This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey friends, what's up? It's Chris Guillebeau, your host of Sidus Will School. Thanks for tuning in today. I'm excited to bring you our latest Throwback Thursday feature. This segment is where we take an in-depth look at someone whose story has evolved since we first featured them.
We've been making this podcast for more than 2,000 days in a row. So we have a wealth of archival material to pull from. And of course, for each feature, we do a fresh interview where we hear about those updates, what has gone well, what's been challenging. Last week, we heard from Justin Onyabu in Raleigh, North Carolina. Justin is the founder of Lazy Jar, an app that makes fitness pay, at least for Justin, because the tagline is, "It's like a gym where you only pay if you don't go." It's a fun project.
It's going along well, as you've heard, or you may have heard from Justin last week. Now today in our latest feature, we'll hear from Dave Simpson in Calgary, Canada. Dave is the founder of Honolulu Ukuleles. So let's hear a bit more about that. What's happened since we first featured Dave in his ukulele business.
He's trying to make premium ukes, high quality instruments that are not toys, but actual instruments for adults and kids. Anyway, Dave will give us the story. I'll come back at the end with a quick wrap up. [Music]
My name is Dave Simpson. I'm from Calgary, Alberta in Canada, and my side hustle, Honolulu Ukuleles, was first featured on episode 1221 called Ultimate Ukuleles Tune Up Underrated Side Income.
I started Honolulu Ukuleles after working in music stores over 10 years, and knew that a lot of people were trying out ukulele as their first instrument, some adults, some kids. Many of the affordable options were really built cheaply, and I just knew they were giving a ukulele player a great chance of having success with it, and continuing on in their musical journey. So I started designing ukes that cost just a little bit more than those really cheap options, but with upgraded materials, better components, real instruments instead of toys was kind of the idea. I still work for the music store that I was working at when I started Honolulu, but my role with them has changed a lot. I work from home now on a pretty flexible schedule, and really am kind of sort of a e-commerce contractor for them, just helping them grow and manage all their online sales.
Since I spoke with you guys in 2020, I've been focusing on expanding our products. We started with one model of ukulele, and we're at almost 30 now. We have a new limited edition program where we make, we design a new ukulele out of one of our popular models, but we use new exotic wood combinations and make just a small amount of them. And when they're gone, they're gone. So that's been really fun.
Our other big new product is called Uke Night. And it's a fun social group uke lesson that I built to teach people that have no musical experience, how to play about 10 songs on a ukulele in one event. And we offer that program as a ticketed event to the public. So anyone can buy a ticket to come to one. And we also do them as corporate team building events.
We launched that about two months before the world shut down and we couldn't do things in person anymore. So it had been sitting on hold for a while. I think that most businesses that are selling a physical product in 2022, the big challenges are supply chain and shipping. And I've noticed that our supply chain is, feels like it's starting to normalize. Shipping is definitely still a hurdle.
The cost of shipping, whether that's Ocean Freight or a package that you're just shipping to a customer domestically, it's just increased by so much that I think our business, a lot of businesses have to kind of look at our pricing and whether we can continue to absorb those cost increases or whether we need to start looking at price increases, which we try to avoid. I think the best advice I could give someone that's looking to start a new business or a side hustle is really to explore the opportunities within something that you're either really knowledgeable about or that you're really passionate about. So you identify what that thing is, spend some time on it, think outside the box, be ambitious and thinking about ways you could monetize your knowledge or your passion. And then once you've started in your growing, learn to be able to delegate. I added that one because it's one that my wife still needs to remind me of all the time.
I'm really excited about what's next for Honolulu. The relaunching Uke Night, now that we can do in-person events again, all the opportunities that that program has. We're building out a kids version. We're looking at possibly licensing the programs to people that are in other cities so it can be offered other places. You know, the pandemic certainly showed us that events that normally you'd run in person can be run online.
In fact, the only Uke Night event that we held during the pandemic was for the senior team from Amazon that were looking for a different sort of corporate team building event that they could do and they were located all over the U.S. So, you know, delving into more of that sort of thing, that's really exciting to me, but really it's being able to do them in person and just kind of seeing what other opportunities present themselves with that program is those are the things that we're most looking forward to. [Music]
- Awesome, thanks so much Dave for sharing those updates with us. Listeners, I wanna encourage you to check out his website, hanaluayukalayles.com. Now that is spelled H-O-N-O-L-U-A-U-K-U-L-E-L-E-S.com.
The good thing about Google is if you type in something that sounds sort of like it, you're probably gonna find it, hanaluayukalayles.com, where he sells ukuleles designed to be instruments, not toys. Let me know what you think and who you'd like to see featured from our archives of more than a thousand stories. You've got a question and update for us about your hustle. Let me know that as well, sidehustleschool.com/questions. Thanks for being out there.
Take care of yourself. Do one thing to get closer to a goal you believe in. And of course you've got time. Come back tomorrow. My name's Chris Guillebeau.
This is Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
