“Do a good amount of research and try to know as much as possible about your ‘date’. What is his/her core business or niche and what can you add to that?”

Leon Noordzij (The Pastry Shop)

“Be prepared. Decide what you want to get out of this one on one meeting. I can’t give you the right anwers if you don’t have the right questions.”

Pirke Bergsma (Pirke Productions)

“Just be cool. I do not want to feel like I am being sold to. Be human – we are not machines.”

Daniel Kuypers (EnergyBBDO)

“1. Don’t ask me to listen to any songs cause it’s really difficult to focus on music in a session like this, 2. Do take my email address and follow up quickly adding when and where we met, with links to music, 3. Don’t try and sell too hard, 4. Probably do bring a couple of beers :-)”

Daniel Cross (Adidas)

“Yes-do a huge amount of research before you talk to anyone. Stalk them on socials (within reason!) See what they’re talking about. Find out what they love musically. So when you start a conversation with them you can be fully engaged with the musical world they exist within. There is nothing worse than someone who just is articulating “I want to place my music in adverts” or similar. There’s no excuse to not do this!”

Mark Gordon (Score Draw Music)

“I think it is helpful to have a specific goal in mind. Both business people and creative people typically are great at so many things and faced with a small window of time sometimes struggle to articulate all of those things at once. It’s best to come up with a single attainable goal and focus on that. If the business relationship moves forward, there will be plenty of time to talk about all of the other things that you have going on.”

Jedd Katrancha (Downtown Music Publishing)