Live Event Marketing, Virtual With CEO And Co-Founder Of Stellar Tickets And Goldstar, Live Events And Entertainment Expert Jim McCarthy on Episode #0253

Jim McCarthy [0:00]
Hi, I’m Jim McCarthy with Stellar.com. You’re listening to EA Interviews.

Intro [0:04]
EA Interviews, Episode 253, inspiration, transformation, success stories and the Imperfect Action Round seven days a week. Join Mario Fachini for today’s Expert Authority Effect Interview.

Mario Fachini [0:17]
Alright, Expert Authority World, I know that you love doing stuff live. And I do too. If you’ve ever gone to an event where someone is public speaking, if they’re giving you great information, and you’re just writing it down fevers, feverishly copious notes, I’ve been there on both sides of the stage where I’m on the stage and in the audience. And I’ll tell you what, it’s always interesting to see how these things are put together. And that’s why I’m super excited to have Jim McCarthy On today’s episode, because we’re gonna be talking about live events, ticket sales, and putting on these big productions. He’s spoken at places like South by Southwest, Ted and even puts on TEDx Broadway. I’m going to bring them up. Right after we thank our sponsor.

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Mario Fachini [1:16]
Here he is, ladies and gentlemen, Jim McCarthy. Jim, how are you feeling today?

Jim McCarthy [1:20]
Good, Mario, how are you?

Mario Fachini [1:21]
I’m having a great day.

Jim McCarthy [1:23]
Awesome. Awesome. Glad to hear it.

Mario Fachini [1:26]
Well, I just want to jump right in, because what you’re doing is amazing. And I couldn’t wait to have you on the show. How did you get into it? Because I was checking through your background. And it’s pretty interesting. But how did you transition into what you’re doing now?

Jim McCarthy [1:43]
Well, we’ve been doing live events live event business for 18 years. So we started Goldstar. Mike, my co founders and I started Gold Star 18 years ago, almost 19. Now, really, because we knew we were internet guys. And here it was 2002. And really, the live event business had not moved on to the internet yet. It was it’s hard to believe, but it’s true. People were still kind of picking up the phone most of the time to buy their tickets, if you can believe that. And so we were kind of part of a wave of businesses that kind of brought the live entertainment business onto the internet. And our piece of it was that we wanted to connect all the people out there who wanted to sell their tickets with all the people out there like you and me who wanted to go see shows. And so Goldstar brought those together, and made it easy for the people with shows to reach the audience that we built. And of course, that business went along very well. And of course, came to a grinding halt. Back in March, when all of a sudden, you know, we all went home and sort of chilled out for a little while. And the live entertainment business completely stopped. And that’s when we started building Stellar. And Stellar is now out there as the platform for online events. So live entertainment producers of all kinds can use Stellar to put on a great big pay per view style, live event that can draw in an audience from all over the world and has been a lot of fun to do. And we’re seeing a lot of success. And a lot of people picking up on that opportunity.

Mario Fachini [3:14]
So March 2020, you made the transition with everything going on in the world. I got to ask what month did you start in 2002? Because I also started this business in oh two as well.

Jim McCarthy [3:25]
I think the site went live actually no, I know the site went live on Valentine’s Day 2002. Now we weren’t real, we were working on.

Mario Fachini [3:34]
It is surreal. I started mine in February of 02’ also.

Jim McCarthy [3:38]
About that. There you go.

Mario Fachini [3:40]
I don’t think it was Valentine’s Day, I’d have to look at a calendar as to the official event date it was with the Detroit Auto Show going on. That whatever weekend it was an oh two but that’d be surreal if it was Valentine’s Day. But wow, congrats.

Jim McCarthy [3:55]
That’s amazing acts same view. Same. Cool.

Mario Fachini [3:58]
Thank you. So how is Stellar go. Is Stellar, going stellar?

Jim McCarthy [4:03]
Stellar is going very, very well. And what’s exciting about it is that it really is a new thing for people who produce live shows to be able to take them online, right? Like, it’s great. It’s great to be able to do a show in person, but then, you know, 99 plus percent of all the people in the world can’t see it because they’re not in Detroit or they’re not in Pasadena or wherever the show is. But with an online event, you can reach anybody anywhere, which is very exciting. So a lot of different, you know, musicians, theatrical productions, a whole bunch of those, whoever really are figuring out how to make this work figuring out how to tap into audiences. And it’s been great.

Mario Fachini [4:39]
That’s exciting because I know the live events will come back and the virtual events are not going anywhere because I’ve had people on the show who have spoke at Adobe Max, they were on the show one day they’re speaking at Adobe max the next and they said they normally get five to 10,000. And because of the virtual thing they had over 400,000 I mean, they were going 24 seven all week long all around the world as like, that is a huge increase.

Jim McCarthy [5:08]
Yeah.

Mario Fachini [5:09]
Now, if you have to do out of necessity, it’s one thing, but when, and I kind of was saying this because all this stuff is not new to me when people are going, Oh, we can do a webinar, we can do this, we can do an online converter. I’m like, Oh, my gosh, bore me some more. It’s been around for 10, 15 years. But it’s new to a lot of people. But the reality is, if you haven’t been doing it the past decade, I think this is the litmus test to go, are you going to be around the next decade and actually implement this, your thoughts on that?

Jim McCarthy [5:38]
I think you’re exactly right. And the segment that we play in is what you might think of is the live entertainment space. So again, theater, music, comedy, performing arts, that kind of thing, right stuff that you buy a ticket to and go watch in a venue traditionally, and that segments even further behind than, let’s say, the conference world or, you know, the that sort of business meetings, that kind of thing. As it relates to the the virtual event, but it is an opportunity, right, it is a huge opportunity. And I think that the people who are using this time to figure out how to do that, to build their skills in designing and creating content. That’s, that’s purposefully for online, getting the technical side of it under your belt as a form of expertise. You know, figuring out the production side, the experience, the show day experience, all that stuff. It sounds complicated, and it sounds like a lot. But really, it’s just another set of skills to develop what you can do. Once you have that, though, it’s a it’s a tool that’s going to serve you extremely well, extremely well in the future. And I think it is going to be in five years, in my opinion, everyone’s going to be doing this whether they got in early and really made an impression, or they’re playing catch up. One way or the other. I think everyone who does live events, entertainment, or otherwise are going to be in this game. The question is just how well suited what’s are they going to be in a good footing? Are they going to be playing catch up?

Mario Fachini [7:03]
Yeah, definitelydon’t want to be playing catch up. Because there’s so many, I mean, mobile devices, I remember when smartphones came out and it was like, oh, smartphones, cool. Whatever shoe I remember before smartphones, and everyone is just calling them blackberries. Remember those things?

Jim McCarthy [7:16]
Right. Of course. Yeah.

Mario Fachini [7:18]
And now, the stats last I saw are somewhere between seven to 10 devices per person. Not per household, not per business but per person.

Jim McCarthy [7:29]
Does that include like TV? I don’t even know what that was.

Mario Fachini [7:32]
I don’t even think that’s it. I don’t even think that includes TVs,

Jim McCarthy [7:36]
Phones, tablets…

Mario Fachini [7:38]
Computer screens, tablets, mobile devices, laptops. Yeah. watches,

Jim McCarthy [7:43]
Curling irons? I don’t know.

Mario Fachini [7:45]
Yeah, the fridges that have the TVs built or the screen? I shouldn’t say TVs, the screens built in them? Do TVs even exist anymore. I mean, if you’re talking about TV for TV sake, yeah, they’re basically large monitors that no one’s got cable. So

Jim McCarthy [7:59]
That’s right. But you do. Here’s the thing, I do believe that I do believe that the value of a really large monitor with good sound is really important. Because you want to you know, you don’t want to sit there and watch something on your on your laptop all night, right, you want to sit back and relax.

Mario Fachini [8:13]
I agree 100%.

Jim McCarthy [8:15]
In fact, 100%, we built for stellar, we built apps for the Roku for the amazon fire stick. And for of course, Apple TV. And for a lot of the big shows, people really prefer to watch on a big screen with nice sound as opposed to I mean, for goodness sake, I don’t know how people can watch a show on a phone, but some people do. And a lot of people watch on a laptop, but a lot of people also watch on, you know, the on the TV, because why not right, actually in the Stellar app, you can actually watch the show on one TV on the TV, let’s say and then chat along with it, you know, on your phone. So it’s kind of kind of fun to do both.

Mario Fachini [8:49]
But see, you’re already on the cutting edge of the technology because people thought about that too. And I’ve spoke at virtual events and real life ones. And I’ve attended both like I was saying, it’s interesting, because how people put it you know, you have the great world class speakers, that doesn’t change anything. The marketing plays a role, but then the experience of the platform.

Jim McCarthy [9:11]
Yes. Yeah, that’s so important.

Mario Fachini [9:12]
People don’t have that live chat. And it’s like you’re just sitting there watching this series of YouTube videos.

Jim McCarthy [9:17]
That’s so Maria, I think you’ve just got it. I mean, I feel like you could do my pitch for me, basically. I mean, that, you the the, the importance of creating that feeling of really being in a place with other people and being live in the sort of experience of going to a show or an event. It’s so important. You know, there’s been some people who’ve done successful rebroadcasts of old streams, and that’s one thing that’s fine. But the ones that really have been successful on Stellar and other platforms have been real, live shows where people could feel the energy they could participate. They could see that other people were watching along with them, they could chat with them, they could react with emojis and that kind of thing, and they can actually interact with one another. There was a show on Stellar last month. It was a concert on Broadway called the Jagged, Jagged Little Pill, Jagged Live Concert from the Atlantis Morrison album that probably remember. And one of the things they did was they let the audience pick the encore song, which was very cool, right? Like you gave people a poll, and they and they answered it, and they picked the songs that well, you guys picked, you know, song A, and then they played that, which is very neat, right? Like you really feel like you’re part of it.

Mario Fachini [10:25]
Yeah, because it’s one thing to watch it it’s another thing to experience it. And it’s one reason I’ve always loved live. And I my backgrounds in band choir drama, I play piano and sax. So in addition to speaking on stage, I’ve also performed on stage and marching band and football fields and all kinds of stuff in it’s 180 degrees different. It’s one thing to just stand up there. It’s another thing to perform up there. Right. And I think that was one of the bottlenecks with the virtual is just how do we recreate this and everything. And you can go, we’re gonna do a breakout room and do a chat and all this type of stuff. But I want to jump into the hybrid events when we can stand. I would love to be at a venue with you experiencing it and seeing a show. But from a business standpoint, you want to capitalize on that other 99% that are around the world that aren’t there. How do you see that meshing together in the future?

Jim McCarthy [11:21]
You know, it’s actually a very familiar model. If you think about it, this is what sports has been doing for 50 years very, very well. Right. Every every live sports event, it normally is a hybrid event, right? So there’s a there’s a roomful of people watching the game, have an arena full of people watching the game or Stadium, whatever. And then there’s even more people watching it at home. And so it’s not like it’s completely out of the blue how this works right there. There’s a model, that’s an existence. One of the concerns that people who produce live events have is if I open this up for people to watch from home, maybe they won’t come to the stadium. But like I always say, imagine this is my thought experiment. Imagine that you’re the Commissioner of the NBA in 1985. There’s just thought experiment for you, right. And suddenly, the league is popular again, because there’s Larry Bird. And there’s Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan, and you know, all of a sudden, the league is popular. Somebody comes to you and says, Hey, we’re getting more popular, our tickets to the games are getting more and more valuable. And we don’t want to stop that. Maybe we should take basketball off television. So that people will want to pay more for the tickets to come to the arena. It’s as a hypothetical situation, it’s pretty obvious that that would be a really bad decision, right? a really bad decision. But the thought experiment is now it’s 2020. So it’s 35 years later, do you think if they had made that decision, the NBA would be more popular and bigger or less popular and not as big what’s obvious, right? That the ability to open up the just open up, you know, to enable people to see it in many, many different new ways, is highly beneficial. And the same thing is true for for just about anything you can think of it’s certainly true for theater, it’s certainly true for music and performing arts and all the things that we generally work in is you can use this tool to make money, but you can also use it to build audience and awareness for what you’re doing.

Mario Fachini [13:16]
And you could have a strong argument that maybe it rose in popularity, because people could watch it on TV.

Jim McCarthy [13:21]
That’s right. That’s right. A lot of people don’t know this. But in the 70s, I used the example of the NBA on purpose. In the 70s, the NBA really hit a low point to the to the point where the NBA Finals were shown on TV on tape delay. Can you believe that? They were on tape delay, because no one no one cared? Like it was just a league that was not succeeding, you know? And, you know, if you It’s hard to imagine a world where, you know, I guess what better way of putting this. It’s not like ticket sales in the venue go one way, and viewership on TV or, or other platforms goes the other way they go together, right. So generally speaking, if you have good, you know, access TV ratings, you know, pay per view ratings, whatever the ticket prices go up, they go up together again, they go down together. And so this is just so important for people in the performing arts fields to realize it’s, there’s a big audience out there that’s interested in what you’re doing. And the live product is great, but it immediately excludes everybody who can’t get into the building. And there’s no reason to do that, right. Like the shows that we’re seeing. We’re seeing people put on big shows. I’m drawing audiences from all over the world. And the vast majority of people who are spending money and really getting engaged in loving a show are not have never been to the venue and may never go to the venue, right? Because they’re in the Philippines or they’re wherever, right so it’s just a tool that I think people have got to learn to take advantage of and they will and they are and they are.

Mario Fachini [15:00]
Yeah, and even locally, you could just have a distance. It’s like, you know, the game is a couple 2, 3, 4 hours, you got to wait in line that’s an hour, hour and a half drive. And you can have 10 or 15 people over at your house, and have fun with that. But are all 15 of them going to buy tickets at 100 200 800? A pop?

Jim McCarthy [15:19]
Right? That’s right. And that’s exactly right. And, again, it’s not a threat to the live experience, because that’s a whole different thing, right? Like, that’s something that you pay more for. And it’s the best, right? I mean, you and I love going and seeing, you know, shows, games, whatever in person, but you can’t always do it, he can’t always do it. So I think the hybrid event is one that I know people are already planning for, they’re planning for creating using the tools that have been created during COVID as ways of expanding the access for an audience to see what they’re gonna do when they come back out. Like think about it, right? Like, maybe the first night that I don’t know, Hamilton or some other big show’s back on Broadway, you think maybe they might be able to attract an audience to watch it. I think maybe they could sell a few tickets to that, right?

Mario Fachini [16:11]
I think Hamilton won’t be a problem at all. And I would even say all the shows that were struggling before, I know so many people, they’re like, I don’t even care what we do just gonna need something new to do

Jim McCarthy [16:22]
You got the truth. That’s the truth.

Mario Fachini [16:25]
So I want to ask you about the first couple of steps if someone’s never done a live event or virtual event and listening to you going, you know what, I’m not looking to do a Broadway show this year, but I’m gonna give it a shot, just wrap my head around it. So in five years from now, I’m not playing catch up, what would some of the first things you recommend they do?

Jim McCarthy [16:48]
I actually have five things I call the Big Five for avoiding failure and setting yourself up for success with your first online event. The first thing of course, the concept for the event is critical. Like what is the event? What’s it based on? What’s it about? One way to start on that if you have an idea, that’s good. But one way to kind of think about that is, with an online event, it’s very helpful to build it around an actor, a person or whatever, who has an existing active following, right? Because in an online event the audience is worldwide, what you’re reaching is not normally for an event, you’re reaching a local market, you’re reaching people who are broadly interested in a narrow geographical area. With an online event. It’s the opposite, right? It’s a broad geographical interest, but a very narrow interest. geographical focus is broad, but the interest focus is narrow. So if someone is an actual show that’s coming up soon on Stellar, someone is an evil dead fan, right? The movie Evil Dead, you may remember, all of what you’re doing to market that show is trying to find Evil Dead fans or horror fans all over the world. Right? So it’s, it’s a narrow interest on a broad geography, which is the opposite of what you normally do. If those if that concept has existing, active reachable fans, that’s a really good place to start. So that I think if you’re, if you’re developing show concept, that’s a good place to start. From there, it has to do with building a credible marketing plan. I mean, you know, we’ve seen some people who get a good concept together, and then they kind of forget that just because it’s online, it’s not going to market itself. Like you really have to think through, like, how does this thing, take flight marketing wise? How are you going to reach people, and there’s a few ways to do that. Very important to relatively early on, think about the budget for this thing, and kind of stack that up against the realistic revenue potential of the event, which events have different ways. One way to think of it is, if I do this event, to the level of quality that I really want, what would I have to sell in order to be successful financially. And the reality is, with an online event, there’s no limit to the number that you can sell. So if you can get the marketing formula, right and make the budget as a high production value for dollars, you can be extremely profitable, right? Then the next thing is technology, to really make sure that the technology that you understand the technology or that you have somebody who does, and you check it, right, like it’s really important to kind of thoroughly, you know, make sure it’s bulletproof, before the day of the show. And finally, think about the experience that people are going to have when they’re actually in the show going experience, is it going to be smooth? Is it going to be fun? Is it going to feel good, you’re going to feel like something people are, you know, happy to have paid for. And so, you know, using a platform like Stellar can do that. There’s other ways to do it. But those five things are the things that I advise, you know, an act of the following a marketing plan that makes sense. A budget that’s getting as much production value as possible out of it and is realistic to be profitable. Good check on the technology and then a really good, smooth, enjoyable event going experience. So if you do all those, if you really do all those, you’re not gonna, I don’t think that your your chances, I think your chances of failing are very small. And it’s going to be you might succeed big. But whatever happens, you’re going to be alright and build a basis for your next events.

Mario Fachini [20:21]
That’s fantastic. That was very succinct. And I appreciate you for sharing all five of those because I know there’s someone listening going, this sounds really good. I’ve never done it in you know, the first thought is, where do I start? What do I do? So thank you for that great basis. And I want to ask a follow up question about follow up after the event. Tell me about your follow up sequence. Do you wait a couple of weeks to a couple of days? Do you do any surveys? And when do you start remarketing the next event?

Jim McCarthy [20:52]
Well, it depends on the pace, your production pace, my feeling is that you know you Well, one thing that’s really really worth sharing, I think is that don’t make the mistake of thinking that online events can be that the timeline can be super compressed. That I think is a mistake I’ve seen some people make where they were, they launched the sales of a show two weeks before the show a little bit of a mistake, because people need time to be marketed to so my general advice is, is that you take six to eight weeks from the on sale to the date of the show, to just get the word out there, right the key you can use your your partnership channels, you can use social media to create a bunch of cookies out there that you can remark it, you need some time, you know, it’s true that people tend to buy their tickets later than they do for in person shows because there’s no such thing as a bad seat for an online show. So there’s kind of there’s no, there’s no like incentive to rush early and buy your ticket. But it’s also true that just because they tend to buy a little later, doesn’t mean you can’t, you can skip over the marketing that goes into the first few weeks. So that is really important. So from my point of view, like the sequence of that, if you had an event every couple of months, or if you were staggering it so that you were marketing within those windows, you could do that very easily, I think.

Mario Fachini [22:23]
Now, do you think there’s a frequency that’s too much, if someone goes, I’m gonna do an event, it was very successful, you could go well, let’s do them quarterly now. And I think that for anyone would is a good pace, because it gives you time to market and also breathe and, you know, let people talk about it. But what if someone goes, I want to be doing an event monthly,

Jim McCarthy [22:44]
I think you can do it, I think I think you could probably even do it a little more often than that if you really wanted to. But you’ve got to give people something different. And you have to have this rolling marketing process going, right. So it could be for example, that if you run a music venue, you could do an event, you know much more often than that with different artists, as long as you still have a good marketing cycle in place for every one of those artists, right? If you’re doing essentially the same show, it does take a little time, right, like if you if you tap out your audience, and then you do the same show again, you probably want to give it two or three months, you’re not going to be able to sell the same thing every week, you know, week in and week out. If you change it though, or if you connect one of the concepts I’m excited about is when you know an artist will do a series of maybe similar performances, but they’re connected, right? So one thing we’ve seen is that, you know, an artist will do a concert where this time it’s about covers from the 60s, and this time, it’s about, you know, covers from the night, whatever it is, right? There’s a theme to or different album, you know, that they play or something like that, or, you know, I’m really into the idea that maybe you even make it something that people need to see, right, like, we’re gonna give you a special code word, you know, at the end of every concert, and anybody who gets all the code words, you know, is eligible for it. I mean, that’s sounds like a terrible idea. But you get the idea, right? Where if you’re,

Mario Fachini [24:12]
It’s not a terrible idea. I’ve the one of the last events I was speaking at a couple of the people did it. And, you know, Tuesday was one day, Wednesday was another. Obviously there’s separate days, but Tuesday. Tuesday was one topic. Wednesday was another topic. Thursday was… So if you watched all the trainings from Tuesday, each speaker like you’d give one word, I’d give one word. The next one would give one word and you know, it’s a great way to make sure people aren’t skipping over stuff either. Yeah, yeah. Anyone you have an incentive in our business. If anyone ever asks you about that, or you want to do it’s a great idea.

Jim McCarthy [24:51]
I think so and you can make it really fun to it’s almost like you could collect, it’s almost like a collectible thing. So that there’s a lot of ways of creating a reason. I mean, one of the things we always talk about in the live entertainment businesses, you got to give people a reason for it to be live, right? In a world where there’s so much content available just sitting on your butt at home, why do I need to drive across town to a venue? Well, there’s good reasons for that. But when you think about producing…

Mario Fachini [25:19]
A break from the screen.

Jim McCarthy [25:21]
From the screen for one thing, but also, it’s better, obviously, we all know that, that live experience is fun in its own way. But it does ask the question, like, why does this need to be live? Why does this need to be an experience as opposed to just content? Right? So and I think the same thing applies to online events? Why do I need to see it live? And there’s a lot of good ways to answer that question. Giving people ways to participate, to play along to interact with other people to have access they couldn’t get right. Like, you know what, one of the things that online events often contain is sort of a look behind the scenes, right? Imagine you’re, you’re standing that the cameras is putting you in the little circle with the band before they run out on the stage. If you’re in the venue, you’re not experiencing that, right, like so there’s, there’s ways in which the live nature of the experience can be really special. We’re an online event, and people are getting better and better at doing those things.

Mario Fachini [26:19]
Yeah, it’s interesting to see how it’s all progressing. Tell me about your most successful what’s been one of your most successful events you would say, and the biggest, biggest return you were able to give to the person putting it on.

Jim McCarthy [26:38]
I think the biggest show on Stellar so far has been the Jagged Little Pill concert back in December, just about a month ago, which was the first time that the cast of Jagged Little Pill had gotten together since the pandemic, they got together in a theater in the Broadway neighborhood, and put on a concert of the of the album. And it was amazing. I mean, it was really great. There were, you know, 10s of 1000s of people watching the chat was just outrageously fun. The pre show was even fun. They did a lot of clips and interviews and little musical nuggets. But I mean, people kept, you know, the show ended and you know, like 1000, people kept chatting for 45 minutes after the show was over. It was a blast. I mean, the music was great. And it just really felt like something special was happening. It was live. Everyone who I mean, there were people who were talking about how they were crying the entire time, which you know, I guess, tears of joy, presumably. But, I mean, that was a really awesome show. But you know, there’s been other huge shows, too, there was that same weekend, there was a Christmas concert by Broadway inspirational voices that had, I don’t know, 10s of 10 20,000 people in it. Just having a great time as well, raising money and listening to great music. So I mean, it’s a lot of fun stuff, that that’s happening. And not just on Stellar, but but beyond. But for us. I mean, those kinds of things have just been so much fun.

Mario Fachini [27:57]
I’m glad you’re bringing joy back to people because they definitely need it. And no matter what’s going on in the world, it’s just a fun thing to do, and share the experience with people and have that time together. And if you have a background in being onstage, you know, maybe it’s something to consider again, also.

Jim McCarthy [28:16]
I mean, the other thing is if anyone’s listening who is considering doing an online show, and part of our job at Stellar is to help you develop that concept and bring it to life. So don’t hesitate to reach out to us reach out to me. And we’ll we’ll work with you to kind of nurture your concept into something that’s that’s real. We’ve had people do some really neat stuff. We there’s a father, daughter of musical duo called Matt and Savannah Shaw, that are on YouTube. And they they sing together, they’re there, they’re great. They put on a show back, I think it was in November, that they had sold 1000s of tickets to the show, they did a nice job producing a really good show near them and in, in Utah, I think is where they’re from. And 1000s of people watched it and loved it. And it was just so much fun. I mean, these are people that they’re very good, but they’re, you know, they don’t have experience touring the world. They’re just really good singers. And they, they got some help, you know, from a production company, putting the show together looks great, sounded great. And their audience loved it. So it can be done in a bunch of different ways to connect with audiences and just you know, have a great time to a great show. Financially, it can be very rewarding, and artistically as well. And I think there’s a lot of innovation to come and how people use this whole democratized pay per view type system to get some cool stuff out

Mario Fachini [29:37]
there. I got two questions for you one of them I’m throwing in because I think it’s important and I know someone listening wants to know.

Jim McCarthy [29:46]
Okay,

Mario Fachini [29:46]
As far as the marketing, yeah, because you’re telling us success stories of people who sold 1000s of tickets 10s of 1000s of tickets, you know, six to eight weeks. How important is the marketing when you’re if you’re already at a level where you’re going to put on a show and you’re going to be a great performer. How , do you.. should you be spending 80% of your time on the performance 80% of the time in the marketing? 50 50? What are your thoughts on that? Because I’m thinking of some people right now who are really great performers. And they’re just, you know, I would be hard pressed to believe they could get a couple 1000 people, online, offline, whatever. And I’m thinking of, how could we help them do that? And I know the answers down to the marketing, but what are your thoughts and how much you should be devoting to it?

Jim McCarthy [30:37]
Well, I think somebody needs to be devoting serious time to the marketing, maybe not the artist, I think one of the things that, you know, one of the best levers for this, when you’re an artist with the following is your following. And then everything that you can build on top of that following so one of the key, we talked about two key tools for online event marketing right now. One is, well, one a and one B are the following that the the Act has the immediate people who are following on Instagram, following on YouTube, whatever the case may be, but one B is the fact that if you work with somebody who knows how these platforms work function, as ad platforms, they can go and replicate the kind of people who are interested in you all over the world, they can, they can multiply the size of the audience that’s likely to be receptive to what you’re offering, through these digital platforms. And then it’s relatively easy. I mean, it’s, you know, marketing is never easy, but it’s relatively easy to get a good ROI with a much larger audience, if you know how to use those platforms. And what they call look alikes, right for the audience that you have. So you can actually if you have a, an audience, it’s 100,000, you can reach multiple times that 100,000 through look alikes. So that’s something that if the artist, or the person with the following doesn’t know how to do it, they shouldn’t try, they should look for someone who can do that for them. And there are lots of marketing services or marketing shops that can help them and we can help you at Stellar if we can help you a bit ourselves. But we can also connect you to somebody who focuses on that. That’s the first kind of marketing that they need to do. The second kind of marketing they need to do is what I think of as your usual partnerships. So one thing that’s been very successful for people is, if you’re producing shows, who are the people that you normally turn to as partners. So, for example, with Jagged, live, they do shows in theaters, right, they’re planning a tour as soon as things open back up. So a lot of theaters around the country that will be eventually housing, their show actually marketed the online show to their buyers. Because they got cut in on the revenue of it. And because they want to build excitement and anticipation for the show when it really does come. So there’s ways of thinking about who are the people who sell my tickets for me now? And how can I enable them to sell tickets for me, you know, during the when we can only do it online. Now if that if those don’t exist for you, because you haven’t done shows yet. Then really the you know, I think what you need to do is is give some thought to finding people who can really supercharge your digital marketing, around a core of interest in and the fan base, creating the look alikes, and really going all in building all the touch points so that you can remarket people and remarket people as you get closer and closer to the date of the show. But can be done, it can definitely be done. But to go back to my, my first of the Big Five, starting with an act that has a following to kind of like, you got a little fire burning, you can make a bigger fire, right? So it’s nice to have at least a little fire burning of a fan base. If you don’t have that it’s just a little harder, you know, I would give it a little more time maybe to build

Mario Fachini [33:55]
Do you have a certain number when you say start with a following is that 100 1000 10,000? Or doesn’t matter? You just mean have a following?

Jim McCarthy [34:04]
Yeah, people that mean sometimes, you know, people’s following may not appear to be all that big, but they’re very active, right? They’re very, very engaged in that activity. So it’s hard to give a rule of thumb there. You know, one of the ways to look at it is if you put yourself as an artist or a personality or whatever, put something out to people and say, Hey, try this, click on this link or do this thing. And a lot of people do, you’ve got an active following like this. This is a sign that people are listening to what you’re doing and taking it seriously.

Mario Fachini [34:37]
And then if they’re excited enough, if you’ve never done a live concert or online concert, they might be so excited. They’re probably gonna be running their mouth to all their friends about it.

Jim McCarthy [34:47]
They definitely will. They definitely will. Yeah. So I think that’s a big opportunity for people. I think that it really is going to become obvious as time goes on. That if you have an active following on Instagram or Tik tok or even probably Facebook, YouTube — these different places that your ability to do a big pay per view type event online is very good. And their financial opportunity, it’s a much better way to monetize than ads on YouTube, right? And because you know how narrow that the funnel is the money that you actually get, if you’re, say a YouTube personality, right? Like, there’s a lot of money at the top in the ads that YouTube sells, but only a tiny fraction of it comes through you pay per view event, we’re an online event on a place like Stellar, basically, you know, once you cover your costs and everything, you make all the money, so it’s actually a really effective way of monetizing compared to the ways that you have right now.

Mario Fachini [35:46]
Excellent. Well, thank you for elaborating on that. I got one more question before we thank our sponsor, and come back for the Imperfect Action Round. It’s the Wheel of Whatever. All right.

Jim McCarthy [35:57]
I don’t know what that means. Yeah. But I am ready.

Mario Fachini [36:00]
The fun bonus question that I created, because what can I say? I’m a performer and I thought this would be a cool idea. So I made it happen.

Jim McCarthy [36:08]
I like it. I like it.

Mario Fachini [36:10]
It ended on the best question there ever is.

Jim McCarthy [36:13]
All right.

Mario Fachini [36:14]
It’s perfect for you. Who is someone you would love to do a concert with on your platform that you haven’t yet?

Jim McCarthy [36:21]
Dolly Parton? I didn’t even have to hesitate. I want to do a concert with Dolly Parton. And it’s partly because she’s great. Everyone loves Dolly. But also because I’d love to have her mind at work on how to make online events. You know, really, really spectacular. I just think, Dolly if you’re listening, I’m sure she’s listened to your show Mario every day. Call me because I have a great idea for you. So Dolly Parton.

Mario Fachini [36:47]
Fantastic. Awesome. That is awesome. Well, thank you for that. I’m going to thank the sponsor, and we’ll be back with the Imperfect Action Round.

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Mario Fachini [38:14]
And we are back with the Imperfect Action Round. Jim, are you ready to take the Imperfect Action?

Jim McCarthy [38:33]
Always.

Mario Fachini [38:35]
62nd answers I got three questions for you. And the first one is what is the fastest path to the profits?

Jim McCarthy [38:44]
Um, I don’t know if you mean that this field or in general so I’ll just go with this field and this field the fastest path to the profits is thinking carefully and quickly about getting your first show out there getting the first show out there learning and repeating. So, and this this is actually probably applicable to any situation right? You’ve got to get into reality and see what reality has to teach you before you can take the next action you don’t perfect ideas in your head. You perfect ideas in reality.

Mario Fachini [39:15]
Oh, I like that a lot. Number two, what is the biggest problem you see your prospects making in the fastest way for them? What is the biggest problem you see your prospects making and the fastest way for them to fix it?

Jim McCarthy [39:27]
Um, the big, the fast, the biggest problem is getting good at developing online shows. Right? So it’s not obvious how to make a great online show. And the fastest way for them to do it is to throw themselves into it and take it seriously as an art form. Some people who are doing these things are kind of, they’re kind of sticking their toe in the water, sort of nibbling, there’s kind of half stepping. If you elevate it from not a substitute for the Live event but a new medium that is complimentary to the in person event and take it seriously, your mind starts racing, you start solving problems, you start coming up with good ideas, and then your ambitions can be 10 times bigger.

Mario Fachini [40:13]
Excellent. Number three, what is the best way to maximize customer lifetime value?

Jim McCarthy [40:19]
Well, in general, the best way to maximize customer lifetime value is stand for something that the the customer values, of course, but that you always deliver for them in a way that is just super reliable, you know, over over hits the mark, if you will, goes past their expectations of the mark, and they are always there to deliver for them. So, you know, it could be something weird, it could be something small, it could be something that doesn’t seem like the biggest thing in the world. But if you’re delivering that thing, and it’s very clear what that thing is, and you’re always over hitting the mark, people are gonna come back to you for that thing, because they know that you’re trustable to deliver for them.

Mario Fachini [41:02]
Excellent. What books would you recommend Expert Authority world?

Jim McCarthy [41:08]
Um, let’s see, I gosh, there’s so many so many to choose from. I would you know, I would actually, there’s one that that I don’t think gets enough play, which is a book called Leadership and Self Deception, which is about the importance of your internal state of mind, as a leader and not with a talk in the book they talk about getting out of the box, when you get in the box with somebody is when you stop seeing them as a person and start seeing them as just a tool on the way to some purpose. And that leads to a million problems primarily because you have stopped seeing things realistically, you’ve started to see them your brain is concocting things that are true. You get out of the box, you see them as a human being. You see reality as it is, and you can and you can solve problems. And I don’t, it’s a great book. And I don’t hear about it as much as they hear about some of the big ones. So I like to recommend it because it deserves to have an even bigger audience than it already has.

Mario Fachini [42:13]
Excellent. Well, I have not gotten that one yet. And I appreciate you for suggesting it. Yeah. Where would you like people to learn more.

Jim McCarthy [42:21]
If you are a person who just wants to buy tickets, online events, go to stellartickets.com. If you’re somebody who’s thinking of doing an online event, if you’re a live event professional or you want to be a live event professional or an event producer, go to workwithstellar.com and learn all about how we do how we do things and how we can help you. And you can reach me on twitter at goldstarJim.

Mario Fachini [42:44]
Excellent. Well, Jim, it has been an absolute pleasure. And I’m so glad I could get you on the show.

Jim McCarthy [42:51]
Thank you for having me. Yeah, my pleasure. Of course.

Mario Fachini [42:54]
Well, Expert Authority World we have another great episode here today. I’ll see you tomorrow. Have a great day. And God bless.

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www.EAInterviews.com [43:36]
Hey, thanks for listening to today’s episode. I hope you got a lot out of it. I know I sure did. If you haven’t done so already, I invite you to subscribe to the show. And also be sure to check out EA Interviews.com for complete show notes, the full interview video experience links to the resources we mentioned in more. Have a blessed day and I’ll see you tomorrow.