Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
NWA Founders is a voice for Founders, Owners, and Builders driving growth in Northwest Arkansas, and is hosted by Cameron Clark and Nick Beyer.
'NWA Founders' is a voice for Founders, Owners, and Builders driving growth in Northwest Arkansas, and is hosted by Cameron Clark and Nick Beyer.
To recommend a guest or ask questions, reach out at nwafounders@gmail.com and follow us on YouTube and LinkedIn for video content.
[00:00:00] Cameron Magee: When we got the call from the White House, it's a surreal moment because 73 hours ago you weren't planning to be there to get called for them to say, Hey, we need you to run sound. Come do your craft. That's such an a and like I'm a sound guy, he's about to stand on my stage in front of my drape and talk through my equipment.
It's all gonna work. Like I wasn't nervous. Like it's all gonna work. I can't believe we're here. This is such an honor.
[00:00:34] Cameron Clark: So we just walked through your warehouse, Cameron, um, which was amazing, seeing all the different equipment, seeing what was going on. Um, one of the things you said as we were walking through was, we're kinda like a fire station. Firefighters ready to go all in action. Kind of as we're going in. I, I thought that was something really cool.
Maybe we could talk about to start so people could understand like the culture of the business, what you're doing every day. What [00:01:00] is AVO three?
Yeah,
[00:01:01] Cameron Magee: yeah. AVOD three. We're an event production company. Yeah. So we do events and most events plan about 90 days notice. But, um, what changed that culture for us was the day we got a call from the White House.
Mm.
[00:01:13] Cameron Magee: And they only to plan things with 72 hours notice. Wow. And so we kind of learned that day. We don't, we don't need to kind of plan on having 90 days. We need to be ready that like a firehouse, you know, when the phone rings, we can go.
Yeah. Wow.
[00:01:26] Cameron Clark: And so, yeah, talk about like, what all do you do? Um, and then I wanna kind of come to the beginning first, but like, what's the, give the full circle of what the, what the business is?
[00:01:36] Cameron Magee: Yeah. I'll just, yeah. I'll cover the business real quick and then I want to talk stories like, um,
[00:01:39] Cameron Clark: yeah, yeah,
[00:01:39] Cameron Magee: yeah. The business, again, we're a, an event production company, and so some people will call it like an AV company. Mm-hmm. I would say AV l lighting, you know, audio, video and lighting. But pretty much any event that you're at, if it's more than a hundred people, there's a crew in the back of the room.
Mm.
[00:01:55] Cameron Magee: And we're that crew. And most events that you're at, the equipment that you [00:02:00] see, a lot of people may think, oh, the venue owns this equipment, or the hotels, this equipment, but they, they probably don't.
Mm-hmm.
[00:02:05] Cameron Magee: Most event spaces, you, you rent the space and it's four walls and carpet.
Yeah.
[00:02:09] Cameron Magee: And so then the event planner, uh, then they've rented the space.
Maybe they've called the caterer or something, but then they're calling us to say, Hey, set up the stage, set up the lights, bring the microphones, bring cameras. We need this streamed. Yeah. We need this recorded. We're gonna have a panel, we're gonna have a keynote speaker. And they have specific.
Requirements in their contract. They're a, they're an author. We need to make sure they're really well taken care of. We, you know, we want a sizzle reel captured at this event. We want, we've got eight breakouts next tomorrow, the next day that are gonna run for two days. 'cause it's a national conference.
All the av Yeah. Um, whether that's here in northwest Arkansas where we started my hometown or national conferences from, you know, Vegas to Orlando, to DC to Seattle, like anywhere. Um, if it's a, if it's their biggest day of the year, they wanna make sure that the AV works. Yeah.
[00:02:56] Cameron Clark: Wow. High stakes.
[00:02:57] Cameron Magee: It is, yeah.
It's an honor, honestly,
[00:02:59] Cameron Clark: and, [00:03:00] and a lot very manual. It's not like, no matter how good the tech is, it's like people have to be there. Yes. Show up on time. Make it happen.
[00:03:07] Cameron Magee: Yeah. And that's why I love it like that. I actually love how service-based it is and, and, um, a big follower of AI and trying to stay on top of technology constantly.
Um, we use all sorts of digital tools and stuff, but at the end of the day, um, backstage with the CEO. Backstage with an author, backstage with a musical guest. Backstage with the president. Anyone? Yeah. It's who's putting the microphone? Who's clipping a microphone on them? Who's handing a bottle of water?
Yeah. Who's saying you're gonna do great? You know, who, who was there for a 14 hour day last night to like vacuum the carpet on stage? One more time. Like, I love serving and I, I think my whole life is about serving. I believe I'm here to serve. That's one of, that's our first core value to odd three is here to serve.
And so I love how manual it is. And, um, I think the hospitality industry has kind of forgotten that they're the hospitality industry. Yeah. They've forgotten that we're supposed to be here to serve. [00:04:00] And everyone at AVO three is super passionate about that.
[00:04:03] Cameron Clark: Yeah.
[00:04:03] Cameron Magee: There's no
[00:04:04] Cameron Clark: quick, easy button. You don't like become a 14 year overnight success.
It's like,
[00:04:10] Cameron Magee: I mean, it's a lot of small events and doing a great job. Yeah. And, um, yeah, there's no easy button in the industry either. When, when event planners say like, oh, we'll just use the in-house AV team at this hotel. 'cause it sounds easier that that usually doesn't go well. You know? Yeah. Or if it's, you know, it may sound easier to say, well the conference is in Atlanta this year and it was in Salt Lake last year, so we'll just hire a local company in Atlanta.
That sounds easier. Yeah. But all the nuances of last year and your COO, she likes to have a walkup song and she loves Michael Jackson, but it can't be pretty young thing. Like all these little like nuances of your event that you've learned. The culture of Uhhuh for Walmart, it's like never say employee, always say associate.
All these little nuances. What, even saying the VOG from the front of house, like, you know, please take your seats. You know, we don't say associates, please take your seats. You know, all those little brand nuances. It seems easier to, [00:05:00] to hire the local company in each city. Yeah. But what savvy event planners have learned is no, you need to find a team and then if you, as an event planner being flown all over the country, you bring that core event and we still hire local camera operators.
Yeah.
[00:05:12] Cameron Magee: We still support the local economy where we are, but. The core team traveling is, there's, there is no shortcut in like, quality event production.
[00:05:19] Cameron Clark: Yeah. Uh, well let's talk about the beginning. So you grew up in Bentonville, um, like a true Bentonville guy. Bentonville High School. Yeah. Yeah. Well, K through 12.
Yeah. Yeah. Wow, wow. Um, which, you know, today is, feels like an exception.
[00:05:32] Cameron Magee: It's weird.
[00:05:33] Cameron Clark: Um, and then where did the interest in entrepreneurship or, or audio video, like where did
[00:05:39] Cameron Magee: that come in? Yeah, I love, I'm, I'm a storyteller. I just love these stories. Like, yeah. I love, um, the, those early years I was 12. Um, and I have friends that still don't know what they wanna do when they grow up.
You know, I'm 35 now, but I found out at 12 what I wanted to do. We, I was a computer nerd and was [00:06:00] super, I mean, really nerdy, like khaki pants tucked in, button down shirt was probably wearing basically this, you know, in sixth grade. Had a computer class, fell in love with it. Um, wandered up to the sound booth at my church in First, first Baptist Church in downtown Bentonville, Uhhuh.
And my, we'd just been there for my whole life. Like my parents, there's just was church. We were there Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night and was just like, do you guys have computers up here? You know, just like a 12-year-old kid. Just a nerd, you know? And there was a guy there who took me under his wing, incredible mentor who said, sure kid, why don't you sit right here and, um, lemme show you the soundboard.
It's not exactly a computer, but let me show you this.
Hmm.
[00:06:37] Cameron Magee: And just, just in the most beautiful, like mentorship, discipleship, just. He was like 21, you know?
Yeah. And I
[00:06:45] Cameron Magee: was 12, but just said like, sure. Like you can, why don't you come early next Sunday? Like, we've gotta get all the choir mics ready to go, you know, like, come up here.
Wow. And just ignited in me like, wow, I love this. Yeah. I love [00:07:00] this. Um, and so, yeah, I started at my church and then my parents are not entrepreneurial. My, there's no one in my family that's ever started a business. I didn't know, I still don't think I can spell entrepreneurial. I, I'm just not, I'm not like a small business family background.
Yeah. Um, uh, one of y'all's episodes I was listening to, it's like, oh, my whole family's entrepreneurial. It's like, that's great. You know, that's not me. My dad's worked at the same bank for 35 years, like Uhhuh, but I wanted to do production all the time. Mm-hmm. Like, I was at church Sunday morning and Sunday night, Wednesday night, you know, Friday night wedding, Saturday women's retreat, summer camp, every mission trip.
You know, I. I still wanted to do more and I just fell in love with it. And so I remember at at school, like that year, like I. I broke into the sound booth in the auditorium because the sound was so bad at this like school assembly we were having. I like got up from my chair and like climbed through the window to get in the booth at no way at the school.
And like was fixing the EQ and the assistant principal like threw the door open. His name was Mr. Hutchin. [00:08:00] He is like Mr. McGee. And I was like, just like, gimme 30 seconds, fixed the sound. And he was like, how'd you do that? You know? And I was like, what? I mean it sounded bad, right? And he's like, it's always sounded bad.
Yeah. And I was like, it doesn't have to.
Yeah.
[00:08:13] Cameron Magee: You know? And so then I started getting outta class all the time. 'cause he is like, Hey, we got a guest speaker for the eighth graders. Can you come do the thing you did with the mic again and. And, uh, so it started kind of helping at school. Like that started, um, going to the school play and just barring a camera from church, gonna the school play recording it just for practice, basically.
Yeah. Like, I wanna get good at running camera.
Yeah.
[00:08:33] Cameron Magee: But then, you know, parents would be like, Hey, what are you doing? And I was like, well, I'm recording it. And they're like, well, can I get like a copy?
Yeah.
[00:08:39] Cameron Magee: And I was like, oh, okay. Yeah. I'll, I'll just burn you an extra DVD outta my computer next weekend at home.
Like my tower computer. One at a time. Yeah. Well I, they're like, I'll give you 15 bucks. So then all of a sudden I was selling like 50 DVDs to all the parents.
[00:08:52] Cameron Clark: Yeah.
[00:08:52] Cameron Magee: And I, I remember I made $600 the first time I like set up a little sign by. The door was like DVDs, $15. I made $600 and [00:09:00] I was 13. Wow. And so that's like a billion bucks.
Yeah. Yeah. Uh, and, and just, you know, just serving like that. Um, and so I think I accidentally became entrepreneurial because I was so passionate about production. I was serving around the clock at church, wanted to do more. But in Bentonville, Arkansas in 2002 as a 12-year-old, there is nowhere to get a job.
Yeah. Doing production. And so my parents were like, okay, when you grow up, you could get a job doing this in like LA or New York. And I was like, but I wanna live here live. And so I was kind of realizing early, like there is a need for production. Again, the assistant principal's, like the microphones just always sound about, it's like it doesn't have to, like there's a need for production Yeah.
People. But you have to make, you have to make it. Mm-hmm.
You
[00:09:44] Cameron Magee: have to like create, you have to show people that it can be better. He, he didn't know that it could be better. Yeah. He, and like every movie, like the microphone always feeds back in movies. It's like, why does it do that? Yeah. Uh, but it, people just assume production has to be bad.
[00:09:55] Cameron Clark: Yeah. But
[00:09:55] Cameron Magee: it doesn't. Um, but you have to, you have to, I had to kind of [00:10:00] make that, um, and so yeah, just, I just became entrepreneurial. I just started shooting more videos and. Um, recording more stuff and running the sound at stuff. And, uh, high school like, um, was like the, um, the, the candy machine, like the vending machines didn't have good snacks anymore.
So I went to Sam's Club and put some like Skittles in my backpack and just started selling Skittles for a dollar.
Yeah. You
[00:10:23] Cameron Magee: know, and got in, almost got in trouble quite a bit for that. But just, just, I love seeing like a need and I think that's all entrepreneurship is in all small businesses is like, see a need, fill the need.
Mm-hmm. And so like, there, there's no good candy, so it's like I'll sell candy.
Yeah.
[00:10:35] Cameron Magee: Um, I've just always been that way, but no one else in my family has kind of ran with it like that because it's scary and it's really hard. Yeah. And because their passions there were full-time jobs. Mm-hmm. But my passion in this town, there just isn't.
So I had to create it for myself Yeah. And
[00:10:52] Cameron Clark: figure it out. Was that ever like, producing movies or anything like that? Was that ever a potential route there, um, for you? I [00:11:00] mean,
[00:11:00] Cameron Magee: I'm not passionate about, um. Film or movies as much. Yeah. Um, some of my friends were, and they do that now. Yeah. And that's awesome.
They live out west and do that. But I like, I'm just a little more like, I don't know, hometown or down to earth or just like, I like serving. I'm not really in it for the art. I'm in it for like, the look on someone's face when they're nervous and it's their big day and you make it better. Yeah. And they're just like, wow, that was great.
You know?
[00:11:26] Cameron Clark: Hmm. And so talk about kind of coming outta high school. The was, when did the, the business start? Or maybe like a, the, you know, first iteration of the business that was like, kind of led to what's, what is of odd three now?
Yeah,
[00:11:40] Cameron Magee: so I, my senior year I got in a little bit of a, a tough spot with my dad 'cause I was like, I'm not going to college.
You know, like, I'm just gonna do this. Uh, my senior year of high school made 18 grand. Wow. Doing production, just running around town.
[00:11:53] Nick Beyer: That's a, that was when, what, when was that? I was a senior in 2008. 2008? Yeah.
[00:11:57] Cameron Magee: Wow. And again, I was 18. That's a billion [00:12:00] dollars. That's not, that's so much money when you're 18.
Like I didn't know what to do with it all. I would Did you own any equipment
[00:12:05] Nick Beyer: back then? I,
[00:12:05] Cameron Magee: all of it went to equipment. I would just, like, I would finish a job. I would pay for the expenses and I would like buy a nicer tripod, you know, and I'd buy a microphone. I would just, it was all equipment. Um, but I remember I made 18 grand.
I told my dad, I was like, I don't need to go to college. I'm just gonna do this. Yeah. But he convinced me, he is like, get a good score on your a CT. You can go to college for free and like just, you can totally do this son, but just like, wait four more years. Mm-hmm. And I'm so glad he did. He convinced me, you know?
And so I went to this little school in, in Arkadelphia in South Arkansas called Henderson State.
Hmm.
[00:12:34] Cameron Magee: And was able to go for free, got I get a good enough a CT score to go for free and didn't plan on really continuing the business there 'cause. I'm not super smart. And so I was like, I don't think, I mean, I could fake it in high school and get like fees and graduate, but I was like, I don't think I can fake it in college.
Yeah. And so I was gonna not do production for four years, but I made it, I, I made it three weeks. I called my dad. I was like, three weeks in school. I was like, Hey, listen dad, like I'm not gonna lose my scholarship, [00:13:00] but like, there's production needs in Adelphia. And he was like, good grief. So, so I just immediately, like, I remember Washout Baptist is there and across the street mm-hmm.
And they have like a weekly like worship service. Mm-hmm. And so I found that pretty quick. Yeah. I just, I love, I just, I find my way to sound booth basically. I just remember finding like third week of school, I was like, Hey, you guys probably you need some help, you know, and just love, and they were glad to meet me, you know?
Yeah. Because it was just a bunch of music majors trying to figure out the soundboard.
Mm-hmm.
[00:13:28] Cameron Magee: And by that point, I had six years of experience. Like I was like a professional at 18, you know, and so I really felt like I made a difference for that ministry in college. Um, but yeah, I just always. Find a way to a sound booth.
Um, so yeah, I, um, I started getting a little more organized, um, still didn't have a business yet. Started buying more equipment. I bought a trailer. I bought like a full sound system as my first debt in my life. It was, uh, 29 grand. I only had nine grand, so I got a 10,000 loan from my dad, 10,000 loan from my [00:14:00] grandpa.
They're like, it's interest free if you pay it back in one year. So I was like, I gotta make 20 grand in a year. Um, and how old were you at this time? 18. Wow. Or nine? 19. I just turned 19. Okay. So this freshman year of college? Yeah. Right after freshman year. Okay. Yeah, it was crazy. Wow. Um, and it was so dumb.
I, it is crazy like entrepreneurship's all about taking risks, but I remember what gave me the confidence to, to buy that equipment was one of the worship leaders at the Christian college had said, Hey, we're probably gonna be doing some like summer camp gigs this summer. We, we could probably like, pay the, the, the group would probably pay a little bit extra for you to bring a sound system and make this sound good.
Yeah. And I was like, okay, like what would they pay? And he's like, I don't know, like 500 bucks, 900 bucks. And I was like, okay. And so I, I spent 29 grand and I did one gig with that guy. I did one gig and then it like fell through and it was crazy. You know, like I, it's funny how. I just have become confident over the years, like from trying something and not working and trying something else.
You just become resilient and you'd form perseverance like a cowboy. You know? It's just like, you just have to Yeah. And [00:15:00] um, and so I, I remember we did one gig and he is still a great friend of mine, but like, it just didn't work. Yeah. And so I immediately had to get organized. So I, I went to my college 'cause I found an old projector in some closet that they weren't using, that they had uninstalled from like, the theater.
And I was like, Hey, we should do movie nights. And like, well we have that projector but we don't have a sound system. And I was like, I got a deal for you. I've got a sound system and a trailer and for 500, 900 bucks I'll do six. And they're like, okay, yeah. Where do I sign? That seems like a good use of student activities, funds five grand.
Like
Yeah.
[00:15:31] Cameron Magee: And I remember I was, I remember like, I called my dad. I called my mom, I called my girlfriend. I was like, you, you're not gonna believe this. And so we did a bunch of movie nights. Um, we did, you know, student events and stuff like that. Um, made a bunch of money. Broke up with my first girlfriend, met my wife now Laura.
And, um, got spent every dime I had on engagement ring got got engaged. Um, 'cause she was helping me every day, you know, she would help after class, she would help me unload the trailer or [00:16:00] run the cables or tape stuff down. My best friend Matt would help me shoot video, still shooting a ton of video and making like videos for YouTube and stuff like that.
Mm. Uhhuh And so I realized like my best friend, Matt and Laura, like they're, that's my wife. That's my friend. Yeah. That's who I wanna be with. Yeah. And so I broke up with my girlfriend, started dating Laura, got engaged, spent my whole life savings on this ring. And I'm so dumb. I, I didn't, I never paid taxes before.
I dunno how taxes work. Yeah. I, I had no idea. But that year I had made so much money and, um, I didn't know like, you have to pay taxes. I, I was, I, my parents, like, just nobody had ever taught me how to be a small business owner. And so I got, I got like a notice from the government and it was like, you owe, it was like.
Three, four grand in taxes or something, which might as well have been a, a million dollars. Yeah. 'cause I just drained my life savings spit off. And so I remember I literally didn't even know who to ask. I I, 'cause my dad was like, I don't know what to do with that. Like, he, he's like, son, I get a tax refund every year.
What'd you do wrong? You must have screwed something up. And I was like, oh no. Like I don't know what to do. So I went [00:17:00] to the business building and was like knocking under, I was like, who's the accounting professor? And I was like, do you know what to do with this? And he was like, son, you need an LLC. You know, like, you need like a business.
Like do you have receipts from tro? I was like, I never keep those. And he was like, and so, yeah, I, I formed an LLC in my dorm room that day. You know, we got, we got organized. Um, and that's when like the vid three, like entity I guess was formed. Even though I'd been running around like a dous for eight or nine or 10 years, that's when I actually formed the entity was there in the dorm room.
'cause I screwed up taxes and didn't know what I was doing. Wow. And so was
[00:17:35] Nick Beyer: that 2011 ish?
[00:17:36] Cameron Magee: It was, yeah, it was 11. Okay. Yeah, that was a big year. Formed the company got married. Um. And, um, you know, then went into senior year, Lauren and I did senior year together, and I made it a race to try to make, I was just gonna be a, a high school history teacher still at this point, even doing all this production, I still had, I did not believe that this was a full-time job.
I made 18 grand my senior year of [00:18:00] high school and I set a goal, the, the starting teacher salary that year. 'cause I, my degree was gonna, I was gonna be a history teacher mm-hmm. And just do this on nights and weekends. 'cause that's the only thing I could fathom growing up in Bentonville was like, yeah, oh, I'll be a wedding videographer or I'll be like a, you know, I'll run around town 15 yard DVDs and, um, but the starting wage for a teacher in, in the state of Arkansas was 29,000.
And so I set a goal. We got married and I set a goal to her parents who were scared to death and my parents and her. I said, I'm gonna make it a race my senior year to try to make $29,000 in profit.
Yeah.
[00:18:35] Cameron Magee: And if I can do that, I'm not teaching, I'm not even gonna apply for teachers' jobs. And they, I mean, you would've thought that I just like dove off the high dial, like my parents and everybody was like 401k, like all this, all these things start health insurance started freaking out.
And I remember I walked across the stage senior year and I tipped my hat to like the parents and it had the company logo on it and they were like, oh, shoot. Did it. I was like, I was like $200 short of like a teacher salary.
Yeah. [00:19:00]
[00:19:00] Cameron Magee: But yeah, I just can't articulate enough, like a supportive partner, my spouse, my wife.
It changed everything for me of just her saying, I don't wanna cry, but just like, I believe you. I trust you. I respect you. Go for it. Um, that was everything for me. So that senior year, like her being married, barely making apartment rent every month, like still providing for her, like she was in nursing school.
[00:19:24] Cameron Clark: Yeah.
[00:19:25] Cameron Magee: Um, but providing, mm-hmm. And covering the rent and just taking it a job at a time and cashing a check and paying the rent. Her saying, like, go for it.
[00:19:34] Cameron Clark: You
[00:19:34] Cameron Magee: know?
[00:19:35] Cameron Clark: Yeah. Talk about the impact on your marriage, you know, from there till you know now, obviously,
[00:19:41] Cameron Magee: uh, of working together. Yeah. So we work together today, which everybody says is crazy.
She's in the, she's next door on a Zoom call right now. She's in that room right there on a Zoom call worrying about something. Um, but we, we worked together those first few years because that's all we knew how to do. You know, it is, this is not like a startup story. Like I, I, [00:20:00] you guys have really cool episodes of like neat people who hit all this scale and stuff like that.
And we're scaling, and I'm proud of what we formed in Arkansas, but we're not, like, we don't have investors. It's just, it's just us. You know? We don't have, like, we're not publicly traded or like anything where there's this big boom that happened, it's just the American dream. Mm-hmm. You know? Um, so she helped me those first few years, again, from rolling cables to like, she would be my second shooter if I got a wedding or she would like, you know, help me with, you know, big moments that happened, like big seasons.
Um, but when we got, we, um, I'm fast forwarding a little bit, but when we got to like three or four people, she got really scared. She's like, I can't be in charge of the accounting of like a million dollar business. And like, this thing's actually taken off. So like, I'm out. This is kind of funny. You know, you think like if it's taking off that she'd be excited to be in it.
It's taking off. And she was super spooked. She was like, I wanna remind you, I'm a nurse, like my degree, I'm an ER nurse. Why am I in charge QuickBooks? Like, I don't need to be here. And so Laura stepped aside, the furthest she'd ever stepped aside. And [00:21:00] to this day, the, that's the furthest she ever got. She just got out.
Yeah. Completely out. Yeah. We hired an office manager named Natalie. Really made the business a real business. But then over the last few years, she's been getting closer because every big decision I have, she makes it.
Hmm.
[00:21:15] Cameron Magee: You know, I go to her. And talk it out. And you know, every hire, every investment, every moment of debt, every moment of risk, insurance, legal, anything scary.
You better believe I'm gonna talk about it at 8:00 PM Yeah. And I think everybody, I think just people that are just normal employees who have normal jobs probably talk with their spouse at 8:00 PM There's something about the risk also being hers that I respect, that she should weigh in, that like, if this tanks, like that's her life savings.
If this tanks, that's like our 401k, it's our health insurance, it's how we're gonna provide for our boys and. I'm just really big on like, if it's a big decision, she deserves to make it. And so then over the past few years, it's almost gotten annoying for her to not be in some [00:22:00] of the meetings at the office.
It's just like, why don't you just come with me to work today? Yeah. Because we're gonna be talking about this big initiative and then you can help me make the decision tonight. You know?
[00:22:08] Cameron Clark: Yeah. What would you say to folks that, like you, they're, they're an entrepreneur, whether you know, man or, or woman e either way, like, Hey, maybe my spouse doesn't under, doesn't understand, or they think they don't understand the business like I.
Hey, no, you, you need to run this by them. And here's, here's why. What would you say
[00:22:26] Cameron Magee: that to them? Yeah. I, I respect that. And Laura didn't understand the business, and she still doesn't, she wouldn't, I mean, she knows this is a microphone, I guess, but she wouldn't know, you know, like the, the craft of production.
Yeah. But I think owning a business is, is really very little about the craft. Like if you're a great chef who opens a restaurant, you're probably spending like 5% of your time with food. Yeah. You know, it's like 95% payroll or whatever. Yeah. And so, in my opinion, it's important if you're the owner and it's different if you have a business partner, then you're, you've got a partner.
[00:22:56] Cameron Clark: Yeah.
[00:22:56] Cameron Magee: If you're publicly traded, you, if you have a board or something like that's more formal, but, [00:23:00] and just a good old fashioned small business that I'm the owner, I, we call her co-owner, you know? Mm-hmm. Like, because she has to understand it. She has to understand if, when we spent millions of dollars in equipment, I mean, that warehouse is huge.
Like there's tons of gear in there. It all has to be insured. There's so much risk every day mm-hmm. That we take, you know, events, outdoor events, you know, hiring contractors, subcontractors, there's massive risk
constantly. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
[00:23:27] Cameron Magee: And so I don't expect her to understand a microphone, but I, I want it, I want a second set of eyes when I'm doing stuff because I think I can be almost too visionary and kind of rose colored glasses and tunnel vision on like, well of course we need to buy this gear.
It makes for perfect sense. And I need her to be like, well, let's look at the last six months, you know, of like cash flow. And even though that makes sense, like you can't, right now, let's wait three months. And so it's really good, I think, to have that objective. And I have mentors, I have, we have a, a group that kind of like [00:24:00] cares for me, like a board, like we have all these things.
Mm-hmm. But there's nothing like asking, you know, you know, sweetheart, what do you think? You know? Yeah. And, but I, I respect so many of my friends, their spouse is like not in the business. 'cause they, they wanna be able to go home and turn it off. And that's a sacrifice that we choose to make is like, when we have date night, you know, we have to decide like, are we, are we talking about the business tonight or not?
Like yeah. When we go on vacation, it's like, are we gonna talk about the, is this a suddenly a business retreat, this vacation, or is this like a retreat from the business? You know? Mm-hmm. So it's, it's a sacrifice mostly for her. Um, but um, yeah, I'm pretty passionate about it after we've tried it. Yeah.
Let's go back to the beginning le
[00:24:36] Nick Beyer: well let's talk about risk a little bit because I think you've hit on that we've pulled multiple threads there. So like, and it doesn't sound like you came from a family that risk was common in
[00:24:48] Cameron Magee: very risk averse. I
[00:24:48] Nick Beyer: think there's probably a lot of listeners who are, are in that same, they they've thought about business ideas.
I know for me, starting a business, I, I grew up in a family that was risk averse. So how, maybe talk us through [00:25:00] your journey of learning how to take risks. And what you've learned about that and how you evaluate risks today. It sounds like Laura's a huge part of that, but just kind of talk us through some of that.
[00:25:09] Cameron Magee: Yeah. There's no, there's no, um, I mean, you have to take risks. There's just no way to avoid it. And, um, uh, I've made so many mistakes. We couldn't write 'em all down, like the amount of mistakes. And so I think, I think, um, people, you know, think like, oh, you must have a ton of, um, of confidence to take risk. And it does take confidence to take risks, but I, I don't have confidence because I've, I've got a great track record.
I've got confidence because I've screwed up so much and we've persevered in light of it. Mm-hmm. And so I think in a weird way, um, I'm more confident because I've got so many scars of screw ups. And I think that's kind of weird to say out loud, just hearing myself say that. But I am confident because of a, of a function of perseverance that's been formed.
Um, we're an event company like COVID was insane, [00:26:00] but we, we persevered through COVID. By the grace of God, we persevered through COVID. And so I'm, I'm pretty confident now. I, I, I just think like, um, one of my, one of my favorite authors, Dan Sullivan, he talks about the four C's. And if you sign up to take, if you sign up to run like a half marathon, which I've never done, I don't, I'm not an athlete if you can't tell by looking at me, I'm not a playing, but yeah, I don't work out.
But the, the four C's, you know, first, first you have to make a commitment. And I think a lot of people say, well, when I have the courage to make the commitment, but you have to sign up to run a half marathon. You have to say, I'm doing this. You sign up, you tell your friends, I'm running a half marathon.
Once you have the commitment, you're immediately faced with like, oh no. Like this is gonna take a lot of courage. This is gonna take a lot of hard work. Then you gain the capabilities and the capabilities come from getting off the couch and putting in your workout. And then the fourth C is when you, when you accomplish the half marathon, now you have the confidence.
And now you say, I did that. And when you then go to [00:27:00] sign up for the whole marathon. If you kind of spell those back out, it's like, well, I know last time I had courage and I grew capabilities and so I'm confident that I did that, so I'm confident I can do this. Mm-hmm. And I think that little, like foresee lap from Dan Sullivan, I think that applies whether you win or lose.
I, I think coming off of a field like sports reference, like a football team losing a game, it's like, man, we just lost a game. We gotta play again next weekend. Oh my gosh. But you can still stop and say, what did we learn? What capabilities did we grow? What can we reflect on that's gonna make us better next time?
One of our core guys better all the time. We're, we're big on what we call growth is the goal. And you can, you can grow from winning. But I've grown from losing, I've grown from so much. Um, just getting punched in the mouth. I think that's like a Mike Tyson quote or something. Like, everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.
Like I've been punched in the mouth so much. Um, I. That's what events are.
Hmm.
[00:27:54] Cameron Magee: Of all industries, like maybe construction, but like events are just like, show up to work and get punched in the mouth, like [00:28:00] multiple times and overcome. And so I, I wanna be marked by my life. I want my two boys, five and six to see that I'm a man marked by perseverance.
I want to be, my whole family's from Texas. I love cowboy stuff. I want to get him a horse and kick, like, I want to persevere, not because I have a, we're not here because I had a golden spoon in my mouth. That loan from my dad was great, but like, you know, I'm not, we're not like funded by my parents. Like, that was like a nice launch.
But I had to pay that back and I did pay that back in 10 months. Darn it. We, we, we, we are not here because of like, um, that I was, that I was like, set up to succeed on this. Mm-hmm. I believe that I was called to this, there was a moment in my life at a, at a, at an event, at a conference where I felt like I heard from God.
I don't wanna get too spiritual, but I feel like I heard from God, you're supposed to do production and you're supposed to lead a team. And I feel like from that moment on, I've been equipped to do this, but I've not been equipped through like, just like blessings. We've been super blessed, but I've not been equipped through, I've been equipped through [00:29:00] like, basically like a workout, like your muscle tears.
And so I think that my confidence comes from the failures, honestly, of like, this didn't work at all, but getting back up, getting back in the ring and saying, well, how are we better that? Like, what did we learn yesterday? What didn't go well? What can we do better today? And so that's, I, I don't think it's like a swagger confidence of like a cocky confidence.
It's like a, well, if we did that, we could probably handle this. Mm-hmm. And, and that works really well
[00:29:26] Nick Beyer: in events. Yeah. So let's, let's bring us back to inception here. So 2011, you're senior in college. Yep. You just married Laura? Mm-hmm. So y'all are married, are you both seniors? Kind of same senior year together.
Okay. Doing senior year together. Yep. The goal is to make 29 grand. Yep. You, you did take out debt, you took out Yep. 29 grand worth of debt. Yep. So just kind of walk us through how that year looked for you looked in the business. Yeah. You have the LLC set up, like what does the first year look like? Yeah. I had to profit
[00:29:56] Cameron Magee: 29 grand for my goal, and so our revenue had to be greater than profit.
[00:30:00] And I had done 20 grand in debt. I had nine grand and then I got 10 from dad and 10 from grandpa. So I had to get that debt outta there. Um, which I don't wanna get into counting. It's more like a balance sheet transaction. But the p and l had to show 29 grand in profit. And I think that's when I, I turned from being, again, when I was like a kid when I was 12, 15, 18, I was opportunistic, like selling candy for a dollar outta my backpack.
Um, but I think that college at that point was about do I have the courage and the, the guts to sell? I think that's, you know, a lot of people don't talk about that. Like the CEO of every company is the chief salesperson.
Mm-hmm.
[00:30:39] Cameron Magee: You know, the, an entrepreneur has to be passionate enough about their craft to believe in enough to sell.
And sales same deal is like getting punched in the mouth nine times to get one. And so that year I realized like stuff can certainly come to me, but my entire life has not been, at that point, had not been production coming to me. Like I didn't have a website. Mm-hmm. It was [00:31:00] like, I need to go pitch this.
Mm-hmm. So I pitched the movie nights to my college. They loved that. I pitched, um, it was funny, it was doing movie nights and they were working and I was back up here in town. It was four hours from college. 'cause I've been freelancing for a bigger production company at the time. So I would freelance as a camera op.
That's like the most easy thing for them to like trust. Like, okay, we could put somebody on camera. We've got our staff guy on the audio. We've got our staff girl on the lighting, but like the camera op, that can be a freelancer. So I was freelancing for a bigger production company up here, and I got a call from the Dean of students at my college, which is like a big deal.
It's a small college, but I was like, hello? And he said, Hey, I know it's late. Did you see the flyers for this thing we're doing that's like American Idol for students? And I was like, yeah, that's tonight. I, I'm in, I'm in home. I didn't make it. He said, yeah, it was so bad. Um, like, we actually are gonna cancel it.
It is like a six week event. But like, I don't think we realized like nobody knows how to run this soundboard in the student union and like, this is like karaoke and we have all these [00:32:00] songs and it needs, somebody told me you have like a trailer full of speakers, I guess. And I was like, yes. And he was like, could you like the next six weeks, can I just, like, how big of a check do I have to write for this event to not be an embarrassment?
And I was like, well, it'd be $6,300. I just like made up a number. And he's like, okay, great. I just, when just when you're back on campus, tomorrow come see me. I'll sign the check. Like, so it was like, okay, now we're doing this American Idol thing. Like it just. Opportunistic, things like that. I, I then got really confident.
I was like, I remember asking him, I was like, how did you just have $6,300?
Yeah.
[00:32:32] Cameron Magee: And he was like, son, like you, you're so young, you don't understand. Like, we spend a lot of money around here, you know? Yeah.
Yeah.
[00:32:37] Cameron Magee: And I, I was like, who else spends money in the college? And he is like, if you wanna start, who spends money?
The marketing department spends way more money, their budget's bigger than me. So I went up to marketing at the college and I said, what do you guys spend money on around here? And they're like, we spend so much money on postcards. And I was like, how much money do you spend on postcards? They said, we probably spend 15 grand a month on like the design, the print, the postage, the, you know, mailin postcards to high school [00:33:00] students.
Hmm.
[00:33:00] Cameron Magee: And this is, this is oh 9, 0 10, 11. And I was like, have you guys heard of YouTube? And they're like, yeah, it's kind of taken off. It's mostly like silly videos. And I was like, no, we need to make videos about the college and put them on YouTube.
Yeah.
[00:33:13] Cameron Magee: And they're like, yeah, we don't really know how we would do that.
Like, video sounds expensive. I. So I like went back to my dorm and like got a pencil out. I was like, well we could probably shoot, like, shoot for two days, edit for a week. Like went back and I said, Hey, I, I think that you should spend $3,000 on a video, but I won't do one. It has to be five, like 15 grand.
I'll turnkey one month. The postcards, I'll make five videos, we'll make one about the biology department, one about res life. And they're like, I mean if you have examples. And I was like, here's examples of videos I made at church or whatever. Like, here you go, I'll deliver on time. If I don't deliver, you don't owe me a dime.
And they're like, sounds pretty risk averse for, you know, they signed. Yeah. And so then me, my best friend Matt and my wife Laura the next week just started shooting videos. Like we just grabbed the cameras and started shooting videos in the dorms and that type of drive to be like, we've gotta make it up, we gotta pitch [00:34:00] it.
It's gotta be valuable. And I got the idea, the price point. 'cause I had been on campus at another way more expensive college and they had this big film crew shooting like a commercial. And I asked the crew like, what are you getting paid for this like 50 grand for like a 32nd spot. And I was like, that's terrible.
Like, that's not a value. That's awful. Like, and they're like, yeah, it's great. They had like 10 people. They had hair and makeup, they had all this stuff. And so that's where I had the idea of like, no, we're gonna, we're gonna do it like at a price that's valuable.
Mm.
[00:34:28] Cameron Magee: And to this day, that video, I actually showed it to my neighbor last night 'cause he was like, what were you doing in college?
And I was like, I made this video. And we, it's still on YouTube, you know, like these videos that the college used for marketing. And they were like, this is the best three grand we've ever spent. Yeah. And that's how I feel even today about, like, a lot of our projects we do, production is expensive. It costs more than three grand now.
Um, production is expensive, but when people say, Hey, the, you know, we spend all this money on the grilled chicken, we spent all this money on the flowers, we spent all this money on the ballroom, but the dollars we spent with AVID three, like [00:35:00] that was worth it. Mm-hmm. You know? And that's, I'm big on
[00:35:02] Nick Beyer: that.
[00:35:02] Cameron Magee: That's
[00:35:03] Nick Beyer: good. So your senior year ends, you hit your goal. Mm-hmm. You pack the van, y'all move back to arkin. Y'all move back to Bentonville. Kind of walk us through where a odd three really starts to kind of spin up.
[00:35:18] Cameron Magee: Yeah. Immediately. Like did, did terrible. Like it did nothing for like months. It was terrible.
I was an idiot. I thought, oh, we've been taken off. This is great. I had no idea. My entire client base was the university. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So dumb. Yeah. I don't know why I didn't see that coming. I have no idea what I'm doing. It's crazy. And, and I, I remember I sat on my couch for months. My wife was faithfully going to the emergency department every night, working a 12 hour shift, working night shift, paying her dues as a young grad, and I was sitting on the couch and I sat on the couch for about nine months.
I don't think I did hardly any gigs because the gigs up here when I went back and said, Hey, you know, can I do this gig that I did in high school, but I [00:36:00] can't just charge 15 bucks now? It was like, well, that's what this gig pays.
Yeah.
[00:36:04] Cameron Magee: When I would go back to college and say like, Hey, can I still do the movies?
They're like, well, that's like once a week. Are you gonna like, how are you gonna do mileage and where are you gonna sleep? Like you don't have free room and board here anymore. I was like, oh, well, like I, can I charge this same amount and make money? No. Can I charge more? No. Okay. Well that's, so I just had no customers.
Mm-hmm. I had no anything and I was a complete just moron. Just, I was just like, how? What was I thinking? Like this is a terrible plan and luckily my dad and her dad were not calling me being like, I told you so, but I could hear them being like, you know, you should have gotten a real job. So by March, I was like, well, this is a good run.
You know, like, I guess it better apply for those teaching jobs after all. Like, I have no idea how to run a business. And, um, I remember again, like, I don't wanna talk too much about, but faith is, is such an important part of my life. Like, I remember hitting my knees and, and really questioning like, what the heck?
Um, because again, when I was 20 at that conference, do production lead a team. My whole, I'm 22 at this point, 10 years more than half of my life [00:37:00] essentially, I've been doing production and I, I was, I've just been very natural at it. Like, it's just come very natural to me. And here I am, like I'm about to like just never do production again.
Like, I just didn't understand what was going on. And again, everybody, you know, whether you're a follow Jesus or not, like you, you can go on a walk, whatever you do to kinda like, think in prayer. For me, I feel like what I heard from the Holy Spirit was why don't you read a book on business? Because I'd never done anything with business.
Yeah. Like, and I remember just feeling so humble in that moment. 'cause I was like, I don't know what to do to make the phone ring. All I've been doing for nine months was watching like more tutorials on how to be a better production person and reading more like technical manuals. It's like, that's your plan.
You know, like it was just a very humbling moment of, if you don't think about business, why don't you pick up a book? And I hated reading like I was a B student, never read. Mm-hmm. But I went to Barnes and Noble the next day.
Hmm.
[00:37:51] Cameron Magee: And I just went to the like books and we had no money. Like we, it was really bad.
'cause I had been the provider through senior year, but then I had made no money. So we were [00:38:00] living off Laura and, and she's a young grad er nurse. They, I think they, she's making like $19 an hour or something at the time. Like they just don't pay nurses enough to say they don't pay teachers enough. And so I actually was looking for that Dave Ramsey book on money where they have like the envelope system, like the cash envelope system that a lot of our friends were doing at the time.
And next to it there was another book from Dave Ramsey and it was called Entree Leadership. And it was all, it was like, you know how to be a leader in a small business. I was like, oh, lemme get that one. I spent 18 bucks on a hardback book and read it cover to cover the next day and just did what it said.
You know, and I was needing a book on business, and that is a book on business, like how to do marketing, how to do sales. But it, it was more a book on leadership.
Mm.
[00:38:39] Cameron Magee: And from spring break, like to Memorial Day that year, we went from like, I think we need to close and I'm gonna get a teaching job to like, we have so much work, I need to hire like a summer intern.
Like, it was, it was a literal miracle of just like, turning things around and just blessing the humility of acknowledging, I have no idea what I'm doing. Maybe I should pick up a book. Mm-hmm. And do what it says. [00:39:00] I didn't have any like, reason to argue with the book. I just did exactly what the book said.
Yeah. What were some of those things? What was the Have a sales plan. Have a marketing plan. Yeah. Uh, follow up with customers, like go back to jobs that you've done and thank them. Mm-hmm. And ask them if they have another job. Ask 'em if they know three friends. I never really asked for referrals. I had just done the job and moved on.
Hmm. Yeah. It's amazing just the fundamentals of business that we still follow today that you just, you don't, I don't know. I was just so. I was such a nerd. I was such a production nerd, and I wasn't a student of business. And so it's, there was no revelation in there. It's embarrassing that like I wasn't doing those things.
Hmm.
[00:39:40] Cameron Magee: But just fundamentals of business, just doing them. Hired that summer intern, kept him on for a year after that full-time, hired another person. A year later we hired Natalie, our office manager. Felt like we went from like, you know, like three Amigos freelancers just hanging out in my spare bedroom to like a real business, you know?
Um, but yeah, almost, [00:40:00] almost closed right after college. 'cause I just, I wasn't smart about like, where are our customers? You know? And we were in, we were
[00:40:07] Cameron Clark: talking earlier the, was that the point where you were, where you really felt like, oh, we've got a business here. That's right. It's not, it's no, it's a, my hobby, I, I love it as a hobby, but like, no, this is a real business.
[00:40:20] Cameron Magee: Yep. It's funny, that's when Laura left, that's when Laura was like, this is a real business. I'm out. Like, this is scary. Yeah. Because it was like, this is real. This is not, I think. I, I, and I was happy, I was content. I've been content every year when we had four people, when we had 44 people. Like I've been content and I would've been content for it to just be me and a trailer and like run around town as kinda like a, almost like a handyman carpenter or something like, but there was something about when we had four people and that it felt like that book was all about leadership.
Mm-hmm. And it felt like I'm now responsible for these three. Yeah. And their health insurance and their rent. And it felt like a real business. It felt like people are gonna call Avid three now. They're not gonna call Cameron. They don't [00:41:00] care if that person shows up instead of Cameron. 'cause they're calling a brand.
Like mm-hmm. Um, that was a, that was a big deal. There's been multiple like, moments like that of, uh, business is more like a staircase of like, that was a step. Mm-hmm. And then there's other steps, you know, but yeah, that was a,
[00:41:13] Nick Beyer: that was a big deal. So that's like roughly 2016? Mm-hmm. Okay. Yeah. 20. Yeah. Yeah.
Basically. And that's, uh, talk business Politics said that the business was around a million dollars in revenue. Yep. That's when Laura stepped out.
[00:41:24] Cameron Magee: Yep. It was like 15, 20 15, but yeah, around that time. Yeah.
[00:41:27] Nick Beyer: Yeah. So you're hiring people.
[00:41:29] Cameron Magee: Yep.
[00:41:29] Nick Beyer: How are you? Are you, are you starting to acquire more equipment?
Yeah. Talk about, 'cause you're, I think your business is, I mean, we walked through how many square feet? The warehouse, 15,000 square foot warehouse. There's equipment everywhere. How equipment's, uh, uh, crucial part of your business. And so when to buy it, how to buy it, taking on debt to buy it. Walk us through those early years of like, what that looked like.
I'm sure that's a lot. Buying a piece of equipment now is a lot different than buying a piece of equipment when, you know, that's a [00:42:00] huge part of your profit back then.
[00:42:01] Cameron Magee: I still remember when we bought our first, um, pair of like big 85 inch TVs, you know, and, um, it was so much money and we just ordered like 25 the other day or something like that.
You know, it's just like, it's just normal now to just be like more of those, you know. Um. It's a lot. Um, we are an asset intensive business. My number one mentor that I've had for years, he reminds me that every month we do a Zoom. He's in Illinois, but we do a Zoom. And every month he reminds me, this is an asset intensive business.
Cameron, you need to act like it. You need to be a manager of assets. You need to realize depreciation is real, insurance is real. Nothing in that warehouse is as new today as it was yesterday. Like, you have to be outpacing the depreciation. Every single unit has to be making an ROI.
Mm.
[00:42:48] Cameron Magee: Like I don't have duplexes, but a lot of people have like 200 duplexes and it's like you've got ones that are great and ones that are not.
And so you, you prune.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And
[00:42:57] Cameron Magee: my dad did stock for, he just retired from the bank, but he did [00:43:00] stock investments for 35 years. And so you have to prune your stock portfolio. Mm-hmm. 'cause stocks are assets. Mm-hmm. Duplex are assets. My assets are projectors and screens. And I, I joke that I own a lot of copper.
Like it's a lot of cable. You know, it's a lot of just. Stuff, you know? Um, but yeah, early on buying was, um, a mixture of, if I had a good month, it was like, Hey, we've got an extra $2,500 I can buy an extra tripod, um, or debt. And we had a lot of debt for a long time. And that's, again, those were the years that Laura wasn't involved as much.
And the more that I got Laura involved, she was more aggressive about, you know, we don't, we don't have debt in our personal lives. We never have, we've always had a mortgage.
Mm-hmm.
[00:43:40] Cameron Magee: But we, we, um, we got, we finally got our mortgage paid off. We saved really aggressively. She runs our personal finances. She's more responsible than I'm, and she, you know, she had got our debt and so she's like, you've got so much debt on the books up here.
We've got to start, like, if you have an extra $2,500 next month, that's not another unit that's paying off the unit that [00:44:00] you've got. Mm-hmm. And, and so she was really instrumental in like getting the debt under control. Mm. And she was really instrumental in. She doesn't have a degree in accounting. That's why she left the business.
She's like, I don't know anything about accounting, but she's a smart common sense person that's just like, everybody knows, I mean, you're paying interest on this. Like, let's get this outta here. And so, yeah, it's always been a mixture of debt. Um, and, uh, we can talk about COVID in a minute, but just like that was a, that was a game changer during COVID was like, most of our industry is consumed with debt.
Most of our industry is ha like heavily leveraged.
Hmm.
[00:44:33] Cameron Magee: And, um, so that was a big deal. Um, but yeah, it's, it's always a mixture of like, reinvest the profit.
Hmm.
[00:44:39] Cameron Magee: Because Laura and I don't, we don't live like lavishly. That's another thing another mentor taught me is like, don't change your lifestyle. Just, and I wanna be that way for my kids too.
Like, I want us to be as No, and we're, we're certainly blessed, you know, like I'm, I'm not saying like we live in an apartment still. Like we have a beautiful home, we beautiful neighborhood, but we don't. We're not trying to like buy a [00:45:00] nicer car than just like a regular car. We're not trying to go on lavish vacations or just go on regular vacation.
We're not trying to, I'm a pilot, but I don't ever plan to own a jet or something. Like, I'm not trying to like go for it. I just wanna fly Cessna. Like I, I want our lifestyle to be normal so when the business has a good year, we are not like going to like, you know, a big blowout trip. Like, we're not like milking the business.
We are reinvesting that profit in the business into either debt payoff or asset investment or hires or strategic things in the business. I dunno if I've answered your question, but Yeah. That was like buying a TV early versus buying TVs now and it takes a lot of management. Yeah.
[00:45:40] Cameron Clark: And then talk on the, on the early part of the business, like, you know, your core business.
Like how quickly did you find the core business of the, the size of events you're doing? What, what type of events? And like, okay, this is, you know, this, this is where we add the most value. We, we, we, we make money on these
[00:45:59] Cameron Magee: events. Well, how [00:46:00] did that happen? Yeah. The, the story almost has two parts. Like the early days we were just here in town, now we're national, we're all over the country.
Mm-hmm. This, the past few weeks we've been in, uh, Orlando and, and Vegas. And, um, we, or d dc we were in DC last week. I, we were, sorry, I forgot. We were in DC last week, and then we, we will be in Seattle in a few months, like we go all over.
Hmm.
[00:46:19] Cameron Magee: Um, but those first, those, you know, the first half of our 14 years, not that we're just in town.
Yeah.
[00:46:23] Cameron Magee: And so I think our sweet spot was what happens in town. Mm-hmm. Yeah. You know, what happens at the Fayetteville Town Center? What happens at the Rogers Convention Center? What happens, you know, here around town on the biggest days of the year. Again, remember there was not a production company in town or I would've just worked there.
Like if you think like back to when I was 18 or 22, I would've just worked if there wasn't a production company. We're a very small market. This is Arkansas. Yeah. Um, this is not LA or New York. No one in their right mind would open a production company here. It's, it's too small the market. Um, so our sweet spot the first half of the time was just do a good job in the venues that are around [00:47:00] town.
The few like turning points on like the, you know, the staircase of success of, of progress in the business was we had an event planner who had used us in town say, Hey, we're gonna do an event just like this next month, but that one's gonna be in Washington DC Can you take the quote you just did here in town?
Can you add like six flights and a semi? And I need to see what that total will be. 'cause I just got a quote from the DC company and something tells me that it may make sense to bring you. Hmm. And um. So we quoted it and he took us to DC Wow. Um, I say the title event planner a lot 'cause that is our customer, but I want you to recognize that guy was not, his title was not event planner.
Mm-hmm. You know, like, but he was a person who planning an event. Yeah. Sometimes our clients are e executive assistant. Sometimes they're people like hosting a mm-hmm. Whatever, you know, it's, it's someone who, who puts their stake in their ground says, we're gonna host an event. You guys could host an event, you could have a founder's event.
You know, like we're hosting an event.
Like,
[00:47:55] Cameron Magee: so we went to DC and then he told another, uh, lady who does event planning [00:48:00] and she said, oh, that's interesting. I have an event in December in San Francisco. And so she had us quote that and um, I was so cocky at the time I, I, on the flight back from San Francisco, I told her, I was like, Hey, I know this was a really important event for you.
It means a lot that you, you know, you wouldn't have done it without us. You had to fly us out, you know, to do this event. 'cause it's such a big day. And I. I'm sure it cost a lot to fly us here, but you know, it means a lot that you really needed the A team on this one. And she was like, I don't know how to break it to you.
You guys saved me like 10 grand on this. You know, I was like, I was so cocky. I was so just like, we're hot stuff, you know? And she's like, no, no, you're way cheaper than the San Francisco race. And that was an eyeopening moment for me. I remember getting home from that trip and opening our website and I, our website had said, like, your hometown AV provider.
And I was like, backspace. Like I remember like taking that and I was like, national AV production, take us with you. Like, and that's when we really kind of started taking marketing more seriously and sales more seriously. And so, [00:49:00] to answer your question, what used to be the sweet spot was in town a box truck.
Like you can imagine like a Penske size truck full of gear. Yep. So it's got a microphones and speakers, projectors and screens and cameras, stages, you know, stage decks, lighting, drape, you know about a box truck worth was our sweet spot. So that's in today's prices, that's like. I dunno if it's weird to talk prices, but that's like 20 or 30 grand in av.
Mm-hmm. You know, for And
[00:49:23] Nick Beyer: is that a, that's a small event. Like how would you describe to That's two
[00:49:27] Cameron Magee: 50 per, that's a normal Northwest Arkansas event. Okay. So, like we do, they're all, they're all the time. Like, you don't realize it, but like Ledger Yeah. Downtown Bentonville where the record in downtown Pittville 21 C, the Double Tree Fayetteville Town Center.
Yeah.
[00:49:38] Cameron Magee: You don't see it 'cause you only event you see advertised is if they're like selling tickets, but like there's private events for the vendors. There's private events for Walmart. Yeah. And so, yeah, what used to be normal was, I don't know if it's weird to say 2030 or grand, but a box truck with five person crew mm-hmm.
You know, for two days an event. And it's, it's
[00:49:55] Cameron Clark: a lot of work. The person who's the, the event planner, whoever that person may be, has a target [00:50:00] on their back. This better be good, it better work like your job's on the line in a serious way. And it's like, and then also the it's reputation thing for the company too.
[00:50:10] Cameron Magee: Well I always say it's her biggest day of the year. If she has the fortune to be a full-time event planner for the organizations you worked for. Most full-time event planners only have three events a year.
[00:50:18] Cameron Clark: Yeah.
[00:50:19] Cameron Magee: So like her scorecard, like she's graded on that event and it's an impossible, like things go wrong at events.
[00:50:24] Cameron Clark: Yeah.
[00:50:24] Cameron Magee: The tent company shows up with muddy shoes and then they have to like wax. They're like, the cater is an hour later, the chickens cold. Like everything goes wrong at events.
Mm.
[00:50:33] Cameron Magee: And so people don't, the average event planner stays in the role like 18 to 20 months and then they move on.
Wow.
[00:50:38] Cameron Magee: It's like the fifth stressful job is like a air traffic controller, but like top five most stressful jobs in the country.
Event planner, they're typically paid basically an an executive assistant salary, but then they have the, the pressure that, in my opinion, the CEO the same on that day. Like, we've gotta put a good foot forward. This has gotta be right. Mm-hmm. The pressure that the CEO carries in his or her big speech is the pressure that the event planner carries in his or [00:51:00] her like event plan.
[00:51:00] Cameron Clark: Yeah.
[00:51:01] Cameron Magee: And out of the 20 things that event planner's good at, decor, floral, C, you know, all the, the invitations, everything that they're good at, like 19 outta 20 on their list is av. They don't have a clue. They have no idea. Mm-hmm. You know, the average person doesn't know they, I mean, we all know this is a microphone, but they don't know.
And so she needs, I always say her 'cause it's almost always the persona is almost always a woman. You know, like Walmart has a, um, persona for their buyer. It's like a mom of two kids, two and a half kids, whatever. Ours, it's, it's almost always a woman. She's almost always the executive assistant too. She doesn't have a clue about av.
Yeah. She's scared to death that Zoom is gonna go down.
Yeah.
[00:51:37] Cameron Magee: Um, and so when we're like, no, it's good. We're we've tied into the internet, we can show you. We'll do a test. Like, and she's just like, she's like, hugs us. You know? It's like she's so grateful that we're solving her problem. Yeah. She's so, she's probably seen it go, go wrong in meetings all the time too.
Every day it gets wrong. Yeah. And that's our business. Like, we have t-shirts that say Flawless is their production. And we, that's a promise. Like we sell, like this will be flawless. And that's insane. Yeah. But [00:52:00] that's what, that's what people buy. They're not buying microphones, they're buying insurance.
They're buying, is this event going to be flawless? Yeah. And stuff happens backstage. Like there's crazy stuff happening behind the drape. But to the attendees in the room, was this show flawless? Yes.
[00:52:12] Nick Beyer: You know, that's, and what happens if it's not?
[00:52:15] Cameron Magee: That doesn't happen very often. I, I don't wanna sound cocky, but like, it, it doesn't happen because we put good equipment, we put very good people.
We don't cut corners on that. I think hotels cut corners. Like, you know, the AV guy that says he is an AV guy is probably just like the valet a lot of times at a hotel. Mm-hmm. Um, a lot of AV companies, um, uh, overdo it on equipment. They put really complicated equipment on there. And so then if you have a junior person, they like, the stuff can go wrong 'cause you're flying a jet and you're not a jet pilot or the opposite.
They, they way, way overdue. Um, the like, uh, the people, but then the gear is like aging and dying. Like we replenish our gear all the time. Okay. Success and events is like doing a hundred thing, a hundred small things. Right. And I, I don't wanna be cocky, but [00:53:00] we do it right. We have to. Yeah. 'cause we serve Walmart, we serve the White House, we serve these big organizations that it has to be Right.
So if it's wrong behind the drape, we fix it. Yeah. And we learn from next time. So that, that's not even bad. Behind the drape. It's Right. Every time. Our old sweet spot was like local stuff. Our sweet spot now are national conferences. It's like we're gonna send a semi or two with about a 12 person crew at x and eight or wherever the conference is this year.
Those dentists move them around. You know, all these associations have these big national conferences. Mm-hmm. So that's, you know, a general session with breakouts. That's like our sweet spot today. And how many people are attending those? Usually 1200. Okay. Yeah. We, we do some as small as like five 20. Okay.
If, if it's below 500, usually, um, this sounds terrible, but they don't care about the AV as much. Yeah. There's something about if it's like 250 people, they don't care. Yeah. Um, sometimes they care. Sometimes if it's the board of directors, they care and so they'll fly us to Seattle or whatever. They'll fly us if it's like this matters, but a lot of like 200 person, you know, like the really specific [00:54:00] associations, whatever.
It's like the Texas Oil, Arkansas Dental Association. Yeah. Yeah. The real, they're just like, we'll just go with the hotel av, it's fine. That's not high stakes.
Yeah.
[00:54:08] Cameron Magee: But something about 500 people in a room makes you be like, this better be good. And something about a thousand people, you're probably bringing in a bestselling author to do the keynote, and you want that to be good.
You're paying them 50 grand or a hundred grand as a speaker's fee. So paying 120 grand for the AV doesn't seem as crazy. Mm-hmm. Um, so that's
[00:54:26] Nick Beyer: more your average event now, like. Yeah. Six figure. Yeah. Six figures. Yeah. A
[00:54:31] Cameron Magee: hundred grand, 200 grand. Yeah. You know, it's, it's 12 people for a week. Yeah, yeah. You know, and it's, it's a semi or two bunch full of gear that you're renting.
And so, yeah. You know, just imagine the average kind of convention center built out. Yeah. When you book that convention center's just carpet. So the stage is us, the lights are us, the mics are us. That's all gear we're bringing. And then the technicians, and we hire local people and, but yeah, that's, that's us.
And that's the sweet spot. Now.
[00:54:54] Cameron Clark: And talk about some of those fun moments, you know, in that, in that time period, like of behind the [00:55:00] scenes, getting ready, putting the mic on somebody, like just what, what were some of the moments that
[00:55:05] Cameron Magee: stand out that were, I'm always honored when I, when I get, um, and this, maybe this is selfish or something, but we, we all wear name tags.
I don't have mine on right now, but we're really big on, like, I want anybody backstage to be able to know your name. I don't want them to say like, Hey bud. Yeah. Or, you know, crew. You know, I want them to say, that's Jeff. Yeah. Or, or that's Sarah. And so. I think the most humbling moments to me are when A CEO or a, a celebrity guest or a musical guest, an a-level artist or somebody, um, after the show or, or backstage.
But if we've been in rehearsals for two days, if they, if they know my name, and by my, you could replace that with any crew member if they're like, Hey, Zach.
[00:55:45] Cameron Clark: Yeah,
[00:55:46] Cameron Magee: that's a big deal to me. Um, again, I don't wanna start like crying or whatever, but like, I, I am here to serve, like I'm here. We wear all black so that we disappear.
Like we are intentionally invisible. Like the whole point. If production's done really well, you don't notice it. That's why people [00:56:00] kind of take it for granted. Only remember it when it's bad. So we've designed ourselves to disappear. We hide in the back. We're in all black. The lights shine that way, not this way.
We're not on camera. We're not on stage. And so when someone remembers our name, when someone, and not the brand of Odd three, but just like if they're like, Hey Zach, great job, bud. That means, or, or when they get off stage and they give us a hug and like, oh, I can't believe it. It went, you know, they loved me.
You know, they went great or. When they've changed their PowerPoint, when it's on version a hundred, you know, and then they get off stage and, and they're like, oh, it's finally over there. There's a big emotion that happens backstage and it's usually before the show. It's our job to be the adult and to like straighten the time.
Be like, you're gonna be great. You know, here's a water. Like knock 'em dead. You've been practicing, you're gonna be great. Like, that's our chance to kind of lift them up when they come off the stage at the end, it is their chance to lift us up to be like, 'cause they're alone. It's kind of weird backstage.
Like they just get off a stage in front of a thousand people, but it's immediately very lonely as a mm-hmm. As a professional speaker or co whatever. And so for us to be [00:57:00] taking the mic off and be like, giving high fives and fist bumps and like, you know, lemme get that clicker from you and you did great.
And. That's, um, 'cause a lot of times you have to like really mic 'em up, like you got tape all in their shirt. It's kind of, it's very a personal moment.
Yeah.
[00:57:12] Cameron Magee: And so for them to be like, you know, Cameron or Zach, like, thanks for everything in the last three days, man. Like, it's been great and hope to have you guys on the next one.
And we're used to the AVS being terrible and, you know, this has been completely different. And yeah, that's what means a lot to me. Um, whether, again, it doesn't matter who the celebrity is, like it, it, it, it could be somebody that you don't know as a household name, but just whoever just got off the stage at whatever tiny or big event for them to be like, Hey, thank you.
You made a difference for them to recognize that. It's like any artist who says like, you know, I introduce the band and at front of house Rick's on lighting. Like, it's just, no one does that. Have you ever been at a concert where they're like, the lighting guys, no one does it. That doesn't happen. And so for them to like recognize us like that, it, it means a lot.
[00:57:56] Nick Beyer: But talk about a specific moment because you've had the president, you've had [00:58:00] President Biden, you've had. I mean, all the names you walked us through outside, there has to be a specific moment that you're like, wow, my fa Yeah. This, this was, this was a little bit surreal. Yeah.
[00:58:11] Cameron Magee: My, the president's my favorite.
Okay. That's an
[00:58:12] Nick Beyer: honor.
[00:58:13] Cameron Magee: And I don't care who you voted for. Yep. The office of the president, like when we got the call from the White House the first time, um, it was, um, and they only have 72 hours notice, you know, it's always seven, two hours 'cause they don't know his schedule. Like something could break out and they need to move him or whatever.
And so seven, two hours out they decide, yeah, he's gonna be in Tulsa, you know, or he's gonna be in Denver. We did one in Denver, or he's gonna be in South Texas. We did one in South Texas. Like, and so it's, it's a surreal moment because 73 hours ago you weren't planning to be there. Yeah. You know, I got the call in my office and 72 hours later I'm backstage in a room a a little bit bigger than this with 20 people in it.
Wow. 'cause it's the presidential hold. And so everybody like his speech writer's back there, and I remember. I had no business being back. They [00:59:00] asked me to be back there. They say, we need you back here because if we need to like testing, we need one person from the crew. Aren't you the owner? Okay. You come back here.
Yeah. 'cause you get cleared on all these crazy security. You have a pen or whatever and they do all the security stuff pre y'all. Like it all goes to Pentagon. They set that stuff before it's, they even called you or? Well, now that we're set up, that we're vetted, but they still, they don't take it for granted.
So every crew member, 'cause they know who's available. Yeah. Every crew member gets vetted, everything gets searched. All it's all real. Like the stuff you about on tv, all the bomb dogs, the, there were guys on the roof, there were snipers, like a mile out. Like it's crazy. They shut down a mile. It's so cool. I love it.
It's an honor. There's no safer place to be. Yeah. Um, but I remember being backstage and I, that was the most room in my whole, whole career was that's the president, that's the person who just wrote the speech that he's gonna address on international television. Then just kinda like working my way around the room.
Like, who are these six guys in, like night vision goggles. Like, they had like, and they weren't there five minutes ago, like [01:00:00] when he was in another room, they weren't there. And, and when he walked into the room, I was like, who are these? There was six guys, full tactical gear helmets. They'd cut a hole in the roof in the other room.
Wow. So like, they're ready, they're ready to like, get 'em out of the, you know, like, it's crazy. You know, it's, it's so, that's such an a, and like I'm a sound guy. Yeah. You know, like, can you imagine being a chef and being called seven two hours and saying, Hey, would you mind cooking dinner for the most powerful office in, in the world?
You know, I cannot as a servant. Mm-hmm. Like you sign up to be a chef. You sign up to be a servant.
Mm.
[01:00:33] Cameron Magee: As a sound guy, I sign up to be a servant. A VA is Hebrew for service. Like a VA theory is all about service. To get called for them to say, Hey, we need you to run sound. Yeah. Come do your craft. Here and then to be backstage and be like, he's about to stand on my stage in front of my drape and talk through my equipment to the national and like it's all gonna work.
Like I wasn't nervous. Like, it's all gonna work, it's gonna be great. I can't believe we're here. This is such an honor. Like, [01:01:00] and so out he went and I tried to go back down the hallway to get to front of house and they let me down the hallway that way. And then I forgot my blazer. I was like, I can't walk out there with my blazer.
So I turned around and I guess I hadn't noticed. There was like secret service guys all the way down the hallway that didn't care when I walked this way. But when I turned around to walk the other way, they were like, who are you? And I said, I'm Cameron. I see my pen. They're like, that doesn't mean anything.
And I was like, this is the pin you gave me. And they're like, no one goes this way on this hallway. And I was like, I went this way on this hallway an hour ago. They said, not right now. You don't. I was like, uh, I need my blazer. And it's like, you don't need your blazer. I was like, I'm gonna go the other, it's just so funny.
Like it's so tight, you know? Yeah. So, but yeah, that, that was a fun. Fun story. And then I told the crew, I said, anybody can get called once. Maybe they were in a pinch, maybe their favorite vendor was booked. We don't know why we got called the first time. The honor will be if we get called a second
time.
Mm-hmm.
[01:01:46] Cameron Magee: And maybe we were called 'cause it was in Tulsa, but the second time they called and it was in Denver. And they said, you know, guys did a great job. That was crazy. We have another crazy job. It's crazy year. Hmm. Well you can, you head to Denver and so it sucks 'cause you don't know what the show is.
They [01:02:00] didn't know if it was gonna be indoor or outdoor. They didn't know if it was gonna be 70 people or 7,000 people. Wow. But can you start packing? So we packed three different versions of a show in a semi right then.
Mm-hmm
[01:02:10] Cameron Magee: And started Dr. I mean I had spent 30 grand in like an hour.
[01:02:13] Nick Beyer: You know you don't own the semi, you're just renting one, I assume.
Yeah, exactly. And you're like, I could pack this whole semi and they could call me back and say, Hey, that's right. Okay.
[01:02:20] Cameron Magee: Because you, they have
[01:02:21] Nick Beyer: to get three
[01:02:21] Cameron Magee: bids '
[01:02:22] Nick Beyer: cause it's our
[01:02:22] Cameron Magee: tax dollars. They're very responsible.
Yeah.
[01:02:24] Cameron Magee: They have to get three bids. That's the other thing, it's an honor to win is it's like, okay, our pricing's good.
Like we got three bid. Like the Pentagon said yes. Like that's a big deal. Like. So it's very affirming. But yeah, there, there's crazy moments of risk like that where I've spent tens of thousands of dollars in hours and I, I remember I called my wife and I said, Hey, they called again. She's like, okay, what do you want?
Like, she started packing the bag, like, what do you want? Because I just stopped by the house and went to X and a. I was just on the next flight west, like generally west. Wow. Um, those are, those are cool moments, you
[01:02:53] Nick Beyer: know, that's not every day. That's, but that's a big honor. So we've talked through inception, some of the highlights.
Let's kind of talk through the midlife [01:03:00] of the business. So 2016, the business is starting to take off. You've got Element Studio, if you'll talk through that a little bit. Yeah. And then let's kind of transition too towards like COVID and, and some of the, and your business is in person, so let, let's kind of talk through some, some of the midlife of the business.
[01:03:17] Cameron Magee: Yeah. I've always done production, and you can call it event production or video production, but just production. And it's like, when I was a kid, I shot a lot of videos and stuff, and again, for the college, I was shooting videos and doing events both and. We got around 20 14, 15, 16 when we started to pick up a little bit.
We got kind of, I'm not good at marketing, but I guess customers don't like when you answer the phone Avo three production, um, you know, we're your go-to video production company, whatever. And then, and then they're like, oh, we, we heard you did events. And they hang up and we're like, oh, shoot. Wait. We also do events, like, they don't, like when you say, when you're like, I'm a plumber, but I'll also do your heart surgery.
Like, people don't like the word also. Yeah. Uh, and so we're like, we need to split this into two. We need to say, all we do is events and all we do is video production. Yeah. And customers are gonna like that better. So we did that for [01:04:00] four, four year, four and a half years. But ultimately what was weird is my heart's in video.
'cause I, I do like, um. Creativity like that. I like capturing. I like that that video, like I said, is still on the internet and Yeah. And getting ROI mm-hmm. For the person who paid for it, like that's a great asset for them. And events are over, you know, and so I liked video, but we, with, if we were booked to do a video shoot, they could call 10 other people.
Yeah.
[01:04:25] Cameron Magee: It's, it's, especially once the DSLR kind of kicked, 'cause around that year, like Ev DSLRs, everybody could shoot high school kids. Could. I was a high school kid. Yeah. You could shoot, you know, and so we were finding if we were booked or we were high or whatever, they didn't like, for some reason, they could get 10 other quotes.
They were gonna be fine. And, but we found if we were already triple booked for an event day and like an event planner is used to using us, we're like, we should have called us sooner. Like we're, you know, we're 10 days out and we're already booked from 90 days ago. Like, we can't do your event. They were like violently upset.
They were like, what do you mean? You can't be like, yeah, you have to be there. [01:05:00] And it's like, well, you gotta book us sooner. They're like, well, you've known about this event for nine months. Why aren't you booking the av? But it's 19th on our list, you know? Mm-hmm. Yeah. And so we were realizing that, oh, that, that's an indicator that we're making a difference.
Yeah.
[01:05:10] Cameron Magee: That's an indicator that there's not a lot of alternatives. That's an indicator that you know, that we're making a difference in her life. We're making a difference in the life of the event. Like every, everything there is making. And so we, we were running both, but events was what was scaling. Yeah.
And video was staying. I had, I had three people at one point. We had five at the video company. That was awesome. But it was, it was staying, it was just kind of the same. And I, I, again, I'm content with that. I'd be happy to run a five person business the rest of my life, but I couldn't ignore the scale that events was taking off.
Like, couldn't ignore, like we're able to hire more people. We're able to serve more event planners. Like again, Lauren and I aren't in it for like to be rich. Like our vision here, our mission here is all about serving event planners on the big state of the year is our mission and our vision is we wanna build a place we wanna work for event professionals.
Event professionals are not well taken care of. Yeah. It's amazing how often I hand a bottle [01:06:00] of water to like a local camera op and they're like, is this for me? Yeah. I'm like, you never drinking water before? It's a load in like we're sweating, like here's some water. You know? Yeah. But they're just not used to that.
Mm.
[01:06:10] Cameron Magee: And so our vision here is all about building that place that I wanna work, that event planners, the event professionals wanna work technicians. So we could not ignore that. Like the scale of AVO three was allowing us to benefit more team members' lives and benefit more event planner's lives on the biggest of the year and we felt a responsibility to grow in scale.
'cause she was mad if we were booked. Mm-hmm. It's like we need to buy some more gear, we need to hire some more people. And so that's when that really. Was taking off like 2018. Incredible. Year 2019. Incredible. Year 2019. 2020. If you know where I'm going. Like biggest start of the year ever. Yeah. The amount of revenue we did in 2019.
Um, we did the first two months of 2020. Wow. We, we were going a just so much scale. Yeah. We had done a great job for an event planner guy [01:07:00] and he had gotten promoted and went to a different agency and he was doing a, the presidential campaign for, um, Mike Bloomberg.
Wow.
[01:07:08] Cameron Magee: And the presidential campaigns, they typically do three events a day.
They do like a morning, afternoon, and night event. Mm-hmm. And um, he was like, we're good in la we're good in New York. But like that whole middle of the country though, like, we don't really have anybody there. 'cause who opens an event company in the middle of the country. It's like, so could you do like, we'll see you in Memphis.
For breakfast, Tulsa for lunch. And then like, we won't do San Antonio till in the morning, but like, can you be in San Antonio? And then like, we're gonna take a dark day. 'cause he is gotta do some, like, press things. But then we need you in Detroit. So like four events and 48 hours. Um, and we had, we freaking nailed those and I wasn't even on those.
That was the other thing. The business started to scale where it didn't have to be me. Mm. It didn't have to be me on site. And you hire people that are better than you and people that clients would trust more. Like, hi, I'm so and so and I'm gonna be your production manager. I'm leading the crew today. And they're like, you're great.
Yeah. Um, and so I didn't [01:08:00] hardly do anything on that campaign because at the same time our Walmart business was growing up. Our Walmart business started when I was in 14. I would go like, um, help like in the photography studio and I had a vendor number before I was 18. You know? Yeah. I, I've just always helped Walmart in my hometown.
It's like my Sunday school teacher worked at Walmart. Like, you know, I'd go over there and help with stuff. Yeah. Around this time and all the work we've done for Walmart, like our first gig for Walmart was like a karaoke in the parking lot for like the, for one of the buildings. And then we did like a women's cocktail hour reception thing for them one night, like, kind of like a women's empowerment thing, which is awesome.
Um, I, I, there's a whole world I didn't know anything about. I'm super passionate about. Now our team is over half women. Like I'm very passionate, especially in production. Super weird.
Hmm.
[01:08:43] Cameron Magee: Um, but some of our early events for Walmart were tiny. They were like, oh, if it's little, like we will call Cameron. But it had stopped being Cameron and it had started being Avid three and we were able to do bigger things.
And so again, they were starting to travel us nationally on some of those projects I was talking to you about. They had started to use us on [01:09:00] bigger events and so I was like, I've gotta take care of Walmart. And then there was this presidential campaign, so I had another person running that. Mm-hmm. We had multiple people running those sites.
And that was the first two months of 2020. It's a presidential campaign year. We're doing all this work.
Mm.
[01:09:13] Cameron Magee: And then, um. That Friday, the 13th of March, which is my wife's birthday, um, everything canceled. Yeah. Yeah. Like quick, like over the weekend we, we had, um, again, we had done the previous year's revenue in two months and we had that much again already signed and like deposited invoices sent for like the spring.
So we were gonna do a four x year in 2020. Wow. And, um, one X was done and we were, we had sent deposits for the two x for the spring and over the weekend people were calling me like, they're like, Hey, I'm like in the office. 'cause like, I dunno if you've seen this thing that's going on, but like, we're not having our thing in April and I just need to tell you like that deposit invoice, we're gonna stop like that.
We're gonna stop payment on the check. Like just know, like ours is canceled. I hope your other events happen, but ours is [01:10:00] out. Well, like every five minutes was like, hope your other events happen, but ours is out. And so we went that weekend. We lost, we lost everything. Everything that we had planned by Monday at lunch, the calendar was deleted.
Over the weekend. My birthday is Sunday, so hers was Friday. Mine was Sunday. By Monday the 16th of March, we had nothing scheduled.
[01:10:20] Nick Beyer: Nothing locally, nothing nationally, nationally. Nationally, nothing virtual. We were doing
[01:10:23] Cameron Magee: streaming stuff. All that canceled, all the video shoots canceled. We still element at the time.
Everything canceled in four
[01:10:28] Nick Beyer: days. And do you remember how much equipment you had? How much debt you had? Yeah, I do because we sat on the floor, which your run rate was. We had,
[01:10:37] Cameron Magee: we had a 1-year-old and we sat on the floor in his nursery and I had our finance girl, Caitlyn, she started asking Laura and I had some really hard questions that weekend.
She's like, so like, I've never asked about this, but like, do you guys owe money on your house? 'cause the bank's gonna need to know, like, do you own your house? 'cause like you're personally guaranteed on all this loans, like stuff that you don't think about when you're [01:11:00] signing it. It's like, oh, everything's up to the right, everything's fine.
Yeah. She was like, you know, like your car is like, you own those. Right. You know? 'cause like the bank needs, they're gonna need, they're gonna ask me on Monday. You know, like it was a very real, you know, she was adding up, you know, we were on payroll every two weeks. You guys probably don't think about this, but like, this is how much money we have and this is how much payroll is every two weeks.
And so that means we have about three months of, of money. And for a small business, I always give Caitlyn credit. We, we've always run our business conservatively, but Caitlyn is, who gets credit for being that conservative. Mm-hmm. Most small businesses do not have three months of expenses on hand. Mm-hmm.
They have like a week.
Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
[01:11:34] Cameron Magee: And we were blessed. We only did because we had done such a good job on those Bloomberg campaign events and Bloomberg is very wealthy. He pays his invoices. So we had just gotten paid. Yep. I hadn't spent it yet. Yep. Hadn't hired people yet. Hadn't bought new equipment.
Yeah. And trust me, the whole team was clamoring. 'cause they're like, we just did a whole year's worth of work in two months. Are you hiring people or not? So like, you have to understand as a leader, I'm like seeing the pain in their eyes of like, we need to hire people. [01:12:00] Yeah. And the equipment, when I'm seeing like, you know, we're having to spend money on cross running 'cause we can't get this gear there in time, like.
So like, I always give myself, I always kind of throw myself under the bus on like wanting to spend money and hire people. But as a leader, like you have to equip the entity, you know? But I hadn't spent it yet, hadn't hired people yet. And so Caitlin was like, we have three months of expenses. And so I walked in Monday morning.
And, and that's business or personal or both? Are you tying these together at this point? We've always kept 'em separate. Okay. She's like, we have three months, but like, we are not wealthy. Yeah. Like we have a house and two cars. Like they, they, it wouldn't have ma once we dipped into that, it's like she was just asking, 'cause like when you go bankrupt, like the bank's gonna need 'cause to pay off these loans.
Sure. Yeah. But she was talking about like the, the cash flow.
[01:12:41] Nick Beyer: Yeah. Um, and are y'all in this warehouse at this point? We're over here across the street. And y'all built that? Do you own it? Are you leasing it?
[01:12:47] Cameron Magee: We built it. We, I was a part, I was like a min minority owner. Okay. But we have a real, you know, rent payment.
Yep. You know, like there's a real lease. Um, so yeah, I walked in Monday and I remember I was gonna get the team together and I was gonna say, Hey [01:13:00] guys, we have three months of expenses. I think this is only gonna last six weeks. We're gonna be fine. Kaitlyn pulled me in the conference room before I like did the little round the morning like huddle speech and said, uh, we have six months of expenses.
And I said, oh, that's great. I can't wait to tell everybody. She said, because everyone's going to half hours today. And I was like, that's a pretty big statement. Like, you're just the accounting lady, you know? And she's like, I'm telling you, this is what we're doing. Wow. And I said, well, this is only last six weeks.
And she said, if you can prove that to me, then you can keep everybody full-time. But I, I haven't seen any crystal balls. And I was like, oh, geez, Kay. Like, talk about, I'm big on like, leadership has nothing to do with title. I was like, yes, ma'am. Like that's, that's a statement that she's not in charge of the company.
She's not the owner, but she's like, look, we're going to half hours. And I said, well, but what if it doesn't only last six weeks? She said, well, that's gonna be a great day. Then in seven weeks when everybody goes back to full-time. Yeah. And so I walked out to the team, I said, Hey everybody, this, this pandemic thing's picking up.
Everything's canceled. Um, we're going to half hours. I'm not asking everybody to work 40 hours. I'm not asking you to work full time. We're all [01:14:00] hourly. 'cause I, I love overtime, it's like events, like you work long hours and so our people get paid overtime. Mm-hmm. I'm not asking everybody to work 40 hours, I'm just saying work 20 hours, go get a job at a pharmacy or in a warehouse.
Like find something else to do. Yeah. And so that day, literally like Monday, no notice. We all went to halftime myself. I went to half pay, you know, I'm sorry, but we went to half pay and was in the business like 60 hours a week at that point, trying to clean everything up. But yeah. Uh, and so we, we did zero revenue for six months, um, from March to September.
[01:14:30] Cameron Clark: Yeah. I mean, the big, a lot of people were able to. There. Your business just didn't exist. The
[01:14:37] Cameron Magee: industry didn't exist. We pivot. Like we immediate, the literal next day we made a commercial for ourselves, talking about what's a virtual event like I can still find that video somewhere. Like, 'cause nobody knew what a virtual event was.
Mm-hmm.
[01:14:49] Cameron Magee: In-person events, we were selling streaming tickets.
Mm-hmm.
[01:14:52] Cameron Magee: But nobody knew. They're like, what's a, you mean like there's nobody at the event? Like how is it virtual? But we've been doing that for years because Walmart and other entities, like it's very normal to [01:15:00] stream. Mm-hmm. And so we were begging event planners to be like, you can totally do one of these.
Yeah. But you have to understand most events are sponsored based and sponsors like, no, we sponsor this event 'cause we wanna get together and network. So let's just postpone the event. Let's just postpone, postpone, postpone. Yeah. So for six months, it didn't matter how much we pivoted, but we're like, we can do virtual.
I think we did like one. But it was from somebody who had already paid their deposit, so they're like, you owe us. Yeah. So we didn't make any money on that.
Yeah.
[01:15:25] Cameron Magee: Um, so yeah, we, we did zero. We couldn't even shoot video because they were like, oh, we don't really want you in our plants. You know, we were doing stuff for vendors at the time.
Like, I don't name brands in town, but they're like, we don't want you in our offices. We don't want you in our plants. Like, you know, so we did zero revenue for six months. So September came and we, we laid off pretty much every, it went down to five people. We had boomed at 19, I think was our, I think we started the year with 19, went to five.
Wow. And, um, it was really, that was a big deal. Yeah. Like that was a big deal. And we had to stay that way for months. Um, and it started picking back up again. The vaccines came out, [01:16:00] people stopped arguing about masks and just put them on. Um, uh, and, uh, events started happening again. So that was like, I dunno, 21 or something.
And we, um, we started hiring people back.
[01:16:13] Cameron Clark: Did you ever think about quitting during
[01:16:14] Cameron Magee: that time? Did something different? Not one time I thought about getting a part-time job, I was like, I, I'm forklift certified. Like, you know, I was like trying to fight like, what could I do? I could go work at Chick-fil-A, maybe if they're gonna stay open.
Like I thought about what do I need to do to get through this moment? But I feel like this is what I'm supposed to do. I will do this until I'm unable. Um, I'm not building the business to sell it. A lot of my friends are big into like, acquisitions and like the buyout, you know, success story of then I got a boat or whatever.
I, I wanna build a place that we all wanna work. Like I wanna be here. Yeah. And so I, it's like e even if we only had five people, even if we never recovered, if we were just five people, I knew events would matter someday because we're tribal, we're human beings. Like we have to get together. Yeah. And so I [01:17:00] was like, no, we're gonna persevere, but it's just gonna.
[01:17:03] Nick Beyer: So what did that teach you about the business? What did that teach you about your operating expenses? What did that teach you about debt? How do you view all that differently now than you did five years ago?
[01:17:18] Cameron Magee: Yeah. Our, our industry has always had peaks and valleys. The second Saturday of May is the busiest day of the spring, you know, like May 10th if you wanna have an event.
I can't, you know, it's just, we're we're booked 10 deep and, uh, the, the 5th of July, we've never done an event ever. So the industry has always had peak, and those two days are 60 days apart. So you go from like, we need to be, it's almost like one of those whales that opens, like dislodges their jaw to take in the krill.
Like, we need to be able to consume a ton on the 10th of May. Mm. But then we need to somehow not be a whale that needs all those calories Yeah. Two months later, you know, and so COVID was like the longest, most extreme valley of a [01:18:00] peaks and valley thing that I was kind of used to.
Hmm.
[01:18:02] Cameron Magee: And, um, I mean I could, that would be like a whole other episode of just like lessons, um, from COVID, from an event guy or something like that.
I don't, I don't, it would just be so much like, yeah, we learned about Valleys. What I, one of my favorite things out of that is I had so much time to think, 'cause like events, like we're just one after the other. We'd over a hundred events a year. We're just like, we're always going. And it was the first time in years, 'cause we've been scaling so quickly that I had a moment to sit down and like pin.
I'd never written our core values. Like we didn't have 'em on the wall because I always thought that was corny when people put 'em on the wall. 'cause then you don't, you don't talk 'em, you just see 'em. I was like, I'm gonna write these down, you know? And I knew that because I said, we are going to get through this and we're gonna need to hire again.
And I, the five people that we kept, these are the people that I want to clone and replicate and we need to identify what are our five core values and so that when we scale, we don't lose our culture. And that's what we did. When, when, when it started picking up, we started hiring a person and we basically hired a person every three weeks for like two and a half years.
We went from five to 50. [01:19:00] Two and a half years because the industry was decimated and because we hang, we, we were able to, hang on 'cause the banks called everybody's loans and like most assets were seized.
Yeah.
[01:19:09] Cameron Magee: In the event world. Um, we, um, we kept, we, we, we, we kept in touch with people. We tried to like, give them like anything we could to like, keep them going.
But most people switched industries. Yeah. Um, so we, we reopened, you know, we were ready and um, and were able to say yes when people called. So they weren't really getting three bids, they were calling like 10 people. And on the 11th call they're like, oh, you're available and you can do it. You got the job.
Yeah. And so we were, I mean, it was just insane at that point. So we were exhausted going into COVID. 'cause we had been doing, you know, four x year with one fourth of the team. Then we were exhausted from COVID because it was like, every day just agonizing like, what are we gonna do? And then climbing outta COVID, it's like we're exhausted again because now we can't, we can't keep up with the work.
So I've been tired for five years, you know, it's just, it's been crazy. But. Uh, yeah, that was kind of the dip of COVID. Like [01:20:00] it's pretty rough.
[01:20:02] Nick Beyer: And what, like what about debt? Like did it change your perception or how you hold cash or like what lessons you learned from Caitlyn? I know you, you talked about her quite a bit.
Like just any, any lessons for business owners as they're thinking about those things?
[01:20:17] Cameron Magee: I'm grateful. We, we actually, as we climbed out of COVID, we, we were able to get debt free personally and professionally for the first time since, I don't know, that 2000 loan or something. Like,
wow.
[01:20:28] Cameron Magee: We, we
[01:20:29] Nick Beyer: got debt free and professionally, like can you, I think we can feel the weight of that because we're familiar now with your business, but people who aren't familiar with your industry, that's like
[01:20:40] Cameron Magee: multiple millions of dollars.
Yeah. Nobody's debt free. Yeah. Yeah. Multiple millions of dollars in equipment that we now own outright. We sold stuff, we like, got smarter about stuff like, um, but yeah, we were debt free. We're back in debt again. I'm actually proud to be back in debt and I. I could do a whole talk on deck, but I actually believe in debt.
Um, I believe in debt as a lever [01:21:00] because I believe in risks, like I was saying earlier. Mm-hmm. I believe in taking risks. And so debt is a risk. Hiring is a risk. Not hiring is a risk. I think people think like, oh, when you take on debt, you're taking a risk, but not taking on the debt is a risk. Yeah. To not have the equipment and the capacity on May 10th.
And so there's, you take risks every day. You take risks when you get in your car. Um, I take risks when I get in an airplane, but debt, I believe in using it as a lever in business. We're an asset intensive business, so in a way we, we don't have to, you don't have to do anything. It's America. But I believe we need to.
And so we're back in debt again for two major assets. Um, everything else is debt free. We wanted to buy a mobile stage, which is like a big hydraulic thing. You pull behind a truck that can like deploy. Oh, wow. Well that's, I mean, that's hundreds of thousands of dollars. Yeah. And so that is an asset that it takes you years to pay off.
You don't pay that off in six months. Yeah, sure. And then we needed to, LED has gotten so big and we, we had a lot of LED wall tiles, but the technology changes through rapidly. We needed to sell that and get a new batch.
Hmm.
[01:21:56] Cameron Magee: And when you buy LED, you wanna buy as much as you can because [01:22:00] whatever you buy, it will snap together.
But if you need to buy more tiles, they don't match.
Yeah.
[01:22:04] Cameron Magee: So like, we need to spend half a million dollars in LED. Yeah. We don't have, again, we don't have half a million dollars, so we've, we've gone back into debt for a mobile stage and some LED that I'm really proud of when we're listening to this in a year or two.
We'll be back out of debt on those things. I'm proud to say, but Awesome. Um, yeah, I, I believe in it, but it, it made me, I think I've always used debt as like, oh, we're growing, we better get some debt up into the right. We're gonna need this. To go down and to the left was like, oh, there's actual consequences here.
Like, we still owe this money and there's still, you know, it was, it was a big deal.
[01:22:35] Nick Beyer: Yeah. And I hope you don't feel like I'm hammering, hammering it with you, but it's like your business model is very different than some of the other founders that we've interviewed. You are a very asset heavy business, so I think it's just,
[01:22:44] Cameron Magee: you can hammer me all you want.
I, I'm an open book. I want, I hope this is helpful to somebody. I love consuming content like this and learning from others, and so you, I'm an open book on whatever you want to talk about. That's good. That's fine. And that's an invitation for somebody even listening. Somebody's like, Hey, I wanna ask you a follow up question, but you don't wanna say on the air.
I'd be happy to talk to 'em about it. I, I'm very [01:23:00] open. Um, I've been poured into a lot by mentors and a board that we had for a season, and like people that I look up to and stuff have, have cared for me. And I've never really felt like, um, I'm doing enough of like giving, like, the lever of like people pouring into me.
I don't feel like there's enough of that because most of my attention is here. Mm-hmm. I, I don't feel like I'm like. Getting to sit down with a mentee as much as I'm sitting down with a mentor.
And so
[01:23:24] Cameron Magee: I've started realizing that like I need to be more vocal about an invitation to, like, I'd be happy to talk with somebody about any of this stuff anytime.
So that the mentorship is not just coaching my people, it's outside the walls, but who are some of those people for you? My one that I've had for the longest is, his name's Mark. And I met him in college. I rented a camera from his online camera rental website. And when I sent back the camera, I put a note in there, I was like, Hey, this was fine, but you really should think about buying this other model 'cause this model isn't great.
And, and, um, I was so cocky and, uh, I guess it got back at his company and they're like, we don't know what to do with this note. So they like put it on his desk. He's like the owner. And so he called me, he's like, Hey, my name's [01:24:00] Mark. I'm the CEO of this. It's like a big website. And it looks like he gave us some customer feedback here.
My people didn't really know what to do this. Um, tell me about this camera you think we should buy. And uh, and we struck up a friendship. And so he's like, I, and I asked him, I said, you know, could I, could I call you back in a month and just ask you about your business? And so we've talked every month for 15 years.
Wow. Wow. Um, he's the one who lives in Illinois. Yeah, he's a, he's a good friend now and he's a pilot. And I'm a pilot, so we love to talk about that. He flies down and sees me. It's my turn to fly up and see him. I'm instrument rated now, so I'm not afraid to get in the clouds. I need to go see him. Oh, congrats.
Yeah. That's cool. Yeah, I love it.
I love it.
[01:24:35] Cameron Magee: Um,
[01:24:36] Nick Beyer: well, let's keep going on the bill. On the, yeah, on the, yeah. You wanna get kind of current. Yeah. So, so kind of talk us through where a VO three is at right now, whether it's revenue, employee size, scope of Yeah. What y'all are working on and some of the events that may be coming up that you're excited about.
[01:24:53] Cameron Magee: Yeah. So this
[01:24:53] Nick Beyer: is a humbling day to like do
[01:24:54] Cameron Magee: this interview. Like, because we, we had 51 people at one point, so if you wanna do the interview on that [01:25:00] day, it'd be like, great, we have 51 people and I bet tomorrow we have 52. But we, we are not rapidly scaling. This has been a difficult year, um, for, whether you wanna call it the economy or whatever.
Events are one of the first things that people cut. Either ho deciding to not host it or postpone it, or attendees saying, I don't want to ask my boss for this ticket right now. Um, or I can't turn in an expense receipt for this right now. And so it's been a difficult year. So we had as many as 51. And today is just very humble.
I just open book. We have 25 people, and I'm not ashamed of that, but I think on a podcast where we're talking about scale, it's like, well then we had 10 locations and now we have 20. Like there's not often that you sit somebody down, it's like, well now we have eight. Like let's do a podcast. Like, yeah, we're in a season right now where I'm learning and I'm, and I mean that by my whole life as a learning, but I'm learning we have to be able to scale.
And I, on May 10th, maybe we don't employ all those people. Maybe we don't own all that gear because we have to be able to afford July 5th. [01:26:00]
Hmm.
[01:26:00] Cameron Magee: And we're in a year of July 5th it feels like, it feels like a low year. It feels like a low time where event budgets are harder to come by. Things are tighter, more, um, you know, close to the vest.
It, it's been difficult. And so we as people have gotten promoted, like, this is a great place to like grow your career. We're really big on professional development. And so we launched people really well. People have gotten other jobs. We're like, go for it. You know? Yeah. We haven't back filled them and then we've had to shrink the company, which is awful.
And I don't wanna talk about that today 'cause it was very recent, so I'm still emotional about it. But like in a month or two I could talk about layoffs and we could talk about that. I've had to do that multiple times in our company. And I'm not ashamed of it, but it's not a skill that I plan to like, get good at, but I've gotten better at layoffs, which is not great, you know?
Yeah. Um, but we've had to scale, we've had to pull back a little bit, but I wanna be real in the air. I don't wanna like, I don't want to be fake and act like we still have 50 people. I don't want to act like that was a long time ago. Like, it's very recently we had to scale back. Walmart just did a bunch of cuts too.
Yeah. You know, like the whole town feels it right now. [01:27:00] Yep. Um, this town where, where people listening. But um, yeah, we, we've got 25 people. We're still doing roughly the volume,
[01:27:08] Nick Beyer: um, that we did last year. And by volume, is that revenue, is that a number of events? How do you, what are those metrics that you're really like dialed in on?
[01:27:17] Cameron Magee: Yeah, so, um, revenue, revenue will be down this year, but the quantity events is actually pretty similar. Um, the, um, headcount is a metric. Um, we're traveling more than ever, uh, because all of our future growth is these national events. Like pretty much any event that happens in town, we know about it. They probably know about us.
Um, and northern Arkansas, again, only needs about an eight person production company. So like, we have saturate, there are people in town that we compete with. Most of 'em are my friends.
Yeah.
[01:27:46] Cameron Magee: That, that I'm, they're smaller than us and I'm cheering them on. They come rent gear from us. Like I, I'm cheering for them.
Like, if we lose you get it, that's okay. You know, like, I love competition. Um, but our growth is more national from here. Um, so I. Um, yeah, I [01:28:00] don't, I don't really wanna share like, dollars off the p and l publicly 'cause I don't know where this goes, but somebody else to email me, I guess I'd tell them. But yeah, we do over a hundred events a year.
We have 25 people on staff. Um, we've got 25,000 square feet between the shop and the office. We own multiple millions of dollars in assets. Um, trying to think what other measurements you would like quantify without me talking about like revenue and, and profit, you know? Yeah, yeah. That works. Those are
[01:28:24] Nick Beyer: great.
Just, just scale and, and that's, that's awesome. And so how, how do you view like, number of events? Is it, we we will still do a super small event, we'll still do a super big event. Like, does that matter to you the way you're set up, the way your team operates? Like, we still do really small events
[01:28:43] Cameron Magee: and it, it doesn't make any sense.
Like it's a terrible operational model. Like everyone that I talk to, any consultants that I've ever gotten, you know, my number or whatever, like. They, they're like, what do you mean you did a six figure event on Tuesday [01:29:00] and a $3,000 event on Tuesday? Like you can't do a 3000 event. That's like what a wedding DJ charges.
Like you can't do that. You have a payroll. Like, I'm like, yeah, but they just needed two people in a van, so it should be three grand. And that doesn't make sense. But I'm very passionate. A lot of production companies, as they get bigger, they kind of, they leave like a, almost like a void in their wake. Like there's a production BI followed for years that I admire and they, they got national, but their hometown, like they haven't been back.
Yeah. That bothers me because their hometown is like the soil in which the roots they grew, that they could be a really big, strong tree like that. And so I, it doesn't make any operational sense and every time we go through a hard time at the company, everybody's like, why don't we start, stop doing all these little ones.
Like we could do less events, make more money. But like the 3000 event I'm thinking of was like a ribbon cutting. Of something in town that, like the wealthiest family in the world was at the, the largest company in the world. Their leadership was there. Like, they're just cutting a ribbon. They just need like a mic.
Yeah. [01:30:00] And two speakers on the square. But like, I wanna be there. It's an honor. I, I can't not do that. Mm-hmm. And so we sent two people in a van. Yeah. And did it. And we crushed it because those are the same guys that do our big shows. You know, like they're overqualified. But we still do those really small events, but it doesn't make any business sense.
It, it never makes sense. But I'm just passionate about not abandoning the community. I think it gives us reps, I think it builds rapport. In my experience, you have to be trusted with the little before you're trusted with a lot that, that phone call from the White House before that was the campaign tour.
Before that was doing national events with the agency that that person was at. And before that we did one tiny goofy little event with that person with no budget, no time. It was stretched really thin. But that was when it was me personally, like we were a lot smaller. I was there that day. We freaking crushed that show.
Yeah. We did better on that show than his crews that he gives 10 x that budget for like, we gave 110% service.
Mm-hmm.
[01:30:59] Cameron Magee: [01:31:00] And five years later, when he is promoted to be their director of production for the White House, he remembered that.
Yeah. Mm.
[01:31:04] Cameron Magee: Yeah. And so I'm just, I, I don't know, like, I know it doesn't make any business sense.
Like I just, I just believe in it. Like you can't sell semi-truck and also sell scooters. Like that doesn't really, I guess Yamaha does, but like most companies don't, don't do like a hundred x rate. Like, but I wanna do 3000 events and then we do events. We do events that there's over a million dollars in AV at the events, and we do events that are $3,000.
We have limits. Like we won't just send a technician to run sound at the wedding chapel. Like, we're not gonna, it's not just like infinitely small, but Sure. If it is a full service event and it just needs two of these, like I just can't charge 'em 10
[01:31:36] Nick Beyer: grand. Mm-hmm. You know?
[01:31:38] Cameron Magee: Yeah.
[01:31:38] Nick Beyer: What's the biggest event you've ever done?
Was it the Million Dollar? And what even is that event? Like what does that look like? How many people are there?
[01:31:44] Cameron Magee: You can see pictures of it on our website. We're super proud of it. Every production company, whatever, pictures on their website's, probably the biggest event they've ever done. You know, you always wanna show the big one.
And it's a big honor. Um, it's an event we get to do for Walmart. We've done it for a few years now. It's their, like, one of their biggest events. It's their top, like in [01:32:00] their top list of events. It's like one of the biggest ones. Hmm. Um, it's walmart.com is really taken off and their com comp, comp, uh, competition with Amazon, with them competing digitally now more than stores.
And so walmart.com has these sellers that they're a third party seller. So it's almost like walmart.com is kind of like Etsy or it's kind of like I. eBay, you know, like sellers are selling on walmart.com, their items. Mm-hmm. And so a few years ago, Walmart said, we need to get those sellers together.
They're all over the country. We need to get them together. Like we get our associates together for shareholders, we get our associates together for YBM. And so it's a, it's a big multi-thousand person national conference with a general session of breakouts. Wow. But everyone there is not an associate.
They're actually strangers. They're third party sellers. And the energy is electric. Yeah. Because they're all people. They're, they're fast friends. They meet in the hallway and they're like, wait, you sell soap and you sell vacuums? And we have the same problems. It's so fun.
Like, yeah.
[01:32:49] Cameron Magee: I, I love the energy of a conference.
I love that. For me, life changes happened at a conference. Like, that's why I said earlier, I felt like I heard from the Lord. I got saved. I became a believer at, at an a special event [01:33:00] when I was eight. Events are very special to me. Mm-hmm. Kids that go to camp is when they learn how to be like a boy scout.
Like transformation and catalyst events happen at moments happen at events. Mm-hmm. And so I'm big on that. So yeah, our biggest event is this Walmart event. We just do, it's a huge honor. Um, and that's our biggest one. Hmm. Um, but then, yeah, we do everything in between. So on that day, like yeah, we take the whole shop, we bring the, the whole office full of people, but then we subcontract a ton to subcontractors that I trust.
Yeah. 'cause we cannot screw that up. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but we, we've done a really good job of kind of like umbrella general contracting that, and our client knows that like, I have no problem saying on the internet. Yeah. They understand like, this is a big event. Of course you're subcontracting general contracting, but they walk around and they're like, this looks like an avid three event to me.
Yep.
[01:33:45] Cameron Magee: You guys are slam dunking it. Like, I love the little touches here and here. Nobody does this stuff. This is crazy.
Yeah.
[01:33:50] Cameron Magee: Can't believe our budget went this far. Like, this is great, this looks really nice. Like it's, it's good. And then of course with Walmart, there's a balance of like, don't let it look too nice.
You know, 'cause everything needs to be a [01:34:00] DLC. It's a real, and I feel that fiscal responsibility on all of our events. Most events are nonprofit events. Yeah. So I think people think of events of like, Elon Musk launching the cyber truck and there's pyro or something like that. I don't really do those events.
I do more like. Normal, wholesome. Like it needs to be flawless, but flawless doesn't have to be flashy. Yeah. And so I think that's why we get along so well with Walmart. But it's 'cause I grew up in Arkansas, like I just don't do give culture. You understand it. Yeah. I don't do like Cirque de Soleil, like we do like just conferences, you know?
Mm-hmm.
[01:34:27] Cameron Clark: Yeah. And so let's talk about the future, the. You know, you, you're saying nationally, like that's the next phase, the next, the next five years. Yes. What do you, you know, how, how are you focused on, on that? What are the, you know, the, the things involved being focused on how do we become, I mean, you already are this national player, but like to the next, to the next level.
[01:34:49] Cameron Magee: Yep. So again, years ago when I changed the website, it was like national event production. All of our marketing now, all of our SEO, we spend so much energy and so much time have so many people working on [01:35:00] our website being robust and constantly writing articles that help event planners.
Mm-hmm.
[01:35:04] Cameron Magee: Because the event planning industry, most people don't have a degree in it.
Like they need help with like growth and professional development and training. Yeah. And so we're always speaking in webinars and writing articles and case studies and like just helping event planners.
Yeah.
[01:35:17] Cameron Magee: And that has helped us be able to bid on way more events like we have, we made. Four quotes yesterday for all national conferences, like hundreds of thousands of dollars of quotes going out the door yesterday.
Mm.
[01:35:31] Cameron Magee: I stayed late last night trying to get the last one out. Like years ago. We were not being asked for that. Yeah. Like, we were just like, if you're in town, we'll use them.
Yep.
[01:35:39] Cameron Magee: But when we put big events out there and we talk about 'em and we put 'em on social media and stuff, people were like, oh, well if you can do that, you can do this.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
[01:35:45] Cameron Magee: And so we've gotten a chance to be a third bidder more, and the industry is, is a bid competition. It, it is a commodity. I, I'm passionate about what we do. I think what we do is special. Every person always says that like, oh, we're a different kind of plumber, but at the end of the day, it's equipment and people and [01:36:00] you can get that anywhere.
Mm-hmm. And so we have to be competitive on price to win.
Yeah.
[01:36:04] Cameron Magee: Um, but we are competitive 'cause we're in Arkansas and we're competitive 'cause of the gear we buy and the way we manage our people and everything. It's competitive. Um, but yeah, we've been bidding more on these national conferences. We've started to get a lot of traction with those.
What's been really great is when we do one, usually they have three and they move 'em all around. Mm-hmm. And so they, uh, the most value that event planners have got from us is when they. They take us with them.
Yeah.
[01:36:26] Cameron Magee: And if it was $120,000 in Miami, if next year it's in Tucson, guess what? It's like $120,000.
Like the truck is the same because as Sam Walton discovered, we're in the center of the country here. Yep. Mm-hmm. And that's been a big deal. So lower cost of living just like Walmart. Mm-hmm. Center of the country, just like Walmart. It's common sense. That's why their logistics network is so successful because we're not, we're not in Chicago where you're paying Chicago rates when you go to Omaha.
Yeah. We're in Arkansas. If we were in Chicago, we would have more work than we knew what to do with. Yeah. We would not need to leave Chicago to stay busy, but we have to leave town here to stay [01:37:00] busy. Yeah. And that excites me because we're pouring economic development back into my hometown.
Mm-hmm.
[01:37:04] Cameron Magee: The town that I could not find a job doing production in is now has it, now has it.
We're hiring people here in town and we're bringing people here. We've, we've got a hire from, uh, Alabama. We've got a hire from Utah. We've got hire from hires from all over the country that we're bringing here. Mm. Because I think this is the best place to live in the country, in the world. Mm-hmm. I fly all over for site visits and to see clients and, and go visit events for a few hours.
Like, I'm not always at the event for six days, but I'll go for setup, make sure everything's good. And every time I fly home, every time I ask myself, like, would we, would I rather raise my family in Chattanooga? Would I rather raise my family in like great towns and we land in X and a and it's like pure chicken houses.
And I'm like, no, this is where I wanna raise my boys.
Yeah.
[01:37:44] Cameron Magee: These are the trees, this is the forest that I grew up in. Like, there's just no better place. Especially with, with Walton's and the family are doing in Bentonville, like. This is the happiest place on earth. It's the best place to raise a family. So I wanna be here, I wanna live here.
I wanna create a bigger company. I wanna bring the jobs here.
Mm.
[01:37:58] Cameron Magee: But I want us to serve the whole country [01:38:00] from here.
Mm.
[01:38:00] Cameron Magee: I've been approached many times to be acquired. I don't want to, I want to own it. Be the sole owner. It's way less complicated that way. And just run it for decades. And we've been approached multiple times to, to acquire other businesses or merge.
Hmm.
[01:38:14] Cameron Magee: My boys are five and six, I'm not ready yet. Maybe when they're outta the house, we're empty nesters, then we will open like a Dallas office or something. But I don't want to, I just want to be as big as we can here. Yeah. And it would make a ton of sense to open an office and I don't know, Louisiana or something.
Like it would make sense, and that's what some companies do.
Hmm.
[01:38:32] Cameron Magee: But I haven't seen one yet that does it and keeps their culture.
Hmm.
[01:38:36] Cameron Magee: Franchises do it. Chick-fil-A has done it. Other people, but I haven't seen a production company do it. Mm-hmm. And I don't know why. Um, and maybe that's our challenge. Maybe when I'm 50 it's like, we're gonna do that.
[01:38:45] Cameron Clark: Yeah.
[01:38:45] Cameron Magee: But I always tell the team, like for the foreseeable future, we're not trying to franchise, we're not trying to do another location. We wanna be as big as we can here. We wanna win as much work as we can here. The whole value proposition is we're in the center of the country. Take us wherever you go.
Mm-hmm. We, the value proposition is not you're Dallas hometown [01:39:00] provider, it's just we're a national. Yep. Mm-hmm. Um, but yeah, our growth will come from these six figure AV conferences. Um, they'll come from the website and bids. We're networking now more than ever. Um, and we're getting tremendous success. We find that it is a bid war, but if they ever try us once, they don't typically change.
Yeah. Once they've done, they're like, oh, this is different. You're, you're their partner. You're the, because we're giving 110%. Yeah. Because like, and that's all of our core values are all about. If you see the event planner and she's struggling to get a case of bottled water out of her car, you go help her.
Yeah. Mm-hmm. You know, and, and that's not normal somehow in production. Mm-hmm. Everybody's too like grumpy sound men with their head in the console, like not looking up. It's like, look up, go help her.
[01:39:42] Cameron Clark: Yeah.
[01:39:43] Cameron Magee: And that's, that's resonated really well. Wow. Even con I was attending a conference last month and I, I went and found the crew and just said hi.
[01:39:51] Cameron Clark: Yeah.
[01:39:51] Cameron Magee: And was helping them and their, their PM was like, Hey guys, sorry, I gotta go get his food. I'll be back in a minute. I was like, it's one 15, you guys haven't eaten. So I chased the guy [01:40:00] down the hall and I said, Hey, you guys haven't eaten yet. He said, no, I gotta go find plates for my guys. And I said, can I help?
And just like making plates for the crew and bringing it back to 'em because it's one 15. How have you guys not eaten? Yeah. I wasn't hard on the leader, but I was just like, I'm passionate about crews, I'm passionate about events. And even when I'm at an event that we're not in charge of, like I just can't help but find my way to the booth.
Yeah. And like make it better. And there's tens of thousands of those conferences, there's no shortage of fish in the sea for us to find these conferences that need us. It just takes. A lot of time and a lot of patience 'cause it's her biggest day of the year and we're a stranger.
[01:40:32] Cameron Clark: And is that why you got your pilot pilot's license?
'cause that kind of, the national presence grew. Is that just a hobby or what was, it'd be fun I guess.
[01:40:38] Cameron Magee: I don't fly much for work. I actually fly. It's hard as a small business owner to take my mind off of work. But, um, I play drums in a nineties, country cover band and you can't think about anything but nineties country when like your left hand, right hand, left foot, right.
When your whole body's drumming, you can't think about business. Yeah. You can't think about work. You're like four counts at a time. [01:41:00] Yeah. And that's what I find is true with flying when I'm in an airplane in the clouds and, and it's like, it's, the cadence on the instruments is like this, you're on. Like, I can't think about work.
It's an escape for me. Whereas pretty much 23 hours a day. Even, even if it's not, I'm not stressing about, I'm not worried about work. I'm not a worrier. I'm just always like, I wonder if we could reorganize how we, like, I'm just constantly tinkering in my mind. And so flying for me, like drumming for me is a chance to say my entire body, my entire mind is completely consumed.
And my best friend growing up was a pilot. My best friend in high school, my best friend in college, my mentor Mark, my, my mentor that raised me, that raised me when I was like 12 and like taught me this stuff, like, raised me up in the industry. He's a pilot. And looking back, like every like man in my life who's been a, you know, father figured me a respectful person to me.
They're all pilots. So I was like, I guess I'll be a pilot too.
[01:41:53] Cameron Clark: Wow. Um, well we're gonna kind of start wrapping up here. The, um, you know, a couple questions [01:42:00] here at the end that we ask everybody are, number one is how do you define success?
[01:42:06] Cameron Magee: Yeah. I, I have looked at every step, all 14 years as a success. I have been content.
I remember when we got four people and we were able to afford those radios that have like the little thing on your shoulder. I was like, we are successful. Like, I remember that. I remember when we had seven people, I was like, man, we freaking made it. I'm just thrilled. When we had 19 people, when it, I defined success as, are the people here, did they want to work here?
Are we building a place that we wanna work? And I saw it this morning. Came in this morning right before you guys got here. We had a little huddle and it's tough right now. Like I said, I just don't wanna shy from it. We just had to, we just had to shrink the company. It's a difficult season that we're in, but everybody with here on time with the shirt tucked in wearing all black saying like, what are we doing in the shop today?
Yeah. You know, like if we are building a place that people wanna work, and myself included, like the days where I come home [01:43:00] and, you know, my, my body reacts like if I have like high blood pressure, well if I just feel tense from work, it's like, what do I need to fix tomorrow? What do I need to change tomorrow?
I don't feel this way again. Success to me is we're building a place that I wanna work. We're building a place that these people wanna work. Obviously what we sell is flawless events. And I take that for granted. 'cause they, they typically are like, that's, I'm, I, I don't wanna sound like overly zealous about that, but the events work and the clients are thrilled that that's something that for some reason doesn't take as much work.
Like we, I've got that. We've got that. And I'm sure there's some client, listen that's mad. It's like, I'll call you. But for the most part, we we're nailing that. Yeah. My success is constantly tinkering the business on like, what if we changed our PTO to be like this? Or like, what if we did this? Like, what if we made it where we did our one-on-ones at lunch?
Because that's probably, you know, I'm always tinkering on, is this a place that I wanna work? Hmm. And so whether we had four people and we weren't even doing a million, then we're doing millions upon millions Now [01:44:00] I'm happy each year because I know that we're building a place who wanna work. The hardest days for me, when people quit, when someone resigns.
Even, even for like good reasons or whatever I, you know, they always do in the afternoon for some reason. And I almost always shut my computer and I have like a walk that I do. It's like a route. Yeah. Because it's a, it's a blow to me of like, they don't wanna work here anymore. And so those are moments if we wanted to find success, it's like, when do I feel unsuccessful?
It's when someone says, Hey, I found something better. Um, and I love that for them. And they can't stay forever and part of their growth is going,
[01:44:36] Cameron Clark: yeah,
[01:44:36] Cameron Magee: but, and we can't just pretend like this is the last job people will ever take.
[01:44:39] Cameron Clark: But
[01:44:40] Cameron Magee: success to me is we're building that place. And that's what keeps me here.
That's what makes this place different than the rest of the industry. 'cause I wouldn't work anywhere. I wish I could work somewhere. My dad, everybody was like, just be an employee son. Yeah. Couldn't find it. Yeah. Um, and so that's success here is how it's that's a long answer, but wow.
[01:44:59] Cameron Clark: Um, [01:45:00] that's amazing. Uh, so last question here.
You kind of answered it a little bit earlier before, but why build a business in northwest Arkansas?
[01:45:09] Cameron Magee: It's because of my boys. It's 'cause of my wife, it's 'cause of me. This is where I wanna live. Um, there's no place. I'd rather be, and I remember when I started the company and set it up here, like we could have moved to New York or la We could have moved to Chicago somewhere.
That made any sense. Dallas made any sense to start an event company. Again, there was no event company here. So every job we got those first years, like we made them up. We were like pitching to people like, hey, you know, um, I choose to have here 'cause I wanna do production, but I wanna live in this town because this is my town.
It's my hometown. Yeah. This is where I wanna be. I want to, my grandfather was a cowboy in Amarillo and he literally, he never left his county. He spent his entire life, they moved houses, they moved different parts of the ranch or whatever, but he was in Potter County. And he had a reputation. I'm gonna get emotional 'cause he just died recently, but [01:46:00] he had a reputation in that town.
And I want to, um, run my business how he ran his ranch. You know, I want, um, to have a good reputation in town where people wanna work here. And um, and I want to run a business in a way that I run into the bank at the super center. I, I don't have to run away from 'em. I shake their hand 'cause they know I pay my debt, you know?
Yeah. I wanna be involved in our community. I wanna be involved in the schools. Um, this is, these are the woods that I grew up in. And so I literally wanna see my boys. You know, we go out to the tenured Creek, we go out to Hobbes, you know, by the lake. We go down to Devil's Den, and when they were like in diapers, we would just take their diaper off and put 'em in the stream naked, you know?
Yeah. Like, I love, we have pictures of the boys sitting in streams all over town that I know. I sat in. Yeah. You know, and so I want to be here. I can't find any place else in the world. I'd rather live. So then I'm compelled to grow a company here, move people here, have them work here, have them actually have PTO [01:47:00] and, and have a healthy life.
Not have to be a rock and roll roadie who's on the road all the time, but mm-hmm. Do their passion of event production, but do it in a town that's like a great place to call home. Yeah. So that's the economic development, the building, the jobs here. Like that's why I've become friends with different governors.
We've had over the years, different mayors. Like I'm very passionate about like the economic development of building the place here so that I can do my craft in my town with my people serving at events like a five and dime ribbon cutting where I took my prom pictures, you know, like it's my town. But then getting to see the country from here, we had a guy who'd never seen the ocean.
And he saw all three. He saw the East coast, west coast, in the Gulf in three weeks. Like it is like his first year here. And he saw all three. And that means something to me. He is like a guy from Silent Springs, just a kid from Arkansas. Yeah. Um, but that means something. We're here, we're in our hometown, but we're, we're doing national production from here.
And it just, it makes me, it, I, I [01:48:00] feel, well I'm not Sam Walton, but I read his book in high school. We had to his required reading and I feel what he saw, which is like, raise his kids here. Raise a very wholesome family. A very normal, upstanding, as normal as you can be as a billionaire. Good wholesome people in this town, but also run the largest company in the world.
Like, but do it from here. Yeah. And I just think it keeps us grounded. I don't wanna be a New Yorker, I wanna be an Arkansan, but I wanna run a, the biggest company we can with the biggest impact we can for as long as we can. But I want to come home and sleep here.
[01:48:34] Nick Beyer: It's good. Well, one of the things we do at the end of every, every episode is we really like to just capture the things that we learn.
I think our listeners will learn. And the first one that was like really clear from onset was how passionate you are about av. And so a VL audio video, Alexa, you can say av, it's fine. Um, but yeah, just watching the passion ooze out of you. I think so many of the founders that we have [01:49:00] interviewed, they are passionate about their product.
Yes. Their service, what they provide to the community. And like that's super, super clear with you. Yep. And I think it even came out like you became an entrepreneur by accident. Like it wasn't on purpose. Yep. It was just because you were passionate about what you're doing. Spilled into some jobs, spilled into some DVDs, and then it kind of kept compounding from there.
So, um, just really encouraged by that. I think the next one is learning, just hearing you talk about, I mean, even, even just now, books you read in high school. Um, having the humility to, to realize like, I don't know anything about business. I need to go learn that. Um, but you let that passion drive you and then you started learning and like that's what really started to grow your business.
Um, and I think anybody listening ourselves included, like if you are focused on learning, fruit will come from that. It may not be immediate, but it will come from that. And it sure has. Um, for AVOD three. And then I think the last piece and it, and it's in your name. It's, it's in the name of your company.
It's service, [01:50:00] and you're here to serve. You're here to serve at events. I think the the things that stood out is, um, training your crew. If they see someone struggling with something like go help them. Yep. It's not your job. Yep. It's not in your job description, but like, we want to help. That's who we are.
It's in our DNA. And I think the more companies that can, can help their employees understand that, feel the weight of that like. Those are the companies we want have across America, in Arkansas, in northwest Arkansas, like that's gonna lead a healthy community. And so thank you for doing that. Cameron McGee, VOD three.
Where can people find more about you? More about your company or what y'all are doing? Yeah, LinkedIn. I think it's,
[01:50:44] Cameron Magee: um, I think it's just my name. I think it's how you get it. I'm not good at marketing, so I screwed this part up. Um, AVID three, aav a d3.com. We're on all the social media stuff. Um, our people do a really good job at that.
But yeah, I mean, you can email me. It's cameron@avidthree.com. I [01:51:00] won't give you my cell phone, but, uh, you can LinkedIn message me or email me and I'd, I'd love to talk with you. I'd love to sit down, especially if you're 18 to 25. I feel specifically called to speak to people in those years is when I made massive decisions that changed the course of my, the rest of my generation's family behind me.
And so I would love to talk to like a senior in high school. I'd love to talk to a senior in college. I'd love to tell them. If you're ever gonna take the jump, do it. Now. Your room board is paid for. I, I want to talk to 18 to 25 year olds, so Yeah. Um, yeah, my website, my, uh, email. Any way you reach out, somebody at I three is gonna find it, and if you say wanna talk to Cameron, they'll say great.
He, he'd love to, you know. Awesome. Well, thanks for your time. Thanks. Thanks, y'all.
[01:51:42] Cameron Clark: Yeah. Oh, thanks Cameron. Thank you for listening to this episode of NWA Founders, where we sit down with founders, owners and builders driving growth here in northwest Arkansas. For recommendations are to connect with us, reach out at nwa, founders@gmail.com.
Lastly, [01:52:00] if you enjoyed this episode, then please consider leaving a rating, a review, and sending it to someone who you think would benefit from it. We'll see you in the next episode.