And I'm all about you mentioning that, but, uh, start us off how'd you get in it how long you've been doing it paint the picture for us yeah thanks um

you know i've been uh djing full-time for about 12 10 12 years now but i started djing back in 2010 i was introduced to it from a buddy of mine that we served together in the army band so that's actually how i got my start i was a musician in the army Um, I got in right out of high school in 2008 and, uh, this guy that was my squad leader at the time, uh, was a, was a DJ.

Um, and he said, Hey, I think you'd be really good at this.

Come with me and, you know, be my assistant for a day.

And, uh, I went out with them and we had a blast.

It was a, a, a pretty good size wedding, probably 140, 150 people at a pretty nice upscale hotel.

Um, driving home i was just blown away i looked at him i said wait a second you get paid to do this and he's like yeah and i'm like all right you know what this is definitely something i want to do you know walk me through the process so he brought me in brought me under his wing i went out with him several more times that summer i invested in some you know basic gear to get me through and i started doing some know birthday parties pool parties just little things here and there and then uh you know during that time i was still kind of going to school and getting my career under my belt um i do work as a career firefighter so at the at the time i was kind of going through the fire academy going through getting my paramedic and whatnot and then you know once i had all that stuff figured out i got hired full-time um you know i decided to get back into djing and start taking it seriously scaling up i got in with a multi-op And I'd been with them for about 10 years.

If every couple watching this remembered one thing before hiring their DJ, what would you want it to be? Do your

How would you define holistic management for those people that may not have heard of it or are familiar with it?

Well, I'll jump in on that one, maybe, Monica, because when I had not heard of it and the little bit of the notion in my head was, well, I'll be honest, it was quite floofy, right? I was like, I don't even know what this means, right? This seems kind of hokey, right? So the best way that I would have to describe it is, I mean, like Monica mentioned what she just said a moment ago, was looking at an operation on...

on this entirety as a whole, right? So not hippie stuff, but looking at it as a whole.

And we could look at the best attributes that came out of it for myself was, the goal setting and the problem solving and the financial planning, right? I know it's easy to go into these courses and you get very hyper focused on production or grazing or something that's kind of very specific to that one operation.

And a lot of it naturally seems to be ranch mentality and grazing kind of ideologies.

The problem solving has been unreal for myself because we were able to bring this into a grain venture where it's hard to find the courses on that.

You know, it got my head wrapped around as a spreadsheet nerd.

Sorry, I was going to say, I feel like you have more of the story about how things played out and what you actually did, but I don't want to assume that, I suppose.

But, um, I, I, knowing that this is not your expertise, but you've spent enough time in it, how would you define holistic management for those people that may not have heard of it or aren't familiar with it?

Well, that, I, I'll, I'll jump in on that one maybe, Monica, because, like, like, when I had not heard of it, um, and, and the little bit of the, the notion in my head was...

Well, I'll be honest.

It was quite floofy, right? It was like I, I, I don't even know, I don't even know what this means, right? The, this, this seems kind of hokey, right? So the best way that I would have to describe it is, is, I mean, like Monica mentioned, what she just said a moment ago, was, was looking at, at, at an operation on, on, on its entirety as a whole, right? So not, not hippy stuff, but looking at it as a, as a whole.

And, and, you know, we, we could look at the, um, the, the, the best attributes that came out of it for myself was the goal setting and the problem-solving and the financial planning, right? Um, I know it's easy to go into these courses and, and if you get very hyper-focused on production or grazing or something that's kind of very specific to that one operation, and, and a lot of it naturally seems to be ranch mentality and grazing kind of ideologies.

The problem-solving has been unreal for myself because we were able to bring this into a grain venture where it's, it's hard to find the courses on that.

Um, you know, it, it, it got my head wrapped around, as, as a spreadsheet nerd, I was able to get access to a spreadsheet that worked very well, and then I was able to modify it to really suit us, which really worked us through this one really terrible spring when we couldn't seed.

[laughs]