How This College Kid Leveraged His Passion Into a Million Dollar Business: College students all over the world are trying to find their passion. Zach Evans found it – playing piano – and used the power of social media to turn his love for music into an empire. Early on his freshman year, Zach had a lot of trouble making friends. In order to deal with the loneliness, he threw himself into learning piano.
How This College Kid Leveraged His Passion Into a Million Dollar Business
After spending a few years learning – mainly off of YouTube – Zach switched his major from Mathamatics to Music and started really taking it seriously. Studying under world renowned piano teacher Dr. Eli Kalman, Zach added classical technique to his already robust piano skills.
But his years learning off YouTube taught him something. Most people (including himself) were much more interested in learning popular music than classical music.
And even better, most pop music is much easier to learn for beginners than classical music. But now Evans had both. And he fused them together.
Using his classical technique, he “upgraded” many basic pop songs, adding classical chords, notes, and arpeggios to spice up the songs.
This style clicked instantly with people – they loved the recognizability of the pop songs, but were also impressed with the flair and ability of his classical technique.
So Zach decided to start a YouTube channel of his own. He went to Best Buy, bought a cheap camera, and started recording weekly piano videos.
After months and months of posting, the channel started to get some traction. And Zach realized he was onto something.
To date, Zach has recorded over 100 piano videos, and they continue to get views and build his fanbase. Month after month, the channel would get more subscribers, views, and shares.
But even after the success of his channel, there was still a big problem – he wasn’t making money.
Sure, he’d make a bit of money from the YouTube ads, but nowhere near enough to support himself on. But he had a lot of traffic – a lot of eyeballs on his channel. And he realized if he could find a way to monetize those eyeballs, he could start making some real money.
After attending an entrepreneur meetup group one night, the idea clicked. A monthly membership site that taught people how to play piano.
At the time, Zach was already teaching in-person lessons, and had developed a reputation as someone who could help you learn piano faster, using what he calls “Accelerated Learning Techniques.” And in addition to that, many wanted to learn how to play in his unique style – the half pop, half classical style that drew people in.
So Zach started another YouTube channel, calling it Become a Piano Superhuman. This channel focused on teaching online students the methods Zach had developed for teaching and learning in the past.
It didn’t take a long time for the channel to explode. Lessons like the “Secret Sauce Left Hand Pattern” and the “Miyagi Technique” quickly blew up, garnering over 500,000 views each, and the channel is up over 100,000 subscribers.
For subscribers that want more, the channel links to an online piano course, charging a monthly fee for access to the more in-depth piano lessons Zach offers. All in all, Zach offers 6 different courses and 2 ebooks on topics ranging from Piano Technique Development to Music Theory to Playing by Ear. Over 200,000 people have signed up for his course, and the business has made well over $1,000,000.
As Zach and others have shown, the internet can be a great place to turn a passion into a living. He, and others have shown that with almost no startup cost, passionate people who work hard have an avenue to truly do what they love, and touch the lives of thousands all over the world.
