If We Knew What we were Doing, UU Probably Wouldn’t Exist Today

An article by Ryan    No Comments

Ukulele Underground was massively unprofitable for its first 3 years. The funny thing is that we never knew it, so we just kept going. It’s one of those things where I think back on now and just laugh and shake my head, but I can’t get over the fact that if we knew what we were doing, we probably would have quit a long time ago and never got to where we are today. Let me explain how you run a totally unprofitable business for 3 years and think everything is fine.

When we started UU in 2007, both Aaron and I already had tried our hands at a few businesses, none of which had any kind of success and most lost us money. My ego was at an all time low and it definitely could not handle one more failure on the quickly growing pile of failures. So I devised what I thought was a genius way to not have another failure in UU.

“Let’s start UU with such a low amount of money, that if we make any kind of money at all, it would be a success!”

We decided to each put in $100. Actually Aaron and I put in $100 each and Aldrine bought a Kala KA-S ukulele for our first give away.  With our plan in motion we quickly became “profitable”. We pre-sold t-shirts and used the presale funds to start our merch store. I sold our first few ads on our website. We were quickly making a few hundred dollars a month, then a few thousand dollars a month. Thing were going great and we were excited to finally have something that had this kind of traction.

The problem was we never paid ourselves. Every penny that UU made went right back into the business. To buy new merch, upgrade servers, upgrade software, going on tour to meet and thank the fans of the website, buy health insurance etc. We kept a healthy balance in our business bank account but our personal bank accounts were getting drained. We were all still relatively young, I was 25, Aaron and Aldrine were 23 when we started, so we saw any money coming in as success.

To solve this problem of not paying ourselves, we all got side jobs. Aaron and I went to work for my dad doing manual labor at his business while Aldrine started teaching private lessons and playing more gigs. Where a rational person would have decided this business venture was indeed a failure, we chose to look the other way and pretend everything was great. This charade lasted for almost 3 years.

Luckily we did eventually come to our senses and luckily when we did we had done enough things right to pay ourselves but I can’t help but to think that if anyone who actually knew what they were doing was running UU, it would not have lasted this long nor even be a thing today.