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Meet Nigel McGill, the musician and creator behind . After spending decades touring and performing around the world as a professional saxophone player, Nigel decided to share his knowledge with others. He began sharing saxophone playing tips on YouTube in 2011, and just a few years later, he created Sax School—a membership community that offers thousands of saxophone lessons. Here’s a snapshot of his success:

• Earned multiple seven figures through Sax School
• Helped over 25,000 students 
• Reached over 14 million views on YouTube 
• Grew YouTube audience to 135K subscribers  

‍What sparked the passion of wanting to teach and how did you eventually find yourself building Sax School?

One thing about being a professional musician is when you're younger, most people have the mindset that all you have to do is be really good at your instrument and then everything else will fall into place. 

But when you start getting into your career, you realize that it's not just about being a good instrumentalist, you've actually got to be quite entrepreneurial. I started thinking entrepreneurially in my music career in order to be busy. It's not just about being a player, you've also got to negotiate lots of different things to keep a career going and get momentum.

The more that I did that, the more I transitioned from just being a player to being the band leader to the organizer of gigs to the musical director. After decades of doing all that, traveling around the world, and doing the musical stuff, the next step for me was to find how I could build more of a business around what I was doing.

Plus, life changes. I went from being by myself to having a wife and kids to support and a mortgage and not wanting to be out on the road so much. It was kind of the marriage of those two things together and wanting to find a way that I could be home more and also share what I've learned and build a business by taking the ideas that I'd picked up along the way and formulate them into something that was my own thing. 

When you first started creating content on YouTube in 2011, what was your goal? Was it to build your brand or share your knowledge?

I wanted to experiment and figure out how to make saxophone content that people would actually want to watch. I think there has to be a bit of trial and error because you're trying to find who your audience is. 

You're also trying to work out how to do this thing where you talk convincingly to a camera. And there's all the tech side of things. I mean, goodness me, it's much easier now. Back then, I was trying to cobble together all sorts of wonky gear but it was hard to make something that had any sort of production quality.

The flip side of all of this is today, it's easier because we've all got the gear to make the videos, but the expectation is much higher in terms of production quality.

‍What have been your most effective strategies to grow your YouTube audience? How do you funnel people from YouTube into your digital products and Sax School?

Our strategy really has been, first and foremost, understanding who our customer is and what their goals are. I know that sounds like really obvious advice, but I don't think a lot of people think deeply enough about that.

We don’t teach everyone how to learn to play the saxophone. We teach adults who are 40 to 50 to 90 years old, people who are hobby players, who are maybe coming back after playing when they were younger or starting from scratch. 

Everything we do is really targeted at those people. When we're making YouTube content, our strategy is making content that really helps our specific type of customer. Helping is important because that’s how we can build an audience and build a relationship with them. 

We start by helping our students on YouTube, then enticing them with free content. For instance, if they want to get the music sheet for what they're learning or some extra lessons.

We know that the lifecycle from meeting somebody on YouTube to them becoming a paying member on Sax School is a lengthy process. They need to get to know us. They need to use some of our content. We need to actually help them. They need to see an improvement. And then they'll be ready to commit to becoming a member. 

Our members stick around for a really long time. I don't know that you can shortcut that process, but there's something kind of nice about helping people and then leading them to the point where they're actually ready to join and stick around.

How did you decide what type of business model worked for you?

It's important to remember that when I started nearly 12 years ago, the landscape was different. Community has always been a massive part of what we do, it was just more difficult to do back then. There were Facebook groups, but for me, my goal was to teach adults to learn saxophone at a particular level so I chose to offer courses first.

I knew that along with courses, there are three things that make it successful. There has to be great educational content, really great support, and there has to be community. For our specific need, there has to be a combination of all three. That's why �ڰ������� works so well for us because we were able to do all three of those things on the platform. 

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What strategy worked best to keep your community engaged?

It all comes back to understanding our customer. Our students struggle with the confidence to go out and play. It's a big step to go out and play in front of people. Community has been important because I want to help people to get their confidence up, and the way we do that is by encouraging them to make videos and share it in our community. I think that's been something that's really helped us grow the community. It's about finding reasons to bring people back into the community all the time. We're constantly giving them challenges, like nudges to make a video of this, share it, have a conversation about it.

We also do monthly challenges. We've been doing that for years. This month, people are working on memorizing songs. Last month, they were working on playing a jazz standard or something else. Every month, there's something different. That gives people a reason to focus their practice, but also a reason to share content and have conversations.

‍What do your members love most about being in your community?

Most people join for the thousands of lessons we offer and they’ll say, “I don’t know if I want to get involved in the community.” But over time, I find that most people absolutely love the community because of the feedback they get on their playing, the interactions with other people, the conversations, and the people that they meet. 

Music is a collaborative thing, and I think it's hard to learn an instrument in isolation at home. Community helps us to create that community feeling in an online setting, and I think that's a really important dimension to learning an instrument which is why it works so well.

We’ve found that creators who have online communities as part of their suite of offerings earn double compared to those who don't. Do you think your community has helped with revenue growth?

100%. The community is an integral part of what we do at Sax School. I think it's part of the magic of why we've got so many students and why people enjoy the process of learning with us. I don't think Sax School would work without the community aspect. And I've never really contemplated doing it without a community.

If you were starting from zero today—no YouTube channel, no brand, just your current skills—what playbook would you follow to build your business?

Making content to build an audience, help that audience, and then lead them into how I can help them even more with a paid product. It's as simple as that. I think that hasn't really changed from 10 years ago. You just need to do it in a slightly different way these days because the social platforms are different. But you absolutely have to find your audience, help them, and lead them into how to help them further with a paid product.

Sax School is a prime example of how creating multiple revenue streams can help scale your business. With the right blend of products–from communities to courses to coaching–you can grow your audience, boost engagement, and increase revenue. Want to find the perfect blend for your business? Take our quiz to find the right mix. 

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