✉️ Welcome to the BPM Newsletter

Business, Performance, Marketing insights for DJs and creative entrepreneurs​
​

THIS WEEKS INTEL

I left 25 years in retail management in January 2020 to finally follow my dream of going full time as a DJ.

Two months later, the industry shut down. Covid hit, the clubs went dark, and the thing I’d waited 25 years to do was over before it had really begun.

Not the plan 😂

Those 25 years were with Virgin, Hackett, Alfred Dunhill and World Duty Free. Managing shops, not booking gigs. But looking back, I learned more about getting booked in those shops than I realised.

The platforms have changed. The tools have changed. AI has changed a lot of what we can do. But people haven’t changed anywhere near as much as we tell ourselves.

Here are five things retail taught me that still apply to DJs today.

1. People decide in seconds.

On the shop floor, my staff had seconds to get someone’s attention before they walked past.

Online, you’ve probably got even less.

2. Presentation changes perception.

Same product. Better display. Different reaction.

Your profile, content and artwork are your shop window. People are forming an opinion before they’ve heard a second of your set.

3. The right question beats the pitch.

The best sales my teams made started with a conversation, not a script.

Promoters are the same.

Asking what they need from a DJ will get you further than immediately telling them what you play and where you’ve played.

4. People remember how you made them feel.

Customers didn’t remember every word my team said. They remembered how they were treated.

Bookings work the same way.

How you handle yourself, the feeling you create in the room and what you’re like to work with can matter just as much as the set.

5. Being good isn’t enough if nobody knows you’re good.

This might be the biggest lesson of all.

You can be brilliant at what you do, but if the right people don’t notice you, understand what you do or trust you, you’re making it incredibly difficult for them to choose you.

That’s as true for a DJ as it was for anything my teams sold in retail.

Get their attention. Make it clear. Give them a reason to care. Build trust. Then give them an easy next step.

The problem is that most of us concentrate on the first bit.

Attention.

Views. Likes. Followers. Reach.

But is your content actually doing the rest?

That’s one of the reasons I built the Discovery Engine.

It scores your content against five signals that help determine whether people discover and engage with what you’re putting out.

20 questions. About three minutes. One score out of 100.

More importantly, it shows you where you could be losing people.

It’s free to try:

TRY DISCOVERY ENGINE FOR FREE

Give it three minutes and see what you score.

Turns out those 25 years in retail weren’t wasted after all.

​
Paul

Rockin Social Media. Estepona, Spain. Alcazaba Lagoon, Estepona, Malaga, Spain
​​Unsubscribe · Preferences​