What is funny is I was out doing a karaoke event with my son, he was laughing about how slowly I typed searches into the computer. He didn’t call me old, just slow. But yes I don’t have stamina I did when I was 16. At 59 and 45 years in the business I can really feel each event now and recovering from takes much longer. So I give myself more travel time & setup/breakdown time.
I second the idea of having a assistant, luckily I have two kids which like going to events and don’t think I should be working alone. Thinking back for first 5 years in business I never worked alone. A combination of heavy equipment & records you really didn’t do stuff alone. For about 10+ years used my older stuff to setup & supply equipment to couple of DJs. When I didn’t have my own event I would handle it, usually I’d stay as I was always fed. I would checkout the other DJs in the venue too. But find dependable people is hard, why I don’t know, getting paid eat and attend a party, wow tough work. The kicker is after using the equipment for years, then letting other DJs use the crap out of it, I still manage to get money for the stuff. What I will say is back in the 80’s & 90’s the Peavey stuff I had really held up, amazing
The Plan now is to keep going after events which age isn’t a factor. I am still at the colleges but I don’t even discuss DJing with them anymore except for maybe the alumni association event. Rather I promote all my other events.