Mindset is EVERYTHING & covid cost us $2,000,000+ #dj
- What's up, what's up, what's up world. It is Jason Jani and welcome here. We're back to my channel. If you're new here, I'd like to extend a warm 2021 welcome to you.
And if you are a returning visitor, supporter or viewer of the content on this channel, welcome back. It's so good to have you here. So if you're new here, let me just tell you really quick. In the fourth quarter of 2020, I made the decision to start this channel primarily focusing on the business of DJing There's gonna be a lot of different content on this channel, and there's a ton of great content on YouTube that never really existed when I was coming up. My goal with this channel is to help push our industry, the private event space forward. I wanna share my personal experiences, things I've learned along the way of not only being a full-time DJ, but building a successful and large business that has done events all over the planet.
My goal is to help you with my experiences and things that I've learned along the way to help you make the best decisions for your world, for your business. And hopefully avoid mistakes that I made that cost me time, energy and money. This channel is all about community. And my goal is to create a YouTube based community that is all about shifting a somewhat shitty stereotype that exists of the mobile DJ industry. People think that mobile DJs, wedding DJs are corny, they're cheesy and they don't have talent. And yeah, that might be true in some instances and in some places, but they don't understand that we are the people that create awesome.
And the capabilities of people in our industry are almost endless. So together we can help inspire the people that hire us for their events to expect more, to never settle and to not kind of choose those bottom feeders and the things that we all dread in our industry. We wanna work for people who care and we wanna inspire people to scream one more song at the end of our events, not leave two hours early. That's what this channel is all about.
As someone watching the content on this channel, I wanna say that when I get this channel going and in the future should it be able to generate dollars and cents and ad revenue or sponsorships or whatever, I give you my word that I plan on reinvesting every single penny into creating better content, more frequent content so that this channel becomes an incredibly valuable resource for those that are serious about being a better DJ or about achieving awesomeness with their business, the business of DJing. So again, I'm super pumped that you're here. It's good to have you here.
Happy 21. And this would be a great opportunity for me to just stop for a second and invite you to support my journey here if you're new with some sub love. So drop down below. Hit the subscription below so just so you can stay in the know and (indistinct) support my hustle, or hit the red box in the corner of the video at any time during this video.
Today, I'm gonna rip about Jani real talk on mindset and why I think it matters if you and your business are looking to survive this global COVID pandemic we are all kind of crawling through. It's all about starting off 2021 with the proper foundation and the right mindset. I believe that mindset is the most powerful and critical component found in people who are successful inside and outside of the event industry.
All of my content is really targeting and targeted created for mobile DJs and people that own business, small business, but these foundational principles of mindset can be found in people all over this planet doing all sorts of different awesome in whatever it is they do. We are all here starting a new calendar year 2021 and we should all be excited that we finally made it through what was 2020. I never thought the year was gonna end. It's over. You've made it, you're here.
Congratulations. And at the end of this video, you can redeem your prize for getting this far. Last year was absolutely insane and I could think of a ton of different adjectives or descriptives, but insane is probably the easiest and cleanest that I could use. We learned new terms like social distancing and the new normal.
We've adapted our daily life to include face masks and hand sanitizer. Extreme personal hygiene has become incredibly important for people everywhere. Things like contact tracers now exist. And these are all part of our daily norm from dining in outdoor snow bubbles to insane capacity restrictions dictated by state and local and federal government mandates, I think 2020 will be the jumping point for what is to come in the virtual world, that we're all now living in. The great worldwide health and technology reset. I don't need to recap it.
You all lived it, we survived it. We are here. I could have never predicted or even sabotaged my world in the way that COVID-19 or the Coronavirus pandemic has impacted us at the SCE event group and in the event industry.
And for someone like me, that's made a career on getting people to celebrate amazing moments in time in what would now be classified as an unsafe socially and distant way according to the CDC. It's been an emotional ride. I have experienced the highest of highs and surely the lowest of lows over the past year. My emotions and my attitude has spanned the universe over the past 12 months. I've celebrated wins small and large, and I've cried as I've seen the whole world I've worked so incredibly hard for the past 15 years slowly fade away outside of my control.
We've been forced to relearn the basics and we've been forced to adapt so that our story and my story and SCE is a story of triumph and not sadness. That's mindset. Last year I lost just about $2 million of events that were at one point booked, but were forced to cancel or postpone or just change their plans. Over 1,400 events gone from the calendars. 1,400 events impacted by the pandemic. Those gates are forever gone and they can't come back.
And if those contracts decided to postpone in place of canceling to future dates, it's awesome, we still have our relationships and they're not totally lost, but they took time away from other opportunities of working with other clients who could have been booked in the future. So you technically took the dates from one time and now spread it across two different dates, leveraging your cost down. It's okay because my mindset is dialed into the future and I refuse to give up because of my mindset. The numbers that I'm talking about are scary. And I'm not saying it to boast, it's not about that, but it's not all.
The numbers are just numbers. I think about the people associated with my business and I've been forced to furlough employees. I've chosen to sell things that I own, that I love because I really didn't need them anymore. I've had to make tough decisions about expenses and investments and hold back on things that I was working on or projects that were just getting started. It has been nothing short of terrible, but I'm here to tell you everything will be okay because I refuse to lose. We at SCE refuse for loops.
One of the biggest lessons I learned through this whole pandemic is stuff that I kind of already knew. It's really like effort matters in business. And you have to know that effort is what creates opportunity effort is what is gonna be the best thing to prepare you for when things don't go the way you may be originally planned. Effort is the game changer.
I believe that with every struggle, there's great opportunity. And although things have been incredibly hard and they will continue to be hard for some time in the future, I believe that with every issue, every obstacle, everything that's been presented, everyone in the world has an opportunity to sit and wait for their circumstances or the world to change where you can grab life by the horns, you could make it happen yourself, and you can do the work. You can invest in action and effort and you have the opportunity of outworking misfortune.
From struggles you are forced to learn you have to or you're gonna lose. And I'm not someone that likes to lose ever. I'm not as ultra competitive as I was when I was in high school or when I was younger.
But I understand you get out of situations what you invest into them. So if you're willing to do the work and you care about the work, the harder you work, the more prepared you're gonna be for opportunities when they're presented or obstacles, situations, things that could normally cripple people in industries and businesses who sit back and are not willing to do the work. Think about it, you can't be a go DJ without being terrible first, you got to do the work. You can't learn how to scratch without putting hours of time in behind the deck. People can idolize DJs all over the world, but a lot of people don't understand what it takes to get to those positions of power and influence.
All the hours invested into the business, the art, the craft, and what was done in the shadows when the cameras weren't on. If you're not willing to do the work, it's only gonna get you so far. Thinking back to SCE, I started my business because I wanted to help people celebrate awesome. I never wanted to be the best thing that never was. I never wanted to tell my kids the story, "I was a DJ once, but I never did anything with it."
I wanted to do cool things for cool people, for people that understood that entertainment matters and that talent matters. I always believe that when you combine talent and technology with a company who cares and people that are willing to do the work, you could experience something different. It's almost like magic. It's kind of like magic. It's a secret sauce. You can't fake it.
If you love it, people can feel it. And when I was told I couldn't do it or wasn't gonna be able to be successful, that gives me fuel to the fire. And when things got tough, that's what I thought about. That was the foundation for the world that surrounds me now. And at that time I took a super calculated risk. It was so scary.
And I left the comfort of corporate America to start my own business during a shaky economy of 2008. And I doubled down. I worked hard. I've been able to do some insane events that I'm super proud of. I've played for a universal celebrities and artists and organizations of couples of people and companies and on and on.
I've been able to visit beautiful locations all over this planet, playing dope nightclubs, playing some of the prettiest properties. I've been to different cities and countries all because I chased my dream. I'm saying this not to boast. I'm saying because I'm proud of the past.
And I also understand that the future will be very, very different. Your mindset is key here and your mindset is power. The world is what it is and there's nothing you or I can do to change that.
But we have the power to change our mindset and take action to influence the people in our space in our world that are around us. Now is the time that we all need to adapt. It's now time to push our industry forward and grow together.
So if you're someone that's watching this and you thrive in comfort, now is the time to relearn, to adjust, to accept the fact that change is scary, it's terrifying, but it will be okay as long as you're able to get your mind in the right place. Change can be good. It's change that creates opportunity and change is what stimulates creativity.
Without change, life, events and everything is easy. It's boring, it's predictable. It's not what I'm about. We all waited for 2020 to be over. And here we are, 2021.
It's here, thankfully, but here we are a couple of days into the new year and nothing really has changed. Nothing is gonna change for a long time. It's okay. It's time to work. It's time to adjust.
It's the new year and you have a new opportunity to crush the world around you on your terms. So I'm ready to deal with the work I need to do. I hope you are too and we need to all get it together.
So here I am talking to you almost 13 years later from when I made one of the most terrifying business decisions of my life, leaving the safety and the comfort of corporate America and diving into the unknown and the chaos of the event world, the chaos a small business and creating a new path for myself. The year 2020 brought back so many feelings that existed with me when I started my business. And although it's not the same, there's a lot of parallel fields that took place. Rather than complaining about the fact that I had to deal with all this stuff and it cost me so much money and I had to whatever, whether it's a business or my personal life, I prefer to take action and impact the world around me one day at a time. The only thing I know what works based on my own experience is to do work and to outwork those who are not willing to do the work in my local industry, people that call themselves my competitors, my solution is to do what other people are not willing to do and to invest in myself, my business, the craft, and use the chaos and uncertainty of what has been presented to me to reshape my world, to align with more of exactly what I wanna do for the type of people that I only want to work for.
Where am I going with all of this talk? Today is your day. And it doesn't matter if you're watching this on January 3rd or January 31st or May 5th or August 20th or 2022. The energy that surrounds a reset of a new calendar year is available to you whenever you decide it's time with your mind. The time is yours to decide. Mindset comes with action and if you're willing to do the work to put you on a road to be the best version of awesome that you can be, great.
If it's not today, it's not today, but you have the power to reshape your world and all that surrounds it with action. You don't need to wait for the start of a new year, a new week for anything. So I wanted to offer you a couple, I guess, things, tips or whatever, things that I do when I wanna shift the world around me, when I wanna create, when I want action, where I wanna reset, so to speak. I start with a new notebook. Simple, right? Buy a $10 notebook and magic happens.
It's not that easy. It's a $10 item, but it helps me perceive the start of a new chapter. And in my mind, a new notebook is a subtle way of a fresh start.
It's funny, I try to go paperless and try to use my iPad. And I bought the remarkable pad. I've learned that I work better when I write things out. I notice that when I'm bothered or upset, my writing gets super sloppy, but writing helps keep me calm and helps me sort out what goes on in the world that surrounds me.
It helps me prioritize things. When I write things down, it helps me never forget. It helps me be more accountable.
And it's just the start. Each year I stockpile, I almost hoard scribbles of conversations, of thoughts, of ideas, of processes and so much more. It's my process and it's what I do to start the reset of my mindset. I like to write, I'm absolutely terrible. As a matter of fact, I absolutely suck at writing, but I love to write out my goals.
I'm not someone that believes in new year's resolutions. As a matter of fact, I hate resolutions. I hate resolutions because they say three quarters for 75% or greater of the people who make them fail by the middle of the first month of putting them into play. I hate resolutions almost as much as I hate line dances at private events.
I'm not even kidding. So if I could offer a piece of advice to anyone, cut out the resolutions and focus on setting goals. And by the way, if you haven't seen my goal setting video of things that I do with myself and my team, be sure to click the link in the video and check out this video. If you're feeling that things are getting stale or stagnant, it's time for you to change.
It's time for you to switch up your workspace. These subtle things make a difference. So move your desk to another part of the room, maybe tilt it a different way.
Clean your desk, just simplify your life. If you're working in clutter, get it out of the way. Throw things away, clean your workspace. Move to a different room, switch up your environment.
If you have any ability to go to a different part of your house or your office building, or maybe to use something, a different space, these are all solutions that can help you stimulate your mind and mindset with action from changing or shifting your workspace to what you're doing in your daily hustle and your daily habits. These are all ways to reset your mindset. So look at how you're spending your time on social media and the frequency of what you're going on different platforms. Look at who you're following or who you're connected to and what they're saying. Where are you spending your time when you're on Facebook? Do you read people's drama and comments? I've practically had to cut Facebook entirely out of my life because I realized that it was like going down the black hole and I was not being as productive as I possibly can.
These are things that can impact your mind in different ways and I feel that these are a couple of key things that you can do to impact not only your mindset, but your mood. And if you can shift your mind, you could shift your mood, ideally it's gonna impact your business in a positive way, because if your mind is not right, if your mood is not right, your business can't be right. It's not possible. Another piece of advice I would say to anyone or something I learned through this whole pandemic situation that we've done is how important it is to take time for yourself and the people around you.
If you're not into fitness and you're not physically fit or if you have a couple of pounds to lose, it's time to start with some action and start moving. You don't have to run a marathon. You don't have to train crossfit every day.
Start with a simple walk around the block or walking your neighborhood. Walks are a great way to start to step away and you have to find activity that works for you and what you enjoy and what's gonna benefit you based on whoever you are in the world and wherever you are in the world. When I say time for you is important, it's about finding something that you enjoy for yourself, giving yourself time to relax, giving your mind time to relax and giving your body and your mind the ability to work off the stress that can build if you're not taking time for yourself. I'm not the most physically fit person and I've gone through fitness, ups and downs throughout my life, but every day I work out with my girlfriend and we have an exercise bike, we have an air bike and we have weights and we have a rig, and we have an elliptical.
It all started with us doing walks and we invest an hour a day into our health. And it allows me to spend time with her. It allows me to clear out the stress that builds up over the course of the day. And it helps me with my sanity.
I've found that when I invest time into this part of my day, it makes me a nicer person. It gives me the ability to deal with things in an easier way. So what is it that you can do for your world? Think about it. We all have to use the time that we have right now before the world goes back to the "new normal" whatever that is and whenever that is.
It's time to stimulate yourself and your business to be the best it possibly can be. If you're thinking about business and where you can go to just shift things up, maybe it's time to update your website, refresh your photos, take some new head shots, review your storefronts, look how they're working. See what they're doing for you.
If you're interested in learning things, use this platform, YouTube to investigate things that you can use within your business or your craft, or learn something that relates to your business so you can be better. I've taught myself how to shoot video better. I've taught myself how important lighting is. I've worked on photography. These are all things that I wanted to do, but I never could do.
And I did it because I had time, thanks to COVID. See, it's not all bad, although it sucks, this is where we are today. Here's (indistinct) for DJs and one of my favorite things to do.
When I crush parties at the end of a party that absolutely smashed as I save that history from that day into its own crate. And over the course of a year, I build my sub crates, which are basically these iconic parties into a folder for that year. At the end of every year, I take all of those sub create folders and I drag that into a single folder. I delete all the duplicates and then what I do is I erase all of those sub crates.
The reason why I do that is because it forces me to think differently. It forces me to be creative. It allows me to refresh what I'm doing at events and it removes the crutch and the comfort from my world. I think it makes me better when I perform for people.
That's a tip. It takes action, it takes time and it takes hustle to rethink things. But this one practice is something that I love to do at the end of each year. And although it's stressful, it helps me stay super fresh and it helps me make my events different year to year, each and every year.
These are just a couple of things that I do to change the comfort around me to impact my mind at different times of the year. So let me boil this whole video down in a summary for you. Mindset for many starts at the beginning of a new calendar year, but it doesn't really have to. If you understand that your mindset is the foundation of your own success and with effort and action, you can put yourself and your in a position to conquer the struggles that lie ahead or positioning yourself for success when opportunity is presented, you will be in a better place than those that don't understand that. If you are willing to do the work, you can achieve incredible results in life, and you can put yourself in a situation that when things present themselves that are not in your plan, you are in a position to get through them and conquer them, making your story one of victory and not sadness. I really appreciate you guys sticking with me to the very end of this video.
I hope that you've gained from this video and I really look forward to growing with you right here on this channel in the future. I appreciate your watch. I appreciate your time. If you gained something from this video, smash that thumbs up button for me.
And if you'd like to throw me a comment, I'll respond to you, just do so in the comments below. Thank you for watching and be on the lookout for new videos tripping really soon right here on this channel. Thanks for watching.
2021-01-07 09:30
