How To Choose The Right Event Management Software

Frequently Asked Questions: -Can their system handle complicated events that stretch over several sessions and/or days? I think that this is the crux of the matter for most event managers. -Do they have RSVP confirmation abilities? If you’re planning a corporate event, this, in particular, is a very useful feature to have. -Can reminder email messages be sent to participants? A basic rule of marketing and advertising is that people need to be exposed to information more than once in order to make a choice. The ability to remind attendees that an event is coming up must be enabled if you want to see a strong turnout. You can also turn reminder emails into fun ways to show attendees upcoming speakers, artists, or give information as situations are updated. -Does their system ensure that registrants fully complete every form? Nothing is more frustrating than requiring forms, only to see that they are not all filled out. I recommend testing out the software to confirm this on your end. -Is their system up to date with all of the newest features and functionality? Although most platforms should be fine for events, there are more and more events that require cutting edge features. Requests that were rare years ago such as VR and cashless event payments are now commonly asked for. Even RFID tends to be only common with larger event companies that have experience with festivals. Of course, there is the caveat that being up to date with newer features only matters if your client is actually planning on using those features. Don’t pay more or waste your time spending money on a big-name company if you don’t have to. -Can the pages be branded with your client? As I’ve discussed in other articles, branding is the way of the future. I think it’s even the way of the present, and not being on top of branding is an easy way to lose business. It’s why I generally recommend finding a white labeled software solution OR working with a provider that has templates that allow you to completely brand the experience without other logos. It might be more complicated, however, the benefits far outweigh the costs. -Can the software offer secure payment processing, and can they handle payment confirmation? When you’re looking for a provider, I recommend asking if they are PCI Compliant. PCI Compliance is a way of making sure that credit card data is not actually saved during the transactions. Ultimately, this means that any hacking attempt will yield nothing substantial. -How is data managed? This is a multi-faceted question, and I’ll expand upon it here. Are you able to download data from attendees? Do you own the data that your attendees have given you? Will the software platform be able to market to your attendees? The more the platform gives you complete control, the better. I would go as far to ignore any company that has the ability to market to your attendees. Using event management software to its fullest potential is easy when you know what you want, and the questions to ask. I hope that this guide assisted you in navigating the pitfalls of finding the right software for you.]]]]> ]]>

Ticketbud Tidbits Episode 7 – Bruce Willenzik of Armadillo

Kayhan Ahmadi: Hello, welcome to exchanges at Ticketbud. I’m the CEO of Ticketbud, Kayhan, along with Sean Burke.

Sean Burke: Hi guys. How’s it going?

Kayhan Ahmadi: Our director of Marketing, and today we have …

Bruce Willenzik: Bruce Willenzik, producer of the Armadillo Christmas Bazaar.

Kayhan Ahmadi: Thank you very much, Bruce. Appreciate you giving your time to us today. You started in the Armadillo Christmas Bazaar many, many years ago. Can you give our listeners a brief intro into the Armadillo Christmas Bazaar and what that is?

Bruce Willenzik: Right. Let’s go back to when we started. We were at the Armadillo World Headquarters, the premier rock-and-roll hall between the East and West Coast, looking for a December event because we were cash starved in the winter time, and friend of mine, Lucinda Williams, you’ve probably heard of her, was down in the Beer Garden one night at the end of October, beginning of October 1975.

We went and talked. It was a long conversation, and she mentioned that the artists down there at the market by the university didn’t have a warm dry place to sell like this. And that immediately got my eyes open, my mind churning. I quickly gave her a hug and got rid of her for the evening and sat down and wrote a five-year plan to build an art show in Armadillo World Headquarters.

Kayhan Ahmadi: So it’s really inspiration striking like a lightning bulb.

Bruce Willenzik: Well, you know, I can say there was a irritation and instigation and inspiration and a cooperation that got it started rather than someone founded it. But I don’t want to go into too much detail about the irritation and instigation other than Lucinda thank you for that mention because that got it started.

We were lucky. We already had a production company. I had a sound crew. I had a security crew. I had maintenance people. I had people who knew how to rig a stage. It wasn’t real hard to reach out and figure out how we worked with artists, but the first thing we came across was, A, we have no budget, and B, we have no credibility with the artists. We’re not going to be able to draw fine artists in the first year. They’re very leery of a first year event.

So our guy who was kinda in charge of putting it together before he quit, and get it to where it got to be, he went down to the 23rd Street market on a pretty sunny day and passed out the flyers, and said come to Armadillo for a Christmas show, $20 a day. He got laughed off the block because it was pretty and sunny, and it was only seven cents a day to be out there if you got your year round license.

So it didn’t look like it was gonna work. And on the morning we were to start, it was pouring down rain and there was a line of people waving money, going “Sign me up, sign me up, sign me up!” And that was our miracle to get started, but it took a miracle to get started. Those first few years it was hard to get people in. And what we realized is that we weren’t going to draw a fine class of artists unless we created our own. So we started working with our artists.

Something happened that was really my miracle. A guy thought he was hurting me and he helped me. He’d been down there in year two and he was just a loud … He didn’t care about anything, he was hard to deal with, and he made real strong statements. “This is what I do, I ain’t improvin’ nothin’.”

Kayhan Ahmadi: This was one of the artists–

Bruce Willenzik: One of the artists complained a lot. And he kinda irritated me, so when he came back in year three with a whole group of people, I made a statement to him that said I’m only interested in people that want to improve every year and want to build a career by working on better artwork, better promotion, better presentation, better business skills, more drive, more motivation. If you’re not interested, take a hike.

Well, he went down to the market and badmouthed me, telling everybody, “That sumbitch expects everybody to improve every year!” By the time I found out about that two, three years later, we just said, “We’re not gonna dispel the rumor.” It created this incredible peer pressure amongst the artists to improve, and we started realizing for new people coming in were having a hard time competing, because our artists were becoming very sophisticated at presentation and display, so we needed to collect the wisdom and make it teachable.

So we became known as a learning and teaching show. We deliberately went five years in experience before we walked into another art show to see what they looked like, because we wanted our own character in the show. Armadillo World Headquarters had its own character, and we needed that.

Kayhan Ahmadi: You didn’t want to contaminate your potential vision for an art show by–

Bruce Willenzik: By copying other people’s mistakes. We figured by the time we saw, went to the Renaissance Festival in 1980, and saw what they did, and went to the craft shows across the street and saw what they did, we could see all their mistakes, because we had already experimented with those things and we’d … Plus, we had the fortunate thing of being a longer show. We were about 12 to 14 days long, so we had time to observe our mistakes and correct them before the end of the season, and that was a really important thing to do.

We also, right from the beginning, under the tutelage of Armadillo’s CEO at that time, he said, “Make all the mistakes you want, but learn from them, document everything, get a base of information, collect the wisdom, and pass it up as institutional knowledge. We should never make the same mistake twice.” I see so many young shows, especially those that are run with volunteers, they don’t collect the experience year to year to year to year, and they have to invent from scratch every year. It’s a very tough way to go.

Kayhan Ahmadi: So you really have to keep all your knowledge base and learnings internal, and have that drive the growth?

Bruce Willenzik: You have to observe what you’re seeing happen at your show without trying to put a prejudice on it first. It has to be what I think it is. Well, you want to see what it really is. You want to see how that drives your systems that make your show work.

Kayhan Ahmadi: Well, how do you measure that?

Bruce Willenzik: You look at that from experience. You have to look at it from experience. How was the artist’s experience on the show? What’s their experience with their move in, what’s their experience with their move out, what’s their experience of the customer, what’s their experience dealing with the staff? That’s how you measure it.

We survey very carefully every year at the end of the year to find out exactly how our artists feel about their experience. I don’t want to know how many dollars you sold, I want to know how you feel about your sales.

Kayhan Ahmadi: So it’s not just a quantitative measure, it’s a qualitative measure.

Bruce Willenzik: On sales? It’s a scale of 1-5. It’s a five star system. You put the cursor on one and it says, “This was really bad, a catastrophe.” You put it on three and it says, “Just what I expected.” You put it on five and go, “Grand slam, home run!” Kinda implies what two and four are, right?

So we look, and that tells you how they feel about it. That’s much more valuable than the number of dollars they’re doing, because how they feel about it is how motivated they are to come back. Our goal is to have at least half the people in the show do better than they expected. You do that, you’re winning.

Kayhan Ahmadi: So it sounds like you’re focusing on the artists’ experience, and by providing a better artist experience–

Bruce Willenzik: That’s the reason you’re in the business.

Kayhan Ahmadi: That’s how you drive in more ticket sales at the door?

Bruce Willenzik: That’s how you’re in the business. First thing, you’re not gonna attract a clientele without something for them to want to see, right? They’re gonna come and see nothing? No. What’s gonna motivate them to get in the car, go through traffic, go somewhere, park, pay to get in or not pay to get in to go someplace, unless they know they got something they’re gonna wanna see there.

And so it’s building that attractive mask, that thing that wants to bring people to it. It’s the beginning of starting a scene, right? That’s when you connect attractions. This artist can bring in this ten people, this artist can bring in 15, this artist can bring in 20, that one can bring in ten. But by the time I put ten of those together, they can bring in 400. Wow. That’s really the … The magnifying factor on that is, when there’s more things together, there’s more reasons to go.

Kayhan Ahmadi: So you’re driving a network effect.

Bruce Willenzik: You’re driving a, yeah, you’re building a scene. And that’s … Attractions that in the mind of the customer are connected. The more you can connect like that, the bigger the overall attraction is, and the more it gains on the sum of the parts. It’s an economic driver. Austin’s cultural identity is built on the scene-building work we did 40, 50 years ago here in town.

Kayhan Ahmadi: So how do you leverage that scene that you create through marketing to drive increased visitation, increased traffic? Is it the scene itself that you rely on, or?

Bruce Willenzik: The scene is designed to bring in people, money, energy, and attention. Then the next part is building a sphere of prosperity around the scene, and that has to do with churning your market. We think it’s important to work with the other events around us whenever possible to make it more attractive for people to become habitual show attenders.

Just like we want in the live music scene, we would love it if all the music venues would work together with all the arts venues to build more traffic to, more domestic demand for what Austin has culturally. We spend a lot of time with the city talking about economic tourism. We work real hard on the tourism program, free hotel passes, and promote the heck out of it and put a lot of resources in it and it’s 2% of our attendance. The other 98% is people who either came to Austin for the show, but not because of the hotels giving them passes, or people from Austin being here.

But working together and connecting attractions is a really cool thing. It’s the basis of what a show’s about. It’s the reason you want a merchandise mix of things and other activities in it, like perhaps a live music stage or a juggler, a mime, a face painter, a something, to create an experience, because that experience is what drives a scene.

You want that experience to be better than what they expected. You want it to be something that they go home and talk about. You want it to slowly improve. Every time they come, it’s a little bit better, so they’ll come back to see what got better this time. If you got a whole slate of improvements to do, don’t do them all at once. Dribble them out. You’ll find the effect is a whole lot more effective.

We’ve been playing with scene stuff from the Armadillo World Headquarters days and even back when I was a kid growing up in New Orleans, my family was in retail. They always talked about creating a shopping scene. So, it’s the same thing in shows. The thing that a love of young, inexperienced show promoters do, or even some of them who are experienced, is they forget it’s a show.

Kayhan Ahmadi: What does that mean to you?

Bruce Willenzik: It’s not a static exhibit. It’s activity. People are coming down there for the event, for the experience of the event. For the what it feels like in the room. “Oh, look, there’s my friend!” “Oh, look, this is fun!” “Let’s dance to this song!” As opposed to just, “Oh, look at the art. Oh, look at the art. Oh, look at the art.”

People who stand in their booth and pay attention to their crowd, make eye contact even on a slow day, constantly have customers. Those who sit in their chair and look at their phone, they don’t get bothered much. It’s a show. You have to put on a show. The happier the show is, the more people like it.

That’s why our prime directive, first line says keep the artist happy. When they’re happy, it spreads to the customers. The next line says keep the patrons happy. Next one says keep the facility happy. We gotta have a home.

Kayhan Ahmadi: So, speaking of facility.

Bruce Willenzik: Yeah.

Kayhan Ahmadi: Over the years, Armadillo Christmas Bazaar has evolved from Armadillo World Headquarters to the Palmer Events Center where it is now. Can you talk a little bit about the process when it comes to finding a venue for your event?

Bruce Willenzik: Sure, because we went through that several times. Armadillo was great, it was our home venue. We had our home production company, we couldn’t ask for an easier way to get started. But in 1980 we had to move, and trying to find a piece of real estate that would rent to a long haired hippie, it was difficult.

Kayhan Ahmadi: That’s probably more normalized today, right?

Bruce Willenzik: Oh, no, no, no, no, it’s not, it’s even, I mean the market today is even harder, ’cause it was a lot of empty buildings around. We found the building, and they wouldn’t talk to me. And luckily, something I’d done with a real estate developer here in town a few years before, I was over in his office getting a check and he asked me, he said “How you doing?” And I said, “Oh man, this guy in Dallas, he won’t call me back.” He looked at me, and he said, “Oh, that guy’s a jerk. Hang on, let me call his boss’s boss.” Got promised a place that day, and they dallied it to the very last second, we got in there all white knuckled, we gotta open.

It was interesting. And luckily, we got such good publicity right off the theme that it worked. We were there for three years and never knew if we could go back the next year. And then it finally got to where we couldn’t go back to that location. It was very challenging to bring charm to a old dead grocery store anyhow, and the next place we went was the Austin Opera House, a small room, which only had about 8,500 square feet to do the show. Tiny. We had to go from 83 booths down to 50, and it was hard.

And in the meantime, a competing show opened downtown claiming, with all of their graphics and name that somehow or another they were our legacy, when they were not. And that was a hard year. The next year, that downtown show decided they were going to knock us out of business with several hundred thousand dollars of city money, of that money, this money, defense contractors, financial institutions, media, all trying to get rid of us, and they lasted one more year and went away, and here we are.

After a while, we had to move from the small room at the Opera House to the bigger room at the Opera House. We were in there for three years. We were inside the same address, but it was a much larger room. We could come back up to 83 booths and we were thrilled with that.

Then, we moved to the Austin Music Hall downtown in 1995. Same landlord as we had had in the beginning at the Austin Opera House, thank you Tim O’Connor and Willie Nelson. We were in that building for 11 years until development downtown took away all the parking and all of the access to and all of the loading area, and all of the logistic space that we needed. And the building itself, there were cracks in the building you could just slip a business card in the first year we were there, I could now slide my whole hand through without touching either side. You could tell the building’s not stable, we really don’t want to be here much longer.

So the nice people who were building next door put a lot of money into helping them improve the Hall, and they improved it so badly we couldn’t use it, and so we had to do a very quick, quick exit to the Convention Center. It was hard to get in there. We took the smallest room. We had a good help from the city, because they needed a retail anchor for December to make sure that the 2nd Street district retail could have some catalyst to get started.

Kayhan Ahmadi: This was mid 2000’s?

Bruce Willenzik: Yeah, and it was 2007. They had just, 2nd Street district was just going, and that was my retail plan that went in there, because I work a lot with the city. And I really wanted to see it work, so we didn’t want to leave the 2nd-3rd Street corridor because our presence was … So, we looked at a lot of places, including where the W, the retail shell down there below what’s now the Moody Theater. It wasn’t built out yet, it wasn’t usable to us, but we looked all up and down that street, we wound up in the Convention Center.

And we had to go to 40, let’s see, 33,000 square feet from about 15,000 square feet in one year, and that was tricky. That was really tricky. We had a lot of community space. We had a huge museum right in the middle of the show. We had a capital Metro Bus right in the middle of the show. We had to take up some acreage, and we had to figure out how to get people downtown to come as opposed to us being, you know, we were on the fringes of downtown and now we’re dead center in the middle.

Very, very difficult with the parking, because intuitively the garage that’s right next door? It’s five blocks from our entrance by the time you walk to our entrance from the garage. The one that’s two blocks away, that’s too far, it’s only two blocks from our door. So, a lot of people were saying, you get in the building and you start walking and you feel like you spend half the afternoon just walking down hallways before you get to the show. It was way too big a facility.

The move to Palmer was great. But the thing you’ve gotta remember, every time you move, it’s expensive. Every time you move, it costs. You have to re-establish to your customers where you are, they’re driving to the wrong place, your artists are driving to the old place to load in. People don’t pay attention. No matter how much effort you put in to a change in location. So it’s really good if you can keep the location long term.

Let’s go back to some other stuff that’s really important. We never want to over promote an underproduction, or under promote an overproduction. Your promotion and your production should be equal. You don’t want to tell people this is the greatest thing ever and have it be disappointing, ’cause they’ll never come back. And you don’t want to spend all the money to mount the greatest thing ever and not bother to tell anybody you got it going on. Either way’s a guaranteed failure.

Kayhan Ahmadi: So how do you balance that? Is it a qualitative, quantitative metric?

Bruce Willenzik: It’s seat of the pants for me, because I’ve been doing it for so long, but when I first started studying it and looking at it, I just saw so many failures on both sides for both reasons, and thought I’ve always gotta pay attention to describe my event as what it really is, and not as I would like to hype it up to be in order to draw. You’ll draw more people, but you’ll have more disappointed customers walking away badmouthing you. You really want your customers walking away happy happy joy joy as much as possible.

Kayhan Ahmadi: At least if you want to have a long term, multi-year successful event.

Bruce Willenzik: If you want to build a show that actually is worthwhile, that’s what you want to do. I tell people all the time, it is so easy to run an art show if you don’t care how good it is. It’s kinda hard to run a good one. To run an excellent one, it’s a career. To run a truly excellent one, it’s a passion all the time. It’s a lifetime passion, or you can’t do it.

You have to do it for the right reason, or it won’t work. If it’s all about how much money I can make, go do something else. You’re not helping. If it’s about can I help these artists learn how to be successful and prosperous in their career, jump right in, put all your effort in there. If it’s how do I build my artists into a tribe that cares about each other and supports each other and works with each other, that’s a really good goal. If it’s divide and conquer, go away. Don’t even bother.

What more would you like?

     Sean Burke: I’m just curious, you said at the very beginning, talking about mistakes. What are some other mistakes, besides the under promoting your overproduced event, or over promoting your under produced event, like what are some other pretty common mistakes that you ran into in the beginning of Armadillo Christmas Bazaar that you’re also seeing now in other events that you go to?

Bruce Willenzik: I was trying to think of what our mistakes were in the beginning. I see the events that have … I see so many people, ’cause I’ve coached so many people through the years, and basically the two things that fall first, “Well I expected to make money the first year.” Yeah, really? “Well, I thought I could do it with only this much money.” Uh-huh. “Well, I thought I could do it that quickly.” Not gonna work, not gonna work, not gonna work. You need a plan, you need support, you need a team.

Kayhan Ahmadi: So how do you build that team? When you’re delegating responsibilities, it’s a challenge ’cause you’re giving away control, but at the same time you’re allowing scale and specialization, so how do you balance that?

Bruce Willenzik: In the beginning it was real simple for me. Sound crew, how do I do the stage? Light crew, how do I light it? Security, you guys gimme a plan! Kitchen, I need a menu, oh no, that’s me. Merchandising, oh no that’s me. Okay, laying out in the floor. I’m gonna get in there, I need three of my guys who know special relationships and how to measure. Let’s get an accurate measurement and let’s lay out the floor. Let’s get an accurate booth pattern. Okay.

My hardest part in the beginning was getting security to learn the booth numbers. “Why do we have to know that?” Now it’s January, February, March, our big show season, rock-n-roll concerts. “Security, booth 16, get there.” And they’re all using it. They all had it memorized man, from then on everything was by number.

There’s a lot of things people can learn when they’re starting off, but most of it you learn from your artist. Go observe other shows and see what the customer experience is there, look for bottlenecks. Look for things that happen in the beginning of the show that upset an artist. Was it a badly planned load in? You just ruined their mood for the whole show. Was it smooth as silk? They’ll be smooth the whole show.

Same thing for your box office for your customers. Customer experience. Your customers come away from the box office smiling, or they come away blank, or they come away frowning. If they’re frowning, you have trouble. Somebody in the box office isn’t nice, somebody didn’t entertain them well, somebody was just grumpy. You don’t want that to happen.

Did you make it too cumbersome and crazy to get in? There’s one show that we go to that the last time we went to their Spring show, you gotta park here, and then you gotta wait for the show, and then you get off, and then you have to buy your ticket, and then you have to buy your shuttle return ticket, then you gotta go through their security. Well when they were busy in the morning, that was several hours.

And then they searched everybody’s purses for any morsel of food or water, so you’d have to buy it inside. Pissed off everybody, right? So when people are walking down the aisle past the artwork, they’re gonna grumble grumble grump. It makes it much harder to sell fine art work.

In our business, we’re where we sell expensive art. That’s why artists come to our show. The kind of comments we get back is, “This was a good year. Things sold from top price down.”

Kayhan Ahmadi: So a happy attendee is a happy potential customer–

Bruce Willenzik: Buyer, it’s a happy buyer, exactly. You want them happy walking in the door, you want them happy walking out the door. You want them happy everywhere in between. Everything you can do to keep that customer happy.

Kayhan Ahmadi: So your role as the event producer is really to curate and create an experience that drives a happy customer?

Bruce Willenzik: What we’re selling is an experience for our artists and an experience for our customer and an experience for our community. That’s what we’re selling.

Kayhan Ahmadi: And then balancing that production with promotion in a way that’s not over promised and under delivered.

Bruce Willenzik: Yeah. I mean, it’s like this. Your promotion, that is your promise. The composition of your show, that’s your delivery. If your promise is huge and your delivery is tiny, you know the results long run. It’s when they, the promise is true but they come and the delivery’s just a little bit better than the promise, they’re impressed, and that’s notable to talk home about.

Kayhan Ahmadi: So success lives in that delta.

Bruce Willenzik: In that little margin right there.

Kayhan Ahmadi: That’s how you go from a one to two year show to a 40-50 year show.

Bruce Willenzik: And you build your show up ’til you have a reputation where the top artists in the country are seeking you out and trying to get your attention so that they can get in, and then when they do get in, they give you really good comments like, “I’ve been doing shows for 20 years and I make it a point not to depend on the show team for anything. Armadillo has proven me wrong, ya’ll should be the model for every show in the country.”

Kayhan Ahmadi: So here’s a question–

Bruce Willenzik: That’s the kind of … We get that kind of feedback, that’s happy, that’s good.

Sean Burke: Yeah, that is good.

Kayhan Ahmadi: So, when someone comes to the Armadillo Christmas Bazaar and makes a purchase at one of your artist’s spots, who owns that customer?

Bruce Willenzik: That artist primarily owns that customer. That is their space. That is their person that’s there. That person came in, they bought a ticket from me so that they could get to that customer. But, if that artist is smart, and that customer is smart, that’s everybody’s customer.

We have artists who network with each other in the show. The year that Deborah Steidel was able to do our show, and she is museum class ceramics, her pieces are quite expensive, and then we have Daryl Howard in the other side of the room, who has pieces that sell with two digits before the comma in the price tag pretty regular. No one left one booth with a package without being directed to the other. “Oh, you’re gonna love this, but let me tell you about Deborah, she’s … Her booth is right over there. She’s got ceramic vessels that would go so well with this, go over there and see what she’s got, get one of those, too.”

And Deborah’s, every time, “Man, I love this, it’s just what I want.” “I’ll hold this for you right here, go check out Daryl Howard’s and get a piece to go with it.” “Wow!” And they’re walking out with both. That is really the best kind of synergy you can build at a show. When they start building that sphere of prosperity around the scene by churning the customer, churning the crowd.

We move people around on the floor, we churn the locations in order to churn the crowd. We promote the other shows when our artists are participating. If five of our artists are going to be at a show in Denver, we’ll promote the fact that if you’re in Denver, go by Cherry Creek Arts Festival and say hello to our artists, and we’ve got pictures of their work there, promoting them at Cherry Creek.

Well, if Cherry Creek’s smart, they’ll share that on their social media that Armadillo did that, and we get the great … I mean, our artists love us for that. The other shows love us for that. Our customers love us for that. What’s the downside? It takes a few minutes.

Kayhan Ahmadi: But it engenders good will in your community.

Bruce Willenzik: And it builds more clientele, because then people from Denver have seen this and they go, “What is that show?” And they check us out online, and they talk to the artists who do it, and then they want to come down, and then next year they come not by themselves but with a busload. Not bad.

But you’ve got to work that. We’re always looking for one more qualified buyer, because when you look at total overall what our artists experience on the national circuit, our total attendance of about 34, 35,000 is small. It’s dinky. It’s infinitesimal. They have shows with ten times that in two days, and they’re used to that, but what they marvel about us is it’s a very small number, but very highly qualified buyers, and that took years of developing the clientele loyalty.

A lot of free passes when out to get that started. A lot of hand shaking. A lot of going to meetings, a lot of networking in order to build that up. And then the synergy that we create between our live music stage and our art sales can be really fabulous. Someone comes down, “I wanted to hear this Western swing band.” This was someone from the physics department at UT, and Andy gave him some tickets, and he came down to see Hot Club at Cow Town, and they just were only gonna stay a little while and they stayed longer and longer and longer and longer, and they walked around the show and they looked at art, and they walked into Nabu’s booth, it has these beautiful paintings and prints, but they weren’t interested in the reproductions. They were interested in the originals and bought the whole wall.

Had there not been music, would that sale have happened? No. Now they come back every year. They don’t always buy a wall of originals, you know, you only have so much wall in your house. But they have to come by and see what’s new and what they want to get at the show.

So that’s what you’re trying to get to in the long run, but in the beginning, when you’re new and fresh, the best thing you can do is work with the artists you have and help develop their talents. Help motivate them to want to be better at what they do. Try to create a regimen of, bring out the best in all the others by showing only the best of yourself. With the motivation that if that works, everybody gets the best at what everyone can deliver, not a bad place to be.

When you dwell on the worst, when you harp on the worst, when you jump on them for the worst, when you try to force them to do stuff, artists are like cats, they scatter. When you beckon, “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty!” And you can give them the treat of a common goal that’s bigger than their differences, they jump together and work together extremely well, including motivating each other to raise their standards of excellency season after season after season.

We did that to the locals. We built them up. We got them to build themselves up, each other up. We got them motivating each other, thanks to that guy on the drag who badmouthed me. Thank you for getting that started. That was the kindest thing that anyone could have ever done for my career. If I ever see him, I’d need to buy him a dinner, steak dinner or something for that. Holy cow!

But anyhow, that’s how you build it up. You build up the locals to where now, they’re on the national circuit. Your people are on the national circuit with these … And they go, “What’s this show you’re doing back home? How do we get in?” That’s how you make the transfer from a local gut started show to a top circuit show.

Kayhan Ahmadi: Words of wisdom from Bruce, Armadillo Christmas Bazaar.

Bruce Willenzik: Thank you.

Kayhan Ahmadi: Thank you very much, Bruce.

Sean Burke: Yeah, thank you, Bruce.

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Ticketbud Tidbits Episode 6 – Nicole Marie Events

Nicole Marie Hughes is an events master. She owns her own event company (Nicole Marie Events) and is branching out to create Rebel Weddings (https://rebelwed.com) for clients that want a more “epic” wedding experience. Today on Ticketbud Tidbits we talk about her experiences in weddings, how to make money as an event planner with your own ideas, how to keep clients, and other unique tips for wedding planners in particular. You can listen to the podcast below, and as always, we have the transcript underneath.

Sean: Hi and Welcome to Tidbits at Ticketbud. I’m your host, Sean Burke, Director of Marketing at Ticketbud. And, today with me is Nicole Marie of Nicole Marie Events. She plans different types of events, owns her own event company and she specializes in weddings. Nicole, thanks for coming onto the show with us today.

Nicole: Of course, great to be here.

Sean: Awesome. So, Nicole, you own your own event company, Nicole Marie Events, could you tell us more about it and tell us more about what you specialize in?

Nicole: Of course. So, my company has two specialties. The first of course is weddings, that’s how I started and how I grew my company. We’re venturing into what I like to call Rebel Weddings. But, it basically we started in Beverly Hills, we did the elegant, big beautiful weddings but now we’re getting into crazier and interesting and more unique types of weddings. And then, our second specialty is strategic events. So, events that have a very clear purpose like fundraisers, PR events, and mixers.

Sean: That’s really cool. So, could you tell us about … I mean, you’re focusing on this new thing Rebel Weddings and you also have these strategic events, what is your company’s value proposition? For example, why would someone want to produce an event over another production firm?

Nicole: Yeah. Well, I always like to say with Nicole Marie events, every dollar that you’re spending on your event or your wedding will go to a specific purpose. And, for weddings and events those purposes can be very different of course. But, for our company we like to focus on getting really big impact. So, if you think about it in a business sense even for wedding couples it’s the ROI, return of investment for every dollar you spend. So, and something that makes basically me as a planner very different is I’m not the wedding planner that you saw in the J-Lo movie who will sit there and tell you all the different types of flowers and the different types of shades of pink or whatever. I really specialize in logistics and tactical planning. So, more like functional design and that’s kind of what we offer that a lot of other wedding planners don’t.

Sean: Yeah, I was going to say, I sometimes had to watch those bridezilla shows and it seems like they’re all so concerned about all this stuff but not the actual practical things so I’m sure that’s very refreshing.

Nicole: Yeah, and there’s so many places that couples and clients can go to look for inspiration for what look they want and things like that but I like to focus on the things that actually make the experience great for your attendees and guests.

Sean: Awesome. So, when it comes to planning your strategic events in particular, and also you could say for your weddings, do you have a typical staff? How many people do you bring on? Do you have any best practices for hiring staff for these events?

Nicole: Yeah, definitely. It really depends on the event. I do such a wide scope of events with my company. So, for example a bridal shower, it will probably just be me, maybe one person to help set up. And, one thing that I’m huge on is cueing and getting things in real-time. So, I always hire people for the day of the event and think of all the areas where I’m going to need someone who needs to give me an answer right away.

So, if I’m backstage with talent or something at an awards show and I need to know in real-time how many people are coming for the door or where a specific person is, I think about how many areas I’m going to need those answers from. So, if it’s just me backstage and someone out in the front of the house, I’ll hire one person who has a headset that I can get answers very, very quickly. Same with weddings, cueing music, things like that. So, the bigger the scope of the event … I did the Geekie Awards that was a video game type of award show in Los Angeles a few years ago and we had probably a team of 15. So, I’d say anywhere …

Sean: Wow.

Nicole: I mean that was a small event so anywhere from one to 10 typically, depending on the scope of the event.

Sean: Nice. And, for the Geekie Awards in particular, how is the staff … what were … what was the makeup of the staff? Did you have people who were handling the floor and some people are at the gate? Could you describe that a little bit more?

Nicole: Yes, definitely. Basically there was a bunch of different areas. There was green room, there was backstage, there was onstage, there was different holding areas for different people who were presenting and different people who needed specific areas for the television crew as well as a check-in and seating the main floor. So, you can think about all those different areas, that’s how many different types of staff we needed. So, we needed hosts, we needed people who really knew and understood television timing, people who really specialized more on the PR side with handling talent, and getting people through a red carpet, kind of escorting celebrities and different influencers where they need to go. So, it really … we really hire from a bunch of different areas for that event. And, along with all the staff that came with the TV crew and everything. So, that was a huge event.

Sean: Oh yeah, I can imagine, I mean with 15 people that is pretty massive.

Nicole: That was just my staff. That wasn’t even … there were probably 100 people actually working the event.

Sean: Wow, that’s intense. I mean, I’ve heard of that and it’s a pretty big awards show. Anyway, so could you tell us for Nicole Marie Events, do you have clients come back to you and if so what have you felt is the best way of actually, not only growing your client list, but how do you maintain the clients that you already have?

Nicole: Yeah. Well, people will tell you on my staff and just my friends in general, I don’t go anywhere without talking about what I do and just kind of throwing it in, best guerrilla marketing you can. If you’ve seen that movie Freaky Friday in the Chinese restaurant there’s this woman who’s always being like, “Oh, you have that. I’ll cater it.” Like, think of me, always throwing in what they do and say, “Hey, I cater, I can do this.” But, that’s what I do. Everywhere I go, I tell people I’m an event planner. I tell people I do weddings and I ask. So, that’s one of my key things is I always let people know what I do and I ask, “Hey, if you’re planning an event, I’d love to plan it. I’d love to be your go-to event planner.” Especially for big corporations and that’s really worked. Yes like you said, I do have some repeat clients coming from the wedding planning side, that’s not really good to say. But, I plan their wedding, their second wedding, and then a third wedding. But, I’ll plan their wedding and then they’ll need something for their work so I’ll plan a mixer for them and then they have a friend has a bridal shower and I’ll plan that. So, I get a lot of repeat business that way.

Sean: That’s really cool.

Nicole: For maintaining my clients, my key thing is constant and quick communication. If they need something, I’ll text them right away even though I may not know the answer. I would never tell them that, I’d say, “Let me see what I can do.” That’s always my go-to phrase. But yeah, it’s just managing your expectations along with mine as a planner. Setting the appropriate expectations. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. You can always reach me. I may not be able to give you the answer you want right away but I’m not avoiding you. I’m not one of those businesses that’s so huge you get an auto-reply and then 24 hours later someone will attend to your request. I’m always within reach.

Sean: Awesome. So, you definitely are taking the proactive approach which makes sense cause you said you want to be very practical and make sure that every dollar goes towards something that actually makes sense. So, it sounds like you have a pretty strong handle of your business. You definitely talk to a lot of clients, just by getting them. Have you had any … do you have any marketing efforts for your company or do you have clients come in from referrals?

Nicole: Definitely. I have a lot of clients from referrals from weddings to events and kind of events back to people’s weddings. So, I get a lot of crossover business that way. But, I also do a lot of bridal shows just thinking about the industry of weddings and different events, there are so many qualified people in this industry and it’s really about finding the people who fit with you. And so much of that is meeting them face to face so you can get a sense of what they’re really looking for.

Something that I found doesn’t really work is marketing your packages and products and what you give because so many people in this industry can give the same thing but it’s really about are you going to be a good fit with your client and are you actually going to deliver on what their goals are for the event or … I say wedding but weddings have goals too. Some people want to have a crazy fun wedding. Some people want to have a very solemn and subdued wedding. So, just matching the expectations both ways, that goes a long way in person. So, I find my marketing efforts are best served that way.

Sean: Nice. Can you talk a little bit more about … so you go to these bridal shows. Do you have a booth there? Do you do any … I know you do some speaking too.

Nicole: Yeah.

Sean: Do you get clients that way?

Nicole: Yeah. So, bridal shows basically, yes, it’s basically like a trade show instead of business to business, it’s basically like you’re exhibiting to potential clients. And, they range anywhere from 400 attendees to 4,000 attendees. So, you really have a bunch of … a huge opportunity to meet people there. I do also do speaking engagements where I speak on different topics of huge in this market right now is millennial marketing and I’m lucky to be one. So, I can provide some valuable insight there and getting people to wrap their head around, “Hey, it’s not so much an option anymore if you can text people. You need to be texting people. If you don’t text, you’re missing a huge segment of your target market.”

But, I speak on a variety of topics. Different types of ways to have areas of engagement in your events, whether that’s weddings or actual corporate fundraisers, things like that. Different things you can do … yeah. I speak a lot. I am starting some online courses to teach other wedding planners. I do some small business coaching. So there’s a lot of things that I have touched on in my business. But yeah …

Sean: No, that’s really cool. So, it seems like … when we talked before, you mentioned … this seems to segway perfectly, you talked about different ways to make income with original event ideas. Could you talk a little bit more about that?

Nicole: Absolutely. One project that I’ve been working on, like you mentioned before, is relaunching https://rebelwed.com this summer. And, what that entails is not only specialized packages towards specific group of my clients, the people who want to … say that I was jumping out of an airplane or underwater or the bride that wants to come in on a boat and have a custom stage built so she can take that boat right up until the ceremony and just step off the boat and then she’s in front of everyone. So, things like that.

But, the way that we can monetize that in different ways is thinking about okay in this industry, it’s a very active income. The hours you put in are the hours you’re paid for, especially with coordinating weddings and events. So, a lot of people in this field also need a passive income whether that’s designing merchandise, developing courses that you record once and you can sell, doing speaking engagements or having certain products that are very much aligned with your target market.

So for example, Rebe we have sort of like a blog but not really, it’s more of like a style guide on different things to do, different ways to incorporate your ideas, but also yeah we sell different things that say rebel bride on it or rebel groom. Just basically providing a complete solution for these people and thinking about all the different ways you can do that. But, aside from that I also have … I’m blessed that I’m a duel citizen so I can actually work in Canada as well so I’ve started creating travel experiences. So, selling basically birthday parties and mini-events but in Vancouver and that’s where my family is from. So, I’ve created sort of like a side line to travel events and events abroad.

Sean: Wow, that’s amazing especially with the rebel weddings, I definitely notice there seem to be a lot more emphasis on the extreme experiences and I don’t know if this goes hand in hand with the whole … there seems to be this millennial mantra where it’s like experiences not things. So, have you noticed … it seems like you built rebel weddings because you noticed a lot more people wanted this. What was the impetus for actually beginning that?

Nicole: Well, I mean I mentioned the bride that came in on the boat and that was me actually.

Sean: Oh wow.

Nicole: I had a custom stage built in Grand Cayman in the Cayman Islands for my wedding. That’s something that I wanted and I realized that a lot of people now … they’re being told what they want but Pinterest, by all these wedding blogs and everything when that may or may not be their personality and they have to find these little subtle ways to throw their personality in. Plus, weddings are huge expense and it’s become this thing where you’re expected to invite a 100 people and pay for their dinner. And I don’t know about you but I can’t think of 100 people that I would pay for their dinner. Even my friends and sorority sisters and I have a huge family but that’s a huge expense.

So, why not do something smaller that really shows who you are not only as a bride or groom but as a couple? If that’s something that you bonded over … I did a wedding where the couple, the bride and groom, were dive masters. They owned dive shop in [inaudible 00:16:39] and that was a huge part of showing their personality. They wanted … they had a big wedding but they wanted to make sure that everything was sourced right. All the fish had to be sourced from renewable sources. The glass had to all be recycled. Every little touch showed exactly who they are and that’s really what it’s about.

It’s not about this okay here’s the white dress, here’s the ring, here’s the shoes, here’s the cake, it’s really about the client that you’re serving. And, it’s not like I have a lot of clients riding around on motorcycles in leather jackets and jumping out of planes, although I do and they’re awesome. It’s really about showing who you are as a couple and that’s, like you said, very much millennial, very much this new wave of personalization and customization.

It’s like, “Oh, what color are your fabrics going to be? Are you going to have a summer wedding? Are you going to have a June wedding?” It’s so much more beyond that. It’s not even where you’re going to get your dress, it’s “Are you going to wear a dress? Is it even going to be white? Are you even going to walk down an isle? Are you going to … even for our Indian weddings, there is a tradition where you come in on a horse or an elephant and nowadays they’re coming in in Bugatti’s and Lamborghini’s instead. Just showing the flare of their personality.

Sean: Yeah, wow. I’ve heard of the coming in on an elephant but I’ve never heard of coming in on a Lamborghini. That’s pretty cool.

Nicole: Yeah, or a helicopter which is actually … from the event side, so much easier to get a permit for than bringing an elephant in.

Sean: Oh, I’m sure. I’m sure, no kidding. That’s so cool. One thing actually I wanted to mention was there was an event on Ticketbud where it was people selling tickets to their wedding. So, instead of giving gifts and stuff, you just paid … it was essentially like a crowd funded wedding. So, it definitely seems like that speaks to the millennial spirit too.

Nicole: Yeah, I’ve even heard of people getting sponsors for their wedding. You know, if they work for a company and I’ve heard mostly about an alcohol sponsors, people who work for Anheuser-Busch and they get them to sponsor their wedding. They have huge elaborate displays which are really awesome and all they had to do was work out a partnership and they got the stuff for free and it was amazing.

Sean: I bet. I mean, plus you save so much money on alcohol in particular. That’s a great idea.

Nicole: Yeah.

Sean: Awesome. Well, thank you so much Nicole for coming onto the show. You had some really valuable insights, not just for weddings in particular, but just for running events and for event organizers too to really make the most out of their knowledge. So, thank you again so much for coming on.

Nicole: Definitely, anytime.

Sean: Awesome. Well you have a great rest of your day and thank you all to our listeners. We’ll have another show next week. Bye.

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How To Sell Tickets Online

Picking Your Event Ticketing Solution

The platform that you use for selling tickets online is a big choice you and your team will have to make. You need to ignore all of the marketing talks on the website and get the bare, essential facts on the kind of features that are available to you. You also need to read the fine print (especially around pricing).

Getting Started – Selling Tickets Online

Before you begin, it’s a good idea to take a hard look at your event and determine exactly what sort of features you will need. For example, are you planning on having meals for your conference attendees? It might be a good idea to have a question set up so that when an attendee buys a ticket, they can tell you if they are vegetarian/vegan or if they have certain allergies. If you’re on a budget, learning more about fee structure might help. If you’re planning on paying for talent or for a venue, learning about payment terms from the ticketing platform you are using can help. You don’t want to get caught with someone telling you that you owe them money when you’re still waiting for a check!

I’ve taken a few questions from The Business of Event Planning by Judy Allen. There are a lot more there, and you can buy the book on Amazon.

  1. Quick Checklist What are the event costs? Are they based off of a subscription model or the number of attendees? 
Most online event ticketing sites nowadays charge a small percentage fee from each ticket in order to make money. There are some that instead charge a higher upfront cost, but then nothing on the tickets. It’s up to your team to figure out what’s the best fit for you. The first thing you need to really figure out is how much the site is going to charge you per each ticket sale. To save time, enter the fee structure all of the sites you are considering into a spreadsheet.  In addition we created a ticket pricing calculator to help you understand how much Ticketbud would cost you – should you choose to use us.
  2. What Charges Do Credit Card Companies Impose? No matter what site you’re looking at, you need to figure out what the credit card processing fee is. I say this because every single site that I know of has a credit card charge in addition to the fee. Don’t get blindsided by this and don’t overlook this potentially hidden cost.
  3. What Are The Benefits Versus The Cost? After you’ve figured out the different costs from different companies, you should look at what features that they provide for your event. Some people might just want the cheapest option, but a lot of times you get what you pay for. Most websites should have a Features page, so you can take out your committee’s checklist and start marking off everything that the company has or doesn’t have.
  4. How Are Funds Collected And Deposited? This is going to be very important, especially if you’re going to be renting a venue, hiring sales staff, ordering catering, or just about anything else is going to be an expense you can’t pay for out of pocket. A lot of event sites will hold on to your revenue until after your event ends. You might need to have a contract in which unpaid parties are aware of this circumstance. There are some sites out there that do offer revenue payouts before the event ends, which could be a big help for you.  At Ticketbud our payouts are daily – regardless if your event ended or not.
  5. Have They Ever Sold More Tickets Than Are Available? When you’re evaluating your event ticketing solutions, I recommend doing some research on review sites to learn if other event organizers have had trouble with the site. This can help in a lot of ways, but one thing you should keep on the lookout for is if there have ever been oversold tickets. The last thing you want is for people to spend their money only to arrive and find out that they can’t enter. It will do a lot of damage to your reputation. It could even break the law, especially for indoor venues, as there is a fire code limiting the number of people inside.
  6. Are There Customized Reports? We come to another huge benefit of getting online tickets sold to attendees rather than at the door. Most sites offer some sort of demographic and purchase tracking, so you’ll get a better look at who is actually buying tickets. This is beneficial not just for future years to optimize, but also for referencing your marketing efforts.  Ticketbud is one of those sites.  Our platform offers event organizers full featured reporting functionality so they can see the whole picture at any time.
  7. Selling The Most Tickets So you’ve chosen the right ticketing solution for you – congrats! (hopefully you’ve chosen Ticketbud – and if you haven’t yet, why not give us a shot – its free) You’ve got one of the toughest parts of your journey out of the way. Now for the true test: actually getting sales. Here are three questions you’ll want on your sales checklist so that you can maximize your revenue.
  8. Do You Know Your Audience? Do you have a lot of VIP and ticket tiers but your audience is low-income, you’re going to have a lot of unsold tickets. On the flip side, if you know you’re going for a high-income audience, it might make sense to have backstage tours and meet-and-greets. The better you structure your ticket strategy with early birds, VIPs, and other options, the more money you’re going to capture.
  9. Are You Selling In Multiple Places? As I mentioned at the beginning of this article, a lot of event organizers think that just by creating an event page, you’re all set. This couldn’t be more false. You need to also create an event page on Facebook, as well as having an event website created with your event registration software. By using all three resources, you boost your chance of being seen in search engines as well as of potential attendees coming across your pages. There’s no excuse not to!
  10. Are You Sending Out Invites and Reminders? There’s an old saying in advertising. They say that someone needs to see or hear about a product at a minimum of 7 times before purchasing. Think back on your own behavior – I bet you can remember times you were about to purchase something but then you were distracted and forgot about it. This is exactly where sending out reminders helps. You can capture a portion of potential attendees that are interested in your product but maybe had something come up. There’s no better way to take advantage of that then through email reminders. We call this remarketing, and it’s an extremely cost-effective way to increase your profit.

Conclusion: There’s a lot to consider when you’re getting ready to learn how to sell tickets online to your event. You need to think about how you’re going to get paid, what your provider offers you, the payment terms, and oversold capacity. Once you’re set up, you need to think about your avenues of sales, your target audience, and your remarketing capabilities. Thanks for reading, and if you have any other tips that worked out well for you, please send them over and we can update this post.

Ticketbud Tidbits Episode 5 – CJ Alderton

CJ Alderton is a busy man – he runs Patrick Crossing, a church that takes place in a pub, and he also heads the annual Durango Celtic Festival in Durango, Colorado. We speak with him about what you need to do to get a strong festival going, how to scale it, and how to use word-of-mouth marketing. You can listen to the audio here, and as always, the transcript is right below. Enjoy! Also, if you would like to appear on the show, you can email me at Sean AT ticketbud.com.

Sean: Hi everyone and welcome to Tidbits at Ticketbud. I’m your host today, Sean Burke, Director of Marketing here at Ticketbud. And today with me is CJ Alderton of Patrick Crossing which is a church based in a pub as well as the organizer of the Durango Celtic Festival which takes place annually in Durango Colorado. CJ, thanks for coming onto the show with us.

CJ: Well thank you for having me. I didn’t realize you knew so much about me!

Sean: Ha, well that’s the thing about the internet these days. You can really look up just about anything. But I assure you, it’s all good.

CJ: Oh, well that’s good.

Sean: CJ, first thing I wanted to ask is how did the Durango Celtic Festival get started, how did you get into organizing it?

CJ: Well a little bit of history, the city of Durango is a big music venue we have music in the mountains in the summer and it lasts 3 weeks. We also have a bluegrass festival with a small Celtic portion called Celt Down at the Meltdown. The bluegrass festival is called Melt Down. So there is a little bit of stuff going on but then some folks moved from Ireland and developed a massive pub, a pub called the Irish Embassy Pub. And they began to do Irish jam sessions and so we began to attract, and bands began to form around the Celtic genre, another community nearby started a Highland games which is a Scottish deal. And about 5-6 years ago, the Henry Strater theatre and the Henry Strater hotel approached us and asked us if we’d be interested in starting a Celtic festival during what they call the shoulder season. We’re a tourist town. So skiing at the point is starting to taper down. So we have got 5 seasons. Spring summer fall winter and the mud seasons. So March is the mud season. And we did it right around St. Patrick’s day, we started 5 years ago with 5 or 6 board members. We didn’t really know what we were doing, we just felt around our way along, and the thing is it’s just kind of blown up. We’ve been able to attract the top names in Celtic music, and we’re very proud of the acts. We’re like a boutique festival, it’s a situation where the shoe is telling the foot how big it is. We can only get about 250 sales per night, but now there’s talk of letting it take off to multi venue, we’re gonna see what’s it’s all about. it’s a lot of work even for a small festival especially with the kind of quality we’ve been able to get here. So the last 2 years we’ve sold out every night, and we fully anticipate doing that every year.

Sean: Awesome. Awesome, so a couple things I wanted to touch on first was, how do you keep getting it growing, what do you do. Do you do certain types of marketing, do you think referrals, what are the big things that keep the growth going year after year?

CJ: Just, first of all, pure determination. You know, I can tell you some things we shouldn’t have done, it’d be just as helpful.

Sean: I mean, it would be.

CJ: I mean, one of the things, the more successful you become, I literally hear around from agents and bands around the world all the time, I’m always emailing somebody. because we’re in sort of an out of the way location, I’ve learned to take advantage of the beauty of where we live in Colorado, it’s a tremendous location. You can do 12 vacations in one spot here, there’s so much to do. However we are off the beaten track so we’ve learned that we have to be very proactive in booking bands. Up to 24 months ahead, which sounds kind of weird when you’re approaching agents with that. But what they can do is, we’re typically a pass through venue on the way to a town, either Denver or Santa Fe or Albuquerque. They like the money we’re able to pay and it’s a short drive from those places. So we’ve learned how to negotiate from what we have and leverage the venue. The other thing we’ve learned is to leverage our historic five-star hotel. The guests who stay in a five star hotel, walk two minutes to get to our green room, then 30 seconds on stage. And it’s all under one roof, so we’re leveraging what we have in a small location and we’re doing it pretty well. As far as marketing, we did the typical social media thing Facebook that went from 5 likes to we’re close to 1000 now, we use Mailchimp, that’s been pretty handy. We have 600 or 700 people on it now and it keeps growing. Yeah, we try not to pester people, we try to do Celtic events throughout the year, and it’s not so intensive on us, but we try not to overdo it. People get a lot of stuff in the mail. We just try to make it worthwhile when they get it. When we first began, we were using a nonprofit ticketing agency, and it was great, they were very helpful, someone was always on the phone, and we had to wait two weeks after the event to get a check from them, so that killed our cash flow.

Sean: I bet!

CJ: So we had to hold off on paying people, and that was just embarrassing. So that’s why we sought out a different avenue this past year.

Sean: Well, we appreciate it! -laughing- That wasn’t planned, to our listeners, don’t worry. That was totally organic. Um, so anyway, so regarding the marketing – so you said you did some social media and email marketing, I’m curious, how far before do you send emails for people to buy tickets? What’s your strategy?

CJ: Well, I’d like to say that it’s firm but it’s not. So this year we tried to get something rolling with you guys and take advantage of the holidays from Thanksgiving to Christmas to do an early bird. And it actually worked really good. We encouraged people to get a ticket for someone as a Christmas gift to the festival. And we sold like 50 or 60 tickets before December 31st. We always do thank you afterwards, and try to give afterwards, because the bands are booked so far in advance, what the festival is going to look like next year and what bands are going to be playing. It’s a Celtic festival which means we’re drawing from Ireland, Scotland, Wales, the Evergreens, the Great Britain sound up year. And next year it just fell that it’s going to be all Scottish next year. So it’s going to be the Scottish Invasion. So we’re going to have a lot of fun with that, and have the Scottish flag. So whether they vote to stay or leave Britain with their own little “Scotexit”. But we’ll be on top of it.

Sean: And I have to admit, that’s nice, from a festival goers point of view, it’s very refreshing, because it seems like, Im reading about ACL. They don’t tell you who’s playing until a couple months before, sometimes after you buy tickets, and you’re shaking your head now. You don’t know what you’re getting when you’re buying tickets, and once you know they raise prices.

CJ: Yeah, we would never do that. In fact, I can say this, we try to do a personal profile on each musician of every band before they get here. We do that all on Facebook, not on email. And then we do band profiles by email. We try to, you know, you look at your lineup and you get to know these people even before the festival. And it just so happened that last year for this festival we had four hot female fiddlers. And usually it’s some curmudgeonly old dude up there, but sawing away, but we had these beautiful ladies, so we kind of made it the year of the female fiddler. We didn’t make it a big emphasis, but it was kind of a hook. Trying to educate ourselves on their music so we can sing along. There’s other things we do. I know we’re talking about marketing to an audience, but we also do marketing towards the Celtic family. And so the artists themselves are part of our marketing strategy because they do good gossip for us. They say “of all the small venues, you have got to go to Durango.” And we just get people swamping us and that’s very important to us to the extent that we reach out to the artist and say “what would you like as a gift bag in your room?” and we get everything from Granny Smith apples to exotic beers, a lot of whisky requests, chocolates. Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory is right here so, they don’t know about that, so we get that out to them too. And for the girls we get flowers, and they love it when they see right in the middle this big gift package from us. And so that’s marketing as well, just a different way of doing it.

Sean: No I think that’s a great idea, I’ve heard a lot of times, sometimes venues don’t treat the artists right. And then they don’t get as many artists as they want. So I think what you’re doing is great, set an example to other people who want to get repeat artists or other artists in the same genre. That’s awesome.

CJ: Yeah.

Sean: So shifting gears a bit, so talking more about the festival, I was curious – have you ever had to deal with unruly customers or ones who were unsatisfied, and if so, how did you rectify that problem.

CJ: -laughs- So the first couple years, we didn’t even think about security. It wasn’t a thing. And then, world events make you start getting a little bit goosy about it. So we brought in some large men with bright red shirts that say Security on them. We post them in strategic places. For practical reasons, some of the instruments these guys are carrying are worth ten or twenty thousand dollars. You don’t want those getting walked out with.We always have coverage. We’re not trying to be subtle or surreptitious about it. We’re saying we have big people who will hurt you if you act up. We’ve had a few grumbles over the years, it’s going to happen. And I just try to deal with it personally and I always start my letter with: “Thank you so much for reaching out to us with your concerns” and blah blah blah. But, I heard a rumor that a guy was wanting to pick a fight one night and he went on a rampage and wrote some stuff to the newspaper. His whole beef was people opening their phone and taking a photo, and he was very sensitive to that, so whatever, my cure for that was I let it blow over and didn’t respond to the newspapers that took the hook. I took him off our mailing list, I figured if he didn’t like us, then that was his problem. He’d have to work to come back to our festival. It wasn’t a big deal. One of the things about Celtic music is it’s under that big umbrella under folk music. So you have Celtic music, you have bluegrass, and whatever, world music. You have the luxury of a listening audience. you can hear a pin drop when the bands are playing. Its not like rock or country music where all hell’s breaking loose.

Sean: Yeah, I was at a concert last night, my ears are still ringing. A day later.

CJ: Yeah, so its actually a pretty polite audience, We try to anticipate as many possible problems. One of the problems we didn’t know, we didn’t even hear about the grumbling, but we were grumbling about it. Was just how to get people in quickly. There’s a bart inside the theatre and of course the Strater (hotel) just wants us to push people there to get their thirst satiated before the bands start. So how did we get them from the queue to the place quick enough. Again, that’s another reason why we chose Ticketbud. You guys helped us out a lot there.

Sean: Well thank you!

CJ: You guys really made it seamless and I gotta say it was, we had one little blip, but it was our fault, not yours.

Sean: That’s all good, did you manage to rectify – how did you resolve the problem? Was it regarding the refund?

CJ: No it wasn’t the refund, we got that sorted out with you guys, it was trying to estimate. It’s very difficult because I also serve as the Chaplain for the Durango Fire & Rescue here, I can’t be breaking the law -laughs- with overcrowding. They have the sign up there with how many people the building can hold. You have to do real time guessing with when you are really sold out. Our biggest goal is to sell out before the first night, which we came really close to doing, but you have to make some decisions. And when you send someone out on a run to see if there’s empty seats and who’s at the bar, well we couldn’t quite get the metrics exactly dialed in. For you guys, you have to put in exactly where the sold out place is. And in our metrics that we set up, what we did, is we kept selling tickets but if we didn’t do what we did. If we didn’t change it, Ticketbud wouldn’t have allowed us to keep selling but since we changed it we did. We just started selling tickets for the following night, but we collected it for this night. One of our volunteers suggested it and it actually worked. And ours is a very unique situation. We really do have a ceiling of what the fire department allows. We can sneak past them a little bit but not too much.

Sean: Ha, not too recommended for our listeners, but yeah. Awesome. So that’s good to know, and also, I was curious, have you ever – the Durango festival, you have the concerts, but you also have Workshops. Have you ever had to deal with someone who doesn’t show up to a concert or a workshop?

CJ: No, we’ve never had that. We’ve never had that problem, I don’t have wood to knock on,

Sean: Well, I -three knocking sounds- there you go.

CJ: Only one we had, we advertised a band at a festival a couple years ago, and about a month out from saying “here’s this big band that everybody loves”, they ended up having some visa issues. One guy had some visa issues, and it ended up crapping out their whole year. And that’s one of the difficult things of bringing foreign artists in. The United States is not friendly to our genre because people like U2 and Sting kind of screwed up the metrics for smaller bands that come in. And Uncle Sam said, “hey we’re missing out on some serious tax revenue, let’s hit these foreign artists for 30% of their gross”. So again this is something they’ve learned, they need to fill out copious amounts of paperwork to beat that 30%, but they end up spending a ton of money in Europe to get ready to come over here to just come here with their entire paycheck. So you take 30% off an entire band and send it to our government. But when you switch it, our artists going over there don’t have that same problem.

Sean: No, they don’t.

CJ: It’s a difficult genre to deal with, in that respect. With a bluegrass festival, we’d be getting people from Kentucky and wherever. And it wouldn’t be that problem. So I don’t know, I’m out in the weeds on that one.

Sean: No you’re fine, I think you’re bringing up some stuff that’s pretty important, without getting too political. It seems that still, with the visa procedure, that you’re still getting a whole bunch of people for next year too. And you didn’t run into any problems with that?

CJ: Well one of the bands that is coming next year is the very band that had issues last year

Sean: Oh, so they managed to figure it out?

CJ: Yeah

Sean: Well that’s good to know.

CJ: Yeah, so we did get them, it just took an extra year.

Sean: Definitely. Well, let’s see- that’s about everything. I just want to know – you talked at the beginning about things that you wished you hadn’t had done, and I was just curious, if you had to start it all over again, what are some things you wish you had known before?

CJ: Um, let me see – well, trying to think back, when you’re – we would have gotten our nonprofit number a lot earlier. We found out that we can’t just get it for festivals, so we were intimidated. Some our friends tried to get one and got rejected three times and their stack of papers was 6-8 inches tall. I talked to my accountant, he said there’s an expert in that, to just send your papers to him. And I went through that process last year in about 15 minutes. It took me about 15 minutes of talking to them on the phone, and they said it usually takes six months, it was done in six weeks. And what that does – I would’ve gone for that a lot sooner if I’d known how easy it was for people who do it full time. And what that does, it makes it so much easier in terms of getting sponsors. If you have a nonprofit status. That’s one. Also, when you’re recruiting committee members, it’s easy to get people you know and like. Then what you find out over time is it’s very task oriented and so you don’t really need idea meetings, and a lot of times if people don’t have specific skills sets with like putting on social media or putting together a website, then they’re just sitting around for something to do. And you’re just trying to think of work for them. When you’re creating a festival, you really need people who have skill sets and don’t have the time to do it. They’ll just say give me my assignment I’ll do it after I watch a movie or get home, I’ll get it done and get it done well. Having very good task oriented people rather than just people that like Celtic-oriented music is incredibly important. And for me, I’ve been the president since day one, and I’m already thinking about a replacement for myself. So we brought in a couple people – I know I don’t look like it, but I’m 57 years old. That’s an antique, baby.

Sean: -laughs- That’s not that bad!

CJ: So I’m bringing in some people who are late-20’s/30’s on the committee who can do stuff by the way, and be getting their input, and tell them, within 4-5 years this is gonna be your baby. I’ll always be around as long as I’m alive to help you book bands, I’m getting pretty good at that, as far as replacing yourself, the worst thing I can think of is to be that old curmudgeon just saying, “we’ve never done it that way before.” As soon as I say that, I need to quit.

Sean: Well, it’s still good that you’re still self-aware of that happening, and definitely just taking someone under your wing seems the right way to go about it.

CJ: And I gave up the MC’ing this year, we had a 29 old grade school teacher up there. Just did a fantastic job, he was right to the point, had everything memorized, he was on and off the stage in a minute and a half. It’s what you want. More and more I find myself getting in the background. And the value of that – I always found myself getting calls – “you gotta go up to the stage, introduce this”, or whatever. I didn’t do that this year. I’m able to get a bigger picture of what’s going on, with the workshops, I can even enjoy the festival a little bit.

Sean: Well, I’m glad to hear that! Anyway, well thank you CJ, for this call. We really appreciated it, and I’m sure our listeners will appreciate it too whether they’re running festivals or not, just because there’s so many applicable things for really everyone. So thank you so much for coming on.

CJ: Well you bet, thank you, and this is not some big political statement, but Ticketbud was awesome and you my friend were awesome.

Sean: Ah thank you, you were too!

CJ: Well alright, it was great to talk to you again.

Sean: Great to talk to you too, CJ.

CJ: Take care Sean.

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Ticketbud Named Most User-Friendly Event Management Software

Capterra released two new event management reports: Most Affordable and Most User-friendly, as well as updated the Top 20 Most Popular Event Management Software report,” said Rachel Wille Senior Product Research Analyst at Capterra, an advisory company for conference management software. “Ticketbud ranked highly in all three reports, including being named the Most User-Friendly Event Management software. Ticketbud was one of only three event management software to be listed in all three reports.”   [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="600"]An image of an award given to Ticketbud for being the most user friendly event management software Our cool medal![/caption]]]]]> ]]>

Ticketbud Tidbits Episode 4 – Clint Kaulfas

Kayhan: [00:00:01] Hello and welcome to Tidbits at Ticketbud but with me Kayhan Ahmadi, CEO of Ticketbud and today we have Clint Kaulfas, professional gate manager for large scale events. Clint, thanks for being with us today. Clint: [00:00:12] I’m absolutely happy to be here. Kayhan: [00:00:15] So Clint How did you first get started in the event industry what attracted you to pursue a profession and what’s kind of been your roadmap? Clint: [00:00:24] Well I kind of always have an interest in music and in large shows and growing up in such a small town I never had the opportunity to hear those types of things. Everything is really far away. My parents are really supportive. So I graduated high school I moved to Austin you know looking to go see my first festival at 18 years of I still never seen one. And I came out here I’m going to ACL I started going to shows and this and that and I was going to school for something totally different. And I thought I wanted to be an architect and I was just getting fed up with the math and you know such a long course, I would have been in school for years. I found that A.C.C. had a music business and performance technology Associates degree to go for and I changed my I switched schools and moved A.C.C. save money and get to something they enjoy doing a lot more. And probably it was the second semester I was in school or got an internship with C3 Presents. I got really lucky. A lot of people wanted to intern for C3 at a big company is probably the second biggest in the road. I would think production wise. Yeah and that’s what got my foot in the door back in 2011. Kayhan: [00:01:52] So tell us about the skills and the expertise that you learned in the industry either working at festivals and chose about the skills that you bring to the table when an organization contracts with you to help run the gate or box office at a big event. Clint: [00:02:10] Well I would say most of the skills I acquired through responding people outside of Emo’s and Stubb’s and. Kayhan: [00:02:21] Two of the biggest local Austin institutions. Clint: [00:02:23] Yeah two of the biggest ones. We got out here helping get the crowd control down out there. It really wasn’t part of my job description I was in box office I was just supposed to be ticket coordinating and dealing with guest list and will call and, you know, making sure all of our logistics are right and our tickets. But sometimes security guards couldn’t handle the crowd control and we’d get out there and that’s where I kind of got good at crowd control that brought me more into the management side of ticketing and handling gates and handling box office. I guess the best way to describe it is like working a couple of shifts at Emo’s for a sold out show. It’s just a chaotic nightmare of kids lined up hours before, nobody listens. You just gotta know how to get a handle on people and make people look at you and listen to you. Kayhan: [00:03:23] Is that speaking with authority is that…? Clint: [00:03:25] Speaking with authority looking professional. You know you walk around and talk and act like you know what you’re doing. People will pay attention and listen. I feel like if I feel like a lot of it’s like the way you dress too like I like to usually wear all black and you know people see my radio on me and everything and my flashlight, and they go “alright, this guy- He’s got a badge on and probably knows what he’s doing. And we should listen to what he’s saying. Kayhan: [00:03:52] To walk the walk. Talk the talk. Clint: [00:03:53] But yeah definitely. Kayhan: [00:03:55] You just finished a long engagement for South by Southwest. Can you tell us about your role a little bit this year. Clint: [00:04:04] So for South by Southwest I got recommended to one of the biggest ISPs for you know events festivals. A company called Right Round. I was doing technical support for them as a network technician and I’m just now sort of trying to broaden my horizons and I’d see a networking field. It’s always been of interest to me I’ve always grown up in front of computers and I love the internet it’s really fascinating and really powerful thing. I was in charge of about eight different networks throughout the festival. The first network I set up I probably had about 2500 feet of Ethernet cable. We also ran a solid fiber line for them to live stream the home performance to Japan. We have probably about eight different switches. Ten to 12 different access points it was a huge network it took us about four days to get it perfected but you know that was my first big network. And I think I handled it pretty well and throughout the rest of the festival every other network I had set up you know, it was a lot easier and I had more grasp on things and knew how everything worked from something of that massive network to go on in the 70s one day network for a client for a day party. Kayhan: [00:05:31] What trends do you see at South by this year. Do you think there are new or different than years past. Either in the attendees or attendance or technology or anything. Clint: [00:05:43] I would say this year that the difference I noticed was everything was a lot more crunched together. Kayhan: [00:05:51] In terms of time or space? Clint: [00:05:52] In terms of timing. Like I feel like I’m pretty sure they have the week a little bit shortened they just called it South By South West Week this year. So there’s a lot of stuff overlaying on top of each other with the tech and the film. And the music. I was expecting on my first day that the streets would be empty but I was already seeing Batchelor’s way before South by Southwest Week even started. Also a lot the bigger. A lot of the bigger clients for South By backed out this year that you know there is no…I never saw a lot of the big huge free parties. You know the Thrasher party wasn’t there with Converse and all that at Fader Fort you know. A lot of the big free stuff wasn’t there. And they try to make more of a, you know, smaller band local venue type thing which I think is great for the city. Kayhan: [00:06:47] Back to sort of the earlier roots of South By. Clint: [00:06:49] Yeah. Absolutely. And. I recently read an article of South By and they had written about them wanting to do that and I’m kind of glad they’re taking steps to get it more in that direction. Kayhan: [00:06:59] So as an industry professional you think that change is well received. Clint: [00:07:03] Oh yeah and I think that a lot of the local the local patrons are a lot more satisfied and that. You know. A lot of the people that come in from out of town from all over them. I’m not so sure but. I feel like more of the people that come from out of town or other countries are here more for the tech side of it and I still saw a great turnout. On the tech side. There’s a lot of good attendees from all over the world. Kayhan: [00:07:34] So switching off from South By just back to general Gate management . When you’re thinking about a large scale event that you’re doing game management for. What do you look for when you’re building an onsite staff for a large event or do you look to call these professional networks and volunteers frameworks. How do you build out the staff to make sure that gate management is executed. Clint: [00:08:00] Well. Whenever I build my staff for data management I usually have a handful of guys that I’ve worked with in the past that they have experience with dealing with lines and responding. That’s where you can really slow down or sometimes is just dropping wristbands all over the place or bumbling here and there. Just people that have a voice people they can know, they aren’t afraid to raise their voice “Hey guys you need to come this way or this way come this way for this coming this way for that. Have your IDs out”, you know just the common sense things. A lot of people will show up to the festival, well it may be their first time and they don’t know that. So you can’t sound rude to people you start out I hold down a professional and welcoming vibe to your patrons. They’re paying money to come and spend time at your festival so you still want them to be happy when they come to the gates. I feel like you know you can. You can kind of. Be a little bit lenient on people that are just you know checking to see if some scans of the gauge you’re just scanning. But. I usually like to go with people that have more experience but I will give people a shot. It’s not really hard to do. You know you just got to be the right person for the job. Kayhan: [00:09:15] So what makes for great onsite operations. Do you have a game plan or best practices do you huddle up with your team the night before the week before? What’s your recipe for success? Clint: [00:09:27] I feel like everybody knowing how everything works where every patron is supposed to go. You know there’s usually a lot of different entry points for different types of credentials at festivals. Signage is a huge key and must for me I love signage everywhere. Also if it’s a late festival lightings for wherever the entry points are so. If it’s any type of QR reader or you know RFID chip scanners or different types of things. You want to have good lighting so all of your scanners and your hardware works. Making sure your network set up right, strong Internet connections that all for our scanners to you know relay all the information back to your Logistics of everything else. I feel like those are the main things and just making everybody’s on the same page and prepared and has everything they need – well rested, fed. Kayhan: [00:10:20]  Order pizza a couple hours before. Clint: [00:10:23] Yeah I mean it’s sometimes it’s long days and some people you know they can’t handle standing out in the cold for 10 hours. But. This is not for everybody. And you need to know what you’re signing up for. Kayhan: [00:10:34] So some gate personnel for more community events tend to be volunteers. What are the most important things that you need teach volunteer in order to prepare if they’ve never done game management or checking people in before how do you prep them, pump them up.Give them you know the coach’s speech in a locker room so to say. Clint: [00:10:54] Usually if it is somebody new like that I’d like to you know type them out a little reference you know, to most commonly asked questions. Where certain patrons that aren’t allowed in an actual entry point need to go where that is, how to get there. This and that. Kayhan: [00:11:11] So a little cheat sheet. Clint: [00:11:12] Yeah just pretty much make sure that they’re going to know how to answer just about any question. If not there’s my number or my radio channel right there and you can give me a shout and I’ll be right there and on the situation. Kayhan: [00:11:24] So it should always be accessible in case something needs escalation. Clint: [00:11:27] Absolutely. Kayhan: [00:11:29] What are some of the best practices for managing the line. We talked a little bit about walking the walk talking the talk, is there you know, when you’re setting up a gig, are you putting a specific direction or are you are you putting signage up or are you putting barriers up combination of all the above? Clint: [00:11:45] Oh yeah definitely. You know bike racks. Bike racks are my best friends during you know huge festivals. It depends on how many people were there and. What the plot of the land is. It just depends on how it is, if I’m going to set up like a maze to you know, slow people down. Or I’m just going to have straight lanes and just let them come flying through. Kayhan: [00:12:06] Talk a little bit about that. What’s what’s the advantage of having a maze to slow people down versus straight lines. Clint: [00:12:13] So I would say straight lines are a lot better for whenever you’re actual entry point is not one time. You know like like for instance Trail of Lights people show up on the same route. Well I mean if they buy ZIP ticket they’re all going to show up at one time in between like an hour and a half span. And that’s only about a quarter of the festival. So the rest of the patrons are just going to go out there through normal GA or they’re going to have as it passes and get there late. And it doesn’t really it’s not really necessary to zigzag the lines. Because I mean most of the time we have two people per lane I might have one person scanning at one person wrist banning. I’ve had our first 20000 people do that line with six lanes and about the longest wait was probably four minutes. For them to get it as long as pretty good for that amount of people. You know and they’re paying to get there early so you want to make sure they get in early. It takes some trial and error sometimes you know. I’ve had some bad wait times back when I was starting out and I was new. But you know you figure it out and see how people move when you see other people notice the signage. It’s always good to have volunteers all throughout the park directing people when they’re coming off the shuttles when they’re heading into the fest. That helps a lot too because a lot of people don’t know where they’re going. I mean a zigzag line is good for, I say like a box office where we are picking up will call and you’re picking a guest list. Everybody is antsy to come pick up their credential and try to get past everybody else because they’re not going into the festival yet they still got a walk from the box office to the festival entry point. So I feel like zigzags are a lot better than that or like the maze set. Or they just have to slowly walk around all these corners. By the time they do there will be a representative ready to help you and usually that helps us out on our backside and helps the patrons keep calmer and you know get through and get their credentials. Kayhan: [00:14:15] Straight lines for moving people fast through a gate, zigzag lines for slow or customer service. Clint: [00:14:19] Yes. Kayhan: [00:14:21] So a bit about ideal ratios when you’re looking at event attendance and you know that you have a 5000, 10000, 20000 person event. How many how many personnel do you have to staff do you think about how many personnel per thousand or do you think about how many gates or do you first determine how many gates you want or access points you want and then staff accordingly. What’s your what’s the plan. Clint: [00:14:47] Well it depends so if it’s just one entry type and I have 20000 people coming through and it’s just one credential. Or maybe some small credential going into other the entrance but mainly they say the 20000 are coming through one main gate. Or most likely just. My round about number is probably like six to every 15000 you know. Kayhan: [00:15:12] Six staff members for every 15000? Clint: [00:15:14] Per like at a flow rate of about 15000 per hour. You know my six guys can easily handle that. If it’s coming up to like 20 hours I’d like to have a eight to 10. So. I usually go along those rules like around 20000 if it’s going to be a fast pace. I like that 10:7 made it out real quick and. Get them through and then cut some guys get them off my production clock and make sure everybody gets in quick you know and you know the next couple days guys go home early guys get to stay late as a team and for everybody and the patrons get in as quick as possible. Kayhan: [00:15:52] We have one person doing the scanning and a separate person doing the wristbanding. Clint: [00:15:55] Usually if that’s how it’s going to be if we’re going to use actual paper wristbands and that works the best for me because somebody’s holding wristbands and then holding a scanner at the same time and trying to fly back and forth. It can get a little hairy. You don’t want to be dropping wristbands on the ground because you know what you’re charging for these wrist bands and who knows who’s going to pick it up and run off with it and. Kayhan: [00:16:17] You want to create that seamless customer experience at the entry point smoothly. So in regards to onsite operations and best practices what advice can you give to someone who’s newly in an industry or maybe having their own event on a smaller scale. Clint: [00:16:35] Well. I guess most of my advice comes in ticketing and I’ve seen a lot of people sneak in the festivals and I’ve seen a lot of people’s fake badges. Kayhan: [00:16:44] How do you handle that. How do you handle those people? Clint: [00:16:48] I’ve got a lot of stories about that last year. So probably the funniest I would say is at ACL a couple of years ago we had these guys going around and they would take a picture of our pressboard and they would do it right in front of a security guard the security guard you know these guys are making $10-12 an hour. They don’t even realize or probably don’t care. So these guys they will go home and they would print out a picture of a picture of our passport. And you know our badges they have RFID chips in them so they would wad up a little piece of paper put it in between the two print outs and laminate it. You know, when we caught them, their badges were at least an inch and a half bigger than ours so you could obviously two other fake they’re a little pixelated it did not look legit it one bit. And we caught some guys and we go back to the guards and show them and I say,”How do you let this go by you, know” One of the guards said “Oh I think I’ve seen a guy taking a picture of this.” And I’m like really, man?  But you know like I said that they don’t make that much money. They’re not. Kayhan: [00:17:53] Their skin is not in the game. Clint: [00:17:54] Yeah you know. It’s not on anything off their backs. I’ve seen that. I’ve also seen kids jump gates. And usually that’s a security guard’s job job to caching em but if the security isn’t paying attention. I don’t care I’m still chasing myself. I have a security guard come in I’m not going to touch you but I have security to handle that. But you’re not going to jump a gate at my festival. I’ve never snuck into a festival so don’t expect that other people will sneak into my festivals. Kayhan: [00:18:19] So always have a vigilant eye out for fraud I guess. Clint: [00:18:22] Yeah. That and people with passing off. I hate when people pass off wristbands. Kayhan: [00:18:29] So tell me what what does that mean to pass off a wristband and how do you catch it and how do you prevent it. Clint: [00:18:36] I mean I saw some people during Trail of Lights handing wristbands over the gates. I saw people cutting them at ACL and they were put put a little pin at the bottom and his put it back together and walked through and just covered it up with their hands leaving just click it on the RFID scanner and boom it flashes green there and security guards don’t care. They’re not really visually checking every wristband. Some do a lot of them do but some of them don’t. One thing is I wish is the Security would get better security companies that pay their guys better so they would care a little bit more and they can get all that more training on this. But you know that’s a whole ‘nother can of worms, yet a big one. Kayhan: [00:19:20] So how do you stay current about your industry. What resources do you look for?Do you have a peer network that you go to? How do you keep your ear to the ground when it comes to the industry. Clint: [00:19:31] I feel like I have a good way to keep my ear to the ground and learning new things and just, you know just like learning from other companies just as I worked for about four or five different production companies out not just with C3 anymore. So I worked with a lot of different people I meet new people and they always have something new to teach me and I have something new to teach them. That’s pretty much learned from working with peer to peer environment. Yeah. Kayhan: [00:19:59] Any words of advice to someone who’s interested in getting started in the industry. Clint: [00:20:06] Think about it think if you like traveling. If you like a lot of long hours and late nights but sometimes you’re off work for a long time and that’s really cool too. You got to really have a thick skin. Be able to deal with irate customers when you have to keep a smile on your face. You got to be very well organized on top of the game know what’s going to happen at all times. Be prepared for anything. Other than that it’s just getting out there and learning how everything works and getting hands on experience. That’s the best way to learn. Start from the bottom and work your way up to the top. Kayhan: [00:20:47] Any parting thoughts or words of wisdom or advice for an event professional out there who’s maybe having their first event or putting on their first festival to a small degree something like that. Clint: [00:21:01] I would say keep an eye on all of your departments. Make sure everybody is doing things legitimately. I’ve seen a lot of people inside of. New festivals and companies just handing out wristbands here and there to friends and stuff and that going on unaccounted for and kind of take advantage of things. I just keep an eye on everybody. You’ll learn. You’ll see things will go wrong and you’ll learn how to prevent them. But I think you’ll be alright. You’ll get it down and after the first one and the next one and it will get a lot easier and smoother. Kayhan: [00:21:38] Clint thanks very much for joining us today on Tidbits with Ticketbud. Everyone, Clint Kalfas, professional gate manager. Clint: [00:21:45] Thanks for having me.]]]]> ]]>

Ticketbud Tidbits Episode 3 – My-Cherie Haley

My-Cherie Haley’s life has revolved around events and entertainment for more than 20 years. She first began as a model, and then moved to Las Vegas to work at Caesar’s Palace as Cleopatra. She runs a brand agency for youths to break into modeling and fashion industries. She also happens to be an event organizer, having put on events for her own silk scarf business as well as by contract. Today on Ticketbud Tidbits, we learn a bit about her life, as well as her thoughts on using social media for events. We discuss how to put your best food forward to get your career started as an even organizer. Also, she talks about how to maintain clients and keep them happy. We also learn about the main 3 things every event needs if you want it to be a success with attendees. We hope you enjoy this episode! Transcript Below:

Sean: Hi everyone, today on Ticketbud Tidbits we are here with My-Cherie Haley My-Cherie: Hi, how are you Sean? Sean: I’m doing well, thank you My-Cherie! And I am Sean Burke, Director of Marketing here at Ticketbud. So today, with My-Cherie we are going to talk about her experience with events, and with running private events. She currently has her own talent agency and she is a former model so she has quite a good repertoire of event related experience. So first thing, My-Cherie, I wanted to ask was tell us. Recently you ran an event for SXSW called Why You’re Here: A Tribute to Austin’s Music History. Could you tell us a little bit about it? You know, what the goal of the event was? My-Cherie: Well the goal of the event was to merge the sports industry and the music industry and the fashion industry and really give everyone a taste of what Austin has to offer as far as music and do a history of how it all started. And the live music capital got its name, Austin, based on the Armadillo World Headquarters. Sean: Right! My-Cherie: Back in the day, and so there were many many artists that performed from all over. Willie Nelson, Jimmy Cliff, and it was just, you know we wanted to bring back this nostalgic moment to people that were coming in for SX and for sponsors to see that Austin is this amazing place since the 80s, or since the 70s. Sean: We actually did an interview, for listeners who haven’t seen it, we actually interviewed Bruce, he used to work at Armadillo World Headquarters*. He works at the Armadillo Christmas Bazaar now. We actually got to talk with them, they’re a client of ours. My-Cherie: Oh wow! I didn’t realize that the Christmas Bazaar was a spinoff of the World Headquarters. That’s amazing, I love that. I love that! That connection. Sean: Yeah, that history. So that was the goal of the event. Do you think that you achieved it based off of feedback from the client, based off of feedback from the attendees. Do you think that’s something you achieved? My-Cherie: Definitely. Everyone there – first of all, the party was fantastic. Everyone seemed to really enjoy the music, and we had you know different liquor sponsors. 9 Banded Whisky was one of the sponsors. Sean: Love them! My-Cherie: Yeah they were great! And then there was Dolce Vita Tequila, which was also a big hit. And so it was a really great event and we had a little bit of blues with Marcia Ball. And then we had some Reggae from I-taweh who came from Jamaica. And then we had Billy Joe Shaver with some country to end the night. Sean. Nice! My-Cherie: And so what we heard from everyone was it was just a really well rounded event. eclectic mix to give people a taste of what Austin has to offer. I would say it went great! Sean: Man, I wish I could have gone, but from what I heard from people – I watched some of the videos – I really wish I had been there! My-Cherie: I know! You should have come. Sean: Definitely a case of FOMO coming true. My-Cherie: -laughs- Sean: Hopefully you will get to do something for next year. My-Cherie: We will, we already have something in the works. We’ve been talking about it, but yeah, it’s definitely something we want to repeat every year for sure. Sean: So next thing I wanted to ask, to learn a little bit more about yourself, you had a previous modeling career- My-Cherie: I still model- Sean: Oh you do?! My-Cherie: -laughs- I still do! Sean: Oh man, my sincere apologies. My-Cherie: You know, I’m getting up there in age, and I’ve been in the industry for about 20 years, I don’t want to give my age away. But I still continue to work as a professional model. Sean: Okay then, so maybe I should ask, you still model, and you run that talent agency too. Do you think that this prepares you for organizing events at all? My-Cherie: Yes! Well I feel that it all started for me when I was still living in Las Vegas and I did a lot of promotional modeling at that time, so I got to see how a lot of events played out and how they worked when I was on the talent end. And I also worked at Caesar’s Palace as Cleopatra and I did that for about 3 years. And for that time we did a lot of special events so we got to see how it all transpired. And I was always very intrigued by it, not just as an artist, but on the other side of things. You know, “I’d love to do this”. So when I moved to Austin I started my own business. I still continued to model. And I started this business where I made hand-dyed silk scarves. From there, in order to get my name out there and to connect with other people and to promote, I had to throw events. And that’s how I really got started with going out there to throw events. I just thoroughly enjoyed connecting people and networking and building relationships and that’s how it all started for me. So now I’m doing brand development for youth and for kids who want to pursue modeling, entertainment, musicians. I really want to help with that. I really love doing the event part of it. Sean: That’s perfect. So tell me, when a client reaches out, especially when you first got started, tell me what you brought to the table. Why would they reach out? For example, for the Why You’re Here event. My-Cherie: Yeah, well that was really interesting how that happened. It’s because another Sean who is part of 9 Banded Whiskey, where we went to an event together that was for my birthday. Sean: Oh great! That’s a really good way to make that connection. My-Cherie: Yeah and we were at this concert and this reggae artist was playing. And he was like I’m throwing this party for SXSW and I would really love this artist, like, do you know his manager? And I said, “I can introduce you to his manager and I would also like to help you throw this party”. Both: -laughing- My-Cherie: And so that’s how that transpired. We just really ended up working well together and we brought in some other sponsors like Loop & Tie. Sarah of Loop & Tie, she’s awesome, so we worked with her. And Arlyn Studios, Lisa Fletcher, who is the one over there, she was so great to work with and the space over there was just amazing. So I think it’s about being at the right place and the right time when it comes to these things. And just being well connected and just staying in touch with those relationships that you do have. And say hey this is something I’m really passionate about. And the reason we had it at Arlyn Studios is because this is something we’re all really passionate about. Good music. And so to do it in the recording studio with Willie Nelson, Gary Clark Jr, all the best of the best who performed and recorded it was like a no brainer. Sean: Seriously. You kind of strike on something that I personally believe. I think that, like, I do definitely believe in luck. But you can definitely, if you work your connections and what you know, you can make luck work for you. My-Cherie: Oh sure. For sure. They say, I don’t know who the quote is by, but luck is when opportunity meets preparation. So if you’re prepared it’s gonna happen. Sean: Yes, I think that’s a great thing to touch on. So tell me also about being in the right place at the right time. But if you’re reaching out to clients, what do you offer as a sort of value proposition, for why they’d want to work with you. My-Cherie: Well I think that it has to do with maintaining professionalism, being professional, customer service is being key. Coming from Las Vegas, everything is about customer service – it’s a hospitality industry. I learned that every client is VIP. Every client is very important, If you treat them with professionalism and respect you will have a great relationship. And it’s also about your connections, knowing if a client reaches out and says hey I’d like to have this particular brand there, this particular artist there, I know oh well I know this person so let me reach out to them. So it’s about who you know and it’s so important, the relationships you do have, keep them flourishing and continue to network. So that you can get more people. Because I met more people doing this event, and you can stay in touch with them and develop more relationships. Sean: So speaking of brands, I did want to ask, how does working with a client with a brand differ from someone who is holding a private event? My-Cherie: Ok, so in terms of, for example, when I think about this question I think for example a brand, an artist or musician. When I want to throw a party for an artist or a musician, to promote maybe their new album coming out, well it would be done a bit differently versus a private event. For an artist you want promotional materials, CDs so you can give it out to to everyone there, you want a promotable hashtag, really push it even beforehand. Send out artist bio, send out info so they know what to expect. You really want to push the brand in that way. So you know once people come to the party even if they don’t know much about the party they are going to know by the time they leave. They will know. A private event, similar to the one we threw at Arlyn Studio, well we had a bit of a mix of artists who wanted to promote their brand as well but we also had sponsors. And the sports industry we wanted to promote them as well. We wanted to do things a little bit different. With a private event you can do a theme party. So we initially decided we were going to do a 70s throwback. We ended up not really have people dress up in costume. But if you wanted to, I did, I wore velvet bell-bottoms. Sean: Now that’s awesome, I wish I would have seen that. -both laughing- My-Cherie: And then you know you have your photo booth that you can set up so you can get your swag thing going on, so that you can give it to guests after the party. And also it will continue to know the brand. I definitely think the photo booth is all the rage now. Sean: Yeah I’ve seen a ton of those, there’s also these ones that produce .gifs My-Cherie: Yeah where you are just like, moving Sean: I’ve seen a ton of those too, they seem to be really big as well My-Cherie: They’re also huge. Sean: One thing I was kind of curious about was did you ever use the Snapchat filters? My-Cherie: Oh yes! Sean: You like those? My-Cherie: Oh yes, I love those! I’m a huge Snapchat fan . It’s probably because I have kids. And so I’m always putting them on it and sharing it with my friends in my group. And now they’re doing it on Instagram. Instagram has kind of pulled whatever they did on Snapchat. I don’t like it as much but eventually it will be as seamless as Snapchat. It’s not as fun. Snapchat is fun. Sean: Yeah it has all of the different filters and features, I feel like Instagram is right now just proto-Snapchat. My-Cherie: Yes, I know! -both laugh- Sean: Yeah, they have some work to do, but it could definitely be a competitor. My-Cherie: Definitely. Sean: So tell me, what are some challenges that you face when you planning event, like when there’s a client, what are some things you find you might run into? My-Cherie: Well I think that it’s really important that you meet the client’s needs. I really don’t know what those are until we’re actually starting to put everything together. One of the obstacles you will definitely face is dealing with the budget. When you’re throwing an event, you have to make sure that it’s within the budget. If you’re over, if you start planning all these things and want to meet their needs, the goal is to stay under budget. Not “okay this is how much, and I’ll meet it”. Go under – and everyone’s happy! Y’know? Sean: That’s smart. My-Cherie: I think making sure that the budget – it’s very important – because the money is just like a huge part of how an event is going to flow and how it’s going to happen. Sean: Great, great. So one thing, you did this event for SXSW, I was just curious – we’ve talked about using Snapchat, and Instagram. I was wondering if you noticed any other trends related to organizing events, like if there are any cool new innovations you saw at SX. My-Cherie: Oh there’s so many cool things. First,I just want to say the trend for any event- music, booze, and food – it’s the perfect combination! -both laugh loudly- My-Cherie: It’s true, think about it, if there’s music, booze, and food, everyone’s going to be happy. You don’t have to worry about that. I mean, the guests are going to be happy. There’s other things going on behind the scenes. They have to be worked out, but if that’s flowing, everything is kosher. Everything is good, yeah. Sean: It is funny, you think it’s such basic stuff, but so many people don’t realize it. My-Cherie: It’s basic. It’s so simply, y’know? It really is, when I was thinking about that question I’m like, you know, music booze and food people are going to be happy. Especially during SXSW, people come here for that. There are also so many layers of SXSW. There’s film, there’s interactive, there’s tech, so we planned our party during the tech on Friday. Which was perfect timing, because that’s when everybody is getting ready to RAGE, I guess. -both laughing- My-Cherie: But it doesn’t really matter if it’s film, everybody still loves music. So what I found, throughout all of SX, I did all 10 days even with my kids on Spring Break. We did stuff at Fader Fort, yeah I just decided that I was going to immerse in it all because for the last 11 years I’ve been doing sX. For the last 11 years I’ve seen it grow exponentially. Sean: Yeah seriously, it’s gotten huge. My-Cherie: It’s just crazy how much it’s grown and what I’ve noticed more than anything, we’ve talked about the photo booths – everything is super interactive. Very hands on, they even have these, I think it’s called V… Sean: VR? My-Cherie: Yeah, VR, so it’s the new thing where you put these things on and then you’re actually in this whole, thing, and it’s just 3D and it’s really amazing so I think that tech has grown so much, and also, people’s attentions span have decreased a lot too. Sean: Really? My-Cherie: yeah, everyone is like, -she snaps – what’s next what’s next what’s next. They’re all moving on to the next thing. But I just think, the trend I’d just say for the 11 years of SXSW, the biggest trend is just to have music, booze and food. And we had Maudie’s Tex Mex, shout out to Maudie’s Sean: Oh man that’s awesome My-Cherie: Yeah because they represented! We had Maudie’s at that party and everyone was like, happy! Sean: It’s hard to imagine how they couldn’t have been! My-Cherie: So true. Sean: So, just kind of bouncing off of that, you said people’s attention spans have decreased, I would totally agree with that. I think that’s probably the biggest challenge. How do you find – do you just think that the music/booze/food, that sort of “holy trifecta”, do you think that’s enough to keep people’s attention? My-Cherie: I think that, I think that it is enough, I think that if you give them, the showcase that we did at Arlyn, we didn’t keep everything the same, we mixed it up, we went from oh – Playing For Change, which was this amazing band, they’re from all over, and the organization is a nonprofit, and Whitney who founded it, it’s just mind blowing what she did, I think you just have to mix. it up and keep people entertained. So we threw in people with the world music, and then we had the blues, then reggae, then we ended with country so I think that aesthetically meeting all of the needs of the guests is like really important, you know, like drinking, food, music, and switching that up. Feeding all the senses, then they can move on to the next thing. And there’s so many events that are happening at SXSW, you’re never going to get bored there because there’s constantly things happening in the city the entire ten days. Sean: That’s the trick! My-Cherie: For sure. Sean: And then, just one last thing, do you have any advice, we have a lot of newer event organizers who listen to Ticketbud Tidbits – what would be your biggest tip for retaining clients, and also, I know you have a lot of connections and stuff, but like, when you first got to Austin. You wanted to do an event. How did you actually make that first step, y’know, the first step is kinda the hardest. My-Cherie: Yes Sean: How would you recommend to newer event organizers to make that first step. My-Cherie: I think that because I am a fearless person, it’s like, oh yeah it’s easy you just go up to the person so I want to look at it from the standpoint of someone else. Honestly I don’t think that you can’t be in this industry unless you have a personality. You have to have some personality, you have to have some charisma. So you need to be able to go up to someone and say hi, my name is My Cherie and this is what I do and I would love for us to connect. So it’s really just taking the extra step to introduce yourself to someone that you know is in the industry. And when you network, pick what your genre is, you know, like if you really want to throw events that have to do with music, then you network with music people, you network with the entertainment industry. And you go to those meetups and you go to LinkedIn and you find those people on LinkedIn and match up. If you wanted to do nonprofits, like I did an event for New Milestones Foundation so that was really great it was a nonprofit that deals with mental health. And I volunteered with Fims for Sims before . I’ve done the nonprofit side before. So if this is really what you love to do, you connect with those in the nonprofit industry. So you pick what genre you’re really passionate about, and then you connect with those people. How you find those people you gotta do your research, go to those meetups and Linkedin. You say I’d really like to meet this person, find them and meet them for coffee, or go to where they’re going to be speaking or to an event that they’re having. It takes being proactive, you need to take the step, the actions toward making that happen which I think is so important. So I was thinking about what really inspired me, and I read a lot of books, but I really love Malcolm Gladwell- Sean: Oh yeah he’s awesome. My-Cherie: Right? Sean: Have you listened to his podcast? My-Cherie: Nooo, I don’t listen to his podcast! Sean: You should check it out it’s super cool. My-Cherie: I need to do that. Sean: I know, promoting a podcast within a podcast is so meta, but Malcolm Gladwell, his Revisionist History, is really great, you should listen to it. My-Cherie: I’m going to do that, I’m glad that I brought up his name, because he really changed my life, and Seth Godin. They both changed my life in terms of in terms of action, and well, Malcolm Gladwell, with the Tipping Point, and Seth Godin with Tribes, and who’s in your tribe, and when you think about that and you think about authors who are successful and worked and been in this industry and been around these people, and you see how these things start to happen. But you can’t unless you’re actively involved in reading this information and doing these things. Sean: Ha, yeah my mom was always like, “A turtle only moves ahead by sticking out its head” My-Cherie: Yeah, you gotta do that, you know, I grew up in a small town in South Carolina, and to even be in Texas, to even be in Austin, which is kind of small. But I’ve lived in Las Vegas, I’ve lived in LA, I’ve lived all over. And at a certain point, if you don’t ask, you will never know. So it’s just being bold and fearless and taking that step into something that you’re passionate about. Sean: I think that that’s an awesome ending point. Thank you, My-Cherie, for speaking with us on Ticketbud Tidbits. I really appreciate it. My-Cherie: Thank you so much Sean, this has really been awesome. I really appreciate it as well. Sean: Alright, well thank you all for listening, and we’ll have another one next week. Thank you. Bye! My-Cherie: Bye!]]]]> ]]>

How to Book An Artist For Your Event

If you’ve run an event or managed a venue in the past, you’re likely familiar with the general booking process. But if you haven’t booked an artist for a performance before, there are a few pieces that are specific to artist bookings that you might not realize. Because of the process involved with booking an artist and the additional requirements that artists have (such as equipment) that other entertainment may not, it’s important to understand some of these differences.

Today, we’re going to take a look at some of the details you might not know about artist bookings; not only that, but we’ll also explore how to get the most out of your artist booking. Let’s get started!

Venue and Date

An artist’s fee can also depend on when you want them to appear at your event or venue. Artists often charge more for weekend and holiday bookings; weekday bookings are a little less costly.

If the artist isn’t on tour, that means that additional costs (travel, hotel, etc.) could go up. As an event planner, you’ll still be expected to cover the artist’s hotel and travel costs, but if the artist will already be in your area, it won’t be as expensive as it would if you’re flying them across the country.

If you’re planning an event and haven’t yet selected a venue, one thing to consider is whether or not it has the equipment in-house that the artist will need; for example, a PA system, a sound board, a stage (or extra space for a stage), and so on. If the venue doesn’t have all this equipment, it’s not necessarily a deal-breaker, but you need to be aware that whatever the venue can’t supply, you may have to in order to fulfill the artist’s requirements. The exact equipment you’ll need depends on the artist, of course, so if you already have an artist in mind, you can reach out to their agent to ask for the artists rider while you’re searching for a venue. That way, you can match what your potential venues have in terms of equipment against what the artist requires.

Understand the Artist’s Costs

When trying to figure out how much you can spend on an artist for your event or venue, you need to keep in mind that their performance fee isn’t the only expense you’ll have to cover. On top of that, you’ll also have to cover the cost of all the requirements specified in their contract rider, the cost of their travel and hotel (and the group they’re traveling with), the cost of any equipment the artist might need that the venue doesn’t already have, the cost of transportation to and from your event or venue, and any food or drinks the artist and their group will need while they’re in town.

A lot of event planners assume that these costs are part of the artist’s appearance fee, only to get a nasty surprise when they realize they have to pay extra money that they didn’t budget for. You can put in what’s called an “all-in offer”, which means that the offer includes the price of travel. You will do this during the negotiation phase when you are locking in the artist.

Understand the Booking Process

Unless you’re dealing with an artist with little to no profile (or an artist who handles all their business arrangements personally, which is rare), you likely won’t have direct contact with the artist during the booking process. More commonly, you’ll be working with the artist’s agent- the agent typically handles all of their client’s bookings, and they’ll be able to work with you on scheduling, negotiations, and the contract process. (In some cases, you may end up dealing with the artist’s manager, but the process is still the same.)

Before reaching out to the artist’s representatives, you need to know your budget, the date of the event, and the venue where the event is taking place. Not providing this information up front can send a clear signal to the agent that you’re not serious about your offer, so it’s important to provide as much information as possible- especially if you haven’t worked with them before.

Once you’ve reached out to the agent and confirmed their client’s availability (and that your budget is in line with what their client normally charges for a performance), the next step is to prepare an offer and send it to the agent. The offer simply puts in writing everything that you’ve discussed with the agent up to that point: how much you’ll pay for the performance, when and where it will be held, who is responsible for travel and rider, and so on. It’s also important to note that the first offer you send may not be accepted- it’s just the first step in the negotiation process, as an agent works to get the best terms for them and their client.

If the booking process seems like it may be too time consuming for you to go through, you may consider hiring a talent buyer, also known as a middle agent. A middle agent will act as a go-between for you and the artist’s agent, so you don’t have to spend as much time on the back-and-forth during the booking process. Talent buyers usually charge 10% or more of the overall amount of the deal for their services, though, so they’ll be less concerned about negotiating a rate that’s fair for you and more concerned about getting the deal done- even if it’s way more expensive than you would like. So if you want to make sure you get the artist for the lowest price possible, you may want to do the legwork yourself so you can have a bigger say in the negotiation process.

Know the Negotiation Process

Knowing how to negotiate an artist’s fee can also make a huge difference in the amount of money you spend on their performance. Just because an artist quotes a particular fee doesn’t necessarily mean you should pay it, nor does it mean that they expect to receive it. Being willing to negotiate on their fee can save you a lot of up-front costs. The negotiation process is where you can also try and bundle some of the expenses together; for example, paying the artist a higher fee to perform with the understanding that they’ll be responsible for their own travel, accommodations, and transportation (you’ll still likely be responsible for providing the equipment). In any negotiation, though, you have to know when to push and when to ease off.

In the end, it’s really a matter of what you want your event to look like that will dictate the artist you book and the arrangement you make with their representatives. If it’s really important that you have a specific artist at your event or venue, then you have to know how much you can afford to spend for that particular artist (and whether the venue can handle that artist’s requirements). And by keeping some of these potential additional costs in mind, you’ll still have a good shot at putting together a great experience for the people attending – without going over your budget.


Billy Bones is the marketing director at Bookingagentinfo.com, which provides event planners with the contact info for the official agents, managers, and publicists. He also runs Celebrity Endorsers which helps businesses identify celebrities to work with based on their brand endorsements, interests, and charitable contributions.

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2 Huge Reasons Why Events Fail

Some events just fail. As an event planner, you know that no battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy. Or, in this case, no marketing or meeting plan ever survives contact with your potential customers and attendees. Despite the gloomy subject, you can learn from those who have made mistakes before you and ensure that your event is successful. This might also give you a good chance to look over what you’re doing for your event right now and optimize it.

Personally, I want every event to be successful because events are supposed to be enjoyable. Nobody ever makes an event hoping that everyone is going to have an awful time! Unfortunately, some event planners and organizers get so caught up in the details of the event that they stop to think about some important topics, such as: what kind of people do I want to go to my event? Have I talked with these people to actually see if they want to go, rather than just thinking they will? Have I created precautions for within the event itself so that if anything goes wrong, I can fix it?

Needless to say, there is no one reason why an event might fail, or might lose attendance in later years. However, these topics I’ve brought up will help you realize the two most common pitfalls,  how to avoid them, and finally how to use them to your advantage. I’ll discuss them more here: the value proposition, and re-marketing.

1. The Value Proposition

The concept known as the Value Proposition (capitalized because of how important it is) is the Holy Grail of marketing. It doesn’t matter what product you’re selling or buying – it rears its head. What it all comes down to is this: what is the value that someone gains from going to this event? For the more mathematically oriented people, the equation for the VP is as follows:

Benefit – Cost = Value Capture

Let’s walk through this really quick, and then you’ll understand why events can and do fail. You’ll also realize why some events are wildly successful.

Benefits are exactly that – what does the attendee gain by going to an event? Do they get to see awesome speakers, listen to bands they enjoy, learn important material related to their career or hobbies, and so on? There needs to be a proper benefit.

Costs are all costs associated with going to the event. Travel, opportunity cost, monetary cost, mental costs are all part of the costs. Some costs cannot be avoided, as nothing is free in this world.

Value Capture. If the total benefit is greater than the total cost of the event, then there is value in the person going. You want this to be positive. Events with a negative value capture are going to be events that fail, ones with high amount of value capture will succeed.

Now, there are a lot of reasons why an event might not do well. 1. The benefit is weak. People aren’t going to want to go to a chili cook off where there’s only 2 or 3 kinds to try, or to a conference on events done by someone who hasn’t made a name for themselves, or where the itinerary is weak. 2. The costs (real and imagined) are too high. Having an event during the weekend of Halloween when your target audience has children is going to be an abject failure. Having an outside event when it’s below freezing is going to be bad for everyone involved unless that’s the point of the event. Charging $200 to go to a concert with two average or has-been bands will be a failure.

When it comes to crafting a strong benefit and value capture, it helps to know all about your target audience. As you can likely intuit, benefits that appeal to one audience are not likely to appeal to another. By making sure you have the best benefits available relative to your target audience, you’re sure to hit the bullseye! You can also measure your event marketing success too, if you want. So, now you know – develop a strategy to make sure that there is a positive benefit to going to your event, even despite the costs associated. It will not only prevent your event from failing, it will make it succeed.

2. Remarketing

Although events might sell out the first year, there are events that begin to hemorrhage attendees and money. Finally, they have to close because they lose a lot of money and are no longer profitable. Part of the reason as to why this happens is because the event does not do a good job of remarketing to its attendees.

Simply put, remarketing is the process through which you reach out to previous customers to encourage them to purchase again from you. A lot of people think that once you’ve sold something to someone, you don’t need to ever worry about them again. How far fro the truth this is! There is the simple maxim in marketing that it costs more to acquire a new customer than it does to retain a current customer. This is where you get the concept of Lifetime Customer Value (LTV). If your tickets cost $60 and an average customer goes 2 years, they’re worth $120, plus maybe they also purchase merchandise and/or donate. It’s worth so much more to spend a little extra on retaining that customer, so maybe they might go for 3 years instead – an easy extra $60.

I cannot stress enough how events need to remarket to their attendees if they want to succeed and be profitable for future years. By getting an email list, you can alert people a month before the next event. You can also email them after the event ends to thank them for coming. You might try offering them a discount on next year, or some other additional benefit to make them want to come again. A lot of huge festivals offer different pricing structures – ACL, for example, has a lower price at the start when you don’t know the artists playing. As they get revealed, price goes up! Same goes for South By Southwest, another Austin event. They do timed purchases, so the earlier you buy in, the cheaper.

Failing to reach out to previous customers is another huge reason why events can fail. Not building hype from year to year can be disastrous. Turn it instead into advantage, and you will reap additional revenue you wouldn’t have otherwise.

As an aside, I wanted to mention Attendee Experience. There are so many things to think about when it comes to attendee experience, because it truly makes or breaks any event. It’s worth an article in and of itself! Some ways you can improve your Attendee Experience are by providing super customer service for events, as well as engaging attendees after the event ends. You can also take action by getting surveys during the event.

In conclusion, there are two big reasons why an event can fail – they fail to have a relevant benefit versus the cost for their target audience, and they also fail to remarket their event for future years. However, by instead employing both of these techniques, you can instead ensure your event’s success.

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Ticketbud Tidbits Podcast Episode 2 – Anne Johnson

Kayhan: So today we have Anne Johnson the associate producer and general manager of the Armadillo Christmas Bazaar. Thanks for being with us today Anne.

Anne: Thank you for having me!

Kay: So can you tell us a little bit about Armadillo Christmas Bazaar? Its history, what it is, give it a quick breakdown.

Anne: Yeah so the Armadillo Christmas Bazaar! We are in our 42nd season in 2017. It started at the Armadillo World Headquarters which closed before my time, but from what I’ve heard its the jumping off point for Austin being the live music capital of the world. You know, it was where Frank Zappa, Willie Nelson, just a bunch of huge bands started coming to Austin to play here. The Headquarters closed in the early 80’s as they were having some financial troubles and Bruce Willenzik wanted to start the Armadillo Christmas Bazaar to try and fund the World Headquarters. And they had to shut down but the Christmas Bazaar has lasted for 42 years since then.

Kayhan: What’s it like inside the Christmas Bazaar? Is it a place for you to enjoy music and for you to go in and do some interesting holiday shopping?

Anne: We have like 160-something artists,  130 booths with, you know handmade fine art to gift items. We are probably 75% Austin local, and probably 25% national with award winning artists making things you can’t find in Austin easily. So you can buy gifts, you can buy fine art, we have 3 bands that play a day so over an 11 day show you have 33 bands. And if you include the little kids band you have 34 for the show. So you have music playing, you can come in you can shop and you can listen to music. We have 2 full bars so you can have a drink while you’re shipping. I think it’s just such a better atmosphere to go shopping, and it’s so much more Austin than going to a mall. It’s stressful, you have to find parking, and getting there is hard, and you’re running around. For this, you come in, you grab a beer, walk around with your friends. It’s almost a gallery /shipping / bar / music experience.

Kayhan: So how did you get involved into the event industry and specifically Armadillo Christmas Bazaar?

Anne: So I got involved with the industry because of the Armadillo Christmas Bazaar. My dad and the producer Bruce were best friends in the 70’s hanging out at the World Headquarters together. My dad had been the night manager there and he still is [at the Christmas Bazaar]. So my Christmas has always been around the Armadillo Bazaar.

Every Christmas Eve I’ve always been at the Armadillo. Our whole Christmas revolved around it. We’d be there ‘till midnight and then we would come home. And Santa came to our house first! So we’d open presents that night and sleep all day Christmas day. That’s how it is for my niece, she’s 15 now and she’s spent every Christmas Eve at the Christmas Bazaar. We trained her this year so she’s going to be working her first job there next year. So Bruce asked me to work, as I was just finishing up with my comm degree at Texas State. Bruce asked me and a few other girls, if we were interested, to come in and mentor with him and of course I said yes. They kind of dropped one person every year and it just came down to me. After that he said “I want you to run the show. I want this to be your thing. It’s ingrained in you.” And I took leadership so I will be running the show whenever he doesn’t want to anymore.

Kayhan: So it really sounds like it’s something near and dear to you and something you grew up with. As an event producer, when you have that, how do you deliver something new and fresh every year while still honoring the traditions? At the same time trying to hit growth numbers and everything else you worry about?

Anne: That’s an interesting question, and one I haven’t completely figured that out yet. When I first started with him (Bruce) 8 years ago I had all these grand ideas of “we could do this, and this, and this”, and those things went to the back while I was learning the ins and outs of how it was already going. I’ve been focusing on that more but I am definitely looking into new and fresh and how to evolve. And that’s critical. It’s how Bruce has been doing it. It’s hard when you’re trying to do everything. It’s a challenge and I set goals every year. You know, “we should have this many new bands”. It’s hard because the show is so family oriented, and the show is a family and this is a culture. We are a tribe. And when you say, “we need to freshen it up” to the person who’s been doing the show for 41 years that isn’t really relevant. It doesn’t work that way. We ask them to bring in what Austin is looking for. It’s tough. We try to refresh it, every year we bring in new things. However I haven’t quite figured out the whole answer to it yet.

Kayhan: So imagine five years from now: what is the Armadillo, what is new 5 years out. What in a perfect world would you add or edit to make it as relevant as its always been.

Anne: Well the fact is that we’re living in Austin and that Austin is changing so much every year. I mean, I was born and raised here and sometimes I feel like a visitor with all the new places coming up and trying to keep up with that and the pulse of the city is going to be goal. it’s nice to have an art show where you can bring in new artists. i go in the spring its my favorite type of the year because you can go visit art shows and see what the trends are. visiting them and keeping an eye on them to see what other shows and artists are doing to grow. We have to grow with the city.

Kayhan: So a big part of the strategy is that you’re understanding what’s going on in your space and making sure that you’re on trend and have a pulse on what’s going on in the city.

Anne: Exactly.

Kayhan: Part of being a producer is dealing with the stress of these big, publicly facing events. As you prepare for this major event which happens during a holiday season, I’m sure your priorities change. What’s on your priority list as things happen from 90 days out, vs 60 days out, vs 30 days out?

Anne: So 90 days out, I guess we are focusing on the artists and making sure that they have everything they need to come in. They build their own space and we work really hard because the atmosphere of our room and the ambience is especially important as you’re doing an event in a convention center. You don’t want people to walk in and feel like it’s every other event thats been done there. We turn off the overhead lights and make the artists light their own booths. And so it has a warm, friendly, cozy feel and it transforms the space so we have to work really hard with the artists so they’re on the same page and it’s cohesive.

60 days out it’s more marketing. When the artists contact us to to get their lighting at this stage we go “oh my God”. We just shifted our focus to marketing  and we help as much as we can. But definitely we focus on our ad agency and our PR company to make sure we get all of our announcements out so the public knows what’s going on.

30 days out just goes to production. You know, “do we have everything we need”, ordering a lot of online orders for parts and making sure we have our inventories of our storage and employees making sure we have staffing we need for show. And for me that’s when life stops: 30 days out. I live 25 miles from the convention center and that’s too far for me to work 18 hour days so I move into a hotel room in downtown. I have to make a list of places that I can eat as I’m a celiac and so sometimes eating out can be hard for me, so I have a list of places I can eat downtown. So if I need to find something with a snap of a finger, I just need to make sure everything is really close to me.

Kayhan: So the night before the event, what are you thinking about? Is there anything keeping you awake? Do you have any funny stories you have to share?

Anne: No you know Bruce is always asking me how I’m sleeping cause he says once you can’t sleep thats the sign you’re doing everything right and I’m like no! I don’t have a hard time sleeping before the event. I don’t have any trouble, I’m exhausted. You do have work nightmares and wonder if anything is going wrong. I’m pretty well organized and basically in November we stop taking new ideas and stop doing new things and it turns into making sure the things and I have all my due dates before then. between Nov and Dec I make sure I’m able to deal with the unexpected.

Kayhan: So at 45 days out you draw a line and from then on it’s all about execution.

Anne: Exactly. And then there’s always things that come up and that way you have your schedule and you can deal with the unexpected contingencies. I’m really excited, I sometimes say it’s like planning a groundhog day wedding for 40,000 people. You plan it all year long, it happens, and it’s over. The time that we’re open is super exciting you know, you get ready for what you’re working on all year long. I think it’s more exciting than nail-biting.

Kayhan: So let’s talk about the sort of marketing aspect, delivering the message to the potential audience. What has worked well for you in terms of media? Do you guys focus on TV commercials, radio spots – what seems to be the best way?

Anne: Well we do a lot of traditional media. We still do a lot of TV and radio and print and online and every year it’s getting more online. I’m not a TV watcher so I don’t always see our ads there. I am thinking the value [of TV] is decreasing year after year. This year I would like to turn all of our marketing and media buys upside down and try different things. I think this might work because we’ve been around for so long, that people that know us in Austin really know us. We need to figure out how to reach the people living here that don’t know anything about us. Austin is so interesting right now. With all these people moving here, I think they’re moving here because of our culture and what makes Austin is so great. But, we have to change those things to accommodate. It’s kind of bittersweet because you’re losing some of the traditional stuff and getting some newer things. It’s good for us because we could move. We’re not a brick and mortar, we can move. If we can’t pay rent we can move.

I wish I had more data to show you, but like I said the traditional media buying –  I’m ready to shake things up. I know there’s a lot of Geo Targeting. I’m going to work on that for this year.

Kayhan: So do you guys use any sponsorships or have any sponsors that you guys reach out to or try to acquire?

Anne: Mhm we’ve been working with Brown Distributing which is a local beer distributor. They’ve been around Austin for a long time. They’ve really helped us a lot with ideas, things that help the event. The more people that come in, the more alcohol they sell. They’re wonderful – I’ve been working with them the whole time we did the show.

We’ve been working with Sun Radio. Going back to one of our marketing things that work is really having reach. With KDRP and Sun Radio, and once they came out, everything they were playing was our lineup. And so we were listening and saying, “oh this is so cool someone is picking up on this they’re helping local musicians on tour stage”.

We developed a relationship and partnership with them. Their line up is exactly what we’re doing on their radio station. Not only do we have a monetary trade, they talk about us like we’re their best friends. They have a lot of love for us on our radio station. Having a sponsor that really believes in you and cares about your success is huge. That’s one of the best things we’ve done for marketing. Only goes as far as listenership, but it’s been really great for us.

Kayhan: So obviously the Bazaar is a Christmas event so how soon after one event do you begin planning for the next one?

Anne: As soon as possible. January we spend time wrapping things up, reconciling, accounting and taking down data. In February we just jump right into: what artists are we going to have this year. Yeah just starting all over again.

Kayhan: So wrapping things up what advice do you have for people out there who are interested in starting a career in the events industry.

Anne: That’s a hard question. Its really awesome if you love what you do and I guess that’s advice for anything. You have to be organized and passionate about what you’re doing because otherwise it turns into you being worried about the profit end of it. What Bruce has taught me is that it has to be a win-win-win situation for everyone. Of course we need to have enough money to continue every year and we have 160 people that depend on us every year to make this work. So for me it’s not a job about making as much money as possible and being as profitable, it’s about giving back to the community and being part of the community and something bigger as ourselves. It’s what drives me to be a better business person. Love what you do and let that translate into your event.

Kayhan: Thanks so much Anne for speaking with us and good luck in planning for 2017.

Anne: Thank you!

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Ticketbud Tidbits Podcast Episode 1 – Deidra Sibila

Kayhan: Welcome to Exchanges at Ticketbud. Today we have Deidra Sibila, Director of Ticketing at 3Can Events. Today, we are talking about behind the scenes stories, and best practices and advice from event professionals.  Today we have myself Kayhan Ahmadi, CEO of Ticketbud as well as Sean Burke, Director of Marketing. Kayhan: So Deidra, you built your career in the Ticketing and Events Industry. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself, a little bit about your career, where you started out, and what attracted you to this career path? Deidra: Sure, Well, I am a musician since I’ve been 6 years old. I played the Oboe and the clarinet and I went to college and knew I wanted to do something in music, but I didn’t want to perform because I wanted to play [Music] because I wanted to, and not because I wanted a paycheck. So I did the next best thing and doubled in music and business in college and got a music management degree, actually arts management with a music emphasis just from my background. And I when to school in Ohio, I’m from Cleveland, C-TOWN! And -laughing-, I had an internship at a 1000 seat capacity venue in downtown Cleveland in the flats called the Odeon, super rad place. It’s not there any more, well I think it is but they changed it, umm it was a great venue because we saw a lot of bands on the way up and we saw a lot of bands on the way down. Coldplay played there, we had Metallica, Nine Inch Nails, everybody. Maroon 5, I remember we had a bomb threat that day. Sean: Well I mean, it is Maroon 5. Deidra: -laughing- It was good because you had a lot of bands that came through that venue and then some other bands as they weren’t doing so, so well or later in their career.  But anyway, I got into the box office there and just kept down that slippery slope of ticketing and worked at the amphitheater across the river in Cleveland, which is about a five to six thousand capacity amphitheater. From Cleveland I moved to Phoenix and was the box office manager at the amphitheater in Phoenix, a twenty two thousand seat amphitheater outside. And then from there I went to Los Angeles and was there for seven years as the senior national director of ticketing for Live Nation Touring. So I was responsible for all the ticketing for any tour in North America. So if Jay-Z went out on tour I worked with them and the artist and with the management company, coordinated all the ticketing with all the different arenas rather than Jay’s people going to fifty different places they came to me. I went to fifty different places and went back. So that was great! And then from there I left Live Nation in 2013 and came to Austin to work with C3 Presents to do festivals – which is Lollapalooza in both North and South America. It’s in Chile, Argentina and Brazil and Chicago, now they have a couple other markets: Austin City Limits, the NFL draft, partnering with the NFL. and so I recently left C3 to do some freelance independant contract work with landed me this opportunity with 3Can Events and the Austin Trail of Lights. Kayhan: Very cool, very cool. So when an organization hires you, or contracts with you, what are they getting? What are you bringing to the table in terms of expertise that sets you apart from anyone else? Deidra: Well, aside from my wit and personality? Kayhan: Lovely personality. Deidra: -laughing- So I like to provide a couple different things. I think ticketing gives us a unique opportunity to work with a lot of variety of events. I’m a huge production nerd. That’s why I loved working on the tours with Live Nation, primarily focused on arenas and stadiums with the production and the different stage configuration. That’s what led me to the festivals and the other special events. I like the variety and getting into some of that technical production. So thats an area of expertise. I can work well with the Production Team on gate operations, setting up your fence. You’re selling this many tickets so I need a tent this big, then that means you need this many tables and this many chairs, so using some deductive reasoning and just special event planning in general no matter what the event is. It can be anything from a conference to a festival to a bake sale. You still still need some of those general event setup requirements. Also, working with the ticketing provider on building the events. I have a lot of extensive knowledge on a variety of ticketing softwares. I’m glad I got the opportunity to work with Ticketbud because that wasn’t one in my wheelhouse but it is now. Kayhan: Shoutout! Deidra: Yeah! So then the customer facing portion, making sure that’s easy for guests to purchase tickets. Assisting with customer service questions. Working with marketing making sure that the FAQ’s are in place on the website. Any brand messaging is consistent to what’s on the website. Sponsorship, helping with any sponsorship contractual obligations or media partner obligations as well as those all important VIP and industry guests. Sean: AHHH Yes! I do marketing [For Ticketbud] especially when it comes to those large term events, how do you help drive growth every year, and what do you think about growth: helping to drive it. How do you work with marketing and other departments as a ticketing professional. Deidra: Sure! I think it is a combination of your organization [event producer] and also the ticketing provider. ‘Cause if… you’ll get natural growth and word of mouth if it’s easy. If someone [Customer] is like,  “This was such a hassle to purchase a ticket. I was confused. I didn’t know what I was doing,” that could hinder your growth. But if it’s an easy process, “Oh I went ot trail of lights. I went to this. I went to that. It was so great. I bought a ticket badaboom badabing. It was great. Had a good time at the event.” It really starts from that first click on your website, or the first time that someone is going to purchase a ticket to when they walk out of your venue that night. Just creating that experience the whole way. And working with marketing like I said on the brand messaging. That it’s easy [ to purchase a ticket]. That your gate operations are easy. Working with security. You know if someone is standing in line forever, how did you help [alleviate] that. Making sure that it is an overall successful experience for the guest will [drive] some organic growth. With the trends of the industry and having the right product, something unique for your market, it’s a combination. Team effort. Kayhan: As a professional you have a long history dealing with these large scale events. We are talking about attendance in the hundreds of thousands. How do your skills, or how do your bag tools scale to handle such large volumes. Deidra: I don’t know, you’ve stumped me. Kayhan: It’s “gotcha” journalism. Deidra: -laughing- Kayhan: We practice gotcha journalism Deidra: -Thinking-. I don’t know. I just. Honestly I treat, like I said I treat all the events the same. It could be anything from 100 people to 100 thousand. I think if you have those same principals and fundamentals and some operational policies in place and give every event your all and care, that comes out organically depending on what the capacity is. If the planning is right in advance then it doesn’t matter how many people are there. Kayhan: Interesting. Sean: In terms of planning in advance, in addition to helping drive growth year over year, what are your main initiatives? What do you look at? Furthermore how do you implement those improvements for ticketing year over year? Deidra: I think looking at some of the data and the metrics that are presented year over year with the ticketing reports provided, sales trends. When are people buying? Are they buying right away or are they waiting also, in that middle, that sales trough period where you have a little bit of a lull. You do well when when you first announce and you do well when when you ramp up. What can you do in the meantime to keep interest. I think that’s a great way for social media to come into play and continues with some fan engagement, running special promotions, random VIP upgrades and get the fans talking about it.  So that’s a good way to create some growth is a little bit of self promotion from the fan’s perspective because they’re excited to come to your event and they are the best marketers that you have. Sean: Yep Deidra: Looking at the data. Ticket price analization. Did we see any price resistance? Factoring in your out the door costs when you have service charges, fulfilment fees also the fulfillment experience comes into it as well. Back to what you what you asked about the overall just general customer service. Kayhan: As you prepare for a major event, I’m sure your priorities change as you get closer and closer. What are you thinking 90, 60, 30 days out from your event. What changes? Deidra: Well my lack of sleep doesn’t change. I’m a big worry wart. I want it all to be top to bottom the first day we go on sale. I think as a ticketing professional, your focus shifts a little bit from the administrative side to the operational side as you get closer. It’s definitely an ebb and flow and that’s what attracts me to the position. There is no day that is the same and no day that is predictable. I think I’m still working off of a checklist from 1998 of things to do today that you just never get to because it changes every day. Planning for the on sale, again working with your respective departments on messaging. Making sure your ticket header has the right date on it. Things of that nature. You get into that intense system level before you go on sale with all the event building and coordinating with your ticketing provider. Then once you’re on-sale you crack a beer and then when you finish that ahah you go into the on-sale maintenance. Depending if your event sells out or not you could kinda taylor what your activities are. But then as you get close again keeping that social integration. Working on any fulfillment opportunities. Staffing comes into it. Making sure your staff is adequately prepared, trained, right amount of people for the event.  Shifting into those operations. Ordering your tents and windows and ticket stock and all those fun things. Kayhan: So the night before, what are you thinking about what’s keeping you awake the day before the gate opens? Any real stories or experiences you would like to share? Deidra: Oh man! Honestly the night before I usually feel great cuz you have done what you should. You’re like, “Let’s do this. Let’s do it! Do that damn thing.” Kayhan: What about 30 minutes before start time? Deidra: Eye of the tiger. Sean: I was gonna say…. Kayhan: -laughing- Sean: I was gonna say, we were gonna ask you if you have any pre show traditions but you kinda spoiled it. You said you crack a beer before hand? Deidra: No that’s when you are on sale. You’re like “Hallelujah!” I like listening to the Eye of the Tiger. -laughing- Sean: You know, that’s a good one. That’s probably the best… I’ve always said that Rocky IV is the best parable for the Cold War. Deidra: No, it’s good it’s exciting. Pre show meetings with your staff, security make sure everybody is ready to go. Like I said if you’ve done all your legwork then it’s more excitement than nervous. You’re excited to have people come to the show and see what you’ve been working on. Kayhan: So you’ve talked about your bag of tools, specifically trying to get sponsors involved and this is, can be a big pain point for event organizers especially new event organizers. What difficulties do you encounter or can you help resolve when getting sponsors involved? Deidra: Oh man, am I allowed to say this? Kayhan: You don’t have to name names. Sean: Just like anything, just in general about trying to get sponsors. Are there any tips you suggest when you are trying to get a sponsor? Deidra: Well I don’t get the sponsors I leave that to the sponsorship people that are the most important people on earth. We all, we couldn’t do some of the things without sponsors. I think part of the challenge is maintaining the expectations of what has been communicated to outside parties and what you can actually do. Sean: Yeah that makes sense. Deidra: And working on finding that sweet spot that helps fulfill those promises and is a great partnership for everybody. Sean: What advice, again a lot of our listeners are newer to the event industry, do you have any advice for people out there who really want to start out in the event industry. Start doing what you do? Deidra: Sure! You have to like to get yelled at by guests. And…. -laughing- Deidra: We joked about this at lunch, but you like to be a behind the scenes player because it’s definitely a thankless position. And think…I’m modest, and my family always says, “Oh you’re so modest.” They think it’s really cool when you’re like, “I’m just doing my thing.” Ya know, I don’t really think of it that way. If you are here to get all the glitz and glamour, then be a booker. Because you’re not going to do it by being a ticketer. We are the lifeline of events in the organization. And it’s cool, it’s a little bit of a silent partner. We are always last to the table but we all know what we put forth in it. So it is a little bit of an unspoken cult I think. Kayhan: So for these big annual events, how soon after the event ends do you start planning for the next year? Deidra: I thought you were going to say,  “Start Drinking!” All: -Laughing- Deidra: Bottle of Fireball on hand, at all times. Umm, a lot of people like to strike while the iron is hot. You’ve had a fantastic experience, you’re coming off a high, you saw your favorite band, you had a great time with your friends, you flew in with your family or whatever the case may be. For some of the larger events that are more annual I think it could be anywhere from the next week to, say, the next month. For tours it’s a little different because that’s more on a cycle. You can’t put something on sale right away because now [the artist] are going to Europe or the artist is pregnant, or something is changing. The only exception I will say to that is One Direction. One year when the first came on the scene, and we did like a 50 date North American tour and went on sale on Friday, blew out immediately…that was for 2014?…. And we were on sale for 2015 by the following Friday. Kayhan and Sean: Wow! Deidra: So that was definitely an exception in terms of a tour where I’ve done that but with festivals or other events it is immediate. Those One-D girls love… Sean: One other thing that we were discussing earlier, especially in regards to gun laws and bathroom laws, if you want to elaborate more on that, just like, the new challenges in ticketing that you haven’t seen in years past but now are very important, things you have to be cognizant of as you plan and do ticketed events in 2017 and beyond. Deidra: Yeah definitely! I think that ticketing has evolved so much. You are not just some crabby lady behind a glass window anymore just selling tickets and pulling a shade down that says, “SOLD OUT.”  You are the face of the event, you are at the heart of the venue. Whether it’s a field or festival, or a theatre, museum, anything. People are coming through your front door first, so you are the face of the event. You have to be prepared in today’s climate, it’s sad, but to deal with…issues. You see someone looking suspicious outside of your venue, what is your plan to thwart that activity? Gun laws, especially here in Texas is something that’s new to me and something that I’ve been more cognizant of. You know, [Texas] has an open carry policy, but you can’t bring it to our events. How do you work with our security team, with your Guest Services and Crowd Control, and your Staff to help explain that to somebody that has a gun, so that they don’t get mad and pull it out and pop it off, ya know. That’s extreme obviously, but it’s something that we have to think about. So, it’s related to ticketing because it’s a customer service area, and as ticketing professionals we deal and a lot of what we do is customer service. A lot of it is Excel and numbers and analytics, but a lot of customer facing as well: Developing policies with your event organizers and your security and your staff on how to handle situations that come up in today’s climate.  And with Social Media: Facebook Live and things like that, how do you work on keeping bad things off, OR conversely using [social media] to your advantage. Like the active shooter situation in Ohio State last year. They used Facebook to help make students aware of what was happening. Can you use [Social Media] with your event organizers so that they can notify the rest of the guests.  If you are at the main stage you might not know something is going on at the main entrance, BUT if it gets real, you could know, and we have to take some serious action. Kayhan: What are your parting words of wisdom for us? Deidra: Parting words of wisdom? It’s a great industry. I love being a ticketing professional. I’ve made friends all over the country through it. You get to work with a lot of ticketing software. You, like I said earlier you are the hub of the organization and that’s cool. So you inherently learn marketing elements and sponsorship pieces, the production that I mentioned, the operations. It’s a super cool and unique position to be in and the sky’s the limit. You can get hooked up with an Artist, you can do a festival, you can be a ticket provider, or you can be down with the Ticketbud, or… -laughing- I mean, you can, you can do anything. And it’s not just typing a command and spitting out a ticket anymore. You are in the technology space with digital ticketing and dynamic pricing and a lot of different trends that are in the industry. It’s I think a lot more of an elaborate field than people realize…. Was that Wisdom? Sean: I’d say that’s definitely wisdom. Kayhan: I’d say so. Thank you very much Deidra Deidra: Thank you! Happy Ticketing!  ]]]]> ]]>