How Scaling Culture Helps You Grow Your Business

Plan Better EventsSmart Event TipsLeadership InsightsPodcast

Nov 22

With Guest Lawrence arevalo, president of verducci event productions

Lawrence Arevalo is the President of Verducci Event Productions (VEP), which helps organizations amplify their message through compelling video and virtual events. VEP specializes in staging, lighting, decor, and audio/visual support. In his role, he manages the company’s operations, trains new talent, and performs as a DJ. Lawrence began his career as an audio/visual technician before becoming a meeting and event coordinator.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

How Verducci Event Productions has evolved its services and acquired new opportunities
Lawrence Arevalo talks about VEP’s brand promise
The secret behind VEP’s event production and execution process
Lawrence’s daily rituals to avoid burnout
How Lawrence collaborates and networks with others to solve challenges

In this episode…

When scaling an event business, entrepreneurs are often too focused on operations and processes, overlooking their business’ culture as a result. So how can you manage your company’s growth while building a positive culture?

Event planner and DJ Lawrence Arevalo understands the emotional effects of rapid growth on team members. For this reason, he implemented strong core values and focused on relationship-building to foster transparent communication to meet his team’s needs. He emphasizes the importance of trusting team members to take ownership of their tasks to foster professional development that can augment organizational growth.

Join Paige Buck in today’s episode as she sits down with Lawrence Arevalo, President of Verducci Event Productions, to discuss developing a company’s culture and scaling a business. Lawrence shares VEP’s brand promise, the company’s event production and execution process, and how he collaborates to solve challenges and scale.

Resources Mentioned in this episode

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by Kennedy Events.

Kennedy Events creates stress-free conferences and events, providing expert management and design for all your corporate event needs — from in-person to hybrid and virtual events.

To learn more about our services, visit our website at www.kennedyevents.com and schedule a consultation today to find out how we can guide you in making your event successful.

Transcript

Below is an AI-generated transcript, full of all sorts of amusing foibles and mistranslations. Take it with a grain of salt!

Intro 0:00

Yeah. Welcome to the Kennedy Events Podcast where we feature top marketing, communications and the future of work leaders and share their biggest takeaways and insights. We love these conversations and hope you will too. Let's get started.

Paige Buck 0:19

Welcome to the Kennedy Events Podcast where we uncover the future of bringing people together through the eyes of industry leaders, whether that's retaining top talent for your business, attracting your ideal partners or retaining your best customers, learn from professionals who have been there and done it so you can too. past guests include John Silva of Culinary Eye Avital Ungar of Avital Food and Drink Experiences, and Elaine Honig of Studio FourForty I'm your host, Paige Buck, and I am pleased to have with me today Lawrence Arevalo of the owner and operator of Verducci Event Productions. Hi, Lawrence.

Lawrence Arevalo 0:54

Hey, how's it going? Paige? It's actually pronounced Arevalo. It's a tough one like,

Paige Buck 0:59

Arevalo. Thank you for

Lawrence Arevalo 1:02

that. No problem.

Paige Buck 1:04

I love it. Arevalo. And I'm like reframing that in my mind right now. Okay, let me tell folks about your company and then we'll dive in. Verducci is an event production company whose mission is to use technology, talent and customer service for their guests to create lasting memories inspire positive change in the world and achieve their dreams for over 10 years, you've helped build the business scaling it to I'm sure this figure has changed over $2 million in sales. And of all your many chat talents. You're also a proud father of two. And you're married to a rock star nurse that right? That's absolutely right. Yeah, amazing. And then before we get going, today's episode is brought to you buy Kennedy Events, we create stress free conference in conferences and events, providing expert management and design for all your corporate event needs from in person to hybrid and virtual. And of course, you can find us at Kennedyevents.com. So Lawrence, our businesses obviously have a lot of overlap. And we often work hand in glove with companies like yours, but you've got all these different like business lines that came like out of your creative brain. How did these get started? And tell? Tell me what they are? What are you doing?

Lawrence Arevalo 2:20

Yeah, absolutely. Well, you know, we've been in business for about 13 or 14 years. And so I think over that time, you know, a small business will pull different levers and turn different keys trying to see what works. And so we started a DJ company, because we we both are, Andrew, my business partner and I are both DJ. And we love music, and we love people. And so like, I think just our, our characteristics, and our love comes out and just serving and serving people. So we started a DJ company, and we grew it to about 15 DJs at some point, and it was rockin and rollin. And we were super busy. Every weekend, every Saturday, Sunday, we were just rip roaring, but we didn't have any business during the week. So we kind of had these expenses. And you know, a lot of like, really big peaks. And so we came across a couple of challenges. One was, we had staff that love to work for us doing lighting setups, or photo booths or things like that, that were adjacent to our DJ business. But they were like, Hey, we love you guys, but you don't have any work for us all week. So like, sometimes we're gonna be available, sometimes we're not. And so we one challenge we wanted to address was, how do we get these people working more because we love them too. And we want to, you know, keep supplying them with work so that they're available when we need them. So after about five years of just exclusively running the DJ business, we decided we wanted to branch out and explore a little bit more. We were doing a lot of weddings at the time, a ton of weddings, which is great. But we also saw that there was an opportunity to do a lot of corporate work. And we just had our heads down focused on building this like this one thing. But once we opened our eyes a little bit more, we realized one I have an audio visual background, I did it all through college, I managed a conference center for Nestle. Like that was my, my background before I even started the DJ company. We have all this gear that was kind of just like sitting in a warehouse all week long not being used. And we had the opportunity, you know, to increase our revenue to serve more customers to get people working more. And so we went at it and we started to do corporate audiovisual production and support. And you know, that grew our business really fast. We like doubled, you know, grew 100% A few years in a row, just adding that additional service and then we grew and we grew and we grew and we you know, I joined Entrepreneurs Organization during that time I learned a lot. We put in a lot of systems and you know, values and we really focused on our people because at some point we were growing so fast but like the wheels We're going to come off and everybody was just like, unhappy, you know. So we tried to figure that out, like I said, pulling a lot of different levers. So we, we had the original, you know, kind of business of DJing, that we kept going after five or six years, you know, it becomes easier to operate that sort of thing. And then we focused on AV a little bit heavier. And that became something we became really good at. So now we've got two things after maybe like 10 years that are really we're really good at. And then during COVID, we, you know, just like everybody, we have to find new ways to make revenue. So we, we did a lot of virtual production, which was pretty new to us at the time, but like we had a couple of years to just, you know, leverage our, our audio visual skills and our customer service skills just nailed that. And we loved that. That portion. We're still doing some of that today. But then we also found a neat companies that were hiring us for virtual also had a need for video production. And it just so happened that like one of the people that used to work for us was looking for some opportunities, he owned a video production company. So we partnered up with him, his name is Jesse, he's awesome, amazing, just totally in line with how Andrew and I operate our business, from customer service to the friendliness and professionalism. So during COVID, we just found each other in this place. And so we started a new line of business, which is video production. And during COVID, we really were able to help some nonprofits, and some large companies get their get videos produced, which was amazing. And now we're focusing on a new spin on that video production company.

Paige Buck 6:42

And I want to ask you about that in a minute. So you said, so from DJ, which was like, I just love the energy, like it's like a completely different vibe than our very like logistical buttoned up. Lots of fun, love to have fun, but it's different kinds of fun to come to your, like DJ live event energy, to AAA to virtual, which if, if it's anything like our experience, you were, we were all learning it afresh together. But then it like you just said opened up a bunch of opportunities. And now, this video opportunity, this new this new thing, what how did you identify this opportunity? And And where's it going?

Lawrence Arevalo 7:22

Yeah, I mean, we had another strategic partner, another planning event planning firm that hired us to do virtual during COVID. And we love working with them, they love working with us. And so they had an opportunity for one of their clients at Asana, who, you know, had some values videos that they wanted produce, they had some kind of back to work. But this is a bit of a turn of COVID videos that they wanted produced. And we even helped them with a with like an external marketing project. So we did a lot of work with Asana, which was great and proved to us right away that we were, you know, our video production side was ready to jump in with larger companies. We also had some previous contacts at Google, and they were hiring us for some virtual stuff. And so we were like, Hey, we're doing this too. And that was working out, they were coming back. So we're like, okay, we're doing a good job, like, so we obviously like if we can work with these big companies and do a great job. We worked with some nonprofits to help them produce their, like mission videos. And so we just were like, Hey, we can do this other side as well. Like we, you know, this is something that and, you know, people are looking for good vendors. And we know, we have confidence that we care enough that we're a good vendor, and we're good partners. So you know, I feel like that was important.

Paige Buck 8:39

And I feel like that care that you're talking about goes to the heart of it's one of your big differentiators. I think it sounds like both your brand promise and your company's values help you like attract awesome team members and attract clients who value those qualities and people. So tell me a little bit about the brand promise and what it does for you.

Lawrence Arevalo 9:03

Yeah, we were just talking about this a little bit, you know, before the show start. But yeah, again, I, I think I owe a lot of the maturity of the business to my time in Entrepreneurs Organization. Through that, like I learned a ton, I met a bunch of really inspiring people. And we actually hired a coach, a guy named Dan clipper, he's awesome. He's an, he's an EEO coach. But then he also has a private firm. So he came on and coached us during a time that it felt really turbulent in the business, like I said, that growth can do so much to make people feel, you know, leaned on and stressed. And it wasn't just our employees, like we were also feeling the same way. Like we were just trying to figure it out. Like we haven't spent a bunch of time on values and and growing our relationships with each other and things were just moving so fast. And we're like, yes, we'll take that project and yes, we'll take that project. And then it was just like, alright, you know, you're sleeping in the warehouse tonight, obviously connect with you. And we're gonna make this happen tomorrow. And, you know, it was like that. And that's how the event industry can get. It's really, really, really brutal and really busy at certain times. And so we're pretty also like, you know, pretty sensitive to how people are feeling like we, I feel like, we have a pretty good emotional IQ. So like, you could just tell our employees were like, We love you guys. But like, This is crazy. So it just felt like it was time to implement some, some, you know, some actual values. Like, I don't think we ever even really did that. Well, the company was just growing and moving. And then just yeah, that that just more like investment in operations, and, you know, strategy and growing people and giving and giving more of the work away, like trusting people more to do things instead of trying to hold on to it and giving people minimal insights. So things really started to go well, like once we had Dan come in to help us but he'll he helped us identify. I don't know if it's necessarily a brand promise, but I feel like it is is that we're the friendly, trustworthy people to get all the details, right, because he was like, after observing you guys, you know, friendly, for sure. Like trustworthy, definitely. And those details like that we, we care about so much. I mean, I was had a meeting with my partner just a couple of minutes ago about like, the smallest details on moving some up, like a floor plan, like just the littlest things. And so those, those became core tenants in our business, and then we, we also develop values with our coach and with our team. And those became things that we, you know, we really lived and we we had to, you know, kind of implement some rewards and just some recognition based on those and really spend time at every team meeting and with our team leads, and you know, just making sure everybody knew the values, they understood them. We even did a contest where we had, everybody in the company can come up with an acronym to help us remember the values as the winner. Yeah, the winner was a was this guy named Dylan. He was a project manager at the time and, and he came up with party taps, party cats and party hats electrified. And that helped us the P. H. Rehab, a and party cats PC, electrify because our values are people first. healthy communication, accountability, positivity, constant improvement and excellence. So taking the first letter of all of those and

Paige Buck 12:39

hearty cats, party hats and party cats electrified.

Lawrence Arevalo 12:42

Yeah, yeah.

Paige Buck 12:44

I've been meaning to do this acronym exercise with ours. I think our team knows ours pretty well. But the acronym is fun. And then then it feels also like the acronym ties back to who you are as well. But yeah, it looks a little bit like you're it evokes your brand and the look of your website. And yeah, there's really good energy in there as well. And I know some people in like, our clients might wonder, like, that's nice, but what are those core values have to do with me? And I think, you know, you, you know, what you're getting when you get us, you know, you don't just know, like, Oh, these people know how to operate the equipment. But I know what's naledi I'm getting what my day to day interactions gonna look like with you what the experience of every step of the process is going to be, because you've told me who you are. Yeah.

Lawrence Arevalo 13:33

And also, it's like, what you hire by? Yeah, I mean, unfortunately, it's what you also buy or buy, what you, you know, reward and, you know, it's what you, you know, all of that stuff is your value. So, like, you know, say for instance, one of our values is, is positivity, right? Events are super stressful. So, we need people to be positive in sort of, like, the whole value goes like this, it goes be enthusiastic and positive when addressing challenges and opportunities. So, so like, positivity is like, Okay, we've got this thing. The skirt for the stage is not right. Okay. I can either be really upset and be like, nothing's ever I hate this, you know, like, this client is like, pushing on me, or, Hey, you know, we need to change in our PowerPoint, like right now. You'd be like, what? Or it could be like, Okay, sounds good. Like, bring it over. We'll get it done. Yeah. And so that's like, that's what we try to push with these values. It's not just this, you know, piece of paper that's on the wall or something you get in your email. It's really like, what we're hiring for. We want people that can come in and be positive in stressful situations or, you know, handle these, these challenges with a smile because honestly, that's what we would do, Andrew and I would like, you know, we'd be like, okay, cool. Let's do it. Let's figure it out. And

Paige Buck 14:47

that's part of that's part of that if you have values and you're hiring and hiring and firing from this, and you're attracting like minded people, because you're so transparent about this, that in Turn lets you do what you were saying before about, like, trusting them more giving them more of the work, getting yourself up into a different focus on whether it's busy, or, yeah, absolutely growth opportunities. I love that. And you know, Dan, I interviewed Dan here a couple of weeks ago, and so I'll have to pass on your praise and good. I've learned so much from him as well, as a trainer. It's really great to hear what he did for Verducci.

Lawrence Arevalo 15:26

That's what he knows, he knows we love Him. He

Paige Buck 15:29

knows he doesn't, he doesn't need the praise. So you've got some really good projects that you've just done that you're super excited about it. Tell me about what we did for Google?

Lawrence Arevalo 15:40

Yeah, absolutely. So we did a two day off site in Monterey for Google. It was for assistant, the product assistant, which is there like, hey, Google. And it was all the director level, folks that work on that product was a really great high end event. So we did all the audio visual for it. We did stage video walls, we had three video walls, we did the lighting for it, all the audio we had, you know, they had a bunch of people coming up from all of their teams to kind of explain what they'd been working on. But we didn't really like TED Talk style. So it was a lot of logistics, we had a day of load in which like, I love that if there's any event people listening right now for your production team, we had a day of loading, we had a day of rehearsal, and we had a perfect show. So that's, that's a lot different than like, you've got a day, a half a day loaded. And we need you to be rehearsing like midday. And then like, We're going live the next morning like that extra time and those additional resources really helped us as a team to go through every single PowerPoint, every single video work out like were looking at these videos not playing, you know, we need to so that whole rehearsal day helped us to click as a team because in our world in AV, sometimes your the people that you want to use might be on a different show. So like I had to fly a fly a few people in, you know, they were people that I had worked with before or, but they may not have worked with each other, right? So that like Team gelling that muscle memory of pushing all the buttons and doing all the things. By the time we were into that show the next day we were we were rocking and rolling. So

Paige Buck 17:18

that's amazing. That's also you're just, I feel like you're like poking at an open wound right now, because we've got two big shows in the next month, where the client had already signed the venue contract without that loading day. Oh, wow. Yeah. So we're having fun times fun, tight, late night, late nights. And you know, trying to like squeeze all that in anywhere we can. I do think that's one of the nice things about what, you know, a silver lining of COVID. Tom, if you've had this where we were talking about how you could really level up production because well, in some ways, like people were captive at, but they needed everything to be absolutely perfect minutes in it. And you could command the sort of rehearsal time, cross checks to extra equipment, extra people that you need to run that level of like live television production. And now that we're back to live, some clients really value like they got hooked on that, and they want it and they can't go back to a more rushed, less polished, you know, productions out here, you get the value of like, yeah, we will get you that full load in day.

Lawrence Arevalo 18:29

Yes, absolutely. Yeah, no, I 100% agree. We were talking about it. And yeah, COVID I think those virtual productions were more like TV broadcasts. And so if somebody has like a total captive audience to their screen, then you're right. Everything does have to be perfect. If there's a little glitch like it, you feel it, you know, videos like Mr. Q, like you really feel it not like you don't add at a live event. But it just felt like so much more for this virtual stuff. And again, there's no like event venue costs are broken a rehearsal, right? And everybody's at home. So it was like, Let's rehearse on this day. Great. Like, we can actually do a full dress rehearsal for a show, which, you know, most live shows a rehearsal is like somebody that just like comes up, and it's like, Hey, is the mic working? Great. The mics working? And my slides are working great. Cool. Like, you know, there's no actual, you know, like, rehearsal rehearsal. So

Paige Buck 19:18

five seconds before I'm on stage. Yep, yep. Oh, and did I tell you there's video embedded in there.

Lawrence Arevalo 19:26

And we didn't get to test it because we because I'm just bringing it up to you know,

Paige Buck 19:32

Nightmare thing is I like feel it in my body when something like that goes goes sideways. But I bet you guys do to what? You were talking about the days when you were like working nights and weekends in the warehouse. You thought you've got two awesome young kids at home and trying to like find balance and space. What are some of your I assume you're not nights and weekends in the warehouse anymore? But what's the Typical day, and what are your like rituals that, like, help ensure you get the time you need for yourself and your family?

Lawrence Arevalo 20:06

Totally? Yeah, well, I'll work backwards. A typical day for me, like, you know, as a, as a business owner for a small business, that there's so many things that like, looking at our finances and, you know, sometimes I'm like talking to staff and sometimes I'm, you know, helping on a client call, sometimes I want to walk through so in advance, I don't know that there is a typical day is their typical day is just crazy. Just depends on the week. But for like the family, my kids get off to school at 330. So like, I pick them up, I'm only when they can, but they, it's a short walk. So that's like a time for me to just like, stop and connect with him. And then we do jujitsu a couple days a week as a family. So I help in their class, it just like 5pm helps me to cut off like in their class, I'm focused, and then I get my exercise in afterwards after their class. So those are kind of rituals. And you know, we like I think the hard thing nowadays, a challenging thing for a lot of parents is screen time. So we've been really focused on saying, Okay, after school, I needed to get some work done, but you've been on the screen for an hour and a half. Like that's turned it off. And let's play old maid or let's like, do you know, my kids are young enough that they that they're they're totally cool playing games with me hanging out or even let's play Mario Party. Let's like play a video game together or watch a show together. Like, as long as we're not all just in a separate room just like looking

Paige Buck 21:24

at our own device. Staring at a flat digital device. Exactly.

Lawrence Arevalo 21:27

I mean, it's hard for everybody these days. But yeah, yeah, doing our best to keep a focus on that.

Paige Buck 21:33

Yeah, I think the challenge, the big challenge about screens with little ones is the same as ours. Like, they everything is there. Right? So it's Oh, yeah, it's my shopping. It's my news. It's my social time with friends. It's, it's also some very unhealthy habits. And, and which ones are they? Which ones are they tapping into? Is it a really cool Learning Program? Or is it like completely zoning out?

Lawrence Arevalo 21:56

Totally zoning? I?

Paige Buck 21:59

I have the same problems myself?

Lawrence Arevalo 22:02

Of course, of course. Yeah, we all do. Yeah. So yeah, I think, you know, I make a concerted effort, I would have to say, I wasn't so good at it. In the early years of the business, I think, when our son was born, and you're, like I said, as an event parent, you can't, like you're so committed to a day and the time for the event to happen to these things that happen, that you can't just say, Okay, I'm cutting my day off at x time. You know, sometimes you're just you're working late, you're, you know, so but once our second child came along, my wife was like, hey, something's gotta change. And that's when having a great team and like having those values and being able to trust people was really great. Because it freed me up from like, feeling like I needed to be in every everything.

Paige Buck 22:45

Yeah, yeah. Well, and you were talking about being a business owner than, you know, no, one day is exactly the same. There is no typical, because your attention needs to be on so many different things. And you might get pulled into something or you're working on a project. So they were like, breathe and pull up from all of that for a minute. I'm curious, like in the in the bigger picture, like, what are you? What are you curious about right now? And what are you trying to learn?

Lawrence Arevalo 23:10

Yeah, I think for me, it's probably more sales and marketing. My business partner, like, I just have to say, like, one of the many blessings in my life is my business partner. And just like, you know, having different a different skill set, so he's always been the salesperson. And I've always been operations, like, behind the scenes, production, finance, you know, like, HR kind of stuff, just, but he's so good at sales that I could just, like, let it go and just be like, Okay, you just do that, and I will, you know, focus on everything else. And that's, uh, you know, sales is such a huge part of a business, if you don't have literally just like, that's, like, you can have the best team, you can have the best operations, but if you don't have, you know, clients coming in the door, then you're, you've got nothing really so. So yeah, I mean, your business will absolutely fail. So, yeah, so he's so good at that. But now that, you know, I'm like maturing and looking to figure out new things. It would really be more about like, I'm doing this this new, you know, video production side, right. So I'm just saying, like, Okay, we were lucky to land some, like big clients that we were just like, thrown in our lap. But how do we, how would I now go out and like, get some new clients and like, let people know that we're here. Great, create relationships, because I feel like one of the things that's really helped us over time with Verducci Event Productions is that we just have a lot of like, handshake relationships, you know, handshakes and hugs and like meeting people and just being out of defense and working for them. And they were like, Hey, we like you looks like, let's do another event. And let me refer you and I feel like that is such a referral based thing. I feel like video production might be too but there might be an opportunity to, to try sales and marketing on like, Can this new internet world you know, like, maybe we're doing projects for companies in other states? Other countries and how do we expand our business to be not just a local, like handshakes and hugs kind of business but but something that can be more nationally or internationally scaled? So

Paige Buck 25:12

yeah, interesting questions to be asking yourself and then, and then you get to that next level of of growth and fear and pain. Oh, yeah. But you've got all of these all of these skills that your wife and your kids forced you to balance out, so you'll be able to apply that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's amazing.

Lawrence Arevalo 25:31

Also, I think coming out of COVID, like knowing when to say no to has been a big thing. Like, we've definitely turned down some jobs this year, because we're like, okay, no, that's gonna, we're gonna be crazy. It's gonna make us it's gonna make our next event suffer. And we don't need to do that. You know, we don't we don't. We don't need to compromise somebody else's experience, because we want to pick up one more,

Paige Buck 25:53

or whatever. And embedding that when you said yes to those things. If it was anything like the way we used to? didn't, you didn't think you were going to compromise yourself? Or them? It was just like, yes, yes, yes, I want to be of service. That sounds fun. That's another project. Good. I can, you know, guarantee that I'll be able to pay my warehouse workers for another couple months. And now it's yeah, now you've got the bigger picture. You know, you'll be okay. If you say no to that.

Lawrence Arevalo 26:18

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I mean, we definitely changed like our team size, we made adjustments around COVID. Like we had to, you know, we had to downsize a bit. And that's actually been, you know, although it was really hard. That's been one of the parts that's helped us manage a lot more is just to, you know, reduce the staff a little bit, but then, again, not have such big overhead that we have to take that extra project, squeeze it in on the day that we already have a couple of big projects, or, like you said, we're not like we can do it. And then you get there. And you're like, Oh, my God didn't realize that we needed to, like, pack everything the day before. And like, you know, you're not thinking about that when you're in like, go go go sales mode, right? You're like, yes, what is this going to compromise? Yes, we'll find the staff and yes, we'll get the gear. And yes, we'll do all that stuff. And no matter what hardships are created for anybody else, so it's nice to be out of that, you know, that mode,

Paige Buck 27:06

that hustle and fear mode for sure. lets you be even better. And, and, yep, freeze, you freeze your brain up for much better things. That's a nice place to be. So let me ask you, my semi final question, my penultimate question. Who is somebody you really admire in the business world?

Lawrence Arevalo 27:30

Yeah, I mean, first of all, I have to shout out like a big group of people, which is all of the folks that I met while I was in Entrepreneurs Organization. I'll just name a few. Because like all of my elders, I would say, just like the guys that were maybe 10 years in advance of me that my my forearm like Cory and TJ, and, you know, Eric Taussig, and like, you know, he's not on my form, but just like, those guys that were just like, a little bit further than me, it just inspired me to like, oh, in 10 years, I could, I can be here I can have a team that's like clicking and running. And, and things can be done well, and, you know, I don't have to be struggling like if I if I stick with it long enough and turn on the right keys, but I would say like my, you know, my biggest inspiration. You know, it's my mentor is Victor, kind of maker and he, yeah, what I love about Victor is like, he's just so dedicated, not only to the business that like he started in grew, which, you know, he's brilliant. I can just so smart guy, to his family, to his community, to you know, giving back and, you know, I see that it keeps him really busy. And sometimes, you know, I'm sure it's overwhelming for him. But just like, every time I talk to him, I'm just inspired by like, and, and you're doing that like, and you're, you know, Assistant Scoutmaster, and you're on the board for this, and you're, you know, when you're coaching your son, you know, you're doing all of this stuff, which is like, you know, that kind of being inspired by people. And again, yeah, like, grew his business and sold it and, you know, before the age of 50, like, that's really inspiring for me. So, you know, when I think about, like, continuing to have the drive to move forward, when things are hard, or, you know, any of that I think about him, gave me a couple of things. One of them, you know, you've probably seen it before, it's like, everybody thinks that the, the path to success is like the straight line, but like in reality, it's like, gets you there. So,

Paige Buck 29:23

yes, yes, I Oh, the other one that we show a lot and accelerator that those same guys will reference is the one that looks like a mountain range. And there are valleys of death, right? You, you get your business to a certain size and then and then you're some luck for a little while and then you get the you know, you climb that next peak, and everything feels amazing, and then you're in the muck for a little while. Yeah, and are they gonna keep calling him the valley of death, which we now know, to walk through? Yes,

Lawrence Arevalo 29:53

I've been reserved. First of all, I want to shout out to more people, which you know, Dan. Yeah, exactly. Forget that and Murdoch who was also my accelerator coach during COVID. So I'm gonna say

Paige Buck 30:04

these games for 11 bar. net out off right from 42 Inc. Who I both Yeah, inspirations to me as well. TJ van for Hayes from PCJ right as PCG Victor and Animaker I can't Can't remember Victor's business name, but he's brilliant. Yeah,

Lawrence Arevalo 30:22

he was precision concrete cutting me. He's not me. He's been an EO like on the board of yo without having a business for like five years.

Paige Buck 30:32

That's why I'm like he pours concrete, right. I mean, all of these folks and Dan Clifford have all been Yeah. inspirations to me as well. And I think you're making me pause and appreciate how much I've learned from them. Yeah, yeah. That's amazing. Yeah. I mean, these are all folks who it's really good to have them in your orbit. Yeah,

Lawrence Arevalo 30:55

totally. Oh, my God. Yeah. So inspiring. So smart. Yeah, I love those guys.

Paige Buck 31:00

Super Amazing. Well, thank you, Lawrence. We've had a really great time talking to you. Where can people learn more about Verducci Event Productions?

Lawrence Arevalo 31:08

Verducci Event Productions? We're at www.wearevep.com. And we also have our new company that we're starting Full Picture Media, it's going to be fully dedicated to video production for HR for medium and small or sorry, medium and large businesses, values, employee recognition, recruiting and training tools. So yeah, we've got both businesses they're operating. We're still serving clients and

Paige Buck 31:34

loving what we do. Say that new business name one more time,

Lawrence Arevalo 31:37

new business name is Full Picture Media. And that's www.fullpicturemedia.com

Paige Buck 31:43

Fantastic. Great. Thank you so much for being here today.

Lawrence Arevalo 31:47

No problem. Thank you so much Paige. It's great to be here

Intro 31:52

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PAIGE BUCK

Paige Buck is the co-owner of Kennedy Events, a large-scale event management company based in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York City. Our team creates stress-free conferences and events with a positive impact, which allows our clients to resonate with their audience. Kennedy Events specializes in producing flawless product launches, award ceremonies, fundraisers, and multi-day conferences while keeping our eye on retention and engagement goals.

About Kennedy Events

Kennedy Events began with one goal in mind—to produce high-level corporate events with just as much strategy as style. Maggie founded the company in 2000, found her match in Paige, and in 2011 the two became official partners. Since then, these two resourceful and brilliant creatives have pooled their strengths to build one one of the most the most sought after corporate event companies in San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles.