Why events win or fail before doors open

Yay. Nicole. Hello.

Let's do it. Let's go off the record. Ready. Ready.

Normally my answer, okay, well there's two parts. So normally my answer, because I'm a big technical girl, so I love obviously right. I love production, I love pyro, I love drones, I love crazy LEDs, blah blah. But I'm a musician too, right? So I have a very different type of respect for artists. I'm not a fangirl, right? It's a different level of respect and trust. So I have to say, being at my job, I've gotten invited to so many events for these top tier A list artists as a guest. And these are we're talking intimate shows, private concerts for, I don't wanna name drop, and I don't know if I should, but just different major artists at the label who I've listened to before I even worked here. Bands, because we have the Green Days, we have Linkin Park, imagine you're working directly with an artist for an event. And then they're like, we're playing a sh we're playing a private event. Come to this event. And then you go and you're just like, I'm sitting with his manager, his mother, Well, whoever, right? These people, and you're just watching a performance and it's like you and a handful of people and then them performing on a stage.

Yeah. Smaller. The more Smaller, intimate, more raw, more vulnerable. I appreciate those a lot, probably a lot more than a bigger festival or a bigger concert, And from their perspective, it's also a different way of performing.

No. No.

Maybe a little bit of both. I feel like I always wear it. I just don't say it.

I think it, but I'm not gonna I'm there to enjoy the show. Yeah, and it's not gonna override your enjoyment. That's great. Let's honestly No. Well maybe sometimes I'm like 'cause you know how I'm type A. So I'm type A. I like I'm very go go go. So sometimes I'm sure people listening too, your expertise is something and when you see it, you focus on it and it's like you can't let it go. You wanna fix it so bad.

Well, I have a couple of things just from my experience. And so I've noticed people are very hyper fixated on event apps. You go to a festival, you have an app. I speak at this conference sometimes and I've been going now for a couple of years, and there's an app, right? That's great. I'm young, I know how to use an app, but I feel like sometimes it's there's so much money and time spent on an app. And then I've noticed at these festivals or at these shows, people don't know how to use the app. The app crashes, it freezes, and it drains your battery on your phone. All this stuff, right? And I feel like it's just really overused, I'm a big signage girl, especially when I did festivals and events at stadiums and stuff. Use signage, digital signage, have a website where people can go to and find everything where it's not through an app that's burning your battery on your phone.

Mm-mm. I just we have apps for different things more on the artist side of things, with the monetizations and all of that stuff. They have to use that to s for streaming purposes and like numbers, right? Metrics. But for me, I don't use apps at this job and I love it. I really like it because I just think apps are overused. So I have to say that's my number one thing is apps.

Yeah. There's gonna

It depends on who I'm working with, but there are a few artists who are phones away.

I agree. I agree. And I think the apps do take people out of the event because you're too busy scrolling and trying to figure out where to what button to push to go to this page and this page. 'cause some of the interfaces aren't user friendly,

That was fun. That was my first time and I really I loved it. I loved it. There was a couple

I like seeing inside of other people's creative heads a lot of the entries were from different places around the world, right? So you see what's trending over here, what's trending over here. There was one, if I can say there was one that really stuck out to me. It had to do with dr so I love drones. I love drones. So it had to do with drones. I think it was correct me if I'm wrong, it was over the it was over water and it was a drone show. I just remember it had a lot of drones and it was like a beautiful drone show, spectacular. My biggest thing right now that's I think a good trend. Is using drones. A lot of there's a

I love drones. I went to this Harry Potter drone show at Dodger Stadium and it was put on by Fever. And they used 1,200 drones and it was it's amazing what you can create with drones.

Depends on the client. My role is very client-based. Just really depends on the situation. But we have drones that fly around, they take content, they take pictures. Really I love drones.

That's a great question. My role is I've been there four years, but my role was pretty much new. We have an events team that's in the UK, but there was no corporate, when it comes to in office events and things, there was no team. It was a little chaotic at first. So when I basically when I first started, there was no process to book events. I came in and I established an event process. We made an event form. People have to fill out in advance to book events with me, whether and whether it's in office, out of office, a corporate event, a C-suite event, It doesn't matter. They have to fill out a form. My role has really grown over the last four years. So it started with more just basic in office events. We have a stage that we had when I started, we call it Center Stage. So we do a lot of events there. And then I oversee for every event, whether it's that or we do live streams a lot, whatever it is, I basically handle the event from start to finish. So I start advancing the event. I do the budgeting, help with the budgeting for the event. I hire the crew for the events. I do the run of shows for the events. I order the gear

Now It does. You talk about, the internal events, these live streams. What are these external events? It's like fan events, a lot of fan events, they're on a radio tour, something, they're like doing promotion for an upcoming single, upcoming album or whatever. So they do a lot of pop-ups, So we're not talking big arena shows, because I've done that too, but this is more like we mentioned the intimacy, right? So it's more intimate, Linkin Park's done quite a few. And they're amazing. Whatever it is, down the street at a skate shop, or you have to rent out a parking lot and we set up an event. It's like really random stuff like that. And then I do, like you said, live streams. We do a lot of artist live streams.

Both. So yeah, so both. So I have a great vendor who does all my live streams. We've done so that the Center Stage I'm talking about at the office, we've done a ton of live streams there because we have a live stream rig that we have set up there. Live streams from there for the Grammys, the Grammy Museum, the Recording Academy. I've done quite a few for them there. I've done a lot of artist events at the Recording Academy too, Grammy Museum So I've done a lot for them. There, which is another off site thing we do live streams there too. Upstairs we have a lounge. We'll set up a live stream there with lighting and cameras and it's like we may make it happen anywhere. You just

Probably a bathroom.

It was a women's restroom, it was a sound thing 'cause it had a vibration to it 'cause of the echo of the bathroom.

It was like the ba yeah, that's basically what it was.

It really depends. So in general, I'm a very flexible producer because the expectations very high, right? 'Cause I'm doing a lot with executives, big artists, managers, especially the managers. You have to like have a certain personality. So I always tell people never say no. Always listen and say, okay, let's see if we can figure this out. And I feel like you have to give them the courtesy of hearing them out. And another thing is I always tell people to build your run of show with some buffer. So I always put more time than I might need to have. Extra room for changing things, you have to modify something. Something's running late. Your gear doesn't show up on time. The artist is late,

It depends on their manager. I've had some really good managers that make sure everything's like with me, right? We're running on time. It's really like riders. Having to work with these certain riders, like hospitality, green room riders, my god, I'm like I give a limit. So

It's a waste of money. I'm telling you, set a limit.

The alcohol, food, colors, little accessories, yoga mats, steamers, whatever, right? The green M&M joke. That's like a real thing. Well,

It's just funny because people it's like a industry joke, right? It's like, what do they ask for? Green M&Ms.

Yeah. It's like it's like that diva mentality, right?

You have to just learn to pivot. I set pretty stern expectations, even if it's like a bigger artist. Cause for the most part, and I don't want to say artists are [...] but a lot of them are great. Most of them are great. Sometimes you're gonna have to say, look, this is what was agreed upon in your contract. There's nothing I can really do about that. You need to talk to your manager about that. It's as simple as that,

It is.

It's the same thing with shows. There was one artist, 'cause I do the Grammy Party, the Warner Grammy Party. I do all the artist production and I set up all the green rooms and all the fun stuff. So it's like certain artists don't want felt. They don't want certain colors, they don't want certain flowers because it makes them makes them sneeze or they want real flowers. They don't want fake flowers but you always do that ahead of time. Ask ahead of time. So they're not surprised.

So lead time, it really depends. Sometimes for our smaller events, I say smaller, but they're not small. Whether it's like a virtual event or a last minute, wait, this artist wants to come in next week and do this thing. We have one artist particular. I'm not gonna say he loves to do events on our rooftop, which has no infrastructure. To do events. So we have a we have a we have show power and that's pretty much it. But it's like a week before he wants to come up and do this big thing. Is sometimes it's a week, two weeks. People at Warner, I feel like a lot of the times it's a little more last minute, right?

I think so. Yeah.

Well, I have a rule. I have a rule that if you book an event of certain a performance, let's say a performance, right? A two week is my minimum. I won't if you request it with me a week ahead, I won't do it. I say no. I'm you have to set boundaries. I'm telling you, I'm not a yes girl anymore. I used to be when I was younger. At this point, you're not, I'm not a yes person anymore. I'm a practical, I'm very practical and level-headed. So that's not gonna happen. You know why? Because crew's not available. I can't get gear that soon. You just can't make the logistics work in a week. You can't do it. So my minimum is two weeks, unless it's like something simple, less very simple. There's not much involved in it. It's always coming in for a photo shoot, a content shoot. They have their own videographer. They need a space to do it and some lights. Whatever. A week is fine, right? As long as the space is available. But two week minimum for me.

Yeah. To the business. Yeah. So we don't, halfway do something. It's like quality over quantity. Right? There's some groups that just wanna do so much stuff, but it's not you're not giving 100% every time. Just do one or two big things a year and make it amazing instead of 10 small things and they're like, No.

Yeah. Well, in my office it's me. Pretty much I have vendors and consultants I work with, but event wise it's me. I literally am one person. I work really closely with our other internal Warner teams, like for example, facilities, corporate communications, IT, the normal teams within a business, security, whatever. You have to work together to make events happen. But when it comes to advancing and producing the events, it's myself. And then I'll hire in vendors or my consultants or contractors to help with these bigger things. But I literally like I tell people I'm one person. There's somebody who sits in Nashville. There's somebody who sits in New York, but those of us in LA, we do the bigger events. And I hope if anyone's listening, boss, I need a coordinator. I've been trying to get my coordinator for a while. So I'm trying to get, somebody to help. It's just become we do over 400 events a year. It's silly. So it's me.

For example Clair is like a huge company, right? And we use Clair at a lot of our other locations. What does Clair do? What what's it a company for? Clair Global. Clair Global is, they build for us, they build out all of our event spaces, the consoles, the racks, the everything that that goes into making the stage come to life. In LA, we use Rat. Love my Rat boys. If Rat's listening, I love them. Rat audio is like a smaller business, it's very personalized. I can call them. If I have a problem, I call my dude over there and he's on the phone with me to fix a problem. Done. It's quick. So I need that relationship. Even coffee. I'd rather go to a small mom-and-pop coffee shop than like Starbucks. No offense. I love Starbucks, but I

Even my lighting, it's like a small business. It's one person. I like using smaller businesses it's comfortable for me. I can call you, you're available. If you're not available, you can have someone else who can be available for an emergency. You're following up with me about how's the gear working? How's it going? Che quarterly checkups or whatever, making sure, hey, it's due, you're due for maintenance. We got to schedule your maintenance. I don't have to, I don't have to chase you. I just I need that personal one-on-one relationship with my vendors, whether it's my live stream vendors, my lighting, my audio people, whatever. Even staging, I have reps for every single company. That's really important to me is like having a representative who's available and willing to work with me with my price, my quote, my budgets, they're not gonna like. Charge me some astronomical amount when it's like, No, you're like, don't try and use me to get money out of me. Let's be reasonable.

Love that. No, you're right. You're actually right. I've and there has been some situations where I've gotten because I have a relationship where I get preferred pricing on things. I'm the one who will say, let's say we have an event and I have great catering vendors and bartending vendors. My god, the best. And let's just say a quote comes back and the client's like, it's a little high. I'm the one to go. Hold on a second. I got you. I got you. So I'll go straight to the vendor or the caterer or whoever and be like, hey, can we work this out? I'll give you a discount on this. I'll give you free this and free this. Great. You just have to have the relationship and ask.

You know me, girl. You know me.

Yeah. I didn't do a typical school journey either, just so people know. I went to one school, I transferred to another school. I didn't I went to MI. Once MI was done, this music school, I worked. I was teaching music. I was playing in some bands. I was talking to venues around Hollywood to just learn things. I was just doing stuff. Then I decided to go back to school and get my bachelor's in 2013. But I got it in sports medicine this was the time when Napster came out. Record labels were going downhill. So there was a lot of change in the business, music business. And I said, I remember saying to myself, self, you need a backup. I remember saying to my parents, I want to do something in sports. So that's why I got my bachelor's in sports medicine. And then I didn't regret it because from there I was like, you know what? I'm really useful now. And then from there, I got my first big girl job. I was doing events and managing a corporate. So it was like a corporate, what do you call it? Corporate. Wellness, corporate fitness center, corporate wellness center. But I was like managing this whole fitness center and I was doing events for this company while I was like out of just from just being out of school. And I was like, it was this weird thing. I was like doing this event thing. And then from there, that's when I was like, okay, then I worked at UCLA, so my not my resume, I worked at UCLA doing events. From doing events there, I got hit up by LAFC. Then I worked at Banc. It was like this domino effect. Then once I got there, I was like, I want to get my master's. And my boss at the time had gone through this great program at Long Beach State, which is where I started. So it took me 360 back to where I started. And I'll tell you right now, I was working full time. I was going to grad school. I was interning at Fox Sports. I was working for the LA Kings part-time. I had like I don't know how I slept. I don't think I slept very much, but it was the best thing I could have done for myself because I networked like crazy. That's beautiful. That is b, I really do.

I gotta read It's all about, networking in the form. And I can tell you've got the same outlook as I do. Networking, not as manipulative, not as negative, not trying to get something from someone else. It's not what I can get from you, but it was it's what I can do for you. And it's positive and productive. And it's amazing how when you build a bridge for someone to get to where they need to go, someday you might have to walk across that same bridge. So, Nicole, how much of what you know about artist experience and everything you do now with Warner, did you learn from being an artist yourself? When I was just an artist, I didn't know much of anything. I thought I did. I thought I did. But in every band or 'cause I did a lot of session work too, hired stuff and whatever. I feel like I just because I had experience with different jobs and different things, I knew a little bit more about the business than most people did. People would come to me as like, can you manage this? What do we do? What do we do? What do I'm like, my God, I don't know. I'm just trying to sing and be creative. But fast forward to now, I have the connections. I have people to help out with things, right? Get really overwhelmed because it's really hard to be creative and be the business at the same time. And I always tell my partner, because my partner's a musician as well, and I tell people I know, if this thing takes off and this band this project goes somewhere. I am not going to tour manage. I'm not going to production manage. I am going to just be as the singer of this band. Be the singer of this band. And we are bringing people on to do these things because I get really overwhelmed. I'm very hyperactive. I can take on a lot at once, but I also have a limit And I don't want to crash, by doing too much.

Well, I always tell my team at work too, my partners, I say, if I call out, if I'm taking time off or I leave early, it's because I need to do that for myself. So the b the best part of my role is I'm not really I'm not micromanaged. I am blessed to have a very flexible schedule, be very flexible with myself because I get my work done and I do it really well. So I'm executing and I'm delivering, but when I need time off, I take time off. I turn my phone on DND. I'm off. And I think it's really important when you feel the burnout coming, I purposely set up my team for success of what's coming up so they don't have to worry about it. If I know I'm out of office for two weeks or a week or whatever. Okay, what events are coming up in a couple weeks? Okay, let me start to prepare these for them so they don't have to worry about it. They can figure it out without me having to be on my phone during vacation, But I do go to the beach a lot. I try and just meditate a lot. I do yoga. I go to the gym a lot. I do obviously music, obviously. I just don't overwork. You don't need to overwork I don't like the mentality of Overworking yourself is a good thing. I think that's weird. If you have a day where you only work five, six hours or f whatever, so what? You did your work in five hours. Go home. I don't know. I just think it's weird to feel the need to push yourself to eight, 10, 12 hours a day. Now, festivals and when I was working at, different events, that's how it is sometimes. Now I don't do that. You don't need to do that.

Yeah, of course.

No.

Yeah, everyone's different, obviously, normally, I start smiling a lot. So when I'm stressed and I'm overwhelmed in an event, I'm like, yeah, it's fine. Yeah, I'm like I get really happy. It's weird. I know. I usually do go for a walk and I put headphones in and I blast metal. So I actually love house music too and EDM. So it's either EDM or metal. Very weird. I know. But I usually go for a walk, I find a quiet space somewhere. If I have to sit in the van, the work van, even to go some like I go somewhere really far away, and I just meditate. Or I'll listen to music. I just take time to myself

In certain roles, depending on your role you're in, whoever is listening, it's your responsibility to take care of your people. So I people call me the production mom at work because I take care of people. So I'll make sure my crew takes breaks. I make sure they eat, I make sure they have water, you need to take care of people. So if you see somebody burning out in front of you. Offer to help.

or they're your first year. Doesn't matter. Doesn't

It is.

Ooh, that's that's a really good question. Yeah. I went from a really chaotic environment to a really structured I say calm. It's just it's so different. This is this is I say it's an easy job for me because I just feel like it's Higher expectations. It's more white glove, I'll say, right? Because you again, you're working with I'm working with CEO, the CFO, label presidents and stuff, right? So the expectation is higher. But the work is honestly really less strenuous So I feel like if I had gone from this job to festivals, I would be lost. I feel like I would be like totally overwhelmed. I think it's a blessing that I went from that to this

Doesn't matter what it is. Yeah, I give it all the time. Like I mentioned, I do the Grammy party. I help with the Grammy Party. I've done all of our big holiday parties for the company.

Well, it's funny because they're they come to me like, are we doing this party? I'm like, I don't even okay, I don't even go to my holiday parties. I work it and I leave I don't even attend it as like a fur as like a guest. I'm so tired. I just go home. But I would say probably I have the Grammy Party or these events we do at the Grammy Museum because they're livestreamed, but they're to like thousands and thousands of people, the academy, right? So it's not like a big in-person event, but the stakes are really big The Grammy party's different because it's so much stuff you have to it's like a lot of planning. Yeah, we start months and months ahead of time. The artist.

I know when it's coming.

I know the month it's coming. And I've been able to go to the Grammys now three times. It's really cool. And I've never ever thought I would go to the actual Grammys. But those are big only because it's like festivals are big. Warner, it's big because the stakes are higher. You know what I mean? I take it as like what's what's involved. You have your executives, you have your partners, you have your artists coming to this party. You're in charge of the way it looks, the way it sounds, how you're laying things out. That's stressful to me because these are not just people off the street. This is like these are like people that pay my salary, these are the artists.

Yeah, I've always held after actions, like postmortems. I think I learned that because when I worked at the stadium back in the day, it was like a requirement. You have event meetings before, and then you have your post morts after. So it stuck with me to keep doing them Universal, I did them. Obviously here I do them for our bigger events, We do video shoots all the time for artists. And we had one recently that just went to crap. Okay. And it wasn't on my side. It was the team that I was working with on that side was just very unorganized, very green, didn't really know how to just didn't know what they were doing. And they've never done that before. We don't have a lot of postmortems for things like that specifically. But I do them when I have to do them because I feel like it's important to give feedback I want the label to succeed. And if certain people They're too green, they're not experienced enough to know any better. You need to give that feedback so that they don't keep doing it. If you don't give the feedback, they're gonna keep treating people that way, not handling things the right way, whatever, right? You have to do it within a few days. I don't think you don't wait a week You schedule it on the calendar, you just fit it in. You have to, you just 30 minutes, sometimes an hour if it's a bigger event or longer, more people, whatever. Just do it. What went well? What we what could we have done better? I'm open to feedback. Everyone else should be open to feedback too. What could I do better? What could you do better? You know what I mean? Just don't take it as like a attack. Just constructive criticism, I guess, right? Is what they call it.

The experience I'm talking about, I said, it was like a video shoot, it was a budgeted time. So we had to be in and out by a certain time. And I have to lead it by saying the pre pro production of this, because I was advancing everything, it was awful. They didn't have their team together. The people that were doing these certain roles didn't know how to do this role.

A month before the shoot even happened. It was just

Yeah, I have to. I give deadlines. I'm like, I need your rider by this time. I need your technical rider by this time. I give deadlines. And when that they don't meet the deadline, I have to call them. I have to chase down people. And then things get to the site and they're wrong. The stage plot's not right. The back line's not right. So I became a I was basically like a creative director. I was a camera person. I was a lighting person. I was a sound person. I was like a I was just I started to become everything because I was calling the shots on the creative when that's not really what my role was at the time. So I pulled my team aside And I said, look, this is not going the way it should go. This is Really messed up. They're talking down on my people. They're being rude. The nothing's right. All the documents I were sent were wrong. So we're gonna start over. You guys are gonna go finish what you're doing. I'm gonna go have a chat with the with them. So I went to have a chat with the artist, the team, the manager, the MD, whatever. I said, look, this isn't gonna happen the way that you want it. This isn't gonna look the way you want it to look. It's not gonna sound the way you want it to sound because nothing was advanced correctly. I'm giving you what I was what. I was given. I'm giving you in person on the stage what you give me on paper. You can't go bend over backwards to completely change something just because you they advanced it wrong or as someone advanced it wrong. So when they come in angry because, hey, this isn't set up the way it should be, well, that's what the stage plot says. That's what you sent me. It's what you're, it's what you get. So you have to be like a little bit of a B sometimes because I don't got time. And we ran over budget because we were an hour over, right? The people who were supposed to be running the audio weren't. Doing it, they were just sitting there. It was weird. It was weird. And I'm just the one

Get up there and do your job. So I have to turn into a little bit of a B because you know what? The label's money is at stake, time's at stake. It looked and sounded great at the end of the day. It really did. But do hold people accountable. If someone's not sending you the right documents. That's what they sent you. Go by what you get sent. Go by what's in writing. I tell people don't allow someone to come in your house and boss you around and push you around because they didn't do their job right. So

These were hired people too. These were hired musical directors and creative directors and stuff too. So I I had to go to the label and say, you need to let these people go. They can't do this. They're not good at their job. At least in this environment. Maybe they're good at their job in a different environment.

Yeah, all the time. I feel like that was all the time. Especially when you cause you try and forecast things in a festival. I think that's probably the best example because you're looking at ticket sales as you go and you're staffing and planning as you see numbers come in. So it's interesting because sometimes you overstaff. Because you anticipate where sales are gonna go for a certain festival and then it ends up dropping, and then you have all the staff and you're paying all this extra money for people that you don't need there. That happens a lot more than people think. And festivals are hard because you rely on sales. You rely on how many tickets are sold. So you don't want to understaff because then your safety is at risk, but then you pay you overstaff when you don't need to and then you lose money.

got to go? It's a few things. Sometimes it it's affecting the rest of the team negatively. Someone's bullying somebody, someone's attitude is just crap and it's bringing people down where they can't work. Sometimes it's attitude at the talent, which is a no-no At the stage managers, attitude at me, whatever it is, right? I've learned that Warner is very corporate, white glove. So I've worked with people outside that I've tried to bring in and it doesn't work. So I've had to tell them, hey, this is your last show with me. It's not gonna work unless you can change your attitude, your personality. You need to be soft. Little more soft, a little more kind. You're working with high level people and they just can't do it. Or like you said, mid-show, somebody's not getting along with somebody else for whatever reason, they're bickering, I'm like, come, both of you, come here, I'm like the mom. I'm like, one of you's gotta go right now. One of you's going I can't do this. This is not working. So Usually you know who it is too because you can tell. I'm very observant of people. If someone's not happy, I can tell. If someone's miserable, I can tell.

They tell me, yeah, they always tell me. And then usually it's my sometimes it's my responsibility to handle it. Sometimes it's really not my role or responsibility to do it. But I'm more comfortable than other people, I think, to do that. Have the what do you call it? The tough conversations,

I'm just looking out for the best of the business. I just I'm looking out for the best of everyone else. And maybe all I say is maybe this isn't the right environment for you. Something going on in your personal life? Do you need time off? Do you need a break? Do you need to go step away for an hour and come back? What do you need? I always give options. I'm I try and understand people. People have things going on outside of work. I don't bring personal into work. I really try not to do that. Some people do. You know what I mean? You just have to be transparent. I don't like to talk fluff. I just I'm more direct about what it means.

Ain't nobody got time for fluff. No, just be direct. Be like, look, if you need a break, cool. If not, you're going home.

Talent can mean different things. Whoever is like the highlight of your event, that to me is called your talent, right? People think of talent like musicians or whatever. It's not always that though. It's like who you're catering to. You need to be able to adjust yourself to who you're working with. I feel like one of my biggest strengths is working with my talent because I just know how to talk to them. I advance everything, I'm the contact for every single thing. So my name is the only one that they know, I'm like the comfortable contact. People already know my name. I'm the first person to meet them. I escort them to the green room or wherever. I make sure they have, do you need coffee? Do you need some water? What can I get you? You need to make sure that they're comfortable.

I'll be honest with you, there's been times with events, especially the big events, where I've had situations where I've worked really hard. I've overworked myself. And you have these postmorts or you have these meetings with your leadership and they don't give a damn. You could done things well, but they only focus on what you did wrong. I've seen people get beaten down. I've gotten beaten down for little things do you not see what I just did and you're like focusing on you know what mean? And I get so frustrated when people in these higher positions don't put themselves in the shoes of the people on the ground. If you're not boots on the ground, you don't get it. I'm dealing with it now sometimes too right with in this job. It's like don't dictate to me what I need, I'm telling you what I need next time to make this better you get no support from your leadership, right? That just makes you want to say, screw this and just leave

I love the people too much I work with every day. I really do. People come and go all the time, right? People come and go, leaders come and go, whatever. But I really love the artists I work with. I really like the teams I work with on my level. I really love my partners. What whatever s screw it. Screw that's not gonna make me leave a business just because they don't see my value. Other people see my value. As long as my clients are happy, my team's happy, my artists are happy, that's all I care about. It's just it's frustrating when you don't get the support of the people you need it from, right? Your high, high, high leadership. I have to say I warn I have a great relationship with my leadership here. I really do at Warner. I really do. I

I love working with these artists that I've listened to since I don't even know. I work with artists now that I've listened to since I was middle school. You know what I mean? It's crazy. And now I get to do these events with them where they're sitting five feet in front of me. It's just it's cool. I love it. It's so cool.

The politics. The politics. It's we know this. It's like people are getting a lot of layoffs in the business right now, a lot of things. It's a lot of politics. So that drives me nuts sometimes, but it's it is what it is.

I do feel like people focus Or sometimes events and businesses and brands focus too much on the on-site part of it and not like the global reach of things. So getting more of a virtual audience involved with events too and making it accessible maybe in different languages. I have great vendors who do those things. They'll come on site for your festival and do a live stream and they'll have, subtitles and captions and whatever. It's like start to expand yourselves more.

That's a good question too. I don't I have a really weird relationship with AI, I feel like. And it's not going anywhere, so I can't say to shut it down. But I do feel like it's overused and it's not used properly sometimes. It's really hard for me too, because I see it every day on a different level with artists trying to make money from writing songs with AI. It's like a whole thing right now. But I feel like we need to stop u abusing artificial intelligence and we need to learn how to use it properly to make the business succeed and not How do I say it? It's like almost like a facade. People use it sometimes as a facade to get their way or to do something. But it's like it needs to be more pure. I don't know. I just I have a weird relationship with AI So I feel like it's not going away, but I think it's a hot topic right now. We need to learn how to use it appropriately and not abuse it.

Not really about how I work, but it affects my if it's affecting the business

At our last Grammy party, we had AI robots. That was this was probably my first experience with something AI like physical on site. We had these AI robots, and they walked around greeting people and serving drinks on trays. And they were being controlled by people in a room in the back. They would talk to you, they could converse with you, they they could take your orders for you and then they would go and they would come find you. It was really weird.

Videos, pictures, taking selfies people were like, wow, this is so cool. This is amazing. They just

That's what we should do.

That's what we should be doing, I really do feel like there's a way to use it to our advantage maybe we can use AI to make apps better.

I don't know if people are gonna agree with this or this answer, but it's something I wrote down because I've seen it a lot and it drives me nuts as waste is like over delivery of free stuff like swag and wasteful marketing tactics.

Don't know if people I don't know if people are gonna

It ends up on the ground, it ends up in the trash. I feel like we use physical, free shirts and hats and it's getting old. I see it all the time. I go to shows all the time. I go to shows myself and I see it and I feel like it's so wasteful. Have a merch booth. Yeah. But when you're at festivals and just giving free stuff away and then it ends up on the ground, you have to clean it up. It's like paper, you're killing trees for it. There's so many better things we could do, like digital experiences even more healthy alternatives instead of giving away merch and swag, maybe it's food, snacks,

Well, we used to give away headphones. For a lot of neurodiverse people, at festivals, it's a lot of overstimulation. So we used to offer calm zones, I think we called them or areas where people can be away from the noise. And we used to offer headphones, free, nice headphones

Safety. I'm a big safety person. I don't mess around with safety, like security,

Yeah, it's to me it's like having a secure infrastructure, having a secure perimeter, having enough staff. Having water stations, having hydration areas, having shade structures, like things like that. I consider and security too, obviously. That's a given. 'cause you hear about these festivals that give a bad rep to these ones that things went wrong. Astroworld-type situations or whatever, and you think how could this have been prevented?

Yeah, I put that on poor planning and the way that the s the festival was laid out, it didn't allow enough space for people to move freely. So it would like pigeonhole people into a certain corner. So you had a lot of people stuck here because one stage was here and then you had to walk around this corner and it was like this tight turn and then people are pigeonholed here so they can't go on this. It was a really weird layout. So you would it wasn't an open area where people can freely roam and be like spread out to where everyone's yeah, it's like a more even spread out. It was clumps of people here and then you had nowhere for people to go. So when people started pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing, it was like they got trampled. People were dying. People were suffocating. They couldn't breathe. There wasn't enough staff. Let's be honest. It was like there were too many areas where people couldn't see. I watched this a documentary about it and I was like pulling my hair out the whole time. How could you how do you look at a floor plan, a layout, and think this is good.

Usually we have a whole safety team. So and that's obviously their main job to do that. But yeah, for the bigger events and stuff, we have if the security team feels like we need more support, yeah, we bring on extras extra, consultants, because It starts from the walkthrough. You have a walkthrough, you have to create a f a layout. You build your perimeter. How big is this footprint? Where the stage is gonna go. You need to think about this stuff.

When I first started with Insomniac, I remember I forgot about the ADA ramps. I for I forgot

I don't know how I did that. I forgot about the ADA ramps and I just forgot I forgot to call the vendor to have them there. I forgot about them. I was like what the hell am I doing?

Yeah. Yeah, no. I I frantically called the vendor and I was like, we have this festival in this location two days from now and I totally forgot to order ADA ramps.

Yeah. Pretty much.

Do you know what? I talk about this a lot because I'm scared. I get scared with ticket prices the way they are a lot of people I know aren't touring as much because it's expensive. So they can't afford the buses, the gas, the crew. It's getting really expensive. I'm nervous about where live events like are they gonna continue on the same scale? People resell tickets for astronomical amounts and not everybody has the luxury of going in debt to go to Coachella like people do and like it's

As an industry, we all really need to be on the same page and work together on this, because the big head, the big jefe, Ticketmaster and stuff, companies like that, we need to all understand what's our outcome. What's our goal here? Sa are we really that selfish to make money and ruin our user experience? Is that really what our priority is at the end of the day? I know people who go into actual debt because they have to rent rooms for Coachella and buy tickets and buy food and buy like it's they go into credit card debt. Is that our goal? Do we want people to go into debt to go to a show?

I talk to a lot of crew, they're not always treated the way you think they're treated. We need to treat people better. And I feel like it's something that's like you said behind the scenes or off the scenes. You'd be surprised how many techs on tour and stuff, they're like not paid well, they're not treated well, they're not given good amenities. It's pretty bad, guys. I guess pretty bad. And I know I know friends firsthand that have left different artists. I'm not gonna say them because they're really big name people. They've left because they're not treated well. But they don't say it. They just they keep it in inside and then they just leave. It's like but they don't say it. They don't say it out loud to like the people who care, who matter,

Probably how to prioritize, right? How to prioritize projects, tasks, you have to I f I don't know if it's something you have to learn by doing it, but I do feel like I was not a good prioritizer when I first started learning the business or working and stuff, because you just didn't know what how to do it. I wasn't experienced enough to understand, but now obviously I am. So I wish someone was able to have a textbook, like how to prioritize for dummies.

I feel like event success happens in pre-production. I really do. Event success happens when you advance an event. During the event, what are you gonna do? You can't call you you can't there's only so much you can do.

You manage it.

Yeah, but you have to have a list. I just love lists.

I think we talked earlier about technology, even things we talked about I know we talked about AI, but things like drones and the evolution of I've seen so many cool things like evolution of drones with water, with lighting, I think that's gonna blow up. I think it's gonna blow up. I think technology is just gonna get I think I love pyro. I'm a pyro girl. I am obsessed with some pyro. I feel like because of the climate and the environment and things like that, I feel like things are gonna start to get phased out and new technologies are gonna start to get brought in. I've heard rumblings of environmentalists and things like that, 'cause it sits in the air and that's a thing I think about a lot. How is this gonna affect the environment?

Wow. That's a really good question. I really wanna do more global work, honestly. Learning more about unions in different countries, the rules of, different countries and I wanna learn more about that stuff and I wanna expand my knowledge and learn more. So I'd love to do more like global stuff. That'd be

Loved it. I really appreciate it. And reach out to me on LinkedIn. I'm there, not shy. So I might not respond right away. But I will see.

I will. I will see it. I promise.