Welcome Back!

I know, it’s been a long while since we last posted a blog, you’ll have to forgive us. We are really good DJ’s but we stink at highlighting and sharing the cool stuff that is happening around here. However, updating our blog is one of our New Year’s resolutions and we are going to work really hard to stay on track this year. If you see us fall silent, call us out! Help make us keep our resolution! Also, if you have an idea about a blog post or you are in the industry and want to guest write a blog post, let us know, we would love to hear from you!

First a recap…

2017 was a year of growth for Music Makes You Happy Entertainment. To start the year, we opened up a shop in Richmond and I created a couple of management level positions, Director of Operations in Hampton Roads and Director of Operations in Richmond. Tyler Wilson, a longtime employee who started off as a technician and worked to become a really good DJ, was promoted in Hampton Roads and Mike Dodson, one of our best DJ’s and an all-around good person, was promoted in Richmond. These two guys are now part of the decision making process for the Company and both of them are in charge of the other DJ’s and events in their area.

We also started training some new employees. Our training process is very thorough, can take a long time to complete and at times can be very pretty intense (more on our training process in an upcoming blog). While I’m disappointed that not everyone made it through the training program, I’m very happy with the ones that did. Our most promising new DJ is LaDel McNair! LaDel is a CNU grad, a music lover and Richmond native, he can even write and produce music as well. He and Mike are working hard in the Richmond area to grow the Music Makes You Happy brand up there and I’m very excited about the progress they have made last year and will continue to make in 2018.

We also purchased some exciting new equipment. Our new line array sound system is huge and affords us the opportunity to do larger events as well as multiple events in one day. The One City Marathon, prerace events for NASCAR at Richmond International Raceway, the Making Strides Against Breast Cancer walk in Richmond and CNU Homecoming are just a few of the larger events we do every year. However, in the past, these events require almost all of our equipment being pushed to its limits and since everything is being used, we can’t take on additional gigs on that day like weddings or special events. With the new line array system, we are providing a better sound, setup and breakdown is easier and it just looks awesome. Whenever we set this system up, people who are into speakers and sound always come up and admire the setup! Plus, with all of our equipment being freed up as well as the additional employees we now have, we can now do more events at the same time and still have the required backup systems that our Company policy dictates we have for each event.

Finally, one of the biggest honors of 2017 was being awarded the Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce Small Business of the Year! We worked really hard to get where we are today and this award acts as recognition that we are moving in the right direction. When I asked, why did the judges choose Music Makes You Happy? They told me that they were impressed with our business plan and the way we train and treat our employees.

Moving forward…

As you can see, 2017 really was a year of growth for us and I’m looking forward to watching all the seeds that we planted last year start to sprout and blossom this year. Some of the anticipated highlights are of course, all the weddings we have booked, I’m proud to say that we have over 50 signed wedding contracts for 2018. We were also hired to DJ, emcee and provide sound for all three stages at the North American Sand Soccer Championships in Virginia Beach this June! This is a huge deal for us and something we are very excited about and something that wouldn’t have been possible without the purchase of the line array system.

In addition to all the great weddings and events we have planned, we are also taking over our social media pages. For the past few years an outside company, Misty Saves the Day, has been handling all of our Facebook posts because we didn’t have the personnel or knowledge to handle that task. They did and awesome job and we were and are very happy with their services. However, now we have the people and we should be handling it. Erin Rice has been hired as our Director of New Media and Brand Manager and with the help from all of our DJ’s, will be handling all of our social media platforms. Erin currently manages several social media accounts for government and non-profit groups, has extensive knowledge with new media and is a terrifically talented writer. We are very excited to have her on our team!

Speaking of social media, we don’t want our pages to get stale, we want them to be a way for you to get to know who we are, each of us. So starting later this month and going forward, a different employee will be responsible for all the posts across all of our pages, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, our blog, everything, for the entire week. Hopefully this will be a way for that person to showcase who they are and it will be a way for you and for our future clients to get to know all of our employees.

2018 is going to be a great year. I hope that you will continue to support us, read our blog posts, check out our social media pages and even come out and see us at all the public events we do throughout the year. Happy New Year everyone!!