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It was fairly last minute and although the manager was well connected, it wasn’t an agency. It was an interesting conversation with the manager:
Manager: How much do you want to charge?
Me: I don’t know?
Manager: Here are the details so you can send them an invoice.
*blank face*
Manager: Do you know how to send an invoice?
Errmm.
At the time, I couldn’t drive. I didn’t have a PA system and my rig consisted of a two-channel mixer and two hi-fi CD players. I’d blown up the hi-fi speakers at a friend’s birthday party the month before! “Do they want any lights?” I asked. “And I can take a smoke machine?” “No, don't worry about that,” he said. “They just want some music. And you can borrow our PA system.”
I guess I must have made a good impression on him before this point. You could say it was a case of being in the right place at the right time, but I believe you can create your own luck by just getting out there. The more action you take, the more luck you generate! Until this point I hadn’t really ‘made money’ from my hobby, just DJing for friends and family, and at the youth club. This really opened my eyes to the possibilities and got me thinking about the future.
A month later I was contacted to play a birthday party for someone via a mutual friend. This time I knew how to send them an invoice and payment details to confirm the booking. I gave the student radio manager a call to see if I could borrow the PA system again: “Sorry, we don’t really hire it out,” he said, instead pointing me in the direction of an AV company who could dry hire one for £75. I decided to look at the numbers, since I had only charged the client £100 for the gig. It didn’t really stack up. If I hired the PA for £75 I would only be left with £25. Plus, I’d need to take the night off from the pizza takeaway I had been working at, which would have made me almost £50 anyway...
“What if I buy my own PA system?” I thought. 30 minutes on Google and I had found something that looked like it would do the trick – and all for just £375. So, I wrote out my rudimentary business plan. If I could get at least one gig a month for a year, the PA system would effectively be half the price of hiring one, so that would make me better off than if I just worked at the takeaway.
It seemed like a massive investment to me at the time, but without that first step I would never have developed the business I have today. You have to take the opportunities that come your way!
As much as I still enjoy being part of many weddings and special events now, the numbers have always been important to me (I did study maths and business, after all!). If it was just about having fun, I could have carried on with the birthday parties for friends and family that had given me the initial experience and built my confidence.
When it comes to running a DJ business there are two distinct sides: the ‘business side’ such as sales, marketing and managing the finances; and the ‘operations side’, which includes looking after the kit and actually getting out there and doing your thing at events. One can’t exist without the other. As a solo DJ you’re responsible for everything. When you have to divide your time between the two sides it can be difficult to maintain a good balance. Understanding what it costs to provide the service is just as an important part of our pricing strategy now. We need to consider the cost of actually doing the gig, then the overheads, marketing and VAT, plus the business needs to make a profit.
In the early days of my business it wasn’t the thought of playing more gigs that pushed me to test different marketing strategies – I wanted to make more money. The fact that I could achieve that doing something I enjoyed was a bonus.
One of the first things I tried was the free local magazine that was delivered to all the houses in the area. It was about £25 for a small placement in the monthly edition. I phoned them up to find out how it worked and they offered me a ‘great deal’ if I booked three months for only £37. “That's outside of my budget,” I said, “I’ll just stick with the one for now.” So I emailed over my artwork, which I had created in Microsoft Paint, and then posted a cheque for the £25. The magazine arrived and I thought, yes, this is it! Here we go! But nothing happened.
Manager: How much do you want to charge?
Me: I don’t know?
Manager: Here are the details so you can send them an invoice.
*blank face*
Manager: Do you know how to send an invoice?
Errmm.
At the time, I couldn’t drive. I didn’t have a PA system and my rig consisted of a two-channel mixer and two hi-fi CD players. I’d blown up the hi-fi speakers at a friend’s birthday party the month before! “Do they want any lights?” I asked. “And I can take a smoke machine?” “No, don't worry about that,” he said. “They just want some music. And you can borrow our PA system.”
I guess I must have made a good impression on him before this point. You could say it was a case of being in the right place at the right time, but I believe you can create your own luck by just getting out there. The more action you take, the more luck you generate! Until this point I hadn’t really ‘made money’ from my hobby, just DJing for friends and family, and at the youth club. This really opened my eyes to the possibilities and got me thinking about the future.
A month later I was contacted to play a birthday party for someone via a mutual friend. This time I knew how to send them an invoice and payment details to confirm the booking. I gave the student radio manager a call to see if I could borrow the PA system again: “Sorry, we don’t really hire it out,” he said, instead pointing me in the direction of an AV company who could dry hire one for £75. I decided to look at the numbers, since I had only charged the client £100 for the gig. It didn’t really stack up. If I hired the PA for £75 I would only be left with £25. Plus, I’d need to take the night off from the pizza takeaway I had been working at, which would have made me almost £50 anyway...
“What if I buy my own PA system?” I thought. 30 minutes on Google and I had found something that looked like it would do the trick – and all for just £375. So, I wrote out my rudimentary business plan. If I could get at least one gig a month for a year, the PA system would effectively be half the price of hiring one, so that would make me better off than if I just worked at the takeaway.
It seemed like a massive investment to me at the time, but without that first step I would never have developed the business I have today. You have to take the opportunities that come your way!
As much as I still enjoy being part of many weddings and special events now, the numbers have always been important to me (I did study maths and business, after all!). If it was just about having fun, I could have carried on with the birthday parties for friends and family that had given me the initial experience and built my confidence.
When it comes to running a DJ business there are two distinct sides: the ‘business side’ such as sales, marketing and managing the finances; and the ‘operations side’, which includes looking after the kit and actually getting out there and doing your thing at events. One can’t exist without the other. As a solo DJ you’re responsible for everything. When you have to divide your time between the two sides it can be difficult to maintain a good balance. Understanding what it costs to provide the service is just as an important part of our pricing strategy now. We need to consider the cost of actually doing the gig, then the overheads, marketing and VAT, plus the business needs to make a profit.
In the early days of my business it wasn’t the thought of playing more gigs that pushed me to test different marketing strategies – I wanted to make more money. The fact that I could achieve that doing something I enjoyed was a bonus.
One of the first things I tried was the free local magazine that was delivered to all the houses in the area. It was about £25 for a small placement in the monthly edition. I phoned them up to find out how it worked and they offered me a ‘great deal’ if I booked three months for only £37. “That's outside of my budget,” I said, “I’ll just stick with the one for now.” So I emailed over my artwork, which I had created in Microsoft Paint, and then posted a cheque for the £25. The magazine arrived and I thought, yes, this is it! Here we go! But nothing happened.
The full review can be found in Pro Mobile Issue 107, Pages 48-51.
