No Sleep Till Brooklyn 40 min

No Sleep After Show: Episode 1


The team involved in making "No Sleep til Brooklyn" breaks down the story behind the episode.



0:00

Welcome everybody to episode one of the after show of No Sleep 'til Brooklyn,

0:07

where we break down the documentary that we shot for our first ever Golden Hour

0:13

event conference.

0:15

So, today with me I have Anthony, founder CEO of Audience Plus, JK Sparks, Head

0:22

of Marketing, and Amir, who is the brains behind the production of this whole

0:29

documentary.

0:31

So, what's up guys?

0:32

What's going on?

0:33

What about what?

0:35

Alright, so before we actually go and kind of break down like how we shot this,

0:39

the thought process behind like different scenes and the way we put this thing

0:44

together.

0:45

First, I just want to ask you, Anthony, like it was your idea to create a

0:50

documentary for Golden Hour in the first place.

0:54

So, like what was the thought process behind a documentary for the event?

0:59

Yeah, I mean there were, I would say the genesis of the idea was honestly like

1:04

probably over a year old.

1:06

There was a show that I saw in Netflix called Seven Days Out, and it's

1:11

effectively like of course a full-on Netflix like production, but going to the

1:17

biggest events in the world and following the event marketers, the event

1:22

producers, seven days before this big show.

1:25

So, it was like a Chanel runway in Paris, it was, gosh I forget the entire list

1:31

, but it kind of gives this like unique perspective on what it takes to put on a

1:36

conference and or put on a big event.

1:40

And I think, you know, for a lot of folks in the event space, they know that

1:44

this, that putting on an event at scale is probably one of the most stressful

1:48

things you could possibly do.

1:51

So, literally there's a list where it's being an event manager is in the top

1:56

five most stressful jobs after being a paramedic and a firefighter.

2:01

It's wild, right, given kind of the, you know, all of the pressures that come

2:05

with putting on an experience.

2:07

So, it's must see TV from that perspective and of course, you know, it's a lot

2:11

of work if you're the event marketer kind of watching it.

2:15

So, I've been sort of just, you know, passionate about that idea.

2:20

Now with Audience Plus, you know, we're obviously believing in content

2:24

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

2:36

engage our audience.

2:37

And so, this, you know, I think Todd was at the job, you got to tell me Todd, I

2:40

don't remember, maybe for like a month or something when we had this idea.

2:44

And I was like, hey, you had this idea before I got here.

2:47

Before I got here.

2:48

But it was like, it wasn't something that I really took seriously, right?

2:51

I was like, hey, this would be awesome to do a seven days out show franchise

2:55

around golden hour.

2:57

And you were like, well, what if we, what if we do it?

3:01

And, you know, hey, I know this guy Amir, he's, you know, his background is in

3:05

documentary filmmaking.

3:07

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

3:15

ize this, like actually do it.

3:17

But if you can do it, let's figure it out.

3:20

Yeah, no, and it's funny.

3:22

So I think when you initially told me like you wanted to do a documentary,

3:29

I hit up a mirror and I was like, hey, man, like we want to do this, we want to

3:34

do this thing for golden hour.

3:37

We kind of want to document it.

3:39

But at this point, we were also two or three months into the planning of golden

3:45

hour.

3:46

So like from a documentary perspective, we kind of missed the very beginning.

3:52

Yeah.

3:53

So like, I want to, I want to recap a little bit because nobody, nobody

3:56

actually has the context of this.

3:58

But like, I originally hit up a mirror and I was like, hey, man, like we want

4:02

to create this, this documentary.

4:06

We've been planning this thing for a couple of months now.

4:10

We've probably, I think we had like four months to go at this point.

4:14

We're all remote.

4:16

We're going to do like an off site where we can like film and record, but at

4:21

the same time, like.

4:23

A mirror didn't have access to us like all the time, like coming into this.

4:28

So a mirror, when, when I came to you and said, Hey man, I want to shoot a

4:32

documentary.

4:33

Like do you remember your initial response?

4:35

I was like, how?

4:37

That was pretty good.

4:39

Like in general, I was like, how are we going to make this feel like it was

4:43

like.

4:44

How typical documentary would be shot?

4:46

Like even seven days out, I'm looking it up right now.

4:49

It makes sense.

4:50

Seven days out.

4:51

So you kind of set the plan in the title and like you have seven days to make

4:54

this documentary.

4:56

Nobody's going to hold it against you if you don't get everything.

5:00

But like with this one, it's like, right?

5:02

We're basically like, this is going to make it look like we started from the

5:05

beginning, but we're going to do a little bit of finag.

5:07

Like it's seven days out.

5:08

The production team is like living with the like they're there.

5:11

All seven days, 24 hours, I imagine all access, which obviously gives them a

5:16

little bit of a production advantage.

5:18

And then what we what we have for this one.

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But we made it work.

5:22

So the reason the reason I bring this up is because it was a it was a difficult

5:29

task in order to create this like documentary show, not being together all the

5:38

time.

5:39

And not I mean, we don't use zoom footage.

5:42

It's not like we just recorded ourselves on zoom and then plugged it in.

5:45

But when I originally reached out to Amir, he was like, I don't know man.

5:51

And like the thought process that that we came up with at the time was, I don't

5:55

think we can really make like a good documentary, like not being together.

6:01

But what we can do is we can create a really good mockumentary.

6:07

And like the the initial thought and this has purpose, I promise, the original

6:12

thought process was, all right, we're we're going to a lot of these things have

6:17

already happened.

6:19

We want to act them out and kind of like.

6:24

Over exaggerate kind of have fun, create like this embellish story. We had like

6:36

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.

6:40

But a lot of the stuff that you're going to see in the actual documentary, I

6:44

think was a blending of those two things.

6:47

It's like, we want to bring some entertainment into this as well as like the

6:52

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

7:03

acted out kind of.

7:06

It's like a cartoon, like, you know, illustration of a real situation, but done

7:13

like awkward, funny, like West Anderson style approach.

7:20

So how I would.

7:21

Yeah, so very awkward, intentionally awkward, painfully awkward at times,

7:25

depending on.

7:27

Yeah, painfully.

7:28

And I think that the goal of this was to introduce like the concept of the

7:33

episode in this entertaining, fun way that we then kind of extrapolate out in.

7:39

Educating the audience how we did it or how we planned on doing it and then

7:43

also like weaving in what actually happened.

7:46

I'll have to get on this one because as I remember the history, I was kind of

7:50

against the mockumentary idea in a way.

7:53

I was like, let's go make this like full on education best practice because my

7:58

hope for it was that a event team, a marketing team, whatever could watch it

8:05

and learn something and go and apply kind of their learnings back to in their

8:09

business.

8:10

And one thing that you assured me of, hey, I think there's a good mix here

8:14

where we could like still lean into more entertainment, but also have it, you

8:19

know, be something that people learn from.

8:23

And so, you know, my observation was like some of the best ideas in marketing

8:27

aren't ones that are something that one person has, but that you like, bat it

8:32

back and forth and you end up with like the perfect, not perfect, but you know,

8:36

we're very proud of what we did.

8:38

Yeah, you end up with something a lot better after you have other people kind

8:42

of adding their twists to it and you sort of refine it further.

8:47

I still want to give you a voodoo doll.

8:51

Really bad.

8:52

Oh, he's going to know what we're talking about.

8:55

Did we record that conversation by chance? Do you know?

9:00

No, but I want to go to a voodoo doll so bad and I'm not going to give any

9:04

context to why I'm saying that, but mockumentary.

9:08

Anyways, yeah.

9:10

I do like that we blended it though, like because it made it, I think like,

9:13

well, what we haven't really covered around that was just like, how do we make

9:17

it engaging and not like talking heads, or like, it's like the slippery slope

9:22

into that where it's just like a boring documentary.

9:26

How can we make it educational, entertaining, and like engaging and I think we

9:32

did that.

9:33

Like, I think we did.

9:34

Yeah, I don't want to give anything away for folks that didn't watch the first

9:37

episode, but what I think is amazing is that Amir, your team was there on site

9:42

at the actual event and we had like what 400 shooters I think there, right? It

9:48

was a camera people who I think in general.

9:51

And so we were able to like flash forward and flash back and kind of take a lot

9:55

of the things we were talking about and actually bring the viewer to that

9:59

future state, which kind of reminded me of, I think you guys use this example,

10:04

like the last dance or any of these kind of documentaries, sports documentaries

10:09

where you get the talking head, but then you see the application of what they

10:12

're talking about in real life.

10:14

So that was an awesome, awesome kind of creative direction.

10:18

I want to share the intro and then let's kind of break this down.

10:25

What do you think he's saying in there?

10:31

He's telling the board that we want to create the biggest marketing event in

10:35

the industry.

10:36

Huge!

10:38

What do you think they're saying?

10:40

But telling them we're way too early to pull this off.

10:43

It's not too early.

10:45

What do you think he said?

10:48

That we need to take big swings.

10:51

Big swings.

10:53

Oh man.

10:54

I wonder what they said.

10:56

They said, of course we need to take big swings, but this is crazy.

11:01

We're crazy!

11:03

You're right.

11:05

I've had just a blood bath in there.

11:08

Well that was easy.

11:14

I guess we read that all wrong.

11:17

I guess we did.

11:19

No sleep, tell him!

11:21

I love the shining hallway setup that you guys had going on there.

11:31

Mildly creepy.

11:33

So good.

11:35

Definitely awkward.

11:36

I don't need creepy.

11:37

So good.

11:38

So yeah, I think this is the most awkward, one of the most awkward.

11:43

It's the most awkward one.

11:45

It's got to be the most awkward.

11:47

Yeah.

11:48

So let's talk about this scene a little bit.

11:51

So the educational value or the thought process behind this episode is pitching

12:00

a conference to the board or leadership or whoever you have to pitch it to.

12:07

So again, the idea is that me and JK are kind of standing outside the room

12:11

watching you attempt to pitch this because obviously this happened long before

12:17

we started filming this documentary.

12:20

The shooting of this scene was actually far more difficult than it appears in

12:26

this video.

12:28

I think we shot this maybe like eight or nine times because it is one shot.

12:34

Yeah.

12:35

But it was doing like this, right?

12:37

Like back and forth has to hit the mark like every single time.

12:40

Like, yeah.

12:41

Right.

12:42

But not only that, the way that we wrote the scene is like me and JK are

12:47

outside the door.

12:49

We're not supposed to like be able to hear what's happening on the inside.

12:54

Yeah.

12:55

But when we actually went to shoot this scene, there was a horrible reflection

12:59

on the glass.

13:01

And we didn't know what to do.

13:04

We were like, Hey, do we just like open the door?

13:07

But then like that kills the whole like vibe of the scene.

13:10

Like then we could then we could hear what was happening.

13:14

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

13:22

you just like peek through and then it adds so much to that scene.

13:27

Yeah.

13:28

That was not.

13:29

That was not that was not it.

13:30

We just did that, didn't we?

13:33

That was scripted.

13:34

But like I've shown this to so many people and nobody has called that out.

13:38

Like did he just pop his head through the door?

13:42

This whole time closed door.

13:44

Yeah.

13:45

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.

13:53

Yeah.

13:54

There's literally no.

13:55

There's no glass in that door.

13:57

Yeah.

13:58

But yeah, I mean, I think I think what again, this was a cartoon of a very real

14:03

conversation that, you know, marketers have with their CEOs, you know, in some

14:09

cases, even taking it to the board.

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And to your point, like we already had this conversation couple months prior.

14:19

And the reality is I don't know that it was like a asking for permission type

14:23

of thing for us.

14:25

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

14:33

think that's a faith in us, but also understanding that events are a bit of our

14:39

superpower as a team.

14:41

And so I don't think there was a lot of like initial pushback, but you know,

14:45

the dialogue and the script here is like, I'm not crazy, you're crazy. And you

14:51

know, kind of this, this again kind of illustration.

14:54

Of, yeah, if you're an early stage company and you want to go host a conference

14:58

, that sounds a little crazy.

15:01

These are expensive things to put on.

15:04

And as we know well, it takes a lot of time and attention away from, you know,

15:09

doing other things.

15:11

And, you know, the stakes are really high.

15:14

Like we talked about in the opening, opening kind of question there.

15:18

So I think it's very real to get that reaction.

15:23

Certainly if you're a team of less than 10 full time employees that we were

15:26

going to a board saying we're going to do an industry conference, not even a

15:30

user conference.

15:32

But I get the sense if you're a marketer who's passionate about events and

15:35

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,

15:41

I want to go bet like 100k that I can get 500 people there.

15:47

And if I'm wrong, that 100k is going to turn to 300k.

15:51

Is that okay? Like you're insane. Like there's like there's no way we're doing

15:55

that.

15:56

So it was fun to kind of play that up a little bit in that scene.

16:00

Have you shown anybody on the board? Sorry, I just want, I have to know. Have

16:03

you shown anybody on the board this episode?

16:06

Not yet. I'm a little nervous now. Now that I'm revealing the behind the scenes

16:12

I'll send them that clip though. We'll see. We'll get them on a future after

16:15

show as well.

16:16

What I'm curious about is obviously like this was one of the reenacted moments

16:21

that we didn't actually catch the live part on camera.

16:24

So like what did that actual conversation and I think not only between you and

16:30

the board but also between you and JK.

16:34

Like when you guys first talked about like creating an event like this.

16:40

I'll let maybe JK give his perspective. Yeah, absolutely.

16:48

Well I think like one, I will say this, like we did have the proven track

16:52

record of not only like Anthony's experience with Pulse against site and

16:58

everything he did there.

16:59

But like at Audience Plus we had a roadshow that we did already.

17:04

That was pretty successful. We had like 100 people in three different cities in

17:08

person at a paid event.

17:10

And then we did a virtual version of it as well with over 1000 people.

17:13

And then we had an executive summit that we did successfully with like 40 CMOs

17:17

in the room over 100 billion of market cap represented from the tech industry.

17:23

So like that we had all that going for us right and then also hopping that

17:29

hopping Anthony had this vision for.

17:33

An amazing like worldwide experience that would happen kind of simultaneously

17:39

to bring the world closer together was the idea was like part of this field

17:44

closer brand movement that we had created.

17:47

And so Golden Hour was kind of that but like at Audience Plus.

17:52

And so Anthony and I were in New York doing a marketing offsite just him and I

17:57

because we were the marketing team.

18:00

And we were like well like you know we're planning a budget for next year we're

18:04

planning like what are our big initiatives.

18:08

And we both agreed like events. I mean we had seen success from from events the

18:13

year prior so we both decided like this is going to be one of our big bets that

18:18

we're going to take in Q1 Q2.

18:21

And so it was November of last year of 2023 we signed ourselves up we put it as

18:28

a line item in the budget and we started planning Golden Hour.

18:34

I mean one of the things I think what you're talking about is we sort of

18:37

tricked our brain into thinking this was easier too because I was like we're

18:41

going to do three cities with one digital broadcast happening on the same day.

18:46

And all of that and that was the original vision from the Hoppen event and

18:49

still kind of our vision for Golden Hour.

18:52

But they're like gosh that seems really hard and really expensive.

18:55

Let's just do one city with a digital broadcast and we're like yeah that would

18:59

be easy a good place to start.

19:01

Like completely discounting how hard it is to do one event without the digital

19:04

broadcast with it.

19:06

So I think we almost like tricked ourselves into thinking this thing was a

19:10

little easier than it was.

19:12

But to answer your question Todd we you know I think after the CMO summit that

19:19

we had in September I wanted to do Golden Hour the next year.

19:26

And so I think I think there was like a board meeting where I put it in the

19:29

deck basically saying that there's like you know we think as part of next year

19:34

we can go do this big conference.

19:36

But as an early stage company of course budget is a really big deal and so what

19:41

happened for us is we actually completed another round of funding.

19:46

And once we closed that funding round we're like this is the big bet for 2024

19:51

as we go do this thing called Golden Hour and then when Jake is talking about

19:56

the offset we did in New York.

19:58

It's weird it all kind of came together in like 48 hours or at least some of

20:02

the scaffolding around what would become Golden Hour and so we're like alright

20:06

now we've got like a vision that's pretty tactical tangible.

20:10

We've got budget that we think we could you know do that use to go do this we

20:14

're not it's not like an existential threat to the company if we get this wrong.

20:19

And so I think it then just showed up in a board deck like hey we're doing this

20:23

thing called Golden Hour here's the logo here's the vision for it and they're

20:28

just like go for it.

20:30

And that was it.

20:32

So Amir I want to I want to ask you because I know we kind of had like an

20:38

initial plan in how like these episodes would kind of like pan out as far as

20:45

like the order of operations goes like Anthony mentioned like you know these

20:51

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

21:20

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.

21:43

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

22:14

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

22:19

going to blend so well. So it was a lot of that like a lot of it was early on

22:23

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.

22:40

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.

22:47

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.

23:19

Definitely not alone.

23:20

To your point.

23:21

So whatever you've been through and whatever you're going through now you're

23:25

not alone.

23:26

Events like this are little helpful reminders that you are not alone in the

23:30

challenges that you may be facing at work.

23:33

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

23:41

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.

23:49

You can say everything you want on screen you can do all the every like if

23:52

nobody knows how to put the story together then it's and it was never a story.

23:56

So.

23:57

I think there's going to be a lot of people that watch this and want to want to

24:04

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.