[00:00:07] Speaker A: This is the EMG podcast.
[00:00:13] Speaker B: Welcome, everyone, to a special edition today of the EMG podcast. We have a newcomer to the podcast.
[00:00:19] Speaker A: Yeah, once before.
[00:00:21] Speaker C: I believe the interview you did back in 2021.
[00:00:24] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: Well, we are sitting here today with EMG's talent relations manager, Mister Caleb Mason. Caleb, how are you?
[00:00:31] Speaker A: I'm doing well. Wonderful. Monday morning. Well afternoon for us.
[00:00:34] Speaker C: Excellent.
[00:00:34] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:00:34] Speaker C: It's beautiful outside. We can see the sun.
[00:00:36] Speaker B: The reason why Caleb has not really been on the channel is you're more of an internal facing person. So Caleb is responsible for basically the hiring and procurement of new talent, right?
[00:00:51] Speaker D: Yes.
[00:00:51] Speaker B: And bringing in new players, DJ's event staff, and musicians to the company here. And so the podcast is mostly geared toward, um, our clientele. But today's episode is really going to be for future staff and talent that might want to work with us. And we thought we could just have, like, a general conversation, uh, about kind of all things EMG and. And where we're. Where we're currently at.
[00:01:14] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:01:15] Speaker B: To start, explain your daily job.
[00:01:19] Speaker A: My daily job is, you know, fielding a lot of new talent, people who are interested in working with elegant music group. And, you know, as we grow, we're getting a lot of buzz out in the world, which is exciting for me. Um, I intake a lot of new musicians who want to work with us, new DJ's, as well as, you know, even event staff who want to jump in on a photo booth job or work part time with us on the weekends and that sort of thing. So day to day, answering emails, fielding, you know, audition videos, all kinds of things. We have a pretty extensive audition process here for basically everybody who works in a talent capacity here, which is, you know, I think, important, you know, to keep quality up. I know I work with Mike closely as our musical director to ensure the quality of that performance.
[00:02:02] Speaker C: So, yeah, I mean, we.
[00:02:04] Speaker D: We.
[00:02:04] Speaker C: Mike and I actually talked about this in another podcast that was specific for our clients about how we select our DJ's, how we select our musicians. And we gave a little. We peeled back the curtain a little bit based on what the process kind of looked like from, like, a global level. But I do want to go into how that process works, both on the DJ side and also on the musician side. We could even go a little bit into the event staff since it's very similar to the DJ, just missing about a step or two.
So let's start with kind of like, general, like, DJ event staff, how that kind of works. So when the inquiry form comes in through the job site, whether that's from indeed or a direct inquiry, I see it first or Mike sees it, and then we send it off directly to you and our general manager, Brian. And then now you take it from there. And so what does that process look like?
[00:02:54] Speaker A: Well, there's a couple different things. One, two starting points. Either we get a audition mix from a DJ. Now, this is a specific mix that, you know, we don't really want to hear your techno house mix from Brazil you did 16 years ago, you know, and or in your Ibiza summer jam mix, right?
[00:03:09] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:03:09] Speaker A: We're doing live events. We're doing weddings, we're doing client facing events. So we want to hear, kind of put you through the wringer a little bit. We want to see what you can do with given parameters. So we're going to ask you to play certain songs, requests, et cetera, in this audition mix, just like you would have with a client.
[00:03:25] Speaker B: So DJ reaches out, Mike, or I say yay or nay. Right. And then they come to you, and then that's when they receive the instructions of, hey, now, we need you to put together this sample mix.
[00:03:34] Speaker A: Correct. Okay. We may have heard some other mixes before that and maybe seen some social media materials or, you know, had some. I know. On our jobs form, on our website, we have some. Why do you want to work with EMG? What's your experience? Like, all these things? So they're going through these steps, but this is the audition piece for our DJ's.
[00:03:48] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:03:49] Speaker A: What can you do with these parameters that are very similar to what you do on a wedding.
[00:03:54] Speaker D: Right.
[00:03:55] Speaker A: That gets approved by, you know, our peers, either you guys, our general manager, Brian, everybody gets a little sneak peek at what they're doing. You know, we give some comments, some feedback, and kind of see what lane we want to put them in. Now, obviously, we would love a seasoned professional who does fantastic mixing, and it's great client facing and does a fantastic job. Sometimes people are not quite there.
[00:04:19] Speaker D: Right.
[00:04:19] Speaker A: So a huge part of the elegant music group process that we've been developing and I've been really striving to get to is talent development, too.
[00:04:26] Speaker D: Right.
[00:04:26] Speaker A: Because there's lots of. There's lots of wedding dj's that are out there in the world.
[00:04:30] Speaker B: I used to be one. That's how. That's how loosey goosey this field used to be.
[00:04:35] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:04:36] Speaker D: Would.
[00:04:36] Speaker C: You had CDs, right?
[00:04:38] Speaker D: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. CDs.
[00:04:39] Speaker B: Heavy, heavy cases of CDs.
[00:04:41] Speaker C: So did you bring, like, the soft cases, or did you have crates, like, what'd you use?
[00:04:44] Speaker B: At first, I had a big wooden box and 300 jewel cases in it, filled with CDs. Heavy. And then I finally got rid of the jewel cases and went over to the soft, the ones you used to have in your car.
[00:04:54] Speaker C: How did you organize it?
[00:04:55] Speaker B: There was no Sharpie. Every single thing was.
[00:04:59] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:05:00] Speaker B: If you wanted a song, I could tell you it's like row ten, CD 17.
[00:05:04] Speaker D: Oh, my gosh.
[00:05:05] Speaker A: That's so cool.
[00:05:06] Speaker B: So we learned what not to do here at EMG. Yeah, yeah, right here.
[00:05:09] Speaker A: This is a lot. This whole conversation is actually what not to do and how we've gotten to where we're at right now. I feel like, you know, every day we're trying to get better, and that includes our talent.
[00:05:19] Speaker D: Right.
[00:05:19] Speaker A: We want to make sure we have online training courses. We have in person paid trainings that we provide for both our dj's and our event staff who work with us as employees. You know, so we're trying to increase people's skills. We have people who are event staff who say, hey, I want to DJ.
[00:05:34] Speaker D: Cool.
[00:05:35] Speaker A: Here's some classes we can throw you, some videos you can watch.
[00:05:38] Speaker C: So let's dive into that a little bit more. Let's dive into how that process works. So why, you know, as an incoming DJ or an incoming person that wants to be part of. Part of our production staff, why would they want to do that? Because of the, like, what resources are we providing to make it sexy to work here?
[00:05:55] Speaker D: Right.
[00:05:55] Speaker C: What are we providing them that other companies may not?
[00:05:58] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:05:58] Speaker A: I mean, so transparency is key.
[00:06:00] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:06:00] Speaker C: Right.
[00:06:01] Speaker A: I know. I've just heard personal stories of people that we work with.
You know, it's an ever evolving industry. Events come and they go. People have a certain amount of dates they want to give out. They have, you know, DJ's want to work at the end of the day.
[00:06:15] Speaker C: Right, right.
[00:06:16] Speaker A: DJ's want to work, they wanna work consistently. They wanna provide for their families.
And that's the people that we're trying to hire.
[00:06:22] Speaker D: Right.
[00:06:22] Speaker A: So we wanna be able to be transparent and say, look, this is the path.
[00:06:25] Speaker D: Right.
[00:06:25] Speaker A: You come to EMG, you're gonna get what you pay for.
[00:06:28] Speaker D: Right.
[00:06:28] Speaker A: You're gonna go down these steps to get paid training to get where we need you to be and to pass that bar for our clients.
[00:06:35] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:06:36] Speaker C: So what, basically what I'm asking is, what are we providing?
[00:06:39] Speaker A: Oh, right.
[00:06:40] Speaker C: Like blueprint, the training program. They need to know about that. Cause they don't know about what our resources are.
[00:06:46] Speaker D: Right.
[00:06:46] Speaker A: So we are investing in a online training program called the Blueprint, created by David Osborne has some DJ companies down in Georgia and South. Whatever fantastic resource that we've been implementing to kind of skill check people who are incoming.
[00:07:03] Speaker D: Right.
[00:07:03] Speaker C: Got it.
[00:07:04] Speaker A: It's a lot of remedial information. A lot of it's really, really basic, but also advanced.
[00:07:09] Speaker D: Right.
[00:07:09] Speaker A: It runs the gamut of not only how to press play on the DJ controller.
[00:07:14] Speaker D: Right.
[00:07:15] Speaker A: But how to communicate with your client.
[00:07:16] Speaker D: Yeah. Right.
[00:07:17] Speaker A: So there are quizzes, assignments. You had to film yourself doing things.
[00:07:21] Speaker D: Right.
[00:07:22] Speaker A: So that you can actually, you know, be Pat. Pass our test.
[00:07:25] Speaker D: Right.
[00:07:25] Speaker A: We want to make sure we can get there.
[00:07:27] Speaker D: So the.
[00:07:27] Speaker C: So basically, you know, in summation like this, you can bring anybody off the street and not know how to dj at all. And by the end of this program, they'll be able to have a good foundation on how to do it. And it's also EMG ified where they're doing it, how to talk to a client the way that we would do it, or something like that. So, you know, and then it's also for an advanced person on, like, I know, like bpms base outs, like those types of things that we kind of do as well for specific. For private events, whether that's weddings or corporates, corporate events. You know, this provides the. The foundation on how to be ready to go by the time you get to your first event. What else besides, like, the online stuff are we providing? Like, the talk. Let's talk about the shadowing, let's do all that type of stuff.
[00:08:09] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:08:09] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:08:09] Speaker A: So there's a clear path. We start with the online training that gives you. We get a taste of how you work, we get a taste of how you learn, we get a taste of how you answer emails, how quickly you can accomplish tasks. Right. Basic stuff, right?
[00:08:22] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:08:23] Speaker A: That's the introduction.
[00:08:24] Speaker C: What may seem basic, but it's very important. It's very important.
[00:08:26] Speaker A: But in the world of freelance entertainers, there's more or less a black and white of how people can do that.
Alongside that, though, we do have on site training. You're gonna come into our warehouse, you're gonna come into our experience center and get hands on equipment with everything that goes out on our events. So not only are you able to dj, but you can produce an event.
[00:08:47] Speaker D: Right.
[00:08:48] Speaker A: That's what we want for our clients, for them to walk into their wedding and go, I trust that Mike Carla is gonna produce my event.
[00:08:54] Speaker D: Right?
[00:08:54] Speaker A: We're event hosts. We're hosting you at a venue, right? So musical knowledge is important, but also everything, every other little piece from your photo booths, from to your sparkler machines, to your cloud machines, you're gonna know intimately how all that works. Aside from that, though, we want hands on experience for you to come onto our events and see how our current event host can do that. So you come and shadow those events. It is also paid shadowing. So you're gonna come learn, maybe do some mixing, get some feedback while you're doing these trainings. So it's all concurrent. And that gives you a chance to not only show your skills and show us what you got, but also to learn how we do things. Not only just seeing, but also following Mike Salpal around while he talks to a maitre D to watch how he lines up your bride and your bridal party.
[00:09:42] Speaker D: Right.
[00:09:43] Speaker B: And to get that feedback, we had a DJ still with us, but we did the MC workshop here. That's another thing, like, we try to do, like, advancing education for, like, just everything related to the industry. He came here and we had a whole section where we had Brian talk about the lineup, which is when the event host walks out to line up a bridal party before the big introductions.
[00:10:05] Speaker D: Right?
[00:10:06] Speaker B: We spent 25 minutes on this, and Brian very articulately laid out, like, this is what you say, this is what you do, this is the function, whatever. The next weekend, that DJ shadowed me and I took him for my lineup. And after I did it, I said, so does that all now make sense with what Brian said? And he said, I didn't realize that's what we were talking about. So, like, I didn't realize that that was what, you know, I don't know what he thought was going on, but I think that that's a really important part of our process. Connect the dots, is that there's both the classroom aspect, sort of the application and.
[00:10:40] Speaker C: Right.
[00:10:40] Speaker B: And the application and the practical.
[00:10:42] Speaker D: Right.
[00:10:42] Speaker B: And so patriot opportunity to actually shadow, get out and do it in a sandbox. So it's like a safe environment, right, where you're not going to screw anything up. I think the moral of the story is this, for our DJ's and our event staff, we are really organized to be able to intake anyone, no matter their skillset. So if you are a super advanced DJ or you've never touched a piece of musical equipment, but you just have an interest in working in events, we have an intake process where we can put you in the correct lane where everyone has upward mobility to grow and gain skills and knowledge within our company and kind of climb the ranks.
[00:11:22] Speaker C: Well, I think. And also the reason why we have this particular process set up is because we, as a company, have very high expectations on what our event staff and our DJ's and our musicians are going to be doing for our clients, because at the end of the day, because.
[00:11:37] Speaker B: We promise very high standards.
[00:11:39] Speaker C: We have very high standards. And so it is, we get a lot of inquiries to be a part of our team every day, whether that's DJ's, musicians, event staff. We say no more times than not. There are a lot of times. Most of the inquiries that come in, you don't even see. I'm only sending the ones that either we're saying yes to. Right. So. And the reason is because we, it has to, to fit a specific mold on how elegant music group produces an event. And it needs to be a specific way.
When we have those high standards, we expect that of the people that are coming in, that's. It would be irresponsible for us to say, okay, go do an event for us now without having any knowledge of doing anything.
[00:12:20] Speaker D: Right.
[00:12:20] Speaker C: So the blueprint that you brought in, the training program that we've been continuing developing with Brian, you know, since, since the end of the pandemic, are all ways for us to be able to say, okay, we expect this of you, but we're going to give you the tools to be successful.
[00:12:33] Speaker D: Right. Right.
[00:12:34] Speaker C: I think that's very important to know. It's like, yes, the standards are much higher than most other companies that you're coming into. However, we're giving you those tools to be able to meet those expectations. And that's a really big thing, because we're not just expecting you to know everything.
[00:12:47] Speaker A: No, no. And, you know, with the growth that we've experienced, it is a challenge.
[00:12:51] Speaker D: Right.
[00:12:51] Speaker A: To say we have the talent to supply our events.
[00:12:56] Speaker D: Right.
[00:12:56] Speaker A: And not only just the talent, but the EMG talent.
[00:13:00] Speaker D: Yeah. Right.
[00:13:01] Speaker A: To walk. To walk through the doors of your wedding venue and with full confidence know that our dj's, our event staff are competent, they're knowledgeable, and they're prepared.
[00:13:11] Speaker D: Right.
[00:13:12] Speaker A: So that's the goal.
[00:13:12] Speaker B: What about on the musician side? How's the process? The same. Different kind of. What's the. What are the takeaways for? You know, if you're a musician and.
[00:13:19] Speaker A: Listening to this, musicians are exactly the same.
[00:13:22] Speaker D: Right.
[00:13:22] Speaker A: I mean, I would love for our musicians to come in and do our event staff training. I mean, and if you're out there, musicians and you want to do that, please let me know.
[00:13:30] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:13:30] Speaker A: If you want to learn more about the event industry, musicians, though, are a little more fluid. They're in and out. They're working a lot. They're doing lots of other things besides, you know, doing weddings. They have their own shows on original projects and things like that. So when I speak to a musician, first of all, I interview every single musician who walks onto our.
[00:13:49] Speaker C: We interview every event set.
[00:13:50] Speaker A: Every event set.
[00:13:51] Speaker B: But what are you looking for in the. Let's just diverge here for a second. In an interview, whether they're event staff or a musician, what are you looking for?
Personality or intangible wise?
[00:14:02] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, it's.
When you do an interview, there's things on paper, and then there's things face to face.
[00:14:08] Speaker D: Right.
[00:14:08] Speaker A: So when I'm on an interview, I want to know why you are here, and I want you to express that articulately.
[00:14:14] Speaker D: Right.
[00:14:15] Speaker A: So I don't want you to say, oh, I need a job.
[00:14:18] Speaker C: Right, right.
[00:14:19] Speaker D: That's.
[00:14:19] Speaker A: That's boring. I don't care.
[00:14:20] Speaker D: That's not.
[00:14:21] Speaker C: We all need jobs.
[00:14:22] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:14:22] Speaker A: Everybody needs a job.
[00:14:23] Speaker D: Right. That's. That goes.
[00:14:23] Speaker A: I was saying, but to have someone say, oh, well, I heard about elegant music group, and I'm really passionate about the events industry, and I, you know, I do a lot of this already, or maybe I don't. Maybe I'm new to this, and I would love to learn more about how you. How you guys, you know, do events, and I would love to work with you and. And, you know, bring exceptional, you know, service to your clients. I do get those answers.
[00:14:47] Speaker D: Okay.
[00:14:47] Speaker A: You know, and those are the people that we really want to look out for.
[00:14:50] Speaker D: Right.
[00:14:51] Speaker A: So it's not just I can play my scales or I went to juilliard for my master's degree.
[00:14:55] Speaker D: Right.
[00:14:56] Speaker A: We have those, too.
[00:14:57] Speaker D: Yeah. And that.
[00:14:58] Speaker A: And that's great.
[00:14:58] Speaker C: Well, most of the applicants are coming from very high end conservatories. Like, they're. Most of them are doing that, or they're. They're a friend of a friend that's been working with us for a couple of years and that type of stuff, which is all well and good. I don't really care where you went to school, you know, I don't. I know you don't either.
If you're going off of where I went to school, no one knows about it.
[00:15:20] Speaker B: And I didn't even go to school.
[00:15:21] Speaker C: He didn't even go to school.
And a lot of our people are amateur musicians that are playing professionally, by the sense of the word. They're not academically trained in music, but it's not really about that. It's about what type of skills that you have besides the craft that you're playing. You're getting to the interview because you can play.
[00:15:38] Speaker A: And I think a lot of musicians have not been interviewed.
[00:15:41] Speaker D: Yeah. Right.
[00:15:42] Speaker A: And don't have to give a little bit more of themselves in this process. And so I enjoy, like, meeting these people and saying, tell me about yourself. What do you like to do? What kind of music makes you excited? You know, and to see what they say. Now, this, I said, passion.
[00:15:57] Speaker D: Right.
[00:15:57] Speaker A: I want to hear why they want to work in the events industry. Second thing, though, is, you know, oh, I just lost it.
But, you know, having. Having the skills to articulate how, you know, why you're passionate about the industry. Oh, this I know it is. First thing is, uh, passion. The second thing is flexibility. I want to hear that you are willing to go the extra mile for our clients. And because at the end of the day, they're our clients. They're also your clients if you're a musician, right. This is your job, right. You're working with us. We're going to get good feedback from our dj's. Our event leads, our event staff that, hey, uh, the cellist was on time.
[00:16:31] Speaker D: They.
[00:16:31] Speaker A: They sent me a text and said that they were here and that everything was all good. We got the music. We're ready to go.
[00:16:37] Speaker D: Right.
[00:16:37] Speaker A: That goes a long way.
[00:16:39] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:16:39] Speaker B: Making everybody's life easy.
[00:16:40] Speaker A: Makes everybody's life easy. And I hear from so many people who are musicians who take gigs, and they go, I don't even know who organized this, right? I got there early, and the bride came up to me, asking me where the band was, and I had no idea because I don't even know who the band leader is. I hear that a lot of the time and our organization, of communicating with our musicians to tell them who's gonna be on site, what time they're gonna be there, who's in charge. Right. What to say when someone talks to you. All those life skills and event skills are key to making the event run.
[00:17:09] Speaker D: Science.
[00:17:09] Speaker B: Well, that can take a lot of stress out of the day of for a musician, too.
[00:17:12] Speaker D: Right?
[00:17:12] Speaker B: Just the stress of, like, I'm showing up and I don't know, anything, versus, like, oh, no, I'm showing up and I know everything.
[00:17:17] Speaker C: Well, this can't.
[00:17:18] Speaker D: Listen.
[00:17:18] Speaker C: I mean, the three of us are sitting here as musicians. I mean, when I was a freelancer, part of what our organization is doing now is based on the positive experiences that I had as a freelancer.
[00:17:27] Speaker B: It's also largely based on the negative ones in what not to do.
[00:17:31] Speaker C: Agreed. Agreed. Which is why I never took those gigs. But, like, you know, when I was told when I was getting paid where I had to be, what my call time was, you were getting paid what I'm getting paid.
And then the music is it provided we provide our music to our musicians. So, like, all of these things that happened prior to us getting to EMG, and now that we're scaling, we want to be able to bring that, that same sort of quality communication and quality resources to those people so that they're put in the best position to be successful, right. Because at the end of the day, the client needs to be happy.
[00:18:05] Speaker B: All of these things. Structure, opportunity, training, also, we kind of just left out and glossed over that it's kind of a fun environment, right. Like, it's a good team of people that we have, which is why we.
[00:18:16] Speaker C: Do those interviews, right. Because, I mean, at the end of the day, like, I remember when I was, when I was becoming a part of, like, the theater, you know, stuff is like, can somebody sit next to you for 4 hours?
[00:18:27] Speaker B: Can they be a good hang?
[00:18:28] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:18:28] Speaker C: Can they be a go hang? Is the vibe good? Like, all those little things, like, those are important skills so that if you're having fun, they're having fun.
[00:18:36] Speaker B: Right, but all of these things.
[00:18:38] Speaker A: Right?
[00:18:39] Speaker B: All of these things have led to two things that I want to highlight. The first is both sides of the equation feed each other. So the better our talent, the better product we can give to our clientele, which helps us grow, which helps us reinvest in attracting the best talent and so on and so forth. We go, right, because they both feed each other because of that, because we've done all of these things. I know that you wanted to touch on sort of the growth at EMG, whether that be in terms of, like, our actual business growth or organizational growth. I'm going to let you expand on that.
[00:19:14] Speaker D: Sure.
[00:19:15] Speaker A: I mean, well, as you may or may not know, the inc.com magazine Inc. Magazine ranked us 43rd in the northeast for fastest growing companies. Now, that's not entertainment companies.
[00:19:26] Speaker C: It's just companies.
[00:19:27] Speaker A: Any company.
[00:19:28] Speaker B: Delis.
[00:19:29] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:19:30] Speaker B: Bagel shops, laundromats, golf courses.
[00:19:33] Speaker A: I don't know how you grow a golf course, but with fertilizer.
[00:19:36] Speaker D: Oh, there you go. Yes. Seed. Good seed.
[00:19:38] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:19:38] Speaker D: Good seed.
[00:19:39] Speaker A: Whether that's bluegrass, a little rain, other things.
[00:19:41] Speaker C: Not the music, though.
[00:19:42] Speaker B: No.
[00:19:42] Speaker A: But, you know, we're seeing a lot of growth, and that's exciting on a business perspective, but on the talent perspective, that means more opportunity.
[00:19:51] Speaker D: Yeah. Right?
[00:19:52] Speaker A: That's more room. That's more seats, more work, more work, more seats, more growth, not only for your calendar, right. If you're a musician or dj. Oh, I know what my dates are like in 2025. That's exciting, right?
[00:20:05] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:20:05] Speaker A: But secondarily, there's more opportunity to grow your own skills and your own. Your own avenues, and we're gonna pay attention to that.
[00:20:13] Speaker B: One of the things that has been so wild to watch is in the first season, if you will. In our first season, there were a couple of core key players, right? And it was very small. Me, Mike, and, like, we personally knew them three or four other people. I'm not even talking musicians. I'm talking about, like, the people in the beginning that we were like, we're gonna grow EMG. And it was all of our work. And then there was the next layer of people, and the next and the next. And part of what's really cool, having been in this multiple seasons now, is watching the people that came in through an interview process as a stranger that now we would consider to be a key player. And knowing that our organization has the ability to afford that opportunity to everyone is just really cool. It's not just if it's. Yeah, it's a place where some people just come, they play, they leave, but it is also a place where people come, stay, find a home, and then grow themselves as they're also becoming agents of change within our organization, which is a really cool thing.
[00:21:10] Speaker A: And something we haven't touched on in this talk right now is the office staff. Right. Those kind of high level, core people.
I know you guys espouse this all the time, but our sort of full time positions have always come from someone who came from somewhere else in elegant music group.
[00:21:27] Speaker D: Right.
[00:21:28] Speaker A: We are. I think one of our core missions is for all managers, everybody here, to keep an eye out and keep an ear open for people who are saying, you know what?
I actually went to school for audio engineering.
[00:21:40] Speaker B: Oh, you did?
[00:21:41] Speaker A: Yeah. Oh, well, then you should go shadow Johnny dive and see how he does live sound for Cityscape. And they're like, okay. And then in a year from now, they're doing 60 dates as a sound engineer.
[00:21:50] Speaker C: That's what happened with, you know, with Ryan, with Cole, with, you know, we have Josh, a new kid. There's a new guy, Mike, you know, so, like, when Mike and I, in our first season, I mean, at Max, I think we were already about a quarter of the way through, so we only had about 200 events left for the season starting in May.
And now we are averaging over 1500 events a year and a lot of them. And we put a lot of, you know, this is for the live musicians. We specifically market for live music.
And those inquiries that are coming in are a lot of the times just for live music, just for ceremonies and cocktails or three hour parties or things like that. And so now it's increasingly growing and those opportunities now are better than ever where some days you're working, whether that's a bridal shower here or the next day, you're working for meta, right? So like, and the, the variety of the work is great too, because I know that a lot of people looking for different jobs, like sometimes the music is different jazz, you have some of the standards here. Next time you're playing John Legend or you're playing Bruno Mars or stuff like that. So it keeps it fresh and it allows for the bag, as we would say, like that's my bag to start growing, which I think I like.
[00:23:03] Speaker A: Our favorite musicians are people who can do anything. That's what our favorite flexibility. Expect flexibility, man, it's just like our DJ's. All of our DJ's can play any type of genre. They can do any. That's the goal.
[00:23:14] Speaker D: That's the idea.
[00:23:15] Speaker C: That's the expectation.
[00:23:15] Speaker A: That's the expectation and the.
[00:23:17] Speaker D: Yeah, right.
[00:23:17] Speaker A: And so the same is for our musicians. We have harpists doing jazz cocktail hours.
[00:23:20] Speaker D: Right.
[00:23:21] Speaker A: Because that's what we have.
[00:23:23] Speaker D: Right.
[00:23:23] Speaker A: And so when we are bringing in all of our talent, we just expect the expectation, the higher standard. And that again, is only going to generate more opportunities for yourself.
[00:23:32] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:23:33] Speaker B: If people want to work here or they want to talk to you, how.
[00:23:38] Speaker A: Should they do so the quickest way. Elegantmusic group.com jobs. There's a job form there. It's got questions. Who you are, where you, where are you located? We're expanding into lots of different markets right now. I'm very excited to have Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago on those, on that form. So wherever you are, reach out.
It has questions for are you a musician or you dj, et cetera? And then for more of the traditional kind of part time job work. We do regular job postings on places like indie.com.
[00:24:07] Speaker D: Right?
[00:24:07] Speaker A: So if you just go to your Google search engine and look up elegant music group jobs or event staff jobs, elegant music group, they'll find. They'll find.
[00:24:14] Speaker B: We're there.
[00:24:14] Speaker A: We're on Google, I've heard.
[00:24:16] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, just a little bit.
[00:24:18] Speaker A: We have some, some ad space there.
[00:24:20] Speaker B: We thank you, sir. Thank you for joining us.
[00:24:22] Speaker C: This was great.
[00:24:22] Speaker B: We will see you next time back here at the EMG podcast.
[00:24:25] Speaker D: Stay tuned. Goodbye.
[00:24:28] Speaker A: You can find
[email protected] or on Instagram at elegantmusicgroup.
