Hawaiian Native Teaches Virtual Ukulele Lessons

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

To be a successful ukulele player from Hawaii, it helps to leave Hawaii. If the scriptures were true, no prophet or uke player is honored in his hometown. As today's featured story discovered in Hawaii, the instrument is so common that it's hard to stand out. But on the mainland United States, and also in faraway lands such as Europe, people are far more interested. Skye is now building a career earning money in different ways through touring, merch sales, and even private lessons by Skye.

Welcome to Side Hustle School, my name is Chris Guillebeau. If you have ever wanted to get paid to play the ukulele, or more likely, if you like hearing case studies of how people are creating financial independence through all sorts of creative ways, then you'll like this story. It's coming right up after this quick message. A little thank you to our sponsor. When he was 13, Hawaiian native Andrew Molina fell in love with the ukulele.

After his first lesson, he realized how much he enjoyed the feel and the sound of the instrument. From then on, he started telling himself that he would practice hard so that he could travel the world and perform. Throughout his years in high school, Andrew would work at his craft. He would play a couple of songs at malls here and there, but found that he wasn't making as much progress as he hoped. As he had grown up admiring and then imitating some of the famous ukulele players of the islands, Andrew realized that he didn't have any particular style he could call his own.

This made him so insecure that he quit playing in his last year of high school, the very same instrument that he had fallen in love with just a couple of years earlier. But Andrew knew there was something amiss from his life. He wasn't interested in a typical path where he would go to college and then get a regular job just like his friends. The thought of finding a different direction spurred him to go on. And the next step he took was to record his own album.

This was in 2012 and Andrew had just left high school. That CD would act as a business card, albeit an expensive one, and could be a way for him to get introduced to potential clients for gigs. Fortunately for Andrew, his father was supportive and funded the $8,000 it cost to record the album using some money he had set aside for him to go to college. The next year the album was released. As Andrew had predicted, the album did eventually help him land his first gig.

A restaurant reached out and asked him to play. This was when he knew he could say he'd played the ukulele professionally, since he would now actually be getting paid for it. While his task was just to play background music, Andrew used this as a springboard to bigger events, such as festivals in Hawaii and other local gigs. And he soon had four bookings a week lined up. While Andrew had made some headway, he wasn't satisfied just playing background music.

He wanted to play in front of an audience and connect with them. So he reached out to some other friends who helped put together a mini tour where he got to travel to California, Oregon, and Washington. This first tour wasn't very profitable, but his goal was to build up a following. Desire and perseverance kept him going, even though a lot of people told him his dream was unrealistic. It didn't help that Hawaii was the birthplace of the ukulele.

Few people on the islands were particularly interested in the instrument because it was so common. To get around this hurdle, Andrew continued to plan tours outside Hawaii, traveling in the mainland United States, then to Europe and Asia as well. He would play at a different place each night and hold ukulele workshops during the day. Fast forward to 2018 and Andrew has been featured on the cover of the UK's Ukulele Magazine. All 10 subscribers love seeing him there.

Although income is sporadic, a three-week tour can now bring in $7,500, a rate he can live off of as long as he tours on a consistent basis. He also teaches virtual lessons by Skype to aspiring uke players wherever they are in the world. Well, I think this marks the first time in the history of Side Hustle School that we have talked about the ukulele, at least a dedicated feature about the ukulele, but I'm glad that this guy, Andrew, has been able to make it work. Definitely sounds like it's been a journey and hopefully much more is on the way. Now a couple of observations, I actually think more musicians and makers and craftspeople should do virtual lessons.

This whole thing about virtual lessons by Skype, I think that's actually interesting. And you might think, well, why would people be interested in that? Because these days I can go on YouTube and watch hundreds of videos for free. I'm sure there are lots of ukulele videos on YouTube where you can learn to play or learn to improve or whatever. And then there are also lots of online courses, you know, there are courses from platforms like Skillshare, Udemy, Creative Live, etc.

I don't know if there's an abundance of ukulele courses, but still, like I'm sure there is something out there. So why would something like a virtual lesson be attractive? And I think it's because a virtual lesson is different than both of those other things. Like YouTube is just like you're going and you're passively consuming other videos, but there's no interaction. Then even with the online course, you know, you're getting specific instruction, but again, there's no interaction.

And so a private lesson is a private lesson. I mean, that's very desirable because somebody could actually critique you, you know, in real time can actually craft the lesson according to your experience and according to your goals. So I just think that more people from various backgrounds should consider something like that, especially if you're in a part of the world that's geographically limited. Maybe like there's not a ton of people just lining up around the block for your ukulele lesson. But you know, thanks to the power of the internet and the global community that we live in, you have the ability to reach anybody out there who might be interested.

Also the ukulele playing doesn't work in Hawaii, this doesn't go over super well because the instrument is so common there, but it works elsewhere. What else is like that? I was like, you know, strip waffles in Holland, or flannel shirts in Seattle, wherever there is a surplus of something, or some provider of talent, a surplus of a provider of talent, you might be better off taking that thing or that talent elsewhere. So just think about that. If there's something in your hometown, your region, your city, your state, province, country, etc., is there a way you could basically export that, whether you're exporting a physical product or you're exporting a talent, just like Andrew is doing as a global ukulele ambassador.

All right, that's it for today. Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better. If you want to find the show notes and check out some of Andrew's music, it's pretty cool. Just go to sidehustleschool.com/938. 938.

I'll be back tomorrow with a weekly recap, a whole new set of stories all next week. My name is Chris Guillebeau, this is Side Hustle School. From the Onward Project.