Chris Krimitsos — Behind The Scenes Of One Of The Largest Events In Podcasting

This is an intro. Intro, intro, intro.

Hustle and Float. Shark with your boy.

My boy, Matt Wolf.

Hey, Joseph Fear. How are you doing today?

I'm doing swell. You?

I'm just doing all right. Just making it through another day.

I just heard a dog fart.

I wouldn't be surprised. There's a dog sitting between us right now.

An old, crotchety dog, and she loves a fart.

Well, this is off to a great start.

She's not that crotchety, actually. She's so nice.

No, she's a very friendly dog, but.

She smells sometimes when she farts.

Yes.

Oh, yeah. Y. Good thing she's not in here during actual podcasting time. This is just intro time, so, you know, it's, like, different.

Yeah, yeah. We kick her out during the actual podcast.

Very true. Very true. All right, man. So today this is a cool conversation because this dude's just amazing. Chris.

Yeah, Chris is a good, good guy. We actually just. We got back from Orlando a couple weeks ago. Based on the recording date. Probably not based on the date. You're listening. But we just got back from Orlando and we were at an event called podf, actually spoke at it all about affiliate marketing and monetization of podcasts. And the person who put on this event was Chris Kremitzos and his partner John Dennis. But today we have Chris on the. On the show talking about PodFest and putting on events and some really, really cool stuff.

Yeah, so Chris, like, first time I met him, just. Dude was an amazing guy from just the first call because we got connected through some mutual buddies, and immediately I was like, this. This is going to be good. Like, he's going to hold some good events. And he did. So podfest, we came back from that and totally blew our minds in terms of the quality and the community. Yeah, and the community. Like, there are peeps, man.

There are peeps.

They are our peeps. Yeah, I mean, there's. There's this thing, like, about the podcasting world, the podcasting community, where it really feels like everybody is, like, really trying to help each other out. It doesn't feel like. It doesn't feel ego driven. It doesn't feel like people trying to one up each other. It kind of feels like a level playing field. Like, the biggest podcasters are hanging out with people that have had two downloads or even people that are thinking about starting a podcast, and everybody's, like, super supportive of each other.

Yeah. Yeah. So Chris is. He's been doing events forever and has seen, like, the shitty parts of events.

And then 2000 events, I believe. So that is nuts.

Monthly events. And he's done it since the 90s. I mean, he's been at it and. Yeah, so he basically laid out. It was like an events blueprint. So if you're looking to add events to your business, this is definitely an episode you want to listen to. And he also points out these expenses and these kind of pitfalls that you wouldn't normally know about when first holding an event. He basically lines those out and how that can save you at least five grand per event. In that case, you know, he had, I think he said multiple times that happened. And I know a buddy of mine, same thing. And it just happens with most events in general, you got to know these pitfalls where your money just, you know, just gonna get taken unless you really know what you're doing.

Yeah, yeah.

And, you know, one of the hardest things about events is getting butts in seats, getting people to register and pay and travel and get flights and get hotels and, you know, you're paying for food the entire time you're at the event because, you know, you eat out a lot and stuff. So it's a struggle to get people to come out to large events like podfest. And we got him to break down a pretty good blueprint, a pretty good roadmap of exactly how he manages to put on not only the bigger events like PodFest, but also some smaller local events. And he does a great job on this episode of really kind of giving you a roadmap to follow if you're going to put on an event like that.

Yeah, and it's cool because we spoke on the monetization panel at podfest, and we basically open everybody's eyes to how we monetize with our show and with the rest of our platform. Once you go on our website or email list, you know, retargeting all this stuff, all the ads, we kind of laid out a very high picture of that. We didn't go into crazy detail, but our traffic book. Our traffic book lays out actually what we do. So.

Good transition, Joe. Good transition.

Yeah, I see. I told you. I'm Segway, man. I'm on my Segway right, right now, and I'm not going to go over a cliff like the owner did, I think, oh, man, that's tragic. So, yeah, but if you. If you know how, like, we're blowing their minds with simple stuff about talking about affiliate marketing and how we monetize. But the fact is, there's more happening than just the podcasting. It's it's all the stuff that's happening behind the scenes, the retargeting, the email lists, the follow ups, the segmentation, all that cool stuff. That's what we get into in this traffic book. Evergreen Traffic Playbook.

Yep. And you can get that@everygreenprofits.com trafficbook what? I have to say it three times. Yeah, I think evergreenprofits.com trafficbook no, no, no, that's you.

One more time.

Oh.

Evergreenprofits.com trafficbook he's pointing for me. But really you need consistency, Matt.

Yeah, but I was going to do like this cool stereo effect where I say it in the right channel and then you say it in the left channel and I say it. But were you really going to edit that? No, I wasn't going to spend.

You don't do the editing anyways. What am I talking about?

I don't. All right, well, let's just go talk to Chris Kremitos about putting on these awesome events and everything that goes into it and just awesome guy podcasting stuff and let's jump in. I'm just saying words now. Yeah, well, let's just go talk.

Your dog's still farting. So let's get to that interview.

Oh, geez.

Hey, Chris, thanks for joining us today.

Oh, thanks for having me, guys.

Yeah, man. So we're just kind of talking war stories about recovering after events and you are just like non stop, man.

I'm feeling it though. I'm not really old, but I'm at the age now where I don't rebound as quick as I used to.

I hear that. Well, you're doing a lot. So just to tell everybody, what we're talking about is Podfest is one of your large events, one of the events you do. And we just came back from that, what, a week and a half ago or so. Yeah, I feel you on the recovery thing, clearing out emails and your voice when you're raspy after events like that.

I feel like I need about a week off for every two days of conference.

Yeah. You know something? PodFest is so immersive that we found a trend that people, yes, they lose their voice and a lot of people get sick. So next year I'm going to have like in the emails before you come to PodFest is like vitamin C and take some boosters before you show up because of the intensity of the conference. Takes a lot of. We're all at a very high level of energy. It just takes a lot out of you and that's a Good thing. But it's good to know, you know.

And we're all podcasters too, so we got to save those nice pipes. We're all given the golden pipes.

Our voices is one of our tools.

Yeah. And we're all talking at PodFest left and right. Dave Jackson. Poor Dave Jackson. School podcasting. He. He blew out his voice, had the flu. He just recovered. So I talked to him today. He's doing really well.

That's good.

Yeah. No, I had the exact same thing at Trafficking Aversion, which was like a week and a half before podfest. The night before the event, I went to sort of some pre opening party kind of thing. I lost my voice at that portion of it before the event even started and then went three days with no voice.

So that's tough because TNC is so immersive. That's crazy.

Same idea. Yeah. I was his translator for most of the time.

I know what he's thinking. So, Chris, let's dig into your background, because when you and I hopped on the phone the very first time prior to PodFest, I think it was in December, we were introduced by Scott Carson. The old guys. Yeah.

Justin and Lee.

Yep. They listen to our show, so they'll shout out, guys. And yeah, it was really cool to chat with you. I think he called me at like 5:30 my time. That's what, 8:30 yours? And like, we chatted for almost an hour and I was like, dude, you were so cool and such an interesting background. And then we just like instantly hit it off. So let's educate us even further on like, how. What. What have you done in the past to lead up to this point here?

So I'm a serial entrepreneur. I knew during my generation everybody was being like, raised up to be a good employee when I was a little kid, but because.

My relatives come from Greece, so when they came to this country, they all became entrepreneurs because I was one of the avenues out of the rat race, so to speak. So a lot of them got into the restaurant industry. So I still remember being 8 years old and drawing diners on a piece of paper and be like, I'm gonna be rich. I'm gonna be a business owner. I'm gonna have every diner in New York. But I just knew I was going to be an entrepreneur. And I learned a lot of lessons along the way. And somewhere in my late 20s, I was trying to make a million dollars. That was my goal. And I couldn't get there. And I was miserable. And I realized, like, making money is fairly easy, but I keep stumbling because I don't have any meaning in what I'm doing. And as a human being, I'm a meanings person. And that's when I started creating events or communities to bring people together. So I spent six months, I had some money, so I wasn't working. So for six months I had the luxury of literally walking the waterfront in Tampa Bay and asking myself this one question. What do I want to do when I grow up? What do I want to do with my life? And I kept asking myself that over and over for literally six months, walking Sunset every day. And I envisioned a community of people that were like minded. One thing I realized I don't want to hang out with people. I don't want to being in an environment where people are naysayers. So that was like step one. I was like, okay, who do I want to hang around with? People like Joe and Matt, right? But how do I find Joe and Matt or you know, like my wife Katie, how do I find people that believe they can do anything? And when they're around those other people, they not only help each other, but they like, it's almost like a steroid. You help each other grow because you have a positive mental attitude, integrity and the ability growth for personally, professionally. So created this vision in my mind. And I'm not kidding guys, six months later I put on my first event. I had 99 people show up through my invitations. I had gone to a lot of events and I had made a lot of friends. So one of the networking things I tell people because they're like, you know, everybody. I literally, when I'd go to a network event and I didn't know anyone, it was overwhelming. So I would just meet one really great, what I would call connection point or someone that was like, oh, they seem to be an influencer. Let me introduce myself to them and get to know them. So every week I would introduce myself to one new person. By the end of the year, I knew everybody in the room because I would just go one at a time. And I really cared to meet them and get to know them. So long story short, I launched my first event Community. Really. And there was 100 people in front of me. I pitched them this idea of this community for business owners, by business owners. There wasn't much there. But you know, this is a great marketing.

Lesson. I had two levels of membership, 450 and $1,000. And the only reason I had a thousand dollar VIP level is because my one friend, Dustin Matthews, who's a marketer Is like, you have to have a VIP level. He goes, someone will buy it, don't worry about it, just put a VIP level. I go, but what's the difference? He goes, just put. You get to have dinner with the speaker. I'm like, all right. That was the only distinction. Like you get everything except for the VIPs. You get dinner with the speaker. Four people took me up on the thousand dollar level, 20 took me up on the 450. And the seeds for my community were built over the next nine years. I did over 2,000 events facilitating this community and became the largest in Tampa Bay for local entrepreneurs. At our height, we had 330 members, I'd like to say active members. And if you could imagine we would get a local mayor every now and then to speak. And I remember the one mayor, Mayor Greco, he had been mayor four different decades. He was a four time mayor in Tampa. He said to me, how did you get all these people in one room? And I said, I don't understand what you mean. I go, you speak at places all the time because you don't understand when you have a guy that's doing mortgages and another guy that's doing affiliate marketing and then you got the dog groomer in the room. That's not normal. He goes, you just don't get business owners across sections. Usually have the mortgage association or the builders association goes, I've never seen cross section of our entire community of business owners in one room. And at the time I didn't realize what I was doing was special. It just what I intentionally set out to do so I could have a meaningful life. And that's kind of how I started. And I've created like three or four different associations. One on Internet marketing called E marketing groups. I created a group for guys to help them in their relationship development. So I learned a lot over the years on that one. And then PodFest was one of the Internet marketing groups, E Marketing groups. We had a podcast speaker and I started five years ago incubating a podcast conference. And unlike most people, instead of going large, I went community driven. And then I would just ask my members to invite a friend. So each year we would double in size by retaining the original group, at least 80% of them. And then they would bring a friend. And that's why when you came to the event, you felt a community very different than anything you probably ever seen because it's been built over years of camaraderie and friendships and people then carrying that out to the next group that's.

Exactly what it felt like. I remember the first day Matt and I went back to the room, and we're like, this is different. These people are actually really nice and helpful and no egos. And it was just. It felt like that. So that. That community, Your goal was 100% achieved in our, you know, experience, Yeah.

I mean, we've always. We've always kind of operated in this. This digital marketing space where we're going to things like traffic and conversion. And back in the day, we used to go to an event called the Underground Event. And now there's the funnel hacker that, you know, click funnels and Russell Brunson puts on, and we go to all these types of events. And I mean, they're great events, great content, a lot of really, really good people there. But sprinkled among them, there's always. It always feels like there's a ton of egos. There's a ton of people showing up in their lambos and, you know, valeting them in front of the hotel and making sure that people are seeing them and you get that kind of stuff. And podfest was just a completely different world. It kind of felt like everybody is here to sort of make sure that the tide is rising together and all the ships are rising together, and everybody is sort of helping lift everybody else up. And it didn't feel like a competitive community. Like, what we were used to is.

I guess that was one of my pet peeves of going to events like, you guys know, like, now you've seen what I've done. But I'm a promoter, and I have quite a extensive database of connections. And I would go to those events that you're mentioning, just a couple of them, and I'd go up to a speaker and I would want to sit down and create a relationship. And I have a lot of value. It's not like. So I was looking to trade value and maybe create something. And they would look at me like, I don't know who you are, and I'm not going to spend my time and. And I go, what a missed opportunity for them. For me, it's fine, I'll go on. I already have my network built up. But. So one of the things early on is, like, how can we take this whole ego worship out of the equation, or at least not highlight it and make sure that our speakers are treated just as well as our attendees, and there should be no distinction between the two. That's how you create a cohesive environment as well as the exhibitors who are extremely well connected in the space. So we try and make sure that all parts of our membership, our attendees, our presenters and our exhibitors are all treated equally, which means all treated with white gloves service. That they're all special, not that there's hero worship on one side. And then everybody is, because I mean, think about who's in the room. You never know who's in your room. You don't know the opportunities. And I saw that in other events. I'm like, what an opportunity missed that someone's treated like a rock star. But there's someone in their audience that probably has a bigger following that wants to do business with them, but their ego won't allow that to happen.

Yeah, I mean, just a good sort of case study about what you just said is we spoke on a panel. Well, sort of a panel. It was originally a panel and then the two other people.

You guys were the panel.

Yeah, the two other people that were supposed to be on the panel had travel issues and weren't able to get there by the time of the panel. So we ended up being the only two on the panel. But after we gave our panel on monetization, the CEO of Himalaya, one of the big sponsors for podfest, came up and talked to Joe and then Joe had a follow up call after podfest and now we're going back and forth with Himalaya about some potential partnerships with them.

Congratulations, boys. Congratulations. And that's because you guys were open to the opportunity and that's the big distinction right there. Yeah.

And yeah, it's so cool. And everything you're saying is exactly what that what we felt at the event and just really quick blur before we move into some interesting questions because I want to dig deeper on how to actually create these events and kind of this community focused thing. Just do a quick blurb about PodFest when it is, how people can learn more about it.

So PodFest next year will be March 6th to the 8th. That's Friday, Saturday, Sunday Cycle next year it'll be at the Marriott World podfestexpo.com We'd love to have you Right now. We've closed down the ticket page so you could apply when we reopen it. But it's going to be an amazing community of content creators that come together to help each other. And the education, I mean, we were smart enough to feature Joe and Matt, so you know that the education is good. We find individuals like Joe and Matt. I think you guys are like the hidden gems of a lot of this stuff. And we. That's we try and do our best to find really phenomenal communicators that could help one another. And we're known for having really top notch education across the board for the podcast space. But in marketing in general, a lot of the stuff is applicable to all kinds of stuff.

Yeah, I want to make one more comment too, because that we weren't there on the final night. We actually had some travel snafus and getting home was kind of a mess. So we weren't there for the karaoke night, but we were there for the dueling piano night. And holy crap, that was the best marketing party I've ever been to. Just such a blast.

I was blown away, just the amount of. And Matt and I, we play guitar, I dabble with drums, and we're just very. We're all into music and we kind of had this like, aha moment. Not sure if it's true or not. You can correct me if I were wrong. And we were standing in the back with Justin and Lee and we were looking at like the drummer and then we're like, that's Michael o'. Neill.

We know him. Yeah.

And I knew he played, but I was like, what the hell?

And then at one point, somebody jumped on stage with a guitar. I'm like, I think that's Dave Jackson playing right now.

That's correct. Yeah. Just so you guys know, we'd love for you to be. We want to create a podfast band. We have so many talented musicians in our midst. That was one of my things. When Himalaya said, hey, we want to do the after party, I was like, only have one thing to ask. What's that? That our podcasters get to play with the professional musicians and they're just as good. And you remember that one little girl that got up and sang. Janis Joplin. Yeah.

She was amazing.

Quite a bit. Yeah.

I met her through Bruce Wozniak, one of our members. He has now hear this. He's a talent agent. And he was talking, he was like, oh, I just happened to meet up with one of my clients. I don't know if she was part of the whole thing, but she was there and I said, can you sing? She goes, sure. I said, come with me. And we threw her up there. Luckily, she was amazing.

She told me that story actually off to the side, exactly how you just described a little bit more detail. And she said that was the coolest night she's experienced in a very long time. She had no clue what was gonna happen. Then she got pulled on stage by you ended up singing three separate songs.

That last phenomenal.

The last one, it was Justin Lee, Matt and I, we're all like, you gotta go back up. People love you. And she's like, really? I'm like, yes. And she did and blew it away.

It was really. She just came up. She came up to us and she's like, oh my gosh, this is the best night of my life.

Seriously.

Thanks for telling me that. I love hearing that because I just threw up there. Go do your thing, Shine. Yeah.

And she did. So.

Yeah.

All right, so enough kudos to you. I'm just kidding. So let's dig into how the listeners here, if they're thinking about events, maybe something in their space, how should they even approach this mindset of, you know, community, focused community first and then build something really cool around it.

So a lot of times when people approach events, they think about what do I have to sell to my audience? And I think that's. I think, yes, that's a necessary conversation. But I think you should think about how can I bring my community to life and that I could interact with them so I could create deeper connection and meaning with my community. And a lot of influencers that have audiences already kind of ahead of the game because you need an audience to market to and people that have subject matters that are interesting, you could also market to. But you want to bring people together for three different reasons. Education is what's going to draw them out first and foremost. So you always want to lead with the education, especially if it's a first time event. Community is the byproduct of bringing the right people in the room. That's what's going to bring people coming back to an event. That's why you guys keep going to tnc. Yes, the education is phenomenal, but now you're integrated into the community. Once you're integrated into the community.

You want to have levels literally for the community to partake in. So for instance, with PodFest, we have an elevate mastermind that we sell. But let's say someone's not an elevate mastermind member. We also have levels that you could volunteer and help us facilitate the event next year and possibly facilitate a room. So there's different ways you want your community to get involved and you should allow them to interact in the way that you want. And then you have things like I love doing airline pricing. Tickets go up as you sell out portions of your tickets. Creates urgency. It also creates value. You just have to have a lot of different things but the most important thing about a promotion, I'm going to give you two tidbits that I think people miss out. If you're not excited about your event, why would you expect someone else to be excited about your event? So a lot of people forget, like you should be excited about your event. That excitement spreads. That's why we all got connected. Because you talked to Scott Lee, I was excited, they got excited, they got you guys excited. And excitement is an extremely important variable when it comes to events. The other thing is an event my size, it's tough to control this, but in the main room, you always want to shortchange your chairs. And I know it's gonna sound weird, but let's say you have a thousand attendees. You don't want to set out a thousand chairs. Cause you have to factor in for 20 or 30% won't be in the room. So you want to always have like a tight amount of chairs so the room is full. Too many first time promoters, they'll. I don't know, they might expect 200 people and they might throw out 300 chairs. That's, that's a huge disservice to your attendees. And what happens is your attendees think that you were planning for 300, even though you only have 200, and they immediately think that your event was not a success. Visually, when they walk in the room, that's a big, that's a really big deal. I don't know if you guys ever been to a Tony Robbins event, but they make you wait at the doors before you go in and then people rush for their seats. I've seen people literally push each other out to get a seat. It's all about now. I don't go that far because I don't have that kind of room dynamics. And you need a lot of volunteers. But it's all about making your event valuable. And the most excited someone is about your event is right before it starts. That's when you have 100% excitement. The excitement level drops. So then as an event planner, community builder, you're always trying to figure out how to peak the energy. Hence the Himalaya after party. We peaked the energy on Friday night after the event started. On Wednesday night we had pre event celebrations. So you're always trying to figure out how to bring that energy back up once the event starts.

That makes sense. Yeah, because that's. What does it take to do that in terms of staff? So you said volunteers and what we notice is that you had a lot of volunteers. So is that. Are Those folks who are. I know some of them were podcasters. You know, Sean Douglas was one of our buddies. How does that all work? Like, is that a crucial part to run any kind of event?

Yeah. Last year, we didn't have enough volunteers, and it wasn't. It wasn't because we weren't searching for volunteers. Like, I've learned this out of 2000 events. We just weren't mature enough to have the volunteers. I don't know if that makes sense, because you can't force volunteers. Like, I could go get volunteers, but what happens is if they're not loyal, they don't show up. And I've done that. This year. We had more of a loyal base, so we had over 30 volunteers. Your. Your volunteers approved themselves to you. You want to make sure to cover their rooms. You know, that's just my etiquette.

Then you have some volunteers that want to work one day, maybe off another. And then that doesn't include what I call, like, let's say you're an alumni. Like, you're a speaker. You've spoken out two or three times. Chris, I still want to be part of it. I would put you as a room monitor, facilitator. That's separate from our volunteers. That's. They're more attendees that we give leadership roles in front of the community. So we had probably another 12 people doing that. So we were. When you account for everybody, probably 50 people.

Wow. And then logistically, as far as all of the, you know, the camera crews and the backdrops and the, you know, all of the other little things, you know, getting the badges made and the people that are handing out the badges at the beginning, like, you know, how is that. Like, are you going out and hiring event companies, or are you the event company, like, organizing all of that?

We have an event planner, and they get paid a really nice sum to help in that. But I'll have to say John Dennis, my partner, did a lot of the name badges, did a lot of the logistical stuff, and then I took care of booking the speakers throughout the year, traveling the country, finding really great presenters. So it takes a team, and you have a core group of maybe five people. Then the. So your biggest expense is an event of our nature. So our event is like a traffic conversion. So I want to draw a distinction because our event is one that people fly in and they book room nights in the hotel. If you book room nights, a hotel, sleeping room nights, you're able to negotiate much better for your ballrooms, because the way a hotel works and it's really counterintuitive.

They're incentivized by having 90% occupancy throughout the year, if that makes sense. So certain months, they need to hit certain numbers on their room occupancy. They know if they get a certain room occupancy, that there's a certain amount of revenue that flow in from people being in the hotel, eating, you know, doing all kinds of stuff inside the hotel. So that's the number one metric you have to promise. So we start negotiating on how many room nights we could give them. Then they tell us how much of a ballroom space they could give us. And then the second thing that they try and negotiate is food and beverage. So they'll say to us, hey, we need you to spend $50,000 with the food and beverage. So that sounds like a lot of money, but honestly, when coffee is $125 a gallon, it adds up fast. Like 50,000. With an event hour size, with a thousand attendees, you could go through immediately. So what you need to do as the organizer is you need to watch your. They call them beos. I forgot what it stands for, but it's like beverage something something. But it's basically the amount you're spending. It's almost like you have an open credit card at the hotel. You need to be watching that credit card all day, every day, three times a day. So you're on target with what you've forecasted. Because if you start telling the hotel, oh, yeah, just add some more food, that could add another 20 grand to your bottom line if you're not watching it.

I just looked it up. It's called banquet event order.

Thank you. Yes. Yeah, banquet. And they just. You'll hear it a hundred times over when you're dealing with the. Oh, the beo. Let's go over the beo. So you have to know, how much food are you putting in your vip? Like, we know next year we need more food in the vip, but we try and budget everything because it's a business and we don't. We want to have an amazing experience, but at the same time, you don't want to lose money. And that's the whole point of running a business, right?

Yeah. And interesting. You just reminded me of something. Business partner back in the day, and he was running an event before we worked together. And he first time, I think he held his event and it was a small conference, maybe it was like 50 or 100 people or so. And he ordered the drinks. He wanted beverages, coffee, just simple stuff, nothing fancy. He was like, sodas, waters, and coffee, I think. And he didn't realize. And this is where the BEO really bit him in the ass. Was he? Yeah, he didn't realize the minimums. Like, I guess there was some contract. You know, it's fine print. I don't remember the specifics, but essentially he ended up paying like an extra. I think it was like five to ten grand.

I don't know.

It was some crazy amount, which he's like, what? Just for waters. Didn't even, you know, they weren't all taken. So that kind of understanding, the BEO and all the contracts, I'm sure absolutely important for any size event.

Yeah. And I'll be creating. I'm in the process of creating courses because I don't want people to. Like, I've probably burned through a million dollars after 2000 events of mistakes. Like, I'll tell you, early on, we had. I did the Facebook summit. So I've been doing social media for the last 10, 11 years. Like, we brought in Gary Vaynerchuk when no one knew who he was. Wine, library, tv. So back then, I remember I was doing a Facebook summit, and this was local, so remember my community? Then I made my money off membership, but every now and then, I'd have an event where I made five or six grand. So it was a nice hit. That would add to the bottom line for the month. Right. So I had a new event planner that I hired to work with me locally because my wife was like, we're doing over 100 events a year. You should have someone handling that. You can't do all of it yourself. And I'm like, absolutely. So we added that team member. She came from the hotel side, so she's like, hey, I got you the Sheraton. All we have to do is buy everybody lunch, and they're going to give us the ballroom. I'm like, oh, my God, that's an amazing deal. So I said to everybody, hey, who would like to buy lunch? It was an additional charge. So now they all bought lunch. So now it's like, it's all profit. I was. I was gonna make eight grand. I was all excited. But in the back of the room, there was an old lady with white, stark white hair. I still remember this. And she would refill the coffee as fast. I've never seen someone her age move that fast. So my AV guy and I kept looking at each other like, that's weird. But it didn't dawn on us what was going on. So then when the coffee Bill came, and by the way, our attendees, they would take a sip of coffee and dump the cup and go get another cup. So they were just wasting. Because that's what they do. So I don't blame them. It's just if she. Their abundance of coffee. Yeah, whatever. I'll have a little bit now. Make another cup. The bill came out to, like, five or six grand. Ate up all my profit. I was. It's like having a piece of the greatest food. You're about to chomp down on that fork, and then just as you're about to bite on it, I get the bill. I lost. Like, I was about to throw up.

Yeah.

And I said to. I said to my event planner, I said, what the hell is this? She goes, well, yeah, you got to pay for the beverages. I go, I know that. You don't think I know that after how many events I've done? She goes, well, that's how it works. I go, no, you cap it. She was working on the hotel side before I hired her, so she's still thinking like she's operating like a hotel. And it really was. It's a. It's a lesson I have never forgotten, and I never. I'm glad I could share it with anyone out there, but always cap your expenses when it comes to dealing with hotels.

Yeah, no, it's good advice, because I know there's so many things, even room blocks, there's stuff in there that you can negotiate deals better. You know, discounts or some cases, if you're using a middleman, they can take the profits of whatever that discount is, so that's not passed on to the customer. Interesting little things that they kind of throw in there that the general public or even an event coordinator, someone holding an event doesn't have a clue about. Yeah, it's interesting. My wife's an event planner, so I hear a lot of these little things, and she's like, ooh, yeah, that's an extra five grand to that event. And they didn't know.

Right. So I think a lot of people could be very successful with their live events. It just. You need to know what you are doing. And if you have. There's a lot of people have specialty audiences, and I think those people should definitely. If you have a really great niche audience, you should definitely do an event. And depending on your niche audience, depends what the subject matter is. Some people could charge 500, 1000, 2000 for a ticket. Others, maybe you can't charge as much, but you could bring your community together. You could do A one day event. That's what I would recommend. If anyone starting out do a one day event at like a Hampton Inn or you don't have to go high end right off the bat where your expenses are capped and people could come in and fly in and you could do a great event maybe with 60 or 100 people and that event would be highly profitable because, you know, when you're dealing with the smaller hotels, the expenses just don't go anywhere near when you're dealing with the large resorts or the convention hotels that, you know, I deal with right now.

Now from a, you know, when we talk about events, I always feel like something that always comes up is like the hardest part about events is actually getting butts and seats, actually getting people to sign up and come out and actually, you know, sit down in seats. Travel. You know, when it's in a place like Orlando and you know, I'm imagining a large percentage of people don't live in Orlando. So most people are traveling in to be at the event. You know, what is, what is the sort of marketing behind podfest look like or, you know, any of the events you're doing look like to actually get people signed up and willing to travel and willing to, you know, make a pretty significant investment to come out and be a part of this.

So for us, we have a reputation now built in. So the word of mouth has built. I want to give you the, here's the advice I would give someone that calls me up for the first time, says, Kris, I'm doing an event and I really need help. So I, this is what I'll tell them. First off, you start with what's called a whisper campaign. And the whisper campaign is you talk to 20 or 50 of your core audience members that you have a relationship with. However many that is 10, 20, 30, I don't know, some people have a lot. Some people have 10 or 20. And you tell them about this amazing event you're going to put on with them in mind and then you tell them that you're looking to charge, I don't know, 300, 400, whatever the price is, let's just say 500 a ticket. But you tell them that you really want them to be there and you're willing to give them a half price ticket to help offset costs for them to travel in. You should get a high percentage of yeses. Then you send them off the links to join up. Then you're gonna go target a couple of speakers that you know that would be really great for your audience. To hear from you. Could you could. I would, I would start with offering to pay for their hotel rooms, which will help you offset your hotel room nights. And then once you have maybe 25 people locked in, then I would start marketing to the general community. The 500 tickets would go on sale. You would have a discount of maybe 20 or 30%. Right off the bat. You're probably gonna sell another 10 to 20 tickets. Many of those people are gonna ask you who's coming. You could maybe share with them some of the community members, some of the speakers. So now all of a sudden, just with two little techniques, you've built in maybe 50 attendees to a small conference and now you're off to the races and you could get people in. We chose Orlando for our event because you guys see the community. We're very family friendly community and it works for the personality of PodFest. I have looked at Vegas, but I don't know if it would work as well for the culture and the community we built. And also the expenses in Vegas are much higher because of unions and different things that go on there. Orlando seems to just be a good fit for us.

Yeah, with Vegas, we've been to quite a few events in Vegas. There's also an element of quite a bit of distractions in Vegas.

Distraction factor.

I remember going to a handful of conferences in Vegas back in 2009, 2010, and it always seemed like every night there was parties that would go till 3am and then nobody would show up to the event the next day. So that's one of the big downsides about doing events in Vegas. And that's why it seems like everybody in the digital marketing space all seem to stop doing events in Vegas.

I'm in full agreement with you. Vegas is just very. There's things going on all the time. Orlando is just for us. We pull a lot of Europeans and Orlando works for them. And we have a lot of international people from South America, believe it or not. So it works for the Latin population and it works for the European population. So then we get everybody from all over the U.S. but Orlando strategically seems to be a perfect fit for what we do. Plus they have convention centers. As we grow, we'll grow eventually probably to five or six. I don't know where, but it'll be at least 5,000 attendees over the next few years. Orlando could facilitate that growth and there's options. The challenge, when you're in a city and you're a certain size and they don't have enough venues, the prices go up. Tremendously because they know they're their only game in town. Whereas Orlando, I could play two or three resorts against each other when we're negotiating, which really helps in like we might start negotiating $100,000 food and beverage bill, and I'll get it down to 40 or 50 within two or three rounds. Now, in the beginning, if you don't know you could do that, you're afraid when you see a hundred thousand. But it's very easy to.

Adjust your room, nights and your beverage and food stuff. And you could really negotiate a lot of different things if you know how to ask.

Yeah. Geez. Now it makes me want to go down that rabbit hole.

Yeah. I like the promotion idea, like what you're outlining there. I think that is an amazing framework that someone can use to start any style event or size event. Like you were saying, even at the Hampton Inn, we've held events. Matt and I, we don't really have a big desire to hold events, but if we did, and we have in the past, you know, cap it about 30 people. I mean, for us, like our thing is like, just keep it. It's very community that way, you know, everybody, you can kind of bounce around. And we've always chosen to, you know, kind of rent out a house, like an Airbnb style.

I was about to say that's probably one of the best things you could do is like a private mastermind thing by renting out a really nice Airbnb. And the costs will be really low comparatively, and everybody will love it, you know.

Yeah, that's perfect. Yeah, this is, it's fascinating. So for the. I know you do a lot of stuff. You were saying you have podcasts of your own as well, and then you also have YouTube and all this stuff. So how does that play into the mix of everything that you're doing in your business?

So I'm a creative. I love creating. Right now my focus is 100% on growing Podfast. But at the same time, I see these opportunities and I know you guys understand this. As an entrepreneur, I can't let them go, even though I should. But I'll tell you what I've done. I went home one day and I told my wife on the kid and friendly space in itunes, I noticed that there was no real good humor, like weird stuff was bleeding in that's kind of X rated into that space. And I have a three year old daughter and I'm like, you know, I bet you there's. I bet you if I name something kid friendly joke of the day, just based on the search, it would do well and it would be a one minute joke, like three corny jokes for little kids, five to seven year olds. So the parents, as they're driving their kid to school, which usually is not a long trip, or they're driving daycare, whatever, they could play the show and everybody could have a good laugh. So I went home and I told my wife and this is so important mindset. I was complaining that I don't have enough time, I'm so busy. And she looked at me and she goes, when have you ever let that stop you from doing something? She goes, why don't you allocate what resources you have at your disposal? So at that time, I went to my local Florida podcast association. We had a gentleman that was a comedian, but his. His puns were all dad jokes. And they were perfect for what I was looking to do, not for an adult audience.

Yeah.

So I said, hey, man, I'd love to produce this show. If you want to work with me, I'm willing to pay you. I would own the show, but you and I could work and you'd get money for your jokes in an outlet. So we started Kid Friendly Joke of the Day and I shared it on my Facebook page. I don't have a huge following. I have like, friends like you guys and people that I know. I don't have, like a huge social following. Within the first day, we had 500 downloads. And it was jokes about. They were dog jokes. So every day there's a different subject. So I was like, okay, I'm on to something, because I've never seen that happen with any podcast I've been associated with that goes like that fast. So since then, we average about 1000 downloads a day. Kid Friendly Joke of the Day. Then we started Kid Friendly Animal Fun Facts. Kid Friendly Dinosaur Fun Facts. Kid Friendly History. Kid Friendly. I mean, a whole bunch of stuff. So the objective of that show is eventually I'll either do a kid series of books, which we're working on. I'm looking for a partner with that, or I'll sell it to someone that could really utilize it and do something great with it, but I'll still be creating it for at least another year or two. We got in so early that our numbers keep growing every day.

It's a horrible problem to have. That's brilliant, man. I think that's.

Yeah, it's for parents. It's for parents and their kids, which. It gives me a lot of meaning because I would listen to Joe Rogan and my daughter's in the back. And you don't realize how many F bombs come out of that show until your kid's in the car. So I was like, I gotta have something else going on here.

Yeah, yeah, trust me, I know. With. You know, I've got two young kids, I got a four and a six year old, and we, you know, whenever we go on road trips, I'm listening to podcasts. And I've really had to be a little more careful as my kids get older about which podcast I could listen to with them in the car. But our trick now is we just give them. They have Kindles. We give them their Kindles and put their headphones on, and then I can listen to whatever I want. But yeah, I'm working.

She's got the Kindle. I gotta get the headset going. And then we'll. She's Sedona's three and a half now, so. But anyways, yeah, you understand the whole point. And so I got that. And then for the. I had a show called Conference Cash Flow. I'm gonna rebrand it so it has more of a live event kind of name. I don't know yet the name. And that will be how to put on live events. I have a passion to help other people put on live events because as you guys saw with PodFest, they could have a transformative impact.

Yeah.

And anything I do as a live event producer, I question why I do it. So, you know, I know that a lot of our people would want more time. For the breakouts. We only allocated 30 minutes, but quite honestly, 30 minutes could allow for greatness. And if someone's mediocre, it's only 30 minutes, you know, for a breakout. We might have some longer ones next year for the panels, but there's just. We do really unconventional things like our merchandise. It was pay what you want, you know, like, I want to. I want to alleviate the friction points. We had a keynote. I don't know if you guys. You guys might have missed it, but on Saturday, we had seven people share one tip. That keynote session was nine minutes. Each tip was an amazing marketing tip on how to double your, like, literally 10, 20%, increase your numbers, and then month over month, eventually you would double very simple tips that we crowdsourced across the community. So like most people tell you, keno has to be 45 minutes in nine minutes, we delivered more value than if you had someone up there for a half hour.

Now, was that. That wasn't the pucha catcha thing, right?

No, not the Pecha Kucha. It was on the main stage, and it was. Those are really fun, too. The pecha. The pechacucha allows me to test new presenters and new ideas and find people for the breakouts next year. So it's almost like. Think of it as, like, minor leagues coming up to the majors. So it allows me to not be so picky, to allow for greatness. And then some people are, you know, they're still finding their legs, and we could give them feedback on how to be better.

That's interesting, because we were in a mastermind yesterday. Roland Frazier, you know, he's part of DM and Traffic and conversion. He was saying, everything is so much better when it's compressed. Like, we're going to speak at War Room next month, and that's kind of like how they find a lot of their good speakers. Kind of like what you're doing there. And then they might go to TNC after that. But he said that same thing. He's like, you compress it to, like, 15 minutes or even the. I'm going to mispronounce it again. The pechacucha. Did I nail it?

Oh, you said it right. Yeah. Pechacucha.

And that's what, five minutes, right? Or something like that.

It's five minutes, 20 slides, 15 seconds a slide. I've done it. I. When I go to other events, if they have openings, I will apply for Pecha Kucha. And people like, why don't you do the longer ones? It takes more skill.

Yeah.

To get your point across in five minutes. And anything I've ever done, I've nailed it two out of the four times. The first two times, I just. I didn't. I couldn't finish the last two times. I nailed it. And I was so proud of myself because it takes so much skill to get a simple point across within five minutes to an audience of whatever, 100, 200, whoever's in the audience. I love that format.

And there's one thing that you said a few minutes ago, too, that I think was super powerful, but we kind of. We didn't touch on it, is that you. You got into the podcasting world, and you've got a whole podcast network without actually being the host of the podcast. And I think that's something that probably hangs a lot of people up, because Joe and I were very, very bullish on podcasting. We've been singing the praises of podcasting for 10 years now. And, you know, we've been. We've been trying to tell everybody we know that they should start a podcast, even if it was just like a show or something. But everybody gets hung up on the time thing. And Joe and I, we actually just launched our second show, which is a daily show, and we actually hired a host to actually host that show. So we actually have two shows now in our, you know, quote unquote podcast network, and one of them isn't even hosted by us anymore. So I just think it's great. A really powerful way to get into the podcasting world, even if you don't have the time to actually be a podcaster.

Yeah, yeah. Like, people don't think creatively because they're like, oh, if I don't have the time to do it? Well, what makes you think you can't find someone or partner up with someone? I couldn't agree with you more. The only advice I would give people is make sure you own your feed. That's it. You know, and then that way, if you need to change out that character, you can. But, yeah, I agree with you 100%. Like, we have eight shows right now. Four of the eight are active. I think, like, we're actively producing new content. We've stalled out the other four because we noticed that they weren't moving. But, like, I have a motto, and it's a book that I'm writing. It's called Start Ugly. I'd rather start ugly and figure it out than wait for a perfect moment. Perfection. It just doesn't. It doesn't work for me because I'm a perfectionist. What happens is I waste time. And as we get older, you guys know we don't have time to waste. So I'd rather just start ugly and muck it up and get better as I go along. And, you know, if you care, you're not starting like that ugly, but it's never going to be as nice 20 times in. You know, you can get better as you go along.

It also explains my life every single morning. I start ugly every day.

You're beautiful, Matt.

Let us know when that book goes, when it's live. That sounds like a good one. I'd like it.

I will. I got some really great. It's very philosophical and a very deep level because I have a lot of friends that are. I'm sure you guys see this. I have a lot of friends that are extremely successful, and what happens is they're afraid to start ugly because now they have a level of success and it actually imprisons them. And I've been there where you think you can't keep reinventing stuff because you're afraid of failure. And if you look at people like Elon Musk, they invite failure every day in their lives. And like Elon Musk, when he fails, it's public. The whole world is watching. But what. Look what he's done. You know, he's flying. The first time I saw those rocket ships land backwards in the ocean. Yeah, I didn't think it would. I thought it was a fake. You know, I thought it was one of those fake things that someone created. Cj, ask a friend of mine. Yeah, I thought, dude, I thought it was like. I thought it was actually not even cgi. I thought it was like a cheap looking. It looks so unreal. My mind was just like, yeah, it's some cheap looking thing. There's no way they're landing rockets in the middle of the Ocean on a 10 by 10 or whatever was. And then my one buddy in San Fran's like, no, no, that's real footage. I'm like, I was dumb. I must have watched it 10 times.

Oh, but that failed.

How many times? You know, it's. I don't get old. But that's just, it's amazing that we live in a world with people like him that are not afraid of failing and they're. And I think everybody should invite failure but celebrate it. Like, I've done 2,000 events. I can't tell you how many times I failed that events. Like, I remember once we had a CPA guy, Dr. Basse. He's probably one of the best educators on tax law I've ever seen in my life. And I see a lot of presentations. The guy, the guy could read the tax code straight, verbatim, and you'd be amazed at how interesting it is. He was just. He made anything interesting. He had his own private plane. I mean, he was really successful. So like John Deere, all these companies were his, were his clients because he was just a phenomenal educator, professor, everything. So we had a local business owners association. All our people were small, most of them under a million dollars in revenue. So my wife was like, we got to teach more operational and cpa, you know, tax stuff. I go, katie, they're only going to show for marketing. That was my experience up to that point. So I get this guy, he's like, okay, I'm flying my plane into Tampa because I have a client down in Sarasota on the water. I'll come stop by your event. I couldn't pull. Usually at that time we would pull 50 to 60 people for a workshop. I couldn't pull seven people to come to his workshop.

Oh, my God.

So the night before, I can't tell you guys how stressed I am because, like, I want to look good for this guy. I. I just had him fly down, but he has a client he's meeting, and I only have seven people in the room. So some guy in our. I have a philosophy. Don't cancel anything. Like, so to my own fault, I will not cancel an event. So I told my wife the events going on. I don't care if I lose money. We put it on. This guy's coming. We're going to do the event with seven people. So, long story short, some guy goes, hey, I send out this. He was an M and A guy at the time. I didn't even know what mergers and acquisitions were. I'm just like, great. You want to send out an email to your M and A people. All of a sudden, 29 people, the largest business owners in our area, like manufacturing companies at 100 million, showed up, and we had a packed house.

That's smart.

But. But it was a marketing failure. I couldn't get my people in. But luckily I was lucky because I didn't cancel this one M and A guy brought in all these people that worship this guy. And it taught me a lesson, like, okay, for the small business owners, they're gonna go to a local cpa. They're not gonna care to learn from, like, a world's greatest expert. They're not there yet. You know, they're not doing tax planning at that level, for instance. But it was. It was an amazing experience. And luckily for me, it turned out where we had really great business owners show up anyways. Yeah.

And failure is just feedback. You know, that's kind of like the thing that always resonates in my brain is just saying, I love that thing. You know, you don't cancel anything, especially if you're committed to something like your own event. You know, you're going to figure it out. And, you know, that forced you to kind of think a little out of the box, a little laterally.

I like that. Failures. Yeah. Honestly, my wife said this to me recently. She's like, you don't, like. I don't even. What I do, I don't even consider failure. It's more feedback. You're right. Because we don't even call it failure because I try so many different things. I can't tell you how many different podcast ideas I've, like, looked into or tried something. Yeah. If I Show you my Lipson account. You'll see, like, 20 other shows. You'll be like, what is that? Well, you know that one time I did this storytelling platform. I just wanted to try it out. So it's like, I love trying stuff out, and I love the excitement of testing, you know, it's just. It's fun, you know, and that's kind of what the creativity for me is what keeps me going.

Yeah, that's like us. I think we've had about 10 podcasts over the last 10 years. This one we've actually managed to stick to for a good two and a half years now.

But congratulations.

Tough, but thank you.

We're approaching episode 200 pretty soon, so decent milestone there. But I had one more question before we start to kind of wrap it up, because I know we have some time constraints here. What do you think it is about podcasters and the podcasting community that makes them such a good community? Why do you like hanging out with podcasters so much?

So, yeah, I have the answer for this one. When we were making the Messengers, a podcast documentary, we actually made a documentary about the world of podcasting. Years ago, I asked Lee Silverstein, who has theat the time he had the colon cancer podcast. Now it's called we have cancer. He's stage four survivor. He's a strong individual. And Lee's, like, in his 50s. And I don't know. While I was interviewing for the documentary, I asked him what you just said. I said, lee, I said in a different way. I go, I don't know what a podcaster looks like, but you're a little, you know, you're a little older than a normal podcaster, and you found this platform. Why do you podcast? What do you think makes you a podcaster? He looked at me like, you know, when someone leans in, they stare at you. So I got kind of scared for a split second, like, I think I upset my guest.

Yeah.

But no, he was. He was convicted. And he said. He goes, I'm a messenger. And I'm a messenger to those people that hear those three words, you have cancer. And he goes, what I do is I have a message for people. We named our movie the Messengers because we believe that podcasters, by and large, are messengers. And they have a yearning to have a message that they believe will empower or help other people's lives. That's the connecting thread. And that's why you feel that community of these individuals that have a message, and that's why they get so excited when they get together, because now you have a group of messengers.

Kind of locking shields and helping each other with what. Even though their message is so diverse, it's just amazing to watch. And that's what I would consider a podcaster. Someone with a message that's yearning to get it out to the world and help others.

That's so cool. Yeah. And we feel that when you bring them all together, like at PodFest, you can feel everyone just wants to give, and that's all messenger is doing, is giving. And this is just the medium that we all choose to give and be that messenger.

Well, and here's a point on that, guys. We do get what I call Crumb Snatchers. Everybody gets them. A Crumb Snatcher, to me, and this is a term an ex taught me a long time ago, a Crumb Snatcher is someone that comes to the party and literally tries to snatch a crumb off the table and run off.

And we all get them. But here's what happens at podfast. The culture is so codified and so solidified, they never come back. So we never develop a section of Crumb Snatchers. And like, I could tell you, I know two or three people from a certain part of the country that came out and didn't enjoy PodFest because they don't understand what you and I, what we're talking about, community. They don't believe in that kind of ethos. They won't be back. But that's a good thing, if that makes sense, because I want people that are bought in. They just. They couldn't figure out how they fit in. And that's cool. You know, you just don't want to develop a following of those people because then it'll dictate everybody else's experience.

That's 100% accurate.

Now, where can people find the messenger, the documentary you made?

If you go on Amazon prime, the messenger is a podcast documentary, free of charge. Go watch it. It's a phenomenal movie. We had at one time, we were like top movie for that opening week on itunes. But here's a lesson. Anyone doing a documentary, a Movie, go Amazon 100%. Unfortunately, we went itunes. If I were to do it over again, I would have pushed everybody to Amazon. We would have price sold 3 times more copies and gotten more attraction out of Amazon than we did on itunes.

Wow. Especially now, too, with everyone starting to get on prime video for sure.

Yeah. Three years ago, I still would have done it. Back then, it just. Itunes doesn't support the independence Amazon, believe it or not, they figured it out, man. They really helped. They see you moving copies because we were moving thousands at the time. Itunes didn't do anything for us. Had I pushed all that traffic to Amazon, they would have gave us a boost because they love independence. Cool.

Good to know. All right, Chris, we'll wrap it up. And where should. Folks, I know PodFest. Was it PodFest Expo.com?

Yeah, PodFestExpo.com and my name, Chris Kremitzos. Hard one to spell, but Google will respell it for you. ChrisKremitsos.com and you can hit me up on Facebook with a DM or anything. I do do some consulting throughout the year, helping people, but by and large, if you were to ask me, what I do is I promote events and I build amazing communities and make sure that I facilitate a clean community so everybody has a great experience.

Now, the recordings from podfest, are those open to the public or are those only for sale to past attendees?

Sale to pass attendees. Right now, I'd love to talk to you guys offline about possibly eventually having them open to the public, but right now, they're just for sale to. What we did is if you bought the recordings, you got a bonus ticket to next year's podfest, right?

Yeah, It's a sweet deal. Cool. Well, all right, man. Well, Chris, thank you so very much for being on the show, and I know you're recovering, so go take a nap.

Yeah, thanks, Joe.

I did.

I did that yesterday. Passed out in the middle afternoon, which is unusual, but thanks. Thanks, man. I really appreciate it.

You got it, man.

Good talking to you.

Bye, boys.

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