There’s no place like home, especially when “home” is Hawaii. But there are times when leaving home can be a career multiplier.

Take steel guitarist Frank Ferera, who left Hawaii at 17 and became the most prolific Hawaiian recording artist of the early 20th century. Consider Keaumoku Louis, another early Hawaiian recording artist, who achieved such stardom on the mainland that when he returned to Hawaii for a concert in 1926 his visit was front-page news.

Jump forward to the present and most everyone knows how Bruno Mars left Hawaii for California, paid his dues, worked through some heartbreaking disappointments and became one of the biggest stars in pop music. The last time Mars came home, in 2014, he sold out three nights in the Blaisdell Arena in record time.

Now it’s Aidan James’ turn to seek success outside Hawaii.

Aidan was 8 when a video of his solo arrangement of Train’s hit, “Hey, Soul Sister,” went viral on YouTube. He is now 14 and plans to accelerate his career as a songwriter and recording artist by moving to Los Angeles this month. The move is a family affair — his father, William “Chico” Powell, a production finance executive at Netflix, is already in California; his mother and manager, Angie Laprete, and sister, Aya Laprete Powell, will be leaving with him.

Aidan described it as “starting over” but in a positive way.

“I’m going to miss my friends here and I’m going to have to start all over, but that’s what I want to do,” he said. “It’s going to be a lot harder to show my music (in Los Angeles), but I want to be able to show the ukulele to everybody and be able to show that you can do anything with it, and expand my music career and become a better musician.”

Aidan will have friends waiting for him. Crimson Apple — the pop-rock-alternative band of sisters Shelby, Colby, Carthi and Faith Benson and their “band sister,” Rachel Look — moved to L.A. recently. The Benson sisters range in age from 15 to 23. Look, 21, will continue to live in Honolulu and commute to Southern California until she gets her degree in civil engineering from the University of Hawaii at Manoa next spring.

“We had been thinking about moving for a while, so when our dad was offered a position in California a few months back, it seemed like the timing and the terms were perfect,” said Shelby Benson via email.

CRIMSON Apple made the move after three years of rehearsals and club gigs, opening for national act All Time Low at The Republik and releasing a full-length CD of original songs earlier this year.

“While Rachel is still in Hawaii, we will be focusing our time on our original music,” Benson said. “Tightening it up, writing and rewriting and refining our music for our second album. We’ll also be checking out the music scene in California, and hopefully doing a few acoustic shows in the meantime.”

There’s almost certainly a period of adjustment involved in moving from a place where “everyone knows your name” to a much larger place where no one knows you and no one much cares how big you were wherever it was you came from.

There can also be culture shock to deal with: the food, the weather, the high-rise jungle of the metropolis and a vastly different racial mix than in Hawaii.

Musician and concert promoter Michael Paulo, a former member of the band Kalapana, has made California his home for more than 30 years. In the 1970s the group spent several years based in Southern California and Paulo said he enjoyed the professional opportunities — performing, songwriting and recording — he found there. He left the group and returned to Hawaii in 1979 with plans of moving back to the mainland to pursue a career as a jazz musician.

“When I left Kalapana I knew that I had done all I could in Hawaii. I came back to Hawaii but my intent was always to get back to L.A. because to succeed, to get better, you had to go to where the competition and the quality and the musicianship was better and get out there and mix up with those guys and find out what you’re made of.”

Paulo said he maximized his chances of establishing himself as a working musician in L.A. by saving enough money while he was back in Hawaii so that he didn’t have to work a “day job” to support himself. Others who aren’t as financially prepared may find themselves dependent on a steady paycheck from nonmusic work and unavailable for gigs or to aggressively pursue a career.

“That’s why a lot of guys don’t make it. I’ve seen that happen a lot,” Paulo said.

“I planned out how much money I would need — and this is important — so that I didn’t have to work for a year if necessary. I could go and play and be free to audition. The first two years I spent just trying to get around the scene, get my name out there and get gigs. I was working, I was playing five nights a week, a different place each night. Then all of a sudden here is this ‘kid from Hawaii’ touring with Al Jarreau.”

Jarreau had noticed Paulo while he was playing some of those nightly club gigs.

Paulo says that touring with Jarreau was “great validation” and resulted in him getting calls for other jobs and then getting his first record deal. He went on to found his own record label and then branch out as a concert promoter.

Some Hawaii acts that seek their fortune from the L.A. music industry discover “the scene” isn’t what they expected. Others find that being a celebrity in Hawaii doesn’t equate to success “beyond the reef.” And then there are those who decide they’d rather live in Hawaii and raise their families here even it means putting some dreams aside.

Charles Recaido said his group, Summer, which was part of the same management group as Kalapana, experienced “culture shock” when they followed Kalapana to the mainland in the mid-1970s.

“The scene was intense. Total culture shock for a bunch of Wahiawa boys,” Recaido reminisced via email. “Smog, traffic, endless streets and lights. First time to the continent for most of us. We were having a blast, living the dream on that first tour but also learning the realities of the business and the rigors of the road.”

Summer returned home intact from its first extended stay in California but one member of the quartet quit after they got back. Recaido resigned after the birth of his first child.

“It was a matter of personal growth for each member; getting ‘real jobs’ was another,” he said.

MULTIPLE Grammy Award-winning producer and recording artist Daniel Ho, a Honolulu native and slack-key artist who lives in L.A., said being from Hawaii can be an advantage for musicians trying to launch on the mainland. It’s a conversation icebreaker since many people in the music industry have vacationed in the islands, he said.

“There is a tendency to be stereotyped into a certain set of sounds — ukulele, steel guitar, exotica — when you say that you’re from Hawaii, but then it allows you a chance to explain that it’s such a rich culture full of so much more,” he said. “In my case, it’s been a wonderful leverage to collaborate with and transition into other styles of music.”

Ho studied music in Los Angeles and launched the smooth-jazz group Kilauea in the 1990s. By the end of the decade he had started his own record label, Daniel Ho Creations. Ho said he made it a point to attend industry seminars and networking events to establish contacts.

“Getting to know more people can always lead to recommendations and work, which is half of the equation. The other part is being able to do a great job. Both take time and effort. The main thing is to be yourself and work at being unique and memorable.”

Jon de Mello, founder and CEO of the Mountain Apple Co. record label, has worked with top local artists such as the Brothers Cazimero, Israel Kamakawiwo‘ole and Amy Hanaiali‘i. He notes that reggae band The Green “is making a big hit” outside Hawaii, and contemporary island music artist Anuhea “is the best of her field.”

“It’s not Hawaiian music, but being from Hawaii can’t be a negative thing,” he said.

De Mello cautioned it isn’t necessarily a selling point for musical genres like R&B and rap that are strongly associated with other parts of the country.

However, as Aidan James proved, YouTube and other forms of social media are making it easier for geographically remote acts to attract attention.

“Cruise around on YouTube and you’ll be amazed at what you find,” de Mello said. “Some of these young kids are coming up with (stuff) that is so cool.”

The bottom line, he concluded, is that “you should sell somebody on what you’re doing before you change your ZIP code. That’s reality. And why change ZIP codes when you can do it from the Internet? You have the whole world at your fingertips … . I can send a song to Afghanistan in less than 12 seconds — or anywhere in the world.”

WHEN THE performer in question is a minor, the decision to move is more complicated.

Mark Parrish, father of Hawaii-born actor and recording artist Janel Parrish, said there are many more opportunities on the mainland, but the talent pool of competition is much larger and the financial costs immense since the entire family is usually uprooted.

“The costs of locating housing will always be more expensive than planned,” he said via email. “In addition, the cost of supporting the child in their endeavors — agents, managers, attorneys, materials — will be ongoing and also more expensive than planned.”

Most important of all, he said, “Any such move should not be contemplated unless the parents are 100 percent sure the relocation is what the child wants.”

Angie Laprete said she and her husband are 100 percent sure.

“Aidan is living his dream,” she said. “The stage is where Aidan is most comfortable. When he’s on stage, that’s his world. The new challenge of going to L.A. — we’ll see what happens. Getting him out there and playing at different venues and meeting people. It’s going to be a really interesting and experimental time for all of us but he’ll continue to do what he loves whether it’s here or wherever we go.”

She added that Aidan already has a theatrical agent for television and film work (“He’s been doing tape auditions the last few years and they’re excited to have him in L.A. so they can send him on auditions in person,” she said). They’re working on a couple of projects that can’t be announced, but sometime early next year he’ll be featured on an episode of HBO’s docuseries, “Saving My Tomorrow.”

Aidan will also be part of “Sail Across the Sun — Train’s Music and Wine Festival,” a four-day cruise from Miami to Jamaica in February that includes performances by Train, Michael Franti, Phillip Phillips, Shaggy, Andy Grammer and Rachael Platton. (For more information visit sailacrossthesun.com/lineup/view/id/1245/.)

“California is flooded with so much talent,” Laprete said frankly. “We can only hope that his uniqueness — his look, his age, his sound with the ukulele — will stand out. The good news is that there are so many opportunities to explore, whether it’s music, acting or both.”