you help people overcome those?

Aurelie: Yeah, I think most of the time, I mean, there's a lot of them, but I'd say the most common ones are, like, it's hard to find clients that are gonna pay me my price, and not just 50 bucks for a song or a full mixing, mastering, production kind of thing.

Most people are just doing Fiverr, SoundBetter, just put a profile there and wait and hope that someone finds you. And so I think a lot of the work that I do with Music Creator students is that I show them that the pray and hope is not really a strategy, that there are a lot of different ways to actually go and get yourself clients and to put yourself in front of those perfect clients.

And yeah, I've been using organic content to do that. So I think, as well, a big misconception is they're reluctant in doing content because they don't wanna become an influencer or a content creator. Well, that's not what it is. It's just we're using content as a marketing strategy to put yourself and your services and your skills in front of the right eyes, right?

I think I see content as free advertisement, and it's kind of like the flyers of the '70s and '80s, right? Every single short is a flyer for your business, for your music business, right?

Michael: Mm.

Aurelie: So yeah, I help them with that a lot, and also making sure that they don't lose track of the music, because they're very afraid that by making content, they're not gonna have time anymore to make music. It's the complete opposite. My whole vision and philosophy is that you just need to capture what you're already doing as a creator—that's how I call them, 'cause it englobes producers, musicians, composers, DJs, audio engineers, whoever.

Just capture what you're already doing as you go through your day, and then that becomes the content. Obviously, we package it in a way that allows people to get to trust us, know us, and then buy from us. But that's pretty much the idea.

I had a student; he was so reluctant for months to do content, but he had joined, and I was like, "That's interesting." And I finally got him to understand how it works, and now he's just spending one day where he just captures everything, makes his content, schedules everything, and then the rest of the days he just works for his production clients making music. So yeah, those are, I think, the three main ones that I would say. Or that you also need a huge audience, which he has 371 followers, to be exact, and he's making 4K a month.

Michael: Awesome.

Aurelie: So, yeah.

Michael: Cool. So there's a lot of good stuff to dig into there. Maybe just that last one that you just shared around the misconception between feeling like they need to have millions of streams or millions of followers in order to be successful or have a sustainable business.

Aurelie: Yeah.

Michael: Could you speak a little bit more to that? What are people getting wrong when they have that belief, and how do they actually make a sustainable income if they only have a few hundred or a thousand followers?

Aurelie: Yeah. I think, when I think about it, I think it comes from the fact that most music people would think that streams and royalties are the way to go to monetize, right? That's the only way. And I think because of the model, we know that you need millions to make a decent income, right?

So I think it's kind of like the same thing for social media, with AdSense and views and all. But here, it's absolutely not what it is because we're not monetizing this way. We're actually music businesses that work with clients, so we're not gonna work for 50 bucks. This person, Mateo, that student that I was referring to, he charges $800 per client, like per production, mixing, and mastering project.

And that's not even, like, I have other students that charge $1,200, $1,500, right? And so with those price points, you just need a few clients. You don't need to be viral and to work with hundreds every month. You just need five regular clients per month, and you're good for more than a full-time income.

And so that's usually the switch that people don't really understand until I show them the math of it. And I think as well they think that they need a lot of views to catch the right fish, kind of thing. Also, with what some people have been taught, to do cold DMs, like send as much as you can saying, "Hey, buy my mixing services. I'm a mixing... Like, do you need mixing services?" or whatever, and hope one replies.

But here, we're doing the complete opposite, where we position ourselves as the only right option for them with our content messaging. And then he has less than 1,000 views on each of his reels on Instagram, but then every single person that engages with the content—likes, comments, follows, watches your story—those are all signs that they engage with you. So you can contact them, start a conversation like you would in a networking event in real life, have a conversation, and then if it makes sense, just suggest your services, that you can help this person, and then sign in the DMs, hop on a call if you want, and that's it.

Like, it's actually really simple, and that's some of the stuff that, I think yesterday, I just saw this in our Share Your Win channel. The guy was saying, "I can't even believe, like, I've been sending three messages a day," not even five, 'cause I tell them to do five a day, "and he already has interest in people that are like, 'Oh yeah, tell me more about it.'" He's mind-blown, like, "I never thought that could be a thing." So, yeah.

Michael: Awesome. Yeah, I love this. This is great. So, I'm curious with the traffic strategy for it. Am I hearing you right that primarily you recommend focusing on just doing organic content and really just documenting what you're currently doing, documenting your current music process, and then leading to the interaction where they can make an offer for a production offer? Or do you recommend having ads as well? I'm curious what the main engine is like.

Aurelie: Yeah. I've never done ads myself, so I couldn't teach that, right? I'm not legit to teach ads. I know nothing about ads. It's not what I've done myself. I've never needed ads. I think at some point, if I want to really scale, I would probably get into that.

For now, I haven't, so I don't recommend them that because, especially at the beginning, I want them to save their money. So organic content, at least, you can start for free, right?

Michael: Mm-hmm.

Aurelie: As you get good at making content. And yeah, when it comes to content, there's kind of different tiers to it. I like to make four different types of content. So I like to make discovery, community, skills, and sales.

Michael: Mm.

Aurelie: And so we have a different ratio where every single week, you're gonna do—top of the funnel is discovery content. This type of content is gonna be trend stuff, stuff that can easily be shared. Just take whatever you've seen working, remix it, short videos, right? That's just the goal of attracting eyes on our profile.

And then the community and skills content, kind of like the same ratio, maybe two, three a week, is gonna be more to get them to learn more about us, who we are, and see our skills. Like literally see us perform the music, make the before and after of a mix or a master, or show the demo of an artist that was sent and then the final production, right? Showing our skills so that people can trust us, right?

And then when they like us, trust us, and are aware of us, then we make a little bit of sales content, which is more like one or two a week, and it's more about like, "Hey, by the way, if you're looking for a producer to help turn your rough R&B demos into perfect release-ready tracks, just comment R&B in the comments, and we'll get in touch," or something like this, right?

And so that's kind of the ecosystem where it just keeps looping, and yeah, you just attract people to your profile, show them more about who you are so that they can relate to you, show your skills so they can trust you, and then you make the offers. And a few percent are gonna be like, "Hey, yep, I'm interested," and then you have a conversation, you sign in the DMs.

Michael: Hmm. Sweet.

Aurelie: Yeah.

Michael: Awesome. So, what I'm hearing you say is that really there's kind of like three different phases of the journey to focus on in terms of the content strategy. The first one is around just attracting attention in the first place, and with those you might look at—

Aurelie: I wouldn't say in the first place, though. I would say—because it's not first you go just for attraction and then the others. It's more each piece of content needs to be made either for attention, either for community, skills, or sales, and you have a ratio of each every single week.

Michael: Gotcha. Yeah, so importantly, you don't just start only trying to attract, but not having the other parts. You wanna have that all together.

Aurelie: No, yeah, 'cause you don't need... Sometimes people think like, "Oh yeah, I'm gonna start with the attraction and build my audience first before monetizing." But you don't need to. Mateo has 371 followers. Simeon, another one, he's a film composer, is charging $1,500 per client. He has less than 200. It really doesn't matter.

Michael: Mm-hmm. There's a metaphor that we use of the rain catcher, where it's like, when you get traffic or attention, it starts to rain. But if you're just standing below it without anything to capture the rain, then it just goes into the ground. And so what I'm hearing you say is that you wanna make sure you have a rain catcher, or you make sure you have the whole thing set up, so when it does rain, you're actually able to capture it right away.

Aurelie: Exactly, yeah.

Michael: Cool. So the three main types, or three phases, that I heard you talking about were the attention, so making it rain, and then the connection, the engagement, the transfer of demonstrating the skill and the before and the after, and the community building, your stories. And then the offer, and letting people know that you actually have something that you can offer them.

Aurelie: Yeah, 'cause that's actually a very common problem. For lack of a better word, problem, is that they—

Michael: Problem's a good word. Is it okay? It's okay if I use the word problem.

Aurelie: Okay.

Michael: It's a good word.

Aurelie: They think that everyone knows about them, that they're ready for hire or whatever. But if you don't say it, people won't know, and you have to say it way more times than you feel comfortable, because on social media it needs to be repeated for people to be like, "Oh yeah, I should actually message that person." We consume so much.

But yeah, very often they think people know, but actually they don't. Still, me to this day, I get messages from people saying like, "Hey, do you do mentoring?" And I'm like, it's literally written in my bio, in my pinned posts, literally everywhere. But online, it doesn't work like that.

And I don't know if it's because people are shy. Very often, I think music creators are shy to do the selling, 'cause we've been conditioned as, the music is the talent, the music should speak for itself. But in this case, it doesn't at all.

You do need to say like, "Hey, by the way, you can hire me if you have that problem. If you're struggling with copyrights, music with Artlist, and you want an actual song that has all of the rights for yourself, no risk, for your film or TV show, whatever, hire me." You need to say it. So yeah, that's very often a problem.

Michael: Yeah.

Aurelie: Yeah.

Michael: It does seem like an important point is, you have to actually ask for what you want. What do you think is the thing that blocks people from making the ask? Or what's the thing that holds them back, prevents them from just sharing who they are or making the offer?

Aurelie: I think very often it's because, as creatives, I guess we have this thing of like, "Oh, it's art. It shouldn't be for sale," or whatever. Like, if you do sales, it's like you sell your soul. Sell out. You're a sellout. That's actually the title of one of my next videos, especially for that.

And so yeah, it's a lot of limiting beliefs or belief-shifting content that I need to make to make them understand that it's not how it works. And it's just because social media, you see a lot of people trash-talk other people. And yeah, I think it's just society, right, that just decided art shouldn't be for sale or whatever, right? But it doesn't work like this. You still need to eat, you still need to make a living, and you can do it ethically speaking, right?

So yeah, you just gotta be respectful for your own skill. It's almost like you gotta be respectful for your own skill. You've learned so much. You've spent years, decades, if not, mastering this skill of music production, composing, guitar playing, whatever it is that you do. You need to be respectful to yourself and charge what you're actually worth. There are people looking for your skills and your knowledge, and very often people are just not aware of that.

Michael: Yeah. That's a great point. It does seem like a big part of it comes from self-worth or self-value, or feeling like it's not okay to charge for it because you enjoy doing it.

Aurelie: Yeah.

Michael: It's almost like, if I didn't enjoy it, then yeah, I'd be okay charging, but this is something I actually have fun doing, and it's like, oh, it's okay to make money and to enjoy what you do.

Aurelie: That's a good point too, yeah.

Michael: So the other phases you mentioned were—you wanna do these holistically altogether—but one of the first stages in the journey for the new follower is just being discovered in the first place, and the attention-based content. So I'm curious what you'd recommend for someone who feels like they're really struggling to even get eyeballs on their content. They're like, "I don't even know, what do I post in the first place? What should I put out there? I feel awkward or cringey about putting myself out there." What—how do they get started?

Aurelie: Yeah. It's phase two of my program, so that's literally the first thing we do. So, two things. First is you need to know who your dream client is. Like, who is the person that you wanna work with? And the more specific you are, then... So I have a whole worksheet to describe this person in as much depth as you possibly can.

If you don't know, just go find on Reddit forums, Facebook groups, be a fly on the wall and see what they're struggling with, what they're saying, the words they use. And then throw that description into an AI, ChatGPT, Claude, whatever you want, and say, "Output 10 content ideas per discovery, community, skills, or sales content." And then you have 40 ideas that will attract exactly this person, to attract this dream client.

Michael: Mm-hmm.

Aurelie: So this is the best way to do it. It's like, "Hey, I wanna attract this person. Give me 10 content ideas," or whatever you want, for each of those buckets, and then you just disperse it throughout the week. That's what I usually do.

And then another one that is my favorite is just intentionally—intentionally is the word—scroll on Instagram, TikTok, whatever feed you prefer, and put a timer or something so that you don't get sidetracked. But every time something makes you stop and actually watch the video, make note of why you stopped. Was it the color of the text? The animation of the text? Was it a visual hook? Was it what they said? The word they used, right? What was it?

And then what I do is, when I like a video that made me stop, then I'm like, "Huh, can I remix this for my own niche and my own audience?" 'Cause I don't just look into music stuff. Fitness, business, mindset, whatever it is, dog training stuff, whatever. But if I see an idea that I like, then I'm gonna send it to myself and put it in a saved folder that's called Inspiration for Videos, and then I just remix those into my own language, my own style, my own vibe. Yeah, I just remix them. But because they're in my feed and because they made me stop, there's a better chance that they're actually gonna work.

And another one, and it's not from me, but it's from one of my mentors, Dan Martell. He has this four-by-four technique where you look at four competitors, people similar to you, and you check their four most-viewed pieces of content in the last four months, and you remix that for yourself. But because they're outliers, it's gonna be a proven format, proven hook, proven formula, and then you just remix it to yourself. And those are gonna be three best ways for you to get started in actually making content that's gonna work for you.

Michael: Mm. That's smart. Yeah, there's something about this remix idea that, if done well, seems like one of the fastest ways to plug into something that you know works.

Aurelie: Yeah, it's just—I'm not saying copy. Absolutely not. It's just, take the formula. For example, I'll take my example that worked the most, 'cause I had one video that went viral, I think, at the end of 2022, which also helped me to get started with all this. But it was a video, like a YouTube Short, that I saw from Ali Abdaal, which I'm guessing you probably know, or—

Michael: Hmm. Okay.

Aurelie: Yeah. And it was a short video, like, "Here are 10... I've listened to, I don't know, for the last two years, to X amount of podcasts. Here are the 10 best ones," right? And then he said, "This by this person, this by this person," and there was the podcast photo that was just showing up.

Michael: Mm.

Aurelie: But what did I do? I said, "I spent the last two years watching 1,000-plus music production tutorials on YouTube. Here are the 10 best ones." The 10 ones. And it went, like, I think 2 million views at this point. Yeah, so not related at all to what I do, but I just took the formula, the idea, and I just remixed it to my own, what I do, what is relevant to me, with my own language, my own style, and it worked.

Michael: Mm-hmm.

Aurelie: So that's attention content, you know?

Michael: Yeah, and when you're looking for the best examples to remix, you mentioned that you have a few different ways that you find good examples. One is by being very intentional and setting a timer and kind of scrolling through and seeing what are the ones that actually grab your attention. The four-by-four method, so you find four of your closest references and then look at their top four posts and remix those. Are there other ways that someone can also do their research to basically figure out those best references, or are those kind of the two main ways that they can come up with ideas?

Aurelie: Well, there's the AI thing as well, after you put your dream client that I mentioned as well.

Michael: Yeah. Okay.

Aurelie: Which is also a great one. Obviously, don't copy word by word what the AI is gonna give you, 'cause it's usually crap, but it's gonna give you the idea of the content, and at least it'll be accurate to attract that client.

But that's three different ways. Now, I'm curious, why do you ask for more? Is it because you don't like these, or you don't...? What's the underlying? Because I feel like other people might think the same, so I'm actually curious.

Michael: No, I think this is great. If anything, it's the exact opposite. I'm like, "Wow, this is so good." I'm feeling inspired. So, Aurelie, it's funny, we talked about at the beginning this is like peanut butter and jelly, but I feel like you're like the flip version of myself in many ways.

Aurelie: I know.

Michael: I came in and I immediately gravitated towards ads, and I feel like what we built has primarily been through advertising. But literally, today and tomorrow, we're rolling out an organic strategy. It's my first time ever doing an organic strategy like this.

Aurelie: There you go, and you just got all of that.

Michael: Yeah. So I'm like, wow, the timing is very serendipitous. And so that was actually me asking probably selfishly, 'cause I'm like, "This is great."

Aurelie: Okay. Yeah. But yeah, I think usually, the thing is also very often people are gonna ask more, but it's kind of gonna be this research paralysis where it's like, okay, this thing is stressing me out to do, so I'm gonna keep researching more and more and more to find the right way or whatever, but it's just delaying actually doing the stuff.

So I usually don't wanna give more because those are really the three best ways, and that's enough. That's way enough for someone to actually get started and actually implement.

Michael: Sure.

Aurelie: Yeah.

Michael: That definitely makes sense, yeah.

Aurelie: But yeah, I would be—that would be me trying to look into ads and be like, "Okay, I need one more tutorial. I'm not sure. I don't wanna waste my money." All of that, so yeah, it's very interesting.

Michael: Yeah. Imperfect action definitely takes the cake versus over-theorizing. Okay, awesome. So I feel like we've got some great ideas for that first stage of the journey, the attention. And you had mentioned kind of the second stage is about developing trust and community and demonstrating your skills. So maybe we could do a deeper dive into that phase of it.

Aurelie: Yeah. I mean, for community, basically, it's just share more about yourself. That's something very often, actually one of the first questions that people ask me when they join is like, "Hey, so I've had this personal profile or this music profile, but it's mostly like it has my family and friends and all... Should I start a new profile?" Or they have two different ones. They have a personal one, they have a music one. They're like, "Which one should I use?"

And I'm always saying like, "It doesn't matter. You just need to use the same thing. You're one person. You're not just..." 'Cause I think because of the aliases in music, we tend to separate our personalities. Like, you have your Aurelie self and then the PLV self that performs and whatever, right? Which is my artist name.

But when it comes to content as a music business where you wanna get clients or make sales, like if you sell sample and preset packs or things like that, you actually need to get the people to get to know you. So you need to share yourself beyond the music, and that's something most artists struggle to do.

And I'm just saying like, what do you like? What do you hate? What are your values? What do you do outside the studio? What are your hobbies outside of music? What TV show are you watching? Do you exercise? What sports do you love? Share when you hang out with friends, make a story, right? Share a day in your life. What's your routine? All of that, all of this, is content pieces that are just gonna get people to get to know you better.

For example, I share a lot about the mindset, the business. Tennis is my sport. Friends, I love Friends. I have a dog. I share all of this, and then it gets people to reply to my stories and things like that. And then they're like, "Oh yeah, dude, I love this, like this episode. I'm so glad you're a Friends fan," you know?

And that's how you can build better connection with this person because if you go online and you search for a producer, you're an artist, you search for a producer, and you have one that is the same price, same service, everything. Which one are you gonna choose between one that you know nothing about, you barely even saw their face because they hide behind a logo, and they just share their skills, they're good?

But then the other one shares their studio. You saw how they actually make the music. You saw an interview with a previous client, artist that they worked with. You know that they are loving the same TV show as you that you're obsessed about. Which one are you gonna choose? Obviously, you're gonna choose this one, the latter one, right?

So it's very important to share all of that with... Obviously, you're allowed to draw a line in the sand and be like, "This part I'm gonna keep private." For example, I tell everyone that I have a husband, but I've—well, except literally recently, where I showed his face twice because it was our wedding pictures. The rest of the time, I never show him. He's never in my videos. Never ever. It's just something that I keep for myself, right? Just gotta find the line, but you can share way more than just the music. It's not about just the music. You're much more than just the music.

Michael: Hmm. Cool.

Aurelie: So that's for the community part.

Michael: Yeah. So what I'm hearing you say is that the purpose of that second stage is really just to be human, to be yourself, and to share the things that you're excited about, your hobbies, the things that you value. And I'm curious, how intentional are you, or do you need to be when it comes to creating that kind of content versus just capturing it in the moment as it happens?

Aurelie: Yeah, no, community is way less planned. It's more like, "Hey," like, yeah. It's more, "Come with me," you know? The more personal and authentic it feels, the less prepared it feels, the better it's gonna work for community content.

Michael: Right.

Aurelie: It's more the attention and sales content that you need to be more mindful about. But the middle part is more about just, "Hang out with me," and just get to know me as a person. Show how authentic you are. Especially right now, online, buying services or products online, people are more fearful. They're more and more fearful. So the more you can build that trust with them, the better it is.

Michael: Makes sense. So what I'm hearing you say is for that type of content especially, it almost works against you to be too intentional or to overthink it. It's really meant to be authentic and more spur of the moment. So I'm curious in terms of creating a space for that or creating a framework, is it just a habit of checking in throughout the day and saying, "All right, I'm gonna record now," or how do you kind of install that? For someone who doesn't do that currently, do they need reminders to be like, "Hey, it's this time of day, just do something"? Or how do they implement that?

Aurelie: Yeah, I think there's two things. So very often, for community content, you can do a couple videos here and there as actual pieces of content. Or, for example, the other day I had nothing to post. It was Monday, and I was like, "Well, I haven't done an update in a long time. What's in my camera roll?" I just selected 10 pictures and made a life update thing, right? What I've been up to—literally me on a trail, me with my dog, me with my parents, whatever, right?

But for that kind of content, stories are good for community because community content is not really supposed to get followers. It's more to nurture your current audience. So stories are great, and what I do is every single day, so it's a habit to build. Maybe you can put reminders while you build that habit but, for example, I would do it right now. I'm gonna take a little picture of this podcast recording. So I just document, capture what I do throughout the day. And I try to do three per day, and I try to do at least one where it's a talking head, where I'm actually talking to the camera, 'cause it makes you practice that, and people need to feel you, you know, to get the real you.

Michael: Mm.

Aurelie: And literally, before I go to bed, I literally go to bed, I take my phone, I put on my alarm, I put my three stories because I've already captured them. I just put them all at the same time, five minutes, boom, done, next day.

Michael: Mm.

Aurelie: Done. That's community content.

And then the other part to it is, yes, for some of them you can plan them, AKA saying like, "Well, today I'm gonna record a bit more what I do," and do a day in my life, right? Or the other favorite that I have is I tell my students they need to have a kind of one-click recording setup where they just come into their studio, they hit click record. If they're about to make music, they hit record. They don't even have to talk to the camera. Just capture you actually making music, right? And that's gonna be content that you can use afterwards. So just capture what you're already doing.

If you have an artist coming to record songs, put on your camera in the corner and record the whole one hour. You just need a big SD card, but just record it, and then you have the content. So it's not even that you have to actually think about the content much; it's just record it and then make some community content.

Michael: Mm-hmm.

Aurelie: Yeah.

Michael: Cool. Makes sense. What's your take on live streaming and intentionally using a live stream to capture content to post as well?

Aurelie: Yeah, that's great. I have a few students actually that do this, especially the ones that are struggling to be a bit more consistent in actually making YouTube videos, for example, because their life is busier for them. And every other week they make a live stream, and then the other every week, or every other week, they make an actual video. This way it's just two videos a month instead of four or something like this, right?

But yeah, livestream's great. It's especially great to build that community. I've done that a lot in the past where I was doing a weekly live feedback session where I was listening to people's songs. We were all listening together. We were giving feedback. Yeah, no, it's great. I have a vocal coach as well that does this. Yeah, it's great.

Michael: Hmm. Cool. And easy to do. So livestreaming's good for community building, and do you see people having success with livestreaming and then capturing the livestream, then posting that? Or is it generally better to post as its own thing?

Aurelie: What do you mean, capturing the livestream, documenting the livestream?

Michael: Like, if you're recording the livestream, have you seen people create a good system where it's like they're live but then they clip the livestreams to publish? Or is it usually better to separate it?

Aurelie: You can do that, but I haven't seen that working very well because the thing is, short videos, they have to be made with a short-form content framework in mind. So usually, I do clip some of my content as well sometimes when I'm a bit low on content for some reason, but it never really works that well.

Michael: Yeah.

Aurelie: 'Cause it's not made for it.

Michael: That's super helpful. Part of the reason this is coming up for me right now too is 'cause literally, tomorrow, we're starting a 12-week cohort. We're doing a live session once a week, and I've been thinking through—

Aurelie: Oh, wait. Is it a live session, like teaching?

Michael: For us, it's gonna be a teaching session. But even with that, I'm thinking through what you're describing right now: how do we intentionally design segments that can be dedicated for the purpose and sort of form?

Aurelie: That is different. That is different. You can definitely put in systems to actually be able to clip them. For example, we just also did that, 'cause I do a weekly session with my own students as well, where I do a coaching session for like 30, 45 minutes, and then we open for Q&A. And so I'm asking them the question, and I'm asking them to say it in a proper way and also always to start with a win so that I can clip all of that. And then my editors just clip that.

But I also did a training for my editors to be like, okay, it's not because the live conversation happened in this way that we're gonna just clip that. Very often, it's like, okay, the segment was two minutes. We're gonna take the first sentence—the sentence that was said at one minute 30 was actually a better hook—so we're gonna crop, clip this one and put it first.

And so basically every single sentence has to be rearranged for a short version that works on short-form platforms. But yes, it's just less work for you to actually do the filming and the content, so great, do that. Absolutely. It's just that in the editing, you need to do a little bit of rearranging for it to work on a short-form platform. But yes, great. And this is better for skills and sales content. I wouldn't use it for attention-grabbing content. But skills and sales content, great.

Michael: Cool.

Aurelie: I love that stuff, if you couldn't tell.

Michael: Yeah, no, this is awesome. And again, very, very serendipitous timing, just right now.

Aurelie: I know. That's crazy.

Michael: Cool. Well, Aurelie, it's been great to connect with you. Thank you for sharing some of your experience and lessons as it relates to creating an organic content strategy. And I personally learned a lot through this. I'm guessing that a lot of our artists as well who are watching this are gonna have a bunch of gems that they're taking away. So thank you for sharing.

Aurelie: I hope so, yeah.

Michael: And then, would love to hear a little bit more about your different workshops and your different programs that you offer. If someone's listening to this right now and—

Aurelie: We just have one.

Michael: Cool. So someone's listening to this, they're like, "Okay, Aurelie's awesome. I wanna handle this part of my career." What's the best place for them to go?

Aurelie: Yeah. So I think the best place is just to send me a DM on Instagram with the words READY and then maybe MM, modern for Modern Musician, so READY MM, all caps. And then we can have a conversation about where you guys are at, what's your goal, if I can help you, and then if I can, then I can introduce you to the program.

But yeah, we just have one program. I keep things very simple. Just one program called Music Creator. It's an ongoing 12-month mentorship. There's different tiers depending on the level that they want, so either a do-it-yourself kind of thing or a more one-on-one, hands-on support. But yeah, and then I'm with them 12 months checking their progress, weekly touch points, lots of touch points, and I'm helping them scale their music business past 5K per month.

Michael: Cool. Good stuff. And you said it was Instagram, and could you remind me the tag that they should go to?

Aurelie: The keyword to send me in the DM is READY MM. Oh, the tag. Sorry, the handle: musicbyplv, right there.

Michael: Musicbyplv. Awesome. Yeah, musicbyplv. So it's musicbyplv on Instagram. And like always, we'll put the link in the show notes for easy access.

Aurelie: Yeah.

Michael: But Aurelie, this has been really cool. Thank you for being on the podcast. I was looking forward to talking more.

Aurelie: Happy to share all of that knowledge. I'm looking forward to seeing your content now.

Michael: Yeah. Let's go.