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Regional Slants
In our pursuit to grow and expand our
business, we must look beyond our
current inventory and capabilities and
be willing to take on risks and challenges
that might be beyond our current level
of comfort.
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Being Bigger
Than You are
By StevePoulton
Sometime last year, we were awarded the
contract to do a large event for the City of Albuquerque.
“Freedom Fourth” was scheduled
to run over four days with multiple acts each
day at the Albuquerque International Balloon
Fiesta Grounds—a large 94-acre park. With
38 January 2006 www.fohonline.com
more than 30,000 estimated to attend the
final day, it was an ambitious undertaking for
us. But hey, there’s nothing like putting up a
big honking sound system to crank out your
favorite tunes.
You know how it goes, right? When you
get that big gig and find yourself stepping
up to the next level? After we had all finished
jumping around the office giving each other
high fives, the reality of the situation started
to sink in—like the fact that you’ll have a
half-empty warehouse on the same dates
because the gear has already been booked
out on other shows.
When we started Audio Excellence, it was
always part of our master plan to be doing
much larger shows in the future. Since we
had a clear picture of what the company’s
objectives were in the beginning, every
purchase and system we built was a piece of
that larger picture. In the early days, I spent a
lot of time looking at what some of the larger
sound companies were doing and how they
were doing it to get an idea of how it could
be done at a larger level.
I also spent a lot of time making new
friends with other companies nearby and
forming working relationships with them.
These relationships became paramount to
our success later on. First, a level of trust was
established that made it a lot easier to do
business with each other. We knew we could
get gear when we needed it. The other guys
knew we could work the equipment in the
correct manner and that they would get
their equipment back in the same condition
they sent it out in. They also knew we would
pay for it in a timely manner. Yes, having payment
terms can sometimes make or break
your ability to do an event, unless you have
large amounts of working capital available to
you. As a small or medium-sized company, it
can be tough to pay out thousands and even
tens of thousands of dollars before you even
see a cent of your money from an event.
Being that we had prepared ourselves
well for this level of show, we began putting
the event together. The first task at hand was
to get the key personnel together and map
out our plan of action. Then secure the additional
equipment needed to do the event.
Guess who I called? Yeah, a couple of good
friends; done deal, we were on our way.
After weeks of preparations, we walked
away from our offices the night before load-in,
everything looking great. The weather showed
no sign of rain, the crew was in place, all the subhired
equipment had made it in, the system had
been prepped and the trucks were all loaded
and ready to go for the following morning.
Load-in day. We all arrived at the event
site, the trucks were cracked open and the
hands started pushing. We opted to fly the
main arrays off two 65-foot reach lifts, as we
have had great success with this on a number
of past events. These lifts also work well on
political events, especially when you have put
everything in place and the lead guy decides
he wants to change it all around again. That’s a
whole story in itself; maybe another time.
The reach lift arrived and we got onto
getting the first array up in the air. The
second lift arrived, and we realized it only
had a 45-foot reach. We called the vendor to
see what was going on as we had been very
specific about having two matching lifts.
“Oh, the one you need we don’t have right
now,” said the vendor. I informed them of our
agreement and they said they would take
care of it. The rest of load-in went fine, and
we walked away that night with only one
array to fly the next morning.
At about 10:30 p.m. that night, disaster
struck. I got a call from one of the key
coordinators: “Someone neglected to turn
off the park’s sprinkler system and our
equipment is getting wet.” My reaction?
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh, what the bloody
heck is going on here? Breathe, mmm, hhhh.”
It was always part of our
master plan to be doing much
larger shows in the future.
There was nothing I could do about it. Fortunately,
most of the equipment was out of
harm’s way and the few pieces that saw any
water dried off pretty quickly. There were no
casualties, and we didn’t need to pull out the
contract and have the client write us a check
for damaged equipment.
Show day rolled around, and we were still
waiting on our second reach lift. Everyone was
starting to get a little concerned, then finally,
we got it taken care of. The last of the speakers
went up in the air. We did our final tweaking
on the system, then the show began. Setup,
show, strike, setup, show, strike, etc. for the next
four days, load-out and go home.
The event’s audio met all expectations,
and we walked away happy.
The success of this event can be attributed
to just a couple of key points:
• The ability to think bigger than you are,
and the belief that you can achieve it.
• The event was completed on paper
before it was started.
• The forming of great relationships with
other vendors.
• Great people were put in place to
execute a plan.
I have saying I like use about what we do:
“It’s just a mic, a mixer and a speaker.” I like to
keep it simple. It also puts it all in perspective
about what we do, large or small. Lay it out in
its simplest form, and then THINK BIG!
Steve Poulton is the president of Audio
Excellence, Inc. He can be reached at steve@
audioexcellence4u.com.