Help other people to succeed too! If that’s your business you are going to make it. I am a believer in helping others is the best way.
Keno Hellmann is the general manager and founder of sticktricks.de – an online drum school for all age groups and levels from absolute beginners to intermediate and professional drummers.
He started to play drums at the age of 15 and works as a professional studio, live drummer and music producer.
He performed live and on German TV Shows with artists like Elton John, Rosenstolz, Big Soul and many others.
Before his drumming and music career Keno graduated at the University of Flensburg with a Bachelor of Business Administration which led him to an entrepreneurial lifestyle combining business ideas and music.
Inspired by his idols like Phil Collins, Chester Thomson, Dave Weckl, Jim Chapin, Dom Famularo, Gavin Harrison and many others, Keno spends a lot of time in drum education and how to teach students of all age groups and levels several times a week in the most effective way. His dedication to drumming led him to the idea to create a website where students find information about how to play drums. This includes educational videos, sheet music text, infographics and online lessons via Skype and GoToWebinars. Finding out which media types help students to improve and how to create that media was a big challenge.
Besides drumming Keno creates production music for international companies including electronic music from electronica and house to chill out. In his free time he loves to kite-surf and travel.
Where did the idea for sticktricks.de come from?
The idea came from my dedication to drumming and music in general. I teach drumming for about 12 years now and I teach students at all levels and age groups. During the years I improved my teaching style which made it easier for students to improve too. I use these concepts in my business now.
What does your typical day look like and how do you make it productive?
A typical day consists of checking my email inbox, saying hello to new email subscribers, collecting topics for being announced on my Facebook page, creating new YouTube videos and so on.
How do you bring ideas to life?
The best way is to produce videos. This really brings ideas to life and students can follow visible ideas the best.
What’s one trend that really excites you?
Personality! More and more people become online entrepreneurs and teach what they really love. I think that this is a great way to make the world a better place for everybody.
What is one habit of yours that makes you more productive as an entrepreneur?
Perseverance. I think that’s the only way to succeed in any business today. Growing organically is a healthy way for me and my businesses too.
What was the worst job you ever had and what did you learn from it?
I assembled cell phones as a part time job at university. I learned from it that I had to finish university to get better jobs and to have the chance to become independent of such jobs :-).
If you were to start again, what would you do differently?
Learn from my mistakes and being more patient.
As an entrepreneur, what is the one thing you do over and over and recommend everyone else do?
Help other people to succeed too! If that’s your business you are going to make it. I am a believer in helping others is the best way.
What is one strategy that has helped you grow your business?
Especially when you do online business you must learn your specific SEO strategies and get them done. Create fantastic content which visitors inhale and which they want to share all over the place like Facebook, Twitter etc.
What is one failure you had as an entrepreneur, and how did you overcome it?
A failure was and sometimes is to do everything on my own. At some point you must outsource certain tasks to people who are better in doing that (graphic design, coding etc.) It’s much faster and at the end it is also a great investment into time which you can spend on things you are able to do.
As a studio musician I never tried to record an instrument which I can’t play, so it is in business – right?:-)
What is one business idea that you’re willing to give away to our readers?
WLAN Kitesurfing – I’d buy that first! 🙂
Tell us something about you that very few people know?
I speak English, Spanish, German and a pretty unknown dialect called Plattdeutsch:-).
What software and web services do you use? What do you love about them?
As a musician I use sequencer software like Ableton Live, Logic Pro and a lot of utilities to create music and drum recordings too. As an entrepreneur I also use things like Market Samurai for keyword searching (SEO) and iphone apps like Fantastical 2.
I think these are the most used applications on my computer and phone and I love them because they help me everyday.
Ah, not to forget WordPress! All my websites are built with wordpress. I love it!
What is the one book that you recommend our community should read and why?
Peace food – it’s a book wich hopefully will be published in English too. It’s about how to find, create and eat more peaceful and organic food and avoid useless products of multimillionaire companies.
What people have influenced your thinking and might be of interest to others?
Related to business I’d like to mention these:
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Connect:
Sticktricks on Facebook:
Sticktricks on Google+:
Sticktricks on LinkedIn:
Sticktricks on Twitter: @sticktricksde
Mario Schulzke is the Founder of ideamensch, which he started a decade ago to learn from entrepreneurs and give them a platform for their ideas.