E · G · B · D · FThe five lines of the treble staff — every good band deserves fans.
One-on-one coaching for independent artists who are done guessing. Twice-monthly calls with me, a scored audit of your entire career, and a scorecard we review every single month — so you can see exactly what moved.
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.
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.Two 60-minute video calls every month, with me, on the record. You get the recording and a written summary with your action items inside 24 hours. At my standard rate those two calls alone are the full monthly fee — everything else on this page comes with them.
Measured by24 calls per year, recorded, with written action items.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.
Measured byAverage revenue per show, tracked gig by gig.Moving people off rented platforms and onto a list you own. We build the capture points, the welcome sequence, and a release rhythm that gives those people a reason to stay. A thousand true fans is not a slogan — it is a target with a date on it.
Measured byOwned 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 two weeks — a contract landing in your inbox, a promoter pushing back, a decision you need a second opinion on before Friday. Replies within one business day.
Measured byOne business day response, Monday to Friday.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.
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.
Honest Qualification
I would rather you read this and decide it is not for you than sign up and find out in month three.
Investment
Same program, same access, same amount of my time either way. The only difference is how you pay for it.
Every month you get two 60-minute one-to-one calls with me. Not a group room, not an account manager, not a recording of something I said to somebody else — two full hours, on your career, with the person whose name is on this page. At my standard $250 an hour those two calls alone account for the whole of the founding fee.
Then there is everything I do when you are not on the call, and it is considerably more than two hours. 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. Contract and split-sheet reviews. 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 two 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 ten artists, and it is real. Twenty calls a month is the easy part. It is the audits, the reviews, the planning and the between-call work behind those twenty calls that fills the rest of the week. Ten artists is my working week, all of it. I cannot take an eleventh without quietly giving all ten of you less than I promised, and I am not doing that.
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.
Twenty-four calls across the year, with me, on your career. Recording and written summary in your inbox inside 24 hours, so nothing gets lost.
Audits, contract and split reviews, 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.
The full partner platform, open to you for as long as you are a client. Not a trial, not a limited tier, not a stripped-back version of the real thing.
Unique tools that let you truly know your numbers — your audience, your income and your catalogue, laid out as you will not find them anywhere else.
Tools, templates and playbooks I create for the people inside this program. Anything new I make lands in your hands first, at no extra cost.
When something time-sensitive lands — an offer, a contract, a decision that will not wait a fortnight — you can reach me between sessions.
Everything I know, on tap. Put a question to it the moment it lands — at midnight, on tour, mid-negotiation — and get my thinking straight back.
Call recordings, written summaries, registrations, your playbook and a year of your own data. You leave holding the assets, not a pile of notes.
Two hours of live 1:1 time at my standard $250 rate. Every other hour, and everything else on this page, comes with it.
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 two calls a month, the same audits and reviews, the same TrueFans PARTNERS, ANALYTICS 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.
And if you would rather do it yourself, there is TrueFans RISE. You start with your own automated CREW, doing all the jobs a team would normally do, and you build with your CREW until you can have your own TEAM as your career grows. Same thinking, run on your own time rather than on mine.
I will go through the detail with you on the call — so book it.
Inside 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.
Questions
Yes. I do not take anyone into the program 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.
Then say so on the call, because there is more than one way in. TrueFans RISE is the do-it-yourself version of the same thinking — your own automated CREW doing all the jobs a team would normally do, built up until you can have your own TEAM as your career grows. I also 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 an hour. 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.
It is real, and here is the arithmetic behind it. The two calls are two hours. The prep, the written summaries, your scorecard review, the audits and re-scores, the contract and catalogue reviews and the planning I write up between sessions are several hours more again, every month, for every client. Ten clients is a full working week every week, before I do anything else I do. There is no eleventh place available 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 ten. I am putting the future price in writing here precisely so that nobody has to wonder whether the deadline is genuine.
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 next two weeks. You get the recording and a written summary inside 24 hours, so nothing gets lost.
Realistically two to four hours a month on program work, plus updating your scorecard, which takes about fifteen minutes. 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.
Book Your Free Call