247 - Embracing Creativity and Community: A Passion for Immersive Art Experiences with FloridaRAMA's Liz Dimmitt

Welcome to Listening with Leaders. I'm Doug Noll, lawyer turned peacemaker. I teach executive leaders how to listen to emotions rather than words so that they can become the leaders everyone wants to follow. And I teach those same leaders how to be authentically present, available, and connected to their families despite being insanely busy. I have learned that we are 98% emotional and only 2% rational. Learning how to listen to emotions is, in my experience, the foundational skill of life. Stick around to the end of the show and I'll reveal how you can be on our next guest in 15 to 20 minutes. So let's get started. Liz Dimmitt, welcome to Listening with Leaders. You are the founder and CEO of Floridarama, which can be found at floridarama.com. Art, and you're located in St. Petersburg, Florida, involving immersive art experiences. Welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me.

Tell me a little bit about, first of all, a little bit about your backstory and then a little bit about Floridarama.

All right. My backstory is long and winding. I think a lot of entrepreneurs are, but basically my undergraduate degree was in finance. I lived and worked in New York City for 17 years. And now I'm back home in Florida. I really started working out in straight finance, got very much interested in alternative assets, ended up going back and getting my master's in art business, and then started working in various art businesses, including a private equity fund investing in the infrastructure of the art market. So I've done a little bit of everything, worked at a major blue-chip gallery with worldwide locations. But in 2017, got called home to Florida, where I am from, and had always dreamed of having a large art space and an immersive art space. And when I moved from New York back to Florida, it became a little bit more feasible because the real estate is a little bit less expensive than New York City. So I ended up finding space and finding partners and building out Florida Floridarama, which is an immersive arts and entertainment destination. And we're growing every year, but we started out with just an immersive art space. So a ticketed experience, you buy a ticket, you come in, and everything around you is made by artists, an entire environment that sort of engages all of your senses, including smell. And, um, there's also an overarching narrative and stories you can deep dive into, games you can play. And then everything made by artists, and we celebrate weird, wacky, wonderful Florida, and we call ourselves a very storyful space. We've grown over the years and recently expanded to include an art gallery that is open to the free, to the public all the time, and a bar and cafe, and now venue rental spaces and other spaces. So you can have your wedding, your corporate event, whatever here at Floridarama.

Wow. That sounds like a project.

It is a lot. And then just to throw you off kilter a little bit, I have a second full-time job. I am also a fourth-generation car dealer and managing partner of Dimit Chevrolet. So I work there and have a full-time staff and full-time job there as well. Just like everyone else, I got the side hustle, the job, multiple projects going on at once.

I saw that on your LinkedIn profile. I forgot to mention that. You're a fourth generation car dealer and man running this art immersive art experience in St. Petersburg. That sounds like your plate is pretty full.

It is. And I don't know why, but for some reason I only have businesses that are open weekends and holidays. It seems like it's the worst planning for your personal life because the dealership is only closed on Thanksgiving and Christmas. And Floridarama, we are closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, but all, again, all those holidays, 4th of July, we're open. So I seem to pick businesses where I have to be in the office when everyone else is taking off.

You've been in the business world for a long time, and, and now you've got two businesses that are quite different from each other that are, that you're, you're operating and managing. What is it that gets you up in the morning and gets you excited to go to work?

Guest experience. And that actually is a big tie between the two. Jobs because guest experience is everything at a car dealership and everything at an attraction or an immersive art space. We are at Floridarama, but then also just, I'm a, you know, a serial entrepreneur. So solving problems, thinking about strategy, and then I'm a real arts dork and I love the experience and working with artists and the rhymes and mysteries and wordplay and things that go into such sort of a out there experience. Everything is okay at Floridarama. You can tie in a lot of really fun stuff. So I love all those fun, quirky connections.

What got you back into the car business?

Just generational. The passing of my brother, who was the designated successor to my father. He passed away and I am an entrepreneur and thought, I can do that. I'll go. I was thinking about moving home already. And just my husband agreed and we came down here and started doing it all.

Wow. Crazy.

My brother's passing early in his life though, also, I would say gave me the gumption to start Floridarama because I got that life is too short to not do what you really want to do and to really go all in on your big ideas. I was a little bit more conservative and risk-averse before. Floridarama is a big undertaking. I raised money. It's very public. I think that life experience out of that tragedy came for me, the motivation to say, okay, I'm just going to try this.

You've, did you bring in investors to fund Floridarama?

I did.

Got your investors and it sounds like it's a pretty big enterprise. So you've got a fair number of employees.

Yeah, it's a big operation. It's not huge. It's not, the dealership is bigger people-wise, but it is a big operation and we do have, we, our key investors are incredible. They are Jeff and Penny Vinik, Jeff Vinik, who owns the Tampa Bay Lightning and is a big name around town. And they really know, I had a relationship with them beforehand doing large immersive art experiences with them and their foundation. It's not an easy, Floridarama is not an easy thing to pitch to investors because who knows what an art experience is or that sees that it's a business investment. So I luckily I had that them primed and we had, had experience working together. They're into big immersive art experiences, so they got it. So I was very fortunate in that way.

So when people walk into Flororama, give me the picture. What's the experience like?

So you walk in, you go up a ramp, and you encounter a Category 5 hurricane, a Cat 5 hurricane, and that is the twister in The Wizard of Oz encounter that transports you to a new world, and that world is the Mermaid Star Motel. And you enter in and there's a, what we call retro-futuristic motel facade. And the different spaces, like each motel room and the motel lobby, all have art installations. There's also the entire environment around it is created by artists. We've worked with 75 artists to date. And there you could just go around and look at beautiful art and take pictures of yourself and see inspiring things. Or you can dive deeper, gamify your experience, do scavenger hunts, figure out mysteries. I mean, there's entire Reddit threads about what's going on with our stories. You can go as deep as you want to into it, and it's very layered. And I like to tell people that nothing is random inside of Floridarama. Everything is where it is for a reason and part of a bigger story.

So what is your— do you have a thing called a normal day?

No, I do not. But who would want to have a normal day? I'm a mom. I have a 17-month-old baby and a husband. So I do laundry and drive a baby around in the car and all those sort of regular things. But when you get to work— this week at the dealership, or last week and this week, CDK is down, which is our entire operating system. So we've had to go back to handwriting tickets and selling cars, our accounting, everything is down tech-wise. Nothing that we can do about it because it's a firm that we work with, most GM dealers work with. So that's been really interesting experiencing car dealership old school style, handwriting out deals and things. And then at Floridarama, we have field trips, we have art activations. Like today I had a meeting with an artist who goes by the name Kinsey Cake about painting 20 fluorescent paintings for an upcoming disco-themed room that we're launching in August. But I'm also working on like marketing and graphics and budgeting and guest experience and training people to work in like all the mundane stuff. But there's like this extra sort of glitter or magic to it at Floridarama where you're always doing something like a little ridiculous in a fun way.

I can't even imagine what your life must be like.

Yeah, I mean, we believe in mermaids and have guests that are mermaids that come and artists that are mermaids. And someone will say, we want to interview someone about their experience in Floridarama. And you'll say, do you want a mermaid to do that? And you have a mermaid do it.

So is Floridarama a pretty big deal in St. Petersburg and the Tampa Bay area?

We're a startup. And so teaching people what an art experience is was I, when we launched in 2021 to the public, it was now everything is called an experience. So people are getting more and more familiar with that term. I think we're a big deal on the tourism and arts and culture scene. And I think growing and growing to big, be a bigger deal on the events, entertainment destination area. But what it is uniquely Tampa Bay, uniquely St. Pete. So we're famous for the art community and diversity here in St. Pete. And if you want to experience that entire St. Pete vibe under one roof, we're the place to come do it. We've got it all. It's right here. It's air conditioned. It's fun. It's magic. It's whimsical. And it's very memorable. So if you want to have— it's the place you take— when I have my friends in town from New York City, this is where I take them because it's, oh, we have that here too. We have the cool things.

Wow. So I'm curious, what is it that makes— what is it that's unique about you, Liz? That allows you to juggle all this stuff and make it all work and hopefully make some money at it?

I think my main skill set is enthusiasm. I have enthusiasm for a lot of things and can get other people excited about it too. And I'm like a great cheerleader and can convince people that we should make a mermaid star motel and fill it up with art and have stories about space cats and they get on board and do it. So my skill in life is enthusiasm. I am enthusiastic and other people get involved too. But with that, I have, I think, can attract and hire really high quality people. And I'm a very big ideas person, but, and, but I'm not necessarily great at all the details, or I know we want to use tech to do this. I can't code it, but I know what the vision is and how we wanted to do it. But how did I make that? Someone else made it. I can— my enthusiasm is contagious to, I think, both our staff and our guests. And I'm really good at hiring amazing people, keeping them happy, giving them the resources to do the cool stuff that we do, and getting out of their way. I'm a yes person, so I say, that sounds great. So I think that really my skill set is being a cheerleader, being enthusiastic, having big ideas, and then actually executing on them, but I execute on them with a huge amount of support and a great team behind me.

How much do you think of all the work that you did in finance in New York City and your education prepared you to do what you're doing today?

So much. I'm a business person first, and I think like, how do we pay for this? Why would someone want to pay to go to this? How can we make this bigger? How can we scale it? How can we take it to the next place, how does this business model get repeated, those sort of things. I don't think about exit. I don't think about an exit because I'm not— that's not what I'm going for. I want more and more locations and more and more art and more and more fun, and I love being involved in it. But I do— the business side does come first, and I think a misnomer that people think about the arts is that always being nonprofits or for free, and the arts is also incredibly huge big business. Think about Hollywood movie studios, think about the media. A lot of it is the arts.

Yeah.

So there's a huge amount. It's a big business. It's a huge industry. And I think about it that way first, having come from the industry side, but then having grown up with a mother and a grandmother who are artists and worked on big artist projects for many years, understand uniquely their needs and how they approach things and how to trans— take what they're doing and make it economically viable. And then now with Floridarama, I have to think about things like, how will this age? How will the public— how do we clean it? How do the public engage with it? Can they not break it? Because you're having thousands and thousands of people touch it over and over again. So it's a whole different way of thinking about art, right? Because it has to be durable and it has to be durable.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, you were talking about big business in art and I was thinking of Taylor Swift and billions of dollars, right?

There it is. Yeah. And just like the music industry, the entertainment and experience industry that I'm in, there's so many other little businesses and that's what I love about Floridarama is that we hire artists, we pay them well and fairly to do their work. So it's another way for artists and especially our local arts community to make money.

Wow. That's amazing. Let's pivot to listening for a second. This is called Listening with Leaders, and I'm always interested in your take on listening. How important is it and how did you learn how to listen?

I'm not a great listener. So I've had to really, I have to really focus and work on it. It's a skillset that I have to constantly practice, but a good example of it is artist explaining. For me, I have an artist sit down and explain their vision and in detail, and you have to really listen about what the essence of it is because you have to help them accomplish it. And they might not actually have the tools, the resource, the tech, the durability knowledge for here at Floridarama. So really understanding their idea and what they want to make versus how they explain to you how they're going to make it and how they like the essence of it is really important. And then we have a huge team at both. We have teams at both places and listening to them and their ideas and their feedback and hearing what they're really saying and what's important is something that I've had to really learn to do. That's harder than listening to an artist for me, but getting what people are really saying, because sometimes they don't say what they really are trying to get across. And I've had to grow there and learn by making mistakes there about why are they bringing this up all the time? What are they saying? What I have to sit there and ask myself and questions as I'm listening. So it's a skillset that I look forward to your sort of tips because it's a really hard thing to do, especially for me who is an ideas, big picture person, because I want to interrupt and bang, build on your idea with this and that. So I have to focus and not miss out on what they're saying.

I think, I think the, the key is knowing when is it important to listen to make sure the other person is heard, and when is it important to listen for information so that you can make decisions and interact? And, and that's what I think most people miss. There are times when the other people just need to be heard. They're upset, they're emotional, they're angry, all that. And what they need right then is to be validated. And if you can figure out that separation It makes listening a lot easier because you know what to listen for. The other thing that people do, and you just alluded to it quickly, is they jump in and problem solve too quickly. Yeah. And that tends to invalidate the speaker and gets them upset. They don't like it.

I have a husband who I lecture about this all the time, right?

He wants to problem solve, right? Liz, if you would just do this, the problem will go away. All right, here's what's going on. Pro tip: he's soothing his own internal anxiety that he doesn't even know that he has. Oh wow. Mhm. When he's trying to problem solve, he's really trying to soothe his own anxiety over something that's going on with you that he can't control.

Fascinating.

And so what I teach people to do is how, instead of trying to problem solve, learn how to listen. You get in the right way, you soothe yourself as you're soothing the speaker, and your anxiety goes away. You don't have any anxiety. And so you no longer jump into early problem solving, and that allows you to listen more closely. And then once the person's calmed down, you can say, okay, how do we want to solve this problem? By asking that question rather than giving unsolicited advice that nobody ever likes. That's the trick. That's the art of this stuff.

Okay.

And the beauty of it is it's all teachable. These are all skills that are easy to learn and practice. They're counterintuitive because people have never thought about this before. But I got into this as a peacemaker, a mediator working in high-conflict cases, and I couldn't, didn't have any good ways of getting people to settle down. So I had some insights and then some neuroscience came out to support the insights that I had, which was pretty cool. And I've been able to develop these skills over the last 25 years. And once you get nuanced about this, it's effortless. In fact, it's even less effort than what you're doing right now. Once you learn. Does that make sense? Yeah.

This is genius advice. I wish my team and my husband were listening, so I'll make them listen when this comes out.

We can always arrange a little, a little webinar for everybody. Okay. Um, so where do you go from here? You were alluding that Floridarama is something that you're thinking about duplicating in other places.

Yeah, I think it could help other cities because we really are great at focusing on the local art scene and amplifying it and putting it all in one place. So we have, you know, a bigger stage for it, but I could see a Floridarama in other places around Florida. I could see a Memphisrama. I could see, it could be. Other places. And then I think art, media, experiences, technology are expanding all the time and the opportunities to improve the experience. It's, we're like trying to be cutting edge. So we got to have our ear to the ground all the time and be constantly adding on to make the experience relevant, timely, but also competitive. People's money and free time, you got to We're taking up both of those things and we have to give them a reason to come and keep coming.

Exactly. So you have to keep reinventing yourself.

Of course.

And in the art world, that, of course, art is invention, but I guess you sit there all the time and you're thinking about, all right, what's the next big thing we can do here to pull people in? Because once they've been here once, they've been through the experience, great, but we want them to come back, so they gotta have a different experience.

Absolutely. And we've had to pivot some throughout. We started building during COVID We raised our funds, got the check in March 2020, and then we're building this thing. And we just hoped that people— we had faith that the world would open back up and people could come, but how people want to have experiences were profoundly changed by COVID and technology is changing them all the time. So we're constantly pivoting here and there. To reflect trends and desires of consumers.

That sounds to me like it takes a lot of creative energy to stay on top of that.

It does. But then you're also like, I'm a consumer myself and I'm a really good consumer. I like, I'm really, that's one of my, another skill set that I have of going out and consuming culture. And I'm like an urban explorer. I like to go out and see and do everything. Us all and our whole staff are constantly learning. Why was it good? Why would I go back? What made it special? So we're all consuming culture all the time. So I think it's one of those things that if you're getting outside and doing your stuff, you have to just be thinking about it and learning and taking it all in. This is a smart way they set this up. How did we have a retail thing, you know, area? Like, how does that work? You know, you're just constantly trying to learn and pick up tricks of the trade from everyone.

Wow.

And I, of course, I'm in Florida where attractions are king, tourists are king, and we have Disney and people like that who would do it perfectly. So there's a lot to be learned. I don't have those budgets, so I have to learn the big lesson and then think, how do we implement this on our budget?

Interesting. Wow. What an amazing life you have. One more question. I'll let you go. What's one thing about you that we would never know about? Unless you revealed it to us.

Oh, I'm an introvert. I am actually an introvert and I can turn it on for work and things that I'm excited about. But I do have to go home at the end of the day and recharge. And sometimes I've hit everything so hard all week with the two companies and going to go see art and do all the stuff that I get home on Saturday and Sunday and don't leave my house, leave my yard, stay home and recharge. But I'm definitely. An introverted person.

You'll be interested in knowing that I'm— this is— we're close to 250 episodes of this podcast, and I would say that 99% of my guests who are CEOs, founders, and entrepreneurs are introverts.

Isn't that incredible?

I don't think I've— I can only think of one, really. I can only think of one guest that I've had who I thought was an extrovert.

Wow.

Isn't that amazing? I'm an introvert myself, and We get our energy from our inside. Extroverts like to go out and be with people cuz they pull their energy from other people, right?

Yeah. I have to go home and recharge. Exactly.

You know, I live in the mountains of Central California for that exact reason.

Mm-hmm.

But isn't it interesting that so many successful leaders are true introverts? So, and you're, there you go.

You're in a, yeah, it, it is really in my staff members and colleagues and people that I work with never, they're always like, what are you talking about? You're always having to do public speaking and always having to to turn it on and networking and all that stuff. And I'm like, that's not— it doesn't come naturally to me to do this. It's a job. I do it. Feels like that I've had to learn in the listening. I'm gonna have to learn more.

This has been a great conversation, Liz. Thank you again so much for your time today. It's been really fun talking to you and learning about your business.

I appreciate it. Thank you so much.

You're welcome. Doug Noll here. Thank you so much for listening to Listening with Leaders. If you are a successful executive leader who would like to be on this program, please visit podcast.dougnull.com/podcast. If you got something out of this interview, would you please share this episode on social media? Just do a quick screenshot with your phone and text it to a friend or post it on the socials. If you know someone that would be a great guest, tag them on the social media to let them know about the show and include the hashtag #ListeningWithLeaders. I love seeing your posts and guest suggestions. We are regularly putting out new episodes and content. To make sure you don't miss any episodes, go ahead and subscribe. Your thumbs up, ratings, and reviews go a long way to help promote the show and mean a lot to me and my 19. Want to know more? Go to my website, DougNoll.com, or follow me on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. That's @DouglasEnoll. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you on the next show.