In 2008, I had what most people would consider a safe, successful career working in marketing at Mercedes-Benz. Then, during the global financial crash, I was made redundant.
Sitting on gardening leave with no job, I took a step that made zero sense on paper: I booked myself onto a one-week DJ course. I’d always loved music, but I had no idea how a DJ controller worked, what the buttons did or how to operate lighting setups.
Without a job or a safety net, I called my bank, applied for a £10,000 loan and somehow got approved. I bought an estate car, purchased brand-new equipment and decided I was in business.
Even though I had never DJed a day in my life, my marketing background kicked in. I didn’t want to look like a guy doing this as a hobby on the side. I wanted a proper company.
I hired the professional design agency I had worked with at Mercedes-Benz to build a high-end website, design lead-heavy flyers, business cards, letterheads and compliment slips. I named the business 20-20 Sounds, applying the logic of 20-20 vision (perfect vision) to sound quality.
On paper, with a sleek website, full stationery, a Yellow Pages listing and top-tier marketing materials, 20-20 Sounds looked like an established brand. In reality, I was sitting in my living room with brand-new equipment out of the box, trying to figure out how to program light rigs and operate a controller on the fly, having no idea if any of this was going to work.
From 2008 all the way through to 2019, I worked a full-time day job while building 20-20 Sounds on evenings and weekends.
For eleven years, my life was a relentless cycle of early morning alarms for my day job, followed by late-night setups and weekend DJ gigs. I learned the gear, survived my terrifying first family gig (my brother’s partner’s 30th birthday), learned hard lessons at wedding fairs and continually reinvested everything back into the business.
By 2015, we introduced our first photo booth. By 2017, we added open-air Selfie Premium. As our inventory expanded, the weight of balancing a full-time job alongside a rapidly growing company became overwhelming.
In 2019, I made the strategic decision to step back from full-time employment and transition into part-time work. That extra operational breathing room allowed me to scale gear, manage weekday warehouse prep and elevate our client service to a whole new level.
Then came April 2020. For 15 straight months between April 2020 and July 2021, the event industry was locked down. Zero bookings. Zero revenue. Just total uncertainty.
When the world finally reopened in July 2021, the floodgates broke. From that summer through to the end of 2022, we completed over 350 bookings without a single break. I poured everything I had into making up for lost time, taking on the weight of every gig, every setup and every late night alongside my part-time job.
By the end of 2022, my body and mind completely gave out. I ended up in A&E, worked into the ground, severely ill, with doctors telling me I had no choice but to take complete rest.
A stark realisation hit me: everyone had won out of me, except me. The venues were happy. The staff working alongside me had been paid and were living good lives. The clients had incredible nights. Everyone won. I knew right then that the way I was running my life and my business had to change. I couldn’t keep DJing five-night stretches while balancing part-time work and trying to build a sustainable company.
Even though my mind was made up in that hospital room, I still had promises to keep. Between January and September 2023, I still had over 100 pre-booked DJ gigs on the calendar. Honouring those bookings while knowing I was stepping away from the decks was one of the hardest mental tests of my career.
In September 2023, I played my final DJ set. Because the business had naturally evolved far beyond sound – adding LED dance floors, illuminated letters, 360 booths and video guest books – we officially rebranded from 20-20 Sounds to Twenty 20 Event Entertainment.
After stepping off the decks and continuing to balance part-time employment while expanding our operations at Chatham Dockyard, the final piece of the puzzle fell into place in 2025: I officially took Twenty 20 Event Entertainment 100% full-time.
Looking Back at 17 Years
The journey from a £10,000 loan in 2008 with zero DJ experience to running a full-time, multi-vehicle event operation in 2025 wasn’t an overnight success. It took:
- 11 years of balancing a full-time job and weekend gigs (2008–2019)
- 6 years of part-time employment while expanding our equipment fleet (2019–2025)
- A major health wake-up call in A&E to force the boundary between DJing and running a business
- The courage in 2025 to take the company 100% full-time
We started with a vision for perfection before I even knew how to turn on a controller. Today, Twenty 20 Event Entertainment stands on 17 years of hard-earned operational discipline, proving that taking calculated risks and backing yourself is always worth the journey.
