It's OK to fail sometimes

When I started Music Makes You Happy in 2011, the original name was Music Makes You Happy DJ Services because that’s all we offered, DJ services. However, that quickly began to change and we started to add more services.

A picture from our very first bridal show!

Some have been really successful and taken off like our cool specialty lighting and our fun photo booths. Certain services fill a niche market and have started to find some real traction like our tailgate party services and our A/V rentals.

Others, one in particular, were a complete dud and looking back, I smile because I don’t know what I was thinking offering it in the first place. I’m talking about our video game package.

Our first party trailer with the video game setup

First off, I haven’t played a video game since my freshman year of high school. Growing up I played video games but what I really loved was creating the atmosphere in the room to make the game come alive.

I would place the seats near the screen, place speakers in front of and behind the seats and set the mood of the room with different color lights. I had an old couch my parents gave me and speakers all over my room. Different color rope lights with foot pedals to change the colors were strategically placed around the gaming area.

I spent hours running cables, placing speakers and mounting lights. That’s partly where my love of all things audio and video came from (that and car stereos, more on that later). However, once the game started, I got bored and wanted to do something else.

But, that love of setting the mood and creating the atmosphere for a real, immersive video game experience was why I thought offering a video game party package was a good fit. It wasn’t!

The only reason Music Makes You Happy was ever hired to host a video game party wasn’t because the players wanted an awesome experience, it was because parents wanted a babysitter. The only events we were ever hired for were kids birthday parties, it was terrible.

The kids would get all jacked up on video game violence, start running around with our equipment and try to break everything we owned. I didn’t grow up with younger siblings and at the time, didn’t have any kids of my own, so children were foreign to me.

Early setup in the living room before the kids got there

I tried to be fun at first and let them enjoy their day but it quickly got out of hand and I ended up hating life. I realized that this wasn’t a good fit and that we did not need money that badly.

I honestly think I would rather dance on the corner in some shorty shorts and have passerby’s throw nickels into a hat before I would offer the video game package again.

However, this taught me a valuable lesson as the owner of a growing company, not everything fits. Music Makes You Happy doesn’t have to, and shouldn’t, be everything to everybody. The company would lose its identity and ultimately our clients would suffer the most.

So if you are looking for a company to host your next video game night, look somewhere else because I’m out on Main St dropping it low in shorty shorts (you can thank me later for the mental images ;-)