#214 - The Sponsors - talking about the industry - looking back and ahead to 2024

0:04 Well, hello and welcome to the episode called Sarah Fixing Her Hair. I like how you got that bit in at the beginning. I just kind of threw this on her. I said, hey, by the way, why don't you jump in and record this like about one minute before we recorded it. So this is officially, what episode number is this? Sarah, I'm going to ask you. You're. The producer Come on, produce a number. Give me a. Number. 214214 It is episode 214, so this is a special episode which is by and for our sponsors. We've had four real core main sponsors this year and then one additional one that kind of popped in for a few episodes, you know, I will tell you. So all four of those core sponsors are included in this podcast.

0:57 I wanted or we wanted to hear directly from our sponsors basically, what do you think about the State of the Union? Where do you think we're headed as an industry this year? And you know really gratitude like just to thank them and and you know I keep saying it but without sponsors. You know, if I had to do all the work myself without the lovely Sarah and also you know, without even having the bills paid because it does cost money to produce a a podcast whether you you know that or not it really does cost money. And so I mean really the sponsors make it happen. We're very happy. We're very proud.

1:40 We're very grateful for those sponsors, especially, you know, and I hate to call out any individual sponsors, but Elation and ACT have been with us since the very beginning of this podcast four or five years ago, Very supportive. We're very appreciative for both of them, but for everyone. And so also Sarah is actually reaching out to a bunch of new sponsors right now because we're planning to add I think 2:00 to 4:00 new sponsors this year. And that doesn't take away from or devalue or water down the sponsorship value. It actually we're changing how we're representing sponsors and making sure that I think you've seen recently especially with Sarah coming in, you know she's stepping up social media to present those sponsors and thank them and and everything else.

2:32 So anything you want to. Have more. Basically, yeah. There's going to be more of everything when you know, sponsors come on board. You know we want to be seen every day. You know, you may get sick of us, but we want you to see us every day and we do want to show our appreciation to the sponsors. And you know, even since I've, I've got just over a month now I've been on board and you know, the everyone's been so lovely to me, You know, they're sort of responding to me, all the rest of it. So it's been fabulous. And then when we came up with this idea for this podcast, Marcel was like, yeah, let's do it. And again, we've got everyone on board, so it's great for everyone to see them as well.

3:13 Oh this was your idea and and it's a great idea because the conversations I've had so far with three of the sponsors and and we're about to do the 4th one right now before this gets published next week I guess. And so yeah great idea. We're going to continue doing things like this calling on the sponsors For more information. You know getting people who work for those sponsors to come in and and talk to us not because we owe it to the sponsors or anything but because they're all interesting people. I mean if you think of who our sponsors are now you you've got you know Eric Loder at ELATION and the rest of the people at ELATION, Ben Saltzman at ACT and the rest of the people at ACT, Mike Cannon.

3:53 Everyone knows Mike Cannon, Dan Anderson we had on or Daniel. Sorry, we had on this episode as well. Great guy. So yeah, I mean, we wanna hear from these people and it makes for interesting chats. And to be honest with you from these chats, I think we'll end up doing like a whole episode, you know, because everyone's chat was so good and it wasn't just about their businesses, it was about everything. So you know what base for more? Well, there are loads more. Well, I mean again as if you look at you know these chats that you're about to hear here, you know basically roughly 20 to 30 minutes per company, four companies, very different companies.

4:41 Two are are what you would probably call rental companies, one is a dry hire rental company, very large, one main light. The other one is a small regional rental company primarily focused on commercial or industrial events, corporate events and all just very, very different answers. Two leading manufacturer slash distributors who are both you know multi $100 million companies not small companies. And so to get everyone's viewpoints is is just really fantastic and I'm glad we shoved this all. Into one. Episode. You're forgetting Brad as well from Gearsource. Yes, we do.

5:22 Have the lovely. Brad, I keep forgetting about Brad. Yeah, there's five. Well, I try not to give too much credit to Gearsource, even though it pays most of the bills. Yeah, it pays most of the bills. So yes, there is. Gearsource is our fifth sponsor. I keep forgetting about them. So. So yeah, I mean, let's let's just go ahead and get these talks. Started Bye Sarah, Bye. Well, hello there Mr. Eric. How are you? I'm doing well, Marcel. How are you? I'm great. Merry Christmas, buddy. Merry. Christmas are. We allowed to say that, Yeah, we're allowed to say that We're both absolutely. We're both absolutely Christians.

6:02 How'd it go? This is being recorded on what we Canadians and Europeans would call Boxing Day. Well, I guess Brits too, because they're no longer Europeans, supposedly, which I argue with my girlfriend about that all the time. By the way, she says no, we're still Europeans, we're just not part of the EU. And I'm like, well, isn't that Europe? But yeah, that one's it's. Good Christmas. Christmas is good. You know, it's different now when your kids get older. You know, it's not as exciting as it used to be, but it's, you know, just get good getting the family together. You know, we're going to see the rest of our family for the years and then, you know, I got to play golf, so that was always fun. Well, there's a shocker. How many rounds have you played since you closed up office? No, just one.

6:48 I actually, I hurt my back a little bit yesterdays. But I did some therapy. I feel better today. So. I hurt my back. Every time I play golf, it's got something. To do with swinging way too hard and thinking I'm Tiger Woods. Yeah, and I don't think it was the golf, but, you know, just get just getting old. Yeah, yeah, it's hard, man. It's hard to do anything anymore, like without tons of pre work and after work. And you know, cuz like skiing. I've I've been skiing since I was 7 to 8 years old I think, and I ski pretty well. But now I'll do one or two runs and I'm dead. I'm like ready for a hot tub, you know, and I don't know what to do about it.

7:32 Like, I guess I could do skiing exercises for three months before I go skiing for three days. But the problem is, most of the friends that I ski with up in Canada, they ski 100 days a year. I ski 4. Can't keep up with them. Yeah. No, you just, you don't have those muscles anymore, you know, or or they just don't stay as fresh as they did when I was younger, you know, like when I was even 40, I could, I could go skiing three days a year and have no trouble. Yeah, I'd be a little sore the second day or whatever, but I get it, believe me. So you've got your daughter back from England, from College in England. So that's. Going to be cool, yeah. Yeah, it's fun. It's, you know, she's doing good. She's ready to, you know, into her second semester, I guess the college or whatever there. And it's exciting.

8:19 So she's happy. She's. Doing well. And it's not like kicking her ass. It's not. Like, no. It's interesting actually, the load. It seems like the first semester workload was very mild and they kind of told her, listen, you're we're going to start you slow, but second semester you just got two more classes and things really pick up. So I think, I think it's good. I like that that they start, especially when you're studying, you know, internationally it's a lot, a lot of change, right. So I think in general, I think for college kids coming in, you know, they all like to party and go out and drink and do all that stuff. So they get that out of their system first semester and then OK, time to buckle down and. She hasn't introduced you to her new British boyfriend yet or anything.

9:03 Not yet. Not yet. That's good. It's coming. It's coming. Pop. I'm sorry, but it's coming. All kids grow up, unfortunately. It's nice. I I think we talked before we started recording or maybe just when we started recording about how it's changed. And you know, it's very much the same for me. Like the present opening ceremony was very short. And you know, then he's gone off driving his SIM in his room or whatever and or dealing with his friends or something. So yeah, it's just not the same. Used to be a whole day event. Now it's 10 minutes and gone. Yeah, exactly. Except for meals when they get hungry. Yeah, I was going to ask you, and this is more to talk a little bit about the industry and stuff, but I wanted to ask you, I saw on social media recently the Saint Louis Arch had been lit by some Proteus something or other Proteus. Which one?

9:59 Brutus Brutus. By the way, have you listened to my bloopers yet? Yeah, I listened to that you. I know you love our You Love our Proteus series. Oh my God. What you guys have to do is before sending me those promos, read them out loud. Like just. Read it, We say it, we say it every day, we say it every day. So it's easy for us. So yeah. Now these are there's a 7076 Proteus Brutus Down permanently installed at the Saint Louis Arch. OK, they turned it on last week or yeah, maybe 10 days ago now. And you remember Michael O'Keefe from TPI of? Course so. He he did the project. You know he a year ago he came to me and said, Eric, you got this new life at 70,000 lumens and I think it'll work great on this project.

10:50 Can we do a mock up? And I said sure. So in November we went and did a mock up with six units last year and you know it showed it to the committee that's in charge of the Gateway Arch and and the designer and all that And they were impressed. Yeah. So you know, as most things do, it takes a while to get done. And yeah, finally got installed and and it's, it looks great. So a couple questions. One, I mean, I'm assuming that this became a much easier solution than the alternatives, which you know, we both know in the past would have been some sort of either Xenon or or you know, metal halide or something that obviously wouldn't do some of the cool things that you're doing. And then Part 2 is what kind of cool things are you doing? Like they're not just sitting stationary in white, are they? Well, for now they are.

11:48 You know, it it because it's a National Monument, it literally takes an act of Congress to make any change to how you light it. Yeah. So you know they have done different things in the history they've they've lit the arch up for years with different technologies but and but they would put they would put gels on the lights or they would you know do different things. But now you know, obviously you know LED's finally bright enough to do this application and of course the lights can do a lot more than what they're using them for. But they have they have a lot of experience now having you know maintained a lighting system there for however long they know what works, what works and doesn't. And the fact that they are automated fixtures helps them park them in a position where you know birds don't go on the lens and you know, you know vandals and and you know exactly, you know vandals and different things. So you know, I think they, you know, you know let's let's see how it goes.

12:48 But it's they'll be able to do a bunch of cool stuff when you when they turn it on every night, it actually fades up. You know they've controlled it where it fades up and fills the arch in the 32nd time sequence. So that's why that's cool. For people that want to go there and kind of watch it turn on, it's, you know, instead of just kind of dimming up. Yeah, I would. Guess at some point that they will probably like allow companies or people or associations to like either bid for or request color, you know pink for breast cancer and those types of things. Yeah, I think national holidays would be, you know, on the table, 4th of July, that kind of stuff. Yeah. And you know maybe for certain causes I don't think they want, I don't think they'll commercialize it necessarily, but because it's a National Monument, but I think you know the fact that they went from 7000 Watt fixtures to 1200 Watt fixtures, they're saving a lot of energy. And you know, I think they, you know, they just the flexibility they'll have at the system now is. Yeah, well, I remember when I provided an LED package to the Miami tower.

13:56 One of the earliest things that started happening is accompanies the Miami Dolphins like sports franchises, movies. So I remember Bad Boy, I think it was Bad Boy Two or something. Wanted the building a certain color for a certain scene of the movie, and they charged an enormous amount of money to just like go think and change the color of the entire building, right? Yeah, it'll be interesting to see if like, you know, the Saint Louis Blues or the Cardinals or, you know, one of the one of the sports teams will want to get it colored if they're in the World Series or whatever. So, you know, we'll see what. We'll see what happens. And it's exciting. You know, it's one of those, it's one of those projects for me that, you know, I was happy to be involved in the beginning. Michael came to me.

14:43 We've known Michael for 20 years plus, I think we took him. Did we take him to Denmark? I don't remember. I don't remember either. But you know we've known Michael a long time and that he the fact that he came to me and and you know my team, we went and did it and we got the deal and the fact that. You have a. Light called the Brutus probably didn't hurt. Yeah, you know. It needed to be. It needed to be a bright light. Badass. Yeah, yeah, it needed to be bright. How? How tall is the like center point of the arch? Without going to Wikipedia, I think it's 650 feet or 600. It's up there. Yeah, it's tall. And all the lights are mounted underground in these kind of pits that you know you have access to and all that and drainage and pump systems and all that. So it's, it's pretty quick the light shoot through these metal grates and you know there's some on the West side, I think there's 48 fixtures on the West side, the Saint Louis side of the arch and then there's 2028 fixtures on the east side which is the Illinois side of the nation. So pretty, pretty impressive, pretty impressive thing to see. Yeah, that's very cool.

15:51 Congratulations. That's a cool project. I mean it, you know, we're getting older. It's one of those ones that you look back and you go, I remember that, you know, and it'll pop up in your memories every year on Facebook and you'll post it again, you know, I mean, anytime you like that iconic a building or a monument, especially like that one, that's proud moment, that's bigger than just a job, right. You've sold bigger jobs than 72 lights, but probably not many bigger than this from a standpoint of, you know, just what it means, right. So it's cool, very cool. Congrats. So I just have, I have basically a few questions that I'm sort of asking everyone, all of our sponsors.

16:33 So you're obviously first of all, thank you very much for being one of our, probably our very first, if not one of the first sponsors of our podcast and stuck with us through thick and thin, through COVID, through all kinds of things. And we appreciate you. We appreciate elation, and I always enjoy having you on the podcast, of course, even the one time where you had to record it twice in full on your 50th birthday. On my birthday, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Which I will never forget, believe me. You talk to me about stories that I repeat, and that's definitely one of them. Because it sucked. That was terrible. So, yeah, but so Speaking of 2023, sort of the results in our industry, like what what our industry looked like, would you say that 2023 was better than expected, worse than expected or as expected? Well, I I don't think any of us expected a lot of the events that happened in 2023 going into the year. I think we were all very bullish. You know 2022 I think for everybody was a record year because of all the pent up demand because of you know the shutdown and COVID and all that you know. So 2022 is one of the the years that will be the new you know it's going to be how do we get back to that level. I think you know going forward because there was so much pent up demand.

17:59 I think we were all hopeful going in we were all hopeful going to 20. Oh, we have. We're going to grow 10%, twenty percent 23. I mean I'd be surprised if if many companies unless you had a standout product or finally got to delivering to us, you know maybe you didn't deliver as much as you could in 22 and now you're delivering in 23. But for us, I, you know I think we would have been happy to be flat this year or up a little bit, you know and we are not, we're just below that. But overall for us it's a good year. So we can't, especially when you consider, you know, there's two wars going on. There's the the interest rates. There's We had the film TV Strike, which was a big gut punch to a lot of our. Industry.

18:42 Yeah, we. Forget. About some of ours, yeah. You know the the, the, the manufacturers that really focus on that market I think took a big hit this year and fortunately elation we're pretty diversified into a lot of different verticals. So yeah, it affected our business, but. What about Ari? Like with the timing of buying Clay Paki and then boom, all of a sudden that happens. I mean it's definitely you have to have a strong stomach to to weather. I mean it's almost another COVID type event for that industry because it shut down, it shut down and in. Some sense worse. I mean, I don't know. Like in some sense worse because it's completely shut down. Yeah, Crazy.

19:28 Well, there was, there was some stuff still happening. I mean game shows and things that didn't need a lot of scripts but the but the film industry if they had a lot in the can from 22. So I think, you know, that's why it lasted so long, but now they're back and I think that'll help us next year. You know, I think interest rates, you know, we, we expected a lot of people to still invest in 23. And I think the rental companies started to realize, whoa, you know, money's money's a lot more now and we're just going to try and use what we can. We're going to, you know, keep our commitments on purchasing what we plan to purchase, but we're not going to go crazy this year and buying, right? Well, and add add to that, you know the fact that they had to start paying back the cheap money that they got during COVID, you know the timing was during this year that most companies had to start paying that money back and there was a lot of debt taken on by our industry at that time. So, well, a lot of people, a lot of people had purchased in 22 for the 2023 tours, right?

20:24 So a lot of, a lot of the buying we saw last year was actually for business this year. All the big stadium stadium tours that were out there that had thankfully a lot of our lights on it, you know, that stuff was bought in 22, So yeah. Yeah, I don't know. Didn't Matthias or you or somebody see this all coming with these crazy number of stadium shows? Or was that just incredibly good luck that you happen to have an outdoor very bright fixture? No, I mean, you know, design designers, you know, came to us a few years ago and said listen, you know, especially after COVID, more and more shows were going outside. People felt more comfortable going to shows outdoors.

21:04 So because of our Proteus range we knew that you know and we've seen a lot of success on Proteus Maximus in 2021, well 20 not but 2122 you know I think we we knew that there was more appetite for big outdoor fixtures and you know produce hybrid we launched in 2017 and you know what so we've already been on the market for five years with that product, had a lot of experience. So we just grew that line, LED again, got bright enough to be now you know in an outdoor fixture and you know we still have discharge lamp. We just launched the Proteus Hybrid Max, which is the evolution of Proteus Hybrid. And you know, it's smaller, it's brighter, it's faster, it's less money, you know, So the technology's caught up now, five years later, six years later, almost that, you know, the discharge lamps are still viable for being hybrid fixtures, but everything else is LED.

22:00 And you know, the tours, the tours have benefited from it. Yeah, yeah. That's. An interesting, interesting point and I mean for sure elation went hard and heavy on on IP stuff I think before pretty much anyone else did like where you had sort of a full range of product before anybody for moving. Heads, yeah, moving, moving heads. I mean, you know, give credit where credit's due. SGM was the first to push it that envelope. Yeah. But you know, I think we were able to we they were LED and it wasn't bright enough so we went discharge and it was bright enough and and we, you know that LED caught up. So now moving on to 2024, same questions. You know your expectations from the industry, not necessarily relations business, 'cause I know that that might be secret or whatever, but do you anticipate growth? And if so, what sort of percentage is it going to grow by 10 percent, 5%, whatever?

23:03 Is it going to drop or is it going to stay flat for next year? I mean I think we're, we're targeting growth next year. I think, you know, with interest rates supposedly starting to come down, you know, it is an election year for us here in the US It doesn't really affect the rest of the world, but I think it'll be interesting year from that perspective. There'll be a lot of, you know, money spent on that. I think the TV film, the TV film business will be back. You know, there's been a lot of investment coming into this industry. If you follow, you know, the PIF Saudi, you know they they they've invested into the live golf or they've invested in the Live Nation. They've invested in the entertainment. I see, I see lots of lighting designers flying. Lighting lighting designers are flying back and forth to Saudi all the time from Europe or from the US. So there's a lot of investment going on in entertainment. So I I would expect the industry to do well in 24. Yeah I that's another great point I have I've been in talks with AUK based financier who is very anxious to invest in a startup that I'm about to get started on here and we've been talking a lot about specifically Saudis who are extremely excited about the live event space and especially the technology side of it.

24:30 And so that's been an interesting talk where they're just like you know hurry we want to give you our money you know how much can we give you. And of course you have to show good growth and everything else, but they're very excited for our industry and that's a good sign and. I. Mean Look at the look at the F1 thing in in Vegas. You know, crazy. I mean Vegas is just unbelievable, you know the the amount of growth that's going on there and and it just you know doesn't seem to stop and the and the city seems to be handling it pretty well. Yeah, well, except for F1F1. Kind of broke the city for a few few weeks. Yeah, but it'll be better next year.

25:10 Yeah, but that, that whole sphere, the whole sphere project, I mean just everything going on there that. Hey, Speaking of Speaking of Live Nation, did you see the article Rapinoe with the I don't remember the exact numbers, but he was talking about how artists now have 10 million followers. And he says his job is easy because all he has to do is sell tickets to 5% of those followers and he sells out an entire tour. And I found that to be a really interesting because that's where he's showing his growth is coming from tapping harder into those artists social media platforms. That's I haven't seen that article, but that totally. I'll send it to you. I'll send it to you.

25:51 It's a really interesting article, really interesting. I mean, and again, maybe they're just looking for incremental growth or something, I don't know. But but I never looked at it like that. Like there's just so much more capacity and there's such a hunger for live music. And he also looks at it as streaming. Being a part of that streaming plays a role but most people who are following somebody on social media are really excited to get out and see them live and and I think that's a good trend for for our business as well. For sure. And then finally, give me a prediction. Give me, give me Eric's big, big thought for 2024. A product trend to market trend, or even The Beatles or or Led Zeppelin are getting back together and both of those bands are going to run out of players, so they better hurry, I guess. If ACDC can do it with like one or one or two originals, probably Led Zeppelin and The Beatles could as well. But so yeah.

26:54 Anything. Well, I think, I think, you know, I went to a show at a House of Blues not too long ago and you know, I think the small shows are going to come back. You know the piece because going to a big stadium tour, you can only afford that you know once twice a year kind of thing to take the whole family. I but I think you can afford going to a house with smaller venue shows I think are going to make a comeback this year and it's you know lower cost for the production. You know there's lots of benefits for these artists. So I think you know that you've seen the casino shows, the the indie casino tour bands and and all that kind of stuff the last couple years and that's done well for us as you know also. But I think the smaller venues, I think we'll see a a comeback on those.

27:42 The nightclub business, you know, also has not been amazing the last few years and I think we'll see some of that start to come back too. The smaller shows I think have been happening, It's just we've been paying so much attention to the big ones. But you know, like as an example, the Hard Rock here, which I guess would be a middle sized show, the the Hard Rock Live or whatever it's called here, the live venue at at the hotel. But that that place is booked constantly. Like they're buying every artist that comes anywhere near Florida. They're buying it, and there might be 4 concerts a week in that place sometimes and like more than I've ever seen at any venue.

28:25 So maybe that's a little larger than what you're talking about. You're talking House of Blues size? Yeah, I'm talking, yeah, 3000 and under small venues. I mean, that's where my daughter want, my daughter wants to go see shows there. She doesn't want to go see shows at the stadiums, you know. I kind of agree with her. I'd much rather see a band in a small venue. And the problem now is though that it's such a cash grab for the bands to to do these 360 deals with Live Nation and and and do the bigger venues sell as many tickets as you can as fast as you can And selling into a smaller venue you're going to get the up and coming acts, the new acts, which is probably what's more interesting for her anyways. Yeah, but an up and coming back act can explode so fast now with Spotify and, you know, all these other channels.

29:10 So it's. Interesting. I think it'll be cool. I. Think that'll be a trend. And I. Mean I'm I'm excited. I'm excited to see Van Halen. I'm excited, you know, to see if some of the older bands get together and go out and and it's gonna be cool. Oh, you mean the Sammy Hagar one? Although they they got. Kind of a gut punch with the whole I don't know if you saw the Satury anything where he butchered. What song was it? Unchained, I think, And and just got slaughtered on social media for it, you know, everyone was like, Oh my God, Joe, what are you doing to this song? You've destroyed it. And he came out and acknowledged, hey, I did a pretty bad job. I'm back into guitar lessons now, figuring it out, you know. Well, they're gonna rehearse.

29:50 They're gonna rehearse and Polish it for sure. Right. Well, they did it live on like I think it was on Howard Stern or something. And yeah, it just didn't go well at all. So yeah. I don't know if you know like *NSYNC is. There's, there's about that and there's like fans that'll get together. Interesting. And bonus question, you know, not only have you been a sponsor of ours since the very beginning of time, but you've been a listener. I mean, you were one of the first listeners too. You, you've always been very kind about sharing your opinions with me, even when they're not so kind. And I appreciate that, by the way, but I I always have liked that you've got a long commute to work.

30:34 I'm sure you don't like it as much as I do, but you often listen to the podcast and then you'll either call me or send me a text when you get to your office or something and you'll say, hey, this was really good. I like this, I didn't like this or whatever. Who would you like to see a spring on geezers of gear in 2024? Anyone. Well, I mean, like we talked about Michael O'Keefe earlier, he might be a good one to talk to. He's been in the business a long time and he's kind of from a different, a different part of our industry than the rock'n'roll side that I think we, we tend to focus more on. But I I think, yeah, I don't know, you know, I love hearing designers.

31:17 You know, the designers again, you know, they they manage so much politics and relationships and you know, not only with their customers but with their vendors. And you know, I think the designers really offer you. I'd love to hear more designers for sure. I mean, I know that you've always spoke trying. They're all so busy. You know, that's one thing I will say about LDI this year was I saw more designers this year than I've seen in a long time. And I think it was the timing of the the, you know end of the year but also maybe a Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, you know Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. So I think that was the designers really came to LDI this year and that was the best part for me of of LDI this.

32:00 Year. I've heard they're booked for the same dates, or the same basic weekend or whatever weekdays. It's the following weekend, but yeah, it's a Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, but it's the 8th, 9th, 10th I think. Don't quote me, but I think it's something. Like that. I think you're right the. 3rd, 4th or 6th, 3rd, 4th whatever. It was. No, I think, I think you're right. I I hope they keep it there. I mean it it seems to be a little easier. I always hated sort of that week of Thanksgiving, actually, it worked out great for me because I'd go straight from Vegas up to Canada and it was a really short flight to get up to my house and I'd go skiing for a few days. And it's not Thanksgiving in Canada at that time, so the ski hills are empty.

32:40 And so it worked out really well. And most of the designers that, you know are working so hard and people in production are working so hard leading up to Thanksgiving and even into Christmas. A lot of our, a few of our customers couldn't come because they're doing big Christmas shows. But you know, I think it's, it's it's there's never a perfect time. You got to, you know, you got to kind of just pick it. And I think LDI is going to be in this time slot for a while because of F1. Yeah, you're right. If if you could help me give a nice little poke to Matthias because he promised to come on and then he's always busy and I know you keep him really busy, but I want to get him on. I I think he's a brilliant guy.

33:20 He's obviously somebody that people would like to hear from. I've actually had people request me to get Matthias on and so give him a poke. Give him a poke. That's a. 2024 goal. Yeah, yeah, I know. I'd love to get Matthias on. I think it'd be really interesting. Cool. Well, I appreciate you Eric and and Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, all that stuff and hopefully I get to see you soon too. Thank you, Marcel. Let's do it. All right, my friend. See ya. Well, hey, Dan. How are you? I'm doing well, Marcel. How about yourself? I'm OK. Merry Christmas and merry. Christmas to you. Before I screw it up, is it Dan or Daniel? Cause I've seen both. Daniel is preferred.

34:01 My dad's name is Dan and I had a best friend's name that was Dan and it just got confusing. So Daniel works the best. Then forever you shall be known as Daniel. Most people like you are are pretty sort of meh about it. Like you don't really get upset or. Anything. I have a friend whose name is Michael, and God forbid I call him Mike. I mean, it's like the end of the Earth. He's like, I don't call you Mark. I don't call, you know and I'm like, OK, sorry you are Michael. That's right. Forever ingrained as Michael. That's right. Exactly. Well, I mean, believe it or not, as much as I offend some people, I I try hard not to usually. You know, I I, I generally try to call people by the name they want.

34:47 Unless we get into all those pronouns and stuff, and then it gets a little weird. But anyways, yeah, so good Christmas, presumably. Absolutely, yeah. No complaints for me. It's always kind of one of those times to rest and reset, but you're always rushing around to see family. So grateful for the opportunity to see family. We did the little bit of a break and now we're diving into the New Year celebration and into a great 2024. Yeah. I mean our our industry, you talk about that little break and our industry tries really hard to check out at this time, but it's so hard. I mean there's just so many things going on and we are in the live event space, right. So but I know what like one of the things I love and always have for my 30 plus years in business about this time of year is sort of that reflection and looking ahead planning and all of that stuff. So you know it's a combination of looking backwards and looking forward to see you know what what can we do better based on what has happened in the past 12 months. And I know for my own business that's a long list. So, so yeah, I'm I'm sure you're the same and we're going to hear some of that.

35:56 But before we do, so first of all, thank you very much for being a sponsor of geezers of gear. We appreciate you very much. And I can tell you without sponsors I wouldn't be doing this show because not because I make money from it, because I certainly don't, but although I'd like to someday, but it does cover the costs And you know, now we we. Have. Second, mouth to feed, which really is our first mouth to feed, which is Sarah. And you know, Sarah has taken on a lot of the production, believe it or not. I've done this entirely by myself. I I upload, download, promote, record, everything I had been doing by myself. And so now Sarah has taken on, I don't know, 70% of that work. And I do.

36:48 I do the easy stuff like talking to great people. So we do appreciate you, but you're probably one of the lesser known sponsors that we have. Give me a give me an elevator pitch on who is Stratum? What do you do? Absolutely. So we're a boutique production company located in the Midwest, Lincoln NE specifically primarily help event planners and meeting planners host corporate events. We do a little bit as far as venue management and live event music wise. But primarily we stay in that corporate space really have a passion for just partnering with people and helping them execute memorable events that captivate, communicate and connect human beings.

37:29 Because at the end of the day, I think that's really what we exist for in the event space. If we can build a connection, if we can communicate a message really, really well, or we if we can captivate an audience, I think that that's really what we should all be driven by and motivated by. I mean that's a great way to say it. And you know, I guess one of the things that surprises me a little bit, I didn't really know that there was much of A corporate or convention business in Nebraska. And so are you traveling outside Nebraska a lot or is it really a vibrant market within Nebraska? I mean I wouldn't call it vibrant. I I would say it's growing.

38:10 Lincoln is kind of known as the the Silicon Prairie. There's a lot of startups here that are doing well in the tech industry. Omaha is just 50 miles down the road from us. Omaha has a much more vibrant space, but we do well for for ourselves in the area. We do travel quite a bit across the United States, North America specifically, but by and large most of our businesses probably within a day's drive of of Lincoln and like I said, we just we love partnering with people in the Midwest. We we align with a lot of those values. We know that business model. So being able to help and support people locally is crucial for our business. Yeah, well, I I follow you on socials and I can say that you do some amazing work from from the pictures and articles I've read and stuff, and you also have been very active on social media. You also were a company that I noticed coming out of COVID just seemed to have better ideas than a lot of other businesses who sort of kind of creeped out of COVID. You kind of went boom out of COVID and really seemed to have a game plan.

39:21 Was that by accident or? I mean, I don't think anything's by accident. I think that we really set ourselves up for success in 2020. This is something I I tell people still to this day is I'm thankful for 2020. As difficult as that was, as challenging as that was, it made me a Better Business owner. It made me a better just overall technician. There's so many good things that have come out of that. Although it was a bad situation, I think that we were able to actually grow our company through that year, which is. Wow. I mean, that's impressive. Yeah. It's it's not a standard or a common thing that you hear. So I think just applying a lot of intentionality to who we want to service, having a good product or if not a great product to be able to offer to somebody and just continue to plan and move forward.

40:12 I mean, I think a lot of what 2020 was spent for me specifically as the owner was. Strategizing and building like, OK, this is going to end at some point. It's How do we, how do we come out of this and how do we not fall flat on our face in doing that? Yeah, no, I I completely agree and and I'm glad you said that because you know so many companies, most companies in our industry will look back at 2020 and say, Oh my God, that was the worst time ever. And, you know, one of the problems I had during that period of time was with the people who just took it as downtime. And, you know, I'm not judging anyone. I'm not saying that's a bad thing or whatever.

40:52 But in my opinion, if you're a business owner or a salesperson or a technician or a, you know, a a programmer, board operator, whatever, upskill, you know, use that time to learn another console, to learn another language, to, you know, teach your children something, whatever it is, but find something productive to do with an incredible opportunity for a business that has no time to do anything right. We're always busy. And so you know you had this this sort of pocket of time where you could do anything you wanted and so many people chose you know Netflix and and honestly I just think that was wasted time in that in that situation so. Oh, I I would wholeheartedly agree. I think the thing that was beautiful about what our industry did in 2020 is that they a lot of the training became free.

41:49 There were so many resources put out there. I mean the opportunity to learn in that year was I mean the the risk tolerance or or the barrier to entry was nothing. You didn't have to pay to go learn how to program on a grand May because ACT waived those fees for the year there were all of this free training. So to your point, I think it is very interesting how a lot of people did maybe neglect that downtime as, OK, let's take a breath when they could have been utilizing some of that time to just maybe sharpen their skills a little bit, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And how about using that time to learn to break things or to fail? Try things that you wouldn't try when you're slammed busy, but now you can go out and try those things and nobody cares if you fail at this point.

42:40 Like, big deal. You know, I tried something. I looked stupid. Move on to the next thing. I know some really stupid ones that I won't bring up right now, but there were some really weird pivots and stuff that didn't do very well, and I'm sure those people would look back and go, hey, you know what? I tried something. It didn't work. And that's how I look at it too, by the way. So fast forwarding here a little bit, so you know I'm sure like everyone else 20/21 was sort of that coming out year when when business started coming back 2022 went nuts and then 2023 you know I would assume for your business was was similarly crazy to 2022.

43:21 And because you're so much more focused on on corporate, it probably took a little bit longer to get to that mayhem like concert touring and stuff got real big in in 21 and 22. I think corporate took a little longer to come out, right. Absolutely. Yeah, I mean I think we we stabilized a lot more in 2023 than we did in 20/22/2022 was I mean revenue wise, I think we we six had a multiple of 6 as far as growth revenue wise. So that was an absolute crazy growth year for us. And then this year we haven't seen that same growth. We've we've seen growth but it's not been the the running and gunning that we saw of 2022.

44:12 So I think it it has taken more time. I think people have kind of levelled off as far as their desire to host events. I think they're being more strategic about it. I think that there's a lot of pieces that are being considered now instead of, hey, let's just rush back to get people back in a room, let's let's put some thought into this. Whether that is the the concert and touring or the corporate space. Both those spaces have, in my opinion and my perspective, have taken a little bit of a different stance this year as far as let's let's do this well, let's get it out there, create something incredible instead of just seeing how many arenas we can hit or how many ballrooms we can fit in.

44:54 Yeah. So you know, and by the way, that's not uncommon. You know what you just said, like I, I have spoken to many companies who say that 23 was just crazy, a record year, you know, biggest ever, blah, blah, blah. But for the most part, people have said either we lost a little bit off 22 or we gained a little bit on 22. But it was a very similar year to 2022, except much more organized and probably more profitable because you weren't just. I don't care what it costs, we got to get the gear. Here, I don't care what that guy costs that I need on the show, I need a guy or I need 10 guys or whatever, right? Exactly. This, this year got a little more normalized, similar revenue but normal, much more normalized from a standpoint of operations and costs and stuff.

45:42 But so as you were planning for 2023 and now as you look back on 2023, would you say that it was better than expected, worse than expected or as expected? I think that there were a lot of moments in our company specifically that show it as better as expected. We were able to improve a lot of our process as a company and get more of the right people ingrained into our company and our culture that are going to in the end pay off for our end users and our clients. So I think that that's a lot of what we focused on and a lot of as I reflect back dollars matter of course, but what about the process and the building, right. I think that I take a little bit of a different philosophy to building a company as far as I'm not so concerned about what was done this year.

46:36 While that's important, what about building something so next year we can be incredible, the year after that, the year after that, the year after that. So I I think it's better than expected from my perspective in a in a lot of different ways rather than revenue. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I mean you're you're obviously very focused on the quality of the product that you're putting out and and that's that's also being growth focused. You know like if we put out a great quality product, people are going to use this more and and more into the future. So you know whether it's your own business or the industry, what would your 2024 expectations be? Would you, would you be expecting more growth, would you expect things to drop a little bit or a lot and or just pretty much to stay flat on on what happened in 2023? I I mean some of the venues that we manage are booked way more in 2024 than they were in 2023.

47:33 So I think that we are, I guess we're anticipating a lot of growth again in 2024. I think the, the thing that we have to maybe consider is we're going into an election year which it doesn't matter where you land on that, there's always turmoil and there's always some risk involved with that. So I think early projections on my side from just again my perspective and what we see is that 2024 could be another big growth year for us specifically, but I think that the industry as a whole could grow again. I think 2023 was kind of that reset year, a lot of settling in and now people are going to look at OK, how can we, how can we engage and improve on what we've built upon and get out there more and be just in the public eye more or or however that looks.

48:25 Yeah, 24 is is a real interesting year, you know. And by interesting, I mean screwed up because not not just the election but you know, the potential of of recession, this looming recession that we've been talking about for a year. But you know, geopolitical stuff too. You know, I've been paying a lot of attention to some of the things that are going on in Europe and Asia and obviously two different wars that are being battled right now. So you know that all has an impact probably not so much on a local market like Lincoln NE. But certainly for some of those companies that are that are utilizing your services in that local market may be impacted with their European offices or or somewhere else in the world or freight costs or you know sort of that downstream effect of having two wars and all kinds of political unrest and and other issues going on in the world. So.

49:28 For 2024, give me a big prediction and and anything you know, the Sky's going to fall. You know, we're going to get our first woman president. Yeah, You know, that's a really good question actually. I mean, I to to the point of the looming recession, as unfortunate as it is, as it is, I think that there's a lot of that that's going to come into play in this next year. So maybe the sky is going to fall. I think, I think the key for a lot of people is to not focus on that and to focus on improving what you can control, right. I mean I think that that's a lot of the, the mistake that people make is they're so concerned with what's outside. And if they were to just take a moment and focus on how they can improve their skills, I mean this carries over from the conversation we just had a couple minutes ago. If we could just improve and continue to focus, I think a lot of things that I look at is if we talk about recession, I've studied history a lot.

50:29 If we go back to the 20s and 30s, the one thing that grew a lot was entertainment, right? Because even even in a downturn, there has to be entertainment involved. And I think so many people don't look at that as an option and they just say they just want to throw in the towel and be like, oh man, well, the sky is falling. I better just call it quits too instead of saying, no, there's an opportunity here. How can we actually help people make it through this in a in a way that makes them smile or or improves their life in in any capacity? You're you're so right. You know, and I, I've always said that like I I remember I've been 20 years ago or more talking to people about the fact that no matter what's happening in a local economy. If the right.

51:14 Show comes through or whatever everyone's going and and I always used Mexico City as an example like I remember and it had to probably be in the 90s or something, which you know, I I don't know how old you are, but probably not much older than that. But Madonna did a concert in Mexico City and it was like 100,000 people. And these are people who don't have nice cars, who don't make much money, who don't eat fancy food or or whatever. But when it comes to entertainment, you know, they'll buy a nice bottle of tequila and they'll go to a Madonna concert. And it doesn't matter what it costs, right? They just, they figure it out, they find the money and they go and they entertain themselves, you know?

51:58 Absolutely. I mean I think that that is such a a lasting truth that we can go into this year for. And I I mean honestly I hope I'm wrong because the impact of a a recession actually hitting. I mean that's gonna, that could be ugly in a lot of ways. But to to your point, if if the right show comes in, if you're doing the right things, you're going to be able to entertain people and you're going to be able to continue to move forward. Even on the corporate stuff though, that you do like, you know, when there's a recession, a couple of things that can be positive also happen. One is is that companies look to take other companies. You know, lunch. And so. They'll be out there, you know pawning their wares and and making sure their team is dialed in and and they've shown their latest products and everything.

52:47 But but also you know, you're just, you start focusing on what's most important to your business specifically and you know building on those things and yes, you know, certainly you can look at cutting budgets and and going Oh my God, we better tighten our belt. You know this is going to be a tough year and one of the first things that go is, is marketing costs and things like you know, meetings and and trade shows and all of those corporate sort of, I don't know what you would call it voluntary expenses or expenses that are not necessarily things that you absolutely have to do, right. Right. So well and I I think that there are some people that will do just the opposite and see that as an opportunity to continue to grow.

53:34 And hey, we still need to go in, engage with our client base, but let's just do it in a smarter way. Let's instead of spending $100,000 on AV, let's spend 25,000 and get creative with them. Yeah. Any thoughts on like a prediction for a product trend or a sort of something new that's going to come out that's going to change the world? Man, I I don't even, yeah, I I haven't had a lot of time to actually sit down and think about that. I've been a busy business owner, so there's there's not been a lot of, a lot of consideration with that. I'm going to be interested to see how immersive sound continues to evolve. I think this year opening up this year and a lot of eyes being focused on how that that works and that immersive experience.

54:19 I think more energy is going to start to get pushed into that area. Obviously I'm a lighting guide by trade. That's kind of how I grew up into this industry. So any new lighting fixtures that come out I I'm always amazed by. But at the end of the day it's still just a light with a lens at the end of it. It just it's faster, it's brighter, it's whatever it may be. So I did not make it to LDI this year. We had a couple of more shows that we. Yeah, there there, there was a trend at LDII, wasn't there either, but I've talked to a lot of people about it and one of the big trends is this lumens per pound concept lights are getting smaller and lighter all of a sudden.

55:02 And so Martin came out with something called the Mac One, which is like, I'm going to probably misquote this, but I think it's £9, it's like 4 1/2 kilos or 4 kilos, 9 or 10 lbs. And oh God, I don't remember the lumens, but it's it's bright like, it's it's bright like a Mac aura almost right, Really nice, really nice features. Tiny. Like really, really tiny. And they make this. 4 bar thing that. You can mount in all kinds of different ways and really, really cool and very inexpensive. Like something like 2 Grand Retail for it, right? Wow. So those are gonna just sell by the 10s of thousands because?

55:43 Yeah, they will. For stuff like what you do, you can pop lights in everywhere, right? And it's small, it's light, it's easy, pretty painless. A bunch of other companies did similar things where they came out with smaller fixtures that are still really bright. And so I see that as being a continuing trend like we went bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger for a while. It's got to be 50,000 lumens. Ours is 75,000 lumens, you know, and. I mean, it's OK if you need to light a building 2 miles away or something, but you know, when, when you're lighting a trade show booth or a corporate meeting or a ballroom or something, you don't need 75,000 lumen fixtures, right? You need reliable, small, easy.

56:29 And yeah, so I'm seeing a lot more of that stuff. Personally, I think there's gonna be a lot more wireless battery stuff coming out with better batteries, longer life on it, cuz life has been an issue. And that fits into the trend of smaller and less power and more efficient and all that stuff. So absolutely. Yeah, last question. So you're a sponsor you you support this podcast. Who would you like to see on it that that either you've already seen once and want them back, or maybe somebody that you haven't seen yet? I'm pretty sure I I think it might have been 2020. So Christian Jackson is actually. I learned so much from his YouTube channel when I first started.

57:16 Much like this podcast, I think that there's a a lot of lessons that I were was able to take on and learn by listening to this podcast. I think Christian Jackson is a one of those people. I mean he kind of flies under the radar a little bit, but he is such a incredible programmer and more so he teaches so much like he he's willing to share his knowledge to to no end. And I think that that would be another interesting guest to have on. Well, and he's sort of the OG YouTube in our industry too. Like, nobody got into YouTube and did what he's done and I don't remember. He's got like, I don't know, 100,000 followers or something on YouTube. It's crazy. But yeah, that'd be a great one.

57:58 I I I wouldn't say I've forgotten about Christian, but when he came on he laughed because he was, I think at that time, the youngest person we'd ever had on the podcast. So now he's a little bit older. We'll have to get him on again. Absolutely. Some more experience, some more insight, he'll be able to add a lot of value I think. Yeah, How many shows you got to do for for New Year's? We actually only have three shows for New Year's, so not not anything crazy, but then we kick off right in January with a lot of larger corporate shows that we do every year. So it's kind of that breath and we exhale as we go into New Year's and then start sprinting right away at the beginning of January. Rest is over.

58:44 That's right. It is over. It was good while it lasted. Yeah. Well, thank you, Daniel, so much for taking a minute to do this with me. And again, we appreciate you very much being a sponsor of Geezers of Gear and look forward to doing lots of cool stuff next year too. Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me on. It's always a pleasure to be able to chat with you. Like I said, love supporting a podcast that has given me so much value. So thank you. I appreciate that. All right my friend. All right. See ya. Mr. Ben, how are you? Hey, good morning or good afternoon I suppose at this point, right? It is, yeah. So Ben is actually recording this with me on a Sunday and on New Year's Eve. So you're a, you're a superstar for doing that. We were actually going to record during the week and Ben. Had a bit of a blowout in his home. Well, fortunately, it wasn't my home. So I spent last week deep in the heart of southwest Texas, where my father-in-law lives in a town small. It's on the Guadalupe River and it's such a small town that there's no convenient hotels.

59:54 So when going to visit him, we did a VRBO of AI call it a fishing shack, but it was, you know, it was a three bedroom home to be. Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, single story, 3 bedroom home right on the Guadalupe River. It was very nice, part of a compound so cold in Texas for the past few days that the well pump froze. So we had no water when we. What day is today? Sunday, right. So we had on Friday morning and Saturday morning we had no water in the house from, you know probably sometime around 3:00 AM until around 1:00 PM when it got warm enough that the well pump thawed and we had water again for a while. So. So we had, I think we had planned to do this on Friday and it was just a bit too much while trying to make sure. No, I get it.

1:00:43 I get it completely, All those. Exciting things you go through at a time. Yeah. So thank you for your. Flexibility and for delaying you're you're you're watching of I think is it Baltimore and Miami coming up in 20 minutes. It is, yeah. It's a huge game, you know. Yeah, really it's Whoever wins this game leads the AFC and puts themselves in a pretty good position. So it's a huge game. And it's also MVP status. Like basically people are saying it's either Tua or it's Lamar Jackson, whoever wins the game kind of thing. But we'll see. I mean, I think it's gonna be an interesting game, I think. Exciting time for a South Florida resident.

1:01:25 It really is for once. I mean, we've got a hockey team that's winning. We've got a football team that's winning. I don't know anything about baseball or soccer, so I couldn't tell you what they're doing. The heat, I think. Soccer. I'm not sure, but. Whether your soccer team is winning or not, you certainly have a ticket draw. Yeah, yeah, no kidding. Yeah, I mean, it's you know what I I have. Jersey sales aren't doing too bad either. I have a friend who who goes to those games, the Inter, whatever, it's called Inter, Miami and he said ever since they got him. Tickets went from $40 to $400.00 and I'm like, wow, man, I like, I didn't even know we had a soccer crowd here. But I guess with all the South American people and stuff, we're bound to, and all it took was bringing in, you know, the. Biggest player in the world or whatever. Arguably the.

1:02:17 Ownership group. The player you got to go anyway. Yeah. No, it's interesting. So before we get into it, I'm just going to ask you 3 questions. But before we get into that, I first of all, I wanted to applaud you for your leadership and your, you know, just stewardship of of just the ideas. And you know, I talked to you a lot and stuff. But the things that you've done with ACT this year, you kind of started the year telling me we want to evolve a little bit. We want to, we want to grow, we want to do some things differently. We don't want to be known as a lighting company. You changed your name to ACT Entertainment. You've changed your logo and you went out and got a huge audio brand. You, you've bought a couple of companies that are sort of outside the the sort of center of of lighting and so I mean it's been an incredible year for ACT. It's been an exciting time and I have to applaud our team for doing a great job.

1:03:13 As you mentioned, we began a distribution agreement with PK Sound and manufactured in your hometown, Calgary AB. All right, yeah, Calgary AB. Sorry, I was trying to say Calgary AB Cannon and I tripped on my tongue there. Yeah. Anyway, so you know, great brand Jeremy James and his group and then Ralph Mastron Jello, who joined us after a very a storied career. Ralph, those people where you can walk into an arena anywhere on the anywhere in the world and he's going to know somebody from the house. He's an amazing guy and really looking forward to you know we we we began last year but it was kind of a soft beginning. We had them at LDI with us.

1:03:56 This is the year we're really launching together and it's really excited about that. And then as you mentioned we acquired TV One which is the manufacturer of the TV One line of products and also Green Hippo. So going to you know then I think we finished that about 27 days ago, so again. 24 We're we're, we're a very. Different company going into 2024 than we were going into 20. 24 absolutely. No, I mean you're you're these are all really amazing moves. I don't know much about TV One, but you know Green Hippo obviously a huge product line and really great addition to you know not only your your lighting products but your control products.

1:04:37 I mean obviously when you look at MA and and Airton and a lot of the other stuff that you have. MDG Robert Juliet. Right. But what's missing you know is exactly what you went out and got and and so no, I I think it's excellent. And so I guess some of this stuff while PK specifically probably ultimate support I guess, which is also relatively. New ultimate support was an acquisition in 2022, yeah, yeah. Oh, so I guess PK really they're coming out party is is Nam. Yeah, They'll be Nam. They'll be. I isn't. Really. An audio show, as much as some people would argue it is. We were together at AES in in New York I think in November or October, I can't remember. But really, really Nam is the coming out party. We'll we'll have a play and have our team there ready to talk to people.

1:05:26 Really exciting. So just to get into this, really it's just three questions that I'm looking at. And so first for our industry, you know, I know 20/22 was an insane year. Everyone that I spoke to record years, you know, just absolutely blew it up. Biggest year they've ever had, yadda yadda yadda. And really most people were just trying to get back to 2019 numbers and then all of a sudden, you know it was just this massive year. I've heard from a lot of companies, some who have actually come on this interview with me, but I've heard from a lot of companies that 23 represented a bit of the same but sort of a hangover to like you know they expected to be 10 or 15% up or 20% up and and they were 5% down or flat. Yeah.

1:06:20 So you know give me, I'm not asking for your sales, I know you guys are a private company, but you know your your outlook on sort of the industry, what 2023 meant in the industry? From a revenue standpoint? I think 2023 was just a really strange year and part of it, part of it depended on specifically where in the industry you operate, right? Obviously, we had what I refer to as the Hollywood strikes, right? So you had the WGA and the the the SAG strikes and so obviously I say Hollywood not geographically but the part of the industry that records film and TV. You know, so any any rental company or any event company that had a had a not even a concentration but let's say you know I, I talk, you know I I was talking to the CEO of one of the top three rental companies and he was saying you know 20% of their business came from Hollywood, right. So you know think about think about lopping 20% off of your company and you know it was what was it, it was May through November, right.

1:07:26 So you know however many months that isn't math you had that much of the year where you know for some people it was 20%, for some people it was 99%, right. So you had a, you had a lot of strange, a lot of strange things. But then you had people who maybe with a high concentration in concert touring. And I think 2023 was, you know, the greatest concert touring year in history until 2024, which we're expecting. You know, if you, you know, you look at the data that Live Nation is putting out and we talked to our customers, you know we we had a huge surge of orders coming in right at the end of the year, all looking for delivery towards the end of the first quarter, right. So sometime in March we have, yeah, I think there's not a single rental company you can pick up the phone and talk to right now who's not going to tell you they're booked for next summer or they're booked for the spring.

1:08:16 And I think those companies also honestly did fairly well in 2023, right. So you know sure for as you know if I put on my manufacturer hat for a second or I think about the distribution area of our business you know we're obviously coming out of COVID. There was a growth rate of you know 300% or 500% or whatever it was because our everything dropped 50% going in you know because of COVID right. So you know the the the velocity of that growth rate is you know the end of the the industry is not going to grow that much again in any given year. But we are definitely back to what we consider a normalized growth pattern whether that's you know you look at 20, you know 2012 ish to you know March of 2020. And I think if you smooth out the curve of COVID, we've actually beaten that.

1:09:07 The industry has beaten that over the last, you know, 4 plus years at this point. And I no and it. Would really expect that to continue for you know again you know I don't know that the Hollywood strike ending is going to cause you know I don't think we're going to come storming out of the gate. But as though at that as that industry starts to restart and remember all those studios are real estate companies now, right, That's really what they are you know So as that part of the industry starts to restart again and then you know again put on the manufacturer hat for a second you think about what's going on in the rest of the world, right. And I, you know I know you haven't you have a worldwide audience, right. We're we're very you know we're we're very North American centric in in the guest list sometimes.

1:09:50 But I think you have a lot of listeners, you know, if you look at what's going on, you know, in Saudi Arabia and other parts, you know that that's that's going to be a huge hot bun of activity for the next. Well, for the next I was. Going to say for the next decade, but probably for the next forever, right? So I think, I think anyone who's manufacturing equipment, anyone who's manufacturing entertainment technology should continue to be quite excited and bullish about you know the industry and the the, the growth in the industry. I I completely agree with you and you mentioned Live Nation and I've mentioned it many times on here, but sure, but they have this really cool approach where Rapinoe put out an article saying that that his his customers or his artists basically have 10 million followers on social media. All he has to do is sell tickets to 5% of those people and you know and he sells out a tour and you know when you look at the math like that it's pretty incredible. So what they're really trying to do is start tapping you know sort of multi multimedia type of approach where you're you're tying into the social media and tying into you know between streaming and and live events and all of those different things.

1:11:09 You're just kind of trying to bunch it all and and have a have a thread that goes. Through the whole thing. So it's pretty interesting. It's it's, you know, I kept thinking the bottom was going to fall out a little bit and it hasn't. And now I've actually sort of changed my opinion to where I don't think it will. I think there's a larger appetite for live. Events than what we're currently feeling. And it's huge. You know, again, it's, you know, we all if you wake up in the morning and turn on the news, right. And I think that was another part of the story of 2023 is we certainly spent month. I think thinking back, it feels like it was the middle of the year, right, where everyone, you know, economists were doing their best to convince us that there was going to be a recession. Right.

1:11:59 The reality is there. You know, we're we're still waiting for the recession that we've been promised for the last three years, right. And you know again I'm, I'm not an economist, I, you know it's it's way outside my purview and area of expertise to understand what's going on there. But I think that had, I think that had a real hangover on some of the purchasing decision making in our industry, right. You know if you were, if you're reading the news, July ish, August ish, you know you just, you really weren't feeling good about waking up, right. Yeah. Well, I don't usually. I personally, I don't usually pay attention to it's a it's an election year.

1:12:41 And all of those. Types of things like I don't think our industry. Follows a lot of that stuff. I'll tell you what's scaring the shit out of me right now. And you know, I follow some of this geopolitics stuff because my business really moves equipment around the world. Like we're not dealing with a North American market. We're dealing with Asian stuff coming into North America, North American stuff going into Europe, etcetera. We're moving stuff around. And So what these hooties are doing right now, like in the Suez Canal and the Red Sea and stuff is scaring the shit out of me, You know, cuz like I've already heard container prices are already 3X between Asia and Europe because they have to travel like thousands of miles additional. And you know, they're they're.

1:13:24 Bringing and Ukraine is blocking the trains. Right. Another problem. Yeah. So I mean this stuff definitely has a cost and and you know if you go back to freight shortages and and these supply and demand issues that we ran into in 2020-2021. Yeah, you know. That is, that's a beating on our end. Remember, I am. I am literally the worst predictor in the history of time. I'm the one who said COVID was a 90 day problem and we all needed to focus on day 91, right? I was right there with you, buddy. You know so. I was as big a Jackass as you were on that one. Weisman thought it was a few weeks. Yeah, so. He was even worse.

1:14:05 We tagged him somewhere. No, I mean none of us. Can predict this stuff. You know, none of us can. Predict this stuff. You can just. Sort of plan for for the worst and and you know groove with the best if you can so. 2024. It. It sounds to me like you're expecting growth in 24, but probably. Regular growth like back to sort of you know the 2017 to 20/18/2018 to 2019 like. 10%, six percent, 8%, fifty, you know, 6%, eight percent, 20%, you know. 2300. Percent whatever the number's gonna be, the number's gonna be right. Yeah. The market is growing. There's more live events. There's more installations that need entertainment technology, you know, there's there's all kinds of, you know, there's construction projects, there's all kinds of things happening around the world.

1:14:54 And you know that's only going to continue as time goes on. Yeah, you know on Wiseman recorded a podcast which I think comes out next week or something. And he was talking about somebody in their finance team or something coming in and saying, you know John, we're going to need you know, to add another 12 million to the budget next year or whatever. You know, are you going to get that? Where, where are we going to get that from? And he's like. Get the hell out of my office. You know, just get out of my office. What's going to happen is going to happen. That's what's going to happen. You know, I can't just pretend that there's another 12 million when I have no idea what's what's coming. You know, there could be another war.

1:15:34 There could be 14. Wars. I have no idea. So. It's our job. It's our job to try to predict the future. Yeah, right. I mean, I'll tell you what if we do, if you came within, you know, 10 or 12% of your forecast this year of of your budgeted forecast this year, I think, damn, you did good. You know, and I've talked to a lot of people who have and I've talked to some people who were wildly off either direction, like they thought they were going to lose money and they made money. So. So yeah, and give me a big prediction. Give me a big bold prediction. It could be somebody who's going to dust off their retirement, you know, stuff and and come back out and tour. It could be a market trend, product trend. What are you thinking?

1:16:23 Something wild? COVID is a 90 day problem. That's my prediction. I've sworn off predictions. I've sworn off predictions. Sworn off predictions. Yeah, you know, I think the world is going to adopt automated line array systems that move in the air. And you don't have to drop them to reposition them. I'm the world's huge fan of your prediction. There you go. There you go. You can pay me later. There you go. And so, bonus question. Give me a guest. I should get on this podcast. Oh, wow. I wasn't prepared for that question. Yeah, right. Well, I'm finally old enough to be a geezer, so. Yeah, yeah.

1:17:03 We should do another one and just talk. A little about what's wrong, Think about that and I will send you an e-mail. Well, that's no good for a podcast. What doesn't e-mail do to the people who are sitting here listening to this going Why can't Ben come up with a name? It gives them something more. It gives them something more interesting to think about. How about Ralph? OK, it's a good idea. It's. A good idea. Love to get Ralph on that would be fun. And we don't even have to talk about ma consoles. We can talk about art, photographs, cars, race cars, racing drivers. I don't care. I'll give them a call and I'll see. All right. All right, my friend. Well, happy New Year to you. I appreciate you taking the time out on a Sunday on New Year's Eve to do this and. Happy New Year to you as well and.

1:17:45 Hope you get to shower before you eat tonight. Yeah, yeah, no, I appreciate it, buddy. All right. Have an amazing time and and we'll chat next year. All right. Stay safe. Enjoy it. See you, pal. Bye. In the enviable position of being in the same company I am and I can't answer my own questions. So seeing that you're the next in command you can you can be the one who's up to bad and answering these. So it's going to be funny asking questions about you know your viewpoints of our company when I'm in the company every day. So, you know, maybe the questions that I'm going to ask you, which are going to be more related to, you know, of how the industry's doing and stuff, let's maybe keep them more industry related, not necessarily specific to gear source, but I mean aside from that, so we're recording this.

1:18:41 People are going to hear this a couple days after Christmas at least. I mean the people who hear it the first day are going to hear it a couple days after Christmas and then obviously in perpetuity. But as we're recording it, we're a couple of days before Christmas right now. And so I think you're traveling, right? For the holiday I am, I'm, I'm doing a lot of traveling actually. I'm driving down. I live in Northern California, so we're driving down with my family and my dogs to Los Angeles to hang out with my in laws for a couple of days. And then from there, we're flying to Denver to hang out with my family for a few days and then flying back to LA and driving back up. Holy shite.

1:19:23 Yeah, lots of fun. That's a lot. You know, you got this thing called Southwest Airlines, right? You can get from like Northern California to Southern California. It's really fast. You can, but then you can't take the dogs and then I have to put them in. I have to board them or do something with them. We have some friends here that typically would watch them, but they're not going to be here for the holidays. So we have to. We're taking them with them. That's a lot to ask people over the holidays, like, yes. Hey, do you mind walking my dogs and feeding them every day and stuff? Don't you live on a bunch of land though? Can't you just let them loose and they can go out and? Well, that's what they do. And the people that watch us watch them are actually they live on in our guest house on our property and they also have a dog. So it's kind of a back and forth. So it wouldn't be a huge deal for them if they were. Around.

1:20:06 But yeah, they're going away. Yeah, they were probably like, you know, we were going to ask you. So yeah, I mean, that's fine. I'm. I'm actually boring as hell staying at home and having a whole bunch of family over. So we're cooking up a storm. And today I was dumb enough to go two days before Christmas to Costco and Trader Joe's, both in the same morning. And I got to tell you, I don't know if it's a sign of the economy or locker. I don't know what the hell it is, but there was nobody there. It was pretty damning. I think luck, you know you're before the weekend, you were smart to get in early and and do it before Saturday.

1:20:50 Yeah, I know there's a lot of people listening right now that probably wouldn't accuse me of being smart, having done that, but I think I just got lucky. I think I picked the right time and and got in, got out, and it was super easy. It was crazy. I was like. Must have been Karen's doing. Certainly wasn't. Yours. I think so, because like even you know Costco. Like, how often? I don't know if you go to Costco, but how often do you go in, get all your stuff and then walk straight up to an empty cashier and you're like we were parked in, got our stuff, got out in 15 minutes? Although I I do sometimes kind of play a a game when I go to Costco, I make it a goal to see how few items I can actually leave with, and it usually is way more than I intended but it. Always is, yeah.

1:21:36 Like I go in for toilet paper and come out with home theater seating or. Or. A washer and dryer or something, you know? It's like, why do I have all this stuff, you know? A million bananas and yeah. Right, enough bananas for a village. Yeah, I know. It's, it's crazy, but it's tempting. I mean, everything looks appealing. The one that's getting me these days, and we talked about this earlier, but the televisions, I mean, the televisions are just out of control now. Like, it's crazy. Like I walk in and right as you walk in the door and trust me, I have enough TVSI don't need any. But you see this like 85 inch OLED TV for like 3 grand or something.

1:22:16 And I'm going. What? Like, I need that thing so bad, you know, I got to have it. I got no. Place makes you Makes you question why you need an LED wall in the industry. No, not really. I just made a bunch of people cringe. Well. Pretty pretty soon LG is going to have you know, TV's that are as big as LED walls, I guess. I don't know, they just keep getting bigger and nicer and like these OLED screens. The pictures amazing and it's like 3 grand and then you can get like I think I saw a 75 inch today for 599, a 75 inch television. Pretty crazy. I mean, at some point you run into the limitation of like, just what can you fit in a car or in your door? So then you get a consumer version of an LED wall.

1:22:57 You just get, you know, a seamless monitor that comes in a box that's, you know, 18 by 18 and it's got 20 panels in it. Yeah, I mean, and then maybe they're just gonna roll up like, you know, wrapping paper and you can just roll the thing out onto a wall and you've got a I've seen. That actually that it is like a, it's a, it's a flexible thing it's you know it was a, it was a like a test product R&D type deal but. I remember LG had something that they called something Wall, but they were just using it for photographs. It was like it was like a a photo frame thing, but it was it was like 2 or 3mm thick and like unbelievable resolution. Just a beautiful, beautiful picture. Like I was looking at it going, Oh my God, like beautiful. Ridiculous.

1:23:47 It's like the wallpaper, that's an LED light. It's like a big OLED LED fixture. Yeah, yeah, that's cool. I. Don't know why you want your whole wall to glow, but maybe. Well, why not? I guess cuz you can you can see it. I could see a ceiling doing it. That would make more sense, but you just walk in and staring at light seems painful. Yeah. Hey, you know, we haven't really spoken and certainly haven't spoken on a podcast about your. I know you were at LDI, I wasn't. What do you think were like a couple of the hot products at the show? That's interesting. I was only there for a short period and I had several meetings and stuff. So I I definitely walked the floor and I saw some things I didn't get, like full deep demos on some of the things that I would have liked to have seen. But the stuff that I did see that caught my eye was #1 Clay. Paki has a new, I think they call it. I'm trying to remember the name.

1:24:42 It's MIDI Bee or something like that, but it's a it's like a miniature profile moving head or a spot. I don't think it has shutters, but it's a mini. It's a mini spot, but it's literally, it weighs 18 lbs and it's like not the size of your laptop. It's itty bitty, but it was it was bright and it was actually a good quality of light and had some interesting features behind it. I have no idea what the price point is, but that was interesting. Obviously that's not going to have a lot of place other than maybe some scenic things in like a rock'n'roll environment. I don't. Know. Certainly that that's. A trend right now, that's a trend right now the smaller size and and I kept hearing this thing of of like lumens per pound or something Oh.

1:25:25 That's an interesting metric. Lightweight is the other big one right now. Like you said, that one's 18 lbs and that Mac one is like what is it 10 lbs or something? Yeah, something like that. That obviously was a hit of the show, you know for for good reason. It's a really good looking fixture and it it definitely is going to take the place of what the Mac or used to, you know, it's got the, for now lens on it. It looks really good, the lights good, it's pretty bright. Yeah, it's got. Different configurations, A couple. Grand. Yeah, yeah, I think dealer is 15 or 1600 or something like that. Yeah, sorry, it's cheap. But you know, it's those were interesting. Another one that I thought was interesting that I tried to find but I didn't actually see in person. Corey Easterbrook told me that there are a couple of fixtures out now that have electronic Frost, that there's some Acme fixtures that have it and Chavez fixtures that have it and it's the same tech behind like the window frost. Where you turn it on and they.

1:26:23 Say like transparent or whatever. Yeah. So it's like a variable frost that's electronically controlled rather than having a disk or anything. So I really wanted to see that, but it was like by the time I learned that, it was, you know, hour 27 of the of the last day, so. I don't even want to have to look into that. Yeah, I know it's a pretty interesting idea. Whether or not it's reliable and has good image optics is another question and obviously open to opinion, but it's a cool idea and certainly could open the doors to a lot of things. Well, the good news is that technology must be coming down in cost then, because I know I looked at it one time for a conference room. And I mean, it was ridiculously expensive. It was like obscene cost, right?

1:27:08 And obviously variable frost in a fixture, we're talking about a. A piece of. Glass that might be that big or whatever, but still the. Controller is probably more expensive than the the actual diffusion part. But I mean, think of what it would do for, you know, obviously the window covering industry would be screwed because nobody would buy blinds anymore before. Or you know any of those things. Blinds, drapes, you know, whatever you call the roll down shades, you know that would go away. You don't need it. That's cool. I I didn't hear about that one. I'm gonna have to check that out. Yeah. Yeah, I'm curious to see it in person at some point, although I don't really get fixture demos cuz I don't work at a rental company anymore. So yeah, I'll have to make a point to. Do that, Yeah, we don't.

1:27:50 We don't often get to touch fixtures. They just kinda magically fly through this software of ours. So. Speaking of which I've actually, this is an interesting and unique episode that we're doing where we've got all of our sponsors on one episode. So we can't sit here and talk for an hour because it's going to then be 10 hours long or something. So Speaking of 2023 specifically this year, do you think that overall the year was better than expected, worse than expected or as expected. So a year ago you were sitting thinking what's next year going to look like? And I don't necessarily mean gear source specifically, I mean could be the used market, the used equipment market, the availability of used gear, pricing on used gear, etcetera.

1:28:40 So what do you think? Well, you know, when I think about that, I think about sort of what the craziness of 2022 was and the insanity of what was going on with supply and demand and with, you know, the shows happening at any time of year on top of each other, 27 at a time, because everybody was trying to get back from COVID. So I feel like 2023 really relaxed out of that some and the second-half of the year started to normalize and get back to sort of the typical cadence of the industry, at least from what I saw. And I think that's a good expectation for 2024 and beyond is that we will get back to a lot of those sort of more normal calendars and more normal schedules.

1:29:24 Certainly business was still good. I've heard from many people that you know they had killer years and excuse me did did some pretty amazing numbers on things in the used gear market specifically because of that normalization of supply and demand. We really saw an uptick. You know, coming out of COVID, a lot of people have the assumption that the used gear market was killing it because of the opportunity and the potential during COVID and shortly after, but. Isn't it funny how that happens though, Brad? Like, you know, people like I remember last year, even in 2021, people like, Oh my God, you're in such a perfect place. But the problem with our business or our industry, our part of the industry is that it is supply and demand and we always have those at the wrong time.

1:30:08 So we've got loads of supply and no demand which was COVID 2020 and then we've got loads of demand and no supply which was 2021. And then you know 2022 kind of was still crazy, but it normalized a little bit where we had some supply and some demand and did OK. And and then this year the demand, well, I don't know you might have been ready to say this, but the demand seemed to go down a little bit because the supply went up so much on the supplier side, on the new gear side. Yeah. Well, I I would say, I wouldn't say that it went up so much that or the demand went way down that it was like below expected levels.

1:30:49 I would say that it went down to the norm right towards what you would typically see. 20/22 was nuts. Everybody was trying to get everything because you couldn't. So the demand was, you know, through the roof. But 2023 really brought that back to reasonable levels and people were making more I'll say intentional purchases and maybe more thoughtful purchases rather than just like send money, give me light, I don't care what it is. You know it was it was more intentional and it was more methodical. We did see some prices normalize on things as well. So like, you know, the CL5 that was so crazy through all of COVID plus the DM Seven came out and that kind of killed the, the extreme pricing on CL5.

1:31:35 Yeah, now it's. 40%, it's down back. To you know 20 to 30 grand for ACL 5, which is much more where you would expect it to be rather than the 45 or whatever it was for a couple of years. Yeah, I think you know business was strong. There's a lot of potential in what things are doing, but it's more back to predictable valuations and predictable needs, which is really what you need for, you know, a healthy business and healthy growth within an industry. So your expectations for 2024 again growth drop or stay flat? I think it's going to grow on the equipment side of the industry and I think that that's driven largely by two things. So number one is again with that sort of thoughtful purchasing plan that people are going to make more investments rather than just grab whatever they possibly can because they have to have it.

1:32:28 So you're going to see more people going back more to, you know, large volume purchases where they can or making really strategic decisions about what equipment they're purchasing. But with some of that on the used gear market comes with, OK, more thought into when can I get used, when does it make sense to get used, not just I have to buy used because I can't get new. Yeah, Yeah, exactly. So I think that's going to come. It's funny you say that. Because I've spoken to lots of manufacturers who say one of the cool things that COVID did is it made people plan more. Which means that manufacturers didn't necessarily have to just have all the inventory in the world all the time, just in case somebody got a show, right?

1:33:08 Like there were actually forecasts being delivered and things like that. Like, hey, we're gonna need this many in Q1, this many in Q2. And of course, there's always the emergency buy or whatever, but for the most part it got much more organized over the past couple of years as a result. Yeah, we'll see if that sticks. You know, that's always the if you if you let people off the leash, then they they will go back to old bad habits. So it's true. Hopefully it stays that way. But yeah, it's certainly a perk. So give me, give me a a big 2024 prediction and and you know, pick the, pick the category, pick the the, whatever you want. But it could be a product trend to market trend, a Beatles reunion tour, you know, give me a big prediction. Sure.

1:33:55 Well, I'm a lighting guy, so I'll, I'll keep it in the lighting world because that's what I actually know about and don't just make things up with. But I think what we've seen since the the launch of really the Stelos. But last year the success of the Cobra, the Cobra fixture from Ericsson and for anybody who doesn't know, those are both RGB laser sourced fixtures. And while there are some challenges specifically in the US around variances for those things, as I understand it, the Cobra just was an absolute killer deal for Airton and one of the best selling fixtures they've ever had even with the challenges within the US. So I think that trend is going to start to push into other manufacturers. You know, we've seen the IP trend that's happened over the last three or four years that basically everybody has a complete IP portfolio.

1:34:47 But I think we're now starting to see the viability and the market adoption for the next thing past LED and I I think it's going to be lasers like it. It has to be in in my mind at least. Yeah. And you know, I think maybe our industry needs to rally together a little bit, just like with COVID, when Strickland always said the problem is instead of a big battleship, we're pulling up to Congress in a bunch of 100 canoes, right. And it's the same problem when you get to something like this variance, you know, hey, we want to, we want to somehow lobby the FDA to get rid of this crazy variance in in the US that shouldn't be there. Because it's not like we're, you know, taking lasers that are cutting people's arms off and stuff and aiming them at people like weapons.

1:35:32 You know, these are safe fixtures. They're they're no less safe than any of the other lighting fixtures that we're selling. And in some cases, a Sharpie is more dangerous than any of the laser fixtures out there. Well, and until this became a thing, it was never a need to have that conversation, right? So it's not a surprise that it never happened because there was no, no reason, right? Laser projectors aren't pointing at people. They're pointing at a wall, or at a screen, or. You certainly could. There's no law against it. Yeah, yeah. You know, that's. That's true. You can scan an an audience with A25K laser or a laser video projector and nobody goes to jail. Nobody gets fined. You know so. Yeah, it's. It's. Goofy, and it needs to be fixed. But I think it's going to take more than just Clay Paki, more than just Ayrton. It's going to take the industry sort of getting together and maybe hiring a lobbyist and and getting in there and and getting it changed.

1:36:25 It's probably something that nobody's looking at because nobody screamed loud enough, right? Yeah. Well, as I understand it today, to buy any of those fixtures in the US now, so originally it was like you couldn't buy them, you had to, you had to demo them and then there had to be a factory representative or whatever. So they got around those things. But now as I understand it, to purchase you have to have gone through the certification to hold a variance and you have to take a safety test kind of thing. So it's like a permit basically. And then in order to have a legal transaction as a seller, you have to show proof that the buyer has those things. How you report those, I don't know who you know who's who's overseeing that, but. Yeah.

1:37:06 Well, and the challenge for these manufacturers is, yeah, they can sell them in Europe, but the problem is the US is more than 50% of the market for most of these companies. So you know, Europe ain't going to cut it. Like even if it's a really successful Ayrton fixture selling it in Europe to make it viable as a line of product like what Klaypaki have built. Claypacky's a smaller company and and they can probably get by having a full line like that. That Skylos thing I think is kind of cool. I don't know if it's bright enough, I haven't seen one in person, but and then they've got the mini Stelos that somebody we talked about the Stelos and the variances on a podcast recently and the Claypacky distributor from Canada sent me a message on on Facebook or something and said hey Marcel, just to clarify, yeah, in Canada we don't need variances, but for the US we have this, I think it's called a mini Stelos or something and it comes in below the the requirements.

1:38:06 So even though it's a laser fixture, you don't have to have a a variance, but I don't know how bright that is. Like I know the number used to be 4.9 milliwatts. I'm sure you don't have a 4.9 milliwatt laser in that thing, cuz that would suck. Yeah, I know. I I have no idea what it is. I mean, I've seen that that fixture, just the body of it, it's it's pretty small, it's smaller than a Sharpie. So I don't. I have no idea what it does in terms of power or features, any of that stuff. Yeah, well, that's a that's a bold prediction, I must say. I probably don't agree with you. Yeah, I think. It might be a bit premature, I think. Yeah, people are gonna start to plan for it now five years, but then look in 2025 or 2026, that's gonna be sort of the next week's step.

1:38:48 No, I think it, I think it absolutely should happen. It's a beautiful light source and I think it's got a place and, but I think they have to get around the variance first and that's gonna take a couple of years, I think potentially. So I don't know, maybe somebody's working on it and I'm going to get another correction via e-mail or something saying, you know, hey Marcel, you idiot, the variance is being dropped next week, you know? So it'll it'll be Michael Strickland's new new side project. Yeah, and so I've got a bonus question for you. Who would you like to see us bring on geezers of gear besides you or your dogs or? Right. Well, you've had so many people it's hard to keep track, but. We have a few. Have you ever had?

1:39:31 Now I'm blanking on his name. Richard. High End, Richard. Bellevue, yeah. You know what? Yeah, Richard. Bill. It's a good reminder because I've talked to Richard so many times about coming on and he was involved in some legal discussions and didn't want to come on a podcast cuz he wants to be able to speak openly and honestly and everything else. But I would think that he's through all of that now. So that's a that's a great Sarah noted. You know we gotta get, we gotta get with Richard Bellevue. He'd be an amazing guest, actually one of the smartest products. He's got so much insight to things and and was so involved in the history of how lighting became what it is today.

1:40:16 Yeah, yeah, you know, another one along that same vein, but younger and and fresher or newer in the industry or whatever you wanna call it, is Matthias from from Elation. And I've spoken with Matthias. He promises he's gonna do it. He's just, he's always busy. They keep launching frigging new fixtures over there at Elation. So yeah, yeah. Have you ever, have you ever had Yvonne on? I mean, he's a he's harder because he doesn't. He's not as strong in English as he is in French, certainly. Well, and we ended up talking half the podcast about racing. So I'm sure yeah, Yvonne is the, for those who don't know, the founder of Ayrton and huge racing fan named the company after Ayrton Senna. And so, yeah, him and I had a pleasant talk. I mean, Yvonne is very passionate about lighting and about his fixtures and stuff.

1:41:04 But yeah, he's a little hard to to pull stuff out of occasionally and his language is a bit tough. But I really enjoyed it. I actually interviewed him at LDI 4 years, five years ago. I don't know what year it was, but but he was great now. And I'll tell you what I mean, we're not a huge industry. I'm already doing do overs like I've I've got, I've had loads of people on multiple times. Chris Mcmean was on again last week and I've had Chris Mcmean on before. You know, it's it's about interesting people, interesting stories. It doesn't matter if it's somebody that we've already had. So, but we'll definitely reach out to Richard Bellevue.

1:41:44 That's a good one. Have you ever had Brad Schiller? He's with Martin, but he's a he's a similar he's he's sort of like. I know Brad really well, but I I can't remember if I've had him on. I don't think I have to be honest with you. You know, it's like Rob Koenig, who who I had last week, Metallica's LD, I just assumed I had him on before. Like I I almost remembered in my own head talking to him. And so I was talking to him and I was like, yeah, you know, we got to get so and so or so and so and he's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, like he was kind of grumpy because I I wasn't inviting him on And I'm like, holy shit, you've never been on the podcast. And he goes, no. And I'm like, OK, well let's get that booked.

1:42:26 So. That was a great. Discussion. Yeah, we, we talked last week. So anyways, Brad, I appreciate you taking a few minutes and doing this with me and I appreciate your insight. And yeah, so this will be out I think either next week or the following week, I'm not sure. Well, thanks to everybody listening and happy holidays. And if it's not holidays when you listen to this, good luck. See you, buddy. Thanks, bye. Well, hello, Rick. Rick McKinney from Main Light. Hello Marcel. How you doing buddy? I'm good. How about you? I'm alive, you know, I I somehow survived 2023, the year of the God.

1:43:14 I don't even know what to call it. Like I I can think of some really bad words, but we'll try and keep it clean 'cause it's the holiday. Season well, happy, happy New Year. Hopefully 2024 will be crazy for everybody. Yeah. No, I mean, that's sort of why we're doing this is really to get a gauge from some people, I think, who really know what the industry's doing, what it's done this past year, what it might do next year. I talk a lot about that on my podcast I had. I had John Wiseman on, well, I think it's yesterday by the time this gets posted. Or was it last week? I don't know. Anyways, it was a week ago probably or yesterday. But I had John Wiseman on episode 213 and if you don't know John, John's sort of at the top of the food chain of of account reps or account execs for for the lighting touring business and he had a a pretty good feel for things and and then George Masik from, well, actually he won't be on till next week.

1:44:14 So now I'm confused with all of my timing. But George Masik from Clay Paki, you know, I love getting people like that on the podcast and just talking to them about where they think the industry's going. Oh yeah, It's it's always good to get everybody's perspective for sure. Yeah, Well, and you guys, I mean one of the. Great reasons. One of the one of the things about Main Light that's so different than than other companies, most other companies is the majority of your business is, is dry hire rentals right Like or if not. All of your business, absolutely. Yeah, it's it's majority for sure. It's it's what we're known for. You know we've been doing dry hire strictly for 20 plus years at this point.

1:44:54 You know, it's it's been a good thing for us. And you've been there over 20? Years, right? I have been with the company for 24 years and as of November in 2023, it's based in a plenty a great place to work. Who's a tougher boss? Mike Cannon or? Itis, you know, they they both have their their, their their good their good points and and you know everybody's, you know, I get along with just about everybody that I work with. I put my nose to the grind and do what I need to do, and that always just seems to work out well for me. And I I get no Flack from nobody, from anybody in most. Yeah, I. Don't think you could pick two different bosses either, you know.

1:45:36 I'll tell you, you're absolutely right. They are definitely on different sides of the spectrum. I. I have a quick funny itis story. So I didn't know itis and you know I I came from Canada. I went straight into Martin. I worked for Martin for a number of years. Martin never did any business with itis 'cause he was always a high end shop at the time. And I left Martin and went to work for High end for a little while and Craig Burroughs took me around the Northeast to introduce me to some customers and itis was one of them. And so we decided to play golf and we're on the first tee. And you know, I just sense of humor, of course, right.

1:46:16 So, you know, I'm, I'm doing my little waggle with the driver and I go to pull the driver back. And every time I went to pull the driver back, he he gave me a little squawk, you know? Oh, yes. And I didn't. I didn't know that I just had Tourette's. And so finally I turn around and I'm like, would you shut the? Fuck. Up already like I'm trying to hit the golf ball, damn it you know, and and he's like, oh did I make noise. And I'm positive to this day, and I've never asked him, but I'm positive to this day he was messing with me and and he was doing it on purpose. There is a very good possibility of that. You know, there's nobody that was any more of a trickster than I did, for sure.

1:47:00 And I'm sure we're not done with it at this point in our lives either. It'll be back around. Oh hell yeah. Did he ever stop in to visit or anything? You know, to be honest with you, I work remotely most of the time, so if there was a stop by, I don't see it because I I work the business out of all four offices. And I see, yeah. I have no need to be in one office so he just, if he does, stop being that I haven't seen much of it. Yeah, yeah, I miss the guy. I I call him every once. In a while. I do to to yell about politics, but so what's what's your role and title in the company? I know it's all very different now that it's that it's under the Canon development Group or whatever the heck it's called, but and it's obviously grown tremendously over the past couple of years. What?

1:47:50 What? What is it you do? Well I'm the national rental manager. I've been that for about the last two years since we've expanded to to four locations. We have a location of course the the first where where I started and where the company started in Wilmington DE. Then we opened our shop in Las Vegas which was closer to to Michael and and and where he he does his business. So we opened that one next and then we opened the National shop and then just this year opened the, the Teterboro, New Jersey location. So we've got a pretty widespread, we're pretty widespread now which is kind of what I always wanted to because it's it's like it was constantly shipping to the West Coast and things like that in the past. And it was just like, gosh, it would be so nice just to have somewhere central, you know, somewhere on the West Coast where we could service these customers and it's win, win, win, win situation 100%.

1:48:48 I would assume the Vegas office like grew like a weed immediately, and probably even to. I don't know if it's your biggest office, but it's probably pretty damn close I would guess. It it's it's doing really well. You know it's we're we're we were East Coast company for the most part to start. So that's where a lot of our business, our core business was from. But of course by adding the Vegas location, all those customers that we dealt with on the West Coast, it makes it so much easier for him. So it increased exponentially. So all good. No it makes huge sense and and like you said it's closer to home for Cannon. So, so no it's good.

1:49:28 It's I've enjoyed watching the company grow and and again I love itis I I miss the guy but I'm so impressed and happy to see what Michael has done with Main Light. I think it's a great brand. I think it's a great company. I'm happy to see that all the key people are still in it. You know yourself and and and Gio and and Randy and you know, I mean the key players are still involved and that's great because it doesn't always. Yeah, Michael definitely put a breath of life back into the company for sure. There is no doubt about it. It's been it's been great since he's taken over. Yeah, so I, you know, I'm not going to keep you here all day. I I really just want to get into a few questions and I've, you know you're one of, as I said one of our key sponsors and I've asked all the other sponsors the same questions and got all kinds of answers.

1:50:19 But there's kind of a line, a thread that goes between the answers that that tells me that everybody's probably right. And so the first question or or the first series of questions I guess is regarding 2023 and this can be this can be main light. This can be your view of the industry from main light. 'S. Set of glasses, but the business overall in 2023? Better than expected, worse than expected, or just like you thought it would be. I'm going to have to say that it was pretty much as expected due to all the the, the, the weirdness that happened in 2022 and the fact that you know that we business was picking up in 2022, but you never knew when it was going to.

1:51:07 The job was going to cancel early. You know, if a tour went out the door, you know, if it were going to come back and for two weeks instead of eight, you know that was the what we were dealing with in 2022. You know, it was it was definitely, you know, less, much less of a fear in 2023, whenever we sent out a job that it wasn't going to cancel. So I'm going to say things were as expected. I was expecting things to go much better than 2022. 20/22 was good in comparison of course to 2021 but we did have that that that's still a lot of questions going on and and people still getting sick and COVID and that was canceling a lot of jobs. So that was a major part of of the 2023. Is it just knowing that stuff was coming back? Do you think as an industry we grew in in 23? I do.

1:52:01 I really I I I do just because of of I we're we're also just towards the end of the year starting to see more corporate come back more trade show stuff. So this is all important to our industry which was kind of lost for the last three years for the most that's true. So well and you know it's good, it's good to see that come back and I think 2024 is going to be even greater because because of that aspect of the business coming back but. You know what? You know one thing our industry doesn't seem to pay a lot of attention to, but I've had and again you're the the 5th sponsor now that we've talked to about this stuff, but I've had a lot of people concerned about the election year, the E word about the R word recession. Not, not concerned like tours are going to cancel or anything, but it could impact things like what you just said, the corporate stuff that's been coming back. It wouldn't take much for wars and all of these crazy geopolitical things that we've got going on in the world to sort of upset what's.

1:53:08 Happening. It certainly could. And interest rates are not fun to deal with right now, too. That's also something that we have to consider. There might not be as much purchasing next year just because of of the the interest rates that could. Help you that could play. Right. Yeah. That that, that that that could, but that that's where that's where mainly is going to help out a lot of people is whenever companies have reached their cat that's cat backs et cetera, you know we're we're going to have the equipment. Yeah exactly. So you know that's what we're we're we're here to help. So it's always I'm looking forward to 2024. Has supply chain still been an issue for you guys in 23 or or that's pretty much settled? Beginning of the year, we were definitely seeing it, but in the in the first three to four months and then the like the last six months, it's gotten a lot better in 2023 with getting the parts we need to keep the lights out working to. Yeah.

1:54:01 So yeah, it's much better the second-half of the year. That's good. So you're expecting this year more of the same or or do you think 24 is going to be wildly different? Do you think it's going to keep growing? Is it going to be flat? I think it's it's going to grow. It's going to grow a little bit, you know, there's I think there's going to be, there's going to be larger tours this year that didn't happen last year because people are are are more comfortable with it, you know. So there's I think there's going to be, there's going to be more stadium tours next year or that's bigger acts coming out. That's wild, you know. The number of stadium tours blows my mind. I talk about it all the time on my podcast. Like the fact that Mötley Crüe is doing stadiums, you know, and and the weekend and all of these acts that to me are arena acts are are out filling stadiums right now.

1:54:52 There's such an appetite for live music. There certainly is. There certainly is an appetite for it you know and that's great for our industry. Oh yeah, we we had a, we had a great run with a with a customer of ours and a comedian this past year. So you know the it's it's it's all it's business is all there. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, apparently, like if you listen to to Live Nation, it's growing. You know, like they think that there's a huge amount of of untapped potential still to grow for live events. So, you know, hey, I mean, there's gonna continue. Getting a. Shortage of equipment this year apparently, so main light is gonna capitalize on that I'm guessing. We're here to help for sure.

1:55:36 So give me, give me a big prediction. Anything you know, a a tour that might get a band getting put back together, a market trend like lights coming from outer space, I don't know. But anything? You know, maybe maybe we can get something to happen like Virgin Atlantic and Yellow to come out. You know, where we do the first show in outer space, where we build, where we build an arena in outer space and we floated out there and we have Richard Branson fly people out to it and we have like one of the most spectacular yellow, yellow shows ever. You know, that's kind of something I would like. That sounds fun. I don't know if I can take it, but. But for real, you know, I'm, I'm a big, I like the old school bands like Electric Light or I'd love to see Jeff Lynn bring it back out again.

1:56:23 And with the production, With the production, it deserves something like. That, you know, I Speaking of old school bands, I just started listening to a podcast that was recommended to me. Where the heck is it? It was. I wasn't recommended to me. I was listening to Rick Rubin talking somewhere, and Rick Rubin mentioned this podcast called A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs. It's incredible. It's it's a that sounds. Really cool. British guy named Andrew Hickey and and like every episode, like, I just listened to the episode about Hey Jude and it goes into way more than hey, Jude. But you know, I don't know that much Beatles history, you know, cuz I was never a massive Beatles fan.

1:57:08 But it's so. Interesting. Like I learned so much in a 90 minute podcast or whatever. But yeah, send me the link. I'd like to check that out. Yeah, I will. I'll send it to you for sure. So, yeah, I mean, what about product trends, anything? Do you see anything evolving, changing? Like, I'll give you one thing that I've noticed. And I wasn't at LDI, but I've paid a lot of attention to what went on at LDI. And there's this new thing where it's lumens per pound or lumens per kilogram or whatever, where lights are getting smaller and lighter, you know, like that little Mac, which I'm sure you'll have thousands of them in your inventory. Oh yeah.

1:57:49 And you know that's kind of what I was thinking is, yeah, it's it's all the product trend, you know, like the Martin Mac one and it's, it's getting as much punch as you can out of a small, out of a small fixture we have. There's a lot of large fixtures with with a lot of lumens out there right now. They've stepped it up in the LED market for sure but now we need to it's it's now the small fixture that's gonna that we that people are looking for with that punch. So I think that's gonna be an important trend for the what. About what about IP ratings like you know are, do you see us getting close to a point where people won't buy fixtures that aren't IP? You know, we're kind of in that boat where of course the majority of our inventory is being pushed in that direction because of what we do and dry hire you. You want to make sure that the equipment stays in good shape and the IP rated fixtures are the way to do it. You know it makes total sense.

1:58:45 It don't really depends on you know where you're doing your shows mostly. It it makes you so much more flexible and versatile too, because like if you have for example, let's say you're down to your last 12 lights in your shop and their IP fixtures. You can use IP fixtures indoors, but you can't use non IP fixtures. Outdoors, yeah. And that's that's kind of the the reason we we had behind whenever we decided to to jump heavier into IP in in the 2023, yeah and 2022 of course. Yeah, and now some of the stuff coming out either from Elation or even Chauvet. Certainly Ayrton IP fixtures are not as expensive as they were, like they used to be 30% more than a non IP fixture. They're not as heavy as they were, they. Used not as heavy, that's.

1:59:32 So much. Heavier. The weight is the huge thing and that's what kept us out of the IP market originally was, you know, we had a few fixtures, but my God, whenever you're putting them on the trusses to test them and things, it's just like, well, we can't have too many of these. But with the weights coming down, that's probably the most important part in my opinion, was the fact that we were able to get the weights down. Do you have any role in the selection of equipment like is it by? Committee. Is there? Are you part of a committee that determines? Essentially, yes. You know, we we get, we get requests all the time for stuff that we don't have and we keep we keep a list of of the items that people are asking for. And as that list grows, we look at that list seriously as as what to consider for our next purchase. Yeah, yeah, that makes.

2:00:25 Sense. So I I'm big part of of of what we purchase in the future just based on requests. Yeah, yeah. Good. You live in Delaware still. I live in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. I live just S southwest of Lancaster, PA Cool. Yeah, the farm. Do you? Do you have to travel to the shops an awful lot? I go into the Delaware office once a month in New Jersey office every other month. Nashville 2 or 3 * 4 * a year. In Vegas, two or three times a year. Yeah, that makes. Sense mostly work here remotely from home. Well, you guys have such a great team. I mean, it's not like Nashville needs you there or whatever, right? Like it's.

2:01:10 Nice it's all about. It's all about having putting the right people in place and making sure that the job gets done on all levels, which is what Main Light does. So I'm happy to to be working for such a great company. It is a great company and I'm, I'm, I'm happy that they're one of our sponsors, because when they're not our sponsor anymore, then I'll just talk shit about Canon and I'll say Main Light's a shitty company. They used to be good. I remember when they were good, but they're not going anymore. So a bonus, bonus question for you. And I don't know if you've ever heard our podcast, but we get a We get lighting designers on front of house engineers, managers, production managers, tour managers, company owners, account execs, all kinds of people.

2:01:53 Anyone you'd like to see us bring onto the podcast? Have you ever had Mike Finnicaro on? I don't believe you have. Have you? No. He would be great. He's a he's a good. He's a good guy. Great personality, good person to talk to. I would recommend Mike Finn Finnicaro. The only reason I know Mike Finn is is through Cosmo posting thousands of pictures of him and Mike and. He's a great guy. If you could do me a favor and just shoot me back an e-mail with his e-mail address, that would be super helpful and we'll reach out to him and see if he's interested in jumping on that would. Be really? Absolutely. Thanks. Thanks for that suggestion. Well, happy New Year and thanks for taking the time to do this. We appreciate you jumping in and doing it and we appreciate main Light very much and. Happy New Year and thank you.

2:02:39 All right my friend. See ya. All right, Marcel. Well, we appreciate it. Take care. Thanks man all. Right. Bye.