Peter: I'm joined by Trent McFadden, aka DJ Balance, an amazing wedding DJ out of Colorado with an incredible story. Trent, how did you get started?

Trent: I started DJing in 2023, after a bunch of my friends took it up as a hobby. I used to be a semi-professional dancer, so I already understood the timing, the eight counts, and the phrasing, which DJing relies on heavily. I caught on really quickly. I've always been meticulous about music, and as a dancer, I'd go to shows thinking about melodies and basslines I wanted to hear. It feels like something I was born to do. At first I wanted it to be a hobby, but crowds responded really well, and I was enjoying it so much.

Trent: I was 25 and having a mini midlife crisis. The startup I worked for failed, but I'd learned so much about business: how to operate one, how to create content, and the sales grind. So I told myself, "Let me go all in on DJing for a year. If nothing happens, I'm 26, and I can figure something else out." I applied that business grind to DJing. I cold called 300 breweries and restaurants and got one gig. A woman in the crowd at that gig owns a brewery, and two years later she texted me out of the blue: "To this day, you're the only DJ who's impressed me. I want you to play at my brewery." I'm playing there this Saturday.

Trent: I was hesitant to do weddings at first. In the Denver EDM community, DJs don't want to play weddings, because it's all Bruno Mars and "Don't Stop Believin'," which makes us cringe. But it's 2026, Gen Z is getting married, and in Colorado, couples in their mid- to late 20s are ravers. They love house and bass remixes of pop songs, old hip-hop, and Michael Jackson. Weddings aren't what they were 10 or 20 years ago. People want more substance and less cliché.

I brought my standards to weddings. I mix two, three, or four songs at once to create mashups and fun lyric and beat plays. Venues still tell me, "You're one of the best we've ever had. You're actually mixing." A lot of wedding DJs play a song all the way through, let it die, and press play again, or just play from a playlist. My first wedding, I played a bunch of house remixes of songs people knew, like Ozzy Osbourne and AC/DC, and it went so well that I thought, "Okay, this is the sauce."

Peter: When we first talked, there was a question mark about whether people really wanted this. Different is better than better, and it has totally resonated.

Trent: Last weekend, I played a bass-music wedding and a house-music wedding. About half my couples are huge EDM fans. But I can also crush a standard wedding and sneak in remixes they didn't know they wanted until they heard them. I believe that's a DJ's job: to play music people didn't think they wanted to hear, and then they say, "Can you do more of that?"

Peter: When we started working together last August, what was going on in your business?

Trent: I'd just launched my profile on The Knot with a fun sample mix video, and I'd done about 10 weddings from it. My goal was to do weddings full-time, but I didn't know how to get there. I'd been serving at restaurants for nine years, and my relationship with my restaurant job was getting rocky. The business was growing, but very slowly. I knew that once I got in front of a couple, I could connect and sell. I really care about every couple. I just needed help with marketing and leads.

Peter: I had a sense that you could be successful if you just had more at-bats. The Knot was getting you some leads, but it was slow going.

Peter: So now, about 10 months in, what is business like?

Trent: Incredible. Sometimes it's still hard to believe, and it's consistent and growing. I've made more money than I ever have in my life, and I'm still enjoying every bit of it. I have at least one wedding a week from June to November, and that's by choice, because I'm moving in November and want to travel to Europe or Japan this winter. I can book as many as I want, but I need rest. I have a December wedding and a January one booked, three in May, and next June is already full. Today I messaged all my leads, and I have four calls tomorrow.

Peter: You've booked about 40 weddings in the last seven or eight months. You went from 10 weddings a year to booking a wedding a week, and you're over six figures, at a time when a lot of people in the industry feel bookings are down.

Peter: What changed that let you go from A to B?

Trent: Consistency is number one. That doesn't mean working from 6 a.m. to midnight. It's a routine. Every day, I go through my messages one by one. You told me the fortune is in the follow-up. If it's Thursday, I skip yesterday's messages, because it's been less than 24 hours, and I follow up with Tuesday's. When couples sign up for the giveaway, they're interested, but that engagement can be lost quickly, because we scroll through 200 videos a day. People get busy and forget. When you follow up 24 hours later, it's still fresh. I can't tell you how many people thank me for following up. I also go back a few days. On Fridays, I'm locked in on the weekend, so on Monday morning, I look at the previous Thursday and Friday.

I message about 10 to 20 people a day. Just sending the follow-ups takes about 30 minutes. If people start replying, I have the conversation right then, because back-and-forth is where most of my bookings come from. Coming off a long weekend, I did three hours today, but tomorrow will be 30 minutes to an hour. And don't stress if it's been 30 minutes or a day since a lead messaged. Timing matters, but not as much as you might think.

Peter: It's not a marathon. Can you do this for 30 minutes every day? If you can, you could easily make six figures from that amount of work.

Trent: What it really comes down to is leading the conversation while being a human. Use exclamation marks and emojis. Respond to their "ha ha" and "We went on vacation last week" with "Oh, sick, where'd you go?" But still lead them to the next step. People want to be guided: "Here's how the giveaway works, here's the next step, and after that you can qualify for the discount." Weave in dreaming with them: "What do you love? What do you see for your wedding?" Don't lead with "How many hours of coverage? We charge a dollar a mile over 30 miles." Get into that later.

Couples need to be confident you can do your job, so you need the professional side: reminders, showing up on time, backup equipment, and organized music. But if they don't feel emotionally connected to you, they won't trust you with one of the most emotionally vulnerable days of their life. I joke with couples that we're having a little pseudo-marriage, because I hold the vibes in my hands. With a caterer, maybe you just need to like the food. With a DJ or photographer, it has to feel good.

Peter: What's working best for you on calls?

Trent: Being myself. I've had a lot of sales jobs, and this one is the most fun. People want to have fun at their wedding. I send them a mix related to the music we've been texting about. I've pre-recorded almost every wedding I've done and posted it on SoundCloud. If they listen to it, they know I can technically DJ. My reviews, process, and brand show I'm professional, not a bedroom DJ you pay on Venmo. So the only question left is: do we like this person?

I always start with, "How long have you been together? Is there a fun proposal story we could all enjoy?" Instant smiles, and their guard comes down. We talk about the deposit and contract only at the end, after we've built an emotional connection. One groom was cooking steaks, and I said, "Dude, I get my steaks from Costco and cut them up myself." He ran up to the camera: "Dude, that's what I do!" That was the first two minutes, and it had nothing to do with the wedding.

You can't have one without the other, though. I'm also very confident in my service and my ability. And as vendors, we want to work with fun people too. That's how we avoid burnout. If we're not laughing and having a good time on a call, I don't necessarily want to do their wedding.

Peter: It's easy to gloss over this and ask, "What's the real secret?" But this is the secret. There's no pretense, just instant rapport. Business is just relationships. And when you're having fun, you want to do the work. It's not "I have to do this," it's "I get to do this." When you're in that place, you do a lot of it, and you get a lot of results.

Trent: When you're grateful for your life, your job, and your couples, that energy comes right through the screen. Gratitude is infectious. Couples tell me, "I see your reviews and your content, but you're just really easy to talk to, and this feels really good." Nobody spends a lot of money when they're uptight. When people say "I need to think about it," they're really saying, "I don't feel safe."

Peter: That's the 80/20 of sales: make people relax.

Peter: What's been the most transformational part of working together?

Trent: The support and guidance, especially being able to bring my questions to the coaching calls three times a week. And the humanity of your team. It isn't a big corporation where I met Peter for five minutes and never saw him again. I feel safe in this community. If I hadn't felt your genuineness, I wouldn't have signed up. I got scripts written for photographers and adapted them for a DJ, which I enjoyed, and the call reviews were huge. You get the leads to the table, but if I'm not selling them, there's a problem, and you offer that support. Joe and Augie are crushing it and are really good people.

Peter: Say there's a DJ watching who does 5 or 10 weddings a year part-time and dreams of making six figures doing this full-time. What would you tell them?

Trent: Find the help you need in whatever area you're lacking. Going from 5 weddings to 40 isn't easy, but it's so worth it. It's scary, and it's a lot of money. Now that money looks like pennies compared to what I've made from the investment, but at the time, I was scared. So first, ask yourself how confident you are in your ability to do a great job at a wedding. If you're not, figure out why and work on it. Then get the help you need, whether that's leads or content.

Be yourself. We're the party, so have fun with it. You can still find your own music taste within weddings. And playing a few hours of music that isn't your favorite is way better than working a nine-to-five you hate. When people are having a great time, you feel that energy too. It all starts with you, and then you have to buckle up and take the leap. I used to watch these videos thinking how cool it would be to be one of these people, and now I'm here.