Be Useful: Patrick Garrigan on Building Events, Media, and Revenue That Last

And what is the through line between building a live audience experience on stage versus one at like a Bloomberg Forum or a Vogue World Wednesday?

Yeah, I mean, you've set it up perfectly, right? It's all a stage, right? We're all kind of performing.

There is a certain element of performance in events.

And so I would say the similarities are more alike than they are different.

You know, I think the first is being about audience.

When I was back in theater school, the first thing they taught us was Aristotle's Poetics, right? About that understanding your audience, taking them on a journey and hopefully having them feel different.

differently by the time they get to the other end of that.

I mean, that is very, very much the work that we do on any given day, because once you know who that audience is, what the desired outcome is, that decision making becomes relatively easy, right? It's is this serving? Is that advancing that plot? Is that advancing that initiative or not? I think the second part and maybe my own personal part of this is the sense of collaboration and creativity.

I mean, when we were doing shows, we were doing them, you know, sometimes often more often than not with very little budget, very little resource.

This may sound like some businesses that you've spoken with.

So it is like, how do you take the products that you have and create something that's truly remarkable with limited resources? And doing that in a way that's joyful right we've all been to events that you can tell that this was a slog right from day one to on-site to all of the follow-up so how are you bringing that sense of joy that sense of creativity that sense of like we get to do this work in everything that we do and that was very much part of the theater biz right there are friends now that we are we'll be lifelong friends forever because we had the the opportunity to share that experience And then the last, I think, is narrative, right? If we're thinking about audience, if we want to take them on a journey, where are they going? Who are the characters? What are the challenges? What are the obstacles? And so whether that is a musical like Bat Boy or Beauty and the Beast, as you alluded to, or whether that's a Bloomberg Forum somewhere in the Middle East or Vote World, which I think is happening here a couple hours after we record this, it really is taking people on a remarkable journey.

I think there's like three really incredible points you just brought up there that, you know, just as I'm thinking about it, my head relating to creative Broadway, let's say, or theater to like, who says a business event supposed to be boring and not have a storyline and not have a creative set and, And people have these roles on the creativity side to make that experience.

Like, it's absolutely

what we need to be

doing.

And especially now with events, everyone wants to do an event.

Like I would say, like before, it was like everyone wants to have a blog.

Everyone wants to be a media company.

Now everyone wants to be an event company.

You really

have to compete.

So it's not just your content.

And it's that joy you feel of being there.

And so you have to choreograph this.

So if I could, if you'll indulge me, one quick side story that you may say, like, this is terrible, Patrick, we need to cut this later.