Show Notes:
How to increase your wedding business conversion rate? One of the biggest stumbling blocks for Wedding Business owners is conversion rate. If you get the enquiry but can’t make the sale, something is going wrong. Today I am chatting with founder of Hampshire Event DJS about how he has ensured his conversion rate is one of the best in the industry. We talk about his radio background, his rise from DJ to one of the most trusted DJ teams in Hampshire and his new adventure into the world of tech.
Check out the DJ Teams tech / music selection tool
Follow Hampshire Event DJS on Instagram
Find out more about the Wedding Pro Agency
Time Stamps:
00:14 – Transitioning to Wedding Marketing Strategies
00:28 – The Journey from Radio to DJing: Lessons Learned
09:05 – Building a Resilient Business Model in the DJ Industry
19:36 – Building a Strong Team of DJs
22:15 – Understanding Marketing Strategies for DJs
32:56 – Understanding Conversion Rates
39:20 – Understanding the Psychology of Music Choices for Events
44:22 – Setting Expectations for a Successful Wedding DJ Experience
46:32 – Understanding the DJ’s Perspective
Transcript:
Simon
00:00:00.320 – 00:00:13.200
And I think responsiveness. So getting back to them quickly is key. Getting back to them with the relevant information also helps.
So don’t write them a huge email, don’t send them loads of links.
Becca
00:00:14.400 – 00:01:04.590
I’m Becca Poutney, wedding business marketing expert, speaker and blogger and you’re listening to the Wedding Pros who Are Ready to Grow podcast. I’m here to share with you actionable tips, strategies and real life examples to help you take your wedding business to the next level.
If you are an ambitious wedding business owner that wants a take your passion and use it to build a profitable, sustainable business doing what you love, then you’re in the right place. Let’s get going with today’s episode. Today I’m chatting with Simon from Hampshire event DJs.
With a 30 year background in radio and having DJed the club circuit in Birmingham, he now runs an entertainment brand consisting of 14 DJs working events across the South. And more recently, he’s entered the world of technology with our shared radio background.
I’ve wanted to get Simon on the podcast for ages, so I’m glad today we’re finally making it happen. So Simon, welcome to the podcast.
Simon
00:01:04.590 – 00:01:04.950
Hi.
Becca
00:01:04.950 – 00:01:31.840
It’s so good to have you here. We have been talking about doing this for far too long, but we finally managed to coordinate and you are finally here.
So we’re going to start by going right back to the beginning of your career because we have this shared thing that we’ve both worked in radio, we’ve both worked for the same radio brand, global radio, and I think there’s lots that we can learn from that. So when you finish school, did you always want to be a radio DJ or work in radio or was DJing events what you wanted to be doing?
Simon
00:01:31.840 – 00:02:39.000
So my, my desire was radio production.
I always wanted to be off the air working behind the scenes and unfortunately in commercial radio where I was in Northampton, there weren’t a lot of behind the scenes jobs.
So I ended up finishing my college course and I had an opportunity to go to uni or I had an opportunity to hang around the local radio station over the summer and do all the rubbish jobs. So I did that and I’d only been there a couple of weeks when the boss said to me we need someone to do the overnight this weekend.
It’s one till six in the morning, do you want to have a go?
So, so I did and then they had me back the next week and then had me back the next week and the group of radio stations I was working for actually had Six different stations around the country. So there was a lot of holiday cover to do during the summer.
And they got to the point where the bloke who normally did through the night was doing Driving Gloucester and they needed someone else to do some cover. And they obviously thought I was okay because then asked me if I’d go and do mid morning somewhere else.
And such was the way back then in the industry. The more you said yes to, the more opportunities presented and the further your career went.
In fact, I’ve just had a notification come up on my phone and it’s 32 years tomorrow since I did my first show.
Becca
00:02:39.080 – 00:03:12.260
Wow.
And I think what’s exciting about working radio and I always talk about the heyday of commercial radio when I was there, back 2011 to 2014, when it was still like this big thing is there’s nothing like the excitement of going live and having to do something first time. Like there is no replay. At least on this podcast, we can edit it out. If we make a mistake, we can edit it.
When you’re live on the radio, it just happens. And that’s very similar to our wedding day. We don’t have a practice run. Whatever we do on the day happens. How did you kind of overcome that?
Or do you just thrive on the adrenaline of doing it live?
Simon
00:03:12.580 – 00:03:57.550
I think you realize that you’ve got one chance to get it right and if you don’t get it, just move on quickly.
Because people soon forget if you make a big deal out of a mistake, it draws attention to it, whereas if you just roll on into the next thing, hopefully people haven’t clocked that you’ve made a mistake. So I would always say that’s the best way to do it.
But the good thing about commercial radio over the years, and it has changed a lot from when I first started in 93 to where I am now, is the discipline that it instills in you.
Understanding word economy, understanding as a presenter, how to position what it is you’re trying to say to people so that you get their attention and then give them the message they want. That’s one set of skills that I had in commercial radio which have really helped me trying to set up and establish a business.
Becca
00:03:57.710 – 00:04:41.220
Yeah. And I think all of us learn so many skills from the careers and the jobs that we’ve had previously before we go into the wedding industry.
And I talk a lot about the things I learned working in tv, working radio. So I also worked for Global Radio, which owns the brand’s Heart Smooth Classic.
And there are so many things I still talk about in my business today and that I still teach about, that I learned during those years in radio, because just the whole way the business model worked, the way that they had these different brands under one big kind of umbrella and it all seamlessly worked together, the way that you got experience working with the big brands that were doing the marketing, all of that stuff, there’s so much I’ve learned from that. Are there things that you look at and think, I learned this because I worked in radio and now I use it in my business?
Simon
00:04:41.380 – 00:07:05.460
Well, the first thing that I’m going to flag up, and you may remember this if you ever visited Leicester Square, was that big mural on the wall in reception, which was a famous quote, which is, people may not remember what you say, but they’ll always remember how you make them feel. And that’s something that we have carried forward into the business.
You know, how you make people feel on the biggest day of their life is possibly the most important thing you could do if you work in this industry.
So even if you’ve got someone in front of you who’s not very happy, try and make them feel better about what you’re going to do to resolve that issue for them, because they’ll remember how you made them feel. So always try and leave that feeling as a positive.
There’s a lot about commercial radio that I’ve applied to our DJ business, the brand being the most important thing. If you. If you remember, 30 years ago, there were radio stations all over the country that had different names.
And now most radio stations share one or another of the national brand names.
So we decided quite early on that being a brand was going to be a bit of a winner for us, because if you’re a one person, there’s only so much work you can do. Now, originally I DJ clubs in Birmingham. When I moved to the south coast to work for a station called Wave, people kept asking me to do stuff.
And after a short period of time, I had a friend of a friend reach out to me to say he was running another radio station in Salisbury. And he said, I quite fancy having a go at what you’re doing. Do you mind if I come along one night?
So we went and did a 40th birthday for a friend of mine in Cheltenham. I paid for his hotel room, he helped me set up, we went through the evening together.
At the end of it, in the car on the way home, he said, I could do this. I said, absolutely, you could do this. You’ve got that radio Background, which makes the music second nature to you.
And all I’ll say is, if you’re going to do it, go and buy the same equipment I’ve got. Because if we go out as a brand, then the hotels will know when we walk through the door exactly what they’re going to get.
And that was the original plan. And another 12 DJs later, Martin’s still with me. And we’ve got relationships with venues all across the south of England.
The venues love us because they. They know what’s going to walk through the door. They know it’s going to be quality.
They know that we will be one less moving part for them to worry about on the day. And it also makes it really easy for customers to visualize what they’re going to get as well.
Because if we say, looks like this might have a different name on the front, it might be branded for the venue, or it might be a custom bit of branding that you’ve decided. But having that consistent approach, which is something that’s very prevalent in radio these days, has really helped us thrive.
Becca
00:07:05.460 – 00:08:09.500
Yeah, that’s so true.
And I remember them changing all of the Hart radio stations to Hart because they were called all of these different things like GWR in Swindon, and then they all became that one brand. And it is much more powerful when everyone’s singing from the same hymn sheet. So I love that you’ve taken that into your business.
One of the things I’ve taken from radio actually as well was how much they cared about brand and things like brand colors.
I talk about this in my book because I remember the lady in my office who was in charge of the Heart branded merchandise, and whenever she ordered a beach ball or some pens or whatever, she was so particular about making sure she had the right hand tone for the Heart brand. And that’s something I’ve taken into my business. We were talking just before we went live about the wall behind me.
And I’m so careful about the color and making sure everything matches because I remember her caring so much about it. And I thought, well, if it’s good enough for her, it’s good enough for Becca Pountney. So if I want to be consistent, I can’t just use turquoise.
I need to use what I now call the Becca Blue in everything I do. So I just love how there’s things that we.
We learn in our careers that we don’t think are necessarily relevant, but definitely make us better business people down the line.
Simon
00:08:09.580 – 00:08:57.400
One of the other things that we do is we have Operation Sheets for every event we do.
So the DJ knows who they’re working for, where they’re working, what the access of the venue is like, the color of the up lighting they want for the room, who the photographer is, who the point of contact when they arrive is, what time they’re setting up, what time they’re starting, what time they’re finishing, what’s the first dance? Is there a father daughter dance, a mother son dance, a second song, a specific track they want to end the night on?
If they don’t, by the way, give us a specific song they want to on the the night on, we always end up playing either their first dance or finding out what their ceremony exit music was and then playing that as the last song of the night because that brings the whole day back around to them. And so many people mention that when they leave us a review, that it was completely unexpected but really wonderful way to end the day.
Becca
00:08:57.560 – 00:09:14.520
Okay, so you’ve talked to me about going down to the south coast and starting the DJ side of your business, but let me just go a few steps back.
When you first moved down and you were going to weddings and events, were you originally going out as you as your name or did you from day one go out as this brand Hampshire event dj?
Simon
00:09:14.520 – 00:11:46.450
So originally it was just me and then people would ask, oh, could you do this, could you do that? And I would be already booked, so I’d say, oh, I can’t do that, but I’ve got an associate who can.
Now, couples are naturally averse to other people subbing at last minute because there are some horror stories of people booking a DJ who two days before suddenly remembers it’s his daughter’s birthday so he can’t come, but he’s got a mate who’s coming and they’re worried that that’s going to be an issue.
So I thought, all right, well, rather than trade as an individual, if we trade as a brand, the success and the feedback that we collect for being good will be brand related and not individual related.
So as long as I’ve recruited people who will sing from the same hymn sheet, it doesn’t matter which one of us represents, we’ve all got the same, we’ve all bought into the brand, we’ve all brought into the approach and the work ethic. So it’ll be a great result regardless of which one of us represents.
And that also gives us another nice little sell, which is worst case scenario if someone’s ill, we’ve got backup in our team and it doesn’t matter who turns up, because they’ll have the same op sheet that your DJ would have been working from. And we’ve only had two instances where we’ve had to put subs out in the seven years that we’ve been working together as a team officially.
One was last September when one of my guys got Covid and we had to send a sub out with 48 hours notice. And the other was a bit more extreme.
And that was in summer 23, when one of my guys was diagnosed with brain tumor and he was doing 15 weddings in the August. And because we had a deep bench, we were able to cover that off. And there’s a happy ending to that story as well.
Because they operated within 48 hours, they removed all bar one mil of the tumor and we had him out DJ again three weeks later. Just because I can only imagine if you’re 28 and you’ve DJed all your life and all of a sudden some big life changing event like that comes along.
It was really important for me to give him some kind of normality. So I said, how are you feeling? Do you think you could do this? Would you like to do this?
Because the couple would love to see you, the venue would love to see you. I’ll be five minutes down the road if you don’t feel up to it. And yeah, we had him back out within three weeks.
And through a very complicated network of relatives, his fiance and some of our team, we managed to keep him going and keep him busy for 12 months until he got his license back and the all clear. So, yeah, there’s a happy ending there. But. But that was the. That was possibly the ultimate test to our resilience.
And luckily as a business, we got through it. But more importantly as an individual, he sailed through it. In fact, he just got married last weekend, which was quite sweet.
Becca
00:11:46.450 – 00:12:16.030
That is a lovely happy ending to the story. And I think the thing is there’ll be some worry going on in Lilissa’s mind because a lot of people in the wedding industry are just them.
And actually if something like that happened to them, they wouldn’t have that depth and breadth of people behind them that you’ve got and that you’ve just explained in order to come in and just take the booking for them. They may have friends who work in the industry that they could pass it on.
But what you’re saying is that in your model, actually it doesn’t matter because they’re going out as your brand, whether it’s person X or person Y. I.
Simon
00:12:16.030 – 00:12:55.930
Don’t think as a business you can afford to be insular. Say, for example, you’re a venue dresser.
There’s one venue in the New Forest that we work at quite a lot and it’s served by several different companies that do venue dressing.
Now, if company A are in there on Friday and Sunday and they’ve got fairy lights up and company B are in there on the Saturday, rather than company A, string the lights, take them down Saturday morning, go back on the Sunday, put them up again. Why don’t you just have an arrangement where company A’s lights will stay up and company B won’t have to do it?
It’s a lot easier for everyone and you know, it is a small industry, so getting on well with everyone is really, really important, I think, because you never know when you might need that help.
Becca
00:12:55.930 – 00:13:21.370
Yeah, absolutely. And it’s definitely all about collaborating rather than competing against each other for sure.
Now, I can already hear some people will have some objections to this idea, so I’m going to pose some of them to you or just find out a bit more about how you get through those. So the first thing is, how does the relationship work between the person inquiring and the dj? Do they know who’s going to be their DJ from the start?
Do they build a relationship over the booking process or do they build that relationship with the brand?
Simon
00:13:22.090 – 00:15:11.110
So they will inquire via the website and I will respond to the inquiry pretty quickly. In fact, my average response time via hitched is 32 minutes. So I’m very happy with that. And then we’ll talk them through the process.
I will do a zoom consultation with them where I tell them a bit about the business. We allocate the DJs normally based on geography because Hampshire is a big patch. We’ve got three lads in South Sea, few guys up by Basingstoke.
Everyone else is sort of centrally based. If a job comes in that is a bit niche, like for example, one of our guys used to be a house and techno DJ in London for 30 years.
So if there’s a dance heavy job that comes in, we always put Craig on that because we know he’s going to love it and he’ll dance for five hours solid and take a towel with him because he’s got so much energy when it comes to that kind of thing. So we’ll explain all this to the client and the client normally are pretty chilled.
Google reviews mention everybody by name, so that hopefully reassures them that it doesn’t matter who they get they’re going to be in for a great experience. And then about six weeks out from the wedding, they get a meet your DJ email which will have a photo and a few lines about them.
And then our secret weapon, about a week before the wedding they receive a postcard, handwritten postcard, saying, have an amazing day on Friday. Matt can’t wait to party with you. Craig can’t wait to party with you. Charlie can’t wait to party with you.
And that reminds them of the name of the dj. It gets them a little bit more excited about their big day.
They know that we’re excited about it too because as DJs, we don’t really have a lot to do with the client. We take the booking, we send them a login to our client platform six months out, we obviously send them a couple of invoices.
We might answer some questions, but quite often we, we have a very soft touch with the couple. So little things like that do make a difference. And I think postcards in particular are one of the reasons why we do so well with our Google reviews.
Becca
00:15:11.190 – 00:15:39.780
Yeah, absolutely. I’m a big fan of the postcard. I’ve made my own branded postcards that I just randomly send to people sometimes because we get so little nice post.
We either get bills or nothing.
It definitely breaks through and lots of people talk about doing it, but you’re one of the very few people that actually does it because I think people see it as, oh, it’s time intensive to send out a postcard or to go to the post office. But actually I think the return on investment of time is so much greater than the time you would spend making a big long Instagram reel.
Simon
00:15:39.780 – 00:15:46.940
For example, it’s worth the extortion of the price of postage stamps. But just do it a week in advance, second class. That’s all I’ll say.
Becca
00:15:46.940 – 00:16:19.920
Yeah, that’s me. I’m always, I’m always putting second class stamps on things and then thinking, I hope they don’t mind that I said this second class.
But I don’t look at what someone sends me stuff as. So hopefully it’s all good. Okay, that’s my first objection then, so that you’ve answered that.
So really they’re buying into the brand and then later down the line they’re buying into the individual and you’re doing that personalized meet up and chat with them. So then how are you finding the right people?
Because I think one of the other big things that scares people about kind of stretching their brand out in this way is well, what if those other DJs don’t show up up in the same way that I do? What if they aren’t as good as me?
Simon
00:16:20.080 – 00:19:04.160
It is absolutely 100% all about finding the right people and then looking after those people. So 62% of what a client pays us goes to the DJ. I pay way above the industry rates, but I’ve got great people.
They’ve invested in the equipment, they’ve invested in the business and the brand, so I look after them and I make their jobs as easy as possible. They get well, they’re well paid, so they will never let me down to go and chase money somewhere else.
Quite often if you’ve spent £350 on a DJ, they’ll be sending that work out to someone for £200. And the challenge with a £200 DJ is if they get offered 250, they’re gone. So you need to look after the people that work for you.
So originally Martin came along, then Dan who was doing Drive on Heart south coast, then Jono who was doing Capital Breakfast. And the thing is, we, we knew the end was nigh for local commercial radio anyway, so this was very much a backup plan for a lot of people.
Then Charlie joined us, he was DJing in the new Forest and then we just picked up people here and there. I put an ad out in a Facebook group, interviewed 77 DJs, took two on. One of them was another ex commercial radio person.
And then from that point people found us, like Craig, the guy I was talking about earlier, who’s the house and techno dj.
He relocated from London to Winchester, did a bit of sleuthing online, found our website, reached out, introduced himself and, and said, I’m going to miss house and techno, but I’m going to Ms. DJing more. I don’t mind playing the killers. So we lent him our spare set of kit.
He did a couple of parties, smashed it out the park and then before I knew where I was, he’d gone out and bought everything and we put him on the road to in the April. He was washing his face by the September and now it’s a nice little pension builder in addition to his day job.
The last person to join us was another Craig, he was a DJ in London, doing lots of big corporate stuff at the Savoy and in Mayfair and stuff like that.
But he’d moved out to Farnham, didn’t want 3am finishes anymore, has another job that he’s just started and found us online, rang me up, we chatted for about half an hour. And I said, what are you doing next Wednesday? And he said, well, nothing. Why? I said, why don’t you come and have pizza with the rest of the team?
We’re having our pre season kickoff in Winchester. Come and meet everybody. Everybody loved him. He was obvious he was going to be an asset to us.
And by the time he left that night, we’d already got half a dozen dates in the diary for. So we are never in the situation where we have to go on a Facebook group and say, has anyone got any availability tonight or next week?
Because we only take bookings for the people that we’ve got on the road to do the work. If we don’t have the people, we don’t take the bookings.
Becca
00:19:04.370 – 00:19:36.800
And the important thing that’s coming out of that is for me is that you’re really taking that job seriously.
So it’s relationship builder for you, making sure that they’ve got the same similar ethos and that they’re behind the brand in the same way that you are, so that you can trust them. And also the other important thing is that you’re not just looking for people who will do it for cheap. Because we all know buy cheap, buy twice.
But sometimes it’s tempting as the business owner to look for the cheapest option. But actually you’re right, because if you want high quality people who won’t let you down, you’ve got to reward them.
And it sounds like you’ve got other ways of rewarding them too, like you’re getting together and doing social things too.
Simon
00:19:36.960 – 00:20:42.950
So if you’re going to build a team, you can’t just have names in a WhatsApp group. They need to know each other. So twice a year we, we, we go out, I buy them pizza and beer and we have a chat.
And that way, I think when Charlie was ill two years ago, if they didn’t know Charlie, if they hadn’t met him and known him personally, they’d have probably been a bit less reluctant to want to help him when he needed and we needed them to answer the call. So, yeah, I mean it’s, it’s probably a unique way of working and I don’t think many DJ agencies or brands work this way.
But find some people who buy into what you’re doing, look after them and you’ll absolutely be fine. I mean, we have 487 five star Google reviews and three four star Google reviews.
If you read the four stars, you’ll go, hang on a minute, why didn’t they give them fives maybe they work in management and they find giving someone top marks, you know, impossible.
But the point is we wouldn’t have such a strong reputation online if we didn’t use great people who were all on the same page and all heading in the same direction.
Becca
00:20:42.950 – 00:20:54.230
So for those people, then going a bit in depth again, for those people that are working under your brand, are they also then able to go out and work individual as their individual brands or are they only contracted to work with you?
Simon
00:20:54.310 – 00:22:15.070
So some of my guys like Matt and Charlie have their own businesses and some of my guys have day jobs and just want to work on a Saturday or a Friday night to earn some extra money. Like say, for example, they’ve just bought a new house and want to pay for the extension or, or stuff like that.
And for them going out two Saturdays a month, possibly even three when it gets really busy, is, is a means to an end. And especially as they’re good at what they do and especially as I provide them with everything they need, it’s a bit of a no brainer.
Charlie, for example, has put a flag in the ground in Berkshire and now we’ve launched Berkshire event DJs too. Now that’s his baby. But it’s the same marketing, it’s the same materials, it’s the same business approach.
What’s orange for us is blue for him and he’s obviously started to establish himself up there quite nicely. And the good thing about that is the DJs we have in the north of Hampshire can also work for him.
So as his workflow increases, then he’ll be sharing resources. And if someone new comes my way who I think would be a good fit for him, then I’ll send him his way as well.
Like Craig in Farnum, for example, who’s just joined us in the last year.
He’s going to be working for both brands as we expand, and we don’t really want to expand any more than we have done, we’ll be able to share the resources. And the good thing that is we can keep Craig busy because there are two places he can get the work from.
Becca
00:22:15.070 – 00:22:36.940
Fantastic. Okay, let’s talk about marketing then and how this works. So how are you reaching couples in Hampshire? What is working for you right now?
Where do most of your inquiries come from? Because a lot of what people do from a marketing perspective is very personal brand led. So I’m Becca, work with me. I’m Becca.
Whereas you’re doing brand led marketing. So what is working? What is generating new inquiries?
Simon
00:22:37.180 – 00:26:52.910
So a third of Our inquiries come from showcases. We only do showcases at venues that recommend us exclusively. That way, on the day, we’re the only DJs in them.
We’ve got our new client platform, which I’ll talk about a bit later, and that is a massive win for us because that gives customers exactly what they want, it reduces choice and it makes it easier for them to curate lists of music. So a third of our stuff comes from showcases.
Google works really well for us because we’ve invested the time and effort in getting our Google reviews up and running. Something we do every year in the third quarter is a below the line competition. So we don’t always get Google reviews from people we work with.
Sometimes if they’ve got a Gmail account, it’s really easy to use a bit of nudge to get them to leave a review. But whether they have a Gmail account or not, life’s maths will still get in the way. Especially post wedding. There’s so much stuff to catch up on.
It’s really easy to drop off someone’s radar.
So every September we do a below the line competition where we email everyone who hasn’t left us a Google review already and we offer them the chance to win a 500 pound Amazon voucher. If you if they leave us a Google review by the end of October, that works really well for us. Normally about an extra 40 Google reviews a year.
Now these are people who we work for. They’re not just blind strangers we’re asking to leave a Google review.
They’re couples that we’ve worked with who we’ve asked for review and perhaps they forgot or they were busy doing something else.
So of the 80 to 100 people we direct email, we’ll get about 40 people who will then leave us a review and then we do a proper fully terms and conditions online number, random generated draw which we film compliance. This is what we have to do in radio just to make sure that we’re totally across at everything.
And you know, it could be that that’s a 500 pound Amazon voucher to buy the luggage for your honeymoon that you’re having in November that you didn’t have in the summer. Or a 500 pound Amazon voucher that’s going to come in handy with Christmas around the corner.
So we don’t talk about that on any of our socials, we just keep that below the line and do that direct. And that always works for us. We find that Millennials and Gen Z are spending a lot of time looking online. So Google reviews really work.
We also have landing pages for every venue that we work with on a regular basis. So somewhere like Burley Manor, we’ve probably got about four landing pages, but each one has a different SEO title.
We’ve also been tweaking the SEO in our blogs because Google’s new generative AI is changing the playing field a little bit.
So instead of just having images that have been named correctly and the postcode for the venue in it, you’ve actually got to make sure your content is as relevant as possible. So we spend quite a lot of time rewriting that. We don’t use AI for it because AI spots AI and won’t rank it as highly.
So back to the days of creative writing at school as I try and find innovative ways of writing these blogs so they don’t look like they’re blogs but still have that relevant angle to them.
And the other thing I’ve been doing in the last two weeks, which I think is going to be essential, is I’m trying to work out how, if you ask a lesson Exit or Siri, who are the best DJs in Hampshire, we want to be the answer. So I’m spending quite a bit of time investing in that.
The other thing that works really well for us and, and I recommend to people, and I know it has possibly not the most positive response from wedding suppliers is Hitched. So we do really well out of Hitched and the reason I know we do really well out of Hitched is because we track where our inquiries come from.
And for every one inquiry we get through Hitched, we’ll sometimes get another two that originate at Hitch but actually come to us via our website. Hitched has a fantastic SEO.
So for us being a team, we pick up quite a lot of last minute work because people get let down or they kick booking a DJ into the long grass until six months before they jump on Hitch, they look down the rankings, they reach out to five DJs. The other four have already got bookings, but because we’ve got a deep bench, we’ve got probably two DJs who are free to help with that.
So choosing a, choosing where to spend your money is, you know, is a really smart thing to do. And for us with Hitch, we found that it has consistently delivered.
Becca
00:26:52.910 – 00:27:20.620
I think the thing is with directories, and I talk about this a lot, is I think actually directories can work, but you also have to put the time and effort into it and you need to know your numbers, which is exactly what you’ve just explained and Crucially, you need to get people back to people fast, which you talked about earlier about how quickly you respond to a Hitched inquiries.
With your Hitched inquiries, just as you are quite data centered, do you know how many Hitched inquiries roughly actually convert and how many just disappear? Because what I do find is you get a lot of pointless inquiries because they inquire to so many people.
Simon
00:27:21.020 – 00:28:27.880
Well, it’s funny you should say that. Our conversion rate outside of hitched is 58%. From inquiry to booking, our conversion rate within hitch is 22%, which they’ll tell you is excellent.
But I’ll say, well, that’s not as good as what I’m doing outside of it. But I appreciate with a website like Hitched you’re going to get a lot of tire kickers.
So naturally that conversion rate is going to be a little lower.
One thing I don’t think directory websites necessarily do well is manage customers expectations of what they need to pay because sometimes you’ll find a filtering section and there’s one website in particular that has four settings under 200, 300 to 200, 400 to 300 or over 500 pounds. So if you’re a customer already in your mind, the anchor point is about £300 and the maximum is going to be 500.
Now I looked in the Hampshire region on that particular website and of the 23 DJs listed, 17 of us were over 700 quid. So by not accurately managing the customer’s expectations then you know that that’s not helping us out at all.
Becca
00:28:27.880 – 00:28:49.220
No, and I think the other thing is, is that quite often the inquiries will encourage you to put a really low price on there to try and get the inquiry.
But it is a kind of catch 22 because then you increase your inquiries but your conversion goes down because when they actually find out how much you cost, then you lose them.
But yeah, so, okay, so what I’m hearing from you then is the three things that are working for you right now is your showcases, your Hitched and your SEO.
Simon
00:28:49.780 – 00:28:51.140
Yeah, Google as well.
Becca
00:28:51.220 – 00:29:57.420
Yeah, your Google SEO with your chat, GPT, SEO and all of that kind of stuff. So your website is, is converting yet. Directories are converting and also your showcases are converting.
And I think it’s important to talk about this stuff because people get shiny object syndrome and they think oh, I need to do this, I need to do this. But actually when you start talking to people and find out what’s actually working is often what I call the unsexy stuff.
The stuff that people don’t really like spending the time on, like thinking about the tech.
I also want to go back to what you said earlier about competitions, because when you were speaking, there was so much of me that was thinking commercial radio, commercial radio, commercial radio. And because I’m the same, I love a competition.
I used to write the terms and conditions because I worked in what was called SPI at the time, sponsorship, promotions, interactivity. And so I used to write terms, conditions for competitions.
And one of the things I see in the wedding industry is people run terrible competitions and then wonder why they don’t work.
And so immediately when I heard you talk about your competition, the way that you set it up, and also the fact that you are giving a really good prize is what makes people give that review. Because often people say, oh yeah, I’m going to do a competition. If you leave me a review, I’ll give you 10% off a future booking.
And no one wants that.
Simon
00:29:57.420 – 00:30:27.710
No.
So I consider for 40 Google reviews from people who work for me anyway, but probably hadn’t got around to leaving them, a 500 quid spend is worth its weight in gold because those extra 40 reviews will propel you even further at the rankings, we are 59% ahead of our nearest competitor on Google in terms of Google reviews at the moment.
Granted, we are significantly busier than they are and there are more of us, but the other, the other little thing that I’ve started using in my emails when I ask for a Google review is a little bit of nudge. Have you heard about nudge?
Becca
00:30:27.710 – 00:30:28.910
No, I don’t know if I have.
Simon
00:30:28.990 – 00:32:42.340
So nudge is behavioral economics. And back in the Tony Boy, back in the David Cameron days of number 10, they had a nudge unit.
So nudge is designed to do little things that change people’s behavior. So two famous examples of nudge, Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, they had a problem in the gents where the floor got quite wet and messy.
So what they did was put plastic flies on the back of the urinals, all of a sudden, give a man something to aim at. Bang, done, solve the problem.
The other example of nudge, which is going to conjure up some less unpleasant mental images, is that when they sent out tax letters, they wrote across the middle of it. Most people pay their tax bills within the first month and they had something like a 70 uptick with people paying their bills. So nudge works.
So basically, when I email a couple and ask for a review, I always make sure I’ve got both their email addresses because If I’ve been dealing with the bride and she’s hotmail, but the groom’s a Gmail, instantly I know I’ve got one of them who’s already got the account, which will lead to me getting the review. And it will be, hi, insert name. Firstly, congratulations. Hope you had an amazing day yesterday. Thank you for making insert DJ name feel so welcome.
There’ll be a little line of color about the party, which they will have fed me on WhatsApp when they finished the night before. So it made it sound like I knew what was happening even though I was at a different venue doing something else.
And then I’ll say, I notice you have a Gmail account and wondered if you would take a moment to help our business grow. And then literally in one line, tell them what I need them to do. If you’re uncomfortable, click. You can click here for our Google page.
If you’re uncomfortable clicking on a link, search for our Google Page. Or if you don’t have a Gmail account, Facebook will do.
That’s been one of the secrets to us getting more reviews because you’re politely calling them out. You’re saying, I know you’ve had a great time. I know you’ve got a Gmail account. Why wouldn’t you leave me a review?
And you know, sometimes if it’s during the summer months, they’ll be off on honeymoon straight away, and sometimes they won’t be going on honeymoon because they’ll have a November honeymoon planned. And then you can follow up to them.
Something else we do is we email them about three weeks after the wedding with a Spotify playlist of everything we played in the order we played it. And then that’s another little nudge for them to leave us a Google review.
Becca
00:32:42.420 – 00:33:21.080
Fantastic. Okay, so little nudges is basically like the doing 1% better, just finding something to get them to. To just try and make it work better for you.
And so I’m guessing you’ve applied that in all sorts of areas of your business, which we probably don’t have time to get into right now. But one. One thing I do want to talk about, though, briefly before we move on to the tech conversation, is your conversion rate.
Because I know you’re very proud of your conversion rate and you absolutely should be, because it’s really high above industry standard and especially outside of hitched, it’s over 50%. What do you credit that to? Why do you think your conversion rate is so high?
And are we talking conversion from initial inquiry to booking or conversion from Speaking.
Simon
00:33:21.080 – 00:40:38.470
To them to booking, from initial inquiry to booking, we’re currently running at 58% and I think responsiveness, so getting back to them quickly is key. Getting back to them with the relevant information also helps. So don’t write them a huge email, don’t send them loads of links.
Just says, just say, this is us. We’d love to be a part of your night. We are the highest reviewed DJs on Google in the South.
We’ve got this brilliant app that’s like Tinder for party music, which will help you curate your playlist. Here’s our E brochure. Prices are on page eight. If you’d like an online consultation. Bang. And.
And actually the E brochure does the work for us by telling them the price is on page eight.
They’re going to have to click on that E brochure to then get to the price and then they’re going to have to go through seven pages of aspirational images and a little bit of text here and there and brides and grooms living their best lives before they find out how much it’s going to cost them to have a night like that. So then you just follow up. I think we, we asked for a 200 pound deposit to secure the date the balance is payable one month before.
So we keep it really simple because once we know we’ve got them in the diary, we don’t care if we don’t speak to them for another six months, which is normally when we do speak to them next, when we send them the login to the client platform so they can start curating their playlist. But I think for us in our space, the one thing that really helps our conversion rate is we give the people what they want.
We’ve made it so easy to tackle one of the most daunting aspects of hiring a dj. So in the industry, when we started our process of building this content management system, we did a survey, we asked three questions.
We asked, how old are you? How long have you been DJing? What’s the biggest challenge to you doing your job? The average age was 55. The average time spent served was 30 years.
And the biggest challenge, people telling me what to play. Now you’re a customer service industry, you should be playing what the people want.
So I thought, if the rest of the industry is still got a massive chip on its shoulder, like 30 years ago, when the DJs were the influences and were the taste makers, then you’re going to die on your ass. Because millennials and Gen Z don’t want that. Millennials and Gen Z are specifically unspecific.
They might not tell you what they want, but they certainly have a really clear idea of what they don’t. So imagine this. You’re 25, you’re getting married. You went to a wedding 10 years ago. The music was rubbish. No one danced.
That is your fear of what your wedding will be like. And you need something that’s going to help you overcome that fear.
You need something that’s going to make you feel confident that your wedding is not going to be like that one where they played the Birdie song and made everyone sit on the floor and pretend to row a boat. So we worked out that we’ve got two different types of customer. 20% of our customer are really into music, have a very strong idea of what they like.
They’re very confident when it comes to music. But the other 80% of our customers just want a good time but don’t know where to start. And they are the reason why radio brands like Heart exist.
They play the same 300 songs over and over. So when, whenever you jump in the car, you’re going to hear something that you recognize, something that’s familiar.
You might not know the title and the artist, but it doesn’t matter because it’s a familiar song and you’re cool with that. So we built an app which is like Tinder for party music. When a couple logs in, they are presented with the most popular music of right now.
This list updates every six hours, and it’s updated by our clients picking music for their parties. So as the songs appear in front of you, underneath every track are three buttons. There’s a red button, a blue button and a green button.
If you find a song that you really like, you push the green button, it goes into the do playlist. If you find a song you can’t stand, you click the red button, it goes into your don’t playlist.
If you don’t have a strong emotional reaction to the song either way, you push the skip button. And that goes into a separate list.
And it means on the night when the DJ turns up to do your party, they’ve got a list of stuff you really like, lists of stuff you don’t mind, and list of stuff you can’t stand. Now, sometimes it will be 10 songs that they really like, sometimes it’ll be 200.
But from a DJ’s perspective, you can’t go wrong because you’re only going to play 90 songs.
And if they’ve given you 200, there’s so much wiggle room for you to be able to mold that list into a playlist of stuff that you know they’re going to like. Now the Journey is taught us quite a few interesting things about psychology and, and how people react to music and how they react to choice.
And sometimes you’ll get people who will send you a list from Spotify and say, we only want these songs and that’s fine. But if you want a great party atmosphere, there needs to be compromise because you need to be playing the songs that everyone is going to vibe off.
There’s a term in music psychology called the nostalgia bounce and for most people it’s 15 to 25. And it’s the key point in your life where you develop your strong connections to music.
So it’s leaving school, learning to drive, holidays abroad with your friends, messy nights out with your mates.
When you hear a song from that period in your life on the radio in 20 years from now, your brain will let off a bit of dopamine and it will make you feel amazing because it will remind you of those times. So we want to be playing those songs at your party.
We don’t have a crystal ball, but there’s a certain amount of science that will help us get to that point anyway. So by presenting people with a never ending list.
Well, I say never ending most people, the most we’ve had was someone gets five and a half thousand before they stopped.
But, but by presenting them with a, with a constantly evolving list of popular music, they’re making choices from a good set of songs rather than asking the opinions of people who maybe aren’t that musically inclined.
Because if you ask on RSVPs, pick a song for the DJ to play and you’re in that 80% that isn’t very musical, then you’re not necessarily going to make a great choice. If you’re in the 20% who are confident you’ll make some great choices.
But if you’re in the 80% who aren’t, you might jump on Google, type in wedding songs and then we’ll end up with stuff that’s not really appropriate for a party, like Eric Clapton Was Wonderful Tonight or someone else’s first dance tune. That again is irrelevant for the audience that’s in front of them. So I guess we’re saying you make the choices.
If you trust us, just point us in the right direction. But if you want to have complete control over everything, that’s absolutely fine, go for it and we’ll make the best of what you give us.
The other thing that helps is understanding the psychology of an evening as well, because there are always two peaks. The first peak will be immediately after the first dance.
We will play half an hour of absolute bangers at that point, because the photographer will be around so, you know, they’ll make us look good. And then the couple will go off and have some evening photos done. At the moment we’re recording this in June, the solstice is a couple of days away.
It’s still light at 10 o’ clock. It’s going to be warm still at 10 o’ clock. So when we go out and do weddings this weekend, you know, we’re fighting against glorious weather.
And on a warm summer’s evening, with a cold drink of something you like and the company of good friends. Who wants to go into a barn and dance if you’re having such a nice time outside?
And we’ll always say to couples, we’ll try and manage their expectations and say, look, as long as people are having a nice time, it doesn’t matter if they don’t come until 10 o’ clock and then dance their ass up for two hours.
The important thing is we won’t stick on the Macarena as an act of desperation to get people into dance, because we understand the psychology of the evening.
We know they’re outside having a nice time, so we’ll place them Ibiza, chill, we’ll complement the mood, and then we’ll try and get people in and dancing when they’re ready. But what we won’t do is stand there thinking, well, we’ve been paid to make people dance and they’re not dancing. Pass Me Love Shack.
So, you know, it’s just. It’s understanding what’s going on and making sure that you’re complimenting that.
Becca
00:40:38.470 – 00:41:02.610
It sounds like an amazing piece of tech for both the customer and the DJ community. So, from a customer perspective, if I was to go onto your app. App, I have a very specific music taste, as people will know that.
I love the 90s, I love the Spice Girls. Right.
So if you were going to be DJing my 40th birthday and I got your app, when I start saying yes to things, does it then know the kind of things I like and recommend them more, or does it just go through the same list?
Simon
00:41:02.850 – 00:41:44.280
No, because it’s based very much on the popularity of music, full stop.
There is a search function, so you can go rogue at any point and if you want something specific, you can find that and then add it to the do Plays or the don’t plays. The number of times Valerie comes up on our don’t playlist because it’s the name of the bride’s dad’s ex wife or something stupid like that.
You know, there’s always a. You look at a list and go, I wonder why they said no to that. And there’s always an interesting reason.
We once had one wedding where we were not allowed to play Fallout Boy because one of the guests fits to it. So, you know, you never quite know why stuff’s on the band list, but there’s always a good reason why it’s there.
Becca
00:41:44.440 – 00:42:04.180
And what about if they’re not very good at picking?
Because we also know, having worked in radio and if you’ve got a good understanding of music, that what people want you to play isn’t always what’s going to work on the night. Maybe they want loads of Adele, loads of really slow stuff. Do you reserve the right to kind of break that boundary?
How much do you listen to what they say versus give them a good night?
Simon
00:42:04.490 – 00:43:45.630
If I get a job sheet and it’s about a month before the wedding and I look at it then and it’s.
And I know it’s not going to work, I’ll go back to them and I’ll politely suggest that some of this isn’t necessarily going to be positive for a great atmosphere. It’s not going to help. Ask them what their outcome is. If their outcome is, I just want lots of music I like, fine, we’ll play it.
If their outcome is, we want a really good party atmosphere where our feet hurt the next day, I’ll say, you’re not going to get that with these ingredients. You’re asking me to make scones, but you’ve given me the ingredients for boeuf bourguignon. So we’ll work with them.
But the whole point of this app is we would never get that outcome. Because it’s like, do you remember that expression they used to use in the 90s for computer programming? You say, garbage in, garbage out.
If you were writing code. If you’re giving them solid music to pick from, the chances are they’ll pick enough good music for you to be able to do that party.
And if they don’t, then we haven’t done our job right in terms of. Or I haven’t done my job right in terms of pointing them in the right direction.
When we did one wedding a couple of weeks ago where the bride music was really important to the bride and she not only curated a five Hour playlist. But she also insisted in the order it was played, so we were literally just like human Spotify. But it made her happy, it’s what she wanted.
And there was no amount of discussion that could be had with her. And we didn’t want it to become an issue because we. We hang our hat off playing what people want.
We did a wedding last year that was metal and screamo and the bride walked down the aisle to an industrial metal version of the Imperial March from Star wars. And by half past nine, there were six couples left. But they were loving it, but they got what they wanted.
Becca
00:43:45.630 – 00:44:22.930
Yeah, and it’s walking that boundary, isn’t it? And I think the big thing that came out of what you’re saying as well is setting their expectations. So if you can see, this could cause a problem.
Raising it early rather than waiting till the night and then having to battle these problems. And, oh, it’s because they’re outside where it sounds like an excuse.
Whereas if you get ahead of the game and set their expectations, it’s going to be a lovely evening. More people are going to be outside, but we’ll compliment that. Don’t worry about that.
If you play these songs, it might bring the mood down, but if that’s what you want us to do, we will do that. But have the expectation that it may do that.
I think often people don’t set expectations and then end up battling problems and firefighting completely.
Simon
00:44:22.930 – 00:46:32.620
And it is. It is all about managing expectations.
Especially if they’ve been to some dreadful weddings where no one’s danced and people will naturally assume that DJ is not playing the right music or it’s the DJ’s fault. But there are so many other forces that might come into play. For example, behavior stimulates behavior.
So if you see a bride and groom on the dance floor, you’re going to want to get up and dance with them because you’re there to celebrate them. But if they don’t want to dance, it’s like pulling teeth sometimes. It doesn’t matter what you play.
If the bride and groom aren’t there, then it’s, you know, going to be a bit of a challenge. I did one wedding where they had asked for 90s naughties pop and I, R and B. And the bride had given me a list of about 30 or 40 songs she wanted.
The buffet had arrived, no one was dancing. The bride was off having some sunset photos done and a bridesmaid stormed over and said, we want 90s naughties pop and R and B.
I said, Yeah, I got loads of that. I’m going to play it in a bit.
And after 10 minutes I was still playing some chill background and the bridesmaid came back with mother of the bride said, we want 90s naughties, R& B and pop. And I was like, yep, the bride’s giving me a list of it, but the bride isn’t here.
I want to play the bride’s favorite songs when the bride is in the room. Room. Look around the room. What’s everybody doing? They’re eating. Yeah. No one wants to see hog roast again for a second time.
Give it 20 minutes for their food to go down. When the bride comes back, we’ll switch into the music the bride wants and then people will dance.
And I said that in the nicest non patronizing and non condescending way. Condescending way I could possibly do it. But it’s like this isn’t my first rodeo and I do know what I’m doing.
So, you know, managing, managing expectations.
The other good thing about our app, I did a wedding a couple of weeks ago where the bride and groom fully embrace the tin of a party music style and then told all their friends that they curated this fantastic playlist. And people kept coming over and talking about how the bride and groom had picked some absolute bangers for me to work from.
And they properly lent into it and took ownership of the music at their party because they curated it themselves. And I don’t care if they take the credit for how great the music is because they still had a brilliant time. I’ll get a Google review, bang.
And everyone else will have feet that ate the next morning and a phone full of great memories. So, you know, that’s what it’s all about.
Becca
00:46:32.620 – 00:46:54.460
Okay, let’s talk about it quickly then from a DJ perspective because there will be DJs listening to this who might be thinking, well that sounds great for you, I would like something like that. So how does it work from a DJ perspective? Is this piece of software something that any of them can sign up to? Do they pay for it?
Do they pay on a monthly subscription? And also crucially, how does it work for them at the other end? So once their clients have picked all the music, what does it give them?
Simon
00:46:54.540 – 00:51:24.720
So we started looking at this project during lockdown because I knew I was going to have a lot of work in a very short space of time. Coming out the back of the restrictions, between the 19th of July and the end of November, we did 205 weddings in a row.
It was Carnage and several of my team were close to quitting because they’d done so much work in a short space of time. But I knew when we started rescheduling everything that I needed a content management system to make things easier.
But there was no point getting a content management system unless I got one that did everything we needed it to do. And a large part of the way we worked was handling the music it. So we built one ourselves. We tested it for three years. It works really well.
It’s had a dramatic impact on our business. So what we decided to do was test it for three years, get some numbers that prove it work, and then release it for other DJs to subscribe to.
So it’s a monthly subscription. It helps you respond to your inquiries with custom templated replies.
You can manage your workflow all the way through, down to sending them reminder emails to leave you a Google review a bit later on. From a DJ’s perspective, especially if you’re running a team, it’s really easy.
Six months out from the wedding, you send an E questionnaire to the couple to collect all the information you need. That also gives them a login to the Tinder for party music tool and they’ll curate their playlist.
You can download all of that into a PDF in three seconds flat. You can give it a quick scan over, make sure everything’s in it, then you can email it to your DJ and they’ve got everything they need.
And you’ve processed all of that in 60 seconds, which, if you’re doing 400 weddings a year, is absolutely genius.
Now, alongside that, the music selections, the yes, the nos and the maybes that that your couple will be making influence the rankings overall of that music. So we get a lot of data out of 40, 400. We get a lot of data out of 400 weddings. We thought, what would we get out of 40,000?
If we had DJs all around the country using this app, they’d get better at what they do because the music that they play on the nights where they’re given free reign would be better. Three absolute bangers from the last year Cascade.
Every time we touch 2007, Friday night, getting ready to go out with your friends, no radio station plays it. I know if I drop that at the party, it’ll all go off because everybody knows that song and the positive emotional connections to it.
Pop punks coming back in a big way. Avril Lavigne, skateboard Troy. Huge at the moment.
And finally, don’t judge me if they’re in their late 20s, Gabriella and Troy Breaking Free from High School Musical absolutely goes down a storm. And the reason it will go down a storm is because of the emotional connections. You know, that film, High School Music was an absolute juggernaut.
And those kids that watched it over and over are now getting married. And the dopamine hit.
They will get off that song if you play it in the right place, even if you only play half of it will just give them such an incredible high. And just going back two years with our app, when we were testing it in March 23, we spotted two songs trending.
They were Murder on the Dance Floor, Sophie Ellis Bexter and Natasha Bedingfield, Unwritten Now. Come the end of that year, they were both used in film soundtracks. They both started trending virally.
Radio stations thought, oh, we should probably start playing these every 90 minutes again. But we were a good nine months ahead of the curve because we saw that trending in our data.
So we were out that summer playing those songs at parties and tapping into that popularity. So it always used to be with DJs, they’d find a song that worked and they would be so closely guarded they wouldn’t want anyone else to know.
But actually, we need to work as a team because there are some shocking examples in our industry and if we all work together to, you know, what’s that expression about, you know, the boats will rise on the tide. So if we can improve people’s perceptions of what wedding DJs are like, create a new stereotype that’s positive, there’s a real benefit there.
So by using the CRM, they’ll have more time because it will help them manage their workflow.
More importantly, the resources that they’ll get in terms of the data from the music and everything else, it will help them be better at what they do. And we’ve also got a huge resource library in the background that’s got airplay charts from radio stations from the last 10 years.
So if they want to go and do a bit of research, it’s there. We have an update for the 20 biggest tick tock songs in the UK every week. Spotify, Shazam, Radio airplay.
We do weekly updates on all of this in the back end. So there’s tons of data for DJs to keep on crosses across the stuff. Like this week, for example, Kesha.
There’s a Kesha track that’s come back out of nowhere on TikTok. And they probably wouldn’t see that unless they were scrolling through TikTok constantly, like your average teenager does. So it’s just there to help.
Becca
00:51:24.800 – 00:51:54.340
What’s really interesting, and I think kind of draws all this together is by using the data and using the app, you’re allowing the DJs not to have to necessarily understand that generation.
And so what typically happens is your 50 year old DJ goes out and they know what music they like and what would get them and their friends on the dance floor, but they don’t necessarily understand a 28 year old will get on the dance school dance floor to High School Musical. And so if they keep doing what they think works, it’s not going to work as well as if they do what we can see works.
Simon
00:51:54.890 – 00:53:12.600
Everybody lives in a bubble to a certain extent.
And if you’re a wedding DJ, you’ve been working for the last 30 years, you’ll have in your mind a list of songs that you always rely on and that always work. And you’ll be reluctant to stray too far away from those songs.
If someone gives you a request list of 20 songs you’ve never heard of, you don’t want to play them because you don’t know what to play them with. However. However, with our app, say for example, your couple are really into country. There’s a list there of the most popular country songs.
And also you can filter out the most popular country requests that have been made using the DJ teams platform. So when they go out, they’ve got the confidence of knowing that all of these songs work together.
There’s a further version that we’re developing at the moment of DJ teams which will enable you to type a song into the search box House of Pain jump around and it will tell you recommendations of what will work with that. So it’s kind of like Spotify, but it’s more contextualized because it will say 34% of DJs followed House of Pain jump around with Usher in. Yeah.
And 21% followed it with DMX, party up or whatever.
So if you are, if you are a DJ who’s stuck in your comfort zone, all of a sudden you’ve got insider knowledge on what hip hop tracks will work and what country tracks will work, which will again make you more confident in straying outside your comfort zone a bit more.
Becca
00:53:12.600 – 00:53:32.980
I love it. I think it sounds excellent. I think if I was a dj, you sold it to me. I know that wasn’t your intention, we’re just talking about it.
But I, I can see the benefits to the consum also the benefits to the business. And a good product gives benefit to Both. Both those two groups of people. So we will put the link in the show notes to the system. It’s up and going.
People can sign up to it right now, can’t they?
Simon
00:53:32.980 – 00:53:35.420
If they’re a DJ, DJs can sign up now and subscribe.
Becca
00:53:35.660 – 00:54:06.030
And the great thing is, the more people that are a part of it, the better the system will become because you’re getting more data into it. And I love that it’s data led. I could geek out about this stuff all day, but we are out of time, so we’re not going to do that.
But I will put all of the links below.
So if you are listening to this and you’re interested in just understanding it a bit more or you think this could work for your business, go and check it out. I’ll put the link in the show note. Okay, Simon, I always end my podcast with the same question, and I’m going to pose that to you now. And it’s this.
What’s the one thing you wish you’d known sooner in your own business?
Simon
00:54:06.270 – 00:54:34.260
That’s really easy. Sometimes they are not your customer. So it doesn’t matter if your price isn’t right. Sometimes it doesn’t matter if you drop your price.
Sometimes it doesn’t matter if you bend over backwards a million times, they’re not your customer and you don’t get them very often. But I think spotting them, realizing that they’re not your customer and moving on.
If I’d learned that a lot sooner, I’d have reached the spot I’m at now. A lot sooner.
Becca
00:54:34.260 – 00:54:41.660
Yeah, absolutely. And not taking it personally either, because sometimes we think it’s problem with us, but actually it could just be problem with them.
They’re just not quite right for us.
Simon
00:54:41.660 – 00:55:00.240
Yeah, you see that sometimes where it doesn’t matter what you do, they want the moon on a stick. And if you’re not giving them the moon on the stick, then you know they’ll be unhappy. And that’s not your issue.
Doesn’t matter how hard you’ve worked, if they’re not getting it, they’re not getting it. So spotting those customers before they even become customers and politely declining, that’s. That’s the one thing I wish I’d known when I started.
Becca
00:55:00.480 – 00:55:29.650
Love it. I’ve absolutely adored this conversation. It’s been great for me as well to go down memory lane and start thinking about commercial radio again.
I get excited when we talk about it because it’s like that nostalgia thing.
For me, they were some of the best years of My life and so much of what I do now has been influenced by that time, and it sounds like it has for you as well. So I’m sure we’ll geek out about radio again at some point in the future. But for now, Simon, thank you so much for your time.
I’ll put all of your details in the show notes. If people want to speak to you directly, where’s the best place for them to chat with you? Is it Instagram? LinkedIn?
Simon
00:55:29.650 – 00:55:42.610
Oh, I’m always happy to chat to anyone. You can drop by the website, The Hampshire Event DJs website, or you can drop by the DJ team’s website. You can find me on LinkedIn.
I’m on Instagram as well. I don’t care. However, you’ll find me amazing.
Becca
00:55:42.610 – 00:55:53.770
So if you’ve got more questions, if you just want to say how much you enjoyed this episode, then go find Simon on social media. And again, I’ll put all of the links in the show notes. Simon, thank you so much for your time. It’s been a real joy speaking to you.
Simon
00:55:53.770 – 00:55:54.490
My pleasure.
Becca
00:55:54.570 – 00:56:17.670
What a great conversation.
We covered all sorts of bases in today’s episode, talking about that background in commercial radio and how we’ve learned so much from it, how to build a business, not just as an individual, but as a team.
And also thinking to the future, thinking about technology and looking at how that can complement and make our business better for both us and the consumers. I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s episode. Do go and check out all of those links and I’ll see you next time.
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