I Stumbled into a Million Dollar Business DJing Clubs in San Diego

I’ve got a secret for you

If you don’t know me that personally, you may not know I used to DJ. A lot

In college I was obsessed with Marshmello, The Chainsmokers, and Skrillex. I loved the electronic music scene. Dancing was fun. The vibes were extremely high. Heck, the company wasn’t that bad looking either. You didn’t need to think, you just danced to the beat.

That was in 2010. Like most things I find interesting, I don’t just dive in. I get an excavator and go really, REALLY deep into it. I went to Ultra Miami in 2011, then again in 2012. I loved house music.

I wanted to pick up DJing to try it out. I went to Ohio State. The fraternity I was a part of, AEPi, was known for throwing some really fun block parties for football season. I asked to try DJing out there a couple time. Each and every time I got shut down with a hard NO.

Instead, I continued to enjoy the music more and more as a pleasant observer rather than curator.

Fast forward to new years 2018…

I visited my close friends Aaron and Andrew in Denver for a music festival called Decadence NYE. They were DJing an after party in their basement. Ahead of time I asked if I stayed up extra late would I be able to “mess around” on their set-up when everyone left. To try it out…

Come 5:30 am when everyone left after the first night I did indeed, mess around.

I dug through their library of music. I started playing with the knobs, sliders, EQs.

I had no idea what I was doing. It was hot garbage being mixed together. Let me tell you though… it was a freaking blast. I was hooked. Looking back it makes sense because I am really just a nerdy engineer.

4 days later I come back to my job in Cincinnati. I was told I was being let go. After only being there for 11 months.

This DJ exploration had to wait for a little until I found a way to fund my passion project.

Southern California

Come July 2019, I was packed up ready to move to San Diego, California with a job offer in hand to start in 2 weeks.

I had no clue what I was getting into. Let me tell you though. Best thing that has ever happened to me, to date.

I get settled in San Diego and start realizing house music is pretty big in California. Not just “EDM” but house music.

There’s a big difference. Trust me.

At that point, every March and September there was a music festival called CRSSD. Put on in San Diego at waterfront park. It’s incredible. September is right around the corner. I was fresh to the area and didn’t get a ticket. Instead, I check out some after parties when the festival was happening. What a welcome party that weekend was.

The music: Incredible. The weather: Immaculate. The women: Made me crumble.

What was there not to love?

I soon realized California is a whole different animal when it comes to the music scene.

Makes sense right?

Yep.

2020 NYE is right around the corner. I had to figure out my plans again. So what do I do? Call up my friends Aaron and Andrew and ask them if we can run Decadence back again. That we did. Did I ask if I could fool around on their DJ decks again, but this time in front of people? Does dolly Parton sleep on her back?

Aaron, Andrew, and the rest of the housemates are incredibly open and welcoming. Them letting me run it back on their equipment was a huge inflection point for opening up my passion for DJing. Fun fact, one of those housemates is CJ. A DJ that’s getting pretty popular in denver and touring around the country. He plays some pretty fun and funky sets too. Check him out

We run Decadence back. I get one ski day in right before the party begins. What a combo?! Ski + House music.

Here was my opportunity to play a train-wreck of mixing music in front of 60 people. Indeed I did wreck the train.

Being able to do that was the most euphoric drug I consumed all weekend.

BTW – I go to 95% of these events completely sober, people thought I was crazy. I was. I liked the music that much. When I returned to San Diego, I bought my ticket for that Spring CRSSD 2020. It was held March 4, 2020. Boy did I not know what was around the corner.

Now it’s March 2020, I go to CRSSD in San Diego. It quickly became (and still is) one of my favorite music festivals that I’ve attended.

Enter Covid

You all know what happens from there. Except my experience was a little different.

Like most people, I was locked at home not knowing when I would be allowed to leave my place. People started to pick up things to do now that they had all this time on their hands. Passion projects or new (covid) hobbies. For some people it was Duolingo.

Take a guess what mine was. Yep. I decided this would be a fun time to pick up DJing.

I had a friend of mine that wanted to upgrade his DJ set-up so he shipped me is Pioneer DDJ-RB

I dove in real hard. I loved doing this. I started practicing in my house every night during Covid. As things started opening up where I lived I started playing at friend’s parties. I was getting pretty good.

I decided to go even bigger. I paid $3,000 to buy professional equipment to practice for playing at larger venues. I purchased the Original CDJ 2000’s and DJM-900 mixer. I felt a little more legit, as if I could play on any set-up now.

I wanted to take the next step and play in front of crowds. San Diego bars were just starting to “open back up,” there would likely be a large demand for live music.

There was one problem: I didn’t know anyone in the industry that would be willing to let me, another random guy in Pacific Beach, try to DJ at their venue.

I had to get creative.

At that time, I LOVED Juneshine, a hard kombucha brand that was getting real popular in San Diego. I still like it, I just drink A LOT less now. At this point I was willing to just get out in front of people. Show that I knew what I was doing, and get reps in. I was essentially willing to do this for free.

I had to think of a way to get the venue’s attention and stand out, showing my creativity and humor.

I had an idea on how to do exactly that…

I walked into my back alley in Pacific Beach, looked through my dumpster recycling and grabbed the biggest cardboard box I could find. I tore it up and wrote on one side in sharpie “Will DJ for Juneshine” on it. I walked straight to my favorite bar at the time, Firehouse, where I had a blast watching some of my favorite local DJ’s play and took a picture sitting out in front of it.

I tagged them, DM’ed them the post, and a small intro about why I would be a fit to play at their venue. To my surprise, they said yes.

First Gig

Some people attribute their success to most of their hard work. I look back and I realized that I put in the work ahead of time to prepare for when I got lucky. That’s what happened.

I rallied all my friends to come support me at the first slot I got at Firehouse. The 12pm lunch slot on a Sunday. It was supposed to be nice and quiet. I didn’t know that. I brought 40 people to a brunch, sit down time. It did not go that way, I kind of let it rip. It worked great. I played a good set (not a great one). But I got extremely lucky.

The manager of a large promotion group was there eating lunch and recognized how many people I brought. He took note. One of my friends invited a very popular local DJ that I have bumped into a couple times during my time in San Diego. DJ Susan. He’s one of the goofiest, nicest, and positive people I know in the house scene. He’s also getting pretty popular at the time of me writing this. Go check him out if you don’t know who he is.

DJ Susan (Steven) sat down for lunch with our friends. Heard part of my set and saw how many people showed up for me. I still vividly remember him walking up to me after my set. He puts his arm around my shoulder and walks over with me to that one manager that was still there. He said “keep this kid on your radar, he’s about to get real big. You don’t want to miss out on him”

The promotion manager gets my info and next thing you know they start booking me every other weekend at this venue for the next 10 months. Things start to take off. I get more practice in. More people start to know who I am. I start playing at bigger bars, venues, private parties, and even a large night club.

I was riding high. What wasn’t there to love? It was a dream come true. I set my sights on biggest venues, clubs, and festivals.

I even had a DJ name. Out of Office (since I had a full time job)

Let me remind you. DJing in front of hundreds of people is arguably one the most euphoric experiences I have experienced in my entire life. Better than any substance or drug consumed. I got a taste and I couldn’t stop.

There were two big issues

• The industry is a little slimy

• In order to reach the next level you had to start producing music

I quickly realized that the industry was pretty slimy. Now this is a big generalization, but this was my experience. The people that made decisions on who gets booked and who they favor came down to things that didn’t really align with why I wanted to do this.

When it came to getting booked, promoters cared less about the quality of the music you played, rather the amount of people you brought through the door. I didn’t want to be a promoter getting people to come out and party every time I played. My friends weren’t the kind of people that would be going out to bars and clubs every weekend.

I realized that in order to play at larger events and venues you were expected to produce music too. That was the next level. I knew I didn’t want to go there. It was a massive mountain I was not looking to climb.

I realized this and started taking a step back. To the point where I took 7 months off from playing.

Something New

Come summer of 2022, I was at an art show and bumped into a friend of mine that was a yoga instructor I frequently practiced with. She brought up the idea of me DJing some of their yoga classes.

My immediate reaction (in my head) was “F*ck no, that sounds dumb.” But then she mentioned that I would get a free membership if i did it. Free heated Yoga?! Now you had my attention.

When I say I DJed Yoga classes, I didn’t just play chill yoga “flows,” these were Yoga Sculpts at Core Power. The location I played at, Pacific Beach San Diego, was the most popular Core Power in the United States. These classes were intense. I’ve seen professional athletes almost pass out taking these classes.

I gave it a try. My only request was that I get paired up with the hardest and craziest instructor. I wanted to play some up beat music to match their energy. I partnered with Omaid Amedi and Kelly Phillips.

The first class was completely packed with 50 people decked out in Lulu Lemon, Vouri, LSKD, and ASRV athletic gear. There was a waitlist of 15 people. Turns out, I FREAKING LOVED IT. Everyone was into it too, they loved the paired experience: ripping house music and pushing out gallons of sweat.

It immediately felt like there was something special here. People came up after class asking when the next one was. I realized that when you pair the right energy instructor with the right kind of music. Fireworks go off.

We did another class, sold out. We did a third, sold out with a waitlist. By the fourth I had a hunch about what was going to happen. I was on to something.

I gave it a name. I called it “Club Sweat”

I thought to myself, “there is a demand for this, how can I make money off this?”

Business Plan

If I found an unused space and get 50-75 people to come to this. I could prove this out as a proof of concept. Then I could figure out how much I was going to need to charge.

There are some clubs in Miami and Bali that do something like this. Night clubs are only used at night and on the weekend. If I could use their unused space perhaps I could probably get a discount.

I reached out to a couple clubs and event spaces in San Diego. I got quoted ranging from about $2000 to $4000 to the locations. I did some quick napkin numbers and told myself I’d have to charge $26-$50 per ticket to break even on just the space rental.

I wanted to state my assumptions and do some benchmarking.

• Local drop in classes are ~$20-25

• Most of the initial customers that we could draw in were local to Pacific Beach (PB), most of the venues I was talking to were outside of this area. I knew it is typically hard to get this demographic out of PB early in the morning. It could be done, but less would be inclined

• I’m providing a product that targets people that want an alternative to the club, the target customer is someone who is likely in their 20s.

• Most of the people that came to club sweat were coming because it was free. Would they be willing to pay for this, or paying double what a drop in class would cost?

• If this was going to be done at location that isn’t a workout studio, people would need to bring their own equipment. Or the class would need to exclude weights

• I am going to need to pay the instructor. They’re considered a top an instructor, I will need to beat their current rate for teaching at a studio

I quickly lost motivation to execute when I did the research. I knew I could break even and make more money off sponsorships and partnerships. I knew this could work. After running through those assumptions I told myself this would need to happen multiple times before it turned significantly profitable.

I took all that in and thought to myself: do I want to make this work?

The answer was no.

Here’s why.

I knew I was moving to San Francisco in 3 months. I think a lot of outreach and partnerships would need to be done to turn a profit and save some costs. I was not willing to do that on my own. The numbers didn’t seem to be big enough to justify the upside.

I don’t regret doing this. I learned what I didn’t want to do, and why.

I’m now super close with Kelly and Omaid, the two instructors I partnered up with. You should check them out. Their classes are a painfully good time. Omaid is even starting to spin up a club sweat of his own!

Your Blueprint

I know this can work. If I weren’t moving, here is how I would do it.

1. Find a club or event space that is open in the mornings. Ideally less than a 15 min drive from where your ideal customer is coming from.

2. If you need to rent equipment, you can get all that for about under $600. You just need two speakers and DJ equipment. You likely can use equipment of a DJ friend, and it’s likely they have speakers. If not, they’ll have a hookup for equipment rental.

3. Target a ticket price of $35 for 50-60 people

4. Find local brands that target the type of customer you want to bring, sell them sponsorships or booths at $2000, or use it as an add on for the experience. For example: a cold plunge company, local wellness brands, supplement companies. Target 4 partnerships. This is where the money is to be made in the future.

5. Partner with local studios to market within their studios, and the instructors that you were working with. They will bring their clientele with them.

6. Offer discounts or free tickets using referrals. Partner with local event influencers

7. Tell individuals to bring their own yoga mats. Find yoga studios that have to get rid of extra weights (rent them if needed), encourage individuals to bring their own weights if they have them. A lot of people do because of covid. (You can even skip out on this early on)

8. Gather local up and coming DJs who can create a 1 hr high energy set, if you cycle DJs that makes reach easier too.

It can be done. I bet you can profit $50K per event as this gets bigger. You would need to do this a handful of times to reach that level of profit.

I have a philosophy where I live my life “my way.” I loved DJing and had so much fun bringing people together. The scene just burnt me out. Instead of completely stopping entirely. I found a way to do this “my way.” Bringing the night club to people who care about their health. Play high quality, high energy music for people that give as much as you do.

That’s how I did this my way. I just gave you the blueprint.

Go ahead. Do this your way.