Interview with Production Staffing Expert Nancy Spooner of Tempo Live Events Show 125

This show Mike McAllen  interviews  the owner of Tempo Live Events, Nancy Spooner.

Tempo Live Events is a great resource for meeting production companies and meeting planners to consider when production or creative staffing is needed for events.

Transcripts:

Production Staffing Expert Nancy Spooner of Tempo Live Events MeetingsPodcast 125

Mike McAllen: Hey, podcast listeners. This is Mike McAllen with Meetings Podcast. I want to thank you again for tuning in and we are very excited because today’s podcast was brought to you by Audible.com. You can get a free audio book download at www.audiblepodcast.com\meetingspodcast and there are over 7500 titles to choose from and you can listen to them on your iPod or your mp3 player and we are very excited. So check that out and we think you will really enjoy audible. I know I do.

Unknown: Welcome to the Meetings Podcast, the Meeting Planner’s podcast source for what’s new in the meetings and events industry. Meetings Podcast is a conversation with a variety of voices that looks at events, meetings, and media, and the changing world around them.

Mike McAllen: Welcome back to the Meetings Podcast. This is Mike McAllen from Grass Shack Events & Media. Today, we have Nancy Spooner. She is the owner of Tempo Live Events. Hi, Nancy.

Nancy Spooner: Hello, Mike.

Mike McAllen: Thank you very much for speaking with me.

Nancy Spooner: Thanks for having me.

Mike McAllen: And it was nice to see your face since we were just friends over the Twitter and stuff like that.

Nancy Spooner: It was neat.

Mike McAllen: It was neat to see you that – yeah, your face. Let me ask you one question:  Are you going to any of the events coming up? Stuff like any of those MPI, PCMA kinds of things. Do you go to those?

Nancy Spooner: No, I do not. I am not a certified event planner.

Mike McAllen: Oh! Because I just started going to those but I go with the podcasts. So I go and I hang out and I flash everyone to one. I went to the first MPI thing event in Salt Lake.

Nancy Spooner: Uh-huh? How was it?

Mike McAllen: It was really fun but it was nice. I have a  I was totally nervous the whole time. So I was not my best. Oh, God. But it was fun. But I was just thinking, “Oh, maybe I can see you at one of those but I am not – again, I am not an event planner either so it was kind of an interesting experience. I have heard so much about it. Anyway

Nancy Spooner: Yeah, I definitely want to take a peek.

Mike McAllen: Sorry, I just went off into something else but tell me and whoever is listening a little bit about yourself and your background and you.

Nancy Spooner: All right. I am Nancy Spooner, owner of Tempo Live Events like you said earlier and I am an event producer but I am also a stage manager and deck manager and coordinator, whatever, you know we work for all hats. My company is – my elevator pitches, we direct or we entertain and engage and excite live audiences at different venues from corporate sales meetings to professional sporting events. My clients include the US Open Tennis, the X Games, I have done the Olympics, and on the corporate side I have production companies that works for companies like Genentech and Verizon and Home Depot and we are an event production resource so our company Tempo provides staff for those event production departments that are a little under resourced.

Mike McAllen: Very cool. It is a great idea. And how did you get into this business? How did you get into the event business?

Nancy Spooner: I fell into it on accident and then I fell in love with it. I have a Television and Film degree and I worked on a lot of really the bad TV shows and movies the first few years out of college and worked my bootie off and then one of my clients at an event production company that did a lot of corporate videos and corporate shows, I was her production assistant and she asked me to come to San Francisco with her to the X Games because she started to dabble on the side at the X Games and so she brought me up to San Francisco and the next thing you know I was directing their live event which is the same thing as stage managing.

I was in charge of anything that you saw and heard as a spectator in the venue so I had a live announcer, I had a DJ, I had a Jumbo Tron, the commercials and the videos, the interviews with the athletes and –

Mike McAllen: Really cool

Nancy Spooner: She was the one mentor of mine that always do me and over my head because she knew I would end up swimming somehow and I did and from there it just started rolling and it turned into the Olympics show and there after the U.S. Open Tennis, the USA Gymnastics and so I had this big sporting event background and it was the Olympics in Salt Lake where I met people that did corporate events. And you know how it is as a freelancer then I started getting picked up by my friends to do corporate shows and then I fell in love with corporate events.

Mike McAllen: Oh, pretty cool.

Nancy Spooner: Thank God in this economy I wear a sporting event hat and a corporate event hat because I sure needed it when you know we took a bit corporate side. The Olympics were rubbing up so I got a lot of – I am pre-production work for the Olympics which was really nice.

Mike McAllen: Oh, that is so cool. It is funny how people now – and I mean people you talk – there was the last event. PROPS, Twitter, chat they were talking about that like how to get people involved from that you know, everybody that was on there were kind of talking about how they had fallen in. I fell into it. I had roommate that was going on trips somewhere and wanted me to go and so needed a production assistant. Oh, I will go.

Nancy Spooner: Oh, yeah.

Mike McAllen: So we went to Korea. We went off to Korea. It was kind of like, okay, you know but that is how I fell into it, same kind of thing but nowadays, there is all these program and people are getting involved through schools.

Nancy Spooner: Yeah, I started teaching event planning actually out of junior college a couple of years ago.

Mike McAllen: Oh, very cool.

Nancy Spooner: In Annapolis, Maryland. Yeah, all of my students when they came in they took a poll who wants to do what, why are you here? There are lots of young ladies that wanted to be wedding planners. No offense to wedding planners that is very, very stressful to me so I turned my class walk into class I turned them into like X Games event and I had music and video, I was bringing them diagrams and different sporting event venues and I turned a lot of my wedding planners into event producers in sports. They realized that there are a lot of different angles you can go at this business. You do not have to just plan weddings. You can do sporting events, you can do corporate shows, you can do museum openings and it was really fun.

Mike McAllen: Very cool.

Nancy Spooner: And I thought I wish I had event planning when I was in school.

Mike McAllen: Yeah, me too. I was a fireman for a long time and then I got hurt and I stopped doing that and then fell into this and I was just –

Nancy Spooner: Way probably more fun than fighting fires?

Mike McAllen: Yes, it is not as dirty and it is nice and there are nice people around.

Nancy Spooner: Yeah. The reward is probably much bigger in the fire fighting side, I will admit.

Mike McAllen: Yeah, I know. It is just kind of the same thing though. You are putting out fires a lot of the time and running around just kind of freelancing and a lot of stuff you know.

Nancy Spooner: That is your next blog by the way.

Mike McAllen: You want to plan as much. Yeah, it is going to be for a blog. You want to make sure you have a lot of preplanning and training and ready to go but you have to be ready for getting that kind of thing out of habit.

Nancy Spooner: Yeah.

Mike McAllen: All right. So, tell me a little bit more about Tempo so but then you decided to start Tempo after you have been a freelancer you are going to help other freelancers? Is that what –

Nancy Spooner: Exactly. I have been freelancing my whole life ­– whole life – which would, well not whole life, whole career which would be about 20 years now and I always said if I had a penny for everybody I got a job for and then a couple of years ago and I just always gave people work because I am very well-connected and I love sharing this business. I am not the kind of person that gets threatened by another event producer on the realm like the girl that will go out and meet as many event producers as I can because I just love what we do. I think if we share the wealth it all comes back around.

And long story-short my business partner Kerry Gallison before she is my business partner, she was my very first production assistant and I hire her because I darn well knew that girl would hire me someday and years later sure enough she gets on some show and she called for one of my first corporate events and she would take a maternity leave and she came back and she said “Nance, I am back to work. If you have any shows, let me know. [Mike] let you know.”

This is in 2006 when we were booming and I got two phone calls that day for work and I could not take them because I was busy doing something so I handed her two shows one of them sent her to  so she just was blown away that I sent her on two shows between 24 hours and I booked her on two shows and she said we need to go to lunch. We need to talk. How do we do this? I am like I do not know how to do it. I do not really market myself you know. Back then you did not really need to and we started talking and this little light bulb went off like, “You know what we could actually do this as a business.”

And it just so happened that the two of us got together brainstorming created Tempo which like I said is an event production resource. We are just a co-op of contractors. We started with just a group of our friends that we work with all the time. We said, “Hey, do you guys mind? We are starting this business. We would love to have you as part of our team and send you out on shows.” And so our friends were like, “Duh, of course, we want to be on your team.”

So we started getting phone calls and started spreading the word that you can call us and we will send our contractors out to your show so if you are a production company like I told you before, envision one of your former clients if they needed a couple of event producers and a graphic operator and makeup artists and PA, they call us and it is one phone call for them and I turn around the next day I hand them a bunch of fantastic contractors to work on their shows.

Mike McAllen: It is a fantastic idea and I have to say that when I figured out what you – I thought you were a production company at first and then when I figured out what you were doing I was like you are working with a vision and I was like how is that because you guys do exactly what I did when I was there so it was funny like and then when I thought that you guys had a business doing that I thought, oh, I totally missed the vote on that one.

Nancy Spooner: Yes.

Mike McAllen: Because I was hiring all these people all the time and always looking for new resources and cool stuff for Envision and then I left to start Grass Shack, our company and then I was like oh, I should have done that. What was I thinking? Because it is such a good idea.

Nancy Spooner: Well, Grass Shack [inaudible][0.09.40] then. Yeah, you know people have done it for years. You know think about Ad company. They do it all the time. They are always pulling contractors at work and I know some graphic artists still do it. I guess it was pretty big years ago but no one actually has done it on the upper end of event production with all the producers that we have and the associate producers and deck managers and –

Mike McAllen: It is a fantastic idea.

Nancy Spooner: Thank you.

Mike McAllen: It is a completely fantastic idea and I think that it is kind of gearing towards – I mean no offense to anyone who works for a production company full time. There is no offense but I do find that people that are really good are freelancers. They are not – and you do not have to say anything because I know you work with all these people but I always found that people that are on their own are usually have already paid their bills working for a company somewhere and now they are freelancing. Just like to move around.

Nancy Spooner: Yeah.

Mike McAllen: I think it is a fantastic idea which is a real cool idea.

Nancy Spooner: Thank you. I just wrote on my blog, the top six reasons to hire freelancers.

Mike McAllen: Yeah, I saw that, yeah.

Nancy Spooner: And it was really easy to write because they are very talented. The people that I send out you know they are only as great as their last gig. If they let me down I know they have lost a client themselves so were are always on our best behavior. It seems like we always have good attitudes because if you do not and you are a freelancer, you are history. People are not going to bring you back because you are just as easy to let go as you are to hire so I find that among my group of friend and a lot of them I was with them when they quit their full time jobs and I was right behind them going, “Yeah, come on out to the fun world. Come on out.” And I am the first one who supports them. Heather Walker was one of my team members and she came from TBA and she was scared to death and I said, “Girl friend, do not be scared. You are so good at what you do. You are going for a ball.” But you know she jumped ship and I can hardly book her because she is so fully booked these days.

Mike McAllen: Yeah, I know it and it is totally true and I think that is kind of the way, you know how everything is changing the internet and how we all work in the landscape of the industry itself. It is moving towards this. I mean I know that big productions are still there but they do not need that overhead.

Nancy Spooner: No.

Mike McAllen: For all these people but you need a training ground for the people somewhere and there is – it is an interesting dynamic. I think it is real, I may have said it already about 10 times now but I think it is a very cool idea and I think it is really great so how long have you guys been doing this?

Nancy Spooner: Tempo Live Event has been around just over two years.

Mike McAllen: Nice.

Nancy Spooner: Yeah. We have done it all our whole life but we are finally making it a visual.

Mike McAllen: Very good.

Nancy Spooner: And we still do small events on our own on the side when someone calls. I need just one ballroom at a sales meeting. We still help with that one ballroom and produce the live event for them. Tempo can totally do that but we always want to make it clear to our clients that no way in heck do we want to own your Verizon account, no way are we going to steal from you your Home Depot gab. That is of no interest to Tempo. We really just want to supplement the companies that had to lay a lot of people off because of this economy or we are getting all set and we are starting to pick up business.

I do not know if you feel but I know business is picking up and they are understaffed now and they do not want to say no to work and I do not want them to say no. We just want you to go, “Yeah, we can do it.”  And I can turn around and send them creative directors or production managers, whatever they need. So we are situated accidentally not really on purpose because we do not want this economy to happen. We are situated perfectly for this economy right now.

Mike McAllen: So how does it work then if Mike McAllen wants to – I need someone to [     ] or how does it work? Would I just call you and then I say, “Nancy, I need true color for the stage in Barcelona and how does that work?” Do I get a number of names of you just – how does it work?

Nancy Spooner: It is however you want it to work. They can go one of a couple of ways. You can send me an email or send me your date and rates and tell me exactly what kind of show color you need because sometimes you need someone just to color a couple of queues. You have no deck managers. It is pretty simple. Sometimes you need to show color who can actually who can actually direct talent and you got 10 different cues going on with pyro in the waterfalls and video playback and a 360 you know so you tell me what the gig is and then I just match the person up and I will send you one person that I know can do it or a few like I want to look at a couple of resumes. I have no problem sending you a couple of resumes.

Mike McAllen: And so then once that person is booked, it goes off the Tempo then?

Nancy Spooner: It goes off to Tempo, yeah and Tempo takes a percentage off of their rate which is just like any agency.

Mike McAllen: Yeah, that actually makes sense. Yeah.

Nancy Spooner: So, it matches your budget and it is approved by whoever the Tempo team contractor is.

Mike McAllen: And then so do you do just all these event meeting kind of related stuff so it is graphic operators and do you do video, too? Do you do video stuff then?

Mike McAllen: Yeah, I have video producers. You name it, we have it and it is very simple because Carrie and I have been in this business so long and I produce some pretty big shows on my own and so is Carry so that we have been hiring these contractors our whole life so we run the gamut just about anything you would ever want we had to hire in our path like so.

Nancy Spooner: That is so cool. That is great.

Mike McAllen: Okay. So, anything else you wanted to talk about? Is there anything else you wanted to share?

Nancy Spooner: I am just starting to blog. No pressure. But I am starting to blog a little bit more so if go to Tempo Live Events.com. I will even more pressure to get my next freelancers right now so I am trying to –

Mike McAllen: Yeah, I like that. You have freelancers actually writing for your blog?

Nancy Spooner: Yeah, yeah.

Mike McAllen: That is a great idea. That is a great idea. Yeah.

Nancy Spooner: It is a less pressure when there is someone else has to write it.

Mike McAllen: Yeah, yeah and now you are podcasting with me. It is just everything is –

Nancy Spooner: I love what you are doing, too. Very smart. Smart man.

Mike McAllen: Thank you. So, tell me how people get a hold of you. What are the ways people get a hold of you?

Nancy Spooner: Our website is tempoliveevents.com. We can be found on Twitter and have a Facebook fan page and again, go to TempoLiveEvents.com. And our phone number is 858-344-0696 and that is our San Diego phone number though it is not always here in San Diego. That phone follows with me.

Mike McAllen: Nice, nice. All right, Nancy. Thank you so much for talking with me and I would love to maybe have you come back and talk a little bit more about other stuffs at another time because I think we can just really dive in to a lot of whole different things but it is a nice little introduction to the vast Meetings podcast audience.

Nancy Spooner: Thank you. I would love to come back and I wish you luck. I cannot wait to hear this.

Mike McAllen: All right. All right, Nancy. Until next time.

Nancy Spooner: All right. See you.

Mike McAllen: Bye-bye.

Nancy Spooner: Bye.

Please leave us a question or comment, which we will try to address on the show ASAP!

Email us at meetings podcast@gmail.com

or here on the MeetingsPodcast site.

www.MeetingsPodcast.com

Music by the http://www.delgadobrothers.com/

Audio mixing by www.RipTideGraphics.com

Brought to you by Grass Shack Events & Media
Copyright 2010 MeetingsPodcast

Podcast: Play in new window | Download