Musician and YouTuber Lauren Bateman was born and raised in Medford, Massachusetts. Lauren is the founder and CEO of Full-Time Tubers, an online resource that teaches entrepreneurs how to use YouTube to grow their businesses. A website called Full Time-Tubers helps to provide information on the nuances of what YouTube prefers and dislikes, as well as what you should focus on when starting out.
Lauren was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma at the age of 16. Since then, she has become a ‘do things now’ kind of person, as she was reminded of how short life can be. Keeping five steps ahead of everything is Lauren’s mission because tomorrow is never guaranteed.
Bateman has a background in cancer research before making the switch to music and YouTube. As a drug researcher and developer for years, she worked for a pharmaceutical company. As a cancer survivor herself, she found the job to be rewarding until it wasn’t. Lauren, like most entrepreneurs, wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about working a 9-5 and, while she enjoyed what she did, she felt there was something more she could do to make a real difference.
She quit her job at 27 to pursue a career in music. Out of a spare bedroom in her apartment, she began teaching guitar and voice lessons while pursuing a career in music. Since her music gig didn’t pay as much, she had to find another way to make money. It wasn’t long before she had a full roster of students and was making more money teaching than selling CDs. At that point, Lauren decided to fully commit to teaching and started hiring other teachers to take on the extra students that she couldn’t accommodate. The first brick-and-mortar location of Lauren’s music school opened in 2012. After opening her second location in 2016, she opened a third location at the end of 2019.
In 2017, she completely retired from teaching and shifted her focus to managing and overseeing music schools. While she missed the people, she worked with and the joy she felt from helping others with their music, she couldn’t shake the feeling of missing those people. As a result of brainstorming, she decided to open a YouTube account and post videos of herself teaching guitar skills and playing songs on the guitar. After a few weeks, one of her older teaching videos went viral, going from roughly 20 views a day to over 4,000 views a day. Having seen the potential of YouTube at that point, she began to sell more courses after the video’s success.
In 2020, she lost 35% of her brick-and-mortar business overnight as a result of the COVID pandemic. In the aftermath of this devastating loss, she decided to invest heavily in YouTube, which has paid off greatly.
Lauren’s advice for young entrepreneurs is to try things and never be afraid to fail. Early in her career, Lauren started two businesses that eventually failed. Despite these experiences, she never gave up. It just meant she hadn’t found the right vehicle yet. Lauren preaches to “Try and fail at as many things as possible.” The quicker you fail, the faster you’ll discover what you’re truly passionate about. Visit Lauren Bateman’s website and business opportunities here to stay up to date with everything she’s doing. Also, you can follow her on Instagram.