Last week I had a corporate holiday party at the aquarium in town. I’ve been there before so I was familiar with the load in/load out and setup space. There’s a long hallway to trek gear back and forth but there are no stairs so hand trucks and rollers make it bearable.

In any event, the client wanted an extra setup for cocktail hour in a separate room, three wireless mics, and uplighting. To make matters more difficult the venue no longer allowed subs in the main room on account of the nearby seals. I had to bring my massive three-way JBLs instead of the more portable eVox 8’s. It would be a more involved setup but I figured 90 minutes would be fine.

The night before the party however I remembered how miserable I was during a holiday party two years prior. I was about 5 minutes late in setting up and loadout took almost 90 minutes… the venue was not happy. Granted it was on the 50^th floor of the Ritz so the elevator didn’t help things, but I was alone and did have two setups to break down. Remembering this, I immediately shot a text to a friend of mine to see if he was free to help with setup for the event. He DJ’s fulltime so it happened that he was free. Perfect.

We got there early, around 4:15, but the venue would not let us so much as roll in our gear until 5 pm. To the minute. The best we could negotiate was to unload my gear into the alcove right inside the door at the end of the loooong hallway. Then, we sat. At 4:59 we begin rolling down the hall. They were so strict and overbearing that my friend noticed a staff member look at their watch as I walked by with a load of speakers. If it were not 5:01 by the time I did so, I wouldn’t put it past them to send me back to the end of the hall. Seriously.

If I had not hired my assistant that night there’s no way I would have been able to set everything up in 75 minutes. And it’s a good thing I did. Because at the end of the night I got an amazing 50% tip with exultations that they would certainly be using me again. With that tip? Please do!

If I was behind in my setup, I doubt I get that tip. They would not have become repeat clients. That $50 investment for an hour of help turned into $500 and a long-term relationship.

We’re just crossing mid-year and I hit a major milestone: I have as much on the books halfway through this year compared to ALL of last year!

I’m keeping up with my targetted revenue growth of doubling each and every year. I hit $25k last year so basic math would tell us that I’m looking at $50k for 2018.

It’s also looking like I’ll be able to keep expenses flat despite the massive uptick in revenue.

Weddings, Weddings, Weddings

So what can we glean from all these fancy numbers? The big thing sticking out is the explosion in Private Gig Revenue. Weddings have accounted for the big growth here.

I had five weddings in 2016 and unfortunately followed that up with absolutely zero in 2017. That changed in a big way this year, as I played five weddings over a four week period in May ALONE. So far I have 11 on the year with another already booked for 2019.

Bar revenue has fallen off a bit but that was to be expected. I stopped spending any and all energy working into the bar scene to focus exclusively on weddings and clearly it’s been paying off. I even began turning away bar gigs to double down on growing the most valuable part of my business.

As you can see below, I’ve done fewer gigs and my revenue has grown. Bar gigs pull in $200-250 not including tax or expenses. My average weddings have been priced at $1500 depending on the package. This is exactly what I planned on.

From Whence They Came

Below I break down percentages of where my revenue has been coming from.

Since a large portion of my income last year were bar gigs, Industry Connects & Multi-ops contributed to half of my revenue. Now that I’m turning away from bar gigs they’ve contributed to only a quarter of my revenue with Paid sources picking up the slack.

Paid sources include sites like Gigmasters and WeddingWire. A big reason why they’ve spiked up is because of the testimonials I’ve gathered.

More Reviews = More Leads (& Gigs)

In August of 2017 I signed up for a Wedding Wire Pro account and through January 2018 I only had two reviews. By June I got that up to TWELVE, with every single wedding client writing me a testimonial.

Industry average is 20%, 30% at best if you follow-up four times. Once you break double digit testimonials Wedding Wire’s traffic DOUBLES. Anyone can tell you that doubling your ROI is huge, because now you’ve got twice the bang for buck. And Wedding Wire is not cheap.

I’m getting more and more qualified cold leads from clients who are willing and able to pay for quality service. If you don’t have the reviews or marketing assets (like a great website and professional photos), you’re just not going to make the sale outside of budget shoppers.

How Did I Get Reviews from 100% Of My Clients?

It all boils down to doing the unexpected. Spending just 2% of my gig revenue  on a gift, my clients were jumping up and down to write me a glowing review!

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