Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Generate is supporting my vision to improve the financial literacy of 100,000 Kiwis by sponsoring Keep the Change. Cheers Generate! Head to generatekiwisaver.co.nz forward slash change to find out more.
I can't think of a time in my life where risk didn't pay off. You have to, at some point, put some skin in the game. I'm a drum teacher by trade and crossed over onto the social media world by accident. And how many subscribers do you have on YouTube? It's 177,981 at the moment. What you do today is proof of where you're trying to go, what you're trying to do. Give it a go.
Even if you think it's not going to work,
We've got Wayne Rooney's brother, Andrew, in the studio today, a musician who lost over 50% of his income during COVID. But he also says that COVID was one of the best things that happened for him in his life. So welcome, mate.
Chapter 2: How did Andrew Rooney transition from teaching to YouTube?
Thank you, Luke. Good to be here. The brother of Wayne Rooney. That's right. That's what I tell him. Shuts them up. He's playing football and you're in the musician space. Yeah, that's right. Yeah.
Do you want to tell people some of the things that you're currently doing and then we can go back through maybe over the last five years and beyond and see what else you've been up to to then get to where you are?
Yeah, absolutely. So at the moment, I'm teaching at a private school in Albany, Christon, which is a great school. If anyone's thinking of sending their kids there, highly recommended. But I'm also doing YouTube. So that takes up the rest of my time and also a dad and family man.
Nice. So when you say doing YouTube, for those of us who don't understand, what does doing YouTube look like?
That is a little bit vague, isn't it? So on the day to day, I could be filming content much like you are now. or editing content uh strategizing chat gpt my best friend strategizing these things trying to figure out um what to release what to record and um yeah it's it's busy it's at least as much time as teaching yeah and what are you teaching people on youtube and at school
Uh, teaching on YouTube. Gotta be a little bit careful there. It's a lot of it's entertainment. Okay. Um, a little bit of teaching, a little bit of entertainment. Um, so it's all drum related.
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Chapter 3: What unexpected opportunities arose during COVID for Andrew?
I'm a drum teacher by trade and, uh, yeah, I've crossed over onto the social media world, but sort of by accident, which I'm sure we'll get into. Yeah. And, um, yeah, life is good. And how many subscribers do you have on YouTube?
Um,
Not that I keep count, but it's 177,981 at the moment. Wowee.
I feel like that's jumped a bit. I think when we were talking last, I think it might have been 160 something or maybe early 170. Could have, yeah. But it's something that you can't help but keep at least a little bit of an eye on, to be honest. Yeah. So these are people all over the world that are keeping an eye on you, playing the drums, basically, if we want to keep it really simple.
Yeah. Yeah. Or at least talking about drums, analyzing drummers, but all drumming related. Yeah, that's right. And when did you start the channel? Okay, so I started it in about 2013, which is obviously quite a while ago now. Never had the intention of going viral, whatever viral means, or having any kind of audience, monetizing, none of that at all.
It was purely a video library of lessons and me playing and mostly for my students and And just myself to look back on, but never with the intention of going big on YouTube. So it was, it was just there.
We'll get into it getting big as we go, but I'm picking up like musicians, creatives, and even teachers in New Zealand. Do you think that they are underestimating the potential that there is to talk to a global audience via the likes of YouTube?
Yeah, possibly. I think we've got a certain voice here. We're quite humble, you know, to a fault sometimes, conservative. And even just our accent is different. So I've got sponsors who dig the accent. You know, most of our guys are Americans. You're not. You're different. So straight away, you are actually literally different.
So last night, Josh and I were in here and we were strategizing, creating a keep the change global type YouTube account. So keen to get your thoughts and be selfish on this podcast. Do you think that is something that I may be missing or probably should be looking at doing instead of just focusing so much on New Zealand, building an international account around financial literacy?
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Chapter 4: What unique content strategies did Andrew use to grow his audience?
Advising you. Yeah. I think we were just speaking before we were recording about, you know, we're so saturated with Graham Stephan and Dave Ramsey and the American finance guys. Who are great, but I think your strength is that this is actually totally, we're playing different rules here. The credit rating thing that we're talking about doesn't apply here, you know.
I guess the overall concepts, the overarching concepts, you could bring like a fresh perspective
view on that and I mean your style your you know no holds barred you just call it as you see it so um that's that's refreshing too yeah I wondered if that approach plus then the Kiwi accent would um yeah would go down well internationally but Probably going to try it anyway, mate, and see how we go. So I'll report back in two years. I'd love to hear about it.
I said to Josh, I was like, okay, let's get 10 videos out and we'll just see how the first 10 go. What sorts of income streams do you have now that people may not be aware of that are possible to generate when you build an audience that big?
Yeah, okay. So if we just dip back to COVID, which where my income, everything changed overnight. Okay. So I was basically 50-50 teaching and gigging.
When you say gigging, so I'm going out for beers at Danny Doolin's. Yes. And you're the guy drumming.
Shout out to Sam Edgar. my mate drumming to Danny Doolins. Um, yeah. Uh, so yeah, digging out playing in various, uh, you know, cafe playing bossing overs at a cafe or, you know, covers at a pub, big corporate events, weddings, all that stuff. 50% income doing that 50% teaching, right?
Teaching gig.
Yeah. And that was my life for a long time. Thousands of gigs. Like literally thousands of them, you know? Wow. So this is a big change we're talking about. Then overnight COVID, can't go out, no events. And so what are we going to do? Are we going to sit around and cry about it or we're going to actually do something? And I felt like I went into COVID ready. Like I enjoyed it.
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Chapter 5: How did Andrew monetize his YouTube channel?
You know, like, is this sort of that? Yeah. So I had to think about that, you know, because... I went to music school. I went to jazz school. So I'm a drum nerd. And the status thing was, how many gigs have you got this week? I've got five. I've got six. How many gigs can you crank out? Because that's the currency. Swinging your gig around. Yeah, yeah. And it's almost like...
There's that status anxiety of, you know, I want to be the guy with the most gigs or getting offered the best gigs or whatever. So I'd built up and I had done that. So to give it all away, it was a big call.
Chapter 6: What mindset shifts did Andrew experience moving from gigs to online content?
Yeah. Almost letting go of a part of your identity.
Yeah. Yeah. And you do lose that gigging muscle too now.
Yeah.
Yeah. Don't call me Frig. I was about to say, what's the cost for a gig these days? You must be very few and far between. No, I priced myself out of it. Most Kiwi don't have a financial plan. They have a she'll be right mate attitude. Amy from Leverage is helping KTC listeners change that.
If you're needing direction, clarity, or wondering what your next financial move should be, then book a call with Amy or download her free DIY financial plan to freedom. To do that, visit financialplan.co.nz.
So then thinking about overseas sponsor opportunities, do they come to you or did you have to, like once it started growing, did you think, okay, maybe I can get some of these sponsors and you started shaking the tree?
No, so I've never found that worked for me. Maybe my approach isn't very good, but they came quick.
Wow.
As soon as you're getting eyeballs, other people are going to be interested. I was surprised real quick.
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Chapter 7: What lessons did Andrew learn about risk-taking in his career?
Are you teaching him some of the stuff at that sort of age or planting the seeds? Trying to. Yeah. Trying to normalize money for him, talking about that kind of thing, goals. Yeah. But obviously the journey's there for him as well to learn, fail and all that sort of stuff.
Yeah.
You sort of just wish you could tell them you can do anything you want, you know?
Is he a big YouTube consumer? Yeah. Yeah, because kids are way more into it, aren't they? Yeah. So does he think it's cool that Dad's on YouTube, or does he think it's... Yeah, although it's me.
I'm still Dad, and I do crazy stuff on there, man. There was one video where I did an angry dance, you know, like Footloose. You've seen Footloose, right? Kevin Bacon does the angry dance. I recreated it because I was watching a drummer that was so good
It was so much better than me that I was like, ah, and the concept was I just gave up and I ran outside the house and did the Kevin Bacon crazy dance.
Yeah.
So that kind of stuff, you know, your boy's just like, oh my God. Yeah. What are you doing? Yeah. But, um, yeah, I do. I really do. Not that I'm a guru, but I try and pass on to him, man, you can do anything you want. That kid's better than you at basketball. Shoot a thousand shots.
You will beat him. Do the reps. You will beat him for sure. Yeah, do you get any of that imposter syndrome for yourself or any blowback like locally of sort of, you know, who are you to be doing this stuff on YouTube or I'm a better drummer than you or I used to have more gigs than you or whatever and now you've got 170,000 YouTube subscribers. Do you?
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Chapter 8: How can creatives overcome the fear of sharing their work online?
Yeah, I think the worst piece of advice is don't take it personally. It is personal. You know, Luke, I hate you. I hate your accent. Your advice sucks. How can you not take that? How can you not take that personally, right? And they're angry, man. They're really angry at you because you're challenging them, right? And they want to be doing what you're doing. So I'll put it this way.
You can't win the internet, right? But I'll put it this way.
So
Two of the most hated drummers. Well, actually, I'll put it differently. The two drummers that get the most hate and probably ridiculed, Lars Ulrich from Metallica and Ringo Starr from The Beatles, who, take a wild guess, who are the two wealthiest drummers in the world.
Yeah, those two. What's the guy from Blink-182, Travis Summon? Oh, he's killing it.
He's a great drummer. He's third. He would be right up there. He's larger than life. He's covered in tats, cocky, and wildly successful. People just want to chop him down. I hate that guy.
Yeah, yeah. It's so funny that people say that. It's not funny, but it's weird that people say, like, I hate someone. So you don't even know them. But people use that terminology. Yeah, even influencers or rugby players, league players. Yeah, yeah. We've inserted that word into how we feel about someone. Like, we don't rock around and be like, I hate that person's mum.
Be like, whoa, whoa, hang on, what? I hate that rugby player.
It's what you want to be though. I think that's what it is.
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