It wasn’t long until John Summitt, 31, (born John Shuster) was returning home after an exhausting day of accounting work in Chicago and drinking cold drinks to find the energy to make music. Working at a Big Four firm like Ernst & Young meant that some days ended at nine to nine instead of nine to five.
Back then, it was numbers by day, music by night. His day job paid him an annual salary of $65,000, but his true passion was making music. Whether it was in his college dorm or in his parents’ basement, music became a creative escape that later became the launching pad for his budding empire.
After leaving Ernst & Young for a grueling 12-hour workday, another accounting job promised better hours, so he changed course. It only took a few months before he was let go, after showing up to work with bloodshot eyes from a weekend DJ shift playing underground sets from 2 a.m. to 6 a.m. It turned out his co-workers were more focused on crunching numbers than spinning tracks.
“But by then I was kind of asking for it because I kind of saw a path to being a full-time DJ producer. It didn’t matter bc at that point I already had releases from record labels,” Samit says. luck.
He had more free time to work on music, and his career as a DJ began to flourish, thanks in part to his online fan base. Widespread lockdowns due to the pandemic increased the crowds who were eager for live events.
“I was like, ‘Well, thank God, now I can get into this whole thing,’” he recalls.
And this is what he did. Before widespread shutdowns due to the pandemic, he was making just a few hundred dollars per gig. In 2020, Summit’s song “Deep End” took off on TikTok and launched her career.
It would be an understatement to say that days look a little different now.
Having traded the monotonous cabin for a full-time party life, Summitt is now a millionaire DJ, producer and owner of his own music label, “Connoisseurs Only.”
“I make more in one show than I probably will in my entire accounting career now,” Summitt said.
John Summitt on his first millions: ‘I felt like I was signing with the NFL’
After signing a music publishing deal in the six-figure range, Summit saw more breathing room to fully pivot. After all, he wasn’t able to pay the rent in his early days, so progress gave him the opportunity to practice music more independently. His breakout year capped off with a full-on moment at Lollapalooza 2022, as the hometown crowd confirmed what Sumit already knew: He was in for a perfect career.
The moment he described as “really making it” was when he signed a multi-million contract with LIV as part of the Fontainebleau Las Vegas resort, which took him into the seven-figure range. The agreement was for 20 shows per year in a three-year deal.
“So, it was like 60 offers. I felt like I was signing, like, an NFL contract for, you know, X amount of millions for three years,” Summitt said. From there, financial security allowed him to bet on bigger offers.
Summitt describes growing his live audience from hundreds to tens of thousands.
“It changes every weekend,” he said. “I just played Austin City Limits, and it seemed like the biggest show ever — about 80,000 people. And every week, I try to outdo myself.”
“The first gig we did was three years ago at Floyd’s here in Miami, for 200 people, and then we did the Experts Only gig for 50,000 people a few weeks ago. So I think this is a good demonstration of how we can scale it up over three years,” he said.
Starting out as “experts only” and becoming an entrepreneur
Between roaming continents in 2022, the entrepreneur found time to start his own “Experts Only” brand.
When planning sets up to 10 hours long, Summitt began building a community of underground, unsigned artists, with up to 15 of them playing at his shows. Since he was in a position to be a trend setter, he thought “why not use my platform for other artists?”
“I feel like a pretty good tastemaker these days,” he said. “Someone will send me a record, it comes out during my set, and I sign it. That gives them a marketing boost from me playing it and supporting it — which, of course, gets other DJs to start playing it too.”
He finds the Experts Only program rewarding because it allows him to focus on developing the talent of others as well.
“When I work at John Summit, it feels like me, me, me,” he said.
“Experts Only” is still growing. The company now has over 10 core staff (marketing, broadcasting, administration, etc.) and hundreds of event staff for each festival. Summitt says he thinks of the brand as a community, where his fans represent him as if they were a favorite sports team.
While promoters urged him to bring the Experts Only program from Los Angeles to Japan, the ultimate goal of his new empire was to give concerts without playing them. He drew the comparison to how Jeff Bezos has worked at Amazon since stepping down as CEO. “It still works without him. That’s the dream.”
“The hardest thing about it is that I’m just one person,” he added.
Although he has given up accounting, he is still far from the business world
Despite escaping the nine-to-five world and going into full artist mode, the label owner has not escaped working life. In fact, he still attends all of his meetings and Zoom calls with his salaried employees who work in the offices. Like others in the corporate world, he prefers work-life balance, putting off tasks at 5pm and treating Sundays as slumber days.
“I don’t let anyone talk to me after about five o’clock, unless it’s just quick little things,” he said. “It’s funny that I escaped the accounting world, but you can never escape the business world,” he said.
“I take Sunday off, and that’s my hangover day, but I guess that’s everyone’s day off around the world, right?”
Sumit used to do 250 shows a year (four to five shows a week), but has now changed his business model to two big shows a week. He is also active on social media, working with the team on multiple posts daily.
“When you sign a brand registry, you get not only the community we have, but our giant marketing arm as well,” he said. “I’m not the one who’s going to negotiate money or a contract, I think you have to assign certain people to different tasks. I think I’m a good cop in most scenarios.”
John Schuster vs. John Summitt
Despite creating his own brand, Samit says he is a reserved introvert. He doesn’t like public speaking but still has the confidence to play in front of crowds of up to 50,000 people.
“DJs are traditionally introverted nerds. That’s what we are — we’re on our computer. So, to really channel that energy, it’s like I have to create a split personality to force myself on stage.”
his album, Comfort in chaos It is a lens into his personal journey linking his public and private worlds. He says that his characters are divided into two parts: John Summitt and John Shuster.
“John Schuster, he’s the introvert at home who makes music all day, every day, and then John Summitt is my stage name, and he’s like the personality and the mentality. You have to force yourself to be in front of people,” he said.
To overcome his nerves, he tries to do a set of push-ups before going on stage as if he were playing in a big sports match. “It helps me not overthink everything,” he said.
Summitt didn’t know he would become a DJ from a young age, his non-linear path is what made him where he is today. His advice for dealing with career impostor syndrome: Fake it till you make it.
Despite turning DJing into a lucrative lifestyle, Sumit said he would still be “thrilled” to do so if he only made $65,000.
“I could pretty much retire now, if I wanted to, but right now I’m just doing it for the love of the game.”
The post John Summit went from working 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. in a $65,000 job to a multimillionaire DJ—‘I make more in one show than I would in my entire accounting career’ first appeared on Investorempires.com.
