I'll Never Book You ❌

In this episode of the Girl My DJ Business podcast, hosts Cream and GaryW discuss the intricacies of getting booked as a DJ, the importance of effective communication with promoters, and the necessity of professionalism and reliability in the industry. They delve into the significance of feedback after gigs, the role of sound and lighting in creating a vibrant nightlife experience, and the need for dedicated personnel to manage these aspects. The conversation emphasizes that DJs should not be burdened with additional responsibilities that detract from their primary role, and concludes with insights on how to enhance customer experience in venues.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction and Podcast Overview
• 1:10 How to Get Booked by Promoters
• 4:40 Effective Communication with Bookers
• 8:15 The Importance of Processes in DJing
• 12:29 Reliability and Professionalism in DJing
• 15:21 Feedback and Self-Assessment After Gigs
• 21:26 Understanding Generic Feedback
• 24:43 The Role of Sound and Lighting in Nightlife
• 35:28 The Importance of a Dedicated Light Person
• 56:35 Conclusion and Upcoming Gigs

Transcript

0:01

What's up guys, welcome to the 162nd episode of the Girl My DJ Business podcast brought to you by the Girl My DJ Business Discord, Digital Music Pool and Ferrari Production Academy. My name is Kareem. Gary W here. We were on a good run, we skipped a week, but I think it was needed. We've been so swamped with the fall kickoff here that we just need a little break. We're back on track. Yeah, I had a travel week last week, came up by Udu DJ, and that usually kind of puts a damper, because it shortens our work week up quite a bit. So that puts a damper sometimes with the podcast, and usually when we miss a week, it is that week, the week that I'm traveling. So not that it's impossible to do it while traveling, but it's definitely a little more taxing and time consuming, since it's a mobile setup, just a lot. Yeah, it's a lot. It's a lot. We sat here for however long on Zoom while I set up my gear to do this. So it's like not, it's not like it's a set studio situation, you know? we'll get you going in a set studio situation soon enough. Yeah. So something we were going with that blew up in the discord that blew up via text that happened to me recently, you know, I get people that ask me on Instagram or wherever like, yo, how can I work with get down? Like, I want to work with get down. How do I get booked? And I kind of want to we're going to tell a story here about about how to work with get down. But then I want to make this really broad so that anybody that's listening, this is more about how do you get booked with any promoter or any DJ group or any venue kind of thing and how to approach those people. So I get a DM that was like, yo, Kareem, you know, someone I know and they're like, yo, I wanna work with Get Down, like what's the best way? And I'm like, well, the best way is to get into our Discord because we're putting gigs in there. It allows me to get to know you a little bit. You know, you can share some music and any content that you're putting out. It's just a good first step. And that person was like, Well, essentially, not in these words. Well, I don't want to join the Discord. I don't feel like downloading another app. Like, I don't feel like doing this if it's not going to get me something. And I'm like, all right, bro, then don't. the lines of I'm established enough, so I don't want to do this. That was the whole thing in a nutshell, right? I don't know if it was that or if it was like him thinking that he had to pay to get into the discord or something and didn't want I don't know exactly what it was, but it immediately in my brain said I will never book this person. I don't want to work with this person. You're making it difficult to work with from the initial conversation. When I read it, my perception of the comment was what I just said. I am established and I don't want to do this. I think my resume speaks for itself. Now, whether that is how it was supposed to be perceived or not, that's how it was perceived. You cannot leave any room for a misconception or a misperceived note or DM. or text, you need to be clear about what you're saying and maybe that's what he meant to say and he was very clear about it and he doesn't have to then go and join the discord, that's fine. But we all have to understand that when you're looking to get booked by somebody, that person or that organization has processes in place for a reason. And you could either respect those processes or not, right? Because Overwhelmingly what happens is you have a lot of people trying to come and join a group and get gigs You know, especially in a situation where you're giving gigs out If we don't know you personally enough to where we are coming out and seeing you DJ Monthly, which I know we're not because we're not even seeing a lot of our guys monthly, you know Then like you have to then you have to go through the process you have to go through the process and so The number one thing is when you're reaching out to somebody, I would say, and if I'm jumping the gun, you could hold me up, but the number one thing when reaching out is be very clear and be very concise in the words that you're using because you don't want to leave any room for a misconception, right? Yeah. You know, I think the first thing is how does this person want to communicate? Is it text? Is it DM? Is it voice notes? Is it a phone call? Is it email? It doesn't matter how you want to communicate. How does the booker, how does the owner want to communicate with you? That's number one, right? Going back to what you said about processes, when there's owners that own multiple venues that have a number of people that work for them and for their venues. They don't got time to deal with stuff that's outside of their processes and their organization. If they say join the discord, join the discord. If they say shoot me an email with your dates, shoot them an email with your dates. If they say come in to talk to me in person, go in and talk to them in person. It's very, very simple. Yeah, please do. night at 11 p So, Kareem and I work with a venue owner, and we know how he likes to communicate and deal with things, and we know how we like to communicate and deal with things. And we like to set up meetings where Kareem and I are available to talk. We know that as soon as he gets that text message, he's calling one of us. Right? And... And that's exactly what happened last night. And when, and when he called me, was like, I don't want to talk to you right now. We both laughed, but like I knew, but I was all excited about something. So I texted him and instead of him waiting till today or tomorrow, because he doesn't have time. Right. As a, as a venue owner, as what's going on in his personal life currently, like he doesn't have time. So he called me immediately just to get it off his chest. And instead of it being a five minute conversation with you and I, I was a two, you know, a two minute conversation with me. So like, that's us not knowing, like so, that's us knowing but not following the rule, right? And just kind of learning how the person, that other person wants to communicate. That's the first step, you're absolutely correct. Right. And I appreciate the fact that that person will, you know, call us, make sure we're good, figure out the situation, talk about what we need to talk about. It's a one or two minute conversation many times, and it's done and it's handled. It's not this like back and forth, whatever. Sure, like maybe last night at the time that it was wasn't ideal for you, but it's his venue, it's his place, and we're gonna do what he wants us to do. And that's it. And that's the point here, right? Like if it's the person who's in power, the person that's booking you, your quote unquote boss per se, you have to kind of abide by how they're doing business, right? It's not always by your time or your way. you and I, like you said earlier, have put in processes and documents and all this stuff to avoid extra texts, extra phone calls, extra emails, all this stuff, right? The processes, and you guys can think about this in your own business too, how can you put in place processes that make things easy? Every time I release something, here is my process for releasing it. Every time I go and create content, this is how I'm gonna do it. Once a week, on this day, and it's gonna be for two hours. Those processes allow you to get in a groove and allow you to not think about and have to figure out, well, how am I gonna do this? Well, you already figured it out one time. You spent an hour doing it. Now you just have to do it. And it's the same thing for us with booking DJs. It's like, y 'all wanna work with us? Join the Discord first. That's first and foremost. you make a note of, this process worked, right? And wherever you keep your notes, whether that's an Evernote, whether that's a note on your phone, it's an email to yourself, whatever it might be, you make a note and you say, okay, these processes worked, these didn't, right? And then you can, as you grow and as you continue doing these things, that process will streamline. You want to mitigate wasted time. That is the most important thing here, right? We all have a million things going on with music production, music prep, music downloading, worrying about venues, booking gigs, et cetera, logos, headshots, all of this stuff. You want to mitigate wasted time. That's the most important thing that you can do in your career. I'm gonna, I'll peel back the curtain also. You and I have brought on a number of people to the team recently, or at least into our apps and the places where we do our communication and we book our DJs because we don't want to communicate through text and deal with a million text messages. Like realistically, I'm getting like 200 text threads a day. That's not 200 texts, that's 200 different groups of people or people that are hitting me up or I'm hitting up in a day. So like, Stuff gets lost very quickly. So we normally we've created these processes, onboarding documents, we shot videos, we created this onboarding document. Go through these steps and you'll be good to go to work with us and you'll get set up on our apps. you know, this is how you put your your available dates into our app. Well, we didn't do that with a few people. And recently, and like you and I are having to deal with the fallout of not onboarding those people in the way that we would normally onboard them. where it's like extra texts and extra phone calls and it's on us. It's not on the people that we're bringing on. They don't know. They're asking the right questions. But we didn't get them into the whole process that we created to avoid all this in the first place. It's true. I'm to get that out today, actually. actually gonna take this a step further and all of my DJs and our DJs are gonna laugh at this because it's just a very cream thing to do. But I started creating a document on like how to work with cream that I'm gonna include in the onboarding. Like don't hit me up after like 8 p Like if I'm cool with talking on the phone but if a text gets it done, shoot me a text. If it's something important, send us an email so that we have it locked in the email. Like all these little things just so that I don't get annoyed. Yeah, we yeah, because like we operate as like email is our gospel, if you will email will make sure that whatever that thing is gets addressed. Because because of such things as 200 text threads, things get lost. Even a call that gets lost because it's not written somewhere. That's why email that you should always and I've said this in past episodes, especially when you're following up, especially when you are trying to get a gig, especially when you are owed money, you should always have a paper trail, right? Not a literal paper trail, obviously, but you should have an email or a text that says, okay, this is what I requested. And if it doesn't get done, then get it to email because then, you know, it lives somewhere. A lot of stuff gets lost in translation when you're talking about it at a gig, when you're talking about it on the phone. Like it can get lost in the shuffle, especially with people that are very, very busy. And if you don't get a response via text or email, well. You know, it's kind of, that's the hard part. It's like, are you getting ghosted or not? Yeah, and my response to that would be just be persistent, right? Like, just because someone doesn't answer you one time doesn't mean they won't answer you the second or third time. Like, maybe they just didn't see 200 different things in one day. Like, if you text me two days ago, that's 600 people down the list. So, sometimes stuff gets lost. So, persistent, not annoying. We say it all the time, right? 100%. I want to read a quote. So I read a book by this author. An author, name is James Clear. And a lot of what he writes about and talks about is just like success and goals and, you know, organizational things, how to stay on task, things like that. So I get a newsletter and this is one of the quotes and I thought this was so fitting to this conversation. And to anyone that's asking, how do I work with a new venue or a promoter or a book or a DJ group? Listen to this quote and think about it and try to implement this. So it's, can carve out a very good career simply by being the most reliable person on the team. You'd not think that always showing up on time, hitting every deadline and responding quickly and professionally to all communication would be such a differentiator, differentiator, but these traits are always in short supply. And I couldn't agree with that quote more. And you would think that all of those things are very straightforward and common sense, but Guys, believe me, like 20%, probably less than that, do those small little things to set themselves up for success or set yourselves up for success. that all comes down to prioritizing what is important in your professional life, right? If I have a million other things, if I have a side hustle and DJing's not really that important to me, getting back to the booker who hits me up about a gig isn't gonna be the first thing I do, right? Just as an example, if having a long DJ career is important to you, then getting back to the people that are important at a very at a reasonable amount of time, even a quick amount of time in our business, because if something's not responded to immediately, it's on to the next one here, right? Especially when talking about booking gigs. Because what happens is, from a booker's perspective, you wanna get these things done quickly because you want it off your plate to move on to the next thing. Right. And maybe you were the first choice, but the booker is going to be okay with the second choice because they just got to get it booked kind of thing. We dealt with it at a younger age often where if you weren't near your phone and you didn't respond quick enough, you didn't get the gig, right? And we're a little more patient, but not always. It depends how much we have going on on the other end of what we're doing. things talked about in that quote are effort and organization and just interest and desire to be successful. has nothing to do with your, your skills, with your, how smart you are. It's purely effort. That's it. And with so many people hitting up an owner or a DJ company or get down or whoever, like those things stand out first and foremost. And those things make me want to work with someone for sure. And I know they make you want to work with someone as well. I'm going to tell you another quick story. I booked a DJ who we don't normally book for an event this coming weekend. And this was probably a month ago. You know, I did my normal, hey, can you send me an email with your logo, W9 and whatever else, right? So I asked a second time, finally got a logo or finally got a W9. never got a logo. This person just emailed emailed me back yesterday for a gig this weekend. sorry, I didn't see this. Here's my logo. Like, all right. Number one, I'm not going and making a change on the flyer. So sorry. Number two. I never want to work with you again if that's how you do business kind of thing. It's something so, it shows me that it's not a priority and maybe you don't check your email or you're not organized and you're not on top of your shit. I was gonna say, how does that make you feel as the person booking this person? It makes you feel not important and not prioritized, right? It just makes me feel like that person doesn't care and isn't organized. That's what it makes me think. Right. Well, know, some people would could do could see that on the flip side to like, I'm not important. Like I don't I'm not important in this instance. That means this gig's not important in this instance. You have a million other more important gigs and things to do. Then fuck yourself. You know what I mean? Like that. You don't want anybody to ever feel like that that's booking you for a gig that you're working for somebody that's paying you. You don't want to make them feel unimportant. You don't want to make them feel like the thing that you're working is not a priority. It's just awful business. not reading the room. And if you can't read the room before a gig, how do you read a room during a gig? You're not in the right profession, that's for sure. like what are we doing out here? And with, listen, we talk about how many DJs there are, how competitive it is, there's less brooms. Like, you're out, this is how you do business. That's it, it's an easy way for me to be like, alright, see you later, like onto the next person. Everybody wants to be a DJ. It's incredible. I play golf with this like 65 year old guy. Just got his first DJ set up everybody He's a CFO of a company a CFO. My man makes a lot of money and I'm setting him up tomorrow with my my hard drive so he can he has a music I swear to God He's into everything so like when we're on the golf course like he he plays Jay -z he'll play you know He plays everything Ludacris, he's into like southern hip -hop, he's into soul, he's into rock, he's into 50s music. He's got an ear, he's got a good ear. I love his playlists on the golf course. That's four hours a weekend I'm with this guy. But that's to my point, the barrier to entry is so low. All this guy had to do was pick up a controller and I'm gonna give him my hard drive. He said he can go play a party. You know what I mean? He's got the means to buy all of the equipment just to play around and have fun. Everybody wants to be a DJ. All of these finance bros, guess what? When they go see John Summit on Saturday, guess what they want to do on Monday? They want to go be John Summit, right? And they go buy a bunch of stuff and they're now a DJ on the weekend. And this is just... bro, house should be a sub genre. I know. that finance bro house because I get in these like very bro -y rooms and I'm like, well, I know that they're going to like John summit and you know, Chris Lake and Fisher and we're all good finance bro house. So, you know, everybody wants to be a DJ and everybody can be a DJ. Everybody can be. So who's up next? That's the way that's unfortunately the mentality at this point. It's gotten so cutthroat. And so do all of those things that you said in that quote correctly and you can further your career for a very long time. And like the guys say, you can carve out a very long and profitable career. Yeah, nothing makes me happier when someone I meet that's fresh and we give a chance to is like on top of their shit. I love it. I love it. I love it. And I will fight for that person. What happens probably 75 % of the time that that happens? What is the next step? They're a good DJ and right, and it's quick. And their success is quick. It's happened so many times. The most successful guys that we've had have had all of those traits that we just mentioned in that quote. Yeah, I'm thinking of a number in my head right now and deciding whether I want to shout them out or not. So yeah, you know. All right, so from there, let's talk about the always interesting after every set, and I know we talked about this on the podcast before, but we're gonna go into this a little further. The old you killed it, he said I killed it when talking about management giving you feedback directly after a set. We've all heard it from bartenders. We've all heard it from management. We've all heard it from ownership. you killed it tonight. That's just the generic way of saying good job at this point, right? You did a good job. Right, like you DJed the full set. Like you were in the booth, you showed up, you were on time, you played your music, and we're done. Thank you. good job. I didn't have to worry about anything musically tonight as the owner manager, bartender. You did your job, you killed it, you did a good job. That's how we should take that saying, right? That's how we should receive that saying, receive that saying as, all right, I showed up, I did what I was supposed to do. It doesn't mean you came in and absolutely murdered the entire place and you're like the next best thing since, you know, name a DJ. It's just become the what you say to a DJ after they DJ. If nobody says anything to you, you got, you know what? You didn't do a good job. You should expect to hear from someone before you walk out of the venue that you just played. You should expect to hear you killed it. If you don't, there's a problem. Look at it that way. I think that's a great way to look at this. me you killed it, I just think about these conversations we have and I'm like, man, did I kill it or are they just like gassing me up right now? I think we know we as DJs are paid to read the room. I'm going up script a little bit here, but we're paid to read the room, right? If you can't understand if you actually had a great effect on that room more positive than the average person, then you can't, you're not in the right business, like I said before. You should know, okay, This place was going crazy, hands up, singing along. I was doing cutouts of music where the crowd was just singing. I just had a really effective DJ set. And you walk out and you feel good. And I know when you do, because you'll email me or text me and vice versa, we'll be like, best fucking DJ. I'm the best DJ in this place. But it's good to feel that way. I don't feel that way every set. No, me neither. you didn't get one of those texts this weekend because I didn't absolutely kill any of my rooms this weekend. Did I do a serviceable job and a good job and kept the room? Absolutely. But I didn't feel like I crushed one of my sets. Right, and your serviceable job is better than most DJs, you know what I mean? I mean, I'd hope so. But that's everybody's hope. when I hear from people, I killed it every weekend, or every DJ set, I'm like, well, this is impossible. I know this is impossible because not every crowd is receptive. Sometimes you have dud crowds. And that's... this past weekend and what was supposed to be grand opening weekend. Like we made money and it was good, like the energy wasn't. I didn't walk out of there saying I killed it. I walked out of there saying like, I hope we made money because this was a weird crowd tonight. We can go into some aspects of why that might have happened later on in this conversation. So, to get back to like you killed it, yeah, let's talk about how to get better feedback, right? What are some questions that you can ask in order to get real feedback? I think that's a good place to start. I think this is like any sales technique, you gotta dig deeper, right? Like if you're having a conversation with ownership or with a bartender, you're hanging out and like, it's, you know everybody's hanging out, like they're having a beer, it's whatever, you can have a deeper conversation, not when the owner's running around trying to pay people, make sure people get kicked out, like you can't have this conversation at that point. But like, I think it's simply like, Was there a point where you thought I did something incorrectly or was there a point where you thought I could have done something differently? I think that's a good way to put it. Or, hey, this situation popped up and this is what I did and why I did it kind of thing. those conversations I have all the time because it's like, I know this was weird, I know this was off script, but there was a reason why I did it. There was a party behind me that probably spent multiple thousand dollars and I wanted to make sure they were happy and they asked for this weird song and I know it wasn't for the whole room but I had to play it for this group or I had to play a couple tracks in that that space because of it. So yeah like what what did you like best about my set? Was there an area you thought I could have done something better or point out a moment and ask like about that particular moment? It's important here to try to stay positive or neutral in your questions. I think getting negative in a question might sound whiny a little bit. So like, hey, tell me where I messed up is probably not a great question, like you said. It's more like what would you see, where do you think that I can, what was the highlight of my set and what do you think I could do maybe a little better for next time? Like I'm looking to just improve my set for next time. A couple other things you could ask is like, who does the best job in this room? Like what DJ crushes it in here? Who's your favorite DJ? And then maybe go on a watch that person on a night off and see how they work it. Like I think that would be a good question. I had Dramalost with me on Saturday night. So I'm interested to ask him these questions. I keep meaning to do this this week, I keep forgetting. But like it's different when you have like a direct peer in the room that you really respect as a DJ and then you can bounce ideas back and forth off of is so important, because it's rare that that even happens anymore to me. Like I never really get anybody that is like. I'll ask for feedback or I'll ask for like, if I notice something in the room, like, and I'm hanging out with a DJ in the booth, like, what do think about taking it this direction? Because it's like, I trust their opinion, they're watching everything while I'm DJing and watching. If it's like somebody good that I trust, like, what do think if I did this, maybe it's a little left field and then that person like, ooh, I think that's a good idea, do it, fuck it. Or it'll be like, I don't know, save it for later, do it late night or something like that. And it's like, you kind of attack the room together. If it's somebody that you're really close with and you trust. Yeah, I don't, we didn't really bounce many ideas back and forth from each other, but I think maybe I asked him for a couple of Latin tracks, but like, I'd like to get his overall thought on how it went in a non -bullshit sense. And it's gotta be somebody that you trust that won't bullshit you, right? And just tell you broadly, you killed it, you know? Did we make money? That's a great question too. Because if the bar made money, then you did a great job. It doesn't matter. The owner's not gonna give a fuck. You could play fucking YMCA all day and you did a great job because the bar made more money this week than they did for the last month or whatever it is. Yeah, agreed. Going back to the thing we started with, the you killed it thing, like. The owners aren't going to give you negative feedback. They're not trying to get into this long conversation. Same thing with managers. Like I said, they have a million things to worry about at the end of the night. They really don't give a fuck about having a conversation with you about how your DJ set was, you know? So like, they're going to say great job. They're going to say you killed it. Just like we said, to say you did a good job. But that's why they hire an entertainment director or a DJ booking company or whoever to book their DJs, because they'll give They'll tell you good job and then they'll tell me and Gary all the things you did wrong. And then we have to communicate that to you. And sometimes we'll have that feedback and DJs will say, well, the owner said I did a good job. Well, of course they're gonna say you did a good job. They don't wanna have this like negative feedback conversation with you. That's why they hire us. Right. It's sometimes the people that are conveying these messages don't exactly know what they didn't like. It's hard for them to put into words because we deal with this a lot. They're not DJs. They don't know terminology. They don't know how to express why they didn't like what they heard. They'll just say something like the vibe was off. Like that's one we get. And then that's really hard for us to relay to to a DJ, and that doesn't mean you're a bad DJ or you did a bad job. What that means is that your style doesn't fit that room. So then you might not get direct feedback. You might get, hey, just stylistically, it didn't work out that night. I think when you hear that, you can expect, okay, I'm probably not gonna get booked in that room again, but let me take this. I'm let me check what my vibe was and maybe think about where I might have went wrong and where I could have done something differently. That's really important when you get that feedback. The vibe was off. What's the other one? It was just it was just off. What else do we hear? It's just very, very general quotes. there. Nice, we always get nice guy, nice girl, but like just not what we're looking for. Just didn't get it is another one. And like I said, that's not negative feedback. It's just that the fit wasn't there. And that's sometimes on the booker, not putting you in the right position to be successful. Right, so that's on us as much as it's on the DJ, right? And maybe you were informed different music and you executed what was asked, but what the crowd was that night. didn't match that. Be careful with that specifically too. I know this is a small tangent, but this has to do with feedback. Let's say Cream and I are booking you and we give you this whole rundown on Thursday, because we do our booking review on Thursday. You never played this room and we're like, play Disco House and play Soul House and then you walk in and you have to play all hip hop. But you stuck to that Disco and Soul House thing, right? Well now... Like I didn't do my job as a DJ and read the room and be like, okay, well I gotta switch to hip hop and that's what I gotta play. Even though my booker told me to play this. You know, when you're doing that, just communicate with the manager and be like, this is the route I'm going because of this and that's it. You know, I did this, and I'm gonna call this out because it was so many years ago. I did this at Teak Red Bank like seven years ago. And I walked in and I played the room and I played it the way they told me to play it. I didn't DJ, I didn't DJ DJ. And I sucked. the whole night, I know I did. was, know, red in the face, terrible. Like everything just, felt like the room was caving in on me the entire night. And I couldn't get out of it. And I knew I was like, never getting booked for this DJ booking group again, ever. And I didn't. like, so sometimes you just have to make the move to playing the room. You know, and that'll benefit you as well. Yeah, I think that's good advice. I think also this feedback conversation doesn't have to be just around DJ stuff like music, actually DJing, it can be around music as well. If you're sharing music with someone like, if you just send them, they're gonna be like, yeah, this is dope. I like it. But like, you have to dig a little deeper and be like, give me your give me your honest feedback. What's something you don't like? What's something you would change? What's your favorite part of the track? What's your least favorite part of the track? I think asking more questions, no matter what we're talking about here is important, right? If you're having a conversation with me and Gary, ask more questions. We'll answer them as best we can, you know, sometimes we don't have all the answers from the owner. It was just a simple text. wasn't a longer conversation around your DJ set, right? Same thing with music. You got to ask those questions, dig a little deeper and ask open ended questions, you know, like that the person can give you some feedback, not just a yes or no answer. I had a great conversation with a young DJ, a very young DJ, and that DJ asked so many pointed questions, so many questions. And as much as it might have been a lot of questions, they were a lot of open -ended questions that were pointed to very specific aspects of a DJ set, specific aspects of feedback, and... As you might feel annoying asking a lot of questions, having all of the information in how to be a better DJ, be a better performer, be a better business person can only further your DJ career in a quicker manner. Right? It's better to have a long form conversation, 45 minutes to an hour, when and asking all of these pointed questions, then letting things go in question and then flounder over time. Right? It's It's just something that I feel like a lot of people think like, I'm wasting your time. I don't want to waste your time. You have a lot of things to do. You're busy, but you're just better off thinking about, and I knew before the meeting that this person really thought about and wrote down all of their questions because that's how pointed they were. And I think that's an important thing to do as well. Like just be prepared when you're going to talk to somebody about feedback or how to grow as a DJ. Yeah, and take the feedback. Don't take it personally. That's that's my best advice. Don't take feedback personally when it's great. You know, take it. Be happy about it. It feels good when it's not great. Yeah, it's not going to feel good. But take it as a way to get better. You know, don't take it like all this person's shitting on me like having that positive attitude and and understanding and openness to getting that feedback is super important as well. Alright, let's move on and let's talk about something that drives me fucking crazy. I want to talk a little bit about sound and staging and why it's important and also the complete lack of care by 99 % of venues when it comes to sound and staging and lighting. I like to start this conversation with when and where. When you should have it and what venues should expect, when a DJ should expect to have a venue with these things in place. Not, your local bar doesn't need sound and stage. You know what I mean? Even sometimes your mid -level spots don't need sound and stage, depending on the size and the vibe of the place. I'm thinking maybe more like high end lounge restaurant lounges. Like they don't need sound and stage. just need pretty, they need good sounds, right? We're talking about like nightclubs, people that hold a lot of people, people that are creating, you're creating a nightclub vibe, right? Yeah, I don't think there's like a plain description other than it's a nightclub, you probably do some sort of bottle service. And you're higher end talent. It doesn't have to be I mean, if you're booking artists, of course, but if you're booking high end local talent, you should probably have somebody in the building that handles this stuff. So where do you start? Let's start with how important having good sound and lighting and a stage person can be. How about that? Yeah, I mean, I think across the board right now, no matter where you are, you need good sound, right? So if you're a local bar, if your DJ just has like two 15s and that's what you have, that's good, right? That's enough. But. For a booth monitor or for like the venue sound? I'm talking even at the lowest gig that you have, right? Sound still matters. We're going to talk about why sound matters because everybody expects a little bit of an experience. you're going to have a DJ, don't have them on a bunch of eight inch bar speakers that plays the football sounds. You know what I mean? putting out a flyer that has a DJ on it, like, your sound needs to be at least adequate. It can't be shitty outdoor patio speakers that were running a DJ thing through that sounds like shit. How many fucking places do this? It's ridiculous. It is ridiculous. So like if you're gonna have a DJ have adequate sound. Adequate. You know? at a point where you have a big dance floor, you're selling bottles, you need to have a sound guy that comes in and checks your sound and checks your levels, right? Like, well. that DJs and stuff aren't crushing the room with with clipping. Someone that's going to make sure the equipment is set up and put away or covered or whatever the upkeep of the of the equipment, right? Somebody that's going to switch out equipment for various DJs based on what equipment they use, because any real venue that is a nightclub should be able to accommodate for the various DJs that they're bringing in. How many of them do? I can think of like one or two in the state. Right, in our market, in our state, right. You know, the sound person ensures that sound is ready to go, DJ equipment is set up, ready to go, levels are correct, the microphone's working, it has batteries, and that we're ready for a successful night. This gets overlooked because it it's expensive, right? But I think having somebody in place to check these things, even if it's like once a weekend, not like a full on sound guy all the time. I'm thinking like mid -level places that might not need or want a sound guy every night, right? If you're a mid -level spot, I'm gonna speak to mid -level, you speak to high level, because you deal more in that. If you're a mid -level spot, you need to have somebody coming in at least once a month to make sure everything is in line the way you left it the month before. Make sure your levels are all correct on your apps. Make sure everything's balanced on if you're using like sound through like an iPad, make sure that's all set. Make sure that the equipment is all kind of taken care of the way it's supposed to be. And then if you do that once a month instead of once a year, you're gonna save a lot of money in blown speakers, having to replace different types of equipment. It will save you in the long run, even though it becomes a monthly expense. It's just the price of doing business in general upkeep of having good entertainment. It's expensive and venues don't want to pay and they also don't understand how important the upkeep is, you know, like, like, Cream's here, he'll handle it or Gary's here. Like, it's fine. Don't like we're good, but we're not professional sound people, you know, I can raise or lower an amp or turn the bass down, but I don't know how to professionally, you know, level a room. I just don't. I don't. Yeah. be like telling one of your servers to go in the kitchen and be the executive chef, right? Like, it just doesn't match. They might work in the same space, it just doesn't match. I think in a perfect world, have someone in the venue that knows how to handle the equipment, that knows how to set it up and break it down or change out something. And that person can also run your lights in a night. You know, get two jobs for the price of one from a nightclub kind of thing. Mm And you're covering your bases on this other part of your nightlife experience that is never discussed, never talked about, but is extremely important in how customers perceive your place and how fun your place is and how good they think your club is. They don't know, the customers don't know this person is so important. The owners don't know how important this person is, but they really are. I think sometimes even the customers don't know why they generally think a place is good. Sure, the music's good, right? But if you have the music is good, the lighting's good, and the sound is good, and like I can feel it, and that's why I like to be there and dance, like until one of those things is sacrificed, you know, you're not really, if you have all of those things, that's a complete nightclub, that's a complete nightclub experience. That's why that person went out to do that. once one of those things is sacrificed, whether the patron knows it or not, they're going to leave because, the sound wasn't as good. Right? Next door has better, it hurts my ears, Right. Right, if you're a venue owner, somebody says it's too loud, it just means that the sound isn't up to snuff. Right? I've stood in front of the most incredible, incredibly huge 12 foot tall speakers. and was able to talk to the person at full blast. That's good sound, right? The layman's person might not realize it, but they're like, I'm a little annoyed, I'm gonna move on to the next. the lighting's not as good, so I'm not as engaged with what's going on, so I'm gonna move on to the next. Because everybody is so used to these heightened experiences at this point. We say this all the time. The regular person now has been to a festival. The regular person has now been to a Brooklyn Mirage style place, traveled to Ibiza, traveled to Vegas. Name a person that hasn't been to a Vegas club. You probably haven't met one. That person, that's what they're basing their experiences off of. In their local setting, if you can touch that, if you could just touch it, good. good sound, good lighting, and a good DJ, you're at least touching that experience. The minute you sacrifice one of those things, that person's like, well, this place could be better, because I've seen it in Vegas and I've seen it Miami. Even though it might not correlate as far as how good the places are, like a place in Jersey City is not gonna equal a place in Las Vegas, but like I just said, if you can at least touch each one of those little aspects of nightlife, you'll have a successful place. Yeah, I agree. I this is another one of those situations where the responsibility falls on the DJ shoulder because that's just what ownership does, right? They're looking to save some money. Why should I pay a light person to be here or an equipment person to be here every single weekend? I got cream like I'll just have cream do it. I'll just have my resident DJ do it. I'll just have a person I trust. Like they're here, we're fine. But that's not the case. You know, that's not the case. And it's unfortunate. And it's again, one of the reasons why nightlife is not as good as it once was. Every club I used to work in back in the day, even the ones that weren't that busy had someone who was there to mess with the equipment, set it up, fix it, and was there to adjust the sound and do the lights. There was a DJ and there was a light person. And then there was also in the biggest places, a sound tech. Like all the AC spots. You have a DJ, you have a light person, you have a sound tech. And everyone has their own job. It's not the DJ's job to be all three of those things. It's impossible. Nothing makes me more crazy when I'm in a DJ booth and someone's telling me like, I cream, you just do the lights while you DJ. Like, no, bro, I'm not fucking touching the lights. That's not my job. I don't know how to do it. I don't want to do it. And it takes away from me doing my actual job, which is to DJ and crush. Right. This has gotten lost in the age of there not being electronic stores that take care of venues, like places that sell speakers and DJ equipment and those have gone away. Those places used to be the place that would, they would fix your, you'd buy your equipment from them, they would. wire your entire place with lighting and sound, your DJ equipment, if you have live music, they took care of that. And then that place would supply or knew somebody that, this guy's the light guy. We use him all the time, why don't you use him? This is your sound guy, he'll be in every week, use him. You need something fixed, you need something fixed, we'll come pick it up, we'll drop off something. We have a venue that they still do this and it's. because this guy's old school and he owned a live music venue, so he still has connections in this world where they come in and they swap out equipment if it needs to be repaired. That, we surprisingly got CDJ 3000s in there. Why? Because the people that take care of that equipment knew that that stuff needed to go. Right, you can't get 2000s anymore. You haven't been able to get 2000s for four years, probably. New. those 2000s so much that they knew that like, why repair these? We're gonna put the 3000s in, we'll take those 2000s, probably repair them and sell them, right? Or use them in parts. Whatever the reason was, you know what, like it got updated without us ever having to ask because that's the old school way of doing it. These new school owners don't know that way and why. That used to be an all -encompassing one. person job or one business's job. And that was not the DJ. Well, COVID happened and none of those businesses want to do repairs anymore because it's a pain in the ass. You can't get the parts. You're not making a lot of money on it. Why would I want to spend my time repairing broken equipment when I can spend my time trying to sell $100 ,000 jobs? you know, like it just doesn't, from a business perspective, it doesn't make as much sense. And I totally get it. Like, I get it. that business has gotten watered down to just installation. It's not installation, upkeep, then like, you know, repair, like not the, because all of that stuff got too expensive to sell all as one, right? name like, as of this week, I could name one DJ company or person or people that could actually fix repair equipment professionally. I found one other company, but I've yet to reach out to them so far. like, Class Kills, they've been helping us out with some stuff, but like, they're an hour away from our venues, you know? It's not the most ideal situation. Yeah, they killed it. They did a great job. They picked up stuff on a Tuesday. They dropped it off on a Thursday. that's with that. And I know they traveled yesterday during rush hour. So probably a two hour, probably a two hour commute, hour and a half commute somewhere between there. And they dropped it off. then the DJ last night, who's not our DJ, but I was in contact with him to receive and hook all the stuff up. said it was amazing. said it was all, everything felt professional, smooth, brand new, which was a huge testament to the work that they did. So shout out to Yeah, there's a huge gap right now, at least here, and I would assume in other places for someone or a company to come in and be that point person where like, I'm going to get you a light person and a sound tech and make sure your equipment's always on point. Maybe it's a subscription fee. Maybe I'm coming up with a business idea on the on the program right now. Right? Like, pay this much money per month and if you need a CDJ swap, I'll be there tomorrow. Get down, DJ services, coming soon. I ain't doing it, but. Might be a division. Alright, so we talked a lot about sound. We all know the sound part as DJs is super important, right? I think we've hammered that home and we've talked about it on number of episodes. I want to talk a little bit about the light person because I was in a situation recently where... you know, we had a lot of people in one of our spots, like one of the clubs I was playing in, but like the vibe just wasn't there. The crowd wasn't as energetic as myself and the other DJs thought they should be. And I'm sitting there like, man, it's like 11 .30 and like the lights have been on the same preset and it's super bright in here and the red up lights on the walls are on and it's like, where's our light guy? And I go down there and there's no light person, we just have a bar back sitting there, like making sure a preset is running. And I said to the manager, like, I'm not gonna go on until we have a light person because it matters. And again, this is something customers don't totally notice, but if you have a light person that understands the music and even better, now in 2024, the light person can literally see. the CDJs and what you're playing and the colors and when the drop is coming so that they can adjust the lights based on the music because they see the waveform, which is fucking amazing. But someone that understands how to adjust the lights with the music, cryo on the drop, strobes on the drop, that is so important to creating a vibe and creating energy and changing it from this is open time to this is headliner time or this is early part of the night to this is energetic part of the night. It's so incredibly important. And I saw it firsthand in not having a light person having a packed room, but just not having the environment that we necessarily could have had because we didn't have dark, a dark setting. didn't have the lights changing slow to fast based on the music. We didn't hit the cryo at 1130, 1145 when people are like starting to get starting to feel good. Like I said before, this is the environment that people expect when they go out to have this experience. And when that expectation is not met, that's when you produce a flat room. Whether that music is amazing or not, doesn't matter who's in that DJ booth that night. You could have had Fisher in the DJ booth. All right, maybe people would have been a little more excited. But if you're not. If there's not production behind it, it's not as exciting. I have it happen in one of my rooms constantly, one of my regular rooms, and the poor manager winds up being the light guy, and he comes in the booth maybe 30 minutes a night. And for that 30 minutes, it's the most energetic dance floor I have. Bar none, not even close. I know they're pushing more drinks across that. More shots, I should say, across that bar because people are excited to be there. And when you don't have that, you're not producing the environment, you're losing sales, you're losing excitement. What makes you want to have a shot with your friends, right? You're excited, a great song just came on, big drop, you're dancing around. You know what, let's get fucked up, let's go grab some shots. You know, now you're selling because you're selling an environment. And I think it just gets overlooked because a lot of times ownership's not in the position to where they're on the dance floor or they're not even in the room. Ownerships not going to Mirage, ownership not going to Ibiza, ownership not going to Vegas, they're older. Managers? Maybe. Maybe not though. You know? not, because they're bogged down too. Managers are underpaid and overworked, right? So they're in a very particular spot. say to you and I means what's going on around what's going on? What's what what places are doing? What's doing well? What's not doing well? What what do we need to do? Like that's always because they don't know they don't go out. Right, right. And I think there's been, as we always say, there's been such a shift, right, in the last five years that those people that do own spots still are owning the same places and they haven't been anywhere during that shift in how people are consuming nightlife. So, but the lighting is so underrated, it so, so, underrated and it's just. it gets put in even at the lowest end places because people are like, okay, we want some kind of vibe, but a lot of times it's just not being executed correctly. I think there's, I'd rather have no lights than a shitty preset and no light person to run it. I'd rather be in the dark. Yeah. Maybe that's just me being a dick right now. But like, and maybe in that situation, I'd like, man, I wish I had a preset. like, I'm just trying to prove a point, right? My point is, if you're investing thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars to put in lighting, why can't you invest a couple hundred bucks a weekend to have someone who knows how to run the lights and helps add to the experience of what the customer is experiencing on a nightly basis? Yep. don't fucking get it. I don't get it. I don't get it. I never will. We will never own a venue, so we will never know why. I mean, money. Money is why. Money is why. But again, this is just every, like, the DJ getting put in the position to take on all these extra responsibilities and all these extra roles. And it's not our job. It's not our job to do the lights. It's not our job to make sure the amps are turned up to the right whatever to make sure it sounds good in the place. It's not our job to fix the equipment. It's not our job to hit the cryo. Maybe sometimes. I mean, that's fun. I like doing that. But more and more responsibilities are getting poured on our plates. And we've just reached a point where it's too much. It's too much. And customer experience is taking a hit because of it. They are not experiencing your nightclub as much because you don't want to spend the extra money for the people to make sure your customers have a good night. Next time one of the owners asks, can we do better? I'm just gonna send them this portion of the podcast. Don't ask me what I can do better because I'll send you a list of 30 things that you can do better. Every place. It's true. It's across the board. It's across the board. It's every single place. And it's usually going to cost somewhere between, I don't know, $5 ,000 and $10 ,000. There are some places that do a decent job. I don't think there's one place that's like, this is incredible. I can't believe like even on my travel stuff that I'm thinking about, it's very rare where I can think of a few. Trio, Trio always is top notch, but Eric is top notch. So like he drives that. right? It's hard to hit everything, right? It's hard to be perfect, and nobody's ever going to be. But, you know, when you're struggling, if you're struggling with just maintaining good sound, you just, there has to be a billion other things, because that is so basic. Yeah. Right, so if you're a business owner right now and you're struggling and your sound isn't good, well, correct that first and then go from there because that's first and foremost to get the biggest bang for your buck. You'll get money back immediately across the bar in just having good sounds. You'll maintain your crowds a lot better in just having good sounds. It's not gonna be cheap. Sounds expensive, because it's important. Sound isn't expensive because it's not important. Sounds expensive because it's the most important thing in running an iClub. That's why good DJs are expensive too. Right. Because after the sound, DJ is probably the next. I know bartenders and other people will probably argue with us on that one, but. I went to a very, very, very small place in West Palm. Maybe 100 people, maybe, in a packed room. They had a light guy. Yeah, I take that comment back. Each thing is equally as important. And when they're all done right, it comes together like a transformer to create this incredible experience. And if one piece, like the light arm is missing, you're out there with a transformer with one less arm. They only got one arm. Terrible analogy. I saw it. I have a Transformers t -shirt. I saw it before. almost wore it on the show. So I have Transformers on my brain. But no, it's true. You really need to have all aspects of the business running equally or close to equally and not overlook one for the other too too much. you can only bandage things to an extent until something needs to change. Yeah. Me and RM worked together recently and like, we'll probably have him on the show and we can talk more about this stuff. But like, we were in a new room that neither of us had really been at before and it was super nice, cool, cool vibe. And like, little tiny things like the cocktail waitresses weren't clearing the cocktail tables. It's like, man, this looks terrible. Like, this is where people walk in. I wouldn't want to sit down at a table and hang out where there's empty glasses and dishes and like, just little shit like that. But that's what I mean. Every aspect is important to create this amazing experience that a customer is gonna remember and say, have to go back to that place. The empty cups on the bar or on a cocktail table, yeah, I'm nitpicking and it might sound like a little tiny thing, but to me, if I was the owner or manager there, I'd be all over my team like, yo, you can't leave this stuff there. If someone gets up and leaves, this has to go immediately. And if a security guard sees someone get up and go and leave and a server doesn't pick it up, Like you need to flash that person to go take care of that table. Like it's on everybody to make sure the night is flowing. don't know. Nobody wants me to own a venue, because I'll be like a fucking dictator out here yelling at people. You have no employees. Nah, I would. But yeah, I would drive myself crazy. That's why I would never own one because my standards would be so high. All right. It's tough. But all right, let's, I think it's a good point to wrap. Upcoming gigs, actually got I was supposed to DJ the grand opening of this spot in Providence called Medici shouts of any vibe and screw and RM. Unfortunately, as we know, the grand opening had to get pushed because of like, building and permits and certain things with the city. It's really hard to knock down like, hey, we're gonna set this as the grand opening and make it happen. You know, there's outside forces. So unfortunately, I'm not going to make it up to Providence. But I have Jersey, New York, Philly. Charlotte in the next couple weeks. So if I'm coming to your city and you want to say what's up, hit me up, come out, I'll guest list you, come out to a show and come chill. Love it. I got nothing going on for the next couple weeks, thank God. You need a break. A lot of travel for you. I've been up by you three times in six weeks. Yeah, it's enough. Alright guys, thanks for listening to this episode. We will catch you next week. Peace. peace.