We recently connected with Nick Terpstra and have shared our conversation below.

Nick, appreciate you joining us today. What do you think matters most in terms of achieving success?

For me, being successful comes down to a few things. You have to be willing to do pretty much anything to advance your service or grow your business. I don’t turn down any gig or event that I have room on my calendar for. Just the other weekend I had 3 shows in the matter of 24 hours: 11p-2a, then again from 7:30a-10a, and then another event that evening from 9p-1:30a. I was definitely tired and feeling the lag from having to be in 3 different locations and very little sleep, but it was totally worth it. My mantra has always been, you can sleep when you’re dead. For me it comes down to being willing to go that extra mile, to ask the hard questions, to spend the additional time practicing and coming up with new ideas so that my performances are always top notch. Being successful ultimately comes down to how driven and ambitious you are and no one will be able to do it for you, but I do think that a really solid core group of friends/colleagues/family/network all help drive that success. I wouldn’t be where I am now without those individuals.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My name is Nick or my dj name is gh0st. I’m a Grand Rapids, MI native and have been doing music my whole life. I took piano lessons early on and then added drums/percussion in to the mix. Once I was able to find a solid private lesson instructor, Don, the aptitude really took off. I have to credit the work ethic he and my parents instilled in me early on for my success now. They always said that I had to be the hardest worker in the room and that there are points where it wouldn’t feel very easy, but I never let the hard moments define me and continue to reflect on how they set me up for my successes early. With that musical guidance, I was able to attend a 4-year private college on a full music scholarship, which allowed me to experience countless experiences and continued growth in my musical abilities. Fast forward a bit and while not performing in the manner that I used to, making the jump to djing and music production was a really great fit for me and continues to evolve. I would have to say that my extensive musical background really gave me an edge when stepping in to this side of the industry.
Currently I perform locally quite often, offering up unique live shows with mashup style music that cover a lot of genres. I have a local residency at the Grand Woods Lounge (@woodsloungegr) as well as a fitness studio F45.
I’m very proud of being able to continually perform music in front of crowds whether in person or digitally. It is definitely my happy place. I’m also very proud that I have my first festival booking at Breakaway Mi this fall and will be one of the silent disco artists! If you haven’t bought your tickets yet, use my code “gh0st” for a discount at checkout!
One thing I want anyone reading this to know about me, is that I always strive to give every crowd the most enjoyable time I can through a night of fun musical emotion and vibes. If you haven’t seen me yet, I look forward to seeing you soon!

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

I think most recently, the COVID pandemic made it very difficult for performers all over. I went from being able to play Friday nights to nothing at all for almost 2 years. It was very difficult to not be able to do that and all the uncertainty around that. However, very quickly was I able to find a way to stream shows or was able to put more effort in to my recorded mixes for SoundCloud and routinely release for people to listen to whenever they wanted, free of charge. Post-pandemic, getting an establishment to “buy in” and give me a shot took some time. That was also difficult, but when the opportunity came calling, I was ready and since then was able to establish my current residency.

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

Honestly, I’m still very much building my reputation in this market. I would say that I have had a few successful colleagues coach me on networking and that has really helped. Now I have a goal of regularly reaching out to others in the community in the same musical field and having conversations about musical creativity, unique show ideas, joint events, etc. I’m currently working with another local dj to set up our own B2B event to bring both of our crowd bases together.

Contact Info:

• Website: Coming Soon!
• Instagram: @gh0sted_music
• Youtube: Coming Soon!
• SoundCloud: https://on.soundcloud.com/qw638RkEikyMZv6F7
• Email: [email protected] Photography- @brysonoppermann

Image Credits
Bryson Oppermann