Today we’d like to introduce you to Conner James.
Conner, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
Well, I never planned on being ‘The Wedding DJ’, but I wouldn’t trade it for the world.
The opportunities the business has afforded me—from travel to creating a network of awesome friends in the industry, and clients who have become friends—have been truly rewarding.
My background playing guitar, bass, and drums in high school led me to naturally gravitate towards the turntables once I got to college at San Diego State University. Each fraternity had its own DJ, and I gladly took on that challenge when I joined the Greek system. While at State, I also worked as an audiovisual technician for all the student meetings, concerts, etc., which gave me the technical knowledge of how to properly run sound, microphones, etc.
By the time I turned 21, I had already secured residencies at many of the Gaslamp’s top nightclubs. I spent over 10 years DJing around San Diego and in many of the nation’s top nightlife markets, all while still DJing for friends’ weddings 3-5 times a year.
When the pandemic hit in 2020, I found that I actually liked having weekends off (as there was a solid year of no DJ gigs). Once the world began reopening, I decided, ‘I’m just going to focus on weddings’ and attempt to leave my nightclub days in the past.
That led to the creation of ‘The LoveTap’ wedding DJ brand, which has since exploded over the past two years and has resulted in me personally DJing over 54 weddings each of the past two years. I’ve now grown the team with DJ friends from my years in nightlife to keep up with demand. We’ve seen an instant response from planners, venues, and couples alike; they all seem to appreciate the fact that we actually DJ at weddings.
So many wedding DJs are glorified speaker and microphone rentals, just hitting ‘next’ on a playlist of songs. What sets The LoveTap apart from every other wedding DJ in town is our extensive experience playing in nightclubs for over 10 years. We create unmatched energy at weddings. We DJ in the same style we did at clubs, but with wedding-appropriate music.
We also offer a ‘DJ + SAX’ option where we add live saxophone on top of what we DJ, and the crowds absolutely love the live music element being added to the ‘digital’ DJ experience.
Today, we are fortunate to work with a handful of the city’s best wedding vendors and have created a dream team wedding crew of awesome people who create awesome weddings for couples. If you need a planner, check out Andrea at ‘Heart & Sol Events’. If you need a photo booth, Eden and Mackenzie at ‘Confetti Photo Booth’ are building the city’s best photo booth option—and they’re all just awesome people to work with.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
The hardest part of growing in the wedding business is the amount of time it takes to see the fruits of your labor. When starting out, you only have 10-20 weddings a year, so you book a few weddings but then you have to wait a year to actually see the event come to life. Now, we do so many each year that we basically get to see an epic wedding every week – so the biggest challenge now is figuring out how to scale the business as we really want to keep the bar high for skills our DJs must have to represent the brand – which makes scaling difficult.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I pride myself on using the turntables as an instrument. Any DJ can blend tracks, but the ability to scratch records and create live mashups within 5 seconds of a person requesting a song is what sets us apart from other wedding DJs.
We specialize in creating weddings that bring that “best night ever” feeling to every single dance floor we play.
Are there any books, apps, podcasts or blogs that help you do your best?
Podcasts and books I listen to mostly have to do with personal finance, real estate investing, and building good habbits.
Books: Atomic Habits, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, and $100 Million Dollar Leads.
Podcasts: Chris Williamson’s podcast, Ramit Sethi’s, and Bigger Pockets
Apps: Workout. Best workout app I’ve ever used and its been easier to go to the gym since fiding this app.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.thelovetap.com
- Instagram: @lovetapdjs
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/TheLoveTap
- Other: www.zola.com/wedding-vendors/wedding-bands-djs/the-lovetap
