On 30 March 2009, DJMM was launched with little fanfare and just a handful of new members.  Since then, membership has more than tripled as more people learn about and experience DJMM.  Now that we are celebrating our first anniversary, we are looking to the future in order that all DJMM members benefit greatly.  However, what really makes DJMM such an amazing experience IS all of the members!  (more…)

For a significant part of my life, I have asked this very question many times; what is success?  When I asked others what success was, they told me what it meant to them, but almost all of them viewed success as a destination or by having a lot of material possessions.  I was trapped in this line of thinking for most of my life too, however I have found that success is not a place or time or even how much stuff we have.  (more…)

I have been doing some thinking the past few weeks about the future direction for DJMM in 2010.  I have come up with quite a few ideas that I would like to implement as well as some of the suggestions that have been made by DJMM members.  And the explosive growth of our tight-nit family has far exceeded all of my expectations.  However…  (more…)

The Small Business Administration or SBA recently released its stats and trends for 2007.  According to this study, only 7% of all the businesses started that year were still in business by the end of the year!  In the 1990s it averaged about 10% per year, but with the economy like it has been in 2008 and 2009, I am quite sure that the percentage is going to dip even lower.

If that doesn’t scare you, it should! (more…)

Many times we blindly believe that all our sales & marketing success is innate or natural. Sometimes we are even arrogant about it! “I gotta be me!”

Still others tend to think that good sales & marketing has more to do with luck than anything else.

The bottom line is that every great company in the world researches and adopts the best practices of others in order to grow and remain competitive. A small business owner must do the same. Pride and ego must never be allowed to hinder the process of acquiring new skills. Do not let your pride allow you to be “justified” or “right” about your approach. Do not allow yourself to foolishly fall into the dangerous rut of believing that it is always going to be your ideal way of doing things.

One of the greatest things I have discovered when I started attendinatg the various trade shows and DJ conferences was the powerful effect that networking had on me and my business.  For years I was involved on many of the online communities for disc jockeys and after the novelty wore off, I found that it was more time consuming than anything else.  When I was looking for answers, often it would lead to heated discussions and arguments about all sorts of things – I got tired of trying to sift through all of the BS to get the feedback I was looking for.  (more…)