All right. DJ tips in under a minute. This one is about Serato and drives and music. If you look down here, you see I have a crate called backup. I always use external drives. Every time I do a gig, it's on one of these bad boys, an external drive. So I decided that if the drive goes down, I need something internally. And since I don't carry really any music on my laptops that go to gigs, because it's all external, I'm going to make a backup file, I'm going to fill it with probably 2,000 to 3,000 songs and put it onto my desktop so that when I'm out in a gig, if the drive should go down -- hopefully it won't, but if it did, I'd have music immediately ready and going. Now, a lot of people will say, I only use internal, that's cool, I only use external. So it's not a give and take, it's really what you prefer. ... [read more]

Have you thought about when your last DJ gig would be? Have you envisioned walking off the stage and packing up for the last time? Do you have your DJ career and retirement mapped out? What if "life" just came in and trashed all those plans and dreams? Have you and your family prepared for something like that? That dreadful scenario is happening right now for one of our DJ brothers. In 2017 Richard Mills (who hails from the kiwi nation of New Zealand) was dealing with life, marriage, kids, bills and a busy DJ schedule when he was diagnosed with brain cancer. He pressed on and with the support of his ... [read more]

What do you think your guests will remember most when your wedding is over? The first thing most guests say when asked about a wedding is whether they had fun or not. That means the atmosphere of your wedding is what will impact yours and your guests’ memory of your big day. Guess who controls the environment? The DJ!! Choosing the right DJ can make or break your wedding. Hiring the first DJ available for your wedding is far from the best way to choose the right DJ for your wedding. Once you have the right DJ booked for your wedding, you can really have some fun focusing on other parts of your wedding planning. Pr... [read more]

All right. Quick DJ tips. I get this a lot, where can I go to learn more about Serato DJ? And of course, you have the Serato website with their forms, you have some of my videos and other videos, but my boy, DJ Hapa here at Skratch DJ Academy in L.A. has a four-part series right now that you can sign up for on learning Serato DJ. It's got everything from introduction to stuff a little bit more involved and it looks really cool. I know a lot of people are always asking, where can I go, where can I learn more, where can I buy something or get in a program? And Skratch DJ Academy here with my boy Hapa is a great place to look and a great place to start. So I'll put the URL down here, give you a little link, but seriously a great way to get going with Serato DJ outside of just the tutorial videos that myself and ... [read more]

I am genuinely excited about the new BPM Supreme mobile app for a number of reasons. I’m just going to say my one complaint about the app right off the bat, and then I’ll discuss all the stuff I can’t believe I ever lived without! No surprise with a brand new app, but it has been glitchy for me on my phone. You know you really love an app when you power through the glitches to keep using it. Definitely true in my case...and I’m sure BPM Supreme will be rolling out updates quickly to get the app running smoothly. So when you open the BPM Supreme app, you see seven sections: Top Downloads, New Releases, News, Exclusives, Curated Sets, Radio Char... [read more]

I had the chance to sit down at the NAMM show with Director of Operations for BPM Supreme, Siraji “Raj” Thomas, and pick his brain. We first met at a ground-breaking event hosted by the online record pool called the Female DJ & Producer Forum. As one of the female DJ panelists for the event, I was given three months of free access to their DJ pool. I quickly fell in love with BPM Supreme and switched over from Digital DJ Pool. Still in recovery from the roof-blazin' industry party BPM Supreme hosted at Rumba Room Live the first night of NAMM, Raj (also known as DJ Raji Rabbit) and I mixed a bottle of orange juice with a travel bottle of white wi... [read more]

DJ tips in under a minute. We as DJs are asked to impart our professionalism, advice and knowledge of what goes on in weddings and this is something that just came across my desk. This is a company, Qalo, Q-a-l-o. That's Qalo.com and they sell medical grade silicone rings and these are for athletes, people running around outdoors, people who have a job where a precious metal ring may bother them, but more importantly, let's say somebody's an electrician and that ring makes contact with electricity and they get killed. So you don't want that. Also, people that work with heavy machinery, tools, equipment that could catch the ring and rip a finger off. So next time you get a client, especially if they're in a trade, just say, for a wedding band, you may want to consider this place. They're super not expensive, ... [read more]

In the past six months my business has seen $65,000+ of bookings come directly from social media. That’s nothing to sneeze at. (I’m on a plane writing this, and as I typed “sneeze” someone sneezed. New superpower? Maybe!). So, I’ve decided to invest more of my efforts in social media. If you have too it’s hard to figure out where to start and what’s working. My friends over at Animoto let me in on their yearly social media survey of 500 marketers and 1,000 consumers. Let me tell you, this information is the perfect springboard to where I’m going to start my 2019 strategy. Here are the pieces of info that I found to be most important, and... [read more]

The first thing Troy Adams does when I meet him is apologize for the glitter on his sport coat. He’s just come from a networking event for wedding professionals where the festivities were capped off by a demonstration of glitter cannons. As the owner of Carolina DJ Professionals based in Charlotte, NC, Troy is accustomed to professional occasions such as this—glitter cannons and all. His involvement, however, goes beyond attending them. Troy also hosts his own series of Lunch & Learn events designed to engage DJs and other vendors with expert speakers and lively conversation. The Lunch & Learn series is just one example of the many ways that Troy seeks to highlight the importance of community within the wedding and events industry.read more]

In my MBLV23 seminar, “The Help Strategy,” we broke down different ways you can differentiate, create and appreciate in your business while maintaining a focus on being more customer centric in your business. Customer centric is the future of business. For too long, businesses have relied on advertising, cheap prices and gimmicks to sell. No longer. Social media has given transparency to business. Those that fully embrace customer centric business practices will thrive... and those that rely on old school tactics will struggle to stay alive. How can your company be customer centric? Let’s look how a company—not in our niche but a wildly successf... [read more]