For Busy Drummers Who Don’t Want to Leave Progress to Chance

If you’ve ever said:

“I practice, but I don’t know if it’s working.”
“I get stuck in the same loops.”
“I’m tired of wondering whether I’m actually getting better.”

Then this program was built for you.

hear from real students

Hear from real recent coaching students Gavin and Adam. Both of these were un-prompted statements during coaching calls I was recording, which I love!

why do we keep failing to become the player of our dreams?

You might think it’s talent.

Or that “you missed your opportunity”/”this is a young person’s game”.

In my humble opinion, and in the opinion of my past students, you’d be wrong.

I’d always believed intermediate drummers could “break through” and change the trajectory of their playing with around six months of focussed effort.

What I didn’t realize until I actually coached students was how quickly and inevitable the changes were.

If that sounds controversial, think about it this way:

How many times have you decided "this is it", and marshaled all the will-power we could muster to go into the shed, take charge, and become the drummer of our dreams...

...only to hit a rough patch, or have "things come up", and have the dream kind of...fizzle out.

How much further could you have gone had you simply stayed consistent through the hard parts?

To say nothing of having a specific routine that targeted your exact weak points, and evolved with you as you developed…

…or a supportive community.

And here’s the other thing that shocked me: it didn’t take monumental changes to anyone’s schedule. Simply by getting consistency, specificity, and accountability, most of my students made transformations practicing just 5 hours-a-week in average weeks.

Let’s explore how…

remember when drumming used to be “easy”?

Everything you worked on seemed to produce results, and every time you sat down to play, there was no pressure.

I remember when I first put “boom chick” together. It felt like the whole world opened up.

I could now spend hours playing along with my favorite recordings in the bedroom.

Not to mention, practically everything I practiced made me better.

Paradiddles? Forget about it!

Coordination? Yes please!

If you’re like many of my students, you remember when drumming was easy. Maybe you even got pretty good, played in bands, did gigs, etc.

But then, at a certain point, it got harder

Maybe “life” intervened.

That’s a common one.

When we’re younger, we’ve got a ton of time to rehearse and gig, and zero pressure.

But then “life happens” - and I mean positive things:

Family, career, other life goals.

But those things inevitably take us away from drumming.

But even if you continue uninterrupted, you’re eventually going to encounter the other thing that stops drummers in their tracks.

the “intermediate rut” - when everything is suddenly hard

Whether you took some years off and are coming back to drumming, or you’ve been playing consistently…

…there comes a time when the “easy wins” aren’t so easy anymore.

And those days of “fun, no pressure” change into self-consciousness and “toil”.

I call it the “intermediate rut”.

Part of it is that as we get more experience our taste evolves. And with every great drummer we’ve ever heard of - and plenty we haven’t - doing daily Paganinni-level virtuosity on Instagram, it’s gotten way easier recently to compare ourselves to others and feel bad.

But the main reason is plain-and-simple diminishing returns.

That’s a fancy way of saying most of the “easy wins” are already out of the way.

That big “zero to one” from not practicing rudiments to practicing them.

Or from not knowing how to play “boom chick”, or do a basic fill, to knowing it.

the “i hate my drumming” negative feedback loop

And that sucks, because it can add up to drumming becoming a negative experience.

We’ve got all these great drummers in our heads.

We sit down to play, and we don’t sound like them.

That makes us feel negatively about practicing or playing, so we do it less.

That, of course compounds the issue, and adds guilt on top. So we’re simultaneously not playing and also feeling bad about it.

And this is what gets me so fired up about teaching. Because it doesn’t have to be that way.

People ask me all the time, “Nate, is it always going to feel like chasing a receding goal-line?”

The answer, surprisingly is “no”.

Yes, of course we’ll always compare ourselves to our heroes and find more work to do.

But in my experience, and that of many of my “peers”, there is absolutely a threshold above which drumming is fun again. And that “hate my playing” negative feedback loop turns into the “hey this is fun” virtuous cycle.

the “hey this is fun” virtuous cycle

When you enjoy playing again, you start to trust your voice, and your ideas.

You experience “flow” - the feeling of being an unconscious conduit for music. (Even if fleetingly at first.)

Because it feels good, you want to do it more.

And that makes you better. AND it sustains you through the inevitable hard stuff.

And full stop. THAT’S the entirety of what I’m promising to a drummer who’s at the right stage, with the right “raw materials”.

I will take you by the hand and pull you across the threshold, “into the future”. And, for the right drummer, I’ll make it “impossible to fail”.

Introducing: the impossible to fail coaching program

The only intensive one-on-one coaching program that includes 24 1:1s with me, unlimited feedback on your playing, and an end-to-end custom curriculum.

After coaching dozens of drummers—from weekend warriors to touring pros—I noticed something simple:

The difference between the players who break through and those who don’t isn’t talent.
It’s consistency, specificity, and feedback.

So I built a coaching program designed to guarantee those things.

Not by magic—but through structure.

When you join Impossible to Fail, you’re not guessing anymore.

You’re following a custom roadmap designed for your exact strengths, weaknesses, and goals—and you’ve got a coach making sure you can’t fall off.

Working together, we can make progress inevitable. Like it was for these students…

what do you get in impossible to fail?

24 1:1s with ME - Unlike some other programs, in Impossible to Fail, you’ll get one-on-one mentorship directly from me. We’ll meet mostly-weekly over the course of 6-9 months, so you have me at your disposal every step-of-the-way.

An end-to-end custom curriculum - Impossible to Fail is one of only a few coaching programs with anywhere near this level of customization. (Many, I’ve heard, have only a '“core curriculum, while the few others with custom curricula are much more expensive per “curriculum chapter”/”lesson”.) When you enroll in ITF, the first step is a comprehensive assessment of your goals, strengths and weaknesses. Then I’ll build you a custom curriculum to get you there. And update it 24 times during the course of our study.

Personalized Feedback - Every student in Impossible to Fail gets unlimited feedback on their videos for an entire year. I usually recommend the day before our live session, but you can also submit for feedback whenever you want.

The amount of time you can save by knowing the 1-3 things to focus on, out the potential 99 options, is hard to overstate.

A “Virtual Campus” - In Impossible to Fail you get a full year of access to the virtual campus, and lifetime access to the alumni group. These are private groups where you can “vibe” with your fellow students, as if you were walking down the hall in music school, hearing others practice, and stopping by to ask for and share advice.

Group Workshops - The amount of facetime the 1:1s give you alone already blows any similarly-priced programs out of the water. But that’s just the beginning. In addition to our 1:1s, you also get 2 optional hours of group sessions every week.

And that might seem like a lot! And it is - but here’s the kicker - from your perspective, this will not take up a ton of your time. It’s designed to feel streamlined. In fact, for most students, the Impossible to Fail program only takes an average of an additional hour per week beyond what you’re already practicing.

It’s no wonder recent students had this to say…

“I’m addicted to this stuff. I’ve never had this much fun playing drums.”
— Adam, Coaching Graduate

“It’s the perfect fit for someone like me—busy, analytical, but serious about getting better.”
— Gavin, Coaching Graduate

Here’s How It Works

You might be wondering “so what happens when I enroll?” Here’s how we’ll create your breakthrough.

Month 1 – Assessment & Foundation
We start with your goals and current videos. I design a custom 24-week curriculum around your exact needs.
You’ll immediately start getting video feedback so you know what to fix first.

Months 2–3 – Acceleration
We meet mostly-weekly 1:1 to keep you accountable and focused.
Each week, you’ll know exactly what to practice—and I’ll review your progress through unlimited video submissions.
You’ll start to feel your playing “click into place”.

Months 4–6 – Refinement & Flow
We tackle the deeper musical stuff—time feel, fluidity, improvisation, phrasing.
You’ll record and analyze your own playing with me, so by the end, you’ll sound like you—only better.

And remember: along the way, you’ll also have access to:

• 🗓 Weekly group “office hours” sessions (optional)

• 💬 A private Slack community of motivated players

• 🎥 Unlimited Loom feedback between lessons

You might be wondering “what does this curriculum look like? How do we do it?”

look Inside a real student curriculum

Here’s what it looks like to work with me.

“in their own words” - hear from real coaching students

It’s been amazing to see my students succeed, and a big part of that success is the accountability that a coach can provide.

Let’s hear from 2 more of them.

But of course, in the Impossible to Fail program, you get way more than just accountability.

Here are all the ways I’ll help you succeed.

why the impossible to fail program is so powerful

In working with my students, there are 3 key levers we use to get results:

Curriculum: over the past decade, I’ve made a science out of finding the few inputs that create the greatest outputs, and in so-doing, I’ve arrived at 3 key principles of what make great drummers great.

Timing, “Cleanliness” (or playing exactly what you mean to play), and Flow.

In the Coaching Intensive, we’ll be drawing from these principles and material that’s been proven to work for over 1,000 students. But, unlike any other program, it will be customized to you.

That means I’ll make an assessment of your abilities, compare it against your goals, and architect a path to get you from A to B in six months.

Feedback: part of changing course and making a step-change in your playing will involve venturing outside your comfort zone. And in so-doing, you’ll lose a lot of your reference points for “how it’s supposed to feel”, and “is this good progress”. That’s where the recorded feedback comes in.

Every week, you’ll submit video homework to me based on the material we’re working through, and I’ll send you direct feedback using a software called Loom, which lets me play the video and audio at the same time as commenting on it. So you can listen to your own video, with my feedback interspersed.

I’ll let you know what’s improved, any adjustments to make, and give you a “sounding board” for any questions you have as a result of venturing beyond your comfort zone.

Live Interactions: we’ll also hop on live one-on-one four-times-a-month. These sessions are useful for specific questions about the material, and setting and adjusting our direction. But as you saw with Erik’s example, these sessions are also where we give support, remind each other what we love about the drums, and get just a bit of gentle accountability, so you can power through the “resistance” when you need 10% more discipline to sit down at the drums after a long day.

But that’s not all…

Because in the group coaching program, one of the most rewarding and cathartic parts of the program is the group interaction.

Students share about their challenges with drumming, struggles and successes gigging, their favorite drummers, shows they’ve been do, videos they’ve discovered, and more.

That’s why I’ve decided to retain the key features of the group program in addition to all the 1:1 interaction. You’ll get:

• A private community, where you can interact with your fellow students.

• Four group “office hours” calls per month, where you can bring questions, or just come and hang and talk drums, and get motivation.

(express) virtual music college?

That’s why I like to think of the Coaching Intensive much more like a “virtual semester of music school” than either a course or private lessons. To borrow a phrase from a colleague, I want it to feel like a graduate level program…

…but instead of 15-20 hours per week, this is designed to work in only 5-7.

Because I'll be doing all the grunt work making sure you're pointed in the right direction, making course corrections, and providing morale boosts, you can do this program as long as you have 5-7 hours per week to practice.

If you're wondering what we'll cover…

...a lot of that is going to depend on YOU.

If you're a fit, and you join the program, first you'll submit some videos of yourself playing, then we'll talk about your goals.

Where my value as a coach comes in, is I'll look at your playing, see the gap between that and your goals, and put it through the old brain computer.

...and architect a program to get you from here to there.

Imagine a custom curriculum mapping the path from where you are to your goals in just 6-9 months.

Imagine hopping on live with me 1:1 24 times, and getting personalized feedback on your playing, all based on the 80/20 principles.

Imagine having a small group of your fellow students in a private group, to support each other, and 4 live group calls every month to troubleshoot, spill about our struggles and triumphs, and keep each other in the game.

Do you feel like that could change the trajectory of your playing and put you on a path to be the player you dream about in a much shorter time?

If you answered “yes” in your head, there’s probably something you’re still wondering about.

What’s the investment?

It used to be that the only thing to compare Impossible to Fail to was a semester at music college.

Tuition for just a semester at my old music college costs $25,000, not including room and board.

Now, some other drummers are offering coaching for similar tuition, but (from what I’ve heard), with much less facetime with the teacher (and sometimes not even with the original teacher)…

…and/or much less customization.

And hey - it’s not a fit for every drummer.

But I’ve spent months shopping around, talking to drummers, and comparing options, in order to be confident that, for the right drummer, this is the best deal out there for what it includes, and what it helps you to accomplish.

Investment & Guarantee

Tuition: $6,200
Flexible payment plans available.

Each enrollment includes:
✅ 24 private 1:1 sessions with Nate (over 6-9 months, depending on your schedule)
✅ Unlimited personalized feedback for one year
✅ 2 hours per week of optional weekly live group workshops for one year
✅ Custom curriculum, updated 24 times over 6-9 months
✅ One-year access to the private community

The Guarantee:
If you stay engaged with the process and don’t feel measurable improvement by the end of 90 days, we’ll keep working with you—free—until you do.

the best value of any coaching program

I know some people will say “coaching with 8020 Drummer? Sign me up!”

But I don’t want to rest on name recognition. I want us to be a no-brainer. That’s why we built what I feel is far-and-away the best value of any coaching program out there.

Here’s how we compare to the only two other programs that offer 1:1 sessions with the creator and custom curriculums.

*There are other coaching programs that cost a similar amount, but which don’t even include a custom curriculum. (I haven’t included them.)

All of which is to say: There’s no other program that comes close to the value.

It’s no wonder that Impossible to Fail is the program trusted by the JP Bouvet Method for their members.

imagine yourself in this program

Your very own, custom curriculum, based on the 8020 principles that have helped me and thousands of students succeed in the past decade, and continuous "case management" for 24 updates over 6-9 months.

24 private, 1:1 sessions with me, where we'll check in about your progress, give you coaching cues, work through mental and physical barriers, and adjust course if needed.

An entire YEAR of weekly group live calls, where you can get even more face time with me, and compare notes with your fellow students.

An entire YEAR of individual feedback on your playing to keep you on track.

And an entire YEAR of the world’s best drum community. (We like to say. With some evidence.)

But here’s the kicker - this won’t cost you a ton of time. In fact, if you already practice around 5 hours-per-week, you can break through your drum barriers in as little as one extra hour per week. (Of course you’re welcome to spend more time if you want.)

Do you feel like you could succeed in blasting past your blockers with a program like this?

If so, here’s how to take the next steps, so you save your opportunity to decide, but don’t miss out on the opportunity.

how do I apply?

Because we only have 1-3 slots available for this program every few months…

…and it’s for such a specific drummer, we have an application process. For instance, we screen for drummers who already have a practice routine. Who are “coachable”. Who have a balance of work ethic and patience. And, we’ll want to see if we “vibe”.

But you can take the next steps right now, to see if you’re a fit, with no commitment, and all it takes is 2 minutes!

Just fill out the short form on the next page, and we’ll let you know if you qualify.

It’s zero-commitment, and you’ll never be “hard sold”. But by submitting the survey, you’ll “save your opportunity” to join, because we don’t finalize enrollment until we consider all applicants.

But we only have 3 total slots for this enrollment, and they will go fast, and the next available slots likely won’t be until 2026.

To keep your foot in the door with zero commitment, just click below.

frequently asked questions

I’m always hearing about these coaching programs. Is this the same as the other ones? I can’t keep track?

This is the most “flagship” coaching program we offer - designed to feel like a semester at music school, but without the time, most of the expense, or the need to travel. Whereas other coaching programs include only group workshops or “core curriculums”, Impossible to Fail has…

• 24 live 1:1s with me

• A custom curriculum, updated 24 times over 6-9 months

• A year of unlimited feedback on your playing

• A year of optional group workshops twice-a-week

• A year of membership to the community and lifetime membership to the alumni group

Why wouldn’t I just take regular drum lessons? For some students, drum lessons are a great fit. But the distribution of teachers in geographic areas is highly irregular. If you don’t have a world-class teacher nearby, what are you supposed to do? It’s also rare that conventional drum lessons give you a bespoke program matched to your goals and ability level, let alone a “beginning, middle, and end”. That’s why this is more like a step-by-step program that guides you, by the hand, to a breakthrough.

How do I know if I’m the type of student who would be successful in this program? Are you willing to make videos and send them? Are you able to practice 5 hours most weeks? Are you willing to attend live calls? Are you willing to follow the process and apply the lessons to your playing? That’s really all it takes.

Do I have to take 9 months to complete the program? Of course not! It’s just that you can if you want. 24 one-on-ones with me, and 24 updates to the curriculum, if done strictly weekly, should take around 6 months. (Of course you can continue attending group workshops and getting video feedback for an entire year.) But we understand life gets in the way. Plus many of our students are professionals with careers and families, and/or working drummers. So business travel, family vacations, tours, etc all require flexibility, and that’s built into this program.

If I don’t like it, can I get a refund? We can’t offer refunds as an official policy. Unlike a digital course, I’ll be matching you to a curriculum and giving you a comprehensive review to get your drumming on the right course in just the first week of the program. That’s time I will have spent to get you pointed in the right direction, and I can’t get that back.

Be that as it may, want you to feel we have “skin in the game” when it comes to producing a breakthrough in your playing. And we’ve been doing this for long enough to have some confidence. That’s why we have a guarantee: If you stay engaged with the process and don’t feel measurable improvement by the end of 90 days, we’ll keep working with you—free—until you do.

I don’t want to lose a slot, but I…have a trip coming up/won’t have time until December… That’s baked in! It’s precisely to work around this type of life event that we made this program so flexible. So even if you want to get started, then have 3 weeks of travel, or heavy-duty work weeks, you’ll still have plenty of time to get all the value out of this program. What’s more, it’s even baked into the sign-up process. You can sign up below to lock in your slot, then, as long as you make the first tuition payment first, start any time between tomorrow and December 1!

But if you wait, we may not have another enrollment until 2026. And the price may be higher.

seen enough? See if you qualify with zero commitment. (It takes 2 minutes.)