My $10K MBA: What A Failed DJ Course Venture Taught Me

Over the last 2 years, I attempted to build up a standalone education series spinning out of my 13 odd years of experience as a DJ.

Overall, I spent around $10K in total (in addition to countless hours). The series was targeted at building a formal DJ education in the world of electronic music, but, failed to reach positive ROI in the end.

Despite this, it did give me some actionable data regarding product-market fit and my own suitability as a founder in the creator economy.

I started this project in unknowing pursuit of Dan Pink’s “Motivation 3.0" (autonomy, mastery, and purpose), trying to create meaning outside of my corporate career. Given my enthusiasm for the music, I approached it with a "missionary" mindset—trying to preserve the culture, history and art of DJing against commodification.

This idealistic approach had some great advantages but also led to a few concrete strategic and tactical errors. So let’s get into it!

1. The Strategy Problem: Selling Commodity Information in an Era of Abundance Is Hard

Initially, I launched the course on Udemy but with an outdated mental model of the internet. I was operating under the assumption of "information asymmetry"—the idea that you can package knowledge and sell it because “good knowledge” is hard to find.

The Reality:

• In the age of YouTube, information is ubiquitous and free.

I built a “mega course” around 10 hours of practice + theory synthesis, but the market for information products has changed. In specific, the market does not value pure information anymore; it values transformation (results, accountability, and implementation). By selling pure information without a specific sensational outcome (i.e., Hormozi’s Grand Slam Offer) or audience connection, I was selling a commodity without really knowing it.

Eventually I left Udemy, in attempt to gain purchasing power and customer list leverage — but I needed to do all the sales and marketing myself. At this point, I started discovering the nature of “value based pricing” and direct response marketing. The trouble was that it is very difficult to sell a commodity at a value-based price point unless you have an existing large audience or are selling a pain killer (pay me $1K to let me show you how to make $10k).

The main problem was I fell into the trap of thinking:

Whereas, prospects and leads were mostly interested in:

It might be accurate to say we are moving from the information age to the implementation age. Information is abundant, but execution is scarce.

2. The Offer Problem: Infrastructure Before Validation

This error was the most costly mistake; I started trying to build a business line before I validated a strong product. The reality was that Udemy had validated my product was worth something but in a commodity market. Udemy abstracted away all the sales and marketing necessary, as well as the cost of building an audience and trust. When I tried to switch to value based pricing, things fell apart.

I have a systems-engineering mindset, and so the promise of scalable direct response marketing vis-a-vie sales funnels, auto responders, lead magnets et al, really drew me in. I gravitated toward building "scalable" infrastructure but did not have a product that people had a burning desire to have. I spent around $7-10K on:

• Hosting and web infrastructure.

• Marketing software and automation tools.

• Advertising

• Content creation

But the reality was: this was a form of “productive procrastination."

Building sales funnels and websites felt like work, but it allowed me to avoid the actual work: talking to customers and selling the product manually. I was trying to optimize a funnel that had low proven demand at the price point. The principled approach would have been to generate manual sales first, then use that revenue to pay for the tools.

There is the adage that you have to “spend money to make money”, but this is something to be careful with. You want to make sure the business is financing its own growth from revenue before you investing in scaling tools. Otherwise, you’re doing pre-mature optimization when you need to be doing product discovery.

3. The "Passion" Misstep

I followed the narrative of "monetize your passion." I realized too late that this advice usually comes from people who have already secured their financial independence, allowing them the safety to pursue passion projects.

My passion was for the underground dance music culture and art of DJing. The market demand, however, was completely different. When I finally mapped out the customer avatars, I realized I didn't really want to serve them:

• Avatar A (The Aspiring Performer): Their primary motivation is Market Entry & Visibility. They aren't looking for a deep-dive into the history of house music; they are looking for the "Minimum Viable Skills" required to get booked and build an audience on social media. They value speed and results over theory.

• Avatar B (The Working Pro): They don't need help with the craft; they have a business problem. They need help with logistics, negotiation, and agency representation. This is a B2B sales/marketing challenge, not a creative one.

• Avatar C (The Hobbyist): They want functional competence (e.g., beatmatching). While this is a skill I teach, the market for this specific knowledge has been commoditized. YouTube provides this for free, making it difficult to compete on price without a unique transformation promise.

I was trying to sell a product based on my values and vision (art/history/integrity) to a market that valued different things.

Moreover, trying to monetize the passion really killed my joy for DJing. I stepped back for several months because of what productizing did to my passion.

Find a profitable market, then see if you can be passionate about solving their problem (even if the problem is status-seeking), not just passionate about the subject matter yourself.

Now, there is a third option of the “High-End Niche”. In any particular hobby market, there is a "whale" segment willing to pay premium prices for history, art, and craft. So my failure might not have been the topic (Art of DJing), but the targeting (trying to sell Art to the mass market crowd).

However, this requires a higher end marketing strategy, direct-response utility strategy is trickier.

4. Founder-Market Fit

Ultimately, the failure wasn't just the product; it was a mismatch between my personality and the needs of the market.

The modern DJ industry is driven by social media presence, hype, and entertainment. To succeed, the founder needs to be a content creator, comfortable with constant self-promotion on Instagram/TikTok, and willing to play the "attention economy" game.

Realistically, I have an analytical and systems thinking brain, I am have a personal skepticism toward the "goldfish attention span" dynamics that platforms like TikTok incentivize. I dislike the algorithmic bias toward short-form, high-stimulation content, yet I tried to build a business in a sector that relies on exactly that.

Truthfully, if your customers are driven by social visibility (ego needs), it would be prudent that you yourself are consistently on the platform demonstrating the image your customers want. We buy on emotion not logic.

In B2B, systems, logic, analysis are often rewarded, whereas in B2C/Creator Economy, it’s emotion, charisma and brand that are king. I tried to solve an emotional problem (validation) with a logical solution (a structured course/funnel).

The Validation Experiment:

Eventually, I ran a final test. I took my list of around 500 people and filtered for engagement with a massive list clean up: only 20 survivors remained; I then offered a massive discount ($27 for the initial $139 package) to determine if it was an offer problem. The lack of conversion show me, it wasn't necessarily a pricing issue; it was a lack of desire for the specific offer I had built.

The Concrete Lessons

If I were to strip the emotion away, these are the operating principles derived from my loss:

1. Validate the Offer Manually

Do not build a website, do not buy software, and do not record a massive course until you have sold the concept to a human being. The "Cart before the Horse" approach burns cash. Sometimes you don’t need as deep validation (e.g., if you’re building a commodity and know that in advance).

2. Product-Market Fit > Founder Vision

This one hurts but… it does not matter how noble your mission is (e.g., "saving the music”). If the market wants "how to get famous on Instagram," and you refuse to sell that, you’ll find hard times making a business there. It’s OK to realize you’re not a fit for the market, you can personally choose to compromise / adapt yourself to the market or just leave and try something else.

3. Know Your "Founder Personality"

Turns out I’m a systems guy. I tend to optimize and scale prematurely over creating offers from scratch and propositioning them to ambiguous markets. Recognizing this limitation is crucial. I tried to force myself into a "hype-man" role that I fundamentally resented, which led to burnout and resistance.

4. Systems Don't Fix Offer Problems

100 leads sent to a bad offer equals zero sales. I spent months trying to optimize the "flow" of traffic, ignoring the fact that the destination (the offer) wasn't compelling to the audience.

Conclusion

This experience clarified that I may be better calibrated for a different market than B2C "passion economy" entrepreneurship, particularly where sales rely on personal brand and social media clout.

I do not think we learn unless we receive a few severe negative emotional experiences. This is partly because of our negativity bias and the impression which emotional experience has on our memory (e.g., we feel pain 2x joy and we remember highly emotional situations in our lives).

Therefore, I really had to get hit by this venture to understand for the future where my efforts might be better directed.

The website, course and channel are still running and making a little bit of money, but, I stopped putting the same urgency and pressure on it as I once did.

Part of me criticizes my venture as a failing in persistence, but for the time being I’m leaving it to grow organically.

The money is gone, but if I had some thoughts for you:

Try to avoid building the high-rise until you've sold a couple blueprints on your own.