The team involved in making "No Sleep til Brooklyn" breaks down the story behind the episode.
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Welcome everybody to episode one of the after show of No Sleep 'til Brooklyn,
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where we break down the documentary that we shot for our first ever Golden Hour
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event conference.
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So, today with me I have Anthony, founder CEO of Audience Plus, JK Sparks, Head
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of Marketing, and Amir, who is the brains behind the production of this whole
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documentary.
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So, what's up guys?
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What's going on?
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What about what?
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Alright, so before we actually go and kind of break down like how we shot this,
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the thought process behind like different scenes and the way we put this thing
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together.
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First, I just want to ask you, Anthony, like it was your idea to create a
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documentary for Golden Hour in the first place.
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So, like what was the thought process behind a documentary for the event?
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Yeah, I mean there were, I would say the genesis of the idea was honestly like
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probably over a year old.
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There was a show that I saw in Netflix called Seven Days Out, and it's
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effectively like of course a full-on Netflix like production, but going to the
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biggest events in the world and following the event marketers, the event
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producers, seven days before this big show.
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So, it was like a Chanel runway in Paris, it was, gosh I forget the entire list
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, but it kind of gives this like unique perspective on what it takes to put on a
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conference and or put on a big event.
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And I think, you know, for a lot of folks in the event space, they know that
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this, that putting on an event at scale is probably one of the most stressful
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things you could possibly do.
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So, literally there's a list where it's being an event manager is in the top
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five most stressful jobs after being a paramedic and a firefighter.
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It's wild, right, given kind of the, you know, all of the pressures that come
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with putting on an experience.
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So, it's must see TV from that perspective and of course, you know, it's a lot
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of work if you're the event marketer kind of watching it.
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So, I've been sort of just, you know, passionate about that idea.
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Now with Audience Plus, you know, we're obviously believing in content
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marketing and, you know, sort of developing, you know, content effectively that
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we can leverage to tell, to story tell and to build our brand to help kind of
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engage our audience.
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And so, this, you know, I think Todd was at the job, you got to tell me Todd, I
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don't remember, maybe for like a month or something when we had this idea.
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And I was like, hey, you had this idea before I got here.
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Before I got here.
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But it was like, it wasn't something that I really took seriously, right?
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I was like, hey, this would be awesome to do a seven days out show franchise
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around golden hour.
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And you were like, well, what if we, what if we do it?
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And, you know, hey, I know this guy Amir, he's, you know, his background is in
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documentary filmmaking.
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I think we might be able to actually pull this off.
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And I was like, look, hey, I don't know how we can literally like operational
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ize this, like actually do it.
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But if you can do it, let's figure it out.
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Yeah, no, and it's funny.
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So I think when you initially told me like you wanted to do a documentary,
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I hit up a mirror and I was like, hey, man, like we want to do this, we want to
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do this thing for golden hour.
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We kind of want to document it.
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But at this point, we were also two or three months into the planning of golden
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hour.
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So like from a documentary perspective, we kind of missed the very beginning.
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Yeah.
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So like, I want to, I want to recap a little bit because nobody, nobody
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actually has the context of this.
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But like, I originally hit up a mirror and I was like, hey, man, like we want
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to create this, this documentary.
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We've been planning this thing for a couple of months now.
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We've probably, I think we had like four months to go at this point.
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We're all remote.
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We're going to do like an off site where we can like film and record, but at
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the same time, like.
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A mirror didn't have access to us like all the time, like coming into this.
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So a mirror, when, when I came to you and said, Hey man, I want to shoot a
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documentary.
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Like do you remember your initial response?
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I was like, how?
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That was pretty good.
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Like in general, I was like, how are we going to make this feel like it was
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like.
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How typical documentary would be shot?
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Like even seven days out, I'm looking it up right now.
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It makes sense.
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Seven days out.
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So you kind of set the plan in the title and like you have seven days to make
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this documentary.
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Nobody's going to hold it against you if you don't get everything.
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But like with this one, it's like, right?
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We're basically like, this is going to make it look like we started from the
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beginning, but we're going to do a little bit of finag.
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Like it's seven days out.
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The production team is like living with the like they're there.
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All seven days, 24 hours, I imagine all access, which obviously gives them a
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little bit of a production advantage.
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And then what we what we have for this one.
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But we made it work.
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So the reason the reason I bring this up is because it was a it was a difficult
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task in order to create this like documentary show, not being together all the
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time.
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And not I mean, we don't use zoom footage.
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It's not like we just recorded ourselves on zoom and then plugged it in.
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But when I originally reached out to Amir, he was like, I don't know man.
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And like the thought process that that we came up with at the time was, I don't
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think we can really make like a good documentary, like not being together.
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But what we can do is we can create a really good mockumentary.
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And like the the initial thought and this has purpose, I promise, the original
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thought process was, all right, we're we're going to a lot of these things have
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already happened.
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We want to act them out and kind of like.
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Over exaggerate kind of have fun, create like this embellish story. We had like
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some some crazy ideas of like what was going to happen at the show and before. But the reason I bring this up is obviously we didn't shoot a mockumentary.
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But a lot of the stuff that you're going to see in the actual documentary, I
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think was a blending of those two things.
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It's like, we want to bring some entertainment into this as well as like the
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education of how to throw an event.
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So like as an example, the opening scene of every single episode is like an
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acted out kind of.
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It's like a cartoon, like, you know, illustration of a real situation, but done
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like awkward, funny, like West Anderson style approach.
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So how I would.
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Yeah, so very awkward, intentionally awkward, painfully awkward at times,
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depending on.
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Yeah, painfully.
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And I think that the goal of this was to introduce like the concept of the
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episode in this entertaining, fun way that we then kind of extrapolate out in.
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Educating the audience how we did it or how we planned on doing it and then
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also like weaving in what actually happened.
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I'll have to get on this one because as I remember the history, I was kind of
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against the mockumentary idea in a way.
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I was like, let's go make this like full on education best practice because my
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hope for it was that a event team, a marketing team, whatever could watch it
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and learn something and go and apply kind of their learnings back to in their
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business.
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And one thing that you assured me of, hey, I think there's a good mix here
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where we could like still lean into more entertainment, but also have it, you
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know, be something that people learn from.
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And so, you know, my observation was like some of the best ideas in marketing
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aren't ones that are something that one person has, but that you like, bat it
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back and forth and you end up with like the perfect, not perfect, but you know,
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we're very proud of what we did.
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Yeah, you end up with something a lot better after you have other people kind
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of adding their twists to it and you sort of refine it further.
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I still want to give you a voodoo doll.
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Really bad.
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Oh, he's going to know what we're talking about.
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Did we record that conversation by chance? Do you know?
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No, but I want to go to a voodoo doll so bad and I'm not going to give any
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context to why I'm saying that, but mockumentary.
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Anyways, yeah.
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I do like that we blended it though, like because it made it, I think like,
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well, what we haven't really covered around that was just like, how do we make
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it engaging and not like talking heads, or like, it's like the slippery slope
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into that where it's just like a boring documentary.
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How can we make it educational, entertaining, and like engaging and I think we
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did that.
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Like, I think we did.
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Yeah, I don't want to give anything away for folks that didn't watch the first
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episode, but what I think is amazing is that Amir, your team was there on site
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at the actual event and we had like what 400 shooters I think there, right? It
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was a camera people who I think in general.
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And so we were able to like flash forward and flash back and kind of take a lot
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of the things we were talking about and actually bring the viewer to that
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future state, which kind of reminded me of, I think you guys use this example,
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like the last dance or any of these kind of documentaries, sports documentaries
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where you get the talking head, but then you see the application of what they
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're talking about in real life.
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So that was an awesome, awesome kind of creative direction.
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I want to share the intro and then let's kind of break this down.
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What do you think he's saying in there?
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He's telling the board that we want to create the biggest marketing event in
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the industry.
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Huge!
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What do you think they're saying?
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But telling them we're way too early to pull this off.
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It's not too early.
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What do you think he said?
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That we need to take big swings.
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Big swings.
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Oh man.
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I wonder what they said.
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They said, of course we need to take big swings, but this is crazy.
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We're crazy!
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You're right.
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I've had just a blood bath in there.
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Well that was easy.
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I guess we read that all wrong.
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I guess we did.
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No sleep, tell him!
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I love the shining hallway setup that you guys had going on there.
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Mildly creepy.
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So good.
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Definitely awkward.
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I don't need creepy.
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So good.
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So yeah, I think this is the most awkward, one of the most awkward.
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It's the most awkward one.
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It's got to be the most awkward.
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Yeah.
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So let's talk about this scene a little bit.
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So the educational value or the thought process behind this episode is pitching
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a conference to the board or leadership or whoever you have to pitch it to.
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So again, the idea is that me and JK are kind of standing outside the room
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watching you attempt to pitch this because obviously this happened long before
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we started filming this documentary.
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The shooting of this scene was actually far more difficult than it appears in
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this video.
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I think we shot this maybe like eight or nine times because it is one shot.
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Yeah.
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But it was doing like this, right?
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Like back and forth has to hit the mark like every single time.
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Like, yeah.
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Right.
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But not only that, the way that we wrote the scene is like me and JK are
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outside the door.
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We're not supposed to like be able to hear what's happening on the inside.
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Yeah.
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But when we actually went to shoot this scene, there was a horrible reflection
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on the glass.
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And we didn't know what to do.
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We were like, Hey, do we just like open the door?
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But then like that kills the whole like vibe of the scene.
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Like then we could then we could hear what was happening.
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So we ended up taking the glass pane out of the door.
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And I think it works so well because there's like this moment at the end where
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you just like peek through and then it adds so much to that scene.
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Yeah.
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That was not.
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That was not that was not it.
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We just did that, didn't we?
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That was scripted.
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But like I've shown this to so many people and nobody has called that out.
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Like did he just pop his head through the door?
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This whole time closed door.
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Yeah.
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Like nobody's got some wondering like it would be a good question or something
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to like call back to anybody.
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Notice that he just yeah.
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Yeah.
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There's literally no.
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There's no glass in that door.
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Yeah.
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But yeah, I mean, I think I think what again, this was a cartoon of a very real
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conversation that, you know, marketers have with their CEOs, you know, in some
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cases, even taking it to the board.
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And to your point, like we already had this conversation couple months prior.
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And the reality is I don't know that it was like a asking for permission type
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of thing for us.
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Hey, we're doing this.
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And, you know, I think that our board is great and it has a lot of, you know, I
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think that's a faith in us, but also understanding that events are a bit of our
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superpower as a team.
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And so I don't think there was a lot of like initial pushback, but you know,
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the dialogue and the script here is like, I'm not crazy, you're crazy. And you
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know, kind of this, this again kind of illustration.
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Of, yeah, if you're an early stage company and you want to go host a conference
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, that sounds a little crazy.
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These are expensive things to put on.
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And as we know well, it takes a lot of time and attention away from, you know,
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doing other things.
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And, you know, the stakes are really high.
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Like we talked about in the opening, opening kind of question there.
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So I think it's very real to get that reaction.
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Certainly if you're a team of less than 10 full time employees that we were
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going to a board saying we're going to do an industry conference, not even a
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user conference.
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But I get the sense if you're a marketer who's passionate about events and
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community, even going to the CMO.
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Certainly in this like budget kind of climate that we live in and saying, hey,
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I want to go bet like 100k that I can get 500 people there.
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And if I'm wrong, that 100k is going to turn to 300k.
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Is that okay? Like you're insane. Like there's like there's no way we're doing
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that.
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So it was fun to kind of play that up a little bit in that scene.
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Have you shown anybody on the board? Sorry, I just want, I have to know. Have
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you shown anybody on the board this episode?
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Not yet. I'm a little nervous now. Now that I'm revealing the behind the scenes
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I'll send them that clip though. We'll see. We'll get them on a future after
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show as well.
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What I'm curious about is obviously like this was one of the reenacted moments
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that we didn't actually catch the live part on camera.
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So like what did that actual conversation and I think not only between you and
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the board but also between you and JK.
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Like when you guys first talked about like creating an event like this.
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I'll let maybe JK give his perspective. Yeah, absolutely.
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Well I think like one, I will say this, like we did have the proven track
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record of not only like Anthony's experience with Pulse against site and
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everything he did there.
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But like at Audience Plus we had a roadshow that we did already.
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That was pretty successful. We had like 100 people in three different cities in
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person at a paid event.
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And then we did a virtual version of it as well with over 1000 people.
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And then we had an executive summit that we did successfully with like 40 CMOs
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in the room over 100 billion of market cap represented from the tech industry.
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So like that we had all that going for us right and then also hopping that
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hopping Anthony had this vision for.
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An amazing like worldwide experience that would happen kind of simultaneously
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to bring the world closer together was the idea was like part of this field
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closer brand movement that we had created.
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And so Golden Hour was kind of that but like at Audience Plus.
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And so Anthony and I were in New York doing a marketing offsite just him and I
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because we were the marketing team.
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And we were like well like you know we're planning a budget for next year we're
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planning like what are our big initiatives.
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And we both agreed like events. I mean we had seen success from from events the
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year prior so we both decided like this is going to be one of our big bets that
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we're going to take in Q1 Q2.
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And so it was November of last year of 2023 we signed ourselves up we put it as
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a line item in the budget and we started planning Golden Hour.
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I mean one of the things I think what you're talking about is we sort of
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tricked our brain into thinking this was easier too because I was like we're
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going to do three cities with one digital broadcast happening on the same day.
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And all of that and that was the original vision from the Hoppen event and
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still kind of our vision for Golden Hour.
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But they're like gosh that seems really hard and really expensive.
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Let's just do one city with a digital broadcast and we're like yeah that would
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be easy a good place to start.
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Like completely discounting how hard it is to do one event without the digital
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broadcast with it.
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So I think we almost like tricked ourselves into thinking this thing was a
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little easier than it was.
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But to answer your question Todd we you know I think after the CMO summit that
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we had in September I wanted to do Golden Hour the next year.
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And so I think I think there was like a board meeting where I put it in the
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deck basically saying that there's like you know we think as part of next year
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we can go do this big conference.
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But as an early stage company of course budget is a really big deal and so what
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happened for us is we actually completed another round of funding.
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And once we closed that funding round we're like this is the big bet for 2024
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as we go do this thing called Golden Hour and then when Jake is talking about
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the offset we did in New York.
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It's weird it all kind of came together in like 48 hours or at least some of
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the scaffolding around what would become Golden Hour and so we're like alright
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now we've got like a vision that's pretty tactical tangible.
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We've got budget that we think we could you know do that use to go do this we
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're not it's not like an existential threat to the company if we get this wrong.
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And so I think it then just showed up in a board deck like hey we're doing this
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thing called Golden Hour here's the logo here's the vision for it and they're
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just like go for it.
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And that was it.
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So Amir I want to I want to ask you because I know we kind of had like an
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initial plan in how like these episodes would kind of like pan out as far as
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like the order of operations goes like Anthony mentioned like you know these
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time jumps and going back and forth and kind of like talking about something in
20:54
the planning process
20:56
and finding that same thing happening in reality like in real time at the event
21:01
Yeah.
21:02
How difficult was it to because again this wasn't like you were just following
21:07
the team around for for five months as we did this like there was a lot of like
21:13
planning and then
21:15
figuring things out because the planning went all wrong like on the on the move
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so like how difficult was it to actually like piece this thing together and and
21:26
make it as close to what we we originally thought is possible.
21:32
Yeah yeah super hard.
21:35
Luckily I'm like I'm very like neurotic when it comes to like being deep.
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Honestly, I think we filmed about nine days total for like everything and that
21:48
's across like everything. I don't know if you want to keep that in for people
21:51
to know or not but like it was probably about
21:54
basically it's hard to make nine days feel like four or five months or whatever
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but the good thing is we're so like like I said we're very neurotic when it
22:14
comes to editing we like don't skip a beat like if I hear you talk about
22:14
something in this clip and I remember you talked about it in your keynote
22:16
then I'm going to be like oh this is like a perfect like there's that they're
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going to blend so well. So it was a lot of that like a lot of it was early on
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like yes we did have some of it like planned out we know we're going to hop
22:26
from here to here we know we're going to talk about for example like the board
22:30
that's going to happen but then eventually it becomes like a it became its own
22:33
thing because not everything was mapped out and some things we missed some
22:37
things we got that we didn't expect to get.
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So really it was just like taking the time to link those things and that's how
22:44
you get like the outro of episode one for example.
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Guess if it fails we can start looking for jobs but honestly I'm not too
22:52
concerned about that.
22:54
Things are extremely hard. We're halfway through the month you know no deals
23:01
forecasted. Golden Hour we are behind on registrations behind sponsorship
23:06
revenue so we got to figure out what we're going to do.
23:08
None of the time the board is insurmountable. There isn't anything that any
23:13
other company hasn't faced or isn't facing right now so we're also not alone.
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Definitely not alone.
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To your point.
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So whatever you've been through and whatever you're going through now you're
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not alone.
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Events like this are little helpful reminders that you are not alone in the
23:30
challenges that you may be facing at work.
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At worst we can be alone together.
23:37
It's like not you can't you just can't plan it. They talk about like everything
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always comes together in the editing room and that's like that's where the
23:45
actual like those are the people who make the final product.
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You can say everything you want on screen you can do all the every like if
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nobody knows how to put the story together then it's and it was never a story.
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So.
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I think there's going to be a lot of people that watch this and want to want to
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create something similar so.
24:08
Again for like a for a remote team.
24:14
A team that's like building up to whether it's a conference or an off site or
24:18
whatever like something that they want to create like a documentary around like
24:22
what's what's your best piece of advice.
24:25
In order to like plan as best as humanly bill possible and maybe this is for me
24:30
to like the next time we do follow up to that yeah.
24:35
Good luck buddy.
24:38
It's going to take out a second.
24:43
Yeah, it's going to be hard.
24:46
It really honestly like you have to have one person who's just dedicated to
24:50
this prop like there's there's no way with having multiple things on your plate
24:55
like somebody has to be seeing it through there has to be just one person
24:59
seeing it through because I mean at the end of the day it's like
25:03
if you put all these episodes together it's a full link document like a feature
25:08
link that's not like an easy task to pull off and like, you know, I want to be
25:14
realistic to people about what it takes to like get this done along with your
25:19
regular workload.
25:21
I think the payoff is there so like if you did want to do this you would have
25:25
to definitely talk to people like me about like how serious it actually is,
25:29
because a lot of people are going to see this and be like we're going to do the
25:33
same thing and then quit halfway through and then waste a bunch of money.
25:38
I don't have it on that note I have a question. Don't waste money. Not a good
25:48
thing. Question for everyone knowing what we know now like is this the path
25:51
that you would recommend or is the seven day days out kind of model better or
25:55
different or how do you think about it, you know, decisions on taking on a
25:59
project like this.
26:00
I mean I think it depends on what you're trying to accomplish. Seven days out
26:09
is going to be, I would assume, much easier to accomplish right like you're, it
26:11
's only a week of time versus four months.
26:12
And like I mean I already said we were trying to manufacture it a little bit
26:16
because like we are a remote team and we wanted to film as much as possible in
26:20
person.
26:21
Otherwise it would just be a bunch of some calls and boring, just be boring. So
26:27
that but also like how audience plus like who we are, what we're built on, what
26:33
we believe is on the media, right.
26:36
And this was a great opportunity for us to go a deeper level on an event and
26:40
build educational content around creating an event which is also part of an old
26:46
media strategy.
26:48
So it totally made sense for us to do it. Does it make sense for every single
26:52
business to do it that puts on an event? Probably not. I mean, I think it
26:55
depends on the goal and what they want to accomplish with the content.
27:00
That's way deeper than what I was going to say. I was simply going to say
27:08
seeing like bits and pieces of what Amir was able to edit and put together from
27:16
this makes me like wish.
27:20
And not that I don't like love the final product I think it came out amazing
27:25
makes me wish I would have pushed way harder for the mock you.
27:30
I think I think if it like just some of like the moments.
27:37
I think if we if we could have just like leaned in and just made them. There's
27:44
the educational piece but like I think there's so much education in this
27:47
industry.
27:48
I think we could have really leaned into like something entertaining that
27:53
people could still learn from but like it to me like it would just would have
27:58
been like it would have hit that much harder.
28:02
And you're saying that can't be really accomplished at an event documentary
28:05
seven days before when everyone is like running around their hair on fire.
28:10
So spreading it out further or taking our approach gives us some like space and
28:15
time to like be more.
28:19
Yeah, I think I think we could have like because like Amir said we shot we
28:25
basically shot like four or five months worth of footage in a nine or ten days.
28:31
So which which was essentially like we had one planning session that was a week
28:39
in Phoenix and then we have like the shooting there the actual event.
28:47
I think if if we would have taken the the time we had in Phoenix to shoot like
28:57
a very satirical scripted like show.
29:03
And then got the actual like same thing like it would have been difficult at
29:07
the event because we were all running around like putting out fires doing
29:11
presentations like doing all that.
29:14
But then like if there was some way we could have carved out like some time at
29:18
the actual vent to like shoot more scenes.
29:22
I think that like again I think that's something that like no team would be
29:28
able to replicate.
29:30
I like we did it if I could have done.
29:32
I love what I love what came out but.
29:34
Yeah like I would have worked.
29:37
Go down or two we're doing a documentary.
29:40
I still want to do the mock America so bad I think people will laugh so hard.
29:45
I will always stand about be vulnerable on camera and then be yourself in
29:49
person because then people will relate to you more in person when they see you.
29:55
So like yeah I'm always going to go for it as the resident like like stand for
30:02
a documentary over mock documentary let me always defend myself a little bit.
30:07
I agree I love I think what you're saying is a hundred percent right.
30:11
I think my challenge with it which again I think maybe like if this one was
30:15
like 50 50 or something like maybe next year we lean more into the the mock.
30:20
So what I think was this deep conviction that Golden Hour is going to become
30:24
like the digit the like new like industry conference for the marketing practice
30:30
And so part of you wanted to document that actual journey and not put such like
30:35
too much satire into it so that folks can be like I remember I was there and
30:41
now I'm seeing how it actually happened and how some of their hypotheses
30:45
because again I this is the first full scale conference I planned since two
30:49
hours. Since 2018 or 19 pre pandemic and it's funny the show because I'm like like
30:53
email is the only way to drive registrations and I'm saying that to camera with
30:57
like authority and experience and then that didn't work for us at all in 2024.
31:03
And so then like the post show like yeah that that didn't work that you know
31:06
don't believe what that guy said.
31:08
And I wanted that I wanted to capture kind of the realness of it. So you know
31:13
we'll let we'll let the market judge kind of where we drew the line for mock
31:16
umentary documentary but you don't need to do that again in your two right in
31:20
your two it's like well it's less about like how do you drive
31:25
into a lot of different options or get sponsors or think about entertainment it
31:30
's more of like hey there's some equity built into this golden hour thing and we
31:34
can lean into some entertainment perhaps and tell a story that builds hype gets
31:38
folks kind of excited about it and I think we can be a bit more
31:43
sensitive on that front. Okay well from a from a business standpoint fine.
31:51
Fair fair fair. I was just saying you're also the CEO and we're marketing so
31:54
obviously we're going to be like dude let's do a mockumentary. What?
32:02
I think it's just so different now than they were not three years ago. And we
32:06
lived that kind of full but we lived that in a way while cameras were rolling
32:10
for nine important days I know it's only nine days but it was nine really
32:14
important moments
32:15
at nine varying degrees of confidence and you know assumptions and all of that.
32:22
How about when you when I walked into your all hands meeting with the camera.
32:26
Yeah I was surprised to see that footage make it into the episode because I
32:28
thought that was going to be like an audible beaver all type of a thing.
32:36
And it was like a hard conversation like that was real. You know we we
32:43
sacrificed a lot to pull off golden hour and that all hands was not scripted or
32:47
anything but it was you know trying to deliver kind of a solemn message of the
32:54
reality of what it takes to put on an event like this on a very small team.
32:59
So I sort of like got nervous when I saw the footage in there but I was like
33:04
hey I think this is probably good for people for people to see.
33:09
Yeah so we talked about this a little bit earlier but the fact that all six
33:14
episodes I think in this in this season put together effectively make a feature
33:20
length documentary.
33:22
What was your thinking taught around like taking an episodic approach to
33:27
production and releasing these and everything versus just cutting like a you
33:32
know a 60 to 90 minute documentary on the making of golden hour.
33:39
I think the way that we went about the thought process in creating this
33:45
documentary and having like an educational spin to it lent itself to episodes
33:53
because each episode is meant to be let's say like one lesson.
33:58
So like episode one was justifying a conference to the board or leadership
34:04
episode two was planning for content episode three was driving registration so
34:10
I think the way that the way that we wanted to teach people how we did certain
34:17
things and like the key elements to like the documentary as a whole lent itself to
34:24
episodic versus like one feature length thing.
34:29
It goes from like educational and then by episode like five or six, like it
34:33
switches up to very like realistic like boots on the ground it's happening now.
34:39
No more talking to camera we're literally talking to each other and solving
34:39
problems in the room it's like comp like a war room kind of four events which
34:43
is pretty cool we'll get there eventually but that's probably one of my
34:51
favorite parts that turn where it goes from like educational
34:55
and so wow now they're solving like the tiniest problems that you would never
35:01
catch on camera.
35:08
So like documentary and it's teaching and it's also kind of like a biopic in a
35:13
way like I don't know there's a lot a K about like it's like a little bit of
35:19
about your life and your career.
35:22
I made that comment to Todd I was like is a little bit of like a career
35:26
highlight reel kind of a thing which I tried to take you know to take it the
35:31
right way to have a thing was very humbling to see that kind of piece together
35:36
like that because
35:37
Pulse was honestly before golden hour or maybe both of them together the things
35:42
that I'm the most proud of in my career.
35:46
So seeing them kind of come together was really kind of emotionally stirring.
35:51
But yeah we you know one of our values is childlike joy at the company and we
35:56
've done weird things in our two years of existence from have a to panga from
36:01
boy meets world be part of our launch event to like changing lyrics to
36:06
semi popular emo songs from the early 2000s and making them about marketing.
36:11
And so in a way kind of it that sort of filter of childlike joy was on this
36:17
project too.
36:19
And I think for me it helped confirm you know Todd's push to do more scripted
36:24
comedy to do some of the mockumentary stuff because that's true to who we are
36:29
as a company that's you know we don't take ourselves too seriously so we can
36:33
kind of you know show up
36:35
more use the word vulnerable more human more authentic more approachable and
36:40
not just be this like textbook on how to do a scope read this like operating
36:47
manual.
36:48
So I very much think like that childlike joy element was integral to this
36:55
overall project.
36:57
And I think it's just pay off for you in the long run like there's so many CEOs
37:01
that seem unapproachable. Maybe all of them.
37:07
And just like putting something like this out like you may not even know for
37:11
years but somebody's going to see this and then they're going to meet you in
37:15
real life and then feel like they can approach you and they know you as opposed
37:20
to like I've only seen you on LinkedIn putting your picture of who you are,
37:24
and then you know it's like God sick and tired when you know what I mean like
37:28
it's so much better to just be like, oh wow I've seen this person even if they
37:33
just watched episode one they now feel like they know you as a person.
37:38
They watch through the rest of it they believe in better.
37:40
So much of it's like a fresh air and I'm not even saying that just because like
37:44
I'm involved in the project but God it's so easy to read through when people
37:49
are posting their vision of themselves as opposed to just like showing who they
37:53
are on camera
37:54
totally. I think even I haven't seen the the the full series yet but I have
38:14
seen episode one and episode two and I think even just in seeing like one to
38:14
two you start to see like even though this is like a documentary like it feels
38:16
like there's like this like character arc or story arc that like you're
38:21
following along with
38:22
I think you're right like people will feel like emotionally attached or like
38:27
involved like in this process as they go through it.
38:31
That's great. Yeah a lot of that I take from from Nick my CEO again site in the
38:36
quick story is we had him do a video actually things two or three videos years
38:42
years ago around carpool karaoke right when that James Corden skit came out.
38:48
And like a famous like CEO in the in the seat with them. They have these little
38:54
quips and then literally seeing Backstreet Boys Abba horribly horribly like not
38:59
good then they'll admit it.
39:02
They admit it on camera so I feel comfortable saying it.
39:05
But we published those videos we got a little you know through our channels
39:09
like you know it got it came up quite a bit with Nick and all of that but the
39:14
story is years later.
39:16
And again site would go and through this like strategic investment you know
39:21
form kind of a new relationship with Vista equity partners valuing the company
39:26
over a billion dollars.
39:28
And the way Nick was introduced to that committee or that board I forget
39:32
exactly the same story was loved you and carpool karaoke.
39:37
And they were these like serious business you know multiple commas like in that
39:42
transaction and they reference carpool karaoke the human side of Nick that he
39:48
put on display and so you know almost everything I've learned in my journey as
39:54
a CEO has come from
39:55
you know looking to what Nick had done before us before me. Well I am excited
40:01
for for people to watch episode one I'm excited for the rest of the series to
40:07
come out.
40:08
And as we as we release these episodes like I'm excited to show people kind of
40:13
behind the scenes like how we how we thought about these things how we film
40:17
these things.
40:18
And how a mirror somehow put them together so gents. Thank you for joining me
40:26
for episode one of behind the scenes on this thing and I will see you again
40:31
next week.