Events Lessons from a Chaos Navigator | Epic Events by vFairs | Norman Leach

Younas, CEO Hello everyone. My name is Mohammed Younas and I'm the founder and CEO of Free Fairs. And today with me, have Norman Leach on the podcast. Norman, welcome to the show.

Norman Leach Thank you very much. I'm glad to be here. Younas, CEO Norman, if you can just give us a bit of a background about your background in the events. If you have been running any events, been involved with any event HECA, that would be great.

Norman Leach Yeah, I sort of came into it through the back door. I became the youngest ever provincial Chamber of Commerce manager in Canada. And at 28, I was suddenly running the Manitoba Chamber of Commerce and we had a number of events to put on. So I quickly learned through doing how to make events work.

⁓ Love doing them. And through my career, I have no idea how many events big and small I've put on, but certainly lots of trade shows, lots of trade missions. And of course, the biggest one was running the Grey Cup, ⁓ which is Canada's biggest single event. 45,000 people attended ⁓ on the day of the game.

But that doesn't reflect that you run 30 events the week before and then the game. So you have 30 plus events to run in a week. All of them have to be interlocking and intermeshing and... But yet I will tell you that if someone offers you to run Canada's biggest party, it's the game you want to play in.

It's definitely job you want to do. ⁓ big and small, done lots of events ⁓ in other countries as well. I've run events in probably six or seven countries and hosted people from all over the world. Younas, CEO 45,000 people, that's, I have been in the events industry for almost 10 plus years.

We've helped companies run thousands of events. We have done many events, 40,000 and 45,000 and more, but all of them online. But for the in-person one, the biggest I teach, I have been involved in is 20,000, 25,000. 45,000 is almost double that.

So just walk me through like what it takes to run an event of 45,000 people. you know, how many moving pieces are there? Norman Leach It's, there's a ton of moving pieces and part of what I do is I put together great teams. I have people that follow me from event to event so that ⁓ we know and trust each other ⁓ and we want to make sure that it's going to work.

But then we just, you break it down in pieces. ⁓ When my kids were growing up and they had a big problem, I asked them, how do you eat an elephant? And the answer is one bite at a time. So if you look at a giant event, like the Grey Cup and say it's intimidating.

It is until you break it down and realize it's like a lot of other events, just moving pieces that have to mesh and have to come together. And it's run by a nonprofit board of directors. And so you've got them to keep it happy. You've got to put the event on.

You want to make a profit. I'm proud to say the Grey Cup that I ran, ran the first profit in three years for the Grey Cup. ⁓ So we were happy. We wrote a check to the football club.

for 2.1 million dollars profit on the game. So we were happy. I kept a photocopy of the check because I figure it's the biggest check I'm ever going to write.

So I kept the photocopy. Younas, CEO Nice. ⁓ I like when you say like break it step by step. So let's start with the check-in experience.

45,000 people, ⁓ do they all come and check in on the same day? Do they come and check in a few days before? Norman Leach Well, you have to remember it is a football game. the tickets were purchased mostly online.

Most tickets were purchased online. And then so when people come to the gate, they already have their ticket in hand. So there's not, if you think of a trade show where you have to go to a booth, get your badge, get your credentials, go through, you don't have that moment. You have ticket takers with scanning devices that are looking, making sure your ticket is legitimate.

⁓ And the stadium is well-crewed for that. They bring their team that knows how to handle a crowd. They handle, in the case of the, when I ran, they, on a weekly basis, they would, well, bi-weekly basis, they would put 25,000 people in the stadium. So it was incremental to go to the next stage on ticketing.

⁓ But selling the tickets was the challenge. A lot of work done selling the tickets. In fact, I'm... I was lucky that I got to travel to every city that has a CFL team to be on the radio, to be promoting and to watch a game from every stadium in the country.

So I'm one of the few people can argue that I have seen every stadium, though Winnipeg, Regina, Hamilton have all gotten new stadiums since then. So it's not the same stadiums I visited. Younas, CEO Interesting. And other than this big 45,000 people event, tell me a bit more about your experience at trade shows.

I was going through your profile and it looks like you have been with hundreds of trade shows. How's that different than this one? How do you compare? Norman Leach Yeah.

Well, the trade shows, the trade shows are much more personal. have ⁓ audiences, have to keep happy. So with the football game, everybody's coming, they're in a good mood. They want to see a football game.

They're happy. ⁓ Trade show people get to be kind of road warriors. They go trade show to trade show. They've got immediate direct comparisons to the one before.

So you have to know sort of what your competitor or the other trade show do. What did people like and dislike? So we do a lot of research on how the show before that's gonna attract the same exhibitors did, right? So if we're talking to, I don't know, teachers and they go to a regular trade show, we wanna know what did they like about that other trade show, what they didn't like.

And so it's constantly evolving. You're not doing the same thing over and over, lots of research. Everybody is a customer. So whether it's the organization putting it on, whether it's the person standing in the booth or the company that's standing in the booth, the individual standing in the booth or the people coming to the show, they're all customers, all with different expectations of what they're going to get, why they're there and what's value to them.

so ⁓ a lot more hand holding, let's put it that way. And I don't mean that as a bad thing. It's just, you can't, it's not one size fits all. Younas, CEO Yep.

And what's the biggest operational mistake you see event planners make when they're trying to grow an event? ⁓ Because again, as you mentioned, you're always compared to your competitors' event, your own event that you did last year. How do we best go about that? Norman Leach So I'm sorry, the question was, what's the biggest mistake?

Younas, CEO Yeah, just like, know, whenever you're trying to run one, just like, what is the mistake that you see people keep on making? Norman Leach complacency. It worked last year, so let's just do it again. And pretty soon we've done it for 10 years in a row and people are bored.

⁓ The audiences are much more informed now. They can go online, they can attend trade shows online, they can see videos on trade shows. They're traveling around the world and seeing how others do it. ⁓ I was just engaged with a small one in Europe and they asked me how I liked it and I said, well, was great, but it was so different from how North America does trade shows.

It's hard to compare. So if you're trying to wedge your show into every province, every state, every country in exactly the same format, you're gonna fail. Guaranteed it's going to fail. And so I always tell my people, we have to be humble.

We have to recognize that what we did last year may not be good enough this year. Younas, CEO And Norman, was going through your profile. I see that you, of course, have run a lot of these events, but you have also been an exhibitor to some of these events. ⁓ Just tell me, as an event organizer, what do you think about exhibitors?

And as an exhibitor, what is expectation you have from the event organizer? How to best balance both? Norman Leach Well, the biggest thing I think now that's changed is that many venues are not keeping up with the technology demands that what our customers are carrying with them. You know, when I go to a trade show, probably have five items.

Personally, I have five items that need to be connected to the internet. And yet we're still working on slow old Wi-Fi systems in many places, or they're underestimating how many devices people are carrying. ⁓ And so technology is the thing that makes a trade show run better as an exhibitor, as a presenter. It makes it run better for me.

And if it doesn't work, it ruins my day. And I'm going to take that out on the trade show, unfortunately, not the venue. mean, okay, as a professional, I hope I know the difference, but the average exhibitor is going to say, I hate this show. had terrible wifi.

Well, it the building that had bad wifi. But we chose that. And so I'm finding that we have to spend money now in enhancing Wi-Fi and other technologies because the venues just aren't keeping up. Younas, CEO And Norman, running these absolutely ⁓ big events like the 45,000 people one or some of the other ones where you have had senior politicians or sometimes even friends join in.

Tell me a bit more about stakeholders alignment because again, I tell this to everyone that I'm a CEO of this company. We serve thousands of people. ⁓ We employ hundreds of people. But the toughest job I had was that of an event planner.

I was an event planner before I became the CEO of this company. And again, I was running small events, not big events, but running big events where you are responsible to keep CEOs happy, senior politicians happy. ⁓ Tell me a bit about the pressure. Is it like any other event, or does it come with its own pressure and obstacles?

Norman Leach The guy that taught me how to do all of this said, just remember everybody puts on their pants one leg at a time. That is everybody's equal. I find people, we've dealt with Saudi royalty, we've dealt with movie stars, we've dealt with all kinds of politicians. And most of them, 99 % of them are great.

They're easy to work with. They're comfortable in their shell. They're comfortable in their power. They know who they are.

I have much more problems sometimes running with public relations people or the marketing people who are trying to support those. They're terrified they're going to make a mistake. So that gets delivered on you. So we try to treat everybody the same.

We work with everybody. We listen. Team is taught to bring problems to me ⁓ because if you tell them, I don't want to hear problems, you won't. And then you'll hear it from the client.

I'd rather hear it from my people saying, we just ran into a challenge. Can we How do we deal with it? ⁓ but we do lots of looping feedback. We are always asking people, how's it going?

Is this what you expected? Is this what you thought you were going to get? And if not, how can we adjust midstream? We, we joke around here that we shouldn't bother having a plan a cause we always seem to end up on plan B anyway.

⁓ cause nothing ever goes the way you planned it. It just doesn't. Something comes out of the blue. that you didn't plan on and you've got to adjust and fix it.

The other thing that I really emphasize to all of my people is that they are working at a show. They are not part of it. So whether it's a trade show, whether it's a fancy dinner, whether it's, you know, a trade mission, we're not there to participate. We're there to support.

And so we need to not ⁓ get so involved in having fun that We miss why we're there. Younas, CEO Yeah. Norman, the event industry has been through enormous disruption over the last several years. And I thought that AI is here.

And with AI, of course, there has been its own disruption. And then a lot has been going on over the last two to four weeks, especially the events happening within the Middle East. But as someone who thrives in chaos, what are you seeing most event professionals are still too risk averse to try? Norman Leach still too risk adverse.

I think ⁓ they're risk adverse in leaving their playbook behind. What's got them here, they've done it for years, they trust it, they believe in it. Unfortunately, in my belief, the world has changed, audience has changed, way we're accepting events has changed. Let's just talk about just a regular game of some kind, Mohammed.

Let's just change the... The average person today watching a sports game needs three screens. So if they're at home, they're watching on a big screen, they're watching the football game, the soccer game, the upcoming World Cup, they're watching it. On a side screen, they're betting, live betting on the game.

And on the other screen, they're live streaming with their friends as to how the game is going. So they built the audiences in one screen that they're... their buddies that they would normally have gone to the game with is there, they're betting, and then straight in front of them is the game. It's almost impossible to reproduce that in a stadium.

So the question is now, how do we let go that the reason they're coming is for the game? They're coming for an entertainment experience. Some teams are getting it, some are not. Some still think it's just about the game.

And so we're going to see how that all turns. But the online betting has changed everything, including how we put on amateur sports. So ⁓ we've got to change it all. Younas, CEO And Norman, do you think that in general, let's stick to games if they're doing the right thing as of now?

Because again, I was trying, I'm not into soccer or football, given I live here in Canada, I was trying to ticket for one of the football games that's going to happen for the upcoming World Cup. They're expensive. They're not cheap. And it looks like, yeah.

Norman Leach Well, it's expensive. Yeah, sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off. It's expensive, hard to get because it's a lottery system. So you don't know if you're going to get your ticket or not.

And quite frankly, you know, like most Canadians, I have a large screen television in my basement that will give me better shots of the game than going. So I'm going, if I'm going, it's no longer just to see the game. So to come in at seven, watch the game, go home at 10. It's what's the entertainment before it?

Younas, CEO Exactly. Norman Leach What's the entertainment after it? And how do we draw people to that? ⁓ The NHL during the playoffs are starting to really catch on to this.

⁓ CFL during some of the games is starting to catch on. The people aren't just there for the games anymore. They're there for the entire entertainment package. And we don't just do sports.

We see the exact same thing in a business conference. People want to know they're there. They're having a good time. Everything works.

I was... ⁓ I attended one the other day. Everybody liked the topics. We liked the event.

We liked everything, but the staff was surly and unhelpful. And we all went away blaming the, so the, the conference rather than a component of the venue, which was the serving staff. Right. So people have to realize it doesn't just start on game time and end at game time.

It's the whole experience. and we can compare worldwide. How many people have traveled all over the world and are now comparing not just what happened in Toronto or Edmonton or Boston, but they're comparing what's happening around the world, both virtually and in person. We've got to adjust to that.

Younas, CEO Yeah. And then just like whether sticking to games or even concerts, again, same thing, know, when my daughters were saying that, you know, they want to have tickets for Taylor concert, a game super expensive, you four or five dollars. Right. And I haven't seen that before COVID, before COVID, these used to be just like regular normal prices.

So did something change where after COVID? Norman Leach Yes. Younas, CEO some things have become just so expensive and some events are like some events they never were able to attract traffic back and do you think that social media has something to play with it because I see people in some of these things where they are there but then you you look at their feed Instagram and Facebook etc you know like they're broadcasting every single thing that you know I am there so you know I don't know how much of that is about the game and how much of that is by the way let the people know that I am in the game Norman Leach I think that's part of it.

think there's a whole lot of the world. I spend most of my time on the marketing side of events now and we're seeing that people are, how to explain it? They want to be part of the event because that's what they're streaming and that's where they're making some dollars, however they're doing it as an influencer or otherwise. So they want that place where they can be part of the game, part that they can.

part of the experience. And so whether it's a concert or whatever it is, they're now broadcasting those things live. I'm sure the promoters recognize that they're feeding hundreds of small businesses with content and they're charging for it, right? They're charging for that content.

Younas, CEO Makes sense. Norman, just going through your profile, I saw that you describe your formula as actions plus communications is equal to believers. How does it apply to the challenge of getting sponsors, vendors, and stakeholders to actually commit and stay committed through a complex event build? Because some of these events are just huge.

Norman Leach Making them, it's not unlike the influencers, is making them part of everything. Part of the, there used to be you went to Shell, you talked to somebody, they wrote you a check for $5,000 and you disappeared and you put their logo on the program and you were done. They want to be engaged today. You may have to have some of their people on committees or even the board that's running the event, but certainly our feedback.

We set regular meetings to keep them up to date where the event is, how it's going, et cetera. We know that if there's something gets, something goes wrong, it's gonna splash on the sponsors. So they're the first ones that we notify if there's a change in venue, if there's a change or something. ⁓ We did an event where the main sponsor, the title sponsor explained that the group before us had worked on things and.

They forgot to tell the sponsors where the event was. They forgot to give them an address and it wasn't clear where they were going. So they were literally phoning an hour or two before trying to figure out where the event they were sponsoring was located. It embarrassed the marketing people and embarrassed the CEO and it took two years to get them to come back.

Right. It took them two years to get them to come back. Not because they didn't get their coverage. Younas, CEO my god.

Norman Leach but because it was offensive, that you didn't treat them as part of the team. We also tried very hard, I would try very hard at the very beginning to make sure that we were aligned with the sponsor. Again, sending out a thousand emails asking for $500 is just a waste of time. It's figuring out what do they support.

There's a particular airline, we won't mention names, but there's a particular airline that loves to support kids' events. And it's all they do is kids. It's a waste of time to send them a letter for anything else, no matter how good you think your thing might be. If it doesn't engage children, they're not interested.

So it's a science in now fundraising is a science trying to figure out who supports what, what drives them and what did they need out of the event to be considered successful? So I long ago dropped the idea of gold, silver, bronze. Every package is ⁓ customized meets their requirements ⁓ and is individually priced. So there's no comparison.

Well, he paid $5,000 and got this and I paid $5,000 and got that. They know that going in, they're not getting the same package. Younas, CEO Yeah. Norman, what's your forecast on just attendance level given what's happening within the AI world?

⁓ With AI, we are seeing that people want to just attend more events because that's a place where you can actually have conversation that's a lot more trustworthy. And I think for a lot of local events that might be true. But then with international events, given what's happening across the world with the economy and everything, do you think that there's an appetite for international travel to happen ⁓ given the cost cut and everything else that's happening around the world? Norman Leach I think it's going to be a real challenge for, and not just on the cost side, but on the fact that we can now with AI generate some very good experiences online.

It's no longer just a flat voice talking at you. We can create and engage people into the conference. They can attend more conferences because they don't have to. Travel time is not just the cost.

If you're going to a trade show, You're going to need to go a day or two early, come home a day or two after if you've got a team of three or four people attending the show and exhibiting. Your costs are huge in staffing costs, et cetera, not just in airplane tickets and others. We can create that experience. I still want to believe, maybe I'll be proven wrong, but I still want to believe there's a market for a hybrid conference where we have people in the room who can travel conveniently to the show.

⁓ And then there's going to be a much larger international audience. And that 10 years ago took a whole lot of effort. was, we did one and it took a lot of effort to get that to work with AI. It's becoming much smoother to run those kinds of shows, to plan them, to organize them.

And AI is here, just like the automobile, automobile is here. The telephone is here. We're not putting that back going, automobiles costs a lot of pollution. We should stop having them.

They're here, they're done. AI is here, it's not done, but it's here. And we have to figure out as attendees and as event planners, how we're going to use it effectively, always with the vision. I hear too many conversations about this will save us, the event planner, labor, this will save us, et cetera.

I hate those conversations because it's not about us. It's still about the audience. So using AI to enhance the audience's experience, that's the tool we need to use. Younas, CEO Perfect.

sense. Norman, tell me a bit more about, like you have an exhibit of stand and one of the things as part of the checklist is ⁓ just the giveaways, the swag that you're going to have in the booth. Like what's your take on that one? You know, I see things literally from one extreme to another, still pen and paper there.

And then sometimes, you know, people who have big budgets, like they go ahead and give you, you know. like nice airports and all of that stuff. But what's your take on that? Norman Leach Well, so we recognize that, or I recognized a while back that people, A, if they are traveling, don't want to go home with a bag full of stuff because they've traveled.

It's all a domino effect. To save costs, they're not bringing a suitcase, they're bringing a carry-on bag and they're trying to stuff everything into that carry-on bag, into the overhead. And that has to last them three days. So they don't have extra space to take a whole bunch of things home.

So we're going smaller. What can you do? Can we do something? If we know we're doing an engineering show or we're doing an entertainment show, something like that, we're to take something that people want.

And that means asking the participants, what would you like to see for a giveaway? Also, very first thing we do when we get to a show, whether it's one of that I'm working on or whether it's when I'm attending. is we hit every booth and pick up every giveaway we can. And then when the show's over, we lay it out on a table and say, what made sense here?

What was the right thing to do? How, and sometimes people find unique things that we use and don't, aren't unique after a while. ⁓ but we use those, but I really am starting to see a belief in things that they can use. So we will give video clips, for example, that tells something about the client's company and give them a useful something to take away.

So whatever that is, it's not just, our company's great. We build widgets. We're wonderful. It's if you're using, if you're trying to start a real estate company, here's the 10 things you need to know and why at an entrepreneur's show, for example.

And then we'll have a dozen of those that we can send direct ones to them. They sign up for what they want. I'd like to see the clip on retail stores or whatever it is. ⁓ The entire new generations that are coming up are visually oriented.

So a pen with a name on it just isn't doing it anymore. It's got to be something that's visual. That means giving them a link, giving them a video to watch, something that they can take back and use over and over again. ⁓ I have a drawer full of pens with people's names on them that seldom get used.

So if it's not being used, it's a waste of money. Younas, CEO I'm going to just, what's your favorite event that you personally like attending as an attendee? Like what's, what's the other topic? Yeah.

Norman Leach as an attendee. ⁓ where I can combine seeing stuff and going to ⁓ learn something. So they've meld the two, that there's a learning component to it, but in bite-sized pieces. So I can go and walk the show, step in and see something, 15, 20 minute presentation on something to do with the show that I'm interested in, combine those two, and I'm gonna have a great time.

Younas, CEO Perfect. Norman, thank you so much for your time. If someone wants to connect with you, reach out to you, what's the best way for them to... ⁓ Norman Leach Honestly, probably through LinkedIn.

It's Norman Leach, the Chaos Navigator. I'm on it regularly. I'm an early user, so believe in LinkedIn. so connect with me there.

I promise I'll get back to you. Younas, CEO Thank you so much. Thank you everyone for listening in. Thank you, Norman, for joining the podcast.

I'll see you all in the next episode. Norman Leach Thank you much.