Beyond the DJ Booth
Brian B and Joe Bunn tackle questions about the private event DJ industry, share music, gear/gadgets, and stories from their gigs.
Beyond the DJ Booth
S2, Ep.3: Amazon Purchases, Spin Studio Bangers and Daily DJ Life
Ever wondered what an airport lounge noise isolation booth sounds like or what a DJ's Amazon cart reveals about their personal life? Join us as we share the quirky details of our latest shopping escapades, including why Joe returned his Elgato teleprompter and his ongoing quest for the perfect Star Wars man cave accessory. We promise you’ll get a peek behind the curtain of our private lives as DJs, full of laughter and amusing dilemmas.
Our musical journey continues as we uncover how spin studio playlists become goldmines for fresh tracks and share the joy of rediscovering nostalgic hits like "Cyclone" and "Give It to Me." Reigniting our passion for music curation, we talk about re-subscribing to music pools and the thrill of incorporating classic bangers into our sets. Every track tells a story, and we reminisce about unforgettable performances, like T-Pain's unforgettable parade set, proving that the magic of music goes beyond time and trends.
Balancing creativity with entrepreneurship is no small feat, and we dive into the everyday hustle of running a multi-operator DJ business. Sharing candid insights into the unexpectedly time-consuming nature of admin work, content creation, and gear maintenance, we discuss the art of strategic scheduling. As we navigate the entrepreneurial landscape, we emphasize the importance of valuing our time and cherishing listener feedback, encouraging you to help us grow by sharing your thoughts. It's a whirlwind of personal anecdotes, music passion, and entrepreneurial wisdom, all rolled into one entertaining episode.
RESOURCES & LINKS
Our website. Please leave a review! - https://www.beyondthedjbooth.com/
To book Joe Bunn: https://bunndjcompany.com/
To book Brian B: https://djbrianbofficial.com/
Joe’s Gear Finds on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/shop/djjoebunn
Brian’s Gear Finds on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/shop/djbrianbofficial
DJ Event Planner free demo: https://www.djeventplanner.com/signup.php
Brian B's Coaching Options: Https://www.thdjscreativeedge.com
welcome back to beyond the dj booth podcast. I I'm Brian B. This is Joseph.
Joe Bunn:Eagles Bun Full name, love it.
Brian B:Oh, junior, even added the Junior in there. Wow, welcome everybody. Yeah, this is for private event DJs, if you're new to this podcast. We just like to talk about things that aren't on the regular socials, such as you know, music we're listening to. To talk about things that aren't on the regular socials, such as you know music we're listening to. Random facts about us that maybe we just don't get a chance to talk to everybody that's out there and you can hear a little bit about us on that war stories, year stuff, travel hacks, you name it. We've done it all. We're doing it all. So we just got out of christmas, we're in the new year. I'm sure as adults, we're buying our own gifts in a lot of cases. Yes, right, one thousand percent. So I thought of this idea of like what's in your amazon cart right now, like something that's been on there for a while that you've been thinking about getting, but you just haven't pulled the trigger, for whatever reason is there something that just like stands out for you.
Joe Bunn:There were two. The first one I actually pulled the trigger, owned it the trigger. Owned it for a week, used it for a week, returned it. The Elgato teleprompter.
Brian B:Didn't work. You were hype on this for a hot minute.
Joe Bunn:I was real hype on it. It did work, but if you see all my new videos that are getting ready to come out, these kind of talking head videos my head is so big it's just a head. There's no body because it has to still hook to a monitor. Got it because it's using elgato software. Now, could I have moved the thing way back? My whole point was I want to be able to self-shoot and self-teleprompt right, whereas now when I use a teleprompter say kwan's using here it's an ipad teleprompter if I mess up he'll stick his finger in the thing and just roll it back a couple lines. Got it because it Cause you have a touchscreen. Yeah, this was not a touchscreen. Okay, so you had to have it physically USB-C connected to a computer and then click on the computer to go back a couple of lines. I even tried the voice active mode. Didn't work very well.
Brian B:Fail. Fail Return Was that an Amazon it was an Amazon purchase Three h on Amazon.
Joe Bunn:Purchased three Honda Okay.
Brian B:Got my money back, so now what's the other one, the?
Joe Bunn:other one which? We're going to show. Right, we can show it. This is cheap but it's just been sitting there for a minute. But like, maybe like three or four years ago me and the boys went to Disney World and we didn't buy anything because none of us really like Mickey's we're not like Randy, Like he likes Mickey, but the Star Wars stuff, like you know, as a child, like, and even now like, I still think those first three Star Wars movies are the end. All be all Right.
Joe Bunn:In 1978 or whenever, when I was seven years old and that came out like it changed my life. Yeah, and so we bought these. What you consider the closest thing to a real lightsaber?
Brian B:I mean it's heavy.
Joe Bunn:Yeah, it's pure. Didn't you have it in the office here forever. I did, okay, but it was like just sitting on my desk. And then I built that third floor at my new house with this kind of man cave with video games, big screen TV, blah, blah, blah, and I was like man, these would be cool on the wall. I bought a lightsaber holder to like vertically put them up on the wall because Davis has one too.
Joe Bunn:Okay, and I thought they would look cool, like on each side of this picture of this signed thing I have from Jared Letta, and you did pull the trigger on this or you haven't yet. I have not yet pulled the trigger, but I feel like that's the look I'm going for in that picture.
Brian B:I like it, I like it. What do you think Well for $12, I mean you really get it, I guess because it was on my desk forever and I had it on like a desk mount. I had to justify the 12 purchase. What have you got? I can't wait to see what yours is. Oh man, it's gonna be like a tooth cleaner. No, no, this is hairbrush, this is a. This is excessive and ridiculous and I'll never pull the trigger, oh you told me about this you had.
Joe Bunn:You still haven't pulled the trigger.
Brian B:No, way man what is it three grand? Five grand. First of all, amazon.
Joe Bunn:Is it really on amazon?
Brian B:you can buy a tiny house on Amazon. Stop, I'm dead serious. Obviously, you got to schedule the shipping and do all that kind of stuff, but I see this at the airport all the time when I'm in the lounge it's like a noise isolation booth where you can go in and work. The audio is pristine, you don't get distracted. It's noise cancellation in there. So if you're doing zooms or you're doing whatever, it's got all the plugs in it.
Joe Bunn:It's this exact brand, the one you've seen.
Brian B:Well, how do you?
Joe Bunn:pay, they just have a swiper on it or something. No, it's free.
Brian B:No, it's free when you go into the lounge, like give me an example, oh so you go into, like, the amex lounge, the delta lounge. They got them and not in everyone funny.
Joe Bunn:I say amex, youmex too, does he Anyway?
Brian B:So they have these in these lounges.
Joe Bunn:Yeah.
Brian B:The cool thing about this one actually all of them, I think they have wheels, so like we have an upstairs area where we shoot content and stuff and I can wheel that wherever I need to Get it in the closet, if I need to to get it out of the way. Lounges yeah, I close it up.
Brian B:I'm like the most productive I'm I've ever been five grand is just a little much for me right now. I can't do it, but I've ran into so many times where, like I, work out of my home yeah, yeah so it's not soundproof correctly it's distracting and you have a small child, right.
Joe Bunn:So this was very similar to this thing that me and saquon were going to buy for the office for because he records a lot of hip-hop records. So we were gonna buy this, like it was like basically a vocal booth, an isolation booth, right. Very similar, you know, I mean, but they were again. It was three to five thousand dollars, it's crazy, maybe more so.
Brian B:It's still sitting in my cart. One day somebody will uh donate towards it. If you want to donate towards it, I'll take it I'll go fund me for brian.
Joe Bunn:What's it called the nook? Give brian a nook, y'all I'll put it in the link in there you can gift it to me, gift it to me for my birthday.
Brian B:Wow, that's good. Wait, when is your birthday? February, so it'll be about a month later.
Joe Bunn:Speaking of birthdays, your boy Saquon's birthday is tomorrow.
Brian B:Is it yeah?
Joe Bunn:28? 28. God dang, he's a baby boy, bro. Young man.
Brian B:He's got a fuller beard than I do. He does.
Joe Bunn:Not right now. He went to the goatee for a minute. We do goatee style.
Brian B:Now he's got like 70s porn stats.
Joe Bunn:Yeah, is that kind of where we're going with Making it sexy? Oh, dude, bringing it back, bringing sexy back.
Brian B:That's amazing.
Joe Bunn:Thinking of bringing things back Okay.
Brian B:Great segue.
Joe Bunn:Yes, it was Good. God, you're getting good at this.
Brian B:What songs have you been bringing back? We longer than that. We did About 90 minutes. That was fun, man, it was fun.
Joe Bunn:I wasn't trying to be selfish, but I was a little bit selfish Because I know that you truly spend more time working and digging on music than I do. If I had a goal for this year, it will be that. That's cool, I like that, and I've re-subscribed to a lot of the pools now, right, so it's kind of like a thing you're paying for and you know that you should be using it.
Brian B:Yes that I would get in there more instead of letting them lapse Totally.
Joe Bunn:I did that already, so now that's my goal going forward. You and I went through and we were basically and it's impossible to do it in an hour or even an hour and a half we got through like A Excuse me, but I came up with like two or three songs and a lot of stuff I get inspired by because, you know, I had that little bit of financial interest in Spin Studio. So I go to a bunch of different classes every week. They play 13 songs. Sometimes they'll play and edit, but normally it's like a radio version. Sure, Right, so I'm bringing back Cyclone. You move your body like a cyclone.
Brian B:You got a plan Cyclone.
Joe Bunn:Give us a little tidbit of that. She moves her body like a cyclone. And, by the way, did you happen to watch the bro in raleigh?
Brian B:no, no no, the national okay, the macy's okay, okay, I don't know, have you ever been to that in real life? I've never been.
Joe Bunn:I've, even all those years you lived there, people would say yeah, it would be like going to times square for new year's eve. It's the worst, okay, so no, you don't if you're in new york.
Brian B:But my wife's. She had a office that was overlooked it. So for two years, I think, we went and they had the parade. It was all catered.
Joe Bunn:I mean we're way up there we've got bathrooms like amenities sure, sure you can't leave until it's all over. Oh, that's right, we can take you in there.
Brian B:Yeah, so it's like great. The views are awesome yeah yeah, but you know you're not leaving until it's over. Yeah, yeah, but at least you're not freezing your. You know you're freezing your ass off.
Joe Bunn:You got a little hot cocoa, totally. My point was, once they pull up to the area where, like al roker and whoever's, the mc t-pain did like a five minute mega mix, wow, he shut the whole street down. It was great. So he was one of the, you know like it'll be like it wasn't the Jonas Brothers, but it was like it's usually like C-list.
Brian B:Right to me, t-pain is A-list oh, I agree, he has a trillion hits. Well, so is Jonas Brothers and it wasn't Jonas Brothers it was.
Joe Bunn:It was like the Monas Brothers, like the act before him. Was that dude Walker Hayes, oh yeah, hayes. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Brian B:Date night at Applebee's Fancy Changed the words to like Santa Claus and a Christmas tree and a something. Yeah, he was hot for about two minutes.
Joe Bunn:Maybe two minutes. But then I started going down this rabbit hole of trying to figure out because you're on a float that is usually like Tyson Chicken or like Legos, you know, did Legos or whoever pay Walker Hayes, did he get $100,000?, did he get $10,000 or did he get $0? Never really got an answer, but my point was T-Pain ripped the shit up and he played Cyclone.
Brian B:I'm not sure Cyclone's a little racy for a child's parade but he definitely.
Joe Bunn:All I do is win.
Brian B:And since you've heard it, have you brought it into a show A hundred thousand percent, and it's done well, it works.
Joe Bunn:I mean I don't need to play the whole thing, but we never do. You know what I mean Play a little smidgen. I got that from Valare and then or maybe I got it I was kind of sparked by the parade. And then I heard it at Valare at the spin studio, and then I was in love with Nelly Furtado, by the way, oh yeah, give it to me. I heard again in a spin class and I was like oh, I got to bring this back Because.
Joe Bunn:I'm a Timberland fanatic. Number one Hit the beat. I'm not era, Absolutely whatever era. I'm the worst at knowing the year of the song. Can you give me a roundabout? I would say 2000s. Give it to me what year it came out. Just come back to us With that. Thank you. You know what that Always reminds me of when I ask Theo, Do you watch Theo Vaughn? When I ask Saquon To look up something.
Brian B:Yeah, yeah, yeah, you ever watch his clips.
Joe Bunn:He'll be like Look up A baby monkey Riding a tractor. I'm like. Whoever the look up guy is Will literally find something. Yes.
Brian B:It's search.
Joe Bunn:Yes, his search history it's insane, not gonna be good 2007, 2007 oh yeah, so 2000, I was in it, you were in it are you playing that one?
Brian B:have you played that one since? Yeah, 100% it works, because mid tempo it's like oh yeah, over a hundred 15, something in that, exactly, and that people don't make a lot of songs like that yeah, so I love that stuff and I Timbaland's like my guy Him Swiss Beats, like those were like the people that I loved. So when we were going through that list I pulled a bunch for you to check out. One of them you said failed.
Joe Bunn:To be fair, I felt like it was in this three-hour set on Saturday. I felt like I had them. Listen, don't get me wrong. The floor didn't clear but, like, even Saquon was like why? And I was like brian b told me that this was gonna go off. It. Does you gotta place it? I know I did and, to be fair, I don't think I had it in the right sector. Right crowd wasn't right. He said he thought they were too young or old. Young, yeah, remember they were. Yeah, yeah, they were young. Yeah, they were in there. Okay.
Brian B:Well, I feel like this song came out like 2010 give me a.
Joe Bunn:Give me a year on this Give us a sample first.
Brian B:So here's the thing, though, before you play the key is, you have to make an edit of it, and I'm happy to share.
Joe Bunn:You can't do it from the verse. This is kid talking about. You got to do it from the pre-chorus, because that's where the hook is, but you need to be in a section of music. I see what you're saying. You know what I mean.
Brian B:Yeah, just continuing on Go ahead 2008, by the way.
Joe Bunn:All right. So yeah, not that old, yeah, but I'm saying if they were 25, that's 16 years ago, they would have been that old.
Brian B:Okay.
Joe Bunn:The beat's great too. Look, it goes off. I'm going to try it again tonight. Don't give up on it yet. No, don't think I retired it, because tonight at that Nays party you're going to hear Jordan Sparks.
Brian B:Okay, I used it this weekend. I actually sent you the clip and people are going nuts over it.
Joe Bunn:So it was a really good one.
Brian B:And then the other one, which I think there's a lot of like EDM, kind of older, I don't know, 2010s, 90s. I love that shit, yeah, so this is.
Joe Bunn:It's David Guetta, yeah, calvin Harris, zedd. You're going to hear three songs from all those.
Brian B:Totally songs from all those.
Joe Bunn:Totally you might hear nine songs from those three right djs producers.
Brian B:Yeah, that's how good that era of edm was, and you brought up in a previous episode recently jenny on the block by jlo.
Joe Bunn:But this one's kind of a sleeper.
Brian B:Okay, this is one of our more dance records. I guess it's waiting for tonight yeah, I love, I literally play it, just as we're gonna play the sample here, where the drop hits on the chorus. Yeah, and I only play the chorus. I never even get to a verse. If you cut it correctly, that's the only thing people remember is that chorus?
Joe Bunn:Yeah, I couldn't tell you one lyric from that song, but I know waiting for tonight.
Brian B:So it's all the O's all of that, okay, so let's see.
Joe Bunn:Waiting for tonight.
Brian B:And, and. Anytime you drop it right there, they're just singing to it.
Joe Bunn:Every time. But what's the set Like? What's right before that?
Brian B:Um.
Joe Bunn:Pitbull Okay, pitbull into the outro beat or Pitbull the vocal and then straight into that because like yeah, so that's kind of waiting.
Brian B:Yes, yes, I got you. Okay, yeah, okay, I can see that even some flow writer stuff you could play before that, like any of that kind of stuff beforehand. I love that. Those are some uh throwbacks to incorporate into your sets, if you're not doing it already.
Joe Bunn:Some ideas, I mean that's been one of the things that I'm, like I said, going through here at the end of the year, especially because I had those two industry parties.
Brian B:Right.
Joe Bunn:I just you cannot play those like a wedding Right? Those people are so sick of our sets. I don't care how good you think you are, like they've heard it. You know what I mean. And so if you have to play an industry set, you've got to jump off onto stuff like this, that's been forgotten and I literally named the crate forgotten bangers, like because these were great songs.
Brian B:oh, totally great song let's get into a question. Okay, what do we got? Uh, you read it. Okay, this is coming to us from houston say his name first oh man, argelio, de leon, de leon, I could get that part I think it's argelio yep, all right, I want to know more about behind the scenes. As a multi-op, I'm interested in learning about day-to-day tasks, staying organized and all the non-DJs required stuff to keep the business moving forward. I think you're king at this.
Joe Bunn:Ironically, I get this question a lot. I think it's because a lot of people that are in this line of work are still carrying on with a nine to five job. Could be electrician, could be a plumber, could be a realtor, could be a software salesman, could be high level executive at blah blah blah research firm. Could be, financial planning. Who knows? And they are one. Everybody is always worried to leave financial security. I know how much I'm going to make a week.
Joe Bunn:I know I've got health insurance, I got this 401k. It's terrifying, but I think that a question like this sometimes stems from what am I going to do all day? Because what they're used to doing is working for somebody all day, yeah, and then coming home and scrambling through emails, prepping music, blah, blah, blah, from, let's say, 6 to 10 or maybe midnight, and then going to bed and then doing it all over. But I can tell you this, and Brian would say the exact same thing there has never been a day that I've woken up and been like damn, I'm bored. Not since I was a little boy can I truly packed, but everything from the admin of checking the emails, responding to the emails, setting up Zoom consultations, sending out contracts, taking in money, depositing money to prepping for shows, downloading music, finding new music, making all the crates for these specific shows.
Joe Bunn:For me, I would say I probably spend two of the five weekdays doing this, shooting something. Now it might only be two or three hours, but then I've got to either send it to somebody to edit or edit it myself. Then I spend a ton of time watching myself back, and I always watch it back in like two speed just because I'm like so tired of seeing myself and then you have to schedule it or put it out. So I would say probably half my week is some sort of content creation or curation and then the rest is basically admin for just normal business. Maybe let's call it 5% is some sort of gear work. I often roll stuff in here and either take it apart, kind of rearrange stuff, put it back together, make something easier. You know, I just changed to the battery powered moving heads so got rid of power cord and having to find power for those, got rid of the dongle, you know little little transmitters and stuff. So I'm always kind of like messing around with gear. But I mean, that's 5% of my time.
Brian B:What about you? I mean, well, I was just gonna say to that point I think this is true about any entrepreneurship that you think, hey, I want to do my own business, so I can have my own schedule yeah and you know be more sleep in yeah, exactly no.
Brian B:Any entrepreneur will tell you that you actually are working more in the business than you ever have 100 right thousand percent so I think for me, what has happened, or at least it did my creative side took a back seat because I was so focused on all of the business stuff you know, which would be networking, admin tasks, all the things you kind of mentioned, sure, but I'm like, wait a minute, I'm not even like. The whole reason why I wanted to do this is so I could actually spend more time, like in the music, and you know, perfecting my craft.
Joe Bunn:Yeah.
Brian B:So now I've actually had to like segment my day out to go. Okay, this Monday is only about this thing, or you know, sales is happening on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, or whatever the case may be.
Joe Bunn:Yeah.
Brian B:I can't even like just willy nilly it anymore. There's. There's just so much that you can do in the business. You don't schedule yourself. You can really be up a Creek without a paddle.
Joe Bunn:Well, I also think, though, then you get so busy that you become a delegator, and the best delegators are the people that do start to regain some of their time, that are able to go on vacation and not have to worry or be on their phone, that are able to dig into music and only play the shows for the clientele that's right for them. That's when you truly start to turn the corner.
Brian B:I feel like they don't wear any hats for a while.
Joe Bunn:That's 100%. And if you're not willing to do that, you're not going to be successful. And I don't care if it's a popsicle stand on the corner or a DJ business Like you, have to give it every bit of your time, attention. You're going to miss, you know, your friend's weddings. You're going to miss some dance recitals or soccer games. And then it turns the corner that it will turn the corner at a certain point, especially if you allow it to you release some of the control. You let other people do the shows that you don't want to do or that are not suited for you, your personal brand it will turn the corner, one of the things we talked about on our mentoring call last night was AI tools and I think, if those are something that I'm exploring right now, to go, okay, what can this do for me?
Brian B:that will give me back some time that before I was having to put a lot of brainpower towards, and now you don't really need to as much if you leverage these things. But you got to look into them, you got to try them out, you got to buy the teleprompter from Amazon and see if it works or not.
Brian B:You know those different things, but eventually, if you can use these tools, they can regain you back some of your time so that you can I mean dude, yeah, think about buzzsprout where we host this right, and think about your last podcast where you weren't using buzzsprout, or maybe it wasn't even around, or it wasn't. It was, wasn't I?
Joe Bunn:don't think it listens to the podcast, makes it sound better, gives us six titles, writes out the entire show and then even transcribes what me and you just said, and probably it looks like it takes about five minutes to scan it. Crazy, I mean, if I had to write that show description I'd have to listen to the episode, remember what we said, and it's actually kind of humorous, Like it's kind of got some like funny. But yeah, man, even something like Buzzsprout right that we host this podcast on and you didn't have it for the Travel.
Joe Bunn:Blend DJ, you know we heard about it through Richie Stedman and some other people that are big into podcasting Scans the file. Not only does it make it sound better, gives me all the show notes and then transcribes the entire thing. That gives me all the show notes and then transcribes the entire thing. That would have taken me hours, it takes it about three to five minutes probably to scan the whole episode. Yeah, write it out. It's funny. I maybe change five words Like I'll take out like some sentences kind of sounds not like us and then boom, that's what I use for the YouTube description and the podcast description and they wrote it in five minutes, it would have taken me an hour Right in five minutes.
Joe Bunn:It would have taken me an hour Right, because first I have to listen to it, then I got to make notes on it, right. Then I got to make the notes make sense into two paragraphs, right, let's call it Anyway.
Brian B:And technology is moving so fast. Yes, game changer Like these things. If you just keep pulse on it, you never know when one of these things can give you more efficiency and make it easier.
Joe Bunn:It's all about time, man. You know, I saw Mojax posted this video the other day and it was about his 360 camera. He was like I hate it. And he was like I don't know what I'm doing, I don't know how to use it. I said, listen, man, you hit record, just set it up by your decks. You hit record and let it run the whole party. You take the files, you send them to bucks, you make them go through it and you say find anything funny, interesting, cute, alarming, cringy? Yeah, and send me 10 clips and five are going to be usable. Done, you're overthinking it? Yeah, and all these guys?
Joe Bunn:oh, you know this 40 bucks shit 40 bucks. Learn how to use it. I'm like dude. My time is worth more than sitting there all afternoon right trying to learn how to it's proprietary software on the 360 oh, I'm aware.
Brian B:Yeah, it ain't capco number.
Joe Bunn:I gotta learn how to use that now. Number two I gotta scroll through Two different angles. What are me and Saquon doing? What is the audience doing? Oh, that's funny, this girl's coming up. Why would I waste my time doing that? Like, how much money did that cost me sitting here for a half a day trying to dig through that footage?
Brian B:It's crazy.
Joe Bunn:Solid, solid, no, anyway, my time is more valuable than that, and that's what you have to think about, right? Thank you, our julio, our helio, our helio, all right.
Brian B:So they lay on. They lay on hope. That helps. That's a beautiful name, by the way, houston, texas shout out. You know, if you are enjoying this podcast, we would love to hear some feedback, because I feel like jeff brown is carrying us on the review front, so we need to like spice it up with some people, uh, giving us feedback.
Joe Bunn:Where do they leave it?
Brian B:That's a great question.
Joe Bunn:I think you can leave it on any platform that you're listening on Apple, spotify, whatever, or beyond the DJ boothcom. All right, till the next one, we'll see you. Thanks y'all. See ya, bye.