Even as a baby in a pram, there was music around me. I grew up with it as a constant companion and there was always a radio on in our house. Radio One became the soundtrack to my childhood, with memories of the 70s and TOTP, the advent of punk, and new wave.

As I grew up, I also had tons of singles and access to lots of my mates’ records too (and their siblings – thanks Nick’s brother for having all those classic punk singles). Everybody taped each others records, so we all ended up with very varied collections. My peer groups had everything from Abba to AC/DC but looking back, that exposure to such an eclectic mix was the perfect grounding for a future wedding DJ. Oh, and badges! Lots and lots of badges. The mum of one of the lads in my class worked for Virgin (the record label, not the shop) and he used to bring in loads of stuff; everything from The Revillos to Tangerine Dream.

From my mid-teens, I had a group of older friends and a very alternative pub jukebox for inspiration (I played in the pub pool team from the age of 15!). My favourite artists of the 1980s were Talking Heads, Bowie and New Order, but I was exposed to so much more than just pop music and a couple of hours of the John Peel show.

Around that time I started going to gigs, many at Blackburn King George’s Hall, including Motorhead, 999, Antipasti and Skids. But we also ventured further afield: Kiss at Leeds Queens Hall, The Smiths at Lancaster Polytechnic, and Siouxsie & The Banshees in Preston.

Still, you would’ve been just as likely to find me at a northern soul all-nighter, in the heartland of the scene. I always felt I had a foot in several camps; I was just as happy at a school disco with Shakey, Bucks Fizz and Adam Ant as I was in a dingey bar with a load of goths. In 1985 I moved to Leeds to study. It was here I was asked to guest DJ at vinyl events due to my expanding collection of 12” singles,
mostly indie and goth. After-show parties for bands such as Spear of Destiny, The Cult, The Cramps and Killing Joke were my first introduction to DJing on vinyl, rather than just selecting tracks on a record player at friends’ parties – thankfully there was not much beatmatching needed! But I did gain an appreciation of playing to an audience and knowing when to play the bangers in a very niche genre. I have fond memories of The Housemartins, Jesus and Mary Chain and INXS.

It was around that time that I became more interested in anti-establishment protest music and politics. I’m a huge fan of The Redskins, Billy Bragg, Paul Weller and all things Red Wedge to this day.
I still enjoyed the mainstream too – Michael Jackson at Aintree, Simple Minds, and David Bowie at Milton Keynes Bowl (little was I to know that 15 years later I’d be living there).

After Leeds, I moved back to Blackburn for a couple of years and fell into a full-time career as an industrial chemist. The Hacienda and the rise of the music scene in Manchester was accelerating. A weekly hip-hop night was accessible on a bus trip and house music was coming over from the USA. It was a great time to be in the North West, as there was a transition from northern soul parties to the original raves in the local countryside. Wow – it felt like heaven to be in such a strange mixing pot of cultures!

Unfortunately, work interrupted my fun and I moved to Cumbria to work at Sellafield. Far removed from the Manchester scene, I found the underground club/rave culture was prevalent, but music took a backseat as I concentrated on college and work. My only concession was the sound system I installed in my Mk3 Fiesta Sport (I couldn’t afford an XR2i).

1992 saw me back in Lancashire, this time in Preston for the final year of my chemistry degree at the University of Central Lancashire. A wild year of drinking, student nights, gigs and exposure to a whole new world of people. Sultans of Ping is a standout memory!

My first post-graduate job was working for a major pharmaceutical company in Loughborough. The wild unofficial raves had run their race by now, but I was in the middle of three great cities: Nottingham, Derby and Leicester. With yet another peer group, we were listening to modern dance music and Madchester and then the great wave of Britpop. We all had much more money for clothes, clubbing and live music than I did as a student.
Loughborough and these surrounding cities had huge student populations and there was always a new band to go and see or a new club night to try. I vaguely remember Shed Seven, Long Pigs, The Bluetones, and Jeremey Healey and Alistair Whitehead, as well as plenty of ‘cattle market’ style nightclubs.

I’ve never been very good at working for other people – it’s probably a product of growing up with parents who owned businesses, combined with my politics. I found I’d hit a glass ceiling at work, so in 1996 I went to study for a PhD in Sheffield and threw myself into club culture and student life. The Arches, Leadmill, Love to Be and Gatecrasher were on my doorstep, and some fabulous live music venues. I saw Oasis, Pulp, Blur, Manic Street Preachers, Chemical Brothers and Faithless in a six-year stay. Not to mention DJ sets by Danny Rampling, Judge Jules, Paul Oakenfold, Billy Nasty and many others.

It's fair to say my wild period lasted longer than most others! I was still a regular club goer well into my 30s, but as the music inevitably changed, my appetite for it changed too. 2001 saw me move to Milton Keynes for the last part of my ‘real’ career, working with pharma companies throughout Europe and the USA. I didn’t like the new club music and the much younger club crowd in my new town didn’t appeal either.

Although, Stony Stratford did have a very active live music scene, mostly blues, rock, jazz and folk – you can’t beat that buzz of seeing real musicians playing in a rowdy pub!

By now I had a 700+ CD album collection and a desire to revisit old artists and look at their back catalogues. There were some new artists I loved but they weren’t being played anywhere. The Strokes, White Stripes, Kooks, Magic Numbers, Killers and Razorlight were all added to my rotation, as I filled in the discographies of Dylan, The Beatles and The Stones.

From 1993 I learned transferrable skills that would come in use later. I was customer-facing, doing sales and marketing and creating client training courses. I admit, keeping 1500 conference attendees interested whilst presenting scientific data can be much harder than getting a few of them dancing!
And selling £500,000 of equipment to research directors is quite different to selling a wedding DJ package. But a lot of the same techniques apply.
You identify customer needs and show them comprehensive, irresistible solutions. Attention to detail and a flexible attitude helps to deliver on promises.

Almost ten years later the global face of the pharmaceutical industry changed in an event known as ‘the patent cliff’. The big players had been relying on profits from blockbuster drugs that dropped off patent in the same two-year period. Gone were the huge profits; the ability to offset tax against research costs led to analytical laboratories moving to countries with cheaper labour.

I tried to remain in a sales role, but it was minor consumables, as opposed to capital expenditure, and it didn’t suit a technical approach.
I started job hunting but my heart wasn’t in it and I realised I’d been on the edge of burning out after a stressful few years. I really needed a change of direction. At this time, I was lucky enough to meet the woman who would later become my wife and she encouraged me to look at wider opportunities.

My future brother-in-law and I had scraped together some kit and started doing some DJing for friends and in pubs. With limited income, it made sense for me to step this venture up a little. It was a steep learning curve, moving to three nights a week in a residency doing a retro night, club night, and Sunday karaoke. As my reputation grew, more people started asking me for private parties and I had to buy better kit. It was during a wedding at a very nice venue that I had an epiphany: I could do this for real and give up the job hunting.

I did a lot of research and internet searching. I joined Facebook groups. I attended Plasa, BPM and other DJ events. And finally I joined some training courses with Derek Pengelly. Derek opened my eyes to the other side of being a wedding DJ, where I could also apply my skills in sales, marketing and communication.

It took a while but eventually I had a great website, courtesy of Gavin Harris, and a big social media platform that forms a major part of my sales funnel. I’m still using the same sales principles (Spin Selling by Rackham) but applying a targeted approach for weddings thanks to luminaries like Terry Lewis and Alan Berg.

By the time I wanted to specialise in weddings, I already had too many followers to start again with a new name, so I had to develop my brand (MK Parties) and try to differentiate myself from the local competition.
Fresh kit helped, and I was learning on the job. Advice in Facebook groups was never in short supply and the basics of DJing were available from YouTube videos and seminars at DJ conferences. Residency work was great to hone song selection skills and lots of agency weddings gave me a way to practise without as much pressure. It was a frustrating time, as I knew my intended goal, but I was still a long way from achieving it.

I’d regained my love of music and standing in front of large crowds again. But if I were to be self-sufficient, I needed to increase turnover and profit. I’d had a taste of higher-end weddings and now I knew I could appeal to people looking for an all-day service. Social media was key to my early growth; I was routinely posting on Facebook wedding groups, not to gain lots of bookings via Messenger but to drive traffic to my website.

For Google, this creates a degree of trust in your page, and I started to organically hit page one for searches for wedding DJs locally. It's great to get lots of enquiries but you need to know how to reply and hook potential clients. I find that most people in our industry are reluctant to do much following up and shy away from what they perceive as the embarrassing aspects of sales. If you want to sell, then you need to blow your own trumpet and follow up (a lot!). Treat every day as a job and set targets for enquiries, replies and sales.

I knew that I didn’t want to do even more events, so I had to look at how I could justify higher prices. I invested in better kit, so my pictures stood out more – not just DJ kit, but a better camera and new clothing that suited my brand. I also completed more DJ training, moving on from just blending and fading. I learnt to control my lighting by DMX and how to be a better wedding host. Every day is a school day and I still expect to learn much more.

I remember my first £1000+ wedding at a local venue. I’d just had a chat with Alan Marshall, who urged me to increase my prices and see how I got on.
I was nervous, I’d gone from £850 to £1200 (another piece of advice, if you decide to go through the £1000 barrier, make sure you go right through it!) but the customer didn’t bat an eyelid! The barrier is always in your own head. Remember the Stella Artois advert? “Reassuringly expensive.” You don’t need to spend millions on marketing when major companies have done it before you.

We’re always told to differentiate ourselves from our competition. Well, my background is a big part of what I offer. Most of my colleagues and contemporaries have had very different routes into DJing, learning the skills much earlier. But I feel my formal sales training and the many courses I’ve done on presenting and public speaking can give me an edge in the wedding industry.

Today I’m a well-established wedding DJ, no longer scrapping for every gig and doing four nights a week. I try to run an ethical business with my own set of values. People get 14 days to decide whether they want to book me, instead of the first to pay wins.

I won’t do back-to-back all-day weddings because I don’t feel the service is the same on the second day. I also have two face-to-face meetings with every client, just so we all know what to expect, and I offer a no quibble money-back guarantee. And if events don’t feel right, I can choose not to accept them.

I also love contributing to the DJ community and the wider wedding industry whenever I can. The advice I can offer is not just about DJing, but also health (particularly as I suffer from sleep apnoea and I’m a CPAP user), insomnia, depression, imposter syndrome, and of course sales and marketing.

If I can help others, just as I was helped, then I always will.