With HARD Summer coming up in just a week, I had the privilege of sitting down with the Executive of HARD Events, the lady boss herself, Meagan DesChenes.

Meagan has worked for HARD events since day one handing out flyers and running the brand’s social media accounts which eventually led her down the path of becoming the head person in charge.

In this episode, we really dive deep into the backstory of HARD events and really what it takes to run a music festival company underneath the Insomniac Umbrella. We also talk a lot about the struggles that they had to overcome during COVID and more importantly how much Meagan has accomplished as one of the only women in her field and what adversities that she has had to face along the way.

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(This episode was recorded over video call)

Today on the show we have our first guest who has been on the podcast twice, he is a San Francisco native, my good friend Hellcat!

Over the last couple years since the last time he was on the show, his project has exponentially grown. He went from a few thousand followers on social media and playing a show here and there for his local community to over ten thousand followers and playing close to 30 shows within just a few months, all over the west coast.

I was excited to catch up with him after all that has happened and find out what he took away from gaining so much traction so quickly. And as you’ll hear in the interview, his major take away, he says, is that closed mouths don’t get fed. And what he means by that is that when you are first starting out as an artist and you don’t have an established brand or have very little stage time, you can’t just sit around and wait for opportunities to happen. Instead, you HAVE TO put in the work in order to make it happen. And today Hellcat is going to break down some of his tactics of how he was able to do this for his own project

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Today we have an extremely special guest on the show who goes by the name R3LL, he is known as one of the pioneers of Jersey Club music and I’m sure, a lot of you just asked yourself the question, “What in the hell is Jersey Club?”

And while we do answer that in this episode, the one thing that I found the most remarkable about this artist is that he has not only been producing music for almost 20 years, but he has stuck to a genre that hasn’t always been the “hottest” on the EDM charts.

R3LL originally got signed with Dim Mak back in 2008 and since then has toured around the world and even played, what I like to call “the big three” of festivals, Tomorrowland, EDC, and Coachella. But, I was curious in finding out how he got such amazing opportunities being that he produced a style of music that most of the EDM fans that I know, don’t even know exists.

And as you’ll hear in the episode, he believes that while staying true to who you are is definitely a longer game, it is a much more satisfying journey long term.

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As most of you already know, you are going to face setbacks and challenges along any journey. It is a part of anything that you work hard to achieve in life and in the music industry, things are no different.

But, when you are faced with a challenge or setback it can be very discouraging and tempting to give up on your goals completely. However, if you are truly driven to achieve those goals then, you must change the way that you view challenges and setbacks. 

So, our guest on the show today Focuss, who is a dubstep producer out of Philadelphia is here to tell us how he overcame his setbacks by not letting himself get discouraged by them but instead, using them as an opportunity to grow. Also, in our conversation he gives his secret on what first made him realize that he needed to change his mindset so that you can implement the same strategy to help you begin growing past your own set of challenges.

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Let’s face it, when most of us were growing up we were brainwashed by schools telling us that we need to follow the correct path of getting into college, getting a 9-5 career where we have the security of a pension, salary, and the “privilege” of retiring at 60. But, unless you’re passionate about the career path that you chose, you’re going to be stuck working that job for the majority of your life where you’re miserable on Mondays and counting down the days until it is Friday again. 

And I don’t know about you, but to me that sounds absolutely terrifying. To be honest, I don’t think I could even last 2 years working a career just for the security blanket that it gave me. And chances are, if you are listening to this show, you are terrified of that as well and you believe that you deserve to have a career that lights you up and that doesn’t even feel like a job most of the time because of how much you love it. 

It can be a very challenging decision to choose the road less traveled and go all in on your dreams. But, that is the exact same decision that our guest on the show today, helloworld had to make. He started his project last march and since then he has had releases on bassrush, lost in dreams, circus, and heaven sent and has even had the opportunity to play EDC the last two years. But none of that would have happened for him if he would have chosen the life of security. 

Before he started the helloworld project, he graduated from college with a degree in computer science and even had an internship with a major software engineering company. Plus, unlike many of us… he actually liked software engineering. But the longer he worked there, the more he couldn’t deny his true passion of making music. So, what finally made him choose to abandon the career that he already worked so hard for to go all in on his dreams of becoming a touring musician? 

Well, you’re about to find out…

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Im just gonna say it as simply as possible, this episode has probably one of the deepest conversations that we’ve ever had on this show. 

Between my history in bodybuilding and now applying the same level of dedication to my work in music, it has allowed me to experience the greatest feelings of accomplishment 
because I know, like many of you listening, when I make my mind up to do something, I go all in.  However, too much of something always has the chance of becoming something negative or not good for you.

For example, if I don’t find balance with the work that I do in the music industry, 
I would probably burn out and lose my passion for it. 
Or if I didn’t allow myself cheat days when I was dieting or I didn’t allow myself rest days while training, It might have pushed me into a toxic relationship with food and the gym. 
And that is exactly what our guest on the show today had to work through in order to start building his very successful artist project that a lot of us know today, SWARM.

In our conversation, he breaks down his 10 year battle with Anorexia 
and the struggle with mental health that is associated with overcoming his tough relationship with food. He explains how he wouldn’t be the funny person we see online, or the phenomenal cinematic artist that many of us love if it weren’t for him overcoming this challenge. 

Like I said, this is probably one of the deepest conversations we’ve had on this show 
and being someone who hasn’t gone through this challenge himself, I sure did learn a whole lot.

So, I hope you’re ready to dive into this one, let’s get started!

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Overthinking… I don’t know about you but overthinking has been one of the toughest things I personally have had to deal with in my own creative endeavors and I’m not even a producer!

In any creative field or entrepreneurial journey you are going to face times when you aren't sure if your work is good enough, you’re going to wonder how well it will do with streams, downloads, sales, etc. But the problem with overthinking is that it can stump your creativity in a MASSIVE way!

So, it is important to know how to work through these times so that you don’t get stuck and then give up on something that could completely alter the course of your career.
Is it easy? Absolutely not! Because we are human and overthinking is a natural human response. 

However, it is possible. And today our guest Zookeeper who is a house music from New Jersey, is here to share how he has battled his own overthinking throughout his time as a musician and how it led him to landing some pretty massive festival slots like Global Dance, Audiotistic, and Countdown. 

So, I hope you’re ready to dive in, let’s get started!

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Doesn’t life just seem love to kick you when you are down?

I'm sure we have all experienced this at some point and when this happens, it’s hard not to let it throw you off track from your goals. But, how do we continue pursuing our goals in the midst of being kicked in the go-nads by life? Well, first and foremost, you have to make sure you are doing everything you can to have a healthy mindset.

In today’s episode, we have a good buddy of mine Elusion who is a music producer out of New Jersey and this guy has gone through so much between his
parents getting divorced his senior year of high school, his music production school getting shut down and evicted and even his management team closing up shop, leaving him to manage himself over the past year.

You may be wondering, how did this dude continue pursuing his goals in music while it seemed like his world was collapsing around him?

Well, I'm just gonna let him answer that…

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I am back from EDC and I am ready to get back to weekly episode releases! If you haven’t gone to EDC, I would highly recommend it.

I had VIP this year and while at most festivals I normally pass on VIP, EDC was beyond worth it and I will be returning next year!

Before we get started, I just wanted to take a second to thank all of you for understanding the fact that we took last week off since I was out of town.

But, we have a special one for you this week with our guest OMAS who is a bass music producer out of San Francisco California, Icon Collective Alumni, and also plays professional poker outside of music.

And today Omas tells us how his biggest hurdle while building his project was actually developing a unique brand, and provides us some tips on how we should create our own brand using elements of who we already are in real life.

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I love working in the music industry however, I also understand that it is usually a long road to get to where you want to be in your career. With that being said, I think that it is extremely important for us all, at some point, to put both feet in and fully commit to what we want to achieve.

Will it still take a lot of dedication, hard work, and patience in order to get there? Of course it will! But in reality, we really only have two choices on HOW we can to get there. 

We can A: Be miserable and impatient and work ourselves to death because we convince ourselves that is the only way to become successful 

Or B: We can relax and allow ourselves to still experience the life that is going on around us. 

Which one would you rather have? Option B right? 

Well so did our guest on the show today, FORBES, who is a house music producer from Arizona, who is also currently finishing up his last semester at ICON Collective, and who even got to play EDC last year going back to back with DVRKO. 

In this episode he explains how he has sacrificed his path to playing Professional Hockey in order to put both feet in on his true passion of making music and why he believes that you should never think about having a backup plan even when it will take some time for you to achieve all of your goals.

And, more importantly, how he has learned to enjoy the little things along the way. 

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