Aaron Anastasi has one of those faces you think is very familiar, but you can’t quite place it. Until you do. He’s a working actor who has played parts on shows like Bosch, 9-1-1 on Fox and others. But if you have ever searched YouTube for singing lessons, you definitely know him.
Aaron is the creator of the Superior Singing Method, a training program and YouTube channel with almost half a million subscribers. That channel funnels people into a subscription program that has now taught almost 100,000 people how to sing better.
He is also the author of two books to help others find their path to success: “The Voice of Your Dreams” and “The Prosperous Mind.”
Aaron joined me to talk about his failures and successes in building influence online, how he balances that, his acting career and his personal life. I asked him very pointedly what influencers out there listening should look for when you don’t feel successful and need to pivot, what his elements of a marketing funnel are, and how he manages a multi-million dollar business of passive income.
Influencers and brands alike can take a page for his superior influence success.
Aaron Anastasi can be found online on LinkedIn and Instagram, where he is most active. The Superior Singing Method is on YouTube and its own singing lessons website.
Winfluence Transcript – Aaron Anastasi – Superior Singing Method
Jason Falls
Hello again, friends thanks for listening to Winfluence – The influence Marketing Podcast. Aaron Anastasi has one of those faces you think is very familiar, but you can’t quite place it until you do. He’s a working actor who has played parts on shows like Bosch 911, on Fox, and others. But if you have ever searched YouTube for singing lessons, you definitely know him. Aaron is the creator of the Superior Singing Method, a training program and YouTube channel with almost half a million subscribers. That channel funnels people into a subscription program that has now taught almost 100,000 people how to sing better.
Jason Falls
So he’s an influencer Who has created passive income through his content, that content is a by-product of his own work to improve an aspect of his life. He figured out how to teach. But he didn’t start out successful his first Singing Method effort failed. Fast forward to now he’s tremendously successful with the Superior Singing Method. And he’s put his story and inspiration for others to find that pathway to success into a pair of books: “The Voice of Your Dreams” and “The Prosperous Mind,” neither of which are about singing.
Jason Falls
Aaron joined me to talk about his failures and successes in building influence online, how he balances that with his acting, career and personal life. I asked him very pointedly what influencers out there listening should look for when they don’t feel successful and need to pivot. What his elements of a marketing funnel are and how he manages a multi million dollar business of passive income. I’ll give you a hint. Passive is a little misleading. We also talked about how his book helps people turn up the volume on their success, an influencer profile we can all learn from Aaron Anastasi up next on Winfluence.
Jason Falls
Aaron, it’s hard to know where to start with you because you’ve got so much going on. When do you sleep? Let’s start there.
Aaron Anastasi
You know, I I my life is it seems very full and it is very full in that I love my life and it’s full. I love my wife, I love my jobs. I love the what I get to do. But I you know many years back, I designed my life in a way that I get eight and a half hours of sleep every night. I don’t work on weekends, I almost never work on nights. So for me, I get a lot done. But I do it in batches and and create a lot of time for self care and all that stuff. So yeah, but that wasn’t what I was in college and grad school. That absolutely was not the case. I barely slept in until I learned better.
Jason Falls
Yeah, it’s it’s definitely one of those tricks that I’m still trying to master I do a pretty good job of work life balance now. But I haven’t gotten rid of the sort of workaholic tendencies of Well, I’m bored. So instead of relaxing or self care, I’m going to go write a blog post or I’m going to go do something for my podcast or whatever. But you know, we all get there at some point. So let’s let’s go through this this life of yours somewhat chronologically, I think so. You’re an actor, you’ve got one of those familiar faces. So I’m guessing we’ve seen you in a show or another over the years. I checked out your IMDB page and you happen to you play a lot of paramedics it seems. So when did that career start for you and give us a sense of what being a working actor is like? I would imagine it’s a tough gig unless or until you make a big break.
Aaron Anastasi
Sure, yeah, I started. Since I was a kid, I always had this inner thing of wanting to be an actor, but I was too terrified to do it. So I just went in the other areas of music and other creativity that was fulfilling, but wasn’t that, you know, big, major thing that I felt inside. And then about a decade ago, I had kind of experience like an almost epiphany experience of like, I need to do the thing that is in my heart to do and so I started training. I took it very seriously when I get on something, I get very, very focused and very serious. So I started training hardcore, and I didn’t book anything for about seven years, but I was training all the time constantly. And then I shaved my head. And as soon as I shaved my head I started booking a bunch of stuff back to back it was like I booked Bosch and then I booked me a 911 on Fox and I booked the show called The boxers that hasn’t come out yet. And then Marvel’s runaways like a book all that literally within like a four six month period, right after I shaved my head and I started Getting a groove of where I was at. And, and then COVID hit Not long after that. But you know, so fortunately now, you know, the industry shut down for about six months and now we’re back. So I’ve had a ton of auditions in the past couple of weeks. I had one this morning, actually for a big show on Netflix. So I’m glad you’re back.
Jason Falls
That’s, that’s great. So the secret is shaving your head apparently.
Aaron Anastasi
Absolutely. Everybody out there should shave it woman, man, no matter what you identify as shave your head and you’re going to get more work.
Jason Falls
Well, and the next thing I want to ask you about, it’s kind of funny because I was looking, I want to ask you about your YouTube channel. The one of the things that I noticed when I was looking through your YouTube videos is like, okay, ball, ball, ball, got hair, got more hair, goatee, no goatee bald. So it’s kind of funny, having someone who’s on camera on YouTube, being an actor and having to probably change your look or whatnot over the years. It’s kind of fun how it manifests itself in that way.
Aaron Anastasi
Absolutely. Yeah. I know, there’s a now I tried to keep the branding kind of similar for for YouTube page for a while just like, Hey, this is me. And this is how it’s gonna be.
Jason Falls
Yep. So somewhere along the line, in the whole acting thing, you you started creating content online, which opens up a nice pivot for you. Give us a bit of the genesis of the Superior Singing Method. Was that a natural extension of your training and or, you know, ways to make ends meet while you were going from audition to audition? How did that that that happened?
Aaron Anastasi
Yeah, I had a buddy who was starting to get into this internet marketing thing. This is this is like 1012 years ago. And he was starting some little things here and there. And I was like, Oh, this idea of passive income, right, I can pursue an acting career and have passive income. It was this big, like, wow. And so I just thought, like, what could we do? And so the first thing we did is I started you know, how to play guitar and how to do this. And that was kind of like, you know, not didn’t really get successful, like had a little bit and blah, blah. And then I was like, What do I really, really, really know. And I was like, I really know singing. So let’s try that. And so that him and I worked on that for a while. We actually worked on it for a couple years. And we launched it, it was called the singing guide. And it was a total flop and no, you know, and so I was like, it was almost to the point where we were like, well, maybe just we just cut bait, and we just try something else. But I just had this sense, this thing could go and this could be really big. And so I rethought it, rebranded it refilmed everything totally changed my whole marketing angle on it, and everything. And then when we launched it, it it, it was very, very, very popular out of the gate. And then we can talk about the ups and downs, but that it took some doing to get there. But the perseverance of pushing through a lot of those pitfalls are what really ultimately made it super successful. I mean, now it’s like, you know what, it’s like a five or $10 million a year business now.
Jason Falls
So what were the two or three things that you changed from that first iteration to make the Superior Singing Method better?
Aaron Anastasi
The one of the things was I, I created my own method, like, what is really what is me and what is just before was just like, piece work of all my singing teachers, and all just kind of putting that together. But when I thought, What is it about me, it’s because I had a terrible voice when I was a kid. And then I built into being a professional singer. So like, what did I actually do? Like not what have I learned and hear these tips. And it was like, what worked for me a terrible singer to become a professional singer. And I really dug deep. And I just figured out what those things are. So creating my method that was unique to me, that actually helped me like all the shortcuts that I took, or whatever, all the things that took me a long time to figure out that I could teach somebody in the short things that don’t have to have all the pitfalls I did. So that was one. The other was much much we actually bought some film equipment, so it’s much higher quality video. And then the the other one was come, actually two different things. One was, I just looked at the camera, and I thought, what my avatar I just thought, I’m gonna look at, I’m only talking to one person. And this one person I decided was my, my half brother, who was in college, I’m like, What would I say? Cuz that’s kind of my target audience of somebody that’s like, Yeah, not a kid. But young. And I could really and so I just spoke to one person from the heart of this is a this is everything that I know. And the other final thing I can say is just that it was this idea of Superior Singing in eight weeks or less. It was this idea of like, you could do it and you can do it relatively quickly. You don’t have to wait 10 years to I can actually bump you a few levels in a shortest period of time.
Jason Falls
Yeah, that’s that’s, that’s fascinating. And I wanted to kind of ask you to go through that because I think there’s a lot of influencers out there who listen to this show. Who They have content, they are probably feeling their way out the way you did with your, you know, first attempt at it, and they don’t really understand what to change. And I don’t know that anyone can ever tell you, okay, across the board, from a very generic standpoint, this is what you need to change about what you’re doing. You got to feel it out for yourself, but at the same time hearing what someone else did, I think is really, really helpful to them. So it was obviously successful for you’ve got almost a half a million subscribers, I think you’ve got a, you know, a huge, you know, email list as well. You’ve got free content out there. And then you funnel people into the kind of paid online course, how many people have taken the course now?
Aaron Anastasi
Yeah, what would be the updated numbers? I think it’s about it’s close to 100,000 people have gone through the program, the actual, like, eight week program. Now, how many people have watched our videos? I think, you know, 50 to 100 million people have like, what, you know, have hit our videos at some point.
Jason Falls
Yeah. All right. So your content is teaching people how to sing better, which is obviously something that a lot of people want to do. I’m curious if the course is something that you set up and the contents pretty static now, or if you’re continually adding to it enhancing building, new arms of the course, etc.
Aaron Anastasi
For years, we did, I added I added stuff a ton of stuff over the years, I think we launched I think it was 12 years ago that we launched. And so over the first five or six years, I kept adding all these mini courses. And here’s a harm a course. And here’s a you know, seven, here’s a mini course of this and a mini course of that. And so now the only thing I add to is what’s called the Vocal Coaching club. And that’s our subscription program. So we have the front end program, that’s x amount of dollars, and then our subscription program, that’s all this other content. And that’s what I add to and have added the most to over the years. And then right now what I do on a very regular basis. And again, batch I batch you know, I’ll do the YouTube video. So like the most recent content is usually the YouTube videos, the free content that drives people toward, you know, our paid content really drives people toward our quiz, you know, take the number one singing killer quiz. And the quiz, find out what your number one singing killer is. And we give them a free video to fix that one. And that takes them through our funnel.
Jason Falls
That’s nice. So I wonder how much time you spend creating the new premium content versus the free content on YouTube or other channels to attract two people to the premium stuff.
Aaron Anastasi
Nowadays, like it would be different over the years, of course, but nowadays, I mean, to be perfectly honest, I probably only spend on a given week, I probably only spend two hours total on the site period. And that’s not even that most the time, probably in a month, I probably spend between five or 10 hours. And that’s like maximum. So. But right now, the YouTube videos would be exponentially more time than the other content, because we’ve just loaded it so much over the years that it’s like, I would have to really think about what else I could or want to add to it.
Jason Falls
Right? So you’ve got the successful singing course in channel and in 2016, you wrote a book but not about singing. It was a kind of a motivational book. Tell me about “The Voice of Your Dreams.”
Aaron Anastasi
Yeah, “The Voice of Your Dreams.” So about 10 years ago, I was I met with a coach and life coach, whatever. And I didn’t know what a life coach was at the time. And I didn’t even know he was that I just wanted a mentor. And some radical things happen to me in my life. I was I was in a stagnant place in my life. I was in a stagnant relationship. I wasn’t pursuing acting at all, yet. I was feeling very just kind of blah. And I wasn’t I was living paycheck to paycheck at the time, I started working with this coach. And within a year, he introduced me to a lot of different principles and ways of thinking in different ways of being that my life over that year was like, by the end of the year, I was making six figures. I was married to a woman of my dream soulmate. And I was massively pursuing acting and starting to see some momentum in that direction. And so I was like, What is this black magic, you know, so as these principles, they really stood out, I was just like, there’s something here. And I’m an avid reader. And I saw I just started devouring tons and tons of books in this transformational framework, and then started taking on some coaching clients and their lives are doing what my life had done. I was just like, this is amazing. And so I just was overflowing with all this, you know, information in these ideas. And that’s why I wrote you know, “The Voice of Your Dreams.” And I had this singing following already. And I knew so I want it to be this plan or the voice of your dreams, turn up the volume, you know, turn down the voices of limitation and turn up the volume of success that play on words because I knew a lot of my singing clients would be the ones and it was a nice dovetail of like, hey, yes, it’s about you know, doing things exercise for your voice and it’ll help but being motivated and knowing why and changing who you are and how you approach things is going to help you know even more so and then I followed that up with my second book called “Your Prosperous Mind,” two years later, which was similar type of principles.
Jason Falls
That’s great. Now I guess I would be remiss if I didn’t take advantage of the success coach in you being on the show. what’s what’s the most important piece of advice or nugget of reinforcement that you give your coaching clients to kind of keep them motivated or moving in the right direction?
Aaron Anastasi
Having the self awareness of knowing what’s going on in your head? What thoughts you’re thinking, therefore, what beliefs you’re believing, so that you can be aware of them and rewrite them? Because we all have these negative self tapes, right? So they’re, they’re running constantly. But the problem is, they’re running in the background like right now, right? So right now you’re listening to me, we’re doing this podcast, we’re having this conversation. And I’m certain that you’re focusing on what I’m saying you’re good at what you do. But there’s also stuff going on in the background, right? You’re thinking, Okay, how much time has it been? And should I edit this part out? And when what am I, you know, I kind of hear this dog, there’s all this stuff going on background, if we can get clear that that is going on, and then tap into what it is, then we don’t have our automatic responses based on that stuff that’s going on in the background. We could see it for what it is. And we’re tempted to believe this and think this and therefore do this, if we can interrupt that and be like, Oh, I see that’s going on. Is that actually is it true that I’m not, I don’t have what it takes to pursue a career in acting, and therefore I should not put this audition on tape or not put as much time as I would into it. No, I think that I can be a successful actor, therefore, I’m actually going to spend the money to get this coached, and get a shot in a way that’s really great. You know, so it just, it changes our whole way of being when we’re aware of what we’re thinking.
Jason Falls
So it sounds a little bit like mindfulness to me, I’ll have a mindful mindfulness meditation practice of my own, I don’t teach other people how to do it, I just do it for my own purposes of self care. And it sounds very similar is that am I accurate? There.
Aaron Anastasi
That is absolutely a part of it, the mindfulness for sure. And what what’s nice about the mindfulness and that could be the meditation and other practices for mindfulness is getting is allowing your inner wisdom to bubble up and give you ideas of what to do and what to go for. And if we’re aware enough to really hear what’s going on, and make decisions based on the wisdom, and I love the phrase, don’t doubt in darkness, what you what was made clear to you in the light, right. So the light would be that time of mindfulness, or meditation or prayer or whatever it is for you. And you have these ideas, I’m going to go after this. But then when you feel discouraged, don’t make decisions based on that discouragement, make decisions based on even though you don’t feel like it, that wisdom in that direction. And that calling or whatever it was that you’re from the universe, or God or Pluto, I don’t care, just whatever it was go after that thing that you knew was true in your heart when you heard it. Yeah,
Jason Falls
it’s it’s, it’s it’s amazing that the parallels there, it’s Yeah, it’s very similar to what what my mindfulness training has told me, which is basically, you know, thoughts are thoughts, they don’t have to dictate your life. And so whether they’re negative or positive, you just there, you recognize that they’re there, you acknowledge it, but then you focus on clearing thoughts, so that you can kind of have a clear stream of consciousness as you make decisions. So I like it, it aligns quite nicely. Alright, so. So I’m a fledgling influencer out there, or someone trying to create content, looking for ideas, trying to figure out how to do this thing for a living? Do you recommend that everyone out there should develop a paid course, subscription based course thing? Or is there is there something one has to know or know how to do before you advise them to take that step? And, and you know, what have you learned over the years that can help people sort of build up what they’re trying to do to establish a life for themselves like yours?
Aaron Anastasi
Yeah, the first thing is, thing, think of it for the long haul. So when you decide what it is that you want to do whatever the content is, or if you want to do a paid course, what I generally start to do is I do something that I love, I get really excited about, I do what I love, and I start, you know, getting content out there and eventually turn it, it often eventually turns into something that I get paid for. But it’s got to be for the long haul something that you love and can love for a long time because I I say passive income, right? That’s why I got into it. And then the, the joke is that passive income is not passive. There is a maintenance aspect to anything that that’s ever done. And it will be maintenance over the long haul. Like I said, I you know, I work maybe two hours a week now or less sometimes. But that’s through a lot of pitfalls over the years and a lot of learnings over the years so I can work less now but I can’t just completely shut it off and do nothing because it will eventually die because things eventually decay. So love what you do just something that you can see yourself doing for 10 years and start doing it. And then I would say you know learn how to monetize it. And that is just the other Last thing would be this idea. I it’s always bugging me this idea of MVP that the minimum viable product people like oh, I’ll start to do this thing and throw it out there. And if people like it, it’ll take off and then I’ll keep putting time into it. Not that there’s not wisdom in that there is wisdom in that but I’m like, no, it’s it’s about tenacity and believing in something and if you really want to do this thing, push through and there’s a really good chance that this thing could work it with the right tenacity and passion and, and learning of course, there’s some things that you just you cut bait, but I just think more often things die because of lack of tenacity and passion, then Oh, just was a bad idea.
Jason Falls
Nice. Aaron, thanks so much for the wisdom where can people find you online? And where can we look for you on the on the big screen these days?
Aaron Anastasi
Yeah, let’s see. So, online obviously, we talked about SuperiorSingingMethod.com if you go to Amazon, you can find my books, “The Voice of Your Dreams” and “Your Prosperous Mind.” I’m the most or my YouTube channel is Superior Singing, and a lot of good free content there on how to sing but i’m most active and most have the most fun with my Instagram, which is just @AaronAnastasi.
Jason Falls
Awesome Aaron, thank you so much. We appreciate your time.
Aaron Anastasi
My pleasure, Jason. Thanks for having me.
Transcribed by otter.ai
The Winfluence theme music is “One More Look” featuring Jacquire King and Stephan Sharp by The K Club found on Facebook Sound Collection.