Lauren Bateman is a full-time musician and YouTuber who was born and raised in Medford, Massachusetts. Lauren is the creator and CEO of Full-Time Tubers, an online resource that shows entrepreneurs how to use YouTube to grow and build their businesses. Full Time-Tubers help to disseminate information on the intricacies of what YouTube favors and dislikes, as well as some of the most important things to concentrate on when starting.
At age 16, Lauren Bateman was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. This reminded her of how short life can be and is the reason why she’s a ‘do things now’ kind of person. Lauren makes it her mission to stay five steps ahead of everything because she knows that tomorrow isn’t promised.
Before making the shift to music and YouTube, Bateman started cancer research. For years she worked for a pharmaceutical company that specialized in drug research and development. Being a cancer survivor, she found the job very rewarding until it wasn’t. Like most entrepreneurs, Lauren wasn’t particularly excited about working a 9-5, and while she loved what she did, she always felt there was something bigger she could be doing to really help people.
At 27, she made the decision to quit her job to pursue a career in music. While pursuing a career in music, she started teaching guitar and voice lessons out of a spare bedroom in her apartment. Her music gig didn’t pay as much, so she had to figure out a way to make money somehow. Eventually, she managed to build a full roster of students and made more money teaching than she did selling CDs or booking gigs. At that point, Lauren decided to go all in on teaching business and started hiring other teachers to take on the extra students that she couldn’t accommodate into her schedule. In 2012, Lauren opened her first brick-and-mortar music school location. Later down the road, she opened her second location in 2016 and her third location at the end of 2019.
It was in 2017 that she completely exited teaching and shifted her focus to managing and overseeing the music schools. However, she couldn’t shake the feeling of missing the people she worked with and the joy that came from helping people with their music. After brainstorming, she came up with the idea to set up her YouTube account to post videos of herself teaching students basic guitar skills and how to play songs simply on the guitar. Towards the end of 2019, one of her older teaching videos went viral going from roughly 20 views a day to over 4,000 views a day in a matter of a few weeks. The video’s success brought in more course sales, and at that moment, she saw the true potential in YouTube.
Her success would halt in 2020 due to the COVID pandemic, and she’d lose 35% of her brick-and-mortar business overnight. After this devastating loss, she decided to go all in on YouTube, and it paid off massively.
Lauren’s advice to any young entrepreneur would be to try things and never be afraid to fail. In her early 20s, Lauren started two businesses that would later fail. However, these experiences never motivated her to give up. It only meant she hadn’t found the right vehicle yet. Lauren preaches to “Try and fail at as many things as possible.” She is a strong believer that the faster you fail, the faster you will find what you truly love and can excel. You can keep up with everything about Lauren Bateman by following her on Instagram, and make sure to check out her website and business opportunities here.