(Newswire.net — November 22, 2019) — Most musicians are known to be the “starving artist” types. But not Zach Evans.
He’s managed to leverage his piano skills into a million dollar business.
Early Life
Zach grew up in Milwaukee WI with 5 siblings, and not a lot of money to go around.
His dad was a physical education teacher at the local school, and his mom stayed home to care for the 6 kids.
Surprisingly, Zach was much more into sports than he was into music as a kid. But the competitiveness he learned in sports helped him tremendously when he was building his business.
He also credits the tenacity and grit he learned from pushing his limits in Track and Field in helping him fight through the struggles of the early days of building the business.
College Days
After high school, Zach enrolled at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. The school, not known to be a top music school, was chosen simply because they had recruited him heavily for track – he was one of the top hurdlers in the state. music was the furthest thing from his mind at the time.
In fact, Zach started out not as a Music Major, but as a Mathematics major, because math came easy to him.
Being social and friends, on the other hand, did not come so easy. Early on Freshman year, he got injured for track, an injury he would never fully recover from. He was depressed, and lonely, and he dove into music.
In the basement of his dorms, there was a piano available to anyone who wanted to play. Zach would go down every night and play for hours, helping him cope with the loneliness.
Change to Music
For two years, Zach continued to play in the basement of his dorm, learning mostly from YouTube. During this period, he fell in love with music and decided to switch his major.
The audition process was tough – Zach was used to playing pop songs, but the audition required classical works. He spent months working up the required repertoire, and at the audition, he barely passed, being warned that he was starting at a much lower level than the other piano majors, who had been playing since kindergarten.
So Zach did what he had to do. He became obsessed with learning faster, researching top practice strategies from only other pianists and musicians. But he also took strategies from top performers in other fields – athletes, memory champions, language learners – and applied their methods to piano.
After four years of practicing, he graduated as one of the top musicians in the program.
Going Viral
After graduation, Zach moved to Nashville TN, where he began teaching the learning strategies he’d figured out to students. After seeing success, especially with adult learners, he decided to put his teachings online.
Taking the content he was already teaching, he simply set up a camera and recorded a multitude of video lessons. He uploaded them to YouTube and quickly saw there was a huge market for this type of teaching.
His videos started going viral, and his channel quickly grew to 100,000 subscribers.
He credits this to his attention to detail in the videos, focusing on quality over quantity, and only putting out videos he knows will hit well with his audience.
Building the Business
Once the YouTube channel started getting traction, Zach got emails from viewers asking for more.
So he started a free course, Become a Piano Superhuman, aimed at teaching people piano online. His followers ate up the content, so Zach decided to start creating some premium courses, and charging a monthly membership fee.
He now has 6 courses and 2 ebooks teaching everything from piano technique to playing by ear to scales to music theory. Over 200,000 people have enrolled, and his business has made over a million dollars. Not bad for a gym teacher’s son.