Today we’d like to introduce you to Bret Gash.
Bret, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
Music and radio have honestly been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. When I was a kid, I used to make cassette tapes and pretend I was running my own radio station. I called it WBFG. At the time, it was just a kid having fun, but looking back now, it’s pretty crazy how much of what I was doing back then eventually became part of my life.
My path definitely wasn’t a straight line. I spent 22 years in the U.S. Army, including three combat tours in Iraq and three years as a Drill Sergeant at Fort Knox. During that time, music was always something I came back to.
I eventually started DJing professionally and got into the wedding and event industry in 2006. In 2012, I started Royal Sounds Entertainment. Over the years, it grew into much more than simply showing up and playing music. Weddings became a huge part of what I do, and I became very focused on the entire experience — planning, communication, reading a room, working with couples and making sure their wedding actually feels like them.
At the same time, that childhood love of radio never really went away. Eventually that came full circle with The Hub Radio Network. What started years ago as me sitting around making pretend radio shows on cassette tapes became an actual internet radio network with multiple stations, live DJs and listeners tuning in from different places.
When I look at everything today, I don’t really see them as separate chapters. DJing, weddings, radio and even my military background have all taught me different things about leadership, people, entertainment and building something from the ground up.
It’s definitely been an unconventional road, but that’s probably what I like most about it. I never really set out to follow somebody else’s blueprint. I just kept building on the things I was passionate about, and somehow that kid with the cassette tapes ended up actually doing it.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
It definitely hasn’t been a smooth road, but I don’t think I would have wanted it to be.
One of the biggest challenges has simply been learning how to adapt. I started in the wedding and event industry in 2006, and the business today looks completely different than it did when I started. Technology changes, music changes, couples change, and the way people find and choose their vendors changes. You either evolve with it or you get left behind.
The Utah wedding market is also extremely competitive. There are a lot of DJs competing for the same couples, and it can be tempting to compete by lowering your price or doing exactly what everyone else is doing. I’ve had to learn to go the opposite direction — focus on the experience, build my own identity and give people a reason to choose us beyond simply being another DJ company.
The Hub Radio Network brought an entirely different set of challenges. Building an internet radio network sounds simple until you’re actually doing it. There have been technical problems, hosting changes, long nights troubleshooting things that weren’t working and plenty of moments where it would have been easier to walk away. But every time something went wrong, I learned more about how the system worked and how to make it better.
Probably the biggest lesson through all of it has been that you’re never really finished. Royal Sounds Entertainment is still evolving. The Hub is still evolving. I’m still learning. I’ve made mistakes, changed directions and started things over more times than I can count.
But I think that’s also why they’re still here. When something doesn’t work, my first thought usually isn’t to quit. It’s, “Okay, how do we make this work better?”
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
Royal Sounds Entertainment specializes primarily in weddings, and for me the job has never been just about playing music. Anybody can build a playlist. What I really do is help create the experience around the wedding — working with the couple, planning the flow of the reception, reading the room and then being able to adjust in real time when the night doesn’t go exactly according to plan.
One thing I’ve always tried to do is look at the experience from the couple’s side instead of just the DJ’s side. Wedding planning can get overwhelming very quickly, and I started asking myself why some of the tools and processes we use couldn’t be simpler.
That eventually led me to create Aven Planning by Royal Sounds Entertainment, our own wedding planning platform. It gives our couples one place to plan their wedding, communicate with us, organize their music, work through their ceremony and reception details, manage photo booth information and handle other parts of the planning process.
That’s probably one of the things I’m most proud of right now because it came directly from years of actually working weddings. I wasn’t trying to build technology just for the sake of building something. I wanted to solve problems I had watched couples deal with over and over again.
I think that’s also what sets Royal Sounds apart. I’m not particularly interested in doing something a certain way just because that’s how the wedding industry has always done it. If I see something that can be better, I want to figure out how to make it better.
At the end of the day, I still love being behind the DJ booth and watching a dance floor come alive. But what I’m most proud of is everything we’ve built around that moment to make the entire experience better for the couple.
Do you have any memories from childhood that you can share with us?
One of my favorite childhood memories is probably just how much music was a part of my life before I ever realized where it would eventually take me.
When I was a kid, one of my best friends was Ros Morganfield, the daughter of blues legend Muddy Waters. At that age, though, none of that really meant much to us. We were just kids and friends. Looking back as an adult, I realize how unique some of those experiences were and how much music seemed to always be somewhere in the background of my childhood.
I was also fascinated with radio. I would sit with cassette tapes and create my own pretend radio station that I called WBFG. I’d record music, talk between songs and basically do my own little radio shows. I wasn’t thinking about a career or a business. I was just a kid doing something I loved.
That’s probably why those memories mean even more to me today. Decades later, I’m a professional DJ and one of the owners of The Hub Radio Network.
Sometimes you don’t realize a childhood dream was actually a dream until you look back and discover you’re living some version of it.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://Royalsoundsentertainment.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/royal_sounds_entertainment
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/18yNeNajWY/
- Other: Thehubradionetwork.net/install
