Ed Icionsub

When I started out as a mobile DJ, I would keep all the planning forms from each job and keep track of all the different dance jobs and venues where I worked. After the first 9-10 months, it was impossible to keep up with all that paperwork and it frankly served no purposed other than vanity. So I don’t really know how many dance jobs I did, but my rough estimate of wedding receptions is about 500. It was not unusual for me to do 3-4 receptions each weekend, often leaving an afternoon reception and driving across town to an evening reception the same day.

Another big chunk of jobs was the Christmas season. I started booking holiday party jobs the weekend after Thanksgiving and I was booked solid, seven days a week until New Years Day. Over Christmas it was mostly corporate events, but there were weddings mixed in, too.

Out of all those events, I only had a technical problem twice and thankfully I could get to a phone and call the business owner to get help. Once I blew out a tape deck and he had to bring me a replacement. That was really tough to cover smoothly, as without the second deck I had no way to cue any of the music. Thankfully I had a handful of tapes already cued and there was very little dead air. The other technical problem was the wrong version of a requested song. The party host was extremely agitated about that, but it was clearly not my fault. I solved that problem by having one of the guests bring in their copy of the song from their car and having the owner talk to the party host to smooth things out.

In the five years that I worked as a mobile DJ, I learned a lot about reading a crowd and finding music to get people up out of their chairs and onto the dance floor. I would come to the event with a music library of almost 5,000 songs and a printed catalogue of songs sorted by title and by artist so I could take requests.

After I got some experience under my belt, I would come up with playlists and lists of recommended songs for the different milestones during typical events. I’m still interested in music and entertaining – it’s in my blood – so I occasionally surf around other DJ sites and read their playlists or other information, such as the Los Angeles Wedding DJs site for the Elegant Event Entertainment company.

What I like about their particular web site is that they have a Wedding DJ blog filled with informative posts. They have posts about venues, party planning, and even “7 Steps for Hiring a Wedding DJ.” This is the kind of information presented in a very user friendly and easy to read format that today’s brides and event planners will appreciate.

In reading the “7 Steps for Hiring a Wedding DJ,” I think an often overlooked step and possible mistake is their tip #2: “Interview the DJ, not just the DJ company.” Most DJ companies will sell you on their service and their price, but most do not offer to let you talk directly to the DJ that will be at your event. This is a very good tip and if the DJ company refuses to let you talk to the DJ, I would run from that contract as fast as I could and find someone else.

When I left the computer company I gave direct sales a try. My vendors were very encouraging about my sales potential, and I found a good job that promised to be rewarding. The only problem is that the compensation was monthly commissions based on net sales.

The problem with net sales is that you might have sold a lot of stuff to one of your customers, but if they return some of the items or don’t pay their bill on time, you don’t get paid commission of that. You get paid based on what the customers pay into their accounts each month. And I’m sure you know that some percentage of customers are going to be financially irresponsible. I wanted to be in sales – not debt collections.

So to help make up for the lag in getting my commission checks, I took a part time gig as a mobile DJ. In a great example of turnabout being fair play, one of the young guys who used to work for me had started his own DJ company and offered me a job. I could accept or turn down whatever gigs he offered and work as much or as little as I wanted. So I took that opportunity and started entertaining people on weekends.

Of course, the Government has done business with people like the CEO of the computer company before. They take the contract bidding process and deliverables schedules very seriously. When they found out that the computer company was misrepresenting their capabilities in the contract bids, the GSA launched an investigation into the company and placed charges on the CEO. They also blacklisted the company from bidding on any future contracts.

The blacklisting is what freaked me out. If we did not have any new business coming in, then there would not be much need for my departments. I started looking for another job and found one easily. I was convinced that my future with the company was shot and that I need to move on with my career.

What I did not know – until it was too late – is the the Board of Directors worked a deal with the GSA. They agreed to fire the CEO and the GSA agreed to remove the blacklisting. They did pursue charges against him personally, but with him gone and taking sole responsibility for the actions, there was no need to punish the 400 innocent employees and the stockholders.

When I left the computer company, I was frustrated and angry that the company was in deep trouble with the Government and I was not privy to the plans to change things up. The CEO of the company was great at starting up new companies but lousy at keeping one running. That seems to be true with a lot of entrepreneurs. The problem with what this man was doing was trying to land a lot of contracts on speculation instead of having the equipment and personnel in place to fulfill the contracts when they were awarded. He would laugh about it and say that we were just “backing into” the contracts. Once the contracts were awarded we scrambled to find a way to meet the deliverables.

This put a lot of extra pressure on the engineers. Frankly, I think most engineers accept a certain of pressure as part of the job. Perhaps they even thrive on the clock ticking with deadlines looming. But in my experience, especially with computer issues, haste makes waste. If you release a program before it is thoroughly tested and approved, you end up with bugs and user issues, and then the consumer gets frustrated and angry. It’s a bad situation for the people manning the help desk.

The engineers at my company would have gotten a lot of use from the Atlassian company’s programs. Their JIRA program helps with bug tracking and issue tracking and help desk tickets.

I happened across the Atlassian site tonight and was reading about the wiki software and the eight different programs they’ve developed to help the tech support and engineering teams. Their web site offers product tours and a free 30 day trial of their software. That’s a good way to convince people of the value in your offering.