Who's DeStorm?

About fifteen years ago, I was touring as DeStorm’s DJ. I was on the road with him for two years. And every time I told my DJ friends who I was working with, I got the same face.

“Who’s DeStorm?”

One of my best friends noted that he’s got more followers on Facebook than Daft Punk.

Daft Punk! And the homies still looked at me like I was making it up.

None of this computed for us. You post videos on the internet, and that’s your job? That’s the career? We were DJs. We came up believing the path was skills, then rooms, then people, then opportunities. This guy skipped the whole line by uploading.

He wasn’t skipping anything. He was early. And he was on top of the hip hop game on YouTube.

While we were on tour, he crossed 1,000,000 subscribers on his channel. At the time, he was the most subscribed rapper in the game.

Truthfully, we were the ones behind. And it took some of us another decade to figure that out.

The paradigm is the problem

Everybody talks about the platforms changing. Algorithm this, new feature that. That’s the surface.

What actually changes is how people engage with the platforms. How they decide who’s worth their money. How they find you in the first place.

When I was coming up, it was all about knowing the right people. You had to be great, or at least great enough that this person would vouch for you to that person, and then a world of opportunity opened up.

Access was the whole game.

Today, there are still gatekeepers. They just don’t sit where they used to. Now your digital presentation can open the door that a person used to have to open for you. A client can find you, watch you, decide you’re the one, and reach out. No one had to introduce you.

That should be exciting news for you.

But, for a lot of veteran DJs, it isn’t, because we’re still running the operating system we installed in year one.

I do this too

Here’s my own version of it.

When I started Spin to Six, I had gone deep on email marketing. I had Facebook ads running. I learned a very specific way to market online coaching, and it worked. I filled a founding cohort with it.

Every DJ I’ve worked with since has gotten results. One of them crossed six figures in about eighteen months. He was maybe two or three years into DJing when we met, so by year four or five, he pulled in 100K. That was more than I made in my year five of DJing, and I’m 26 years into this. Last time we talked he was over 200K in revenue for the year.

So the thing I learned worked.

And that’s exactly what makes it dangerous.

It’s funny that I’ve been pushing a program for DJs about Instagram and I haven’t been posting much on the Spin To Six Instagram myself. (Shameless plug: @spintosix)

Same trap.

I learned a way that worked, I got comfortable in it, and I had to catch myself running an old playbook while telling everybody else to update theirs.

Veterans don’t get stuck because we’re lazy. We get stuck because we already found something that worked once for us before. And it’s hard to pivot to something unproven when we already know what works.

Cheaper to start, harder to be seen

I bought my first set of decks in the late 90s. I think I dropped close to two grand. I was a high schooler. I saved for three years for that. And after you bought the gear, you were still paying six bucks a single to build a crate.

Now you can get a controller for a hundred bucks, pay for a streaming subscription, and have every song ever recorded on your laptop by dinner.

That’s beautiful. If DJing was your dream, the wall in front of you is shorter than it’s ever been.

It also means the wall in front of everybody else is shorter than it’s ever been. Barriers went down, noise went up. Your skills will still put you head and shoulders above most people in your market. But skills don’t get discovered on their own anymore - and they never really did. They just used to get discovered by a person instead of a feed.

If you can’t market and present yourself, you’re going to be the best-kept secret in your city.

What’s actually true right now

The algorithm changes made in the last year work in your favor. Your content can travel like you’ve got a million followers when you don’t.

Here’s the thing: You don’t need the following…

You need to be posting.

That’s the part people don’t want to hear, because it’s not clever. It’s just work.

What it looks like when someone does it:

A DJ in my last group met a guy on day one of posting. Three days later that guy signed a contract for a $2,300 wedding. Three days.

Another DJ was in the running for an event, and it was down to her and one other woman. The other DJ was connected to the local radio celebrity in her town. This is the exact kind of relationship that used to end the conversation.

In the old paradigm, she loses that one. But because she’d been in the group posting consistently, her online presence was better.

She got the booking. One hour, $500.

Another DJ in the group told me people started hitting him up directly off the content he was putting out. No introduction. No middleman.

None of those are life-changing money on their own. That’s not the point. The point is they now have proof that the new game responds when you play it, and they’re not going to stop. More is coming for both of them.

The part that doesn’t change

You have to seed the work to see any results.

That’s the one rule that survived every version of this business I’ve lived through. The cost is different now. It used to cost years of proximity and favors and waiting for someone to vouch for you. Now it costs consistency in public, which is cheaper yet somehow feels harder.

If you’re a veteran DJ and you’ve been telling yourself the game got worse, sit with the possibility that it got easier and you’re solving it with a map from 2006.

The solution is simple: Update the map.

The skills you spent twenty years building still work. They just need a different delivery system.

And you know what the delivery system is, but you may not know how to work with it.

That’s where the IG30 Blitz comes into play.

I’m running the second round of the IG30 Blitz. It’s 30 days of posting with a structured plan and feedback. I’m calling it the second beta round because I’m still building it out based on the success and opportunities of the prior round.

If you want to learn more about the IG30 Blitz, click here: ig.spintosix.com

I can also do a free profile review for you.

Here’s how it works: You send me your Instagram handle, and I make you a short video breaking down why your profile isn’t pulling the views or the inquiries it should.

But if you want to see this happen in person and ask questions, I’m doing a live IG Profile Breakdown on Thursday, 8/6 at 5 PM PT / 8 PM ET.

Feel free to register here and join us: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/aQsBOF-zSD-oSEFwZXJf-g

If you’d rather just DM me your handle, do that. I’m here to help either way.

To Your Success,
Shammy

PS – Maybe you get it already, and you know you need to change your paradigm. If that’s you, and you know you want to secure your slot in the next IG30 group, click here: ig.spintosix.com