Yep
- Thread starter tunes4046
- Start date
Bullsh...
When a prospect tells you "NO" it's a reflection solely on you: the person making that pitch and it has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on anyone else.
When I can post a successful better bid than someone else it only proves the other guy failed to properly scale their offer.
I've offered work to a lot of DJs who's prices are completely void of reality. They have this one magical image in their head of their own unique "ideal client" and they may as well be tossing pennies into a fountain because that's just how baseless their wish list really is. They get a handful of hits - just enough that like the addicted gambler they continue this pattern until years later they post something like this meme - blaming others for their own failures.
Meanwhile, there are plenty of other DJs who consistently fill their calendars with premium events at premium prices because they have the skills to identify appropriate buyers, sell and negotiate effectively, and then consistently deliver great results. None of these people are whining and crying about being "sabotaged" by some mythical crap DJ victimizing customers with booking voodoo.
This is the 21st Century - there is no mystery about DJs. If we can't consistently get our price - our offer simply isn't a good one.
When a prospect tells you "NO" it's a reflection solely on you: the person making that pitch and it has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on anyone else.
When I can post a successful better bid than someone else it only proves the other guy failed to properly scale their offer.
I've offered work to a lot of DJs who's prices are completely void of reality. They have this one magical image in their head of their own unique "ideal client" and they may as well be tossing pennies into a fountain because that's just how baseless their wish list really is. They get a handful of hits - just enough that like the addicted gambler they continue this pattern until years later they post something like this meme - blaming others for their own failures.
Meanwhile, there are plenty of other DJs who consistently fill their calendars with premium events at premium prices because they have the skills to identify appropriate buyers, sell and negotiate effectively, and then consistently deliver great results. None of these people are whining and crying about being "sabotaged" by some mythical crap DJ victimizing customers with booking voodoo.
This is the 21st Century - there is no mystery about DJs. If we can't consistently get our price - our offer simply isn't a good one.
Thanks sir. That's one of the best post you've ever made because you didn't put anyone down for how they are running their own business.
No where did I blame anyone. Surely you’re not so blind to reality that you don’t see the bottom end of the market beating each other up for $150 to $300 gigs. We all know you have a magic Solution for everyone’s issues, yet can’t offer any help without a narcissistic, condescending comment just to inflate your own ego.
There is no way you can talk to people in the real world the way you do online, or I would bet someone would have physically harmed you by now. While you have great knowledge and could be very helpful to many, you fail to be able to deliver that knowledge in anywhere near a helpful manner.
You are the true definition of a keyboard warrior
You can sure tell you didn’t read everything he posted he put the whole industry down
No, you posted a 30 year old meme do it for you.
That segment of the market is not "beating each other up." There's a member here doing a karaoke event in that price range. Is that not a itself magic solution? Where's the fist fight? How condescending is it to post something that suggests he's "burning the industry" and "working for scraps." That's not at all consistent with his enthusiasm and obvious satisfaction. He's working and you're complaining - who's having more fun?
"We" didn't create this thread, you did - with a single classist meme that is itself rooted in narcissism, much like your reactive and hollow outrage.
There's been a legion of people through the years trying to push this worthless meme of fake "collectivism." The handful of people left on this isolated board is an example of how well that works at drawing people in.
I live in the real world where people like Taso succeed at identifying the highest and best positioning of their talent and then apply themselves relentlessly to closing their best deals. The same world where people like Mixx actively engage in communities and stay connected with a creative practice they love. There's a whole world and proven range of practitioners that can lift themselves without need for an underclass to stand on.
A standing karaoke gig and one-off events are two completely different animals. My karaoke gig is on Wednesdays and Fridays, neither of which typically interfere with higher paying gigs (weddings), plus it adds roughly $25k per year to my income. Now if I were accepting $300/night for weddings, yep, I'd say you have a beef with me messing up pay levels for other wedding professionals.
If you're not IN the bottom end of the market...
if you're not trying to service that kind of clientele...
If you're even considering doing a gig for $300...
how are they affecting you?
Also, I'm sure there are people who are charging $1000+
who are beating up the other people charging that much.
There's a DJ for every budget, and a budget for every DJ.
And there's competition at every level.
I have a question. Is there a DJ causing problems for your business? What I learned is to stop blaming other people for my short coming and keep the focus on what I need to do and fix the things I need to fix. There are those on here that are not worried about a DJ charging $300 to do a wedding for example.
They are exactly the same thing.
You're paid one date at a time and it can be terminated at will.
There is no particular reason our karaoke presentation gets magnanimously better on Saturday than it was on Wednesday. We're merely exploiting a customer's one-off willingness to expend more money while in a "holiday" state of mind.
Does our favorite beer taste better when we pay twice as much for it at resort instead of the local pub? No, but we're simply more inclined to over-pay while on vacation and "living large."
Same principle at work in the mobile DJ biz.
This is why price rejection occurs whenever we encounter a prospect who is not buying into the living-large model and is fully aware of the utility of what they might actually be seeking. Hence, the bar is willing to pay a utilization fee for karaoke, but not the "holiday" price.
No, it's not the same. I show up twice per week. As long as I do a sufficient job, I keep my job. One-off gigs (weddings) happen exactly one night at a time. They are completely different.
Where is this mythical "bottom" that you speak of?
My number is more like $400-$600 for the occasional teen dance, or similar baseline DJ request. However, these dances are held by entities who are major institutional customers that pay me very well for more substantial events, or referrals for clients using their facility. Then there are local community agencies that are a public relations opportunity for me to be out and seen locally.
There's no brawl going on here because there's simply no one else in this space. DJs who could benefit from this work aren't because they don't truly understand that real business is relational not transactional. At least a quarter of my calls and emails are not even gigs at all - it's referrals of people with a question they want informed advice about. The gig comes later when they want to hire the guy who gave them the informed solution to their problem.
If our DJ business operates no differently than an Ice Cream truck - then we should expect to drive around for quite some time before locating a prospect willing to pay 5 times what a popsicle is actually worth.
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How then, do you explain DJs who's annual wedding, mitzvah and similar bookings consistently outpace your karaoke dates year after year? I spent at least 25 years performing on average 4 times a weekend up to 50 weeks per year. That's twice the frequency of your karaoke gig.
There are plenty of DJs still out there working at that pace today!
That's at will employment, a one-off gig repeated.
PS: Why is the bar set at sufficient, rather than exceptional? That's not meant to be a dig - it's just an observation about perception and how you choose to define your own work.
Exceptional doesn't have to mean extravagant, lavish, or opulent. If you're able to achieve a client's desired results at $10,000. for what would otherwise would have cost them $23,000. - that's exceptional. My argument is that the club getting karaoke 2 nights a week for ?? $250+ /night - is already exceptional. So, why persist at framing it otherwise?
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My comment is "sufficient" means I keep getting invited back the next week. Exceptional means I'm growing their client base (which I am). I currently run 30+ singers with a high of 45. Things are going well and I don't have to re-sell a new gig every night. Just show up, setup and do a good job.
I would not use this language in front of your hosts. Exceptional is not what you think it is.
Growing their client base is NOT YOUR JOB, and they know that. They've known it all along. Your job is to increase the stay time of the people who do come in, and extend that of the regulars as well. Everything else is done organically - you can only influence the experience within that space, at that time.
This is the nature of the nightclub and bar business. I started in nightclubs and hotel lounge venues. Each month we met with the venue manager and their concerns were always the same: how long did the crowd stay and were they buying drinks?
An example of this in a major dance club (800 guest capacity in the main dance/performance room) was a manager who actually made the trek to the mezzanine level DJ booth to tell me that people weren't buying enough drinks and that I needed to do something to with the music to change that. I hyped the BPM to a really high level and got the place jumping with a super packed dance floor. Then, he returned to the booth the tell me "that's great, but now they're just asking for water."
The real solution to that is not 'hype' it's regular rotation during the night and monitoring how long the lines are at the bar. It's the DJs job to maintain the lines without letting them grow to the point that frustration sends people elsewhere to buy a drink.
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Growing their client base is precisely my job, and I'm doing it very well. That's why they want to keep me around. Talent often thinks (wrongly) that promotion is exclusively the job of the club owner. It's not. As talent, I'm supposed to be pushing the club and bringing in new clientele. I'm doing this, in spades.
The term "bottom" was not my word.Where is this mythical "bottom" that you speak of?
My number is more like $400-$600 for the occasional teen dance, or similar baseline DJ request. However, these dances are held by entities who are major institutional customers that pay me very well for more substantial events, or referrals for clients using their facility. Then there are local community agencies that are a public relations opportunity for me to be out and seen locally.
There's no brawl going in here because there's simply no one else in this space. DJs who could be benefitting from this work aren't because they don't truly understand that real business is relational not transactional. At least a quarter of my calls and emails are not even gigs at all - it's referrals of people with a question they want informed advice about. The gig comes later when they want to hire the guy who gave them the informed solution to their problem.
If our DJ business operates no differently than an Ice Cream truck - then we should expect to drive around for quite some time before locating a prospect willing to pay 5 times what a popsicle is actually worth.
I was only pointing out that it's useless to complain about the lower portion of the price list...if you don't cater to clients or dj's who do.
There are plenty of clients who only want to pay the bare minimum, just as there are plenty of d.J's who cannot seem to get work without lowering their price.
If you prefer to buy a Mercedes rather than a Yugo, that is your choice, but not everybody has that choice.
How have you been promoting this venue? Surely, you're not implying that your mere presence is promotional?
Are you printing posters? Is there a mailing list? Are you dropping the name of this club while working in another? Are we relying on traffic to your website? Define: promotion if you would?
The point here, is not proving me wrong it's establishing where the true ground is and that what we think and do is rooted in a functional and demonstrable reality - not simply our self-image.