Hello!
I’m Danielle Knights and I run a music agency called Live & Love Music. We supply live music acts to various venues and events across the UK and Europe. This includes weddings, corporate events, pubs, bars, restaurants, parties, festivals, shopping centres and much more. We’ve even provided entertainment for army barracks events and furniture stores, so it really can be a diverse clientele. How did it begin?
I decided to set up my own business when I was 16, as I’ve always felt the need to take a different path to everyone else, as well as doing something I enjoy, of course. I left school after my GCSEs and put on a few charity gigs, then moved onto organising them for profit (although it didn’t always work out that way!). Finally, I settled on the music agency side of things, as this business model made more sense and it was quicker and easier to make money. My Grandad and Dad have both run their own businesses, so I grew up with these influences in mind. I love live music and going to events, so it was a natural pro-gression for me to move into that sector.
When you run your own business, there really is no limit to what you can achieve if you put the hard work in. Each day is dif-ferent and I love working with a variety of clients and artists. Exciting news? 2018 was our busiest Christmas season yet and we had some really exciting book-ings in December. We had 8 New Years Eve gigs on, including some Thames boat tours, as well as a few Christmas light switch ons and other big corporate clients. A lot of our pub clients keep coming back for regular re-bookings too, which is amaz-ing! Plans for 2019 2019 is looking really exciting already.
In January, I won a £5000 business grant from QuickBooks, which I’m so excited about. I entered via their Facebook competition and was over the moon to have won. I’ll be using the money to go towards im-plementing a strong marketing plan to push my agency forward this year, as well as organising a video showreel and photo shoot for some of my acts. Its such an amazing opportunity so I'm hoping it will help me double my business revenue over the next year.
The team at QuickBooks have all been so lovely as well and I’m really grateful they chose me as their winner. For the rest of the year, we have lots of weddings booked in already and we’re cur-rently working on a few bookings for our repeat clients. A big focus for us this year is improving our website SEO, which is key these days, and we are also looking to expand further into the corporate sector.
I love my Company Stamp - thank you so much, Fran. I’ve been using this on my letters and Christmas cards to clients. Having a Personalized Stamp really helps me to brand my correspondence and add a strong, professional look, which is important for any business.
You can follow Live & Love Music on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and www.liveandlovemusic.com
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