Chris Den Uijl
“Money and success comes when you’re really doing what you love and what your heart desires, it’s what gets you up every day. It’s what makes work not work.”
Chris Den Uijl
Event Creator & Promoter
Imagine the scene. Sun is going down and you’re on the beach in Mexico, some of the best artists in the world are on stage providing the soundtrack. You’ve got friends all around and 35,000 other people having the best weekend of the Summer.
That’s what Chris Den Uijl creates every year at the Baja Beach Fest in Rosarito and bringing that to life for thousands of people is what he lives for. Alongside that he also produces between 30 and 50 other live events every single month! A workload like that might seem too much, but as you’ll see, when you focus on what makes you happy it doesn’t seem like ‘work’ at all.
So, I know you host the Baja Beach Fest now but maybe you can give me a backstory to how you got to doing that?
I’ve always been really inspired by music. Tracy Chapman and Bob Marley, to Rolling Stones and The Beatles. My parents were pretty hippie and every road trip consisted of the kids all driving in the car singing at the top of their lungs and so music was always just something that was really important to me, and still is.
So, what did you study?
I went to school for mass communications and marketing. Mass communications is a really interesting major because it dates back to writing letters to newspapers and the evolution of TV, social media and web. It really teaches you how those things affect people’s decisions.
I was really intrigued by it all and then with marketing it kind of gave me this idea of really wanting to be in events. So soon as I left, I started working at an agency to cut my teeth. I really loved bringing people together and I quickly realized that this was my ethos in life, that the thing that I was meant to do was to bring people together.
During the same time one of my best friends in college took a similar path. He went into the music industry doing events, while I was working in live events. We were producing these night events in skate and surf, mixing sport, music and product. This was when we both had this ‘aha’ kind of moment as we both saw the impact music can have on an event.
My friend came to me and was like, “man, that event was so cool with so much creativity.” So, we worked on a spring break concept. At that point I realized I’ve learned all these incredible tools, this really sharp toolkit, but my heart is really in music so I jumped into it.
What was great, was that I was able to bring the value of how to do operations and logistics. I have vendors that would work with me through thick and thin and I knew how to put a budget together. I knew how to do permitting and walk through with fire safety, and I felt like I was walking into a space that I knew. I felt really inspired because now I could go beyond producing and start actually booking the entertainment. We ended up making a little bit of noise with the agents and the managers, producing some really solid events. You know, fast forward eight or nine years, and now we do 30 to 50 events a month.
A month!?!
Yes, it was amazing as there was music that was booming at the time that we love - hip hop and electronic. So we then thought, how do you not necessarily recreate the wheel, just make it spin faster? So, on that basis we’ve now done everyone from Cardi B to Lil Uzi Verte, Travis Scott to Ludicrous. I mean, you name it, we’ve probably done it in the hip-hop side.
We then concepted some ideas that had just never been done before, one of them being latin music. Obviously, latin music has been around for a really long time. This was all around the time that artists like Bad Bunny and Cardi B were coming through, so there was this perfect alignment happening. This led to Baja Beach Fest being 100% latin music.
Where are most people coming from?
90% are coming down from California.
So, it’s 5,000 people a day?
35,000 a day now as we have multiple venues now.
That must be an amazing feeling.
Yeah, it’s amazing. My personal ethos is breaking down social barriers and bringing people together just around the music. Sometimes it’s tough because when you bring multiple genres and music together, you bring a lot of different types of people together. Sometimes the energy can be weird, but this event in Mexico gave me the chills because every single person went there together as a culture.
Wow, so that’s an amazing way to look at what you have created, what would you tell your teenage self?
I think that the number one thing that I learned, and I tell my little brothers and some of the other employees that we have, is right when you get out of college, jump in fully committed into something for at least 18 months. Yeah, even if you hate it. Commit, learn what it feels like to have a bad day, to have a good day, to work through things you don’t like, and towards things you do like. Then leave. Take Inventory of the things you really loved and the things that you’re good at, as well as those you’re not good at. Get experience and commit to it.
That’s such a good point, my first career job we had to do trade shows, up at 6am cleaning, working on the stand 8-5, events in the evening, back on the stand at 6am. I hated some of those days.
But that teaches you how to sharpen the tools that you’d like to use, and you’ve got the tools in your toolbox when you need to use them.
What would you say to someone who wants to follow your footsteps?
Get in and start and just learn. I am a huge believer in looking for talent right out of college. There’s so many different sides to this business. Marketing, design, producing events, booking and all the logistics around booking the artists.
As a business owner I then enjoy asking people where they see themselves within the event. Don’t feel like you need to know exactly what you want to do in music. Just get stuck in. Don’t be scared to go to these companies and explain to them how much you love this. Just don’t feel like you need to have any answers, but you do need that energy when you walk in the room.
There’s one more thing I think is really important and that’s the balance between following your heart, doing what you love and in getting held down by money. That’s where you will find real success and happiness. When you find that balance. Money and success comes when you’re really doing what you love and what your heart desires, it’s what gets you up every day. It’s what makes work not work. Finding that and harnessing that is really important.
I love that. That’s powerful. How do you reconcile that with student debt levels in the US?
Just work with your college on a good payment plan and think of it like a car payment. Don’t get weighed down with it. If you find that balance of really chasing what you love you will end up making way more money, way faster. Because if you love doing it, you get to that place much quicker. You get that promotion, because people feel it, they look at you different because you just give that energy off. A lot of people that are really focused only on the money part give off that energy which doesn’t portray how powerful they are.