E · G · B · D · FThe five lines of the treble staff — every good band deserves fans.
A working method for independent artists who are done guessing: a scored audit of your whole career, a scorecard you review every month, and five keys worked in order. Work through it with me, one-to-one — or climb it with my team, a stage at a time.
Two Ways to Work
Two different things, and it is worth being plain about the difference. One buys you my time. The other buys you the method, run for you a stage at a time — by me for now, and by coaches as the ladder grows. The book, the paperback and the album come with every paid place on either.
Direct access to me. A one-to-one call with me every month, an hour every week with your cohort of twenty, your audit scored and re-scored every quarter, all eighteen client calculators and the whole toolkit. I open the places a few at a time rather than all at once, so each new artist is properly settled before the next arrives. When the twenty are gone, they are gone.
What You Get With MeThe same five keys, run as a programme with coaches rather than as my own diary. Coaches join as the ladder fills; until they do, I take those calls myself. You start where your numbers put you and move up when your numbers say so. The price rises because your income has — each stage is earned by results, not by time served.
See the Five StagesFive stages, from $300 to $1,500 a month, like the five lines of the staff. Most artists start at Foundation. If your numbers are already past it, we will see that on the free call or in your Baseline Audit, and you start higher. After that, the next stage opens when your scorecard shows you have outgrown this one.
If $300 is more than you can carry right now, start here. Everything in the Course, plus the Fan Ledger, the calculators, and AI Staff working at draft — they write the emails, posts and replies, and you check them and send. No dashboards and no one-to-one calls. The tools, and the method to use them with.
The 5 Keys course, all five modules; Ask Paul, as often as you like; all eighteen free calculators, saved and tracked; and the weekly group call. No one-to-one calls, no coach — the method, and a room to bring it to.
After the Free Call
Most coaching sells you a feeling. This one hands you a number.
On our free 30-minute call, we work out where you actually are. If it's clear I can help and you want to go further, this is what going further looks like — a full year of working together, with a scored baseline on day one and a re-score every quarter. You will always be able to answer the question “is this working?” without guessing.
The 5 Keys with Paul · What You Get
No vague “access” or “community.” Every item below is a deliverable with a defined completion state.
A 40-point assessment of your career across the four keys you play — craft, audience, live performance, and money. Delivered as a written report in week one, with a score out of 100 and the three weakest points ranked in order of what to fix first. The fifth key is what that score becomes by month twelve.
Measured byScore out of 100, re-scored at months 3, 6, 9 and 12.A live shared dashboard tracking twelve numbers that actually predict a sustainable career — not follower counts. You update it monthly; we open it at the top of every call and talk about what changed and why.
Measured by12 metrics, logged monthly, charted over 12 months.One video call a month, one-to-one with me, on the record, booked on one of the two days a week I keep for calls. You get the agenda in advance, we open on your scorecard, and we work whatever is live for you. You get the recording and a written summary with your action items inside 24 hours. Then every week your founding cohort — your twenty, nobody else — is on one hour-long call together: the things more than one of you ran into that week, worked through once, with the other artists in the room asking their own. The weekly room is deliberate. It means help every week rather than once a month, and it means your progress never waits on my diary.
Measured by12 one-to-one calls a year, recorded, with written action items — plus an hour-long cohort call every week.We get you registered with a PRO, set up your own publishing entity, and register every song in your catalogue. Most artists I meet are leaving half their performance royalties on the table because nobody ever walked them through this. We finish it together.
Measured byPercentage of your catalogue fully registered. Target: 100%.Three income lines from the same show: what the venue pays you, the performance royalties you file for every setlist, and real-time fan support in the room through TrueFans CONNECT — no QR code, no app download, 92% straight to you, and every dollar of it landing against a named fan in your ledger before you are off stage.
Measured byAverage revenue per show, tracked gig by gig.Moving people off rented platforms and onto a list you own. We audit every place a fan could join and fix the ones that are broken, write a five-email welcome sequence in your voice, and set a release rhythm you can actually keep. A thousand true fans is not a slogan — we put a date on it in month one and track the gap monthly. And the term gets defined rather than waved at: a true fan is someone who has given you $250 or more in the last twelve months. Your ledger counts them by name, so the gap is a number rather than a feeling.
Measured byTrue fans counted monthly, plus owned contacts (email + SMS) and 90-day engaged rate.A week-by-week template covering the twelve weeks before a release and the eight after — metadata, splits, distribution, pitching, assets, and the follow-through that most artists skip. Yours to reuse for every release you ever put out.
Measured byReleases shipped on schedule against the plan.Email and text access to me for the things that will not wait for your next call — a contract landing in your inbox, a promoter pushing back, a decision you need a second opinion on before Friday. I reply within 48 hours.
Measured byA reply within 48 hours.The Measurable Part
These are the metrics on your scorecard. Every one of them is inside your control, and every one of them is reviewed on a fixed schedule. Vanity metrics are deliberately absent.
| Metric | How It's Measured | Reviewed |
|---|---|---|
| Owned audience | Total email and SMS contacts you control outright | Monthly |
| Engaged fans | Contacts who opened, clicked, attended or bought in the last 90 days | Monthly |
| Catalogue registered | Percentage of your songs registered with your PRO and publisher | Monthly |
| Setlists filed | Performances submitted for royalties, against performances played | Monthly |
| Revenue per show | Venue fee plus in-room fan support, averaged across the quarter | Monthly |
| Income streams active | Count of streams paying you anything at all this month | Monthly |
| Music income | Total earned from music, split by source | Monthly |
| Cost per release | What a release actually costs you, all in | Per release |
| Songs finished | Written, demoed, and recorded — counted separately | Monthly |
| Shows played | Confirmed performances, with fee and attendance logged | Monthly |
| Release cadence | Days between releases, against your planned schedule | Quarterly |
| Baseline audit score | Your 40-point audit, re-scored out of 100 | Quarterly |
A note on what I am measuring. These track the work and the assets you build — the things you and I actually control. I am not going to promise you a streaming number or an income figure, because nobody honest can. What I will promise is that at any point in the year you will know precisely what has moved and what has not. Twelve inputs, and one output they add up to: how many people are actually paying you.
The Year
Four keys you play, one a quarter, worked in the order that compounds — and a fifth you finish on. Each quarter closes with a written review and a re-scored audit.
The First Month
Every program says the first month matters. Here is precisely what happens in mine, week by week, with the state each week has to reach before the next one starts. Print it and hold me to it.
Thirty days in you should be able to say, without me in the room: here is my score, here are my twelve numbers, here is what I am registered with, and here is what I am doing for the next ninety days. If any of that is missing and you did your part, the 60-day guarantee below is exactly what it says it is.
Honest Qualification
I would rather you read this and decide it is not for you than sign up and find out in month three.
The 5 Keys with Paul · Investment
Same work with me, same access, same amount of my time either way. The only difference is how you pay for it. Looking for the ladder or the course instead? They are further up this page.
Every month you get a one-to-one call with me, and every week an hour-long call with your cohort. The one-to-one call is exactly that — not an account manager, not a recording of something I said to somebody else — time on your career, with the person whose name is on this page. The cohort call is the room where your twenty are together every week: the questions that came up for more than one of you, answered once, and the other founding artists doing the same work you are. It is in addition to your own call, never instead of it.
Then there is everything I do when you are not on the call, and it is considerably more than the hour we spend on the calls. Your baseline audit and every quarterly re-score. Your scorecard, read and interrogated before we speak so the call starts with what changed instead of catching me up. One contract review a quarter. Catalogue and metadata audits. Registration checks. Release and touring plans built out between sessions, written down and sent to you. Whatever I have to go and read, chase or verify on your behalf that week. None of that is billed — it comes with the calls rather than on top of them.
This program is new. What I do not have yet is a shelf of documented results from this specific twelve months of work, and the only way to get them is to run it with a first group of artists. That is what the founding rate buys me, and it is worth being straight with you about it.
The cap is twenty artists, and it is real. Twenty one-to-one calls a month, plus an hour with the cohort every week — and that is the easy part. What used to fill the rest of the week was the work behind the calls: pulling your numbers together before we spoke, building the audit by hand, writing up where you had got to. The toolkit does that now. Your scorecard and your audit build as you work, and thirty-six calculators read from them and write back to them, so I arrive at every call already knowing what changed.
That is what makes twenty artists possible at $750 a month. The founding rate is exactly half the $1,500 a month this becomes once the twenty places are gone. It does not stretch past twenty: beyond that, the calls and the work behind them stop fitting alongside everything else I run, and the only way to make them fit would be to turn your one-to-one call into a group room, which I will not do. The cohort call is the one place we are all together, and it sits on top of your own call, never in place of it.
If you join the founding cohort, your rate is locked for as long as you stay. Not for a year — for as long as you keep working with me. When the price goes up, it goes up for new artists, never for you.
These are not upsells and there is no higher tier that unlocks them. Every artist in the cohort gets all of it from day one.
Twelve calls across the year, with me, on your career. Recording and written summary in your inbox inside 24 hours, so nothing gets lost.
Every week, your founding cohort on one call for an hour — your twenty, nobody else. The questions that came up for more than one of you, worked through once, and a room of artists doing the same work you are. Recorded, so you can miss one without missing it.
Audits, a contract review each quarter, catalogue and metadata checks, planning written out and sent to you. Hours that never hit an invoice.
Where you stand today, scored across the five keys, then kept as a living number we open at the top of every call. No guessing involved.
Eighteen calculators the public never sees — catalogue valuation, advance recoupment, deal comparison, publishing royalties, foreign withholding, runway, business structure. They read from your scorecard and write back to it, so you are running your own numbers, not example ones.
Whatever I add to the toolkit while you are a client — calculators, templates, contract markups, playbooks — lands in your account the day it ships, at no extra cost and with no tier to upgrade to. You keep what shipped during your year even if you leave.
When something time-sensitive lands — an offer, a contract, a decision that will not wait for your next call — you can reach me between sessions, and I reply within 48 hours.
Forty years of my answers, available at 2am on a tour bus when I am asleep — contracts, royalties, booking, releases, worked from your own scorecard. It is not me and I will not pretend it is: for anything you are about to sign, it says so and puts the question on the agenda for our next call.
The Long Way Home — the ebook, the paperback and the Storm & Star music card — sent to you when you join.
Call recordings, written summaries, registrations, your playbook and a year of your own data. You leave holding the assets, not a pile of notes.
A call with me one-to-one each month, an hour with your cohort every week, and everything else on this page — all for the same $750.
Renews once a year at your founding rate — cancel any time before it does. Payment plans available, just ask on the call.
Paul Saunders Scholarships
I hold back a small number of scholarship places each intake. One takes up to 50% off the monthly price for exactly the same program — the same monthly call with me, the same weekly cohort call, the same audits and reviews, the same toolkit, client calculators and Ask Paul. Nothing is stripped out.
There is no form and no application. Every scholarship is decided on the free call, on what you are already doing with your career rather than what you can prove on paper. If the founding rate is out of reach and the work is real, tell me straight. Places are limited and they go as the cohort fills.
Book the Free CallInside your first sixty days you will have three things in hand: your scored baseline audit, your live scorecard, and your PRO and publishing registrations underway. If you have done your part and any one of those is missing, tell me and I will refund every penny you have paid. I will not guarantee what the market does — nobody honest will — but I will absolutely guarantee the work I said I would deliver.
The Smaller Door
Some artists want to know what I would actually say before they commit a year to hearing it. Fair enough. There is one thing you can buy on its own, it costs $500, and if you join it comes back as free months. It has its own door: you pay first, I read first, and then we spend ninety minutes on it — twelve places a month, no more, shared with the Sixteen compilation.
One-off · No subscription · Twelve places a month
This is not a lighter version of the audit the program opens with. It is the same audit — the same forty points, the same scoring, the same report — sold on its own to anyone who wants the diagnosis without the year of treatment.
Twelve places a month, paid before the session.
Join within thirty days of your plan arriving and the $500 comes back as free months:
The audit has cost you nothing. If you do not join, you still keep every one of the four things above and I will not chase you about it. There is no pitch on the session. The plan I write is built to be run without me — if you read it and get on with it on your own, that is a good outcome and I will have been paid fairly for it.
The audit is the one thing here you can buy outright — no qualification, no pitch, and it is never booked through the free call. Would rather talk it through first? The free 30 minutes is always open, and I will tell you honestly which of these you actually need.
Or start with a track. Sixteen puts one finished song on a sixteen-track collectible card — $50 to submit it for review, the $450 balance only if it is accepted. The slot includes this same audit and ninety minutes, the same free months if you join, and twenty-five cards to sell at $20.
Questions
For the program, yes — I do not take anyone into twelve months of work without speaking to them first. Thirty minutes tells us both whether this is a fit, and it costs you nothing. If it is not a fit, I will tell you straight and point you somewhere more useful.
The Baseline Audit is the exception. You can buy that outright without ever talking to me, because the audit is the qualification — by the end of it we both know whether the program makes sense, and you are holding a written plan either way. It runs the other way round from the program: you pay first, the ninety minutes comes after I have read your answers, and there are five places a month.
Then the ladder or the course may be the right way in. Foundation is $300 a month, the Toolkit is $200 and the Course is $100 — different products from working with me, not discounted versions of it. And if it is specifically me you want, say so on the call, because there are three other ways in. The Baseline Audit is $500 once, with no subscription attached — and if you join within thirty days of your plan arriving, your first month with me is free. I hold back a small number of scholarship places that take up to 50% off the monthly price, decided in conversation rather than on a form. And I have single sessions at $250 a call whenever you need one. I would far rather you work with me at a level you can actually carry than sign up for something that puts you under real strain.
The 5 Keys Program is built for artists who already have money moving through their career and want to move considerably more of it. If that is not you yet, the free call is still worth taking and I will tell you honestly which of these is the right one for you.
Who you work with. The 5 Keys with Paul is me: a one-to-one call every month, a weekly call with your cohort of twenty, and everything I do between them. There are twenty places because there is one of me. The ladder is the same five keys and the same scorecard, run as a programme: the course and the group call do the teaching, and coaching check-ins keep you moving. It sells the outcome rather than my diary, which is why it can grow and why it can start at $300.
While the ladder is new, the coach on those check-ins is me. Coaches join the team as it fills, and I will tell you before yours changes. What does not change is the difference between the two: the ladder is check-ins against a stage, not a one-to-one call with me every month and a weekly room with my twenty.
Neither is a cut-down version of the other. They are different products for different artists, and on the free call I will tell you which one you are.
By results, not by time. Each stage has a job — stop the leaks, grow the audience, diversify the income, run it like a business, sustain it — and your scorecard shows when that job is done. The price rises because your income has. Nobody is moved up for having been there six months, and nobody is held back once the numbers are in.
Someone who has given you $250 or more in the last twelve months. Not a follower, not a monthly listener, not somebody on your list who has never bought anything — a person who has actually paid you, and whom you could name.
Twelve months rolling, not a calendar year, which means a fan can drop back under the line without doing anything wrong. That is not a failure, it is information, and it is the single most useful thing your ledger will tell you.
Most artists I meet have somewhere between two and twenty and have never counted them. The counting is month one. What you do about the number is the other eleven.
The audit is the diagnosis. The program is the twelve months of treatment. They use the same forty questions and produce the same score, so nothing is duplicated and nothing is held back — if you buy the audit first and then join, we do not do it twice, we carry your score straight in as your day-one baseline. The honest difference is what happens next. The audit tells you what is wrong and hands you a written plan you can run on your own. The program is me running it with you for a year — a one-to-one call every month, the cohort every week — and doing the registrations, reviews and chasing myself. Some artists genuinely only need the first one. If you are one of them I will say so on the free call rather than sell you the other.
It is real, and here is the arithmetic behind it. One call each is twenty one-to-one calls a month, plus an hour with the cohort every week, before I do anything else. The prep behind them — the written summaries, your scorecard review, the audits and re-scores, the quarterly contract review, the catalogue checks, the planning I write up between sessions — used to be several hours more again per artist, every month, which is why this was going to be ten places at twice the price. The toolkit changed that half of it: your scorecard and audit build themselves as you work, so I read rather than assemble. What is left is still twenty calls and the weekly cohort, plus the better part of another working week behind them, and I have two other businesses that need the rest of it. Twenty is where that stops adding up. I open the places a few at a time so the work grows at a pace I can do properly, and there is no twenty-first place at any price, which is exactly why I am telling you the number rather than saying “limited spaces.”
Nothing. If you join at the founding rate you stay at the founding rate for as long as you keep working with me — on monthly or annual. The increase to $1,500 a month applies to artists who join after the first twenty. I am putting the future price in writing here precisely so that nobody has to wonder whether the deadline is genuine.
Once a month, with an agenda sent beforehand so none of it is spent working out what we are doing. We open your scorecard and look at what changed since last time. We work whatever is live for you right now — a contract, a release, a show, a decision. We close with your action items for the month ahead. You get the recording and a written summary inside 24 hours, so nothing gets lost.
An hour, every week, with everyone in the founding cohort on one call — the twenty artists working with me, and nobody from the ladder or the course. I take the questions that came up for more than one of you that week and work through them once, and you hear how the other artists are handling the same quarter you are. It is recorded. It is in addition to your one-to-one call, not a substitute for it — nothing about your own career gets moved into the group room.
Your one-to-one call, an hour a week on the cohort call, then realistically two to four hours a month on the work between them, plus updating your scorecard, which takes about fifteen minutes. Call it seven to ten hours a month all in. This is not a course you watch. If you do not do the work between calls, the program will not do anything for you and I will tell you that early.
On the monthly plan, any time after the third month — the minimum exists because meaningful change does not happen in four weeks and I do not want to take your money pretending otherwise. Annual is paid in full for the year and covered by the 60-day guarantee above. It then renews once a year at your founding rate, and you can cancel any time before it renews — you are never locked into a second year, but if you stay, the price you started on is the price you keep.
Yes. One fee covers the act, not the person — bring whoever needs to be on the call. For bands I would usually want at least two of you on most calls so decisions do not get lost in translation on the way home.
It is a platform I built that lets people in the room support you digitally during your set — no QR code, no app to download, 92% goes straight to the artist. It is one part of the live revenue work and it is optional. The setlist filing and venue fee side stands on its own regardless.
That is the fifth key, Flourish, and it is a deliverable like everything else. You leave with the assets — the registrations, the owned audience, the playbook, a year of data, and a written plan for the next twelve months. Plenty of artists continue at a reduced check-in rate. Plenty do not need to, which is rather the point.
The Next Step
Thirty minutes, no charge, no pitch. We work out where you are and whether the program is right for you. If it is not, I will say so.
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