I Am Not Your Guru

I have a slightly unusual episode for you today, and I have to admit I am feeling a little bit nervous about it! Because it’s something that’s quite personal. It’s been quite emotional for me in the past, and I’m tackling this topic now, finally on a livestream, no less. So no pressure! But it’s something I am looking forward to digging into with you.

So in our recent episodes, we’ve been talking about identity, and we have this upcoming training on Saturday on Discovering Your Musical Core. If you haven’t registered yet, got to YourMusicalCore.com, sign up and join me live on Saturday.

Then we had a question recently that had me explaining more about our philosophy of how we’re all about growth and expansion and helping you to discover your own unique musical path.

And with all of that in the mix, it made me want to finally tackle something I’ve been meaning to for a few years. Because we get this particular question once in a while, and I don’t think I’ve ever really answered it publicly.

It’s something that I think our members inside Musical U probably all understand instinctively, whether they’ve ever stopped to think about it or not. But over the past few years in particular, as we’ve been reaching more and more people with our message, I’ve really realized it’s not obvious to some people when they first encounter Musical U. And I’ve titled this episode “I am not your guru”.

There was a Tony Robbins documentary a few years back where that was the title, and I thought it was a fascinating title because he does seem like a guru to so many people, right? And I think his point in calling it that was actually a little bit like what I’m going to be talking about today. Even though his case is very different to my own.

And I want to say upfront, I realize that wording can seem a bit pushy!

Like I’m saying, “you are telling me to be your guru, and I won’t”, like, I’m not, I’m not trying to put that on you. This is more like “Heads up, that’s not what I’m here for.”

And again, I think a lot of you in our kind of keen community, in our audience who’ve been with us for a while, are totally going to get what I’m talking about today and be like, “Christopher, why are you making a fuss about this? We get it.” But if you’re newer to us, or maybe you haven’t thought about this before, I hope it’s going to be valuable to hear some of the thinking behind it and why we do things the way we do.

And I wanted to borrow that title, I am not your guru, because it neatly sums up both the question and the answer to it.

So this question, for us, it comes in a wide variety of forms, but it’s things like, “where can I see videos of Christopher performing?” “If Musical U is so great, why doesn’t Christopher have any Grammys?” Or another one is “why do you do so much talking and so little playing in your videos?”

And all of it really boils down to asking, “why isn’t Christopher doing all the things I see other music gurus doing online?”

And so I wanted to share my answer to that, but also tell you a little bit about the background, because it’s something I’ve actually wrestled with a lot over the years.

And just for context, I started Musical U then easy ear training in 2009. I was 25. I’d never worked for myself before. I’d never started a business before. I’d never intended to be an entrepreneur.

And I was thrust into this world of leading a business and trying to grow a team and trying to spread a message online. And a lot of what I’m going to talk about today was quite emotional for me over the years, and I came to a real point of peace with it, and I’ll share how and why today. But just to say, I’m going to try and be a little bit light-hearted with this today because it does have deep emotional roots for me and I want to make sure it doesn’t get into anything too kind of intense!

So listen, there are always going to be people who won’t be satisfied until they see me doing all that flashy stuff, and that’s fine. This episode isn’t for them. My mum always told me that you can’t please all of the people all of the time.

And frankly, those people probably tuned out already when I didn’t open this video with a crazy guitar lick or a flashy drum solo! And that’s absolutely fine.

This episode is for those of you who felt drawn to us at Musical U, because you’ve got the sense we’re a bit different.

And whether you knew it or not, what I’m going to talk about today is, I think, a huge part of that.

So again, coming back to my kind of origin story, as it were, just to let you know, like, I am not a showman by nature, and in our industry, there’s a lot of people who are. Who are that kind of frontsperson.

They’re the flashy guy, they’re always the center of the party, centre of attention.

That’s not me. And I don’t know if you can pick that up in my manner on video, but, like, on the DISC profile, for example, one of the attributes is I, for Influencer. I have a very low “I”. That is not what I try to do in life. It’s not what I am naturally strong at, in terms of my character.

And I never had aspirations of fame or being in the spotlight, and it’s wacky to think of it, but at this point, through my work at Musical U, I have been seen, like, in videos by, you know, conservatively well over 10 million people. At this point, like, factoring in our advertising, our marketing, our social media, all of the places Musical U is and where I’m the face of it, that’s like ten million.

I can’t wrap my brain around it, honestly. And I just wanted to say at the outset, like, that’s not something I ever aspired to. It’s not something I take joy in. It’s not something I take pride in.

And I was thinking about it this morning, and I think actually, a lot of you can probably relate, because I know a lot of our members relate when we think about musical performance, a lot of our community, they actually, they are not that keen to be in the spotlight. But those who go on to develop their performance skills with us and get out there and play music for people, it’s because they care so deeply about the music and they’re kind of, they’re willing to be in the spotlight in order to share their music and the stuff they’re passionate about.

And it’s kind of the same with me for this. Like, I’m so passionate about the message, I’ll jump on camera, I’ll do this kind of thing, no problem. But just so you know, like, that’s not, that’s not something I ever wanted to do.

I love my introvert cave. This is my office, this is my makeshift studio, and I’m happiest when I’m by myself quietly in here. So there is this long standing struggle I’ve had as a result, and I finally made my piece with it a few years back.

And it all hinges on this idea of a guru.

If you look around in music education in general, but particularly online music education, there is a lot of this kind of hero worship model where you go to such and such website and this person is incredible and you can learn from them and you can be incredible just like them. And that is kind of the standard model – and that’s not us.

And you don’t need to be around Musical U long to realize that. That, you know, that is not the way we do things, and that’s not our style. It’s not how we communicate, it’s not how we present ourselves.

And so I wanted to share a bit about why. Because we do get the occasional comment or email, not a ton, maybe, you know, a couple every month, which on the scale of our comments and emails and feedback is not a lot.

But occasionally people asking, like, “where are the videos of Christopher wailing on guitar? Why don’t we see him performing on big stages?” Stuff like that. And sometimes it’s polite, sometimes it’s very not!

But yeah, you know, going back to the start, I had no intention of being a visible figurehead. If you didn’t know, our organization started as a mobile app development company. I was a nerdy kid making iPhone apps for my own ear training and musical development, and it kind of snowballed from there in a way I didn’t intend or expect. And so I wasn’t the face of the brand.

The brand didn’t have a face in the early years. But then we started publishing articles online and my name would be on some of them. And then we started sending out emails to our email list, and I was writing them and signing them off, so I was starting to be a bit visible.

And then we did a video or two here or there. We started the podcast, and then people were hearing my voice a lot. Then the podcast turned into a video show on YouTube.

And so suddenly, not so suddenly, but in retrospect, it feels sudden. I became the face of the brand. I became the figurehead, and I was out there visible, the way all of these guru brands are.

And I’ve always been very upfront and vocal about how I’m not perfect myself. I’m still learning. And funnily enough, I think everyone on the Musical U team, despite how expert they are, they would all say the same thing.

Like, we all really live that Pillar Belief of “Enjoying the Journey”, where we believe learning music is an endless journey, a lifelong journey with unlimited horizons to explore.

And so we’re all on that learning journey, and none of us position ourselves as the be-all-and-end-all that you should be aiming for.

But looking around at how other people were doing things, I couldn’t help but struggle with that question. Like, should I be doing a lot of playing on camera? Should I be showing off? Should I be, you know, being the exemplar in that way.

And I didn’t need to for our message or for our teaching. Like, so much of what we do is ear skills and instrument agnostic. Like, it’s not specific to one instrument. It’s never made sense for our core material to be demonstrated on an instrument.

So it was clear I didn’t need to, but I still kind of felt a bit of imposter syndrome because I wasn’t. And I had so much resistance to it.

Like, my gut was telling me not to, but my brain was telling me maybe I should. And I’m a science guy by nature, by background, you know, very logical left-brain thinker. But I’ve come to really respect intuition, and there’s actually a lot of good science these days on the validity of your intuition and that sometimes you can’t explain why you know something, but you know it.

And this was one of those things where I just knew, like, anytime I thought about going that direction, I was like, nope, that’s not it. That’s not right. And at the same time, like, I looked around and I could see how much easier a lot of it would be if I was going to do that! Like, how much easier a lot of our marketing would be, how much easier it would be to attract people.

And so I wrestled with it.

And I do want to be clear, like, I’m not here to throw rocks at that guru model. There are definitely some things I might say about, you know, whether the best musician is always the best teacher, or whether, you know, perpetuating that hero worship that our society has is a good thing for the average music learner and whether it might discourage them more than it inspires them.

But to be clear, like, I’m friends with a lot of the people who run the other big online music education companies, and a lot of them are that guru. And I have no problem with that. It’s right for them.

So what was the problem in my case?

It was clear it wasn’t, like, about fear of performing or fear of judgment.

I’m a happy performer. I’m comfortable. I’m confident. I’ll play. I’ll perform. I’ll share my music with people. I’ll jam. And I didn’t have resistance to doing that on camera.

The resistance was something in how it fit in with Musical U and I, for the longest time, I couldn’t put my finger on it.

And then one day, I forget exactly when it was, but it was fairly early. It was pre-podcast.

I was putting together some notes on an idea that later became a podcast episode called, I think, “Intimidated or inspired. You choose”, and I’ll link to that in the shownotes. But what was coming out was that as soon as I stepped out on camera playing, it was going to be a lose-lose.

Like, either I would blow people away and I would become that guru, and it would skew the brand in this weird way, or I would disappoint people, and they’d look at it and be like, oh, well, if Christopher’s not that good, the company can’t be that good. And so it felt like there was no win there. And that set my mind at ease for a little while.

But it kind of felt like a copout, because the reason we put out that podcast episode is we very much are about encouraging you to be inspired rather than intimidated when you see an amazing musical performance.

So that didn’t quite feel right, and the company grew, and we spread our message more widely. And I noticed that without having really thought about it, I noticed that anytime I would write something for our website or a podcast episode or an email, as soon as I mentioned an instrument, I would mention three or four more. And as soon as I mentioned a style of music, I would mention three or four more.

So, for example, if I was saying, you know, you can learn to play by ear on guitar, it’s easier than you think, and that goes for piano and saxophone…

Or if I say, you know, if you want to learn to jam at your local blues jam, or maybe it’s a jazz group you want to sit in with, or even if you’re a classical musician wanting to improvise…

I realized I was doing that. And I was doing it because as soon as we named one instrument or style, we might attract 5% of the people we wanted to talk to but alienate 95%. And I realized that was at play in this on-camera thing, too, that, you know, as soon as I showed up with a guitar in my hands, anyone encountering our brand would see me as the guitar guy and Musical U as the guitar thing.

And even if I had a couple of instruments in sight, like, again, it was this thing where as soon as you get specific in that way, you’re alienating most people. And we do have team members and our Resident Pros playing on camera in some of our material, both publicly and inside the membership. But I think it’s fundamentally different when it’s, like, the figurehead of the company, the founder of the company, and I think it’s really, like, just subliminally even if you say, you know, “I’m showing you on guitar, but it works for every instrument.”

It just really has that effect on people, is what we found.

And so for a while, for a while, that satisfied me. I was comfortable with that. And, I mean, those are all really good reasons not to do it!

But then one day, and I was trying to remember exactly this morning, and I realized it was just after we’d come back from Valencia in Spain, where we were living.

We were living in this temporary rented accommodation in London, and I used to go for walks around the neighborhood there. And at the time, we were about to launch the Living Music program, and I was, like, racking my brains for what to call that program. At the time, the code name was, like, Musical U 2.0, and it eventually became Living Music.

But I was like,, I was doing a lot of thinking about words and naming and meaning.

And unrelated to that, it just suddenly clicked in my head, and I had one of those, you know, have you ever had one of those epiphanies where your thinking just shifts and you can never see it the old way again? You know, you just have this moment of clarity, and it’s like, “oh. Oh, yeah, that’s how it is.”

And so this thing that hit me was: it’s Musical U.

Like, I named the company Musical U for a reason. The pun in that name. I’m a big fan of puns, and the pun in our name is not an accident.

I chose the name Musical U because, yes, it hints at musical university, but also because it’s about “the musical you”. It’s about you becoming more musical.

And that spirit has been there since we started in 2009. And then it became clearer and more solid when we rebranded as Musical U.

And what clicked for me that day was that the absolute worst thing I could do for Musical U as a brand, as an organization, as a community, the worst thing I could do for our mission would be to let it become that kind of guru brand.

And the more focus on me, the less focus on you. Like, anything that hints at “come here and you can be just like me” would be a dire mistake.

And it just hit me so clearly. And I couldn’t be out there talking about the talent myth and how society trains us up to hero worship these alien gods that we admire on stage while also trying to hype myself up like one of them!

And I suddenly understood that intuition I had had all along. It was my instinct telling me that putting myself front and center like this was fine as long as I was always shining the spotlight on you, not me. And so, you know, like I mentioned, I think I mentioned in an episode this week, I would always rather share stories of our members and their triumphs and their breakthroughs and what they’ve achieved than talk too much about my own.

And if you hear me telling my story, like, I’ve been interviewed a lot at this point, and I’ve talked about it on podcast episodes and in emails, and I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but, like, I’ll happily share my backstory. I’ll talk about the struggles. I’ll talk about my own journey. I’ll talk about how I wasn’t talented or gifted. And I, you know, I gradually figured out these methods. And I tend to finish the story when I started Musical U around 2009.

And the traditional guru story would go, “… and then I achieved all of these great things, and you can be just like me!” But I cut it off. And I guess, again, instinctively, I cut it off because at the point at which I started Musical U, the story becomes yours. And it’s much more about what you can achieve and what you can accomplish and how we can support you in doing that.

And that’s why I’d rather share our members triumphs. And I will say in passing, this is something we’re working on improving. We have endless quotes, and we have videos of our members talking about their breakthroughs.

If you go to our public reviews page, we’ve got almost 100, I think, video case studies of people talking about their amazing breakthroughs. But we haven’t done a good job of documenting or helping them to document the results and actually demonstrate all the amazing things they can now do. That’s our bad.

And you can expect a lot more of that from us in future because I totally do get that desire to see the proof. I just – I cannot allow that to be me.

So, yeah, fortunately, after 15 years and tens of thousands of students, there’s no shortage of proof that our stuff works. We can do a better job of showing that, I think. And that’s something we’re working on.

So that was a long story. I hope it made some sense, and I hope it’s interesting or useful to hear some of this. But, like, it can literally be summed up by saying, “this is not the Christopher Sutton School of Music, it’s Musical U.”

And if I can, it’s funny being on camera, broadcast livestream, and knowing how many people might see this in future. But I’m also just here alone in a room, so I feel comfortable being a bit vulnerable. I’ll, I’ll thank you for allowing me to be a little bit vulnerable.

But if I can be a bit personal and spiritual almost for a minute, because I think if you’ve watched or listened this far, I think I can trust you with something I don’t really share outside of close friends and family. But for me, this is my calling in life. I’m not someone who ever thought they would have a calling or ever talked in those terms or ever in aimed to.

And like I said, the whole, like, being visible, being a figurehead, not my cup of tea!

But as I look back on like the last 15 years and all the ups and downs and trials and tribulations and, and how vividly I’ve seen that vision we’re working towards at Musical U, it’s always been crystal clear to me. I’ve always had that deep intuition and knowing that this is what I’m here to do.

And I’ve gradually, reluctantly, to be honest, come to accept, like that is my life’s work. That’s what I’m here for. I’m here to spread that message of unlimited human potential for musicality and music making.

And it’s something I’m honored to do. And part of why I wanted to do this episode is that I’ve noticed the more I can put aside my personal junk, stuff like imposter syndrome, listening to negative comments, worrying about how I’ll be seen or judged, the more I can set that stuff aside and just show up. As, you know, the spokesperson for this mission, the more we’re able to help people and the more rapidly we move towards that vision.

So I am not your guru. I hope that makes sense now. But I am honored to be your guide and proud to play my part as the voice of the company to spread the message that I know can change so many musical lives and hopefully leave the world a much more musical place.

Similarly, we have amazing musicians on our team. They’re not your guru either!

Our coaching team are honored to be here as your coach if you go into Next Level. But even that, it’s designed to be a fixed term program, not to make you dependent on your genius guru coach – but to teach you to be your own coach forevermore.

Our Member Success team are delighted every day to serve our members by answering questions, making suggestions, helping them have more success in their musical journey, helping you have more success in your musical journey.

And all our Guest Experts, Resident Pros, all the other people we collaborate with, they’re here to play their part in helping you expand into a bigger, brighter, happier musical future.

And that’s because at the end of the day, it’s not about any of us. It’s about you.

So there it is. I think I did an okay job of that. Like I said, that there’s a lot of, a lot of pressure doing this live. When it’s something that has these deep emotional roots and a big backstory behind it.

You can probably tell it’s a topic that’s deeply personal to me and has been a really weird and challenging and I think ultimately really wonderful line of growth, both for me personally and for Musical U.

Like I said at the start, I think a lot of you inside Musical U have understood this all along. I think as soon as you’re in that community, you get it, right?

And I think it is notable that, like those questions I alluded to at the start, we only ever get them from outsiders. We never get them from members. Because they’re inside and they’re thriving because of that focus being on them, not on us.

So let me know your thoughts. I love hearing your feedback in general and would love to hear how all of this lands with you and whether it’s something you’ve wondered about, wanted to know about, whether what I shared today is helpful or useful or interesting.

Tomorrow I’m going to be back with our next Meet The Team interview, which I’m really looking forward to, that is with Mr. ZSonic, as many of you know him from inside the membership, Zac Bailey, and we’ll be doing a bit of digging into his musical backstory and his role at Musical U, which should be a lot of fun.

And then on Saturday, before our live training, which if you haven’t registered, register at YourMusicalCore.com and sign up for that to join me live. But before that, we will be putting out a live stream at the normal time.

Tomorrow’s livestream is 2 hours later, I mentioned yesterday in the preamble, but just to say, if you’re tuning in live, tomorrow is going to be 2 hours later than our normal time.

But on Saturday, normal time, our second episode of Coach’s corner, which is packed with juicy nuggets as always.

And then a bit later than that, we have our live training with me, where we’ll be going deep on discovering your Musical Core and how to shape your musical journey so that you become the musician you’ve always dreamed of being.

I look forward to seeing many of you live with us on Saturday for that, and I’ll see you again tomorrow on our next livestream. Cheers, bye!

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