We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jen Quirk a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Jen, appreciate you joining us today. Your ability to build a team is often a key determinant of your success as a business owner and so we’d love to get a conversation going with successful entrepreneurs like yourself around what your recruiting process was like -especially early on. How did you build your team?

Mayhem Music Promotions was my brilliant/ not so brilliant idea. After encouragement from several people I asked my best friend Steve to be my partner in this endeavor. So so hasluck would have it, probably against his better judgement he agreed lol. For awhile it was just he and I. We had people helping us create flyers until Our friend Matt offered his talents. He became our third member and the bands were thrilled and always excited to see what brilliance Matt created and produced. As we began to grow and had more and more shows booked we realized that we needed help. Jesse was brought on board to assist us at shows taking in a variety of responsibilities. Jesse interacts with the bands, manages the stage and helps with any other task we ask of him. Very soon after I asked another local promoter, Erica ( The Eerie Siren) if they would like to join us. Asking them to help book bands, reach out to venues and work with the venues and myself creating shows and events. Her experience is a huge asset to what we are doing and pursuing to do. So here we have the Mayhem crew but I still felt we needed one more thing to make us a complete promotion/ event coordination business. I wanted to have our own PA and sound tech. I purchased a modest system and then we asked our friend Bobby if he would be our sound guy. Not only did he accept, he purchased the equipment from me and added to it making Mayhem complete, so I had thought. Very recently another individual approached us showing interest in being a part of our team. Nash is extremely competent when it comes to social media, creating websites and producing merchandise. It was safe to say that he could take us to a more productive entity. Mayhem in 2 years has grown from two to seven. The really cool thing is that all of my team members are also successful and talented musicians. All of them having worked with promoters, booking agents and venues has allowed them to be examples of what they feel should be expected of those people. I can honestly say that we are definitely the dream team!

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Well, I’m a lover and supporter of original music. I spent many years attending shows and getting to know the bands. Covid left our scene in bad shape and I wanted to do something to change that. I also wanted to give our bands the treatment I felt they deserved. I wanted to give them the opportunity to feel like rock stars for at least that show. One of our greatest challenges is finding venues willing to let our bands play. Erie is very much a cover band town. This had made it difficult to convince our venues to be open to original bands especially the ones we work with who are performing the harder genres. We and other promoters have definitely made huge strides in that and we’ve been able to open doors for our bands in venues who have never been receptive in the past. We’ve proven that we can draw people to their establishments and improve their business.
What sets us apart? Well, like I said, there are seven of us working together with the same goals. We eagerly accept any opportunity to work along side other promoters to bring to our community the best shows and Events. We are proud that we’ve built the reputation we have and that others want to work with us. I’m also so very proud that each of the Mayhem members have stayed committed to reaching our goals as they all continue to to pursue their personal dreams with their own bands. I’m proud that we work for the bands, putting them first and can proudly say that we give our local music supporters some of the best shows and events in our area.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

I think it was pretty simple. Hard work and dedication. Our reputation was built on respect, from the venues, the bands and other promoters. Each of our members individually are well respected in our local music scene. I believe our community knows how important this is to all of us and that our intentions to grow our scene are selfless. They know we are all in this together.

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

Steve, oh Steve lol. Steve and I met about 15 years ago. We became instant friends sharing so many interests especially our love of music. He introduced me to our local original music scene. Initially to support his bands. Our friendship has continued to grow and we are both very active and supportive in one another’s lives. We have shared the best and the worst times with each other. I will forever be grateful that he supported and encouraged me to start Mayhem and humbled that wanted to be my partner in it. He and I have done many things together but for me personally, I am most proud of Mayhem Music Promotions. I am so blessed to be able to work alongside with one of the best people I know.

Contact Info:

• Facebook: Mayhem Music Promotions

Image Credits

David Design
Nina Miller
Tiffany Earl Troop