Rod Baker – His Neon Pivot
I love stories about new business ideas that came organically from just paying attention to what’s happening around you. Sometimes a new trend is right before your eyes. In this episode, Rod Baker tells us about how he pivoted into a whole new business, DFW Neon after seeing people doing selfies in front of his neon sign. Listen to this episode and hear about Rod’s pivot and how you can learn to see the opportunities around you.
About Rod:
Rod Baker is an industry optimist who strives to not only be his best, but to bring out the best in others. He's the owner of DFWParties, a Dallas/Fort Worth based DJ company... and DFWNeon, a Dallas/Fort Worth based company that designs and delivers wedding LED faux neon signs.
Instagram @djrodiii and @dfwneon
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Below is a full transcript. If you have any questions about anything in this, or any of my podcasts, or have a suggestion for a topic or guest, please reach out directly to me at Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com or contact me via text, use the short form on this page, or call 732.422.6362
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- When I think about pivoting, I think about my friend who pivoted within the industry, kind of a COVID-related pivot, but it's an interesting thing you're going to want to hear. Welcome back to another episode of the "Wedding Business Solutions Podcast", I'm Alan Berg, and I'm so happy to have my friend Rod Baker on with me today. Rod, how you doing?
- I am great. It's an honor to be on here.
- Well, I am honored not only that you're on, but that we're actually together.
- Yeah.
- We're not on zoom.
- I know, this is strange to be side by side for video format. It's nice.
- We are doing this. It's great. So, and I'm here in Texas, which is where Rod is. I was here. What was it? December I think.
- I think, yeah, December, January, somewhere in there.
- I think it was December and I spoke for the Professional Wedding Guild of Fort Worth, which Rod was very kind to bring me down to speak. And he was telling me about something that he did during COVID that has become another business for him. And this is part of my Pivot Series. I wanted to talk to you about this. So your business is, your other business is called.
- Yes. It's DFW Neon.
- DFW Neon and your main business is?
- DFW Parties.
- DFW Parties. So you've been a wedding entertainer and DJ for,
- 29 Years.
- I wasn't going to ask you for the number.
- [Rod] But thank you.
- I started when I was four.
- Exactly. Exactly. There you go. So you were, you were doing this in kindergarten.
- [Rod] Exactly.
- It was wonderful. Okay. But DFW Neon came, was this during COVID, before COVID?
- Actually during COVID.
- During COVID. Okay.
- And the irony of the situation was I appeared on a podcast.
- Okay.
- Virtually. Don Mamone's podcast. I don't know if you know Don or not. And it was about pivoting and I gave a very impassioned speech about why you don't pivot.
- Why you don't pivot.
- Why focus on your core principles, focus on your core business. Don't try to do too many other things because this too shall pass.
- And this is recorded so we can.
- Yeah absolutely, yeah.
- And see what you didn't do.
- A week later, this idea started forming.
- Alright. So, so what is the idea and how did it form?
- So the form, the idea is, is a trend that's real hot in the, the wedding industry right now, the neon signs.
- Okay.
- Personalized. A lot of times I have generic ones that I rent, but it's a hot trend in the, in the space.
- Okay.
- For me, I found out that this was going to be a thing really by accident.
- Alright. Right. So, neon signs thinking like Las Vegas, Times Square, things like that, but they're not actual neon gas.
- No, this is, these are LED strips.
- Okay.
- That are a fixed acrylic. And then there's silicone that diffuses it to give that single line look.
- So it has the, it has the feeling of neon. It's not actual neon, so it's a lot easier than. To work with.
- Yeah. I mean, you couldn't. Yeah. The degree that neons are being used these days, you just, couldn't. The weight, the gas, the, everything, this is just, this makes it practical. In fact, a lot of the bar signs and normal "neon" signs you see are done this method anymore.
- Interesting. Okay. So, you first came across neon signs, How? Where?
- So um during COVID, even in Texas where we were very wide open with our, our COVID policies, we did have three months where we didn't do events.
- Okay.
- And as a classic workaholic, as somebody who does 75 to 80 weddings a year, I wasn't comfortable not working. And I should have been probably, but I wasn't. So I did some things, I retooled some things, worked on some contracts kind of, you know, gimme a chance to catch my breath on some things. And one of the things I did was to retool my DJ booth. I wanted a visual kind of update a little bit. And so one of the things I did was I bought a, neon sign. It said, "Let's party". And I affixed it to the front of the booth.
- Now, was that a sign that already said "let's party"? Or you said, I'm going to make a sign that says let's party?
- It was a generic sign. That's, a sign that's commonly bought.
- Okay.
- There's some phrases like "Better together" & "Let's party" and "Happily ever after". There's some that are very common in this, in this space. So I got one that says "Let's party", being the DJ that I am, at DFW Parties, you know, it kind of, it was legit, you know, so I put it on the thing. And then I had everybody at the party first party back, by the way, it was pretty epic. It was, we were ready to party, But everybody started taking selfies in front of the DJ booth. And in 29 years of doing this, I've never had anybody taking selfies in front of the DJ booths. So I instantly knew that I had something. I instantly knew that this was anything that stopped people in their tracks to take pictures of, I needed, you know, dig in a little further and learn more.
- Yeah. And, and the lesson here is just paying attention.
- Yeah.
- And it's the Why, it's not that they were taking the selfies.
- Right. Why?
- Why are they taking selfies? Cause they've never done this in 29 years.
- Right. I'm a trend-watcher. I like, I like to watch macro trends. That one was obvious to me it's, I mean, I'm sitting here watching this unfold and it was, I, that, that whole imagery of that night is just so vivid to me. Because it was like, okay, I instantly knew I had something. I'm a marketing guide, you know, kind of like you, but, but I instantly knew I had a winner.
- Okay. So you have this one sign. People are taking selfies.
- Yeah.
- That's not a business.
- That is not a business. So I have bought lighting from China over the years. So I'm used to, those interactions. And I took Chinese in college. I can't speak the language. But I can speak the business. So I knew how to reach out and put in the request for proposals and those kind of things. I was able to work through that. I had to work through about five or six different vendors, providers before I got the quality and the consistency that I needed in the signs they were, there was some that showed up cracked and you know, that didn't light up when you plugged them in and then they just didn't want to make good on them. So you, you have to kind of go through those growing pains with a, with a process like that. Nailed it down. I have a really good provider. I have two, but I have a primary provider and they're just fantastic. So I'm able to put this product out very efficiently. I'm faster than pretty much anybody in the market. And my pricing is very competitive with that.
- So what is the turn around? You order a sign and how soon do you get it? Because we're talking about from China, so.
- Exactly. So what we do is I bypass the ship process. We don't put them on cargo ships. I actually spend a little more and tighten my margins and we FedEx or UPS or my favorite is DHL. And they get over here in about design to doorstep probably about two weeks.
- Oh. Wow.
- Yeah. And I, I shouldn't even say it. I hate, I'm not going to put this out there on video. I'm going to regret this. Eight days is what they've been at the last about five or six orders
- Oh two weeks.
- It's two weeks, 2.5 weeks is actually the official, the official line. Yes.
- Okay.
- So you figured out this process, you have the, the signs and was your initial intention to just make these for your clients? Sell them to your clients?
- Yeah. That's, probably where the start came from and I thought, okay, let me just explore this and see, that was really, it just kind of exploratory process. And I gave one, I made one for one of my venues that I do a lot of business with, Brick Venue. And the owner of the venue posted an Instagram post right in the middle of COVID had the mask on and everything, but held up the sign that I had made for them. And they have 10,000 followers. So within a day of posting that, I had 10 sales, from people that were not my clients.
- Local?
- Yes.
- Okay, so people connected to you and to this venue, Brick Venue.
- Yep
- She holds up her sign and, 10 people reach out and they say, I want to buy them.
- Yeah.
- Other venues?
- Eventually.
- Okay.
- And then it expanded for no, the people that bought that were actual bridal clients.
- Oh actual clients.
- They were people getting married.
- Oh, okay.
- People follow Brick that, they have a very good curated feed and they do an exceptional job. Shout out to McLaren out there, with their social media. So they were able to, you know, they have a very loyal fan base.
- So it was their couples.
- It was their couples.
- Okay, great. Alright.
- And none of these people were my weddings. And so my signs started showing up at colleague's weddings. And so it became synonymous that when you saw a neon at a wedding, they instantly would text me, a vendor, not just in the DJ space, but any of the categories was sort of saying, hey, thought of you.
- Here's your sign.
- Yeah, and literally here's your sign.
- Here's your sign for, for you Bill Engvall fans.
- Yes, exactly.
- Here's another Texan in there. Here's your sign. Okay. So, there you go. You have 10 sales over there.
- So here's the thing. It's a, it's, I've always sold a service. I mean, never sold a product before. Now the wonderful thing about this particular product is it's such a visually stunning product that when somebody posts about this on social media, it multiplies very quickly. It's gone exponential a number of times now. To the point that I am. Yeah, I'm going to have to hire help for the first time in my career. I'm not very, I'm not a very good delegator. We've talked about this. I'm learning to, I'm documenting the processes to try to turn this over to some people that can handle some of the, some of the tasks.
- I just noticed something on your camera there.
- Yes.
- There's a.
- Yeah. I turned it off.
- Okay, good. Cause there's a cable.
- Yes.
- In front of the lens. [Ron and Alan laugh]
- Okay. We might leave that and we might take it
- Hey why not?
- We'll see over there. So
- B-B roll.
- Yeah. Exactly. So uh, now you're doing these for couples?
- Primarily couples. Uh that's the core business.
- Right.
- And on any of the Facebook groups, I almost do no marketing myself right now. Not any of the Facebook groups, they'll say, Hey, who does neon signs? And I have people that will screenshot these in groups. I'm not even involved in. And there'll be 15 replies. Just like you see a lot of times in, in any kind of Facebook. Generally 13 to 14 are about me.
- Wow.
- I have established in a very short order market dominance. It's it's been phenomenal.
- Right. Now, I know in this market, one of the things that you've done. So when I spoke for PWG, behind me on the, the ivy wall
- Yeah.
- Was a PWG sign. That was one that you made.
- Yes.
- That you made it for the group.
- I made it for the group.
- No charge.
- No charge.
- And all the other groups.
- All the other organizations.
- Right. Right.
- So SWP, NACE, all the letters. All the acronyms. So I went through and I bought them signs. And so again, I get, even to the meetings, I couldn't make it to, I would invariably get texts, calls. Hey Rod, was just thinking about you.
- Right.
- So, this is called marketing. When you invest. I mean, there's different ways to invest in marketing.
- Yep
- You can invest in advertising. You can invest in, in social media and things, but this is marketing as well is putting in front of your target audience.
- Especially in influencer marketing, I guess, on a micro scale.
- Well, well again, who shows up at these meetings? Because they're going to put that sign up at every meeting,
- Right.
- Planners, venues.
- Yeah.
- People that could do this. So, that's what started happening.
- Yeah. And so, and I've done that and I've also done in the rental space too to build awareness. So my original goal was to get a $100 per rental, per sign. Okay? So if you go to my site now and go to the rental page, it's $120 to rent a sign.
- Okay.
- However, if you'll put a tag in a DFW Neon, in your Instagram, you can rent it for a hundred dollars.
- Mm.
- Getting me my original price that I want to get in the first place.
- Right.
- And I don't put any limitations on how they post. If it's a measly post and they do just a little something, but they don't ever do that.
- Right.
- They're so enthusiastic about it. They do these great stories. They have a creativity that I couldn't even dream about. And the marketing is being done by the customers.
- Right. So, and, and you see this a lot. I, my wife bought me these whiskey glasses.
- Yeah.
- And it came with a thing and it said, if you post a five-star review and you send us a picture of it, we're going to send you a free glass.
- Yeah.
- Which, I like the glasses. So I posted the five-star review and I got two more free glasses.
- That's pretty awesome. Yeah.
- There you go. So, that there's the influencer marketing as well, because
- For sure.
- I have a pretty big following.
- Yeah.
- A lot of people know that I like bourbon. Well, if Alan has this glass.
- 100%.
- Right. I can't connect the dots because I don't know what happened on their end, but.
- For sure. But I'm sure yeah. The appeal is there.
- Right. So now the industry, the industry is finding out about you is doing this, but you've started to get some customers outside the industry.
- Yeah. So what happens is they post them and after the wedding they'll put these things in their homes. They use them as decor. And so they'll actually post pictures of that.
- Okay.
- So now we're moving beyond the wedding phase and the wedding industry, into a more consumer oriented thing. And now it's turned into a more commercial type thing. Where somebody will need something for a trade show, or they'll need something at their business and they'll say, alright, where'd you get that sign? And I have, you know, people that have referred from their wedding sign into the commercial space. And then that's just sort of gone exponential from there as well.
- So the use could be somebody's logo. What other kind of commercial use are you seeing?
- I see them all over trade shows, you know, cause they they'll, I have one company, well I'll just say it is Motel 6. They had a massive booth and they, they bought these massive neons that we put together in segments and they were highly detailed, had the Motel 6 logo, but then they had a lounge. And so they had the name of the lounge. When you enter that area, they had these different places you could go for the trade show.
- Right. And so we just created the signage basically for each part of the trade show.
- So somebody who's listening here, who's in the wedding and event industry, if you're doing a wedding expo, instead of the paper sign that they give you,
- Yeah
- And instead of some other kind of signage, which may not be so noticeable.
- Absolutely. So here's, what's cool about that. Is, I can actually get them made to where they're flat along the bottom and they can sit on a base instead of being have to attach to something.
- Okay.
- So you could put it on the table at your booth.
- Right. Which I don't, which I don't recommend. Because you want to have it up high, if people in the booth that they can see it.
- That's actually smart. That's smart.
- So you want to be,
- You want to, okay.
- You want to be able to hang it from the top. Right?
- Uh, but you can battery power them as well. They're 12 volt wires. So you can buy a battery pack, that's kind of selling at Amazon for about 40 bucks. And you can power them up for a couple hours.
- And you don't even need the cable there. And if you don't have power in your booth, you're good. The whole thing with the wedding expos is, there's a lot of noise, visual noise, as well as noise.
- Right.
- And, somebody's walking by a booth. This could give you a competitive edge,
- Absolutely.
- Something doing that. And it could be their name, it could be their logo. It could be a phrase.
- So we have a humongous wedding expo in January, every year. And I provided four signs to companies. They got rentals from me.
- Okay.
- And so I generally, I'm going to probably start going back to doing wedding shows again for this product, not for my DJ product, but for this product. But I had a lot of sales from that and I didn't even have a booth because.
- Right.
- They started seeing the signs throughout the building and they started connecting the dots and they, the people that rented from me shared where they got it from.
- So it could also be a, a venue that puts their Instagram hashtag.
- Yeah. Yeah.
- Put your hashtag or your handle. They take the picture.
- Yep. So at, at a bridal shop, I sold one to a bridal shop, Bliss Bridal. It says "Bliss Bridal".
- Yeah.
- And they, "Say yes to the dress", right under the neon sign. Every single new customer is under one of those signs.
- Is it a hashtag Bliss Bridal?
- It's not, but they need to.
- They need to.
- And I actually have the idea. I want to make a battery power one for realtors that, you know, they always have the signage of when they close the deal.
- Right.
- I want that. I want, you know, the ideas are just endless.
- Right. And that's the thing is this is a, another way to get a message out.
- Yeah.
- How creative can you be? It's just, it's your, it's it's up to you to decide on that one there.
- Exactly.
- So this is not replacing your entertainment business?
- No, absolutely not.
- This is, this is going along with that.
- Yep.
- What, what are your plans? Because right now it's just you?
- Right now it's just me.
- Okay.
- I do have a junior DJ in the DJ space.
- Okay.
- That I brought on for the first time ever. I'm finally getting to the point where I can trust somebody else. I have trust issues.
- Yeah.
- I have a fantastic DJ, Shelby, who, who I've pulled on board. And so I don't want to transition it, I want to do this as long as I can.
- Sure.
- And I make the joke. Every wedding that I do, I have a moment where I think is this the night where I lose relevancy? Is this it? And then, you know, then we rock the party and drive home and go, no, this is not the night. So, I always worry about that. We have shelf lives. I'm way older than your average DJ. And I'm still rocking these parties. My calendar's full. I'm still doing all these. And I'm still having a great time.
- Which, which is the key. Because I did an episode called, "Is there an expiration date on you doing weddings?"
- Okay.
- And it was very interesting because there were a lot of comments on social. I know from some people that didn't listen to the episode first, but just paying attention to the title.
- Okay. Right?
- Because titles are important. Title book titles are important. Article titles are important. So people, you know, in their thirties going, you know, when I'm 40, I'm done, right? And people in their forties going, when I'm 50, I'm done and people in their fifties going.
- Well you don't want to feel like you're still doing this. You know, there's sort of a, a mentality, but then you get there and you realize I'm still having fun.
- Well, well that's the key cause I think about Mike Walter, who's also been on the podcast and you know.
- We're similar age. Yeah.
- Right. And you're both doing 70 plus events a year.
- Yeah. And Mike's got a very successful multi-op business. Doesn't have to personally do 70 events a year.
- Nope, but he's having a good, you can tell. And it's all his social media. He's having a good time.
- Exactly. He's also started doing officiating. So there's a pivot, Pivot for him.
- There's his pivot. Okay.
- And he put posted the other day where he did only the officiating at the wedding and it was another DJ.
- Okay.
- And he said it was really weird to be heading home at 7:30pm.
- When it's still light out. I can identify.
- It's really weird there. So, so this has been an interesting pivot for you. It, hasn't taken away the fire on the DJ.
- No.
- But there's another fire there. And I think that's the key with the, with not only with the pivot, but what you said about what's your shelf life?
- Right.
- Is, your shelf life is up to you.
- I think so.
- Because you get to see in real time that these people are having a great time.
- Yes.
- I get to see when I'm speaking, I don't get that from a book or even the podcast, you know,
- Sure.
- I get your feedback, and it's really interesting. I'll go to a trade show and people will come up and go, Hey, I love the podcast. Well, I didn't even know you were listening.
- Right.
- Cause I can't tell who's listening there.
- Right. Yeah. When you're presenting like, much like you do when you're presenting or when I'm emceeing, we have instant. We know if we're working. We know if it's we're having that connection.
- Right. Right. Right there. And then you get to, you get to talk to people in the moment. So, here there's a little bit of a disconnect, but what you're doing there would be, you'll save $20 if you do this. There's your feedback.
- I'm putting it back into play. Sort of letting other people do that. I'm trying to leverage what I have been doing myself for 29 years.
- Right. And that's that feedback loop, which is what we want to have there. So, wrapping the, this pivot, that was kind of an accident.
- Yeah.
- You saw the opportunity. It's your marketing brain.
- Yep.
- You saw the opportunity, you ran with that and you are running these things in parallel and you're loving both?
- Yeah. I'm having a good time.
- Listen, that's the key. It's not about age, because it's up here on what I've said to people with that other episode is, if you think you're done, you're done.
- Right.
- And if you don't
- Once you feel like you're out of the game, you need to be out of the game.
- Right. And if you don't think you're done, you're not done. Right? That's all there is to it. So, thank you so much for joining me
- Thank you.
- And for talking about the pivot. This has been a blast and we'll have to see just how intricate.
- We might be able to fork something out there.
- We'll see on there. Alright. Thanks for listening.I'm Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you'd like to suggest other topics for "The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast" please let me know. My email is Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com. Look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks.
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