Software Tester Tunes Pianos for Harmonious Hustle

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

It all starts the day after tomorrow. The day after tomorrow is the publication date of The Money Tree, my new book, my first fiction debut, where I have created a whole story and characters in the universe, but I'm also teaching self-reliance. Some of the same lessons I teach through side hustle school, but in a very different format. For now, let's focus on today's story, which features a money-making skill we have never before looked at. That's correct.

After nearly 1200 episodes, we haven't run out of ideas and opportunities. This is something I always get excited about. I'm like, "Oh, we have never talked about this before." And this one, this skill/idea opportunity, is all about piano tuning. In the story, a software tester and serial side hustler learns this new skill and turns a profit from it in just over a week. I love that timeline.

A few days ago, in the classroom episode, we called it side hustle sprint, and I was like, "What would you do if you had to get started in two weeks or so?" Well, this guy is setting an example. The story is called "Software Tester Tunes Pianos for Harmonious Hustle." And that story is coming right up. Software tester Josh Kemp has always been adept at using his hands. Although his day job involves working at a computer, he enjoys learning more physical skills on the side. In particular, he likes trades at the intersection of art and science, which has led him to study topics ranging from shoeing horses to installing water fountains.

These skills also allowed him to generate several income sources apart from his paycheck. When Josh got a free piano off Craigslist, he decided he would restore it as best as he could. But after messaging several piano tuners in the area, he only received one reply and an offer to do the job for $135. Worse, that piano tuner failed to show up on the day of the appointment and never responded to any of Josh's emails. That's right, he was ghosted by a piano tuner.

Josh was upset at first, but the whole incident got him thinking. How much work do piano tuners have if they could treat customers this way? But if there was so much work out there, how hard would it be to learn to tune a piano himself? He might be able to clink out a harmonious new source of income. The first thing he did was reach out to a few known piano tuners in other states, and he used email addresses he found online to ask what they thought about someone breaking into the field.

Then he used his wife's phone, which had a different area code, to ring up those in the local neighborhood to gather feedback. Some thought that pianos were going away, and that this gig would soon disappear. But the majority believed that there would still be work for years to come. Armed with this information, Josh jumped into developing the skills he needed. Wanting to get trained quickly, he looked online for a course he could purchase.

He stumbled upon an instructor with a seemingly modern platform, and he paid the $750 cost. While it wasn't a small amount, the market research he did already told him he'd be able to recoup the costs soon enough, and besides, he loved learning new skills. The only problem was, the course taught piano tuning like it was 1906, and had instructions specifying the use of a tuning fork, without the use of any modern apps or equipment. In his words, it was almost useless, and he had to turn to watching YouTube videos to get the real knowledge that he needed. Based on the recommendations from those piano tuners on YouTube, Josh bought a tuning app for $300.

This worked far better than what the online course had taught him, and now he was ready to play the diatonic scale, or perhaps scale up. The online course had taught him to run Google ads, but Josh found that $100 of ads failed to net him a single piano in need of tuning. The piano tuners he had spoken to had zero experience with digital marketing. This made Josh decide not to pay for any more marketing, but instead to rely on free organic posts to spread the word. And it worked.

Free piano tuning ads, on platforms such as Facebook Marketplace and Nextdoor, got the attention he needed. And at a price of $80, Josh got his first customer. He then experimented with his prices, raising them to $90, and finally to $100, as he realized that was the optimal price for his service. In researching his competitors, he saw that a lot of piano tuners had websites that looked like they also belonged in 1906, or at least 1996, and they had almost no online reviews. Josh decided he would plead with everyone he worked with to leave him a Google review, even walking through the entire process with them.

In some cases, he offered them a $5 or $10 discount. Within three months, he showed up on the first page of Google for piano tuners in the area, and started receiving calls from this ranking. The results were far better than anything he ever got from that online course. But it turns out the disappointing course had a silver lining. It wasn't completely dissonant, you might say.

Josh's experience led him to develop his own piano tuning course, with lessons drawn from his journey. Having picked up the trade on June 28th, and then having made his first sale on July 5th, Josh knows that a bias for action and practical experience goes far. To be precise, it spans seven octaves. All right, so what can we take away from this story? Piano tuning, our first time to feature this trade in almost 1200 episodes.

I think about this concept of becoming a detective that I first wrote about in the side hustle book. Do your research and see what competitors are doing. In this case, I like this tactic of Josh using his wife's phone with a different area code to call around locally, so that other tuners wouldn't realize he was in the area. Which is pretty clever. Sneaky, you might say, but clever.

Also, those local Google reviews are important. For a service business, you should do everything you can to get customers to leave them for you. Google really prioritizes local businesses that have these reviews. So that's why it's so critical. And then lastly, in most major cities, you can often find free pianos that people just need moved out of their homes.

Like they're happy to give it away if you can take it away. They may not be amazing pianos, but they're free. I wonder what kind of opportunities there could be in this surplus of large musical instruments. So think about that. Maybe somebody out there has an idea.

Oh, and one more thing, why are pianos so hard to open? The answer is because the keys are inside. What can I say? We do enjoy good fun from time to time here on the podcast. If it's not Baroque, don't fix it.

All right. Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better. Today's show notes are at sidehustleschool.com/1191. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School.

From the Onward Project.