EPISODE 13: Shifting Business Priorities

[INTRODUCTION]

[00:00:19] KK: Welcome to Risky Business. I’m Kathy Kaehler and —

[00:00:22] BL: And I’m Bliss Landon.

[00:00:23] KK: We are the Coverage Queens.

[00:00:24] BL: Yes, we are.

[00:00:26] KK: Welcome to our show, our podcast. We’re excited about this episode. We have a really amazing woman that we are going to be speaking to who has her own company and —

[00:00:38] BL: She’s amazing. Just wait. You’ll hear.

[00:00:40] KK: We’re super excited because it fits in to what we’re talking about with change in our lives because of a pandemic, but also what we’ve had to learn about different ways of where we go to protect ourselves in this situation. But also, she’ll start with her story of what she has been doing.

[00:01:02] BL: What she was doing, then she had to pivot to do something else, then she’ll go back to doing what she’s doing before. She’s really an amazing woman, very dynamic and high energy, and you’ll see. You’ll see.

[00:01:15] KK: We are talking in our last couple of show about our estate sale weekend. I was going to say, I’m not going to be able to do sales this weekend.

[00:01:28] BL: Because you’ll be out of town.

[00:01:30] KK: I’ll be out of town. But I am going to do a sale where I’m going, which is what is also really cool about — we talk about tech all the time, is that my app will tell me where there’s estate sales in other cities.

[00:01:43] BL: Very fun.

[00:01:44] KK: I will keep you posted.

[00:01:46] BL: I’ll just be sad that I’m not with you tagging along.

[00:01:48] KK: That would be so sad.

[00:01:50] BL: Checking out the carpet.

[00:01:52] KK: Exactly, anyway. All right. Well, let’s introduce.

[00:01:56] BL: Yes.

[INTERVIEW]

[00:01:56] KK: Robin Shaw who from Upstaging is with us. She will be joining us to tell us about her journey and her story about what she’s done with her company and what she’s doing now. Robin, welcome.

[00:02:09] RS: Hello.

[00:02:09] BL: Hi, Robin.

[00:02:10] RS: Hello, and thank you for having me on your podcast. I’m excited. I look forward all your questions.

[00:02:17] KK: Well, we’re excited to have you. From Bliss telling me about a little bit about what you were doing to what I assume are kind of gearing up to do again, but Upstaging, what’s that all about?

[00:02:29] RS: Okay. Upstaging is one of the top touring production companies in the world, actually. We do stage lighting, and transportation, video and set design for major touring clients. Clients such as Paul McCartney, Rolling Stones, Billie Eilish, Kenny Chesney, there is the Foo Fighters. So yeah, pretty much anybody.

[00:02:54] KK: Holy cow.

[00:02:55] RS: We don’t necessarily do everything for every client. Sometimes we do — our biggest portion is doing trucking because we have the capacity to do more bands with that. Then sometimes we’ll do trucking and lighting. Usually, we do them both together.

[00:03:11] BL: What does that mean, trucking?

[00:03:13] RS: Trucking means transportation. You know the 18-wheelers, the big trucks that you see driving all over the road. Let’s say somebody like Taylor Swift may have 50 trucks and wherever she goes, we’re transporting all of her equipment. Everything from her rigging, and lighting, and set, and sound, and video and wardrobe in the truck.

[00:03:38] KK: You go and pick up the items that she is going to need for her show and you deliver them?

[00:03:43] RS: Right. We would go pick them up. Right. Correct. Well, it’s more than just delivering them. It’s going from one show to the next. If you go let’s say to a Rolling Stone’s show, and what you see in Los Angeles at the stadium, all of that takes about three or four days to put up and about a day to take down. It goes in the trucks and then maybe two days later —

[00:04:07] KK: To the next town.

[00:04:08] RS: Right. It will be starting to do Oakland Coliseum or go to another city. Everything that you’re seeing pretty much in Los Angeles will be done in another city. We have truck drivers, lead truck drivers. Because as you can imagine the logistics of doing that in time is difficult.

[00:04:29] KK: Wow! That’s a lot.

[00:04:31] RS: We run roughly around 300 trucks. It’s the fabulous position if there’s — I know this is mostly women and women truck drivers are great. It’s just a different type of position for them. That’s our transportation. When I say transportation, that’s what I mean. I could say trucking, but transportation seems to be a —

[00:04:51] KK: What kind of lead time is that? I would imagine the lead time that you need. I mean, concerts are set up years in advance. Are you doing that now for hopefully the coming back?

[00:05:02] BL: 2022.

[00:05:03] RS: Yeah, that’s actually right. In fact, I’ve been in more meetings. I’ve been waiting for all these meetings to start and now that people are getting vaccinated, everything is starting to ramp up. Mostly, all the big tours are going to be ramping up for 2022. I wish things would ramp up for 2021, because 2019 — we have been busy for the last 10 years, like we have more demand than supply. If you’re not a client of ours or like — and that could be anywhere from the manager, it could be the artist, it could be the production manager, it could be the promoter. It’s hard for us to take on new clients. We’d like to, but it’s difficult because sometimes we don’t have the availability.

I mean, if I was in a perfect world of how this gets figured out, everybody would do it on a matrix. When one tour end, another tour could start. But the production is kind of the last thing on the totem pole. First, it’s the artist wanting to go out, then the agents looking for the dates. Those are also difficult because you’re competing with — if it’s stadiums, with football and different other events in there. If you’re in an arena, you’re competing with basketball. You have to find availability. Then once that happens, then we get called.

For the lighting, we have to have a relationship with the same people that I discussed there, plus the lighting designer. The lighting designer will have a concept of what the shows going to look like, and then we start discussing it and putting cost together, and seeing if we need to change anything. Yeah, it’s a long process.

[00:06:45] KK: I would say.

[00:06:46] BL: It’s tremendous.

[00:06:48] KK: Tremendously long.

[00:06:48] RS: Yeah. It’s pretty amazing. It’s funny since I’ve been on all these phone calls, I been to parties where I’ve been with people that are in finance business and I’ll be at their parties and somebody will come up to me and say, “Hi! How are you? Who are you?” and Is aid, “Robin.” They go, “Robin? Oh, you’re the rock and roll friend.” Here I’m thinking, “You’re exchanging money with Russia.” You know what I mean? “You’re exchanging billions of dollars in funds AB.”

The funny thing is, I ask people if they like their job and a lot of people go, “Yeah! I like my job.” I love what I do, and probably the most important thing that is great about my industry is, everybody has to be very, very countable and smart. Because let’s say you bought tickets to go see Kenny Chesney, and you got a babysitter and you’re going with friends. If we at the transportation end aren’t together and getting everything happening, the show may not go on. There’s a lot of stress. In our trucking division, we have seven dispatchers and people that just deal with what happens if a truck goes down or —

[00:07:59] KK: Weather.

[00:07:59] RS: If somebody get sick, somebody’s parents are ill. It’s just a constant, that’s why we have seven people dealing with that. Then with the lighting end of it, I mean, there’s not a lot of lead time, but it is trying to figure out what the design is. It’s a very collaborative business.

[00:08:16] BL: Do you own the truck or do you contract out?

[00:08:19] RS: Yeah, we own the trucks.

[00:08:20] RL: You own the trucks, okay.

[00:08:21] RS: The drivers are our employees. For the pandemic, it’s been good that we on the trucks. But the one thing I want to say about our business in general, it’s very collaborative. And I would say, most of my friends, most of the people I work with are people I would easily have over for dinner. Some of the people that I work with, I vacationed with as they had children and my children, our children know each other. Some of these people I’ve known since the ‘80s.

[00:08:50] KK: Wow! Such a fantastic special family. Well, Robin. You were saying 10 years. I mean, if you have like a top three of your favorite shows or your favorite artist, do you work repetitively with them or just some favorites?

[00:09:04] RS: Yeah. Generally, we work repetitively with all our artist. Occasionally, for a few years back on lighting and it still happens, it may be that somebody is designing something and we may have worked with them last time, but they’re designing equipment that we either don’t have or our capacity isn’t there. Yeah, that’s basically it. They don’t have the exact equipment that they want, and so they may use another company, but it doesn’t matter. Usually, we’ll keep the trucking end on that.

You’re asking what are my three top shows?

[00:09:36] KK: Yeah, that you love.

[00:09:37] BL: Yeah, that have been fun, and interesting.

[00:09:40] RS: Oh, okay. I don’t know that I could —

[00:09:42] BL: Over the top design, I don’t know. That was really fun.

[00:09:45] RS: Okay. I can tell you what I like about the shows. If we’re looking at — I mean, it’s so difficult to say, because look at the artist that I’ve mentioned so far. I don’t know how I could pick a —

[00:09:58] KK: A favorite.

[00:09:59] RS: Right. A Billie Eilish over Foo Fighters.

[00:10:02] BL: Yeah, because they’re all fantastic, right?

[00:10:04] RS: Right, while interesting. I will say for an outdoor collaborative experience with the audience, Coldplay is really good at making you feel your part of the concert in a stadium. They make it feel intimate. Oh my God! I mean, I couldn’t say. Paul McCartney is Paul McCartney. Just Paul McCartney singing his songs. Billie Eilish is so interesting, so was Lord.

[00:10:30] BL: Wow.

[00:10:31] RS: I can’t. I can’t name top three. I wish I could.

[00:10:33] KK: You got a lot. What happened, Robin, last year when we all took the left turn down a very scary road and everything changed, and clearly your business. Concerts were just done. I mean, I had tickets to Justin Bieber. I’m devastated. I’m a huge Bieber fan. What happened?

[00:10:56] RS: Well, it was scary. In January, we started working on all this stuff, and we had the cruise ship. You could see all that stuff going on. I started buying tons of hand sanitizer and stuff for our office, which of course I didn’t need. We had tours out. Billie Eilish was starting up, I think it might have been March 10th. March 10th Miami and then I think she did Orlando. We had maybe three or four things out that were getting done, close to being finished. Everybody else that we had lined up. Once May hits, everybody starts going out on tour, and everybody was sitting there saying. “We don’t know. We don’t know. We don’t know.” Then on March 12th, basically live entertainment was officially canceled. It was right before the shutdown.

Then on Friday, I call it Friday the 13th, we got together in our company and had about 30 people that were in managerial positions and not, because wanted to hear from everybody. We started to just sort of think about what do we have in our shop and what can we do to help. Now, because we build sets, we have all the machinery to cut things and build sets, and we have a lot of what’s called polycarbonate, which a lot of people think of is like plexiglass, but it’s a little bit different, it’s a grade. The one thing that everybody needed, if you remember during the crisis in March was PPE, face shields.

[00:12:26] KK: Right, face shields.

[00:12:27] RS: We started making face shields, and we had a prototype, that was Friday. By Monday, we had a prototype ready. Now, some people, “Well, how could you have done it that fast?” But you realize, in our industry, that’s how we operate. I could get a call from a client on a Thursday at noon and said, “We need to have this built and we need it here by Friday at six.”

[00:12:51] KK: You got to do it.

[00:12:53] RS: Yeah, exactly. The no word is not in our vocabulary.

[00:12:57] BL: You just say, “Okay, let’s do it.”

[00:12:58] RS: Yeah. Right. Then we figure it out, and then maybe we’ll call somebody up and say, “Hey! We can’t do it for Friday, but it will be there Saturday” or something like that. But there is no no.

[00:13:08] KK: You’re getting it done.

[00:13:09] RS: How do we figure it out. Yeah. We’re good at that. We’re trained to do that. We’ve been doing it for 40 years. Monday, we had a prototype and by that following week, we had probably sold 40,000 of them.

[00:13:23] RS: Wow!

[00:13:24] KK: Who did you sell them too?

[00:13:25] RS: Okay. Well, our main purpose was doing the right thing because we could do this and this was needed. The other thing was, we wanted to keep all are people working. At that time, it was like, “Well, maybe, okay, everything was pushed back or postponed until summer.” Remember during the early days? “Yeah, this is going to be done quickly and it’s going to pass through us and we’ll be done.” We had a lot of stuff and we wanted to keep them working. What we did was, a lot of our people that do sales or — they’re not even sales, they’re more client reps for the artist. We were making cold calls. We became cold callers. We would look up list. Our company is based in Sycamore, which is a suburb of Chicago. I’m here in Los Angeles with my team, but we deal with the managers, and the artist and the agent. That’s why we’re in Los Angeles.

We started with local hospitals, we started with nursing homes. Because if you remember — we tried the government route, and found it to be a — it was a completely blocked process. We filled out all the forms, we took all the time. But for everybody being in such emergency —

[00:14:38] KK: You couldn’t wait. You really couldn’t wait.

[00:14:40] RS: Right. We couldn’t wait. I had contacts because I’m part of WPO, and also different organizations where somebody knows somebody high in the food chain. I would get to the right people and give them the pitch, they’d say they were interested, I’d fill out the forms and couldn’t get anything happening. Because at that point, nobody knew who was going to pay for it, everybody was waiting for product to come from China. All you could see on the news is how everybody didn’t have. So we decided to just do it in the private industry. Dentist office, medical centers, hospital and nursing homes at that time were our biggest — we go to nursing homes and they would say, “Do you have them now?” “Yeah.” Because we could make so many of them in a short period of time because it was just us.

[00:15:26] BL: That’s amazing.

[00:15:26] KK: Wow!

[00:15:28] RS: We did that, then as the pandemic changed and move along, we went into making desk shields for students, children’s face shields for the summertime last year that were going to camp and such. We were doing desk shields for either people that were at work or doctor’s offices. Now, the receptionist was enclosed. We would do for companies that were still open, and banks and courthouses. We would custom build and go in and do all that. The thing that probably distinguished us out for many other company is, you had highly skilled people doing this, because these are people that are building a set for, I don’t know, Thomas Rhett. Okay. When you’re building a set for an artist to show on the stage every night, and then moving to a truck, and go back to another think, the quality has to be —

[00:16:20] KK: It has to be perfect.

[00:16:21] RS: Yeah, it has to be perfect. This was not stuff coming from another country.

[00:16:25] BL: Robin, explain the difference between the plexiglass and the polycarbonate that you use.

[00:16:30] RS: Oh, yeah. Well, that’s good because nobody really knows. It’s really funny because even when you hear all the news bleeps, everybody talks about plexiglass. Plexiglass breaks, okay. First of all, it burns easily in a fire. Then secondly, it cracks and it breaks. Like if you throw a ball around it, it’s going to crack or if you just somehow crack the edge of it, then it’s hard and sharpened.

[00:16:52] BL: I’d say, is it sharp you could cut yourself on it at that point?

[00:16:55] RS: You could cut yourself. Whereas polycarbonate, we have something on our website that actually shows the difference. We have someone in our shop breaking a piece of plexiglass very easily and then taking polycarbonate and twisting it and you can’t break it. That’s the big advantage, but it’s more expensive.

[00:17:13] BL: How much more expensive would you say?

[00:17:15] RS: I don’t really know. Somebody else would know, but we had to go through a lot of learning curve in the beginning for general consumption. We were probably a little bit expensive because it cost us much more to make it, but we had it available. Okay. Then as all of the product that came in from overseas, we had to figure out like what can we charge. Right now, we’re selling them, our prices are completely competitive, but it’s still very hard to break into. Schools in the beginning, we had a lot of success with pretty much everywhere. California has been a hard school system to break into in general, all the California, but especially LA. We tried, but we probably sold maybe 200,000 of the children’s desk shields, which are really great and teacher’s desk shields. Maybe even more to pretty much everywhere all over the country.

We would do email blast. We didn’t know how to do this. We were a company that you came to us because you wanted us. We got that after 40 years of doing business, then it hasn’t been — for 10, 15 years, we’ve have never had to really go out and look for work. We had to be more delicate in figuring out who do we turn down and who do we do. Because no matter what, to keep the consistency of our quality, we can only take on so much. And our company policy is always been and people used to laugh and say, “We’re the company that will say no to business.” Because we don’t want to have the risk of putting people out there that aren’t qualified or being out there not doing a good job. So when it’s super busy, we rather have another company go out there and not do a good job.

[00:19:04] KK: What do you see coming as we’re hopefully coming to an end? Do you see doing both right now?

[00:19:12] RS: We don’t know yet. I would like to. We just have to see. It’s weird. I’m surprised that people keep changing. Now you can be three feet apart inside instead of six feet for school. Quite honestly, I was shocked that our face shields, I thought they were going to be the invention of the century. I really did, because they’re almost the same as the facemask, but you can see and talk and you can make them nice. I wear mine all the time. But what ended up being, you needed to have a facemask.

[00:19:44] KK: A facemask underneath.

[00:19:45] RS: Of the face shields, yeah. In the beginning, we try to point out the difference. But once the CDC said facemasks, face shields were not really popular. I think they will become popular again, because people will want to have protection without having their face covered. But I see for — sorry, you know I’m a talky and I’m passionate about what I do.

[00:20:08] KK: That’s amazing.

[00:20:08] BL: That’s okay. No, keep going.

[00:20:10] KK: I love it.

[00:20:11] RS: I’m in constant talks now. I’ve never been so busy. Like in the beginning of the pandemic, I was busy transitioning and pivoting our company. Then a lot of other people were taking off and my role is generally been keeping in touch with what’s going to happen when we start up again. Okay. Which now, there’s a lot of hope. 2022 is going to be so busy. I’m actually going, “Oh my gosh!” Because we have to find the employees and figure out that. All the costs are changed a little bit, so every way we’ve done business in the past will probably be a little different only in the costing. You might say, “Well, everybody’s going to be trying to save money.” But the big tours, the Coldplays, the Beyoncés, the Paul McCartneys, the Rolling Stones, Kenny Chesneys, they all want to put on a great show for everybody and they can afford to, and so can a lot of artist.

[00:21:09] KK: Something came to mind while you were talking in that, Robin.

[00:21:10] BL: Me too, but you go first.

[00:21:13] KK: You’re in a business where a concert brings in thousands, and those thousands are always shoulder to shoulder, if not back-to-back. Then we have this pandemic where we’re needing to be apart from each other. Then you become involved with creating a safety device.

[00:21:37] RS: Correct. Several safety devices.

[00:21:39] KK: Several. But it almost seems to be that they could streamline together, is that that is the way concerts moving forward to keep these masses of people protected, that that becomes like the wristband. The wristband when you go in.

[00:21:55] BL: Well, yeah. Like you incorporate —

[00:21:57] KK: You incorporate that now. We want you all to be here. We want you to be together. We want you to feel the energy. We want to have this amazing concert, but we’re also going to keep you safe.

[00:22:08] RS: Okay. Yes. That’s what we discussed. Okay. No, no. The whole year, that’s all we discussed.

[00:22:14] KK: Yeah, I think that’s amazing.

[00:22:15] RS: And everything that we discussed from trucking, and tracing, and testing, all of that probably is going out the door with the vaccines. Okay? Now, outdoor venues, it used to be this thing, it’s called amphitheater or sheds. Which are arTour Venues, Irvine Amphitheater had one. I don’t know what else they have in California, and the Hollywood Bowl so you’re outside. Where there you can block off seats and you’re outdoors because you’re sitting in seats. And maybe in arenas, you can also block off seats, hopefully. But you know what, when you’re in a concert, everybody’s standing.

[00:22:52] KK: And singing.

[00:22:53] RS: Yeah. You have to wear a mask. I think it’s very difficult to enforce it. Okay? Then you got a little alcohol.

[00:23:01] KK: That’s true. I forgot about that.

[00:23:02] BL: Oh, yes.

[00:23:03] KK: The alcohol. It’s true.

[00:23:04] RS: No, no, no. Hey, listen. How many of us have had a glass of wine or two with friends outside socially distance, and then we’re moving in closer? I’m a smart, wise adult that doesn’t want to get COVID, but couple of glasses of wine, I’m like closer. So you add that and then you add an age factor, so I think it’s difficult. We’re all trying to work on that. I don’t think anybody has come to a solution yet.

[00:23:31] BL: Have the people asked you for safety measures for those types of things for 2022?

[00:23:36] RS: We all started it. A lot of talk has been in the AC systems, and changing those. Even with schools. What people are finding out the ventilation is everything, but also ventilation is extremely costly. Like even the smaller venues that might have opened up earlier, to put in a new ventilation system and then have half capacity. The other thing that has to be realized is that a smaller capacity, the financial metrics may not work. If you’re having half amount of people in the venue, how does that work financially? We’re all right now, just now that we know because we’ve been through this many times. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had people say, “We’re going to go out in September” last year. Okay. Then, “No, no. Definitely March, April.” Now, it’s June to July and then I’ve been told anything that’s June or July will probably be September, but that’s for sure.

[00:24:34] KK: Well, that is perfect because we will want you to come back in September.

[00:24:40] BL: And tell us how it’s going.

[00:24:41] KK: And tell us what is happening.

[00:24:42] RS: But I honestly think all the big stuff will be in 2022.

[00:24:45] KK: Yeah.

[00:24:47] BL: Yeah. Well, amazing. I hope that things start to open up.

[00:24:50] KK: I do too.

[00:24:50] BL: I miss live music. My son is a singer and I miss the live, just anybody, watch anyone. Then getting to concerts. I saw in the news the other that they may be postponing or eliminating Coachella again, which might be a good idea. I don’t know. I’ve never been to it, but I know there’s a lot of people there. Have you ever done Coachella?

[00:25:10] RS: Yeah. I think nobody knows. Come April and May when we figure out how many people have been vaccinated and once they open it up to everybody, then I think more people will know. I actually do. I miss it too. I mean, the funny thing is, I know having dreams of like it used to be. You have dreams, your dreams could be weird. I’m having dreams of actually real life, okay. The first dream was kind of weird because I was at a concert, and I was on an airplane going to a concert. When I got to the concert, I had my mask, but I realized nobody else was mearing masks. I was so panicked about it that I said, “Wake up, Robin” and I did. Now, I’m just having different dreams about being at a U2 concert or a Billie Eilish concert. Again, I love what I do and what I do is very creative.

[00:26:05] BL: Yeah, it’s so fun.

[00:26:03] RS: Being part of the process at the beginning and then seeing what it’s like on stage.

[00:26:10] KK: Must be incredible.

[00:26:12] RS: Then all the joy. I mean, I’m lucky to be in a business that bring a lot of joy to people.

[00:26:17] BL: Right.

[00:26:18] KK: Well, we’re going to look for that joy soon. What’s a good website for us to share? Tell us your website.

[00:26:24] RS: Please. Please. It’s www.upstaging.com. Right now, you’ll go on it, it will give you all of our safety barrier products. Please buy from our company, because it helps keep us alive for when the concert industry starts.

[00:26:46] KK: Great time.

[00:26:47] RS: It pays for our people and don’t want the people to go off and get another job. And then when everybody starts up, we don’t have the personnel we need to be able to do these tours.

[00:27:00] KK: Well, Robin, we will spread the word on that. Thank you so much for spending some time with us.

[00:27:05] RS: Thank you for having me.

[00:27:06] BL: Thank you, Robin. I’ll see you tonight. Right?

[00:27:09] RS: I’ll see you tonight at 5:00.

[00:27:11] BL: Yes, we have our Zoom call for WPO. Okay. I’ll see you later and thank you so much for coming on our show. We really, really appreciate it.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[00:27:18] KK: So interesting. Isn’t it? I really, really think that [tie in 00:27:21] is, it’s a fascinating thing.

[00:27:23] BL: Absolutely. I just love hearing her story, and then just how they pivoted. Then what she’s doing with the PPE. It’s really important, and who knows how long we’re going to need that stuff. It may last far beyond businesses, maybe just to add like we’re talking about before we interviewed her, that grocery stores have them now. Because there are so many people that —

[00:27:44] KK: Is seeing.

[00:27:44] BL: Yeah. The cashier, they see so many a day that it gives them that feeling of protection, which is really crucial.

[00:27:52] KK: Well, and I think too, it’s also been able to know where it’s coming from, how it was made, what it’s made with. It’s made in this country. We’re supporting other people who work here, super important. Well listen, thank you so much for joining us here at Risky Business. Great topic, very interesting and very timely for what’s going on right now. Because all of this is part of this whole community life that we are living. The more we know, the better we can share and just be educated.

[00:28:22] BL: Absolutely. So many topics to cover.

[00:28:24] KK: So many topics. We look forward to you on a next episode of Risky Business. I’m Kathy Kaehler.

[00:28:30] BL: And I’m Bliss Landon, and thank you so much for joining us. We’ll see you next time.

[END]