🌟 bezos, rihanna and louis vuitton used his staffing agency services

Welcome to another CEO Wisdom podcast today with Daniel Mersing. Daniel is a client, he's a friend, he's CEO at Premier Staff. He's into event staffing and management. He's in LA in West Hollywood area. Dan is a smart thinker, a biohacker, great leader and he's very bullish on growth and attacking markets. So we're going to talk about that today. This podcast is brought to you by my podcasting company. It's called podware.com if you want to start scale be invited to podcast like this one. Go to podfire.com we monetize podcasting the unconventional way. Dan, welcome to the Pod. Tell me a bit more about yourself and about Premiere.

Yes, thank you Charles for having me. A little bit about myself at Premiere. Career Stuff is actually the first company I founded. It's an event staffing agency. We focus mainly on luxury events where we provide basically bartenders, servers, brand ambassadors for basically like basically any company that needs to hire temporary staff and that are professionals and know what they're doing. And we basically hire and train everyone in house and that way they show up to the event ready to just deliver for the, for our clients.

And you've worked with brands such as Louis Vuitton, you've worked with Rihanna, you've worked with Bezos. Tell us about some of these clients and what it meant for you to work with these.

Yeah, Louis Vuitton was definitely an exciting one that we got. That was a three month exhibition that they had for, for basically like a pop up museum for Louis Vuitton on Madison Avenue in New York City. And yeah, that was exciting one just as far. What did that mean for us? Yeah, actually that was our first client in New York City. So that allowed us opportunity to actually scale and, and actually enter that market and we're able to leverage opportunity to basically just build a team out there. And so that was definitely an exciting one because we hit the floor running with a big boom. And yeah, as far as like events like with Rihanna, we do a lot of events with like Netflix. Those are mainly catering events like movie premieres. I think Rihanna had a product launch for her business so again they just hire a team to deliver a luxury quality experience for the guests. We don't do much of the event planning but in this case when it comes to catering it's more so just again delivering quality service. Just people that can show up with a warm, positive, like exciting attitude for, for the guests.

And what's your master plan? How do you want to scale that business to this guy.

Yeah, you know I, I think the way we're going to do that is through our brand ambassadors. I, I catering that's like a, it's definitely scalable but I really think brand ambassadors a way to do it. It's very fun. It's very, not only is it fun but I think every big company is realizing the value of in person experiences for their, for their customers or for marketing purposes. I think everyone's so caught up in their phones now and like that's the, the phone advertising, advertising on the phone through TikToks. Any social media platform is very saturated. I think actually getting guests to come in person and, and, and have a, an experience, providing experience for your customers as like the new way of marketing because people come and actually post right and then they start marketing for you. On top of that I think it builds a lot of brand loyalty. So I think brand ambassadors is going to see a huge, huge uprise. It's already, it's already growing but I think it's going to continue to grow in these next couple of years. It's like you know, every, it's just more and more so that we are going to actually using our phones and constantly. But I think again like changing from like Internet to actually going back to in real life experiences is a new way or, or, or a more valuable way of marketing in the future.

I agree with that. And how can you scale a business like this, that one that is heavily reliable on humans which do not tend to be reliable.

Yeah, that's a challenging one. The biggest reason why we get hired, it's basically I found that providing value to the team helps with retention, helps with loyalty. Basically laying out a clear path for growth for the team basically when they start out, you know, for, for one being very welcoming, you know, creating a pot, you know, having a positive warm culture for you know, where they actually enjoy it. We're having fun events, you know now. So we not only do we have fun events but we also make it fun and enjoyable. So when people come in they just, you know, they see the culture, they just quickly learn how things operate and then on top of that we have a very clear transparent path for growth. Know where we're very transparent with our, our compensation rates for each tier and then we also provide a plan of a checklist exactly what you need to do to and what you need to accomplish. You actually get offered a promotion. And, and again it's very transparent. It's very structured. There's no like it's very Black and white. It's like either you meet all these checkpoints or you don't. Right. And then if, if you do, you get promoted. It's like very clear. There's, there's no, there's no biases. It's very just like that's. We. The way we anal. We, you know, the way our team analyzes is the performance reviews is. It's very just like check boxes. Like if they hit everything then they accomplish it. So if someone's actually motivated to do it, all they have to do is go and read our, our, our plan to basically getting promotions and then, and just do it. And then basically when we do the performance reviews, we'll review it and give them the promotion. So I realized like having that clear path of growth, it's how we've been able to stay competitive in the market with our team. You know, I think compensation that the dollar amounts are very important, but more so also, you know, I think there's other big variables like, like again having that path for growth where we actually, and then, and then once they get promoted as well, we also invite them to a leadership development program where we actually develop and train their skills and leadership. So whether they want to stay with our company or go to another company, they now have learned and acquired leadership skills. And I think that's one of the biggest actually that we offer that other. That none of our competitors offer. And again it's helps so much retention so much with positive culture with everyone else as well.

That's pretty cool. And these humans, how do you pick them up? For example, we now have Grant Schwab Turkal and Grant is. Looks like a high quality young man. How did you selected? Granted.

Yeah, so that's a good question. So everyone on our management team, our core team have all come, you know, from our events team. Like, you know, we just, we promote internally and we give everyone internally an opportunity to grow and we, we, if we ever have to hire a new position on the back end, we always give our event team first choice an opportunity to actually step up to the plate and be able to deliver for us. So Grant, for example has been with us for a little over a year. He started off as a bartender for our company and then you know, became a captain and just, you know, he was kept, you know, showing up and, and delivering quality and, and, and, and our clients were loving him. So he became a captain or, or a manager same, we call them captains. And then we had an opportunity to have him join a recruitment department and from our recruitment Department he was able to, you know, then get the opportunity to become an account manager with us and just again he just kept delivering, kept executing. So as opportunities come up, we always offered to him and so basically now he's one of our main core employees on our team and he started as a bartender a year and a half ago. So that's also like a very encouraging thing again to like not only retention but also inspiring other people to, you know, stay with our company and be excited and to work with us. And so that's, that's a big thing. So that helps a lot.

What about you then? How did you discovered that staffing business? Where did you started out in life? Because for example, two of my, or actually four or five of my first jobs were in the service industry. I was a waiter in restaurants. I also did some bar stuff. How did you find out that about that industry yourself and why did you decide to launch a business into this?

Yeah, so I was actually, I was, I went to New York City, I got signed as a high fashion model. And you know when you guys are starting out, you don't have a lot of money. You need to work part time jobs. And I think, I think one of the other models in agency told us about this company. They pay $30 an hour to hire models to work like as service for, you know, luxury events and they, you know, they want models to work. So I picked up that job. I started working a lot of shifts and quickly went to, you know, becoming, to managing events in New York City within a couple months. You know it's like 2021. I, I forget things but, but I was very young and starting to manage events in eventually moved back to LA and I started working for another event company and quick, you know, within a couple, within a couple months of moving back. That's actually when I started working with Jeff Bezos. There's a Golden Globe party that I was working and they, they, out of all the team members, they appointed me to basically be Jeff Bezos guy. Anything he needed, anything he needed, him or his guests needed. Like they, that was me. It was my responsibility. I had to take care of Jeff. And so I was basically shadowing, shadowing him the entire night. And again every celebrity was there. This is Golden Globes Amazon prime premiere like after party. And every celebrity was there and every, even though there's everyone's celebrity there, they're all looking at Jeff Bezos like he was a main celebrity. And this is, he was definitely number one at the time, as rich as man, right this is years ago, so. And you know, I was working with him, this guy named Ogenio Lopez. Like he's a, like he's a billionaire. You would never know. Largest art collector in all of like South America and has a house in Beverly Hills. And you know, he came up to me and asked me if I can start staffing these events. I was like, sure, sure, I can do that. You know, at that time, like, I knew enough people and I have experience managing events. I can. This shouldn't be a problem. So went to his house, did a walk through over $100 billion worth of art in his home. And this is just like in Beverly Hills, just casually just laying out like, and as, as I was meeting him on this walkthrough, like people from other museums around the world, like France and stuff were coming to Tori's house and like, and like, absorb, observe all the art that he had. And so anyways, like, that was my first client. I started stopping all of his like art parties and I realized like, oh, this is like fun. This is, this is good. This is like exciting thing. So at that point in time, just went, I dove all in, went all in on this and invested all my time and energy and I think I like, I don't know, two, three thousand dollars in my pocket at the time when I started the company. And so like, I had no investors, no partners. And then here we are three years later and basically, you know, we have clients like Jeff Bezos, Netflix, Louis Vuitton, Rihanna, Cartier, Nike, Adidas. Like, it's just every, any big name company. We've, we've, we've probably worked with them.

So yeah, that's pretty cool, dude. Yeah, the Eugenio Lopez, he's the hair of the Grupo Jumex fortune, right?

Yeah.

So yeah, it has a museum in CDMX as well. They've got like really badass museums in cdmx. Carlos Slim as well has one with an amazing art collection. So yeah, it's, it's interesting also that a juice company, right. But there's one in each country in Quebec, it's called Wazis. And it's like they have like literally 35 of the juice market bezels. I listened to his interview with Lex Freedman last Friday. I do recommend listeners to listen to that one. How's the guy in person? You know, because like me when I go to ph, I'm a very online type of guy. You know, I can scale my stuff, I have full control over my schedule. But in person it's a bit Awkward, you know, Like, I'm. I'm not super introverted. I'm like a hybrid, but I don't like meeting new people. So how's Jeff, like, physically just like, having a good time, laughing out loud and having fun or.

I would say he's very intense. He's intense. The first event I worked with them. What is his girlfriend's name?

Sanchez.

Lauren Sanchez. Yeah. Lauren Sanchez. Yeah. So this is actually the night, like, paparazzi has captured them, like, leaving this party. And this is like, before they announced their divorce, like. And so.

Oh, Mackenzie. This divorce with McKenzie Bezos.

Yeah, exactly. So they're still married. There's. They haven't release the news. He's at this party with Sanchez, Lauren Sanchez, and. And her. Her couple of her friends and just intense. Just. I. I would. I would say organically he's very introverted and. But obviously he's, you know, acknowledging people saying hi. But he's. There's intensity to him for sure. He's definitely very. I would. I would say calculative.

Yeah.

So. And a little. A little stiff. You know, I don't think that's his element, you know. You know, like, he's not like an actor, you know, or celebrity. And because of acting and being socially. So I don't think that was his environment. So he's a little stiff and that maybe that's why he's a little intense and. And like, he's analyzing potentially. But it was definitely that's. It was funny because that night he was like, face to face with Laura Sanchez, like, Like, clearly this is his girlfriend and, you know, holding her hand and like, this is. I think this is a statement, like, letting everyone know, like, here's a girlfriend now. But it wasn't very talkative, like, to only speak to his personal assistant directly and like, no one else, like, she had to talk to any, you know, other staff members on his team. Even for Jeff, like, she, like, anything he wanted, she would have to come and tell me. Actually, everyone else I talked to, but he didn't want to talk to anyone except his assistant or anyone he's acknowledging, like, you know, that's at. At the event.

That's interesting. But yeah, having top service as. Yeah, like that. I guess that's what you want when you go at these events. Someone to get you drinks or any favorite or anything that you want, you know, like, and when it came to Rihanna, what did you observed in her and her events? And Louis Vuitton, like, these are very high quality people. Do they expect everything to be perfect. What. What do they expect from a company like premiere?

Yeah. So for Rihanna, it was a launch party. It was more like a court, like a. Obviously she's famous and she's leveraging that for marketing purposes. And she showed up. This is a big launch, but. But it's just like, it's just like any other event. Like, this is just where our team was hired as bartenders for this event for Rihanna. And again, it's just anything they want. It's funny, I have team members. We did the killer Roy's 18th birthday party with, you know, Justin Bieber was there and did it like a surprise, like live performance. The same for the birthday. And again, like, Justin Bieber, I think is like, even at the next level up and like comes up to the bar, asks for drinks, right? Oh, can I have, you know, a soda water, please? I don't think he was drinking on this at this one. And. And so it's just like. It's just like you have to treat like any other event. So what they expect is just deliver, quality, deliver service. Don't get starstruck. That's actually the number one rules. Like, you can't be starstruck. Like, my clients don't tell me this. It's rare that our clients tell us this, but I think they don't. Oh, there you are. That a lawsuit there? But basically, I don't, I don't think they. They just expect us. Like they're hiring our company. We have the reputation. They know that our team's going to show up and not be starstruck. We're not going to take photos. We're not going to be in their face trying to talk to them. It's just like you treat them like anyone else. You don't, you know, try to make like it just good, quality service is just basically being able to provide the good service without even being noticed. I think that's like the, the way you judge good, good service. So that's, that's what they expect from us. We're not, we're not trying to talk to them. We're not excited and so forth. Right. We're just acting normal and providing service. That's like, that's. That's what they expect from us. Yeah.

And being human, because these folks are used to being viewed by starstruck people, you know, and people think they're like superhumans, but in the end, it feels good to them to. To be treated in a normal, humanistic way, although they do expect the best from everyone around them. Because they're hyper performers in terms of next year. Dan, what do you have in mind for the company? What would be the top growth objectives?

Yeah, so everything thus far has been short term. You know, we get hired as our clients, have events, everything we're focusing on next year. And actually this is why, this is why we are working together. This is why I hired you for the email campaign is to basically get contracts signed so we can have projected revenue. And it's not even for projected revenue purposes. It's more because we want to get, it's actually goes hand in hand. So not only do you get contract signs so you get projected revenue, but you're also getting bigger contracts. Six to seven figure contracts is what we're aiming for with each client. So instead of having a thousand clients hire us for you know, a two, three thousand dollar worth of service for one event, it's like we rather get hired for, you know, $400,000 for the year. And we provide full, the, we provide the staff full time for this venue or this brand wants to hire us because they're constantly having outdoor engagements with, with their customers. And then instead of hiring people internally and training them consistently and then managing it, they just hire us and we manage it for them. So we want to basically get partnership agreements signed with clients that are big enough to the six to seven figure range. So that's all we're focusing on right now. That's why we're doing this email campaign with you. And that's I believe is what's going to take our company to the next level, allow us to grow. So that's, that's where we are and

the pod possibly to get these whales slash dream 100 clients. So where can people find out more about you then

LinkedIn? I'm start launching a podcast channel soon. Social media is actually launching as well. Soon we'll be creating a lot of content. So Instagram soon. Instagram now. You can do YouTube shorts soon and then also TikTok. So this is actually, we're finalizing the strategy now. We're actually creating some content later today and the goal is to actually launch strong and in early January.

So there you go. So that was Danielle Mersing and Charles Cormier for another founder wisdom podcast.com if you want to take care of your podcast and scale it, you can go to Pod Buyer. Come.