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OT: Where are ya from and what else do ya do?

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Ed Taylor:

--- Quote from: AllenDeneau on January 15, 2013, 01:57:37 AM ---I'm still pretty new here on the forum and as I peruse through the posts I find myself wondering where this person is from or what do they do besides post on the forum ;). Meaning are you full time employed in the audio/entertainment field or is there another "day" job rounding out your dance card...

If you are full time in this field, what are your specialties? Are you a mixer, system designer, speaker designer, stage tech, product rep, etc...

1. Where are you located
2. Is this all you do or do you have other business
3. How'd you get into it

I'll start with less than mindblowing info:

I'm originally from near Chicago but since January 2011, I've been a Tennessean. I live in Cookeville, well Livingston actually but Cookeville line is literally right across the road.

I am/was employed full time within my own company that specialized in corporate events needing sound and lighting but we also have a DJ side of the biz too, although that's pretty much in Chicago as my DJ still lives there. I've been involved in the industry for most of my life, in one way or another... Growing up my Dad was in bands and also had the business I now own. He was also a partner in one of the very first karaoke clubs in Illinois...

I tried my best to avoid this line of work ;) I went to school for business and graduated with a BA in Marketing. I was drawn back in when I had to cover an event for my Dad as he was recovering from his quadruple bypass. He was scheduled to sing and provide the entertainment for a wedding and told me I had to do it. Unfortunately I CANNOT sing, at all, and I agreed if I could just play music (DJ) the event. The clients were ok with this and off I went. I gathered my CD collection and a pair of CD players and talked a family friend into going to the event to MC the event, I was scared to death to talk on the mic.

The night went great and I actually revived my love for the entertainment industry. I started taking over my Dad's biz and grew a pretty profitable DJ business right off the bat. Sadly, even with my marketing degree, I never really promoted the sound side of biz and subsequently, we kept getting more and more DJ events and less and less sound jobs.. That, along with the fact that my DJ doesn't like the live sound side at all, so I went with the flow and focused on the DJ biz. Only after years of a small sound show here and there did I start to turn things back around to sound and lighting. Former and current clients would call to inquire about names to call for their other events and it hit me like a ton of bricks, I had NEVER even discussed my ability to do it with them.... I took advantage of those opportunities as best I could from then on out.

Opportunities that I never noticed, or weren't there, began to arise for me to return back to my true love, live sound. I was just getting traction back home when the opportunity for us to move to Tennessee came about. After a lot of thought and prayer, here we are.

The first year I sat back and surveyed the area as to what opportunities there were and what needs there were and who could fill them here an hour East of Nashville. The second year I started engaging a bit but, I still kept busy with business in Chicago so not a lot materialized here in Tennessee. Now we are starting year 3, literally our anniversary of moving was just 5 days ago, and it's time to kick it into high gear. I'm fighting a small town area in which I'm clearly an outsider or newcomer so it's been a bit challenging but I like a good challenge.

So there it is, I'm from Cookeville, TN and I own a small event production company and I tried to escape this line of work only to realize, it's what I love and always have.. So I'm back and trying to make up for lost time.

Just thought it'd be cool to learn who some of you are, what part of the world you live in and what it is that you do.

Next.....

--- End quote ---
Carolinas...have always had a "day job"  in Information Technology..so the bills are covered. Owned a pro backline biz for a little over 15 years...simple choice was that I'm a gear head and felt my stock market investment could do a lot better in an industry that I knew and had some control over..and it did...made a lot of good $ through the years and "talk about time"..sold it to a larger concern about 3 years back...but did keep my longer running private party biz going...that's been running since 1989..mostly weddings, corporate parties...so a reasonably capable semi-pro level audio/lighting/common backline supply...intended to provide some side income for home improvements, vacations, etc over the years and give me something to do when I retire from the day job. so while I've missed the work during covid, it's not crushed me financially...it's just hybernated for now.

Guillermo Sanchez:
I'm probably going to be one of the outliers here.

I'm from Venezuela. I had been in the audio business all my life. I started with a mobile DJ when I was 11. While having my own, people started to hire me to install and tune their DJ sound systems (and I mean big systems, not speakers on a stick stuff but dozens of 18" sub boxes, JBL 4560's or Altec VOT boxes, 2441 loaded horns and 2402 Tweeters, all active 3 or 4 way depending on the particular system). That work lead to do live audio pretty quickly and I was mixing my first show at 14.

I kept on working on install/tune system while I morphed my business to audio system rentals. Long story short, I built what was a sizable SR company in my country, doing mostly international acts and big venues, plus a lot of corporate jobs. At some point, when my beloved country politics turned for the worse (Leaning to "socialism" which in reality was an excuse to steal and squander our immense resources), I decided it was not in my best interest to have so much hardware, so I sold the system and started working as an independent designer/tuner again. While going to that transition, I met Crown's president at the time and was hired as Business developer/application support for the LATAM region. I worked at different positions within Harman Pro for 7 years, mostly doing systems setup, training and tuning for our SR partners in the region until it didn't align with my goals, so I quit, moved back to my country and started working independently again. I worked for a brand representative which had Martin Audio at the time, then worked for a consumer/pro audio representative that had some interesting brands with it, while also doing independent system tuning. Currently I do system design and tuning for some big local Production companies and do system tuning and sound design for a lot of cruise ship lines through a company sell and install such systems. That is what keep me busy now, after 45 years in the business.

Sorry for the long winded post. is not easy to sum up 45 years of audio in a paragraph

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