- This says it's preparing the live show for us
to get started so, I think we're gonna be ready to rock
for another amazing episode for EventIcons.
Alex, are you ready to do an amazing episode of EventIcons
as well?
- I am, I am very excited for today's episode.
Today, we are talking about mega events,
televised events, they're some of the most challenging
events to produce, and today we have one of the most
formidable event producers in the business.
Paul Winston has worked on incredible events
like the National Memorial Day Concert,
Capitol Forrest Concert, both of which
you can see every year, televised on PBS.
He's also worked on the World Police and Fire Games,
the Olympics, the Superbowl, and event events
for the State Department.
And today, we'll find out just what it takes
to produce mega events like those,
from one of the best in the industry.
So, let's get to it.
(funky music) - It's Wednesday
at 5:00 PM Eastern, so you know what that means.
It's time for another episode of #EventIcons.
Presented by Endless Events, the show where you get to ask
the icons of the events industry anything.
Use the question panel on the webinar
to submit your questions, or you can hop on Twitter,
submit your questions with #EventIcons.
We'll be answering your questions live
during the entire show.
Before we get started, the more people we have watching,
the better conversation we can have.
So please help share #EventIcons on Twitter
and Facebook, just tell your friends to watch
at www.Event-Icons.com.
Now, without any further delay, this is #EventIcons.
- As I've mentioned, Paul Winston is the owner
of Razor Marketing and Management.
He is an event professional, he'll oversee largest events
on the largest scale, on the international stage,
under the most difficult conditions,
and demanding timelines.
Does that sound about right, Paul?
- Yeah, yeah, who wrote that? (laughing)
- So-- - And I think
the fun fact about Paul is that, we were just talking about
this right before we went on air,
is that you hit over 1,200 nights at Marriotts stayed,
so that just shows you how much you're working all the time.
- Yeah it's like I said my stuff lives in Houston
more than I do, I spent in 2016,
I spent more time working in Africa
as I did my house in Houston. (laughing)
- Now, I am very fortunate because I have had
the opportunity to actually work with Paul
when I was in grad school, and see first hand
how he does everything, so today by the end of the hour,
hopefully you will have an idea of kind of what it takes
to do these huge events.
So, the first question we always ask
our first-time guests on the show, Paul,
is what got you into the events industry?
And if you weren't in the events industry,
what would you be doing? - I took
a kind of diverse route to get here.
I went to Texas A&M and studied architecture
and construction management.
And when I got out of school, I had a small design build
firm, and we did restaurants, night clubs, bars.
Lots of commercial spaces we designed and built.
And I played soccer in college, and played soccer
all over the world, in 1994, I was livin' in Dallas
and World Cup Soccer was coming around.
And I thought I would go in and volunteer,
and give something back to soccer which, again,
got me all over the world.
And went in for my volunteer interview,
and the guy sat down beside me, introduced himself.
And asked why I was there, and I told him.
And, why are you here, and he said,
trying to get my contract resolved.
And if I don't, today's my last day.
And he came out a little while later
and I had to go, and he said couldn't get it resolved
and so I quit, okay, la-dee-da.
And turns out, I was meetin' with the same people
he had just met with, turned out he was the project manager
for World Cup Soccer in Dallas
for the architecture, construction,
and the look of the games, and he quit.
And I happened to be the next one in the room.
And they were short a project manager,
and back in the day when we didn't have cellphones,
we had pagers. (laughing)
And I went back into the lobby
to return a couple pages and I asked
if I could come back in the room, I said sure.
And I figure they saw me through me,
and through like, no, no, no.
And they asked me how busy I was and I told them
I was gonna kind of volunteer for you guys all summer,
and work on my law, they asked if I wanted a job.
And I walked out of that volunteer meeting
with a job with the World Cup '94.
- Wow. - And from there,
my bosses at World Cup went on to the Atlanta Games
and they brought me over to the Atlanta Olympics
to head up the venue overlay planning.
You were in a stadium and you have to modify it
for the games, and I ended up
as Director of Facility Planning.
And from there, one of my guys from DC
and I ended up running one of Clinton's inaugural balls
and just really Forrest Gump. (laughs)
- So, you've worked on a ton of stuff.
- So much stuff. - If you had not had
that guy quit, and you had not fallen
for that job, what would you be doing right now?
(laughing) - I'm sure I would still
be doing construction management or something
along that lines, and I enjoyed doing that.
We said and we were talking before the show stared,
I had no idea this part of a career existed.
There weren't things in college at that time
about sports management or event management.
That didn't exist, and who knew
this world was even out there?
And like I said, Forrest Gump, I stumbled into it.
And here we are.
And for me, a lot of, the next question I always get
is well, those seem like two pretty different fields.
And they're not, if you think about going into architecture,
you're planning to build stuff.
And in the sports world, and in the event world,
we're doing exactly the same thing.
We're planning to build stuff.
We're planning to, how does it look?
If you come to me as an architect,
say, I wanna build a house, I'm gonna ask you
the same type of questions.
How many bedrooms, how do you want things to relate
to each other, it's the same thing
if you come to me as an event.
How many people, how many spaces?
What you want to accomplish so the pieces are the same.
Now, afterwards, you have to run and operate it.
But the planning process is much the same.
And all those, in architecture world,
it's called programming, you're programming your spaces,
you're programming, and it's exactly the same process
that we do now, and how we plan these events.
Before we ever start one, I've already built it in my head.
I already know how I'm gonna run it,
I already know how I want it to turn out.
You make changes along the way.
But it's just like architecture construction.
I've already built it in my head
before we ever start doing anything.
And so it's a very similar process.
- It's interesting hearing that because for me,
my background is in set design for film.
And it's very similar kind of idea.
People ask me all the time, how does that relate to events?
And I'm like, well, you're still planning
and you're still telling a story.
- Right. - Yeah,
so I love hearing that kind of parallel.
One of the things that I don't, and Will and I
were talking before the show, I don't think we've really
had anyone on the show like you,
working on the events that you work on.
They're very unique, a lot of them, the Superbowl,
World Cup. - They're so serious.
Like there's a lot of-- - Olympics.
They're a high-stakes-involved but also,
a lot of them are televised, especially the two concerts
that you work on every year, on the Capitol.
They're shared on the national stage,
you've got events on the international stage.
What are some of the challenges you experience
when tackling events with such high-pressure stakes?
- The biggest difference between
these live broadcast events, all live broadcasts
are the same but these really big mega events,
is you only get a shot to do it once.
And if you're not ready, you're not prepared,
then it shows.
And then the flip side of that is
that no matter how well you plan,
something's not gonna happen.
The example I always use of playing golf
is that the difference with me and a professional golfer,
we both hit the same ball, we both,
I can hit the ball in the woods with the best of anybody,
just need to see a professional golfer do the same thing.
The difference is he can get out of the woods
in one shot, and he knows how to hit that shot.
For me, I'm hacking away, hoping I get out.
And that's the difference on managing these events
is that stuff is going to go south.
A microphone's going to go dead.
A bus isn't going to arrive on time.
Something.
And you have the experience and the processes
to be able to fix it on the fly.
And make sure that nobody ever knows the difference.
And that's experience, and having a plan.
And again, build it in your head,
build it on paper, Alex, you've seen all the paperwork
we do for those things, we have an opps books
that outlines everything that's gonna happen.
And that's for a reason, that way everybody can look,
if you're doing transportation, this is what opps says.
So, you can cross-pollinate a little bit.
And when something goes south, you know all the parts.
And so you make your best decision to go on
and hope nobody notices. (laughs)
- Now, you know with-- - Funny.
- Go ahead, Will. - No, I mean,
I'm just like blown away, I think, well, first of all,
you've kind of highlighted a little bit on it, Alex.
And we kind of teased it a little bit
but Paul are you able to explain all of the types
of events that you can do, and kind of just go
through like, a little highlight reel.
Because I think that's one thing that people
need to understand too, like you mentioned
like the Capitol Concerts, which we're gonna talk
a lot about, you talked a little bit about the Olympics,
the World Cup, what were some of the other events
that you were doing so people can understand
like what are the kind of events
that they would se you working on typically?
- I've worked on, first one, big event I did
was World Cup Soccer, then I've done five Olympics.
And for LAN, I was in charge of all the venue overlay design
which is kind of not exactly true
but it's the way my job title read.
Pan-Am Games, Goodwill Games, five Olympics,
five Superbowls now, I've done two presidential
inaugurations, three or four democratic conventions now,
G8 Summit, Organization of American States summits,
bunch of White House and State Department summits.
We managed some 5K races for the transplant awareness.
So pretty much anything anybody wants to pay us for,
we will do. - That's so cool.
- We just finished Robert F. Kennedy's 50th Memorial Service
at this summer in Arlington Cemetery.
We got to do some really, really cool,
really, really cool events. - Out of all those events,
(laughing) what's--
- What was that? - Never heard
of any of those events, never heard of 'em.
- There are things no one's ever heard of.
- No, and the sad thing about, I've decided
I have to maybe admit that I'm getting old.
Like when we did the RFK, today, this came up,
we got it, blah, blah, blah.
And have of my staff said, who is RFK?
And then you just want to just, you know it's just like,
okay-- - What?
(laughing) - It's more than a name
on a stadium, you cannot come back to me
until tomorrow, until you've Googled him.
(laughing) - Yeah, there you go,
there you go, what's the, out of all the events
that you've done, we talked a little about
like the challenges, rough challenges with all of 'em
but what's the hardest event that you've ever had to work
like what's one that you were just like,
like obviously you've done a lot of these large-scale events
but was there one that like, surprised you
and you were just like, oh my gosh, so much work?
- There's all of 'em every time.
(laughs) 'Cause they all have
their own unique challenges.
Atlanta, when I got there in early '95,
and they hired me to come in and try to figure out,
there was a disconnect between the venue planning
and the construction planning, and construction
was saying everything was there,
venue management was saying things aren't there.
So, I got hired to kind of bridge that gap.
And we came up with, we being I, 'cause we researched
all of this, the Olympics at that time
were $1.8 billion and we came up with $100 million miss
on the venues, so the venue construction was $100 million,
we came up with, there was a, yeah, let me get this right.
The venue construction, yeah, we came up $100 million
miss, they gave me, in our department,
roughly $35 to $40 million and said fix that,
and fix everything else that we don't know is broken yet.
And so that being my first Olympics, and I had absolutely
no idea so I wasn't scared of it.
And that happened, that was huge.
Because we were in such a bad hole, a year out
we started the redesign of all the Olympic venues.
And somehow that all came together.
We had a great team, it was a great, great team all around.
And moving along, Vancouver opening ceremonies
was very hard, Salt Lake opening ceremonies
was very hard because it was four months after 9/11.
So, all of a sudden, all the security stuff kicked in.
And a whole new, the president was coming so a whole new
standard, and a whole new level had to happen.
Vancouver was tough, it was a downtown venue
with hockey next door, I had both of 'em.
In the center of a metro area.
It was a long, painful 18 months.
I went home, probably after a year,
I went home one night and finally thought,
god, I had a good day, we made progress.
Went back the next day and figured, man,
I must've drank at lunch or something
because yesterday sucked too. (laughing)
And I just, yeah, but in all of them,
they all have their own unique challenges,
their own unique things, the smaller ones sometimes
are just as hard as the bigger ones
because of resources and because of budget.
And with that being said, I'm very fortunate I get to go
places and be a part of things that people see on TV
or read about in the paper, and you're standing there
somewhere in the background, and it's just way cool.
- So, and I know it's gonna vary
but can you kind of give us an example
or what's the typical planning time frame
for some of these events?
- It depends, usually,
for me it could be just like for RFK,
if another company had it, they brought us in to help 'em
out, we did it in the full TV production and everything
in less than 10 days, that's what we had.
- Wow. - And it was a thing.
Most projects for me are probably in the year range.
And the Olympics, I used to get hired
a year to 18 months out, that's kind of the timeframe
where they're ready for my particular skillset
and level of compensation.
'Cause a lot of these events kind of work themselves
into a bind, and they don't wanna spend the money early on,
they think they have the expertise
and then the more and more they get into it
then they kind of look up and go,
yeah, well, yeah, we're in a little bit of trouble.
And for me, I wouldn't want to set an Olympic games
for seven years, that's just not what I do.
Coming into last year 18 months in, helping.
I'm fine with that, so, I'd say,
easy answer is six months to a year, somewhere on that.
And it just kind of depends on the event.
- Yeah, and now, you also worked with a lot of different
employees, and volunteers, and each product is different.
How big is your typical events team
and how do you manage so many people?
- For the concerts, under my direct,
what I would call my direct staff,
which you were part of, that's somewhere in the 40s
depending on the show, but also underneath me falls
access control which is another 20 to 30,
closer to 30 probably, and so my whole staff
is 70, 80 people when it's all said and done.
It's kind of depending on the show.
Others are 15 to 20, this depends on the gig.
And so what we have is what we call a staff enter sheet.
And which anybody has ever said, I've been on a plane,
I've been in a bar, talked to George Washington University,
gonna say we wanna be a part of it, please.
So we'll reach out to everybody at the start
of these things and say, hey, we're looking for people
for this type of day, and this type of gig.
And see who's interested, and see where we can fit 'em in.
And there's a lot of people that have worked with me
on these things for 15, 16, 17 years.
There's others I've been working with for 25 years now.
And kind of one of us gets a gig
and we call our friends. (laughing)
For me, you worked for us years ago,
four or five years ago, whatever that was,
you could step in today on any of our events.
It is the same planning process that we do over and over.
It changes by event because there's specialties.
You know every little event is different.
But the process is the same, the way we manage the events
is the same, you've sat in the trailer
and the office with us where I griped at everybody
about using the correct font,
where everything looks the same
because that's the level of detail that people look at.
And so it's bringing a lot of people on
and then it's just, quite frankly, it's teaching
people how to do their jobs and how to learn.
And we get a lot of young kids that are right out of school
and still looking for their first job.
And they'll stick around with us for two or three summers
at the Capitol and they go on to careers.
And we may catch up with them later on another event
but sooner or later, we just train and we teach,
and they learn. - Now you, working with
a lot of contractors like that, what do you look for
when hiring the right people?
- First thing is whether you're gonna annoy me or not
so that's always number one. (laughing)
- Well, I'm gonna loose this one then.
(laughing) - Yes.
I'm really good at doing these things.
My team and the folks that work around us
are all really good at this.
And you have to fit into our systems.
We don't know everything it is about what the technology
does, we don't know everything about power.
But I know how I need it to work,
I know how I want it to work, we have to be able
to fit into our systems, we don't know everything.
But there are reasons we do things the way we do.
And a lot of the answers that we get to doing events
at the Capitol, they're not the way we would do things
normally if we were in the middle of a field.
Same with RFK's memorial service at Arlington Cemetery.
Not exactly the way we would do some of the things
but it's their rules, their venue,
and so you have to abide by those.
And so the answer is that we would,
the processes sometimes are site-driven
versus what we would do if we were in the middle
of a field somewhere, and you come in,
and you look at it, the new folks,
and say, wow, that makes no sense.
The answer is yeah, you're right, it doesn't.
But this is the hand we're dealt.
It could be with an Olympics, the hand we're dealt
by the organizing committee, and in Vancouver,
it always happens in every country,
they limited the amount of Americans
that we could bring into work, so part of the team
I was gonna bring in for opening ceremonies,
we couldn't bring in, they would no longer issue visas
for 'em, which again, that happens all the time.
It's not a Vancouver thing.
And so instead we hired about 20 vocational tech kids
is what they let us hire, and we taught them
how to do the jobs, and it's a lot more work.
It's not as efficient but that's the hand you're dealt,
it's not the way we would do it.
So coming into a lot of these projects,
people have to understand there is a system,
it could always be better, but we got to these answers
for a reason and you just can't reinvent the wheel.
If it's a good idea, hell, we'll steal it and make it work.
But there's a lot of times that it just kind of,
guys, this is what it is, you're right, it's dumb.
But this is what it is.
- I love it, I'm also curious.
Like doing with the hand that you've been given,
and one of the big hands that you get
is the high level of security that's needed for these events
and obviously with being on the Capitol,
you deal with the Capitol police.
And I'm really curious because like, security
has been a huge trend this year.
What has been your biggest challenges
that you've experienced working with the Capitol police
on a security standpoint and what's been like your biggest
learning that maybe you've even
applied to your other events. - The Capitol police are great
and I work on, I've worked on the last two inaugurations.
So, last eight years up at the Capitol in inaugurations.
And then for 16, 17 years at the Capitol on the events.
And the leadership with Capitol police,
we've been very fortunate, is that
we have, with any place we go, Atlanta, or any Olympics,
anything since '96 when the bombs went off in Atlanta,
the safest way to have an even, the most secure event,
is not to have it at all.
So, then the next safest way is not to let
any spectators in, and/or just green screen 'em.
So those are never gonna happen.
(laughing) And so,
you've got to figure out and work the relationships
with the law enforcement, not only Capitol police,
we have senior military people coming.
So we have their advance teams we're dealing with.
We have members of the administration.
We're dealing with them also, so there's a lot of moving
parts to it, and the biggest piece
is having the relationships with everybody.
That they trust your judgment and they know
that you're trying to get to the same place
they are on the security, we won't have anything bad happen
to anybody, whether it's health,
whether it's trip and fall, whether it's safety.
Or whether it's something more sinister.
But we have a job to do as far as getting the crowd in
with the Capitol police, get them to their seats,
and the talent, and all of those things
it takes to run a show, so it's finding that balance.
And the Capitol police have been great about it.
They listened to my challenges, I listened to theirs.
Then we figured out a path that works for everybody.
It may not be exactly what they want,
it may not be exactly what we want.
But at the end of the day, we can get 'em done.
And it's the same challenges with working a presidential
event, whether the Secret Service
doesn't want anybody around anywhere.
But again, it's an event that the President's hosting
or the Secretary, and so you have to work out
where that line is and part of that is just reputation.
That they know you're trying to get to the same spot
they are and you're not trying to for lack of a better term,
just hoodwink 'em and just try to sneak something by.
And it works both ways.
So I've been very fortunate.
The thing that I've learned, not only from Capitol police
but working with Secret Service, all the other
alphabet agencies, the same thing in Canada,
Royal Mounted Police.
The more you can explain what it is you're trying to achieve
the better chance you have of them understanding it.
Because this is, a lot of times, it's not so much
like it used to be, there's more of it now.
With these large-scale special events, when I started,
you think about the Boston Marathon
before the Boston Marathon bombing,
there were cops out, there were a lot of 'em.
But the bombing changed the rules.
It changed the security package.
The same thing happened, before my time,
after Munich, and Israeli athletes were killed.
Then it happened again after '96 when a bomb went off
in the park, so they had these changes.
9/11 changed things again, and so,
the more we can understand what they're trying to achieve
and why, the more I can teach them
about what it is we're trying to do.
Then we come up with an answer that works.
RCMP in Vancouver, and I don't remember exactly
but they wanted like,
200 meter or 300 meter setback from all of the mag lines.
And from buildings and everything else.
And fence lines, but you're in downtown Vancouver,
that doesn't work.
There's not 300 meters between buildings, or 200 meters,
so we have to find a common way
to get to the answer that everybody was comfortable with.
Long time ago, I was taught
that these decisions that you make
'cause there's always a balance on security
versus EMS, versus crowd safety.
There's always a balance, and you have to look
at your decisions, could I defend my decision
under front page of the New York Times?
Or in front of a Senate sub committee?
Can I defend that decision?
And if the answer is yes, then that's the best you can do.
And it may not have been the way we would all want to do it
but again, it's because of location,
because of all those intangibles
that you just have to make your best decisions
and go on. - I think that's a good
learning too, I mean like a lot of times
when it comes to events, we worry, and like obviously,
it's this very stressful environment.
I'm curious to know too, you have to obviously
at some point, like you're saying,
but what tactical tips do you have for someone
when there is a crisis?
You've obviously been a part of a lot of events
where crises have happened, what has been like your number
one tactical tip for preparing for those?
Other than just prepare as much as you can, obviously.
And then learn to let go, do you have any sort
of tactical tips for reacting to those sorts of crises?
Crises?
- The first thing is evaluation.
Because you really have to understand in the moment
what is a crisis.
Is it that somebody tripped and fell?
'Cause when you hear it on the radio,
and you get the text, you get the call,
you don't know what it all is.
And so there's a little bit of don't run yet,
stop, think, and evaluate.
And from there, for our teams, if we're at the Capitol,
and I've got somebody with me with Capitol police.
If I was at the Olympics, I'd have somebody with me
from the security side, and you're evaluating
and you're moving but you have to know
what all the parts are and what all the options are.
And that's just part of your learning process and planning,
is how you move people, how does this effect.
There's always a cause and effect with everything
that you do, and so you don't wanna make it worse,
you wanna allow law enforcement, and emergency services
to do what they need to do, and then you also have to take
care of all your peeps, so it's just a balance line.
It's just stay calm, rely on your systems,
and you'll get through it.
We're really good at evacuating the Capitol grounds
because of weather. - Yeah.
I've been part of it. (laughing)
It's pretty remarkable to witness how quick.
- Yeah, it's a skillset people shouldn't have.
(laughing) But we're,
we've never had to do it because of, knock on wood,
security, it's always because of weather and other factors.
But between us and Capitol police,
we have lines, we have a plan, we know how the plan works.
And we do it, we're really good at getting people out.
And for our staff, and Alex, you've sat through
our staff meetings at the trailers
once you get to the Capitol, for three or four days
before the show, we go through the emergency plan,
the evacuation plans, and everybody in the staff meeting
hates it, 'cause it is boring as hell
when you keep going over the same thing.
But that's the only way, if I can get you to listen
to part of it, then you at least know
where your beginnings of your role is,
then we're gonna make this happen.
And you just have to, it's just training and practice.
And then just making good decisions.
Decisions that you can defend
in front of the New York Times.
(laughs) - And I think that's another
unique kind of thing that we haven't really talked about
is a lot of these events that you're working on
take place outside.
How do you-- - Anybody can do one inside.
(laughs) - Anyone can do one inside.
But how did you kind of develop that plan
for weather and evacuation and that kind of stuff?
And how do you kind of prepare for that?
- For me now, it's again, taking a lot of the same systems
we use over, and over, and over,
from place, to place, to place.
The bombing in Atlanta,
in '96, which was a wake-up call for everybody,
certainly changed the way these things are planned.
For us at the Capitol, years ago I think,
that years ago, there were no mags.
To get in, before I started, maybe the first year or so
that I did in the '90s, there were no mags.
I don't think there were.
And times changed, and as times change,
your systems had to change, and so it's not,
they've all come together gradually over the years.
A mistake was made or a problem came up.
And then you've taken what you did and adapted.
Years ago, I didn't have a police, the Capitol police
officer, as part of our team.
And we, they knew what our part was,
we knew what their part was, and I would call them
on the radio, or call them on the phone.
And it worked but one year we had to evacuate the lawn
because of weather and one of the officers
that I dealt with happened to be standing next to me
when I was making a radio call.
And Sean said, I'm sticking with him the rest of the night.
So, Sean from Capitol police was able to listen
to what I was doing with our staff and our crowd,
and the people we manage, and relay that information
back and forth in real time.
And from that point on, we've always made it a part
on dress rehearsal and show day
that there's an officer assigned to us.
And it just helps in that communication.
It wasn't a planned thing, it's just he happened
to be standing beside me, I heard something,
he heard something, it's like, okay,
this is how this should work.
And part of that, we just had each other's radios.
But it was so much more effective
if he could listen into our conversations
and pick up things to relay back,
or the other direction, and it just simplified
the communication process and that was not something
that we started with, it's just something that grew.
And back to your earlier question about how do you plan
the security, it's about the relationships.
That they saw what we were trying to do,
I saw what they were trying to do,
and now you make it happen.
So, been an interesting learning curve.
(laughs) - Something you mentioned
that I don't know that many people know this.
Especially if you've seen like the Capitol concerts on TV
but these events essentially happen twice.
Because the night before each event is a dress rehearsal.
Can you kind of walk us through what a dress rehearsal
for a mega event looks like? - It's about a 90% show night.
The crowds generally aren't as big.
Depends on the year, sometimes we don't have all the talent
there because they don't arrive until show day.
We don't have the Wounded Warriors.
We don't have a lot of the pieces.
But because for the new staff and you do these things,
in May and July, then you don't do them again for eight
months and everybody has to re-learn how to do 'em
a little bit because everybody's gone on to other events,
other places, other things, and with Capitol police,
it's the same thing is that, and all the other agencies
we work with, no matter where it's at,
it's the chance to kind of run through things,
to see if there's something that definitely doesn't work.
And it's also a refresher about, oh, yeah, I forgot about
that, it's just a little bit of a, not only in the Olympic
world as a test event, but it's not only a test
for the athletes, or the people on stage
to get the cameras right, it's a check to make sure
all the mags are working, to make sure the water stations
are working, there's no problems with seating.
All of those things throughout.
It just gives you a little bit of dry run.
Because once it's live on air, you can't stop,
and, you know, yeah, we're gonna fix that in post.
Yeah, there is no post. (laughing)
Post is right now.
When we do an event that you can fix in post,
it's just great because you can stay stop, fix in post,
and keep moving.
But you're truly, with Olympics, you do three or four
rehearsals and so you're really not just doing show night,
you're doing three or four full rehearsals
or some combination thereof, and you've done these shows
a lot of times, and we can evacuate the lawn
on the west lawn of the Capitol on dress rehearsal night
for the same reasons because of weather.
And so it's just a good run-through.
And if you were doin' a TV show, or something in the studio,
you would be doing the same thing time after time
but before we can do those, we actually have to build
a venue, and so you have that little timeline going
'cause you start on the middle of the lawn.
So you have to move the venue, put all the stuff up,
then do the security sweeps, and then you get a chance
to rehearse if you've got everything done on time.
- I love that, always waiting for the end of rehearsal
for sure, we actually have a question
from the audience coming in. - Woohoo!
I'm glad somebody's watching. - I know, I know.
I'm so excited that someone's watching as well.
There's many people watching, so thank you everyone
for tuning in, by the way if you have questions for Paul,
just leave 'em down in the chat over to the right-hand side
at Event-Icons.com, and we will get to 'em right away.
So, Katrina Moore actually had a question.
She is a tourism director for a small Texas town.
Obviously not doing the large-scale events
that you are doing and she says she's responsible
for producing festivals and events in her city.
What's one thing that you would have for her
to keep mindful as she's planning events
on that smaller scale?
I know that's maybe couple-- - No, that's a good question.
Because to a certain degree, the scale doesn't mater.
Because if you're planning your bachelor party,
you're still inviting people, there's still some sort
of invitation, the parts are all the same.
They're all the same for a wedding.
They're the same for a civic event,
they're the same for the Olympics where you,
all the parts are the same, they just grow in scale
and scope, one of the questions that I've always asked
our clients is that at the end of the event,
how would you consider it a success?
And so, we've hosted this, we managed a lot of small 5K's
for the transplant awareness, and so we go into these cities
and do them, and so you ask, how will you judge us
with what's a success?
Is it by number of people, is it by number of,
'cause you can't get it right if you don't know what
that end product is supposed to be.
And for the person running events in Texas, woohoo!
I actually live in Houston, if that part
hadn't come up yet, so I'm happy to hear
for somebody from home.
It's how do you judge what a success is?
Is it budget, it's what is those criteria?
And it's not only for yourself but it's for your clients,
for your managers, for your bosses.
How do they judge it?
What is the most important thing that you're trying
to get out of that event?
For some of the 5K's it's the number of runners.
When we moved to a new city, it's just sometimes
the client's goal is just get the first one done.
Once we've done the first one we have.
And so there's all these, 'cause how do you judge
if you're successful or not, what do you want
the event to be when it grows up?
- So, let's talk a bit about, 'cause you mentioned
who gets invited, and who these people are.
In these events that you plan, (laughs)
have a lot of VIPs, talent, high ranking government
officials, star athletes, what does it take
to create a good VIP experience and manage so many of them?
- And again, part of it is the same answer
that I just gave, Alex, is to the client,
what is that successful relationship
going to look like on the end?
What do they want to achieve?
Sometimes, events are, the VIPs are invited,
the sponsors are invited, the sponsors wanna meet
the VIPs, the VIPs want to meet the sponsors.
Sometimes that's the definition of a successful event.
Stuff we do for the Wounded Warriors up in the Capitol,
it's being able to bring them,
get them out of the hospitals,
show them the Capitol, and treat them with the respect
that they're due and make them feel special.
And which they already are.
But give them that experience.
Again, we manage the VIPs on a lot of these other projects
besides the stuff we do at the Capitol.
And it's all just defining with the client
what they want it to be, and then if it's a VIP
that comes with an agreement, member of the administration,
somebody with a security team, they have a different set
of criteria versus an A-level talent.
You know Hollywood talent versus somebody who's just
started but it's just judging what experience is.
The best thing is just be organized,
be on time with your conversations with 'em.
And just like you do with anybody, anticipate
what the questions they're gonna ask.
'Cause you know the answers.
But just being able to try to stay on the front side
of that, they're all gonna wanna know
when they're supposed to be there, how they're gonna
get there, where they're gonna park,
how do I get to class, what do I need.
Take care of the easy stuff and then that way,
you can deal with their one-off problems
and one-off issues and whatever they,
'cause they will be there. (laughs)
- Always. - Speaking of problems
and seeing an evolution of those problems,
technology has obviously changed in a massive amount
of time since when you first started.
- Just a tad. (laughs) - Just a little bit.
Just a little bit, so. (laughs)
Like you were talking about I think on the pre-call
was about how before with cellphones.
I mean, like how did we get things done?
You couldn't just call someone on site and ask 'em
a question, you couldn't get work done
on the road as easily, how have you seen technology
evolve in the event planning process
over the last, almost two decades?
- Plus and minuses for everything.
And when I was, again, 'cause I'm old,
when I was in Atlanta, workin' for the games,
that was pre-email, '94, '95, '96.
Email was just beginning to start.
And everything was still done by hard copy memo.
And I would get back to my desk
and judge how sucky my day had been
by how many inches of memos were on my desk.
If it was six or eight inches worth of memos,
it was not a bad day, if it was a couple feet worth of memos
it was a really sucky day. (laughing)
- Versus like inbox zero now, like everyone's--
- Exactly. - Oh, email.
(laughing) - Well, I had about 40 folks
who were workin' for me, kind of, not for me.
But in my reporting structure.
It may be 50, and so if I talked down a memo,
you literally typed it on a computer, printed it.
Somebody had to go to the copy machine
and somebody had to deliver those 50 memos
to 50 mailboxes across the building.
(laughing) Which sounds like
an entirely painful operation, which it was.
- It's like being CC'd on an email with 50 people.
(laughing) - Right.
But the better part was that if you wanted to reply to me,
you had to go and physically type it on the computer,
print it, and walk it over to my desk.
And so, that was the bonus plan that I miss now
about that system, is that if I copy 50 people
on an email because it's my staff,
then not every one of the knuckle heads can reply,
okay, or think they have an opinion right away.
They have to actually stop and think about it
and take a positive step to go over there,
and maybe mark it over there by the time they got here
they'd go, yeah, this really wasn't such a smart idea.
And so, email has made that so much simpler
on so many matters, but this also made it
so much more difficult, I couldn't have done my job
in Vancouver, I couldn't have not done my job in Atlanta
with the Olympics if we had emails.
I could not have gone through the volume of emails
that we got, and memos, I barely did.
But email, I could never have gotten through the volume
of just any one of those 50 weighing in,
or several of those 50 weighing in
on everything that went out, whether it has anything
to do with them or not, now the technology
for me, it makes things so much simpler.
Cellphones, the first phones that came in,
it changed our world, but pagers that came in
that you could have text on pagers changed our world too.
So every piece of it has grown.
Now the problem is that we go to these events
and we have cellphones, we have radios,
there's text messages, there's emails.
Somebody will wanna set up a what's-it or something else app
(laughing) you cannot,
in realtime, on game day, I can't check 'em all.
There is no physical way for me to manage all
of those different methods of communication on game day.
And so that's the challenge, it's how do you get
these systems into, group texts are great for some things.
Emails are pretty much, on game day, or a day or so before,
there's pretty much no way I'm reading all those emails.
Nobody can and still deal with everything
you're dealing with, and so, there's a lot of great tools
out there, there's some really new cool apps
that come out all the time, but it's finding the ones
that you can manage and keep.
We'll tell people, in the old days, before we got voice
text mails, you know you get those text message
from a message that was left, we would fill up
my inbox on my phone where people could not leave messages
'cause you would never check 'em.
And make 'em call over and over.
'Cause inevitably, we would get to, after the event,
you check the emails and somebody had called
about something really important
and was really pissy because you didn't respond to 'em.
Like I've got 50, how can I possibly
get through all of those?
Things like we're doing now, these are great tools
that we didn't use to have.
Excited to see what the next ones are.
But you've gotta find the things
that you can manage and you can work on.
And not get too distracted by the noise.
- So, speaking of distractions. (laughs)
A lot of our listeners are used to working on site
at like, a conference center, and they'll probably
have a room that they all work in.
But oftentimes, your office on site is a trailer.
- I've spent a lot of my life in a trailer.
- Very close quarters with everyone you're working with.
What is that experience like?
How do you manage (laughs) the people in that space?
And how do you get your work done?
- I yell, indoor voices, quite a bit.
- Yeah. (laughs) - So,
that usually starts it.
For anybody who ever walks into the madness
that is our trailer at the Capitol for the first time,
they're like, oh my god, what is this?
Because in a 12 by 56, or 12 by 70 trailer,
whatever we're at now, you have, I don't know,
4,000 people working in there and coming in and out
all the time, and it's, part of it is boundaries.
Part of it's being respectful for everybody else
that's working in there, and you just have to set
the boundaries, and for me, you've been to my offices,
or my part of the office, my back's to everybody
so I don't get disrupted by everything that's coming in.
If I sat and faced the door, yeah, I would look up
and see every person that came in.
And so, it's just finding your ways to work
and after doing this for long time,
and it's, to a certain degree, a trailer is no better,
no worse, than having an office in a convention center.
I mean, they all have their plus and minuses.
The air conditioners work probably a bit better
in the convention centers, and the restrooms
are certainly better than our toilets.
(laughs) But there's plus and minuses.
You know there's plus and minuses.
The great thing is that we could have offices
off-site of the Capitol but instead we're right there
at the base of the Capitol where people can come in
and see us, the police, whoever else needs to come in
and see me, I'm there, we can go walk
and look at an issue, whereas if we were in an office,
even in the Capitol, that's not quite as effective.
And so, there's plus and minuses.
But you just figure out your way to do it.
You put your ear phones in and you just figure out a way
to get through the days.
And it's really no difference in the one hand
than having open office spaces,
and just a bunch of cubicles, they're just as bad.
And I think we've worked under, I can't imagine
there's not just a way we've not worked on this
one way or another over the years, in one location or not.
I mean, and I was in Libreville, Giban,
working on a project for the State Department
where the power went out everyday.
(laughs) And so, you know,
power the air conditioner, you work in a dark room
for awhile, and you just get used to what the circumstances
are. - I love it, wow.
So, unfortunately, our time is coming to a close.
Like time flies, and I have to admit, Paul,
I love your stories, and I wish--
- And most of 'em are even true.
(laughing) - I love it, I love it.
Well, I know everyone's really excited to hear
about your tips, we've obviously had a couple of people
already starting to ask about, hey,
what's your tip for small-scale festivals,
and this, and this, and that.
And I know you're full of tips.
But if you had to pick one single tip
for event planners, whether it's conference planners,
special planners, anything like that.
What would be your one tip that you would give
to event planers this year? - I have two.
And one is, one of the questions
I always get whenever I do a speech or talk to classes,
or talk to whatever, is how do you get involved
in sports or event management?
And Alex has touched on it several times.
Is that the way to get involved is be involved.
If I'm speaking at Georgetown University,
or George Washington University,
or Ohio State, ANM, wherever.
As long as more kids are in the room,
they've all got their MBA's, they're all getting
their masters in planning, they're all getting something.
But if they sit out there, and they email me
their resume, and they've all been really smart kids
who have gotten really smart degrees,
there's no difference between their degree
and the kid sitting next to 'em.
So I tell 'em to volunteer, get involved,
take a low paying jobs, get involved.
That way, if you come to me, and you'll send in your resume
and I say that you worked on a marathon,
you worked on a 5K, you've volunteered at the Superbowl,
then we have something to talk about,
to set you apart from everybody else.
I still do that, the way I got my job
at the State Department is that I didn't know anybody
in the Obama White House, most everybody I knew
had left from administration to administration.
And I was in Charlotte and I asked, basically,
I just told them I'd take a job doing anything
just so I could get involved with that White House.
And the guy I ended up working for knew people
who knew people, he got me to finding Alan Fitz.
And Alan went on to the State Department.
And couple years down the line, he goes,
there was this guy who worked for me in Charlotte,
at the convention, and he'd be really good for this.
And he pulled my name out of the air somewhere
'cause he remembered it, and that's how I got this job.
So you never know where that string plays out.
And so, if you're starting, get involved.
Just meet people, take experiences,
and you never know where it plays out.
Event planners now, for me, the thing I preach the most
to everybody that works for us, is communication.
Is I talked about this so many different forms
of communication, that whether it's email,
whether it's tech, I mean, pick an app.
'Cause there's a gazillion, Facebook, any of these things.
Just because you send it, doesn't mean I read it,
doesn't mean I saw it, and that's what you have to push
over and over, is the communication
so you're not surprised by what I'm doing,
I'm not surprised what you're doing.
We're not both pointing our fingers at each other
saying, I thought you were doing it.
And just setting up those systems where we're all
in the same page, and as I said earlier,
what are we trying to achieve?
How will we know that this event was a success?
How is it being graded so we know what to look for
and to make sure that's what we're all striving for.
'Cause my definition of what's a successful event
may not be the same as yours, it may not be the same
of Alex's, and it may not be the same
with anybody watching, but somebody who's hired us,
who's paying us, said this is what we're trying to achieve.
Now we all need to get on that plan to achieve it.
- I love it. - Deep.
- I love it, and it is, and these tips are great
'cause they're coming from years and years of experience.
And I think communication is something
that is constantly evolving so I love to hear about that.
Our final question for you is do you have
any new resources you wanna share?
What websites do you go to for inspiration,
for information, blogs, books, gadgets you're using?
- Well, we've started doing, we've always called 'em
trip books, and it's operations manuals, everybody,
if you come out in the political world,
they're trip books, but has all the information.
Alex, you've seen this in trailers with 'em.
It's the plan, it's how transportation works.
It's how, they're a pain in the ass, they're big.
They have lots of information in 'em.
But the technology is now caught up with them.
So we're doing virtual trip books.
Now you can pull it up on your iPad, your surface,
your computer, you have it there.
And so through some of the websites
that we're starting to build, foreign event through Nack
or through any of these other databases,
even Smart Sheet that now has portals and panels
where I can get all that information in the same place.
You start and here's your welcome package,
here's all your information, and so the technology
has finally caught up for us to be able to, again,
manage the communications better and through things
like that it will only get better.
But for us, we're big, my planning, and the more everybody
else on my team knows, the better we all are.
So we put it all out there, most all out there.
Where everybody can read it and see it.
And again, you just always have to be a hard trip book,
now we're going to virtual, there's still,
we're not quite 100% there but it's such a nice step
to be able to make instead of having to go through
Smart Sheet to look at a spreadsheet, Nack to look
at a database, we can start building these portals
where they're all there, and it's a nice change.
And we'll continue to learn and continue to evolve
in that direction. - And are there any
like, websites, or articles, or anything that you read
to kind of get yourself, like where do you hear
about this stuff? (laughing) - A lot of smart
young people work for me. (laughing)
And we plagiarize.
I mean, none of us have invented any of this.
And so wherever we go, we see a good idea,
that's like wow, that makes sense.
And so, just like picking up people,
we'll see a good idea, a good staff,
a good person, we'll pick 'em up and bring them
along the way.
And I read a lot, I mean, I go through
Sports Business Daily, I don't read so often anymore.
But Sports Rebel, Teams Conference, a lot of these
different things, and I just read a lot of articles
about other events and just to see what's happening.
LinkedIn actually has some cool features if you kind of
look at some of the feed, you'll see some things
in there every now and again that just pop up.
It's just there's so many events out there
and there's so much information, it's how you get it down
into something that meets your eye.
But every event I go to, everyone I've worked with.
'Cause I staff a lot of events.
People need staff to come in when I do the Superbowls.
I work for a company called Populous who they bring me in
as part of their staffing plan.
And I look to see what they do, I look to see what other
groups do, and it's just continually evolving.
This is continuing education.
- I love it.
- Wow.
- Yeah. - Wow.
- I feel like I've just sat through a master class.
(laughing)
- Basically, basically. - Hell, at one point
I paid you to sit through the master class.
So you, c'mon. - Hey.
I know, look at me now. (laughs)
- Exactly. (laughing)
- I love it, I love it.
Would you like me to wrap up, Alex?
- Sure, let's do it. - Alright.
So, this is, Paul, this has literally been so incredible.
Thank you so much for being on the show.
Literally just so much wealth of knowledge.
And like I said, I think we could talk
for like, three hours about all the awesome stuff
that you've gone through but I think this is a good
tipping point for a lot of people to see at least,
how is it done when, yeah, there's so much pressure
all coming together, so, Paul, thank you so much
for being on the show. - Well,
thank you guys for having me.
We've only been talking about this about since like June
or July or something like that.
- Yeah. (laughing)
- So, thank y'all for having me.
- You're welcome.
- Yup, if there's anything I can do,
if people have questions, feel free, reach out.
- Awesome, we're definitely gonna list all the resources
down below, if you're watching a recording,
they're gonna be down below on the blog post.
If you're watching us live, you wanna check out
the recording and we'll have all the links posted
of all the awesome resources that Paul mentioned.
But we do have to wrap up, so if you are watching live
right now, you're awesome.
But if you're watching the recording,
you are not experiencing Event Icons the right way.
So make sure to head over to Event-Icons.com.
Sign up and join us live in the live chat
where you can ask questions like Katrina asked,
right to Paul immediately, which is amazing.
Come and join us live, we'd love to have you.
If you are more of the On Demand, Netflix and chill
kind of person, feel free to catch us on Pocket Cast,
iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, wherever you are, we are.
You can even ask your Google Home and Amazon Echo
to listen to EventIcons and we'd love to have you.
So, I think it's time that we get out of here.
We got a lot of amazing episodes coming up
in the next couple weeks, Alex, any final words?
- I think just, Paul, how can people reach you?
How can they contact you if they have questions?
- They can just email me I have no problem with that at all.
- Awesome, so we'll put Paul's email in the show notes
for you so you can reach out to Paul,
ask some questions, and tomorrow is, at least in America,
is Thanksgiving, so I hope everybody has
a fantastic Turkey Day, and yeah,
I think that's pretty much it.
Let us know what icons you want to be on the show next.
And thank you for joining us today.
And we will see you next week on EventIcons.
- Thanks, everyone.
(funky music) - Thank you for joining us
for another amazing episode of #EventIcons.
To catch the transcription, and all of the resources
mentioned, head to www.HelloEndless.com/blog.
This week's episode will be posted and available
by next Tuesday, also let us know
what you thought about this week's episode.
Share your biggest takeaway and join the social conversation
sponsored by Little Bird Told Media.
Just tag your post with #EventIcons.
We'd love to hear from you.
Thank you again for joining us.
We'll see you next Wednesday at 5:00 PM Eastern,
right here, on #EventIcons.
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