Music has always been HUGE to me.

At age 6, I was introduced to Run-DMC by my cousin Pat in Philly.

Done. I was hooked on hip-hop. The Raising Hell album was dubbed on a tape that I broke by listening to it 1k+ times on my Walkman.

If Spotify existed back then, I may have streamed it 100k times.

From 6-12, I curated music constantly, dubbed music off the radio and mixed it.

At 13, I found my Mom’s old record player that was on top of a double tape deck combo and realized I could dub records straight onto tapes.

I’d scratch records, record it, stop the tape, rewind it back and keep recording and mixing tracks.

One record player turned into 2 and a mixer at 14 when I started finding “new” hip hop records at local record stores around Detroit.

I bought turntables and a mixer in Warren, MI and records in Roseville and practiced every night.

At 15 I realized I could make money DJing parties.

Not “playing music,” but curating and mixing music.

This was my first business, from 17-21 I spun records most Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights. And made money doing it.

At 36, music fuels just about everything I do. Traveling, driving, Chores, Running, Working Out and you bet your “you know what,” working and building websites. If you’ve worked with me on projects, you’ve likely had some Tupac, Eminem, Russ, Logic or Rakim in the background. You just didn’t know it.

What fuels you?

Thanks for reading, and have a great day!

Paul Hickey, Founder / CEO / Lead Strategist at Data Driven Design, LLC has created and grown businesses via digital strategy and internet marketing for more than 10 years. His sweet spot is using analytics to design and build websites and grow the audience and revenue of businesses via SEO/Blogging, Google Adwords, Bing Ads, Facebook and Instagram Ads, Social Media Content Marketing and Email Marketing. The part that he’s most passionate about is quantifying next marketing actions based on real data.