Today we’d like to introduce you to Michael Yanko.
Hi Michael, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I was a Karaoke host at a local bar for a few years as a fun way to make a little extra money on the side. One of the bartenders asked me to DJ her wedding even though she knew I had never done it before. I really enjoyed it, so in 1999 I started as a single DJ as a side hobby. At that time I had a good paying day job doing extreme marketing.
A couple years later I was sitting at the Daytona 500 with my late wife and I told her that I had turned down 13 weddings for that date, and if we could have had other people doing them and just made $100 on each one we could have made $1300 while watching the race. Her response was “Make it happen. So I bought 16 DJ systems and hired 8 people that I though would make great DJs and trained them to do weddings exactly the way that I did. Equipment was not as reliable in those days so I sent them out with 2 complete systems. We took an ad out in 5 Yellow Page books and very shortly all 9 of us were booked almost every weekend. From day one our goal was to supply top level entertainment in budget friendly packages. We knew that there were a lot of great people out there that deserved to have an amazing wedding, but didn’t have the money to pay for the big name people. We changed our name to A Better DJ.
One day I called one of our DJs to assign him a wedding and he informed me that he just moved to Chicago in a hurry to help out with family. I asked him if he brought his DJ system. He said yes, so I told him I would try some marketing in Chicago. Today the Chicago area is our 2nd biggest market.
About this time Yellow Page ads starting to die out and the new thing was internet advertising. I was forced to put in some long hours and learn SEO and get my company back on top. Within 3 days I had us on the 1st page in our local market. I duplicated what I had done in the local market and the calls started pouring in from the Chicago area. I quickly ran an ad and hired 10 more DJs in Chicago to keep pace with the calls. Also at this time my female DJ told me she was getting married, and that she had called every photographer in the Yellow Pages. The cheapest one was $750 and she wouldn’t even get any pictures for that price. I told her we would evaluate the results and have a meeting. She ended up paying $1250 to get 100 photos that really weren’t that good.
I had several years experience as a concert photographer and was quite good at it, and my late wife also had quite a bit of experience and had taken classes. Wed had a meeting and decided I would cross train my remaining local DJs in photography, we would do all of the editing in house, and proceeded to buy 7 cameras that were top level at that time.
We changed all of our marketing to offer the option of a DJ-photo bundle at an amazingly low price. In a very short time 85% of our bookings were DJ-photo packages. With this new success we changed our name to A Better DJ and Photographer.
About 5 years into it the business was growing so fast that my late wife gave up her day job. A couple of months later she said “If you put the same effort into our business that you do at your day job, you probably wouldn’t have to work there anymore.” I laughed and told her “One day.” The business continued to grow so 6 months later I did give up my day job. Within 30 days of quitting and work our own business full time I was making enough to cover the money I was making at my day job.
The word got out to neighboring states about how great our services were, and how we had the best prices in the country. We expanded into Alabama, Georgia, and both Carolinas. My experience in hiring the right people really paid off and we were building a network of very talented people. Soon expansion had us in 13 states, then 20, and when we got to 25 states I said to my wife “We might as well take it nationwide.” Of course her reply was “Make it happen!” So I did. I spent 5 years at about 80 hours a week building our network and doing marketing to bring in weddings and events.
In 2006 we added video. We kept the same name but started offering a DJ-photo-video bundle at less tan half the national average for those 3 services. Business boomed again! At this point we had around 2,000 professional DJs and photographers that were willing to work in our budget friendly packages.
The company continued to grow but in early 2016 I lost my wife to cancer. We were personally doing about 100 weddings and events a year and all the sudden In lost my partner. I had a full schedule and had to pair up with some of our other photographers. As luck would have it GOD put someone very special in my life and In was able to teach her photography. She was a natural! As soon as I put a professional camera in her hands she started taking great pictures. I taught her how to edit so she did her own photos and I edited all of the weddings from our other photographers. I’m really good at it and very fast, but the business was taking my life about 18 hours a day. She also learned how to work our inquiries and took over the initial inquiries.
Fast forward to today. We have over 4,000 DJs, photographers, and videographers in our network. I’m now 68 years old and I didn’t want to work as much as I did. I wanted to enjoy some real life outside the business, so I hired a company in India to do most of our editing. I still do the final edits before sending photos to our clients. I cut back some of our advertising so now we are only doing 250-500 weddings and events a year. Sometime in the future I will be hiring and training someone to take over the business so I can have a lot of enjoy more of my life.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Our biggest obstacles are that our prices are so low that some people think it’s a scam, and most of our listings show up as Orlando and potential clients fail to recognize that we are nationwide.
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
DJ-photography-video
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.abetterdj.net
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@ABETTERDJ/videos
Image Credits
All photos taken by A Better DJ and photographer
