The True Cost of Business

[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] man that still hypes me up it gets me super excited to be here tonight i'm super excited about the next talk the true cost of business with a good friend of mine trevor zulinke but like always i will austin the man with the words do the intros to bring in our special special guest tonight for all of you guys so bring in your comments ask your questions tonight is gonna be amazing and it's a perfect time to have this conversation right before thanksgiving and i hope you guys enjoy this what's going on omar what's good man how's everything bro how's your day so far uh my day has been a long one but i will tell you what just looking forward to tomorrow all that good eating man we got a lot to be thankful for including a real special guest tonight see we definitely got some people tuning in excited for this so i'm glad to actually drop this episode right before uh thanksgiving since we already got got some members waiting on us let's actually introduce tonight's guests and as you already mentioned it's a close friend to you tonight's guest has over 15 years actually over 30 years of experience in the industry um he is one of the fine founding members of the live events coalition if you don't know what the live events coalition is you're going to get some further details and info on that tonight but if you're part of the audio visual industry at all these are the people who's fighting to make things happen in our benefit and for our benefit episode that you want to tune in to kind of get some some knowledge um behind the scenes and this guy has a wealth of knowledge to offer to us he's also the owner of the gerardi productions who has what four locations now omar four locations yep i want to say it's four now i could be wrong yeah it's four locations i think it's like tampa north carolina arizona and chicago i believe definitely so these guys have been blowing up they're expanding and without further ado let's not waste any more time trevor let's bring in trevor hello hello hello what's going on what's good man i'm excited to be here guys i'm i'm really excited for uh some thanksgiving turkey tomorrow so we have my turkey uh my turkey's in the uh is in the bag soaking up some uh maple bourbon glaze so nice [Laughter] nice so trevor tell us a little bit more about the back story uh who you are just so that people kind of get a quick introduction to you yeah so i've been in um i've been in the industry for uh i'm not i've i'm not 30 years in the industry but i've been i've been in the industry for my entire career uh my entire um professional professional life has actually been in the live events industry uh i started running sound at a young age in a youth group my mom said you need to go to church so threw me into a youth group and the guy was like hey i was sitting in the back and he was like hey you want to run sound and i fell in love with live the live events the live sound aspect i went to college at sae school of audio engineering thought i was going to be the next scott storch and produce music but really went back and started doing the live sound stuff i've worked for a couple different corporations uh i've worked for some of the big the the big guys um i've worked for a couple of different mom and pops and now uh i'm now one of the one of the co-owners of digitality productions uh dangerous been around for about 20 years we do a ton of uh white labeling so we white label a lot of our services for some of them some a few of the big national brands so we do a lot of that on the back side so we really help support some other bigger corporations and bigger production companies um that allows them to um you know further their business so i've been uh i've been an owner for almost a year now coming up on a year in january um so i'm looking forward to 2021 i'm looking forward to getting back into live events uh but right now we're in this beautiful digital age and has these hybrid meetings and online um broadcasts now wow wow so if you can't start off by saying not 30 years and then tell us about all of this you got over the course of this come on man but uh what's funny is as i look back at my background my mom was the exact same way and i had gotten involved in the church choir at a young age and that's what got me into performances and things of the sort of course i didn't think it was cool at first but they gave me my first little uh kirk franklin role and i got to wrap it up man i had a good time but that's actually what got me involved into the industry myself like we have that commonality there yeah so how did you make the transition from obviously that's where where you you got your interest from originally where how did the transition go into the actual live event side is it because you went to sae or no actually i was working for a um a church in a school down in miami i was working for dade christian school i was their tech guy a friend of mine was their choir director and needed needed some help doing some some of their events for the school they hired me on full-time and one of the um sales managers of a company that's no longer around that used to be southern audio visual and if you're in miami you know who southern audi visual is um and a gentleman named by frank trotta who said he was the director of sales and said hey can you come and just be one of our freelancers and i did a couple of freelance jobs with them and fell in love with the actual corporate live sound side of things and i was making a little bit more money that i was making at the church uh which was kind of nice [Laughter] and um so that kind of that that taste of that you know breaking everything down loading it in breaking it down the kind of the rush of being in a different spot different location and there's always a challenge there's always something that you kind of have to it never goes to plan and i think i'm just kind of sick and twisted that i love that that we plan for everything and then it never goes to plan and we have to adjust in a you know and that's something that i absolutely enjoy so you sound just like omar when you say that well it's funny so i just wanna before we dive into this topic too much victor just pointed out something that i actually would like to talk about real quick here uh he loves collecting watches true fact we shop stories about voca what's what's this watch thing right here about you are you like a like a hobbyist horologist or or you got some background story here for me i love so i have always loved watches and um i have now have uh four watches in my collection that i'm gonna be selling it's just kind of a hobby thing that i got kind of got over when kobe kind of started um i was like oh like i have nothing to do right now there's no business and we were talking we're trying to talk to our clients and like oh we're not doing anything so i started going down the rabbit hole of luxury watches so i have a few panerai's um i have a u-boat watch which i've always wanted a u-boat watch and a um a tag which i'm currently you know flipping and selling and just to have it's just a really fun thing to do so yeah i do love watches not nice nice so i just want to throw out there for anybody who's who's also a collector if you are getting watches and selling watches and again this is way off topic i personally love uh skeleton watches so if you get those in your inventory trying to sell give me a call i'm a big fan of us because skeleton watches myself uh but again i don't i don't yeah i don't i don't want to get us too far off truck victor thanks for that that's a fun fact for everybody there um so i want to talk about this you know this car seats are all you know the true cost of business here right and i want to trevor i want you to kind of lead us a little bit on this and kind of just explain you know coming from in my description you know i said stagehand to business owner the business owner to our freelancer freelancer to the business owner you know what are some of this thing made coming up and same ones that i've made and we've talked about in the past you know not even made but you kind of learn as you get into this industry you know when it comes to a stage and you're a w-2 right and we've had this conversation before when you go to that freelancer side you're w9 and then the next step is the business owner and you can still be a business owner or be a technician and run yourself as a business but a lot of guys aren't building themselves properly or they don't know what to do so what are some things we could tell them about when you're when you're when you're running yourself as a business not just a freelancer but as a business here are some things you should be thinking about when you're when you're on the road or when you're traveling or when you're doing hybrid events what are some things they should be thinking about well the first thing if you're going to be running a business i would run a business as an llc i wouldn't do it as a sole proprietorship or i wouldn't do it as a you know a fictitious name um there's a there's a lot of tax benefits when it comes to running it as an llc it's also some uh some protections that you have as a business owner so you can still be owner operator a lot of people want to do this whole proprietorship which is great but i was even explaining to my sister who's starting her own little publishing company um that she's like oh i'm going to do a sole priority so don't do that go as an llc because if you go get a check and you go and write yourself a check and you get a check for ten thousand dollars and you as a sole proprietorship it comes to you you're now taxing that ten thousand dollars if you get it as an llc and you you the business that stays inside the business and you take a thousand dollars out of that you're taxing that thousand dollars you're not taxed on that as the as the person the actual person so there's other opportunities where if you need to buy gear you need to buy different things for your um for your business to move forward like you need a new you need a new computer the business buys that computer for your work as you're working through those things so there's there's some good things there when it comes to looking as a business owner now i'm not the world's smartest business owner i think that it's a lot of drive and determination where i'm always doing something my wife yells me all the time because i'm always on my phone i'm always on my computer i'm always trying to learn something new so my wife's like what are you doing i thought we were watching this movie i'm like yes but so an email came in i have to answer this question because it's it's a lot of times people think that if you want to be a business owner you don't do you don't do that much you kind of get you have people to do stuff for you and i think being business the exact opposite is you're always working you're always making sure you're trying to improve you're trying to read new things you're trying to stay up on the latest curve you're trying to figure out what's the next thing that has to happen and you know making sure that you you know you have mouths you have to feed there's people's lives that depend on you making the right decision if you have employees uh but if it's just you it's your your family members that are depending on you to make those right decisions and to move forward so i think that the um the biggest thing is if you are moving forward and you're in a business or if you're looking to do it pull yourself out of the 10 and there's a lot there's other tax benefits as well as just being a w-9 and staying uh staying a freelance employee but then you can also you know if you open up a corporation you can get different things and you can get insurances and there's liabilities and workman's comp there's a lot of other little things you can do so if you do get hurt uh and you're a 1099 now you have a workman's comp that you can do and it's pennies on the dollar to pay and it's giving yourself protection uh for the future as well yeah you're muted omar oh no so i want to add real quick that you know one of the things and trevor you could tell me what what your principles are austin as well uh and i'll put us all here just when you say this so i for example run my business as an llc i also run another business as a corporation because i run multiple businesses right so one of the things that i do for the llc side is because i'm in the state of florida and again i can't speak for everybody's um states essentially but because i'm a state of florida's right to work state i opt out of the insurance so i have to get a certification about the night of it for the not all of it but a part of it has anybody else done that on this side you guys see that do you guys think that's common practice i've done it for myself before work one's coming and no i'm there hello i yeah i don't know can you hear me i carry you all right so um i bopped it out and the owners of dijradi bopped it out for the workman's comp on our side of things but for our employees we have workman's comp for our employees right now we have two employees we had 12 but covert has shrunk us down two to two employees right now outside of the owners of the gerard themselves um but yeah those employees do have workman's comp um and just so if they do get hurt what they fall or or something like that there's they can make we can make sure that they are taken care of um in the event of an accident there so understood um and to answer your question omar i i didn't opt out um for both of my business i carry insurance but for the audio visual side of things i carry uh what's what's it called uh workmen's comp insurance for all of my employees as well as for myself because obviously i do staff myself on some shows so god forbid in the event that something happens i have to make sure that i'm covered as well so i will add the reason that i do that is because i have tricare uh because i'm ex-military so also covers me on a lot of the same things that those those benefits add me so for me cost wise it doesn't make sense to do that because i have tricare which will cover me on almost any incident it happens with me whether car work or um personal tricare pretty much you know covers across the board which is great for the guys listen six years six years you know the blank contract to the government signed in blood saying you can take my life if anything happens you know give me the give me the tricare bro give me the service brother that's funny so so i want to keep driving down you know some of the things you mentioned about the tax benefits right i want to also let guys know you know for someone who may be hesitant and again again let us know in the comments if you're hesitant on some of the business stuff one of the great things that i you know was a pleasure to find out it's a love hate i have honestly and i'm sure trevor and also have similar stories when it comes to quickbooks for example quickbooks is expensive it takes a lot of money out there's a lot of transfer fees there's a lot of fees to quickbooks associating with that and i have an accountant as well the good thing about all that stuff is that that is all tax write-offs at the end of the year because i run myself in the business and because i pay myself to w-2 those are things that i write off so another incentive essentially right to get your yourself as a business other than what's going on now agree 100 and i will also tell you that it is an expensive tool but it is a tool that will shape up your business it will it's i feel it's absolutely necessary especially if you're not a person who keeps track of things on excel spreadsheets and to keep everything all together in one hub and have it being easily accessible for your accountant and things to allow you to be hands off it's it's worth worth its money and its weight in gold yeah there's also another app for people starting out it's called waves wave app so w-a-v-e-a-p-p um it's very similar to quickbooks it can integrate into a quickbook so if you have an accountant that needs to have a quickbook file you can take it but it's free you can make invoices in it you can send invoices in and out of it um and it's and you can have it directly linked to your bank account and they can send you all the reports and it's free um so there's a couple of little things that you don't get for like quickbooks but that quickbooks has that this doesn't but it's um it is a very good um application for guys starting out and really kind of learning because it's all app based on your phone and off of the internet um and it works and integrates really really well so sorry i'm so glad you said that i'm i'm actually looking at ways right now for one of the things because like i said quickbooks even though is it a tax write-off it's still a lot of money a lot of things saying so this is a good one there's another one i'll recommend called as aslo azlo which is a banking which is for freelancers and entrepreneurs uh and the cool benefit that this bank has is very low um monthly charges very low interest rates and a lot of things almost no interest rate than a lot of things and built internally it has its own uh invoicing and checking account so you don't need to have quickbooks or ways for some of those things you could do that all within the bank itself which is a super cool functionality and it's very catered to the freelance sort of startup market right now um they're a great one and again i'll leave that for everybody in the comments nice so two very cool uh apps that we're kind of giving out so so here's a question from the evidence what kind of insurance coverages do you guy do you get and from what carrier so when i was i'll start off first when i was getting it um i was doing the show specifically and if i needed to have it for a show specifically i when i got asked for it i would tack this on my fees but i would just go to dj was it dj american dj's associations of america yeah american dj associate yeah i would get theirs pay their program fee um but since then because of my relationship with trevor it is actually really cheap to just have it full time i think i think it was when i was paying for it was like 15 a month or something like that it was super cheap yeah we um we cover for us we go through the hartford um and our policy is two and a half million dollars in liability uh and then a couple of times we've actually had to bump it up for certain shows there's been a couple of we're also on the you know we're not just uh i'm not just sole predators we do events and we do shows so we're bringing stuff in there's been a few times that we've had to actually up it to a five million dollar policy for specific shows coming in because that's what with the hotel and i think a lot of times the hotels are just doing that just to get their own av companies in-house saving companies to do it there's a few people that there's some dj's and some other local vendors that won't be able to get a 5 million policy which i think is a tactic and that's another another another topic for another day but uh we also have to carry re-rent insurance and i forgot the actual technical name but with when we rent gear from you know ver um rentex you have to have another another type of policy that's what a re-rent so basically if you lose that piece of gear or if that piece of gear breaks in your if you break that piece of gear you basically have to pay them the amount it costs to replace that piece of gear as if it was new so even if they have a christie that's five years old and they've rented it out a million times you have to pay the purchase price back so you have to have the re-rent insurance and that's was we would scale that accordingly because that's actually pretty expensive to have it on a monthly basis so and you do both through hartford we do both through hartford yep excuse me thank you anybody here um i haven't done it myself but i recently found out about them maybe beginning of the year uh take one insurance okay they're another one yeah so they're and i'll post it in the comments they're another one that i saw that does similar to the hartford that i was looking at but obviously because of the the text exam stuff and track here i i looked at it i was like oh that's another option and then moved on my life [Music] so one of the things also with insurance um with insurance is that there's not many companies out there we had to actually talk to like five different people to actually write our insurances the right way and then when they found out what we did they were like oh we're gonna have to up your policy because this is not what it is because the only thing they had was like a dj um so there is needs to be and this is a whole other talk for another session as well but it's very very hard to categorize what we do because there's nothing written there's you know there's there's it and then there's you know aviva we do and then there's like uh insulation av so we were at categorizing installation av and then when they kind of found out exactly what they did they had to rewrite the policy in a way that was more a dj wedding planner and a couple other things that make the policy fit the right way so it was interesting i i actually experienced that same thing myself trevor and one of the things that the insurance company did to actually pump up the policy was when they asked about rigging and how high in the ceiling would you have to go to but once all of that is involved that goes a little bit beyond a dj or something of the sort and the higher the risk involved the higher the premium just put it that way exactly yeah we were doing led walls and they were like well there's these that we see this picture that this how tall is it like 17 feet and like oh okay yeah their policy is changing i know just what you mean it's not cheap but it's mandatory it is but it's also you know that really good safety if if the worst case scenario does happen absolutely um you're you're protected so absolutely it's better to need it and and how does that saying go it's better to have it and not need it to need it and not have that's it we got some comments coming in omar so i'm bringing them in well some of them are me posting you know some of these links that we're talking about here tripod screens it's not in any led wall amen i guess the insurance on a tripod is much cheaper so i want to i want to keep diving into the sub a little bit for the audience out there you know some of the things that guys maybe maybe not building for you know as well as not just you know i i want to get god's mindset and i'm hoping trevor can help us here of the building just for my time right so you had said earlier on go what do you mean no don't build just for time yeah so so guys a lot of times what they do is they build for the time which which is honestly it's the way you start right you build for your time as you build up but once you have the experience or the expertise right and the skill sets and you have the clientele you should be also building for not only your time but also your skill set because of that time on top of that if you're buying gear and purchasing stuff you should be adding that to your to your um to your charge right so like for example when i was doing video and trevor can a test for this when i did video uh for i was just you know i'd back myself i'd show up i'd do my thing um get in and get a paycheck get out after a while i started purchasing gear that i i wanted to bring with me for just okay so like i bought decimators i bought uh radio pcdi boxes i bought an atm switcher i bought little things to bring with me i raised my rate a little bit so that when that stuff came with me it was part of the package that came with me um and those are the little things that i did and my clients had no problems uh doing that right um so i want to kind of address that you know the elephant in the room when it comes to buying your gear and using that as part as your package you know what do you guys think about that should should their rate go up on themselves or should they build separately you know how do you guys see that happening on your end well for me i there's a couple of different things as a as an owner when i hire in freelancers if a freelancer shows up if i have an a1 show up and doesn't have cans he doesn't have over the ear cans i'm going to ask him to leave that's my biggest pet peeve as a as a former a1 um you always walk in with cans so that's the one that's that's the one thing i would say that um if you're a freelancer kind of like what i'm we're saying if you're a freelancer and you are specific to a1 l1 v1 and you are have a job to do and those there's you everyone has a tech kit that walk around with and they have those little things that if something's always forgotten something's left off the truck or something breaks you have that to kind of back it up i think there's a majority of if you have that skill set and you have mastered your skill and where people you're in demand where you having multiple production companies call you saying hey we need you for this show we need you for this then i think it's a rate it's a rate increase but also if they need that piece of gear i think it's like hey man you know i have this piece of gear for it the show's going to go you know it's going to be 20 bucks or it's going to be 30 bucks if you need it that way they don't have to actually go to a ver or another one like that you have it there you have it available for certain things and it also depends on the relationship that you have with that specific production company there's some production companies you might want to work with because they don't beat you up on overtime and they they look at you like okay great yes is what it is and they try to take care of you or and then there's other production because i've worked for too where it's like where they literally nickel and dime everything like oh well you took a 15-minute break and you know we really didn't work the full 10 hours you know can we can you cut me like it really wasn't overtime so there's there's there's there's two sides of those things it's how you want to really bill for it but i think that if you have the skill set you've put in the time you put in the hours and you bought that gear to make your life easier and make the show successful in the end then yeah you should be billing for it and whether it's in a rate increase or if it's a separate if you have a if you have an llc i would separate that on there because your labor rates are different than what you cost is for your rental and that rental gear you can you can separate that out a little bit and it can also help show depreciation over time and everything like that so i would definitely if you have a company and you have an llc i would run it to its you know oh i need to use my macbook pro and i need to use this atom switcher it's going to be you know 30 bucks for this and 50 bucks for that and then my time here and then just put it out that way at the end of the day i don't care what i'm paying uh when it's on what's on the invoice as long as the the final dollars match with what we agreed upon so as a business owner yes and i think i think you hit the nail on the head right there um one it starts with the relationship what's the integrity of the relationship that you have with the production manager whomever it is who hired you also i believe that your rate will naturally increase with the value that you bring to the marketplace the value that you're bringing to each show to each event that we're putting on together if i know that i can hire you um as my v1 and from the simple things like like little dongles or or having spare decimators or or a backup d.a or whatever the case may be but if i know that once i hire you to to be in the lead position because when we talk about a1 b1s lds these are guys who are in lead positions so once i know that i can hire you and i don't have to worry about the headache you want you come with additional gear if need be i know that i can instruct you to get one thing done for me and i don't have to worry about it but that type of value to the marketplace then your your invoices don't get questioned so so to speak because i'm gonna pay even if it's a little bit extra just to have that peace of mind and not have to worry about it yep 100 yeah and i got you know i have a a client you know did your productions who doesn't hassle me for [ __ ] so they get whatever they want when they hire me all the time you take care of them you're gonna take care of you in return and it's about that ongoing relationship not today's invoice but that longer long-term relationship which is awesome brings up a very good point for anybody watching this you know this whole talk about relationships you know having these venture clients you know not only for for a business sense but also to say hey this one i want to bring you out because i know you're the guy to bring it there's not a big budget for it those are those questions you have your clients that are going to help make you that go-to guy because it's to know hey when i have the money i'm going to give it to you you're going to do the job well when i i need some help but i still want to have you on there and still give you work i know i can still call you and you're not going to you know be an [ __ ] about it like those are the topics that you did you build right and i think we just got someone just liked it as we're saying this but those are those are what we're talking about customer relationships not just oh i taught this guy once in a while and he gives me work and i do my job i'm in and out but but really really working with them as a as a company to a company and you know being with them not just as here's my rate either utility don't we work together or not but but being over the pitfalls with them and helping them out not to the extent to where you're like you know losing out on stuff but to the sense where you're you're both working at for a common goal which is for the clients you're both being treated respectfully and equally and i think that's a big thing that people need to understand so i got two questions here real quick i want to get to before we keep going uh mike asked if you hire free pg for video videography and live streaming an event are they responsible for their own co workers comp do we have them sign an agreement that they're independent contractors uh so i'll just say no more no no go ahead one more so for for me for example when a client asks me for that uh if the client's not producing it i will tack on a little more on my rate and i will provide it uh particularly for my stuff though because of the workers exempt i have i just provided that saying hey uh because i live in state of florida here's what i have if that's not if that's not enough for them because some some some studios will not accept that um i'll get i'll get it for the show through you know one of my one of the ones that i go to uh which is mainly just uh edgy um god american dj dj's yes american djs thank you i'll just go there pay like the fight you know i think like 25 and five dollars for the month or whatever um i do that and i get on my day and i just ex i put that fee onto them they get what they want i get the job and move on my life yeah when it comes to um when it comes to live streaming if they're live streaming on the workmen's comp side of things i necessarily don't think you can eat it but also depends on your state so look it up look up for state state where they're at where they're at and where you're where your company's at for independent contractors we do have a couple of signatures for independent contractors um when they kind of first start with us that we have basically saying how they're going to get paid how the how everything's going to work um and then but we do cover workman's comp for our freelancers when we do hire them so there's you know there's there's we don't have to really worry about the workman's comp for that because we'll we have that in in in line with everything that we do um so yeah just everly you know always check with the state that you're in and they're in but um yeah yeah um we do the exact same for for freelancers i want to make sure that that that coverage is there one because it protects the freelancer themselves it protects the business and it also protects the end client so we make sure that we provide that that service for everyone by making sure that that insurance is mandatory um live streaming events there's live stream where you may be able to do it from your home some people are doing it from a production studio some people are doing that out of a warehouse and some people are actually going into the client's home office to live stream so all of those different variables they make a difference in whether it's required yes or no but again for me i'll always say that i i want to know that it's there i want to make sure that all of my guys are taken care of and everyone is covered at the end of the day the other thing that i would say is right now if we're having guys go out for events where they're going on site somewhere we have them sign a covered release form i know that it's really bad but we've been looking at things where people are suing other companies where people are really happy to get the work but then they go and contract cover it's really really hard to prove where they got coped from but if they have that that range of of like oh well i worked in these three days and the doctor said i got sick in these three days and these five days and three of those days are in there uh you could be held liable for your company if you hire someone um for any damages and stuff like that it's very kind of hard but we do have technicians basically signs saying hey you know you're taking this job at your own risk you understand the risk of cobit we are going to provide you with all of the necessary guidelines as well as personal uh ppe um to do your job effectively uh and would stay with inside the guidelines form the cdc but you are assuming there is a risk involved and you will you will hold our company uh um non-liable or you know that we're not held liable for any any damages that you could get from covet so yeah it's it's absolutely important man we there was a show that we had scheduled for the beginning of november and the end client someone in their office got coveted and their restrictions are so tight that they put the entire office on quarantine for a month for 30 days so now the show is rescheduled for december but that goes to show you the incline is taking that amount of caution so when you when you're either working on on-site or you have technicians who's working on site you don't want to be an additional burden you don't be a part of the problem yep yes and i want to keep moving forward guys we're at the 30-minute mark for anybody who's new to the show or hasn't been before uh this is you know this is a moment for you guys to ask your questions to to our speaker which is trevor zulinke today from the driving productions uh we'll answer the best that we can as honest as we can this isn't scripted there's no format uh we kind of just talk about the topic at hand which is the true cost of business and giving you guys some information to better yourself so that when we do get back into full swing of things and that thing slowly is going to trickle in now you guys are being prepared for what's coming out there trevor just brought up a very good one and so dawson about the whole covet situation something i hadn't even thought about that maybe i should start thinking about it and applying to my own business practices moving forward um but i want to get back to what uh the second one that i brought up originally that i wanted to bring up which was from ed uh so ed says my my tech kit comes with me sorry my ticket comes with me at my day rate if i pull from it and i don't recharge for that which i agree with this so far and definitely not if the gear i pull is just to make my life easier on that job 100 that's what you know the reason i brought mine as well um if one of my laptops is needed to save a show either because of a failure or the benefit didn't bring enough or the client made additional on-site then that gets charged as a rental fee and that's exactly feeds back into what trevor was saying earlier where hey if you have that one piece of gear instead of having to figure out between a vendor and delivering all stuff if you just have it there and you charge it a fee for it nine times out of ten your client's not gonna say no to you they're gonna say yeah no word just add it to the bill let's we need it right yep because they're gonna go to the end clyde right so i think ed's ed's point is great i'm assuming ed's rate is very well though because i i i'm assuming his tech kid is but no one else that is ed willock is a according to the last show i was on he is a audio god so i'm sure his rate is very phenomenal and his kit is um i can't remember he probably gives them a much better rate to rent that laptop than they have to go from in-house right yeah i know for sure for sure if you see some of those invoices for a piece of drape trust me they'd be happy to rent anything that they could get from you as opposed to in-house yep we've literally driven across the street to go to best buy and buy a tv as opposed to rent it from in-house so then we have to walk with your gear and if you get the opportunity hey rent it out yep so here's john brown asking do you think conventions trade shows and conferences will ever come back meeting rooms and show floors by the nature are some sometimes crowded or packed wall-to-wall so i'll start with that one first of you guys yes i think biologically speaking as human beings we need to connect with people i think the virtual stuff is great the way we do this is great the way we figure it out is great especially for guys like us here that and for you guys watching that are just we love figuring these things out it's awesome because it's a whole nother level of play and it's taking what we already know and love and making it just a little bit more complicated but still fun to do it's true everybody's laughing because it's true right but here's the thing there is a there is a sales part that is not happening as well as it would if it was face to face because what usually ends up happening and this is on the back end right you do a convention you do commit and we do it too right it's saying we don't do it the same way but we do this we go out to a city or a state we do our bar rooms we get out there we do our thing at the end of the show we go and get drinks right we go with the crew we hang out we talk we socialize we do things those meetings that are happening and those trade shows you were working on those events are working on the banks or the you know the whatever companies those are all networking moments and they're taking their p that one person they want to meet that one's going to talk to and they're going to have drinks and have dinner and socialize those are key moments that are helping them to expand either their business or their network or whatever that is that is that doesn't just happen in the ballroom it happens outside of it and that's the real thing that's missing right now with the virtual like yes you're there you get to talk to them you kind of can reach out to them but if i get an email from you i can ignore you i can annoy your phone call but if i'm from face to face i have to see your facial expressions i have to interact with you i have to talk to you i have to put up with you for at least an hour at this point right and i i have to socialize with you and give you an answer and then if you're a sales guy and you're smart about this you can you can lead that conversation to make them agree or disagree what you want to do depending on how that works out but that's something that's missing that you don't get in the virtual social side and trevor might know this better than me because he's been doing much more oh he's been hiring me to do virtual so he might have a better answer and austin might have a better answer as well because austin's is a master of sales and words so he might be able to figure things out differently so that hey if i see you face to face we're not a different conversation what we're having virtually because because now you're here with me you're in a room with me you're stuck with me yeah so i have one of our clients who's omar you've actually done uh we i actually tasked you one time to do some uh some blending on a 45-foot screen and a ballroom that was way too small but one of our clients is we do a ton of events with him omar remembers that show um we were talking about hey we should really go you know we should we should definitely look at doing some virtual meetings we should you know look at doing the xr studio we should look at sending out green screens you know what you know how because they were doing some small events and just they were just letting us know like hey we're going to do some online events like well how can we help they're like well if we need help we'll call you but we don't want our we don't want our online events to be great we want them to be kind of less like something more to be desired because we their business model is really that b2b where they have ceos and decision makers of two different companies working on deals together and they and that's their whole business model and it's it's an amazing business model i mean the deals that come out of these these meetings are amazing and they're multi-year multi you know million multi-billion dollar deals so it's very very important that they have them together and i do think that we're going to see over the next three years this is my predicament this is not i don't know the future but i think over the next three years i think that q q q end of q 2 beginning of q q3 and q4 of next year you're going to start seeing a lot more meetings come back after the um the cove enviro vaccine comes out i do think that they're going to make it mandatory that you'll see a lot of companies saying if you want to have a meeting you're going to have to have the cobia vaccine and you're going to have to show that you have you've been vaccinated um but i do think you're going to see it but i will say you're going to you're going to see a a hybrid you're we're going to be in this hybrid space where we're going to be doing meetings like we're even or we're bidding on an event right now that's a general session and 10 breakout rooms that is live for june next year but every single one has a hybrid component to it so we're going to be uh streaming out to another to a to a broadcast but and then a couple of those will have some streams back where speakers already said we're not coming to it but we want to speak so they're going to we're going to speak into the room so we're already designing our system so which is actually a good thing if you are in because there are going to be more positions available uh coming out of this where we're going to need good streaming technicians for the next couple of years and i just don't think that streaming component is going to go away i understand i agree with that as well yep yeah it's it's not uh at the moment it seems like a replacement for the live events but soon enough it will be in addition to because a lot of these bigger corporations yes that face-to-face interaction is absolutely mandatory it's crucial and it's important however if i don't have to fly in dignitaries from all of these major different countries and things to bring them to or they may not necessarily feel safe coming to to a large event themselves we still have that streaming capability and i feel it will be an additional option because they'll have maybe a little bit smaller gs's but they'll still be able to hit a much larger audience yeah and i think even you know we're seeing a little bit now you know obviously the mandalorian gets a big credit for this but with the whole xr and ar kind of expansion happening right now with all those functionalities it's much easier i mean even back in the day you had them using screens right which would do the holograms it's becoming much easier to virtually bring somebody to your audience rather than pay for that person to come out there at this point so i i think trevor hits it on nail you know we're gonna i don't think it's gonna go away it's gonna be part of the it's gonna be part of the deal now so you know the guys who are doing the webinars i'm sorry doing the streaming now on the webinars now they're going to continue to have work down the road it's going to be part of it and you're going to be the go-to guys for that for that part of it for the shows um but i i i see where guys are from where about this whole covet thing you know for south florida in particular they're already requiring it on some show sites to have um proof that you've you know you've taken a test and you're your complaint within x amount of days especially if you're traveling so i did a show actually not even showing installation about three or four months ago now and it was in north carolina mind you didn't spike out there was you know as in the middle of nowhere as a church it wasn't a big deal uh when i came home i needed to get tested because the job i had two days later um knew that i flew out of town because obviously they checked social media and they was like hey you just flew out of town if you want to do this job so you go get tested and you give me these results before you before you come on job site so that at least it says in south florida thing and it's happening more and more so you know like iris said like trevor said you know be ready for that to be more of the norm until there's like a you know vaccine or like cure for this definitely and um i've seen venues are starting to have rapid response testing in front um there's a lot of venues that actually have these uh facial recognition scanners but the scanners now have uh temperature checks on them too so they're they're automatically doing temperature checks on you from the time you come in they're doing everything that they can because these venues they have to stay safe and remain in compliance in order for them to stay open and continuously make money so again they're not going to take risk on your behalf so it's a it's a big one so i want i got to go to the facebook land to get it so edward says i think that conventions are forever changed 100 percent there i think they'll come back but there will be more precautions and i've already seen this in the live ones i've been doing the hybrid events right they'll be lower numbers again i'll point there'll be a virtual experience for all these events moving forward oh this this part is great especially for this talk right now the return on investment the roi on the virtual advance is so high the reach is far greater and the previous than previously in person and the overhead is far less i think this was this i think we'll see remote video presentations brought in with live panelists on stage at these convenient conventions there'll also be a big opportunity for xr and ar to be used in these spaces so enemy are saying the same thing you guys are saying the same thing i think the one thing we missed to mention especially in this talk right was that the return on investment the the reason i think trevor and trevor could probably speak to this better what it what it would cost a client to do the same kind of forum in a hotel with the travel the hotel booking the food you're now doing a similar event a fraction of the cost you know your budget is still up there you're still getting all these people interacting now it becomes hey if you really want to make these connections for your business you come to the event you make this kind of you talk to people if you are interested in the event and you want to learn more about it and see what we're about you pay this fee and you do the virtual side you know i see that becoming more of a thing down the road especially you know for the music industry as well i don't see a concert happening nowadays especially now with live nations what they came up with a few months ago i don't see a concert happening where you would you only have a a live audience anymore there's gonna be a big portions to be online it'll be a different price to watch like a pay-per-view version of it and there'll be a price to see it live and i think there'll be significance in price and price cost between the live side you know and watching from your house or watching this thing i agree with you on that and i'm gonna say like honestly i feel like we're we start to overthink things a lot based on what we foresee things to possibly become but not even paying attention to what already was already in place right so let's take a look at probably one of the top selling marketing positions that there is a super bowl commercial this is a game that so many millions of people watch on tv yet you could still purchase tickets and actually go to the super bowl in person i think the same thing is actually going to happen on the convention side that yes we'll we'll have the capabilities to bring in a lot of people that that who's either within our organization and what not to talk to our people from much cheaper price but also remember some of these conventions they are marketing it's all about marketing one that face-to-face interaction and then they bring out some real heavy hitters like gary vaynerchuk uh grant cardone and and they'll bring out these major speakers because they know that by bringing these people into this arena that's where people is going to spend the money and and and fork out hundreds and thousands of dollars to be able to sit down and get this training live in person same thing we used to listen to albums and cds all the time but you still want to go to the concert in person to see them in action or hear them sing in person i i it's gonna come back it'll change but it won't be like this forever definitely not well i think that uh i said the roi on on these virtual events is so high i think that i think that is true to a point um like we're doing an event right now that the av is um usually a third of what it is right now and we are now going into the xr space for them so it's a four day conference it's usually flown in and they have it's like a sales conference um and but now they don't have to rent out you know they don't have to find the executives they don't have to pay for our food for you know 350 people they don't have to pay for all the extra dinners they just have to pay for their executive speaking and then bringing them in we're going to be setting up the xr stage out in california um and we're doing the whole the whole event xr and it's going to be this you know a full streamed event with some interaction um with their with their the rest of the employees as well as their their live audience um but now that's that's literally tripled in price but the company is still saving money because they're not spending money on all the hotel rooms they're not spending money on all the food um so there is there is that kind of uh ebb and flow but they this company cannot wait to go back to a live meeting um they're just doing this right now because it is a um a science-based company or a pharmaceutical company that they want to make sure they are compliant and the bet and moving the best way forward with the covet situation so um i think that it is um i i do think that there will be um there will be it will change um but the experience just like he uh austin said that you know there is um there you can go buy tickets to the super bowl because people go buy those tickets and spend thousands of thousand dollars on those tickets because it's the experience of that of being in that live space yes and i think that's what's going to be there's so many people there like the experience needs to be i love going out i love staying at a hotel i love going and spending 15 on a really cheap piece of bourbon but i get to talk to someone and i think those are the experience i think the best memory i had is spending 35 dollars on a smoked bourbon in a hotel in you know san francisco and just talking to some people and having a great night um that that bourbon was cheap bourbon i could have got it you know at home for a quarter price but i was there and i had that experience so i do think that they're gonna come back but it will it will be a completely different scenario um and you know virtual is expensive still um it's not as expensive but i do do think it's four times as hard i agree i agree and i want to add you know i think what's what's been interesting here is and we haven't seen it happen yet and i'm hoping it does honestly and this is why i want to bring it up if anybody watches esports and the way they kind of do their presentations i mean these are very graphical heavy um very kind of like theme park feel feeling of of a show i think you know to what trevor is saying that experience now to attend is going to be way way more than what it's been now you know this the good thing about what's happening with with with covert in particular is that you know over this last year is that everything and this is obviously my personal opinion everything has been so cookie cutter for so long in the live event side that now you have to really up your level up that game to make these events just that much more better right yep and then the other thing that's happening too is a lot of these events or these clients that had that had these mandatory meetings about training or just the medical facility they're going to approve that just enough to make it say hey i don't have to pay all this money to fly these doctors out we could do this all virtually hire this one company to do it and get everybody what they need without having to spend those extra all this extra money and still you know and still execute what's needed to happen for the industry and and another thing too is i think that these these little virtual bands as far as the medical side that i've seen i think they're expediting or speeding up some of these processes because now it's not a couple days to fly here a couple days flying there a meeting here meeting there now it's i sit down at my desk at the hospital i get the information i need i talk about it i do a presentation i get the feedback and then i go right back and i start implementing there's there's this it's much quicker to get information out there now with the way we're doing it and i think as we fine-tune this and make it a better process and a better workflow it's gonna just speed that part up um so much more faster than what we've been using the last couple years i agree but i'm gonna be the nail that sticks out and i'm gonna say this um i believe that eventually the amount of attendance that they're getting for these conferences and these conventions i think it'll start to fall off from the virtual side of it because since it's so convenient and easy for you to just log on to your resume account or whatever the cases and watch it i feel more people will miss out on it more not in not as many people will feel the same because there's no experience you you can watch it but you're going to provide that experience to the maximum amount of level that you or the capacity that you can through a screen but when you're in a room or a ballroom and that base is turned up and that music is pumping and everyone is screaming and the applause is going that's what gets motive people motivated that's what gets them fired up that's the that's the energy that a lot of these companies are looking to to push for in their sales personnel so that they can get fired up and go back to work and start making some more money yep that's a good point a good point so i'm thinking of a particular show i did where it could have been done two ways right it could have been two screens the speaker in the middle the sound was good maybe some ballyhoos or right which which when we were doing this this was to me to me was like hey what we should be doing for everybody because this this is this makes a difference right especially if you're doing a sales thing we were doing wall to wall led ultra ride content right so the presenters on stage with this awesome backdrop of presentation right and then on top of that you got the bass pumping you got the belly who's going off and it was such a simple setup but it was like the impact you got from from the audience was great and then the the great part was you had a camera you didn't need the backlight [ __ ] because it had natural backlighting um you put some bat you know you paint the walls with some a couple of you know four like four mac movers in the back or some values or whatever do you do a walk-up man you do some graphics on the screen it didn't take a lot but at the time it was like this is next level and it's not even that much next level like it's a super easy execution it looks fantastic this and and it got the reaction you're talking about you know people are hyped up they're loving the music they're into it they're vibing on it right how much of that are you seeing on the multiple monitors that we're running we're not you know that's what i'm saying and that energy it's it's necessary for these companies 100 and but that's what i'm saying i think and and i want to bring as common here real quick that's what that's what i'm saying i think that there's still like trevor saying it as well this dual hybrid we'll still have for another year or two because i don't need to have as many people on board if there's a cover concern whether it's insurance side or just personal side right because because it you can get sued right um i can still execute a good show for my live attendees and still get the information for the people that can't attend which is kind of like a a double win for my client and speaking you know speaking of when it comes to zombies with a client and ed wanted to just clarify so when i said the return on virtual events was high i meant for the event producers not so much for the av providers which again this next part is 100 sure right there was a bit of a race to the bottom on pricing for the virtual production for a lot of companies to just keep the doors open sad but true uh and it had to happen and i'm hoping that and a lot of clients as well there will be a level off where hey this is the average of what it costs for all this to do these things you know going forward if you want to add this to your events the event still costs this which is back to the rates right virtual still cost this and you combine those two things and i think that'll be where it kind of evens itself out but just to kind of go with uh what ed says there um it's a really good point because we have seen that um actually there was a client that worked with us and said we only want trevor's team working with us uh we did a couple of their events omar you're actually on a couple of them as well um they have a ton of events coming up and we set the pricing like hey you want to do all these things you're adding all these things there's going to be some prices involved because you're adding more vmix machines we're adding things that double back into other green rooms we're doing a lot of stuff and what we do is we set up i have a um i have about a 600 square foot basement uh in my house in florida which is where that before it has basement but i have a basement and we completely tuned it out to be a studio we have a tricaster two elite we have a fully built vmix server we have vmix on like three different uh high-end laptops and then we have like a laptop station over on the other corner where and we have a matrix set up so we can have tvs around the room so we can see what's going on so there's we have multiple internet providers coming in and there's it there's a huge cost it's costing me about 500 a month or more just to run this just to run the electric and the internet costs and and cost for having a tech on site um so there's a cost involved with that and this they came back and said well we have another provider that's going to do it for x and you know you're too high can you come down it's like at that point it's not worth me doing it and i won't come down to my pricing um and not that we need we don't want the work we don't nee

2021-04-27 13:48

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