REFLECTING ON THE LAST 37 YEARS

Hello, this is Les Goldberg, and welcome to The Road Ahead. The Road Ahead podcast is dedicated to the future of the live events business, bringing together industry experts. So welcome to a special episode of the Road Ahead podcast. I'm Dave John and I'm sitting in for our host today. We have a special guest in the studio who is celebrating the 37th anniversary of starting his company. Please welcome Les Goldberg. Hello, Dave. And normally I would be doing the podcast, but I think it's great that now you're doing the podcast because this is our anniversary. Yeah. Hey, listen, thanks for being a good sport about it, man. Letting us take over your podcast 37 years. It's a long time. It is 3.7 decades, which seems like a lot of time. Know. Actually, I was looking at it today, too. This is episode number 37 of your podcast, and it's the same day as your 37th anniversary. And I just thought that's that's kind of crazy, right? I mean, that's all these things that happen. I love to see that when things in life like kind of line up so well. So you've always told me, you said it's important that we reflect back on things. You know, we have a good show or a bad show. What did we learn along the way? So today, it's time for you to reflect back on your journey. 1984. Right. 17 years old. How did this get started? Well, it's in the wayback clock when I go in the wayback clock. I kind of think about life in 1984, and I think about being a high school kid and and finding a passion for what you do and stumbling on something that I found to be my life's work. And, you know, one of the things that they do or they should do in every school back then they did with me, is they asked me to take one of those tests and what what you'd be good at. And I took one and my test said television broadcast, which is very close to kind of the work I do every day. So fortunately the test was right. But when I kind of think back to 1984 and the journey to today, I can only sit here in or and not realizing the the hills, the valleys, the journey. And you know, sometimes when you go through an experience, you know, you're better off because you've lived through it and it just seems like so long ago, 37 years ago, I think gas was like, you know, $0.30 a gallon or something. And, you know, but I will tell you that I started in 1984 with an unfettered enthusiasm for this business and to do the kind of work and something that brought me happiness. And and I thought, I've had such a fortunate background. And for those of you who don't know, I worked for a guy named Les, and he was about 350 pounds, and they used to call him Big Les. And then of course, they call me Little Les. And that was my high school journey. And also in my senior year of high school, I think I only went to the one semester because I had enough credits to graduate. And the semester I went to, I had traveled for 23 days out filming and doing production, and I remember meeting with the principal who told me that they're going to let me graduate because they thought I got more experience, life experience, doing what I was doing than I would have had school. So I give kudos to the principal for that decision. But he's also the principal who told me that I was going to donate $1 million to the school, which I don't think was really the realistic possibility. It hasn't happened yet. Right. But not yet. No. So how would you say that you have changed since 1984? Because one of the things that we talked about when we describe you here is that you still have the energy of a 17 year old, and sometimes that's a benefit here. And sometimes we have to reel it back in. But how would you say you have changed? You know, you don't know what you don't know. And sometimes not knowing lets you go down paths and destinations that you may not have have tried. Had you known this was such a great idea. And I think through trial and error, and I think it's no different than touching a hot stove. You do that once and you learn you're not going to do that again. I think, you know, your life is a as a combination of all of your experiences that you have gained. And if we speak towards the business career that I've had, I've had a lot of different experiences that have helped shape and helped allow us to grow our business. I've sat through easily 5000 motivational speeches and, you know, and trying to understand and learn. So, you know, you're learning every day. But but the the motivation for anyone and me internally is to want to be great at something and to want to do great work. And I think the motivation far exceeded any monetary rewards. And so for for Les Goldberg, it's about doing the best work. It's about conquering the world, it's about growing and it's about having fun. And if you could do all of those things and find an industry that you love, then you've got a magic formula. And I think I'm a very fortunate person. By the way, if I don't take a note, today is my mom's 84th birthday, so it's Saint Patty's Day. She's always happy that everyone celebrates her birthday. I did not know that that was the same day. That's pretty awesome. You know, you talk about in your in your first book you wrote, there's a chapter where you say average is unacceptable. And I love that because it seems like you're always striving to improve. So what are some things that you had to learn on this journey? You know, there's there's show and there's biz. Okay. So on the show side you have to learn how to use the equipment, the protocol, what to say when you're meeting with customers and what not to say and and how to communicate how things work. Technically, luckily, I'm very technically inclined, but but the business part of it, there's no operator's manual for for the business. And to understand everything from the local jurisdiction laws to how to run a business and how to how to deal with employees, and how to have the proper insurances and contracts. And, and I would say it's the paperwork. And it's also about making sure you always try to do the right thing. And that's not easy. And I think after 37 years, it's kind of from the first day. If you try to do the right thing, then in any situation it tends to put you on the right path. You know, I think a lot of people that listen to your podcast, they want to understand, you know, how you approach things. Do you have maybe some some key things that you could boil down on what to be successful in business specifics? Well, you know, I think the business, you know, it's not just having a great idea and it's not it's not just about having funding for this great idea. You know, it's critical to build a team. And I think one of the things that we have been fortunate at both LMG and ETP and our brands is to have incredibly awesome people, and I think people are the building blocks of success. And if we can foster those people and grow them and, and make sure they understand expectations and the philosophy, I think that is one of those super important elements. And every one of those people has a certain component where they have to be leaders. And so many businesses are devoid of leadership. And and those those people have to know when it's time to lead. And they also have to know when it's time to stand to the side and let whoever is leading let them go. And, you know, at the end of the day, we have to understand the formula of success. And it's about putting the right people and the right roles on the right day and letting them have the keys and letting them drive. And I know there's things that I'm really good at and things that I'm not really good at. And one of the things that's great in our working relationship is I know that and things that are that you're really good at, I just step out of the way because I just know you're going to be great at taking care of it. And so I think one of the things that people get is in business. They kind of feel like their power and authority and control, they feel like, you know, that that they have to make every decision and they may not be positioned or have the knowledge to make every decision. I think one of the smartest things is, is, is getting smarter people around you than yourself and assembling a team of of really smart people and in a lot of different areas that complement each other. And ultimately, when you put them in a room, they combust in a way that's productive. And to me, that is that's a great solution to to creating success. You know, there's so much power in what you just said, too, because I think a lot of people, a lot of leaders look for qualities of themselves and a candidate. And I've seen you do this over the years, where you look for people that are that are got different skill set than you do, as you said. And when you bring everyone together, it's very powerful. Let's go back a little bit back to the early days. When did you first realize that the business was taking off? Because most small businesses, they they fail in the first couple of years. So when did realize that that the business was successful? You know, a long time ago. And I'm going to say this was probably and it's I'm going to guess 86, 87 something in that time period, they were doing closed circuit boxing events where we would bring a satellite dish and a video projector, and people would pay $25 and go to a venue, and we would put on a show for some closed circuit boxing event or some special event. And I was in Tampa, Florida, and I was being hired to do, I think, six locations for one of these boxing events. And I saw it as a probably a 20 year old, and I saw it in front of a customer, and his name was Phil Alessi, and he owned a business in Tampa called Alessi Bakeries. What a great man. And I had convinced them to hire us to do this work. And I'll never forget, he gave me a check for $50,000 as a deposit. And this was a new level of life of business that when I got that check, I was on cloud ten and I had thought, wow, $50,000. And this was in 1987. And so I rushed to the bank and I went to set up an account, and I went to the cashier, the teller, and I said to him, is this a good check? And I was almost in disbelief, and the teller looked at it and said, this is absolutely a good a good check. And it put it in my account. And I said, could you please put it in his cash? And I thought the sky was the limit. I said if people would pay me to do what I love to do this kind of money, I thought, anything is possible. That's awesome. You know, I brought I brought your book here and you can see it's well marked up. I've read this like many times, and I was looking at it this morning, and there's a chapter in there that talks about how failure is a part of success. So what have you learned about failure. So failure is like, you know, one of the toughest things. It's kind of like getting a punch in the gut. And you know, I see failure as not delivering as per your expectations to your customer. And one of the most important things in business is to always do as you say and execute. And our our mantra is flawless execution. That's what we go for. And if something doesn't go right, you know you're experiencing failure. Now there's different kinds of failure. There is failure where a piece of equipment failed and that's outside of your control. And then there's failure where a person that you provided maybe pushed the wrong button and didn't operate something correctly. That's human error. It's a lot easier to accept. It's still not fun to accept a piece of equipment failing. And what did you do as a backup plan? Or how did you overcome the obstacle? But it's even worse and more challenging to accept that human error. People made a mistake and I, you know, for for at least the first 20 years of a business when something didn't go right, it was such a Debbie Downer. This Debbie Downer lasted for months. And it would it would just take the air out of the room and all you can think about is, what could we have done differently to not have that situation occur. And so failure is this great opportunity to learn. You learn what you've done wrong so you don't do it again. And then conversely, if you don't learn from your failures, then you are going to obviously repeat them again. And and that's another set of frustrations. And then there's a part of failure that is if you don't take enough risk then then and you don't experience failure then and you live in the world of success, then you really can't appreciate it. So you can't do great things without taking risk. And that risk has a failure component. And there are circumstances beyond your control that absolutely could impact the outcome. And thus, you know, failure is something that everyone who does great things has to deal with. You know, 37 years ups and downs. It's some days are smoothing smooth sailing and some days are a little rougher. This past year has been a rough one. So what gets you through? Like the big challenges, things like we've faced in the last 12 months? You know, I could never have dreamed I had coming off of 2019, which was absolutely the best year ever. And, you know, we were operating all of our cylinders were percolating and and we were the sky was the limit. We could do nothing wrong in 2019. It seems we were so fortunate. And to experience a black swan event, a once in a lifetime or every hundred year flood or a pandemic. You know, this concept was almost unthinkable to a person like me. And so we were very fortunate to not be in the position of many of our competitors, where, you know, a lot of them are debt latent. And and that put them in a really, really, really tough financial situation. But but ultimately, there's a kind of a bigger concept here. You just have to believe down deep in your core that we're going to get back to doing what we do, what we love to do, what we live for, and we live for that applause and the experience that we're creating, the spectacle, the environments that we do. And if you know, they're not taking wrecking balls to convention centers yet. So I'm truly a believer when we get through this pandemic, i.e. like the Spanish flu in, you know, right before in the 1920 or 1918, then then the years to follow were the Roaring 20s. We're going to have the roaring 2022 and we're going to war again. And so I think you come in every day without real strong expectations that you're not sure what's going to happen, you know, the good, bad or other. But you have to keep forging ahead. You have to continue with a plan, and you have to work the plan, and you have to get everybody on board to understand expectations. And this time of COVID, you know, whether how you sell, how you communicate, how you create all your different product offerings. You know, we have a whole suite of virtual offerings that have come out of this, that when we go back to doing live and we are going back to doing live our lives starts this weekend and shows are starting to book, and we'll have all these virtual offerings to combine with all of our physical live offerings. So we like an expansion of the things that we we can offer to our customers. But I think the the ability to be optimistic in the worst of times, when you turn on the news and all you see is how many people died and how many cases there are and how the world's ending. And you just have to believe in whether it's a higher power or the idea that we're going to get back to doing what we love. And I'm naturally an optimistic person, and I try to, you know, even when I get how do I set hit on the head with a hammer with something that I could not have expected? It doesn't matter. You have to get up and brush yourself off and forge ahead. And I don't know if I'd be this happy if I didn't have my my solace of going to the gym. And there's a few things in life, and the gym is one of my the, you know, the way they call the happy place. That's my happy place. You know, that's a real good segue into the last question I wanted to ask you. And this is a question that I've heard you ask countless people over the years. So are you ready for it? I'm ready. What makes you happy? You know, I think happiness can be broken down into a lot of different pieces. You know, the happiness that you have with your family and your kids and and seeing them succeed. And then the happiness you have in your relationships, whether your personal relationships. But but if you ask me what makes me happy on a work perspective, happiness for me is able to do the work that we love, to take care of our clients, to provide the best technology and put on the best shows. Shows that border on the line of spectacle, that have many different technologies, many opportunities for what I would say, points of failure. And you know that spirit where Barnum and Bailey said the show must go on, that is alive and well in this company and in me. And I think being happy is the ultimately the. It boils down to one thing. I'm happy when I make other people happy, and if I'm able to make someone else happy, it brings me happiness. And all of those pieces are fit into that one little formula. And so I'm happy to be able to provide, you know, a team and a staff and try to create a happy environment for those people, and they take that out and deliver exceptional experiences for our clients. And happiness isn't one specific thing. It's a combination of many things all coming together. And on some days, you know, there are more, you know, pieces that are good, other days there are fewer ones when we work through challenges. But, you know, you have to believe that the good will overcome evil. Plus, you're one of the most optimistic people I've ever met. So listen. Congratulations. 37 years. Amazing. Dave, thank you for filling in for me today and and letting me express some of my thoughts for 37 years. And, you know, there will be many more to come. And this is Les Goldberg and The Road Ahead.