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48 BCBusiness junE 2018 COuRtEsy OF dRumEO "I didn't like being away from home," he confesses, seated in the of•ice he's decorated with pictures of his wife and two young sons. So Falk returned to the business that has been in his family for three generations: Fraser Valley Specialty Poultry, the largest duck farm in Western Canada. Having spent nine months in the processing plant before his short-lived stint as a touring musician, he moved into sales, hawking ducks in Vancouver's Chinatown and teaching drumming on the side. Falk's fortunes changed in 2005, when one of his students, Rick Kettner, revealed that videos he'd uploaded to an online drumming forum were getting thousands of downloads. Sensing an opportunity, Falk pounced. He and Kettner quickly pro- duced a series of instructional drumming videos. "We borrowed a handicam, and we •lmed it at my family's farm. It smelled like manure in there, and there were ›ies ›ying around," Falk recalls with a laugh. Finding an audience, the pair began selling lesson packs on eBay, and through websites such as BreakSticks.com, RockDrumBeats.com and DrumTechniques.com, for $10 to $20. Their business model proved to be slightly ahead of its time. Customers found the idea of paying for digital content diž- cult to grasp, and it didn't help that the link to download the lessons was only active for 24 hours—less time than it took some to download the •le, as many households were still using dial-up modems. "We got some angry people wondering where their package was," Falk remembers. The pair took the hint, opting to sell DVD packages of their Rock Drumming System directly to consumers. At the time, even this was disruptive—tutorial books had traditionally involved separate authors, publishers and sellers. "Books and DVDs are small enough that it's cheap to ship," Falk notes. "It's more logical to go straight to the customer, and then we own that relationship." Falk estimates that he and Kettner sold about 100,000 of their DVD packages before circling back to the digital space. In 2011 they ožcially launched Drumeo, which Falk describes as "Net›ix for drum lessons." The platform provides access to drum tutorials produced in-house, hosted by teachers ranging from music legends such as Bernard Purdie (who's played with Aretha Franklin and Steely Dan, among others) and acclaimed studio drummers like Kenny Arono• (Bruce Springsteen, Rod Stewart, Smashing Pumpkins), to lesser- known teachers including Falk. Drumeo produces plenty of free con- tent, including interviews and demos with drumming stars, but its bread and but- ter comes from member subscriptions. For US$29 a month, or US$200 a year, subscribers get access to members-only step-by-step courses, on-demand lessons, playalong tracks, live lessons and personal- ized feedback from teachers. Falk bought out Kettner's share in 2013 and steadily built Drumeo into a multimillion-dollar out•t. Today, the company has about 10,000 active Drumeo membership subscrib- ers, close to 390,000 Facebook followers and more than 700,000 subscribers to its YouTube channel. Voted Best Drum Educational Website by readers of Drum! magazine three years in a row, the com- pany employs 25 full-time sta•. After post- ing $4.3 million in revenue last year, it's on track to hit $7 million in 2018. Asked why such renowned musicians would take time to hang out in Abbotsford for a couple of hours and teach drum skills, Falk has a ready answer. "Drummers are normally in the back [of the band], and they normally don't get any recognition, or very little," he says. O•ering them direct access to Drumeo subscribers puts them in the spotlight for a change. Todd Sucherman, drummer for prog- rock band Styx, has a slightly di•erent take. Sucherman, who spent two days last year •lming tutorials for Drumeo, says it's a way to connect the drum community. From the road in North Carolina, he describes what he calls "the plight of the drummer": the burden of constantly hauling gear from gig to gig. "There's a shared camaraderie, and drummers by and large are very friendly to each other." Then there are the material bene•ts. "I know that my exposure went up a bit having appeared on Drumeo," Sucherman says. Getting paid and being "wined and dined" by the team didn't hurt, either: "It's a nice way to spend some o•-time from the road doing something else." Falk's •rst contact with many of his big- name guests comes through drum manufac- turer reps, who have sponsorship and brand ambassador relationships with musicians. "Yamaha will pay a drummer a chunk of money and say, 'We want you to do these •ve dates,' and Drumeo's one of them." Sean Browne, international drum product marketing manager for Yamaha Canada, has connected several artists to Drumeo. In his view, Falk's business has set the bar: "Other [tutorial] sites, they just Social media has been good to Drumeo—take a 2014 Kickstarter campaign to renovate and expand the company's headquarters, which raised more than $100,000, well above its original goal of $25,000

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