Meet Buddy Hale | Social Entrepreneur, Program Manager, Drum Bender

We had the good fortune of connecting with Buddy Hale and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Buddy, what was your thought process behind starting your own business?
When starting The Library Of MusicLandria, the goal was to create something new, that was inspired by my personal interests, music, community, libraries and the sharing economy. I thought about what kind of non-profit business idea would bring me joy, would have a positive impact on the music community, and most of all, what resource did I wish existed when I first started exploring music.

What should our readers know about your business?
The Library Of MusicLandria is pretty rad and you really have to see it to understand the scope of it. It doesn’t translate on paper. I’m most proud of watching it grow and dreaming up what it will look like in the future. MusicLandria started out in a tiny apartment with only 25 instruments and now we’re the largest music instrument library in the United States. We’ve completed over 26,000 free instrument loans. That’s equal to over $2,574,00.00 in free access to music gear. We’re for musicians by musicians.

MusicLandria got to where it is today through lots of hard work, sacrifice, and a deep belief in the mission. I worked 60 hour work weeks, for free for about 4 years straight while trying to build a solid foundation for the library. I went all in, failed a ton, got back up, tried something else. Was it easy? Yes and no. Yes, because I was doing work that I believed in. No, because I’d never started a nonprofit before and I was kind of doing it solo and I was learning everything in real time.

A bunch of challenges started to work themselves out once I learned about “failing forward” and “minimum viable products”. Eventually, I realized that having fun with all of our programs was super important, and that I’d been allowing myself to struggle with low impact or low demand programs for way too long. Once I decided to prioritize self care and a normal work life balance, things got much easier, and less stressful.

I’ve learned so much about the non-profit sector along the way and would definitely do things differently if I were to start MusicLandria from scratch again. Now that I have the gift of hind-sight, I’m working on a model to replicate MusicLandria so it can exist in cities outside of Sacramento.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
We’d go to The Russ Room, Tropics, Sol Collective, STAB, Queen Sheeba, Comedy Spot, The Crocker, Verge, SF, Oakland, Tower Theater, The Crest, Gold Lake, Luna’s Cafe, Mast, WAL, a bunch of record stores, Tower Theater, we’d picnic in some of our local parks, we’d bike all over town and try to get lost.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
The Rascal Foundation, California Arts Council, Sacramento Office Of Arts And Culture, Music Nomad, Sacramento Region Community Foundation, RCA Foundation, Warm Audio, EarthQuaker Devices, Watermelon Music, Behringer, Analog Cases, Kline Music, Ortega Guitars, Universal Audio, MXR, Make Noise, The Awesome Foundation, Rachel Freund, Mike Bahr, George Paganelis, all our board members and volunteers, Sacramento State Business Department, MyTurn, The Impact Foundry, everyone who has donated, come to a show, borrowed an instrument or helped build community and create memorable musical moments with us.

Website: www.musiclandria.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/musiclandria/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5w-GmgkX6YqM0z3REucbmg