Got a day job? Then be smart and use our tips to help you in your future DJ career… Pic: DJ Booth
Last week we saw how DJing can help you as you progress in your career. But many people dream of giving up their day jobs and DJing full time eventually. That’s great – except being a full-time DJ is incredibly difficult. That’s why for most DJs, a day job – at least for a while – is part of the reality.
However, the good news is that your day job can actually help you with your DJing, giving you the chance to pick a whole host of skills that you’ll find invaluable in your future DJing career. That’s what we’re going to look at today.
What we’re about to tell you will not only help you through the days at work, but it will also assist you in planning how things will be in your future DJing career, so you can “hit the ground running” when the time is right to quit! So here are four areas you can work on while doing your “day job” that you can use to directly affect your future success as a DJ:
1. Treating the customer right
Nearly every job involves customers somehow. And customers only stay loyal if they’ve had, and continue to have, great service. Whether your day job is in a retail store or a stockbroker, keeping these people happy is the key to success.
Every single successful DJ is careful to look after their fans…
It’s just the same with your DJing. If you believe DJs who make a success of their careers are belligerent musical renegades, doing their own thing and not caring about the audience or those who reach out to them, you’re wrong. Every single successful DJ is careful to look after their fans.
What you can do at work: Look at your company’s customer care manuals, guidebooks, guidelines and so on and work out how you can come up with similar “rules” to help with your DJing. The logic underneath both are the same.
Everything from the way guests are shown around your workplace to how your company handles social media can potentially teach you something about the right (or wrong!) way to treat paying customers.
2. Learning how to sell
The success of your DJing career will depend on “sales”, whether it is “selling” yourself as a DJ to someone else through bookings, or direct music sales (from your own productions). Having experience of real-world negotiating, setting prices, and closing a sale will directly affect your eventual success as a DJ.
What you can do at work: Be interested in those who do the selling, if that isn’t you. Again, guidebooks and manuals can show you policies and techniques, but you could also become canteen buddies with someone from sales to learn how they approach going from zero to a happy customer. Remember, that’s you in the future hustling for DJ gigs!
3. Perfecting your communication skills
“Nobody did anything worthwhile on their own” is a good rule for business (and life). Other people are the reason all business people success. Those who do well in business aren’t always the best at the role, they’re the ones who can communicate most effectively, getting people on their side and building a network of trusted allies.
Social networking doesn’t have to mean spending time on Twitter and Facebook – you can cultivate a real-life social network at work, and all good DJs have one of these too.
Cultivating an understanding for what other people want, what their concerns and desires are, and practical things (like the best time and way to get in touch with them, or how to successfully use email or the phone to get things done) will directly help you when you’re building networks and “getting people on your side”.
What you can do at work: Maintain an up to date work contact list (probably on your computer), and ask yourself regularly how you can help everyone on it.
Make notes against their record so you don’t forget their birthdays and other important dates in their lives. The key to building a trusted network is to genuinely hold other people’s interests to heart. Be the friendly person who’s always willing to help, or who always knows someone who can help, and good things will come!
4. Striving to be disciplined
DJs are legendary for suffering poor self discipline. Missing gigs, not bothering to buy new tunes or work out fresh routines, even working drunk. So what you need to do here is so easy: To give yourself an unfair advantage over the majority of DJs, you simply need to learn to treat your DJing as a job. And what better place to learn that than in your “day” job?
Learn to do tasks that best suit your mood…
What you can do at work: Don’t “get away” with being late or taking long lunch breaks; instead, take pride in sticking to regular hours and being reliable. Have properly managed task lists (that you review weekly) and prioritise what needs to be done accordingly. Learn to do tasks that best suit your mood (for instance, doing harder, more involved things in the morning, and menial, easier tasks later in the day). Don’t let people down.
5. Becoming comfortable handling money
Money is going to be the making or breaking of your DJing career, and it’s of course exactly the same for every company. I’ve know DJs arrested at airports for not declaring their earnings! Being comfortable with running your finances is absolutely essential. You need to know how to account for income and expenses, and how to file a tax return, as a bare minimum.
What you can do at work: Of course, if you work a cash register, you already know about taking responsibility for what goes in and out. But even if your job doesn’t involve getting anywhere near the business’s money, there are people in your workplace who do.
So what can you learn from them? What are their priorities? How does the flow of cash through the business affect its health? What do the bosses say about the company’s money in staff meetings? We said above you should treat your DJing like a job, but you should also run it like a business – here’s a great chance to understand how cash will play a vital role in that.
Finally…
Successful people know that they can learn stuff from all experiences – stuff that can then be applied to other areas of their lives.
Even if you hate your job, there’s going to be something you can learn or use from those hours you spend there.
Even if you hate your job, there’s going to be something you can learn or use from those hours you spend there. But hopefully, your job is not all bad, and you can do considerably better than that.
If there are successful people around you at work, you’re in a prime place to learn from them – every weekday from 9 to 5 (or whenever you work). Don’t treat work time as lost time – let it help you in your DJing instead!
What skills have you learned from your day job that you apply to your DJing? Please share your thoughts in the comments.
Now go to:
Why You Need To Hustle To Get DJing Success
Getting DJ Bookings: How It Really Works
9 Insider Tips To Landing A Job As A Cruise Ship DJ
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Tags: Day Jobs, Dj Booking, dj careers, Practical Tips, Quit Your Day Job
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Nice article, on point. A lot of people in the music business, not just DJs but artists also, completely miss the basic professional aspect of the game.
In the end, what we talk about is people’s money and that has no difference than any other business / job and the service it should represent.
[ link ]Yea I see a lot of djs who have skill for sure but don’t know fully how to present or represent themselves
[ link ]Great post Phil!
Being a DJ helped me how to understand people. I would meet 30-40 people a night, 3 times a week. That’s an average of 120 people per week! My people and social skills improved immensely. Especially in my day job where I had to continuously work and improve relationships between partners.
Most importantly, DJ’ing taught me entrepreneurship. Learning how to create a product “Productizing myself”, marketing it, selling it and having repeat customers.
[ link ]Being a professional marketer, my professional career and my side-gig as a DJ has had its ups and downs. Here lately, the DJ side has had more downs. In fact, I find that properly promoting myself in the club scene is rather difficult when I’m working a professional day job, meeting with clients, etc… It makes it extremely difficult to be “in the scene”, hanging with the club goers, talking with promoters, promoting myself while there, etc.
I used to to teach at a 2-year college and DJ at night. It worked out perfectly. I would teach two 4-hour classes from 1-10pm and then DJ afterwards. Since I didn’t have to work in the morning, I could sleep in. I no longer can do that which has dwindled my DJing initiatives.
I still love playing for a crowd and there are a few clubs where I’m always welcomed to play at… problem is, they’re in a different state because I moved for work.
Any suggestions on developing a fan-base in a new city where you current job inhibits you from joining the clubs on a regular basis? I can show up every now and then, but when I was DJing on a regular basis, I was ALWAYS at the clubs I played at.
I would love to hand out CDs and mixes, but in the end, it comes down to the promoters wanting to hire you. Do you think they would be willing to give someone a gig that they rarely see even if they developed a fan base? My podcast reaches TONS of people and I have the stats to prove my 80k subscribers…. but no one really cares around here.
[ link ]In my day job, I work as an editor, and I’ve found that kind of work helps a lot with my DJ work.
The writing and editing skills help when it comes to writing promotional materials and in dealings with club managers. My experience working on websites as an editor has helped on the DJ side, too. And you have to be diplomatic as an editor, and that has helped in dealing with management.
[ link ]And it works the other way, too — the technical side of DJing (file conversion, audio editing, etc.) has helped up my game on the editing side, especially as I’ve been getting into multimedia ebook publishing.
I like the balance between the two — feels like I’m really using both sides of my brain!
Forgot to add: great article, Phil!
[ link ]the article TITLE says 5 ways.
The page title says “4 ways”
problem with Meta tag
[ link ]We added a bonus!
[ link ]5 things to think about if you are working 9-5 and Djing at the weekend.
I am a manager in a finance firm and I dj in a bar til 3am in my hometown on Saturday nights. I have discovered some of the pitfalls of trying to juggle a straight job and a Dj job.
1. Have one weekend off per month. It will let you recharge your batteries and it will make Djing after a weekend off more energetic as you will have been looking forward to it. Don’t be frightened to be on a rotation it keeps you fresh and the bar/club fresh (familiarity can breed contempt).
2. Be careful what you put on Social media. More often than not when you apply for a job the HR team or recruitment manager will google you and see what comes up. If you want to be see as a pro Dj create a seperate web page or social media account.
3. Offer to do work parties. They can be lame and you will end up playing pop and classics, but you can build up contacts this way. Not everyone I the office is a dork. If you play an office party be overly professional and don’t get drunk.
4. After a gig. Drink loads of water go to sleep but don’t stay in bed until the afternoon, you will feel tired but you will not sleep properly the next night. Ideally force yourself to the Gym or walk your dog.
5. Don’t photocopy/print flyers or posters and leave originals in the trays or on your desk. You might think this is Corporate sponsorship but your boss might think it is theft.
Great article again. Looking forward to the NAMM update next week.
[ link ]Some really good tips there, #3 is completely true in this day and age.
[ link ]I’m a doctor. I grew up in Chicago and have been a fan of house music going back to when I still had baby teeth. I have shoeboxes full of old mixtapes from the 80′s and early 90′s. The first CD I ever bought was Techno Trax Volume 4.
I just got a new job that pays more, and I only work 4 hours a day. I’m looking for some self-actualization. Some people take guitar lesson or work on their golf game. This is more my speed and I’m having more fun than I could have imagined.
To me it could work either way. “Who’s your doctor? You know, that one that’s a friggin DJ!” People always want to talk to me once they find out what I do. Lots of DJs at big clubs as well as the managers always remember me and give me some line like, “Wow man, I really respect what you do.” I’ve even made friends with the top resident at a mega-club who is sort of mentoring me. I’m new to this and haven’t stepped out of my basement yet, but would love to and think the letters after my name could help along the way.
Being professional is key to success in ANY line of work. If nothing else, I’m having a great time.
[ link ]Wow, Phil found my article worthy of his own “remix.” Thanks!! Sorry to have missed this, I’ve been away from DDJT for a few weeks. I started a new job as a professor and needed to launch my semester correctly.
I can’t add much that Phil hasn’t already said, but I think my experience with managing digital media assets for animation and website design has helped me organize my music collection better.
I’d also say experience with the ebb and flow of work projects helps me to better manage my DJ activities in my spare time: When its time to do the detail work of organizing my library, and when its time to stay up late for a session of inspired mixing. Also how to multi-task and effectively collect music in the background while I’m working.
[ link ]Thanks for the feedback – and for inspiring the article!
[ link ]