Today we’d like to introduce you to Hannah Harris.
Hi Hannah, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I moved to Michigan in 2017 shortly after returning to the US from Ireland with a Masters degree in Ethnomusicology — I had worked at County Emmet Celtic Shop in Petoskey as a seasonal employee the summer before and the owner asked me back to train as the manager for the shop. While my retail job helped pay the bills, I definitely found myself in a position of needing some additional income and also not wanting to abandon my trajectory of making Irish music my career. I started looking at options for side hustles and that led me to the online space. What started as one to one online lessons over Zoom and local performance gigs in northern Michigan gradually developed into me offering online courses and other trainings for learning Irish fiddle. County Emmet closed in the summer of 2019, and I was already getting more and more into the online space even before the COVID shutdown in March 2020 to connect with my broader audience outside of northern Michigan. In 2022 thanks to my retail management experience I became the head of customer support for MemberVault, which is a Software as a Service (SaaS) company helping creatives, entrepreneurs and other business owners create, sell and deliver their offers online. This tied both my business and musical interests together as my customer support role is part time and allows me the flexibility to continue gigging, teaching and selling Irish fiddle trainings on MemberVault. So I’m a team member and also use the platform for my own business! I’m now based in metro Detroit and have gotten involved in the robust Irish music scene here. I love that my work combines in-person connection with an online element allowing me to connect with people further afield, as well as the mix of interests in troubleshooting technical issues on MemberVault or troubleshooting bowing, rhythm and phrasing with my fiddle students.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
It has definitely not been a smooth road. The business has seen me through some of my happiest and saddest times — sometimes serving as a creative outlet needed to take my mind off the personal side of things in life. COVID was a struggle but not in perhaps the assumed sense. I was already in the online space and did not have to pivot my business model. If anything it helped me explain what I was doing to people in my life who didn’t necessarily get it before! But it was hard in its isolation and especially drove home how remote and cut off I felt from many friends and family, most of whom live beyond northern Michigan. Living in metro Detroit now has helped heal a lot of that isolation and help me get involved in the community around me again, which was something I missed for a long time post-college. Another challenge was not knowing anyone who has built the exact business that I have as a model for how to do things. So much of what I offer is experimentation — what do my students want, what gets them better results, what brings in revenue to help me keep the business going? The experimentation is actually quite fun, but there’s always that element of unknown and needing to take action even when the results aren’t clear.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I am a professional Irish fiddler and a customer support specialist, and enjoy crossing skills over between two very different fields and making it all work! On the performing side, I play with my partner Alberto Whitmer in our Irish traditional fiddle + guitar duo Sionainn Laoi (Irish language for Shannon Lee — named after the rivers that run through the two cities where we got our Masters Degrees in Ireland). I occasionally co-host traditional music sessions in Plymouth and Ann Arbor, and play with lots of local Irish musicians in the area for other gigs too. On the teaching front, I still do work with 1:1 students online, and I’ve added a tune learning membership and seasonal workshops both online and in person. My biggest goal and what I’m known for is helping fiddlers get the real feel for Irish traditional music, particularly if they did not grow up listening to a lot of Irish music. I am really proud of how I’ve been able to translate my skills of helping others find solutions to problems in multiple fields: i.e. figuring out why a video embed code won’t play on a MemberVault account owners site and then later in the day helping a fiddle student learn a new skill to help them memorize a tune they’re feeling stuck on. I love that nothing about what I do each day sounds like a standard 9 to 5 (though those are typically the hours I keep), but it keeps me independent. I am also unique in that I have equal love for the business and artistic/creative sides of what I do. I wouldn’t want to outsource one or the other!
Are there any books, apps, podcasts or blogs that help you do your best?
My favorite life and work books are Deep Work by Cal Newport, The Relaxed Woman by Nicola Jane Hobbs, Real Artists Don’t Starve by Jeff Goins, and Everything is Figureoutable by Marie Forleo. Podcast-wise I recommend She’s So Lucky hosted by Les Alfred and The Goal Digger Podcast by Jenna Kutcher (also highly recommend Jenna’s new substack). I’m a big fan of my Full Focus Planner for keeping track of priorities from week to week. And of course, MemberVault is a huge part of my day-to-day!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://hannahharrisceol.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hannahharrisceol/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@HannahHarrisCeol
- Other: https://hannahharrisceol.bandcamp.com/
