#19 John Kenney – From Disney to Dueling Pianos

John Kenney – From Disney to Dueling Pianos John is an Entrepreneur. John quoted Jeremy Frandsen, from the Internet Business Mastery Podcast, the longest running internet business show. Jeremy advises “the only way to FAIL is to quit”. John started his first business “Dueling Piano School”. He created a podcast and a membership academy to teach the basic of duelling pianos. The academy provided video courses on jazz piano lessons. He found that the niche was not large enough. It was not validated. Another venture was as a lifestyle coach and as a writer. Jeremy Frandsen wanted to visit DisneyWorld. John was working at Disney and he created a programme – how to negotiate Disneyworld. Avoiding the queues. For example, after the fireworks at the Magic Kingdom, the park stays open a couple more hours – when the queues are low. John created Cast Member Secrets. John’s offer was a $17 ebook called “Cast Member Guides to Walt DisneyWorld” a list of should and shouldn’t do to get the most out of your trip to Disneyland in Florida. John did not overly plan his business, after a few attempts at blogging, he attended New Media Expo and came back with an idea for the 5 day a week podcast 10-15 minutes in length. Soon he had 50-100,000 downloads per month. That was AMAZING! It was very challenging for John. What went wrong. John couldn’t see a way to scale it. The information he was getting lagged actual changes at Disneyland. This made previous podcasts and ebooks going out of date. John attracted a lot of haters. They were being very judgmental. Pat Flynn, another top podcaster says that just means you are doing something right. After trying to sell the ebook for several months he’d netted $200 in 3 months and decided to call that business done. At the same time, his passion for dueling pianos came up. Even with lots of encouragement, John was cautious. He didn’t want to continually in bars, where dueling pianos are chiefly heard. Somebody asked them to do a wedding. John branched out into weddings and conferences. He played and got paid a month’s salary in one night. Slowly overtime he and his partner got gig and gig. He hired a business coach and help from Jason Van Orden and in the 100 days leading up to John quitting his job he now knows: What he is doing with his leads He knows exactly where they are coming from He knows how much they cost him He knows what kind of systems to have in place so when they come in he can easily convert them John is going all-in on this business. He plans to hire a virtual assistant. Leads are coming in more rapidly. He comments about his website (does yours do the same thing?) People are finding him and loving what they do His website makes sense to whoever is coming to it It gets them excited about hiring duelling pianos Where price is not so much a barrier to hiring him because they are seeing the value he is able to give his customers The first step in his sales process is getting people to love duelling pianos: Especially for a wedding My fiancé and I met at a duelling piano bar It starts with the guys in bars creating love for duelling pianos. And that might not be John himself, he is leveraging the work of others! Most of his leads come from Google Plus Gigmaster.com and GigSalad.com – where people are looking for events Some from Facebook – he promotes his page by promoting with articles. He promotes every 3 months. If he pops up every 3 months, as opposed continuously (which didn’t work as well) Google ads land on his website The first thing most visitors do is WATCH A CLEAR VIDEO ABOUT HIS SERVICES – people want to see him in action Based on that video they can request a client He has testimonials He is getting organic searches from Google because he is No 1 in the Orlando area. How else does John attract business? He performs live. He nurtures introducers – photographers,