We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Nick Castillo a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Nick, appreciate you joining us today. When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?
After being in the workforce for over 21 years, you definitely learn a lot about yourself. For example, I left Virginia Tech with a Computer Engineering degree, was a coder for about 10 years, realized I had a brain for innovation and marketing, worked on my company’s website and helped with social, co-ran a community of over 1 million+ members, and on the side hosted karaoke and trivia events.
As a lot of us may have experienced these past couple years, I ended up getting laid off. The job application process in itself was grueling and it was seeming next to impossible getting an interview in the positions I felt most qualified for. I then took a step back, evaluated my situation, realized I had some savings and a supportive partner and asked myself what I actually enjoyed doing and how I could earn money from it. At the time, I felt that my trivia nights one night a week were a real hit. I would receive many compliments after those games and even from games that I would fill in at at other bars and private events in the area.
Realizing I had a passion for entertainment and a window to “do something a little crazy”, I dove head first into providing a top tier experience to the people of San Diego.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
Before I decided to become a trivia host back in 2017, I would attend many trivia events and realized how it was very similar no matter where I went. I am not talking about the format of the games, but the hosts and the energy of the game. It seemed that it was just one person and a mic speaking in a monotone-like voice and we’d get through the game. Now, that being said, that is definitely a vibe and I can see some trivia fanatics expecting that and loving it, I definitely get it. However, I always thought that it could be spiced up a bit and be a little more engaging. What I mean by that would be things like asking the questions with inflection, similar to how a game show host on tv would say it, playing a song that relates to the question being asked (for example the question is asking who is older, George Clooney or Paul Rudd, and I would play ‘What’s My Age Again?’), and showing the questions on tv with some color pop and sound effects when the question is revealed and when the answer is revealed. I’ll be honest, the prep for these shows does take some time, but when I receive compliments after the game like “I’ve never had that much fun at trivia”, “I like how you matched the songs with the question”, and “I love your announcer voice”, it just further solidify’s my decision to pursue this venture. Not to mention, one of my venue’s won Best Trivia Night 2023 in the San Diego Reader in it’s first year of hiring me!
When I first decided to start this business, it was originally going to be tailored to just trivia. However, I realized that hosting transcends just that game! By trying to keep my finger on the pulse of weekly events in the bar industry, I had noticed that Music Bingo has been getting pretty popular, so just recently I have begun offering that as an event to host and already have a bar on board for a weekly event. Coming soon, I will also be offering karaoke! Having been a karaoke host at one of the staples here in San Diego for over 4 years, I feel I can bring that experience to a wider audience now.
My final offering is DJing. Growing up as a kid in the 90’s, I listened to all types of music from the 60’s onward. I worked in a music store as my first job for 3-4 years, which enriched my knowledge for music and opened me up to genres I never knew I enjoyed. That’s not to say I haven’t listened to music since! I am very up to date with today’s music as well and let’s just say my library is expansive and I can keep a party going all night long.
In all honesty, I believe this eclectic mix of offerings sets me apart from others in this industry. For example, recently I was speaking with a client that was interested in hiring me for their event as a trivia host to provide some fun for their employees, but once they heard that I also DJ and provide Karaoke, we are now adding all that to the mix for a night of fun!
What I would say to any future customer is that if they are looking for someone that really puts everything into making their event engaging and exciting for their crowd, they have found that person. From the heart, I am not satisfied unless the customer is not satisfied.
We’d love to hear your thoughts on NFTs. (Note: this is for education/entertainment purposes only, readers should not construe this as advice)
This is actually a very interesting question! Did you know that I actually minted (created) 10 DJ Hokienick NFTs? This is when I was hosting a weekly trivia virtually during the Covid-times. I had created a show on Twitch that my friends would tune-in to and had even extended it to friends of friends over time. Usually the winners just got bragging rights and I created a leaderboard that they could view over time to see how they compared to others. But once I started researching more about NFTs, I created my own and awarded them to the winners, which I thought was pretty innovative for it’s time.
All that being said, I have 5 of my NFTs sitting in my wallet and I’m sure my friends don’t even know how to pull up their NFTs that I awarded them if I asked them to! I personally think that the NFT fad has waned a bit from where it was at, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see it pop up again in a more mature fashion in the future.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
When I first started my journey with this business, the thought would be that half of it would be hosting and the other half would be creating a trivia app that I would be able to use for my games. I spent a few months storyboarding the app myself and creating design prototypes. Paid a designer to actually make it look good, and then work with a developer to get it created. Although the developer ended up ghosting me, at the same time, I was getting such positive feedback from the games that I was running using pen and paper. People from various teams throughout the night would come up to me after the game and tell me how much they loved the game being run “the old school way” because they feel like there is less of a chance that people are cheating, they get to get up and move out of their seats from time to time, and make chit-chat with the host and other players turning in their answers.
By listening to the crowd that keeps coming back week after week and giving me that constructive feedback, I had decided to pull the plug on the trivia app idea (for now….).
Contact Info:
- Website: www.djhokienick.com
- Instagram: @djhokienick
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-castillo/
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/dj-hokienick-san-diego
Image Credits
For the live event photos you can put: Nifty Fifty Media