Arnie Carver » Business

Learning more and more

Arnie — Tue, 06 May 2008 12:42:48 +0000

With Amy here helping me with the day to day operations, I’ve decided to continue with my computer education. Since I still don’t have enough time to actually enroll in school per se. I decided to do a study at home course from Quickcert, that way I can learn at my own pace while still working full time. The course that I’m taking is for CEH Certification (Certified Ethical Hacker).

A close friend of mine has his certification and makes around $70k per year. Not bad for something you can learn from home. Not that I’m quite ready to leave the entertainment industry, but It’s something I can use in my day to day life and certainly something good to fall back on. Once I finish this course, I plan on taking more at my leisure. There’s a lot to learn that could really help me solve my own tech problems instead of having to pay someone else to fix them.

A New Assistant

Arnie — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 05:11:20 +0000

So, as I said in my last post, I’ve got family in town. My cousin, Amy is here and probably for good. I’m hiring her as an assistant to help me with my day to day operations. Answering the phone, setting up jobs, giving price quotes, that sort of thing.

Amy is recently divorced and needs a life change. The divorce left her depressed and in a huge amount of debt. Creditors are calling her everyday and the stress is enough to overwhelm anyone . She’s getting her life back together with the help of Debt Counseling and a strong will to go on. With attorney’s fees, and several bills now in collections, she certainly needs help consolidating her debt and she is taking the first steps to a new stress and debt free life. We’re starting with a day trip to Six Flags. I told her the day was on me and to consider it a signing bonus.

A Week on the Road

Arnie — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 07:24:03 +0000

I’ve just confirmed that I’ll be in Cincinnati Ohio next week to set up lighting and sound for a new nightclub opening soon. I like to travel, see new places and meet new people. I much rather drive than fly. I like the idea of being able to stop when I want to and not be cramped in an airplane with god knows who. I’m not afraid of flying, I just find it a really big and expensive hassle.

Of course a guy like me can’t have just regular luggage. I need something cool and functional. My luggage is actually BlackHawk Tactical Gear . It’s the same stuff that law enforcement and the military use. I use 2 A.L.E.R.T. bags, one for my luggage and also one for my tools and equipment. It has plenty of space and extra compartments for whatever I feel like stuffing in them. Not to mention the cool factor.

If you’re on the go like I am or just like cool stuff, head on over to Actiongear.com and check them out. They carry a full line of law enforcement and tactical gear.

Cost Effective Advertising

Arnie — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 06:49:23 +0000

Owning a small business, it can be difficult to get the word out about your products or services. Unless you have a huge advertising budget (witch I don’t) it can be tough to find cost effective advertising. The phone book and the web are a necessity. I’ve found that radio and television ads can be very expensive for 30 seconds of exposure to people who simply are not interested. The best way that I’ve found is merchandising. The first thing most people thing when I say this is t-shirts, but who’s going to wear a t-shirt advertising a DJ to do anything but cut the grass in on Sunday afternoon? Nobody.

I’ve found that putting my logo on give-away toys and trinkets much more effective. When this idea was first pitched to me, I had a hard time finding a company to make these items for me. That’s because I didn’t know there was a proper name for this stuff to search for. They are called trade show items

Rubber balls, yo-yo’s, key chains, and frisbee’s are all great and inexpensive ways to promote your business. Even if your potential clients don’t use them, they will probably give theese toys to their children who will. Mission accomplished, you have just put your logo and business information in their home and they will see it often. Thus be more likely to remember you.

This method has worked extremely well for me and I suggest anyone else in a similar situation give it a try. Gimmees.com has a huge selection of novelties for all of your marketing needs.

Another Hard Drive Burns Up

Arnie — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 17:49:23 +0000

Lats night at work, a worse case scenario happened again. I was setting up my equipment and my external hard drive would not power up. This is very bad because all of my music is stored on it. It’s not the first time this has happened to me, actually it’s like the third time. The first was about 2 years ago, at work, in the middle of a shift. I lost everything, and it took me a week to reload all of my cd’s onto another drive.

I learned my lesson then, that technology sometimes fails. I now always have 3 external drives with my music library on them and carry 2 with me just in case. Seagate hard drives come with a 5 year warranty and they will replace the hardware but the data is lost. It will take several hours to transfer 400 gigabytes of music over to the new drive but it’s better than copying a few thousand cd’s over again.

To any other digital DJ’s out there, ALWAYS back your music up, you never know when a drive will fail.

Why people download copyrighted material

Arnie — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 03:43:24 +0000

I remember the first time I heard about Napster. It was in 2001 when a friend told me about a website where I could download virtually any song I could ever want for free. I was in total awe at this concept and never thought of the ramifications.

Fast forward to 2008 Napster has been converted to a store but countless sites with this concept have sprung up in it’s place. As we all know now this is illegal. The legality seems not to matter to many people and the RIAA and MPAA are taking action. All of this information is common knowledge but no one is really discussing why so many people are downloading.

I think the first reason is obvious, It’s free. But that’s not the only reason. Another reason is availability. I recently read a report that 60% of music downloads are indie label. That means the worlds largest music retailer, Wal-Mart probably does not carry most of these artists’ music. Best Buy has a little better selection but not much. The next option is the the net. In witch you need a credit or debit card to pay for anything. How many teenagers and college students have a bank account let alone a line of credit? Not many, I’m sure. Amazon and iTunes are great sources to get non top 40 music, but not if you don’t have plastic. Small record stores have all but vanished and most major retailers will not do special orders. I know this from experience. This leaves this largest age group of music consumers with little options to get what they want. I believe this is a major factor in the popularity of peer to peer file sharing.

I can’t cay that I have a good solution for this issue. Not that I haven’t given it a lot of thought, but I think I understand it.

In closing and for the record, I do not download music illegally. As a professional DJ, I have to account for all of my music and pay royalties to ASCAP. I guess I’m lucky that it’s a tax write-off anyway.

Excellent and Affordable Tech Services

Arnie — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 10:49:54 +0000

For me, as a professional DJ in the digital age, it is imperative that I have secure backups of all of my data. There are a number of ways of achieving this. The best way that I’ve found is with Fast-Teks. Owning my own business, I have enough to worry about. I don’t need to have tech problems on top of it. That’s where Fast-Teks comes in.

Fast-teks is your one stop shop for any computer troubleshooting solutions. For your home or business they can do it all. Everything from remotely backing up important files to setting up an entire office network, Fast-Teks does it right the first time. They even do repairs and spyware removal from your home computer. Don’t let tech headaches trouble you any longer, let Fast-Teks handle it.

Stipid things DJ’s do #3

Arnie — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 08:31:57 +0000

One of the worst things a DJ can do is to drink on the job! In absolutely no way does being drunk on the job help your performance. As everyone knows, while you’re intoxicated a lot of bad ideas seem good at the time. It’s very bad when you’re trying to make announcements but no one can understand you because you’re speech is so slurred. The occurrence of brainfarts multiplies exponentially as well. I like to drink up just as much as anyone else, but not at work. Being a DJ is still a job, don’t be drunk on the job.

Arnie

Stupid things DJ’s do #2

Arnie — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 05:18:42 +0000

Another common mistake that I see DJ’s make is letting their personal taste get
in the way of business. This is very bad. As a professional DJ, it’s my job to play
music that people want to hear. My personal taste in music is completly irrelevant.
When someone hires me for a job, it is to do what they want and this usually does
not include trying to expand their personal taste. I can listen to all the metal
I want in the car or at home, not while someone else is paying me to play Madonna.

Besides, there are a whole lot worse jobs out there. I know, I’ve done more than
enough of them.

’til next time,
Arnie

2 Decades in the entertainment industry pt.2

Arnie — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 06:13:02 +0000

Here we are with my second of many installments sure to come about the business of
entertaining people. To dive right in from the start, my earliest memories are of
beating on pots and pans with wooden spoons pretending to be “The Cat-Man” Peter Criss
of KISS. As a child growing up on rock music, Kiss were the ultimate super heroes and
I wanted to be just like them. I guess I got my way, having played drums in several
rock bands as well as wearing a costume and makeup whilst claiming to be a super hero.
Just not at the same time. Maybe I’ll get into the whole super hero bit some other time
as it’s quite ridiculous.

I knew as a young child that settling for a regular 9 to 5 office job just wasn’t for
me. The next bug that bit me came when I was 6 or 7 tears old when I saw the movie
“Poltergeist”. To this day, I can’t remember being so scared. I had an old, half dead
apple tree in my back yard that looked all too much like the one that attacked the
little boy in the movie. How could something of pure fantasy illicit such a strong
emotion as fear? I’m still not sure I have a good answer for that one, but I’ve certainly
learned to recreate that feeling in others. Through the years after that, I became
increasingly fascinated with the genres of horror and scifi. I watched every horror movie
and TV show that I could find. Everything from “The Twilight Zone” and “Tales From the Darkside”
to the gore soaked classics like “Day of the Dead” and “The Thing”. My fascination evolved
quickly from fear to the art of creating monsters.

I would get my opportunity to try my hand at both soon enough. When I was in 8th
grade my school had a tradition of putting on a haunted house on Halloween to help
finance a field trip. Myself and a group of friends were charged with putting the
spookshow together. I wonder if the school district had any idea what kind of monster
they were feeding. With a big help from my dad, some cardboard, paint and a whole lot
of inspiration, we pulled it off rather well. Now 19 years later I couldn’t fathom doing
anything else during the Halloween season. Welcome to the haunted attractions business!

Lots more to come very soon……..

Arnie