Denver NACE Podcast
The Denver NACE Podcast is a show dedicated to the events industry in Denver, Colorado. Hosted by members of the Denver chapter of the National Association for Catering and Events (NACE), the podcast features interviews with a wide range of professionals in the industry, including bakery owners, wedding planners, venue owners, DJs, musicians, and photographers.
The aim of the show is to share the stories and lessons of these industry experts and help grow the Denver events industry by bringing the community together.
Whether you're in the wedding industry, corporate events industry, nonprofit events, or other social events, the Denver NACE Podcast is a valuable resource for anyone looking to learn more about the industry and the people behind it.
Denver NACE Podcast
Rob Meagher: From Trivia Host to Wedding Entertainment Maestro - The Elite Entertainment Evolution
Ever wondered how a trivia host transforms into a powerhouse wedding event specialist? Meet Rob Maher of Elite Entertainment, who joins us on this enlightening episode to share his incredible journey. His company isn't just about DJs spinning tracks—it's an all-encompassing event extravaganza with photo booths, high-tech lighting, and LED dance floors, all delivered with a genuine kindness towards clients and vendors. We even get a taste of how Elite's DJ Ethan turned a standard wedding into a memorable bash with a perfectly timed "Devil Went Down to Georgia."
Navigating the DJ business requires more than just a good ear for music; it demands savvy operational strategies and a solid team. In this candid chat, we lay out the perks of running a multi-op service, such as Elite's decade-long success in maintaining reliable backup DJs and their personalized client service led by full-timer Josie. We delve into why Elite chooses to employ their DJs instead of contracting them out—following IRS guidelines to a tee—and their ambitious goal to expand their roster to 20 by the wedding season's peak, ensuring every event hits the right note.
The event industry is a complex dance of talent and logistics, made even more intricate by the pandemic's lingering effects. We tackle the decision-making process behind hiring employees versus contractors, weighing the challenges and benefits of each, especially in light of COVID's tumultuous impact. There's also a spotlight on the indispensable practice of networking, as we underscore the upcoming NACE meetings where wisdom from industry pros promises to spark growth and innovation. So, tune in for a dose of inspiration and an insider's look at thriving through the wedding season hustle.
What's up? Denver event professionals, Welcome back to another episode of the Denver NACE podcast. I'm super excited today because we have a very special guest, a relatively newer member of NACE. His name is Rob Maher. You may know him as the face of elite entertainment. Welcome to the podcast, Rob. Hey, thanks for having me. Of course, Now you and I have done some work together. I love your company, I love your DJs and we just have such a good time. But why don't you give our listeners just kind of a 30-second, one-minute elevator pitch of who you are and what your company does?
Speaker 2:Well, elite Entertainment. We provide event services for primarily weddings, so it's djs, photo booths. We do lighting and drape installations, so, uh, pipe and drape, ceiling fabric chandeliers. Uh, we just got into the led dance floor game and we're pretty pumped about that. I've been with elite full-time for just over a decade. I started actually DJing was a side hustle, it was my weekend gig to make extra money. And then I linked up with Matt and Jan who were kind of running it all before I came into the picture, and it made sense for me to join and we've combined forces and here we are now.
Speaker 1:That is awesome. And how long? You said at least been doing this for about 10 years. Is that right?
Speaker 2:Cash. I think they're coming up on closer to like 14 years, but yeah, don't quote me. Let's say 13 or 14 years, but I've been around for 12, full time, for 10.
Speaker 1:Okay, very cool, and so, yeah, let's chat about your backstory. You said you started out DJing as a side hustle. How did you get into DJing?
Speaker 2:It started I had a friend that was dating a guy that had a company that was very focused more on karaoke and trivia. So I started as one of the trivia hosts in bars and that's how I became a little more comfortable talking on the mic and kind of figuring out the process. Karaoke was was a whole other thing where, um, there was a little more of an entertainment factor uh to that, and then, um, that doesn't pay very well. So I got into more doing social events weddings, birthday parties, that kind of stuff and it just kind of grew from there.
Speaker 1:Awesome, yeah, that makes sense. Do you have, like, a background in music, or you just you love music and that's why you learned how to DJ.
Speaker 2:I've always loved music. I've always loved entertainment. I've always loved entertainment. Really, my first job I worked at a movie theater and just I think that's what hooked me into what sound and video can do as far as providing an emotional experience. I guess for lack of a better term I just I love what art can do to elicit emotion from people. And and I kind of found my path in music with, with DJing was introduced to electronic music a few years into it and really really dug into that, found, found a lot of joy digging into that genre and that's kind of I think that's the real passion for me. Now, obviously we provide wedding services, so that's an enormous focus, but I think the true joy has come with electronic music.
Speaker 1:Okay, that's awesome. So do you DJ at clubs?
Speaker 2:I used to a ton in my 20s. Those times are more or less behind me. Every now and again I'll get out and kind of have a little bit of fun with it. But I like my normal bedtime and waking up early.
Speaker 1:So the club life is kind of in the past for me now that makes sense, and obviously DJing at a wedding is very different than DJing at a club. I'm curious, like what are some of the things that elite entertainment trains their DJs to do that makes weddings such a great experience with you guys, settings such a great experience with you guys?
Speaker 2:Well, we really I mean at a base level we focus on be kind, and that is it's not just for the couple, it's not just for their family and friends, it's really also for all the vendors that we're working with. And and we really we focus on our team kind of building their team the night of the event. It's like, hey, get to know who you're working with, make sure that you're on the same page, make sure that everybody understands what the other vendors are trying to accomplish and working towards the shared goal of making sure that it's an amazing experience for everybody that's there, that it's an amazing experience for everybody that's there. We spend a lot of time training our staff. Our DJs go through a six-week training program before we're even sending them out to events. So we really like to focus on the little details, because I think that's how you're able to create special moments for people at events is is really understanding everything. That's kind of going on a little bit under the surface and being able to pull special moments out of that understanding.
Speaker 1:That's great and I think I got to witness that firsthand when one of your guys, ethan, and I we did a wedding at Winter Park Resort and he was on it Like he was collaborating with the planner. He was making sure that, you know, dinner coincided with all the other plans and then I felt like he took care of me as his electric violinist. You know he was offering to like set up sound equipment that I didn't even need just anticipating my needs. So he's a very big team player that I didn't even need just anticipating my needs. So he's a very big team player. And he did pull out a special moment for the couple while I was on the dance floor playing, one of like the uncles or someone, or it might've even been the bride requested Devil Went Down to Georgia and he made it happen and it was just magic on the dance floor. It was such a good time. So I really can see your principles in action and in just my short experience with Ethan, I love hearing that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Ethan's one of our best, so he uh, he's always going out and uh and making us look awesome. I appreciate having him, yeah, for sure?
Speaker 1:Well, very cool. So I guess let's chat about some of the other wedding services you do. I know I've been focusing on the DJ, but tell me, we started as a DJ company.
Speaker 2:Then we added photo booths to the offering. So we do open air photo booths. We actually just picked up a 360 booth. You know what? We're three or four late, uh, three or four years late to the, to the party on that, uh, maybe a little bit more, but uh, we thought that that was something that was going to be a passing fad and uh, it seems like it's. It's a really fun activation. People are really drawn to it. So that's something that we've we've added on.
Speaker 2:But really, I think what we internally are very excited about is the wow moments that we're able to provide for our couples with the lighting and drape.
Speaker 2:So I think the team does an exceptional job with with sealing fabric, you know, doing sheer fabric treatments.
Speaker 2:We do market lights, edison drops with different cages, chandeliers, creativity, kind of seeing how we can push what we currently have in inventory and kind of growing some of the inventory in an intelligent way to really be able to continue to raise the bar of what our team can do on site. So it's tough to totally explain it without I wish I had a little slideshow for you to see it. Look at this cool thing that we did and look at this cool thing, but uh, but we're really excited about that, really excited about um, the led dance floor. Like I was telling you, that's something that we picked up um about a year ago and it's. It's really exciting to to get it out. I mean that the feel famous event man, I I thought that that was just so cool having that there and then having you out there doing your thing. So that's primarily what we do, happy to kind of dive into that a little bit more if there's anything that you kind of want to point me in the direction on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I guess how does somebody go about deciding here are the pieces that I want to add to my event, and how do you make that all happen for them?
Speaker 2:A lot of that magic is, you know, you start with a Pinterest board Like what, you know what, what moves you, what's exciting to you, and then trying to be able to to understand. First of all, there's limitations to every venue, so really taking the time to not only talk to the couple and understand their vision, but then the team making sure to get to the venue, do a site visit and understand what we can actually accomplish within some of the limitations of the venue. But really Jan on our team does such a great job of pulling the creativity out of our couples and being able to put something together with our different offerings, and I mean he's such a great conductor when it comes to that and just getting people excited to realize their vision.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's awesome and that kind of reminds me of something that I've seen a lot in some of the wedding Facebook groups. You've probably seen some of it too, but there's been a bit of I wouldn't call it controversy, but a little bit of pushback from some DJs. I haven't necessarily seen you involved in those conversations, but you know there's a lot of pushback on the. You know I want a DJ that doesn't cost an arm and a leg, like the pricing conversation. Like how do you fit into that pricing conversation and how do you make sure that couples get the value that they want but that you're also, you know, paying for your staff in a way that makes them feel valued and keeps the lights on and makes everybody happy man?
Speaker 2:that's a big question. I think that you can always talk about experience when you're talking about price, because there's always going to be somebody that's just starting out that their price is going to be cheaper. Um, a single op. I think they sometimes have a little more flexibility with their pricing. They don't have as much overhead, um, so I I think that some of the value that we're able to provide at our I would call our price point, typically with DJs kind of the upper level, of kind of the mid level, um, I think what we're able to provide is is we have, um, we have more systems in place.
Speaker 2:So little things like when we're sending out more than a couple of DJs in a night, we actually we pull one of our DJs out of rotation. We have them here at the office with gear loaded up, with their suit, ready to go just in case something happens. So, generally, that's, you know what are. What are things that we run into that are issues? Well, speaker failure, maybe there's. There's an issue with a mic system, so that DJ is ready to go at the warehouse to be able to to run that to the other DJs that are actually performing. So you know, we have that in place.
Speaker 2:We also. We have, you know, we've been doing this for over a decade, so there is a track record of you know. We've never missed events. We own our mistakes, we try to do business in a very honest way and we care. So, you know, I think that what's cool is we have a decent amount of social proof.
Speaker 2:There's reviews that that more or less say, yeah, these, these people care. Um, I think I love reading through the reviews because often you get to see there's you know, josie, she takes such a a big part of uh kind of the conversation of making sure that we get all the logistics in for the DJs. So we pay somebody full time to be available to answer the phone, to quickly answer emails. Josie's handling a lot of that client interaction to help the DJs get a lot of their event prepped and then hand that off to the DJ for the final conversation. So the DJs can really understand the client's needs as far as music and maybe some of the nuance of what's on their timeline. So I think those are a couple of the key points that I think allow us to kind of set ourselves apart and I think, charge what we charge, which is a fair thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. I mean you hear it all the time and it's because it's so true, but you get what you pay for and nothing against. You call them single ops versus multi-ops. Single op meaning the person who is DJing is the same guy who's running the office, and typically they they probably even have a full time job on top of that, so DJing might be their side hustle, kind of like you when you're in your 20s, but yeah, you know nothing against that. But there are limitations to that model.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I want to jump in. Look, there's a lot of guys, there's a lot of guys that I know that are running, I think, fantastic single ops. I think that we're just a different thing. So I in no way wanna talk down to that. I just think it's different because there are some very exceptional entertainers that are single ops. It's just, it's different.
Speaker 1:For sure, and you guys provide your own unique spin on even the multi-op setup. And it sounds like you've got a bunch of DJs on your roster. About how many do you have working for Elite?
Speaker 2:So we're at 15 right now. We are ramping up. I have two DJs about to finish training now and we're feeling pretty great about them and we hope to probably be to about 20 DJs on our roster when we are really kind of in the meat of wedding season.
Speaker 1:Yeah that's great, because then that allows you to have that backup in place in case anything goes wrong.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:And you've got a you know, got a bunch of people on your list here and I hear that you're somewhat of an expert on the contractor versus employee debate. Sure, you had to work that in for our listeners. This is kind of we were discussing should we talk about a topic that was proposed was contractors versus employees and I was like let's just feature rob instead. But while we're here, are these djs employees or contractors? How do you approach that?
Speaker 2:well, they, they're employees. You know there's how do I say this? Well, more or less, there's a bunch of rules that the IRS has that says this is how it's an employee, this is how it's a contractor, and they have simplified the rules. But, at the end of the day, the things that we are providing basically make our team employees. So we provide the gear, we provide training, and then we're also dictating how they do their job, and so all of those things point heavily to them being classified as employees versus contractors.
Speaker 2:Now, as I was telling you before we got going, you're, you know, you've done some work for us. That makes sense that you I would pay you as a contractor because you are. I'm reaching out to you saying, hey, are you available? And then you're providing all of your own equipment and really like doing your own thing. As as far as the interaction with with the client, once we say once, we kind of put that relationship together.
Speaker 2:So we have employees and I think that it's a better way for us to care for our team. That allows them more of the social safety net. So if they have to file for unemployment, they're paying into that. They're able to take advantage of that if anything weird happens, like you know, covid and you know, colorado just rolled out I think they call it FAMLI F-A-M-L-I. I don't know if you're familiar with that, but Colorado rolled out something that we're all paying into that provides an additional safety net of paid time off, and so to me I think it's kind of a no brainer, for if we really want to care for our team, let's pay them as employees and provide them with a little more of that safety net.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's great, that that really does provide that loyalty and that bond that you were talking about. I know that it also puts some additional burdens on the business. Would you talk a little bit about that?
Speaker 2:Well, yeah you're, you're more or less adding 12 percent to payroll because you're paying it. You know you're paying some of the taxes. You're paying into other other things, paying into other things. Again, I'm not a pro, but my understanding is it's about 12% extra that we're paying in to make sure that our employees are taken care of a little bit better.
Speaker 1:Yeah for sure. Sounds like 12% well worth it. Sure, you mentioned COVID. I'm curious. I was in Wisconsin when COVID happened and it was a mess up there. How did COVID affect Elite?
Speaker 2:Well, we lost 75% of our business. Thankfully there weren't a ton of refunds, there were a lot of reschedules. But yeah, it was an enormous impact to us, just like everybody else here, and it certainly presented a lot of challenges, especially I. The initial challenge was everybody wanting their money back. And then once that dust settled and and we were starting to go in and do these micro weddings and all of that you know. The next challenge was, you know, we're providing our services in a ton of different counties and each county have kind of their own rules and so trying to keep up with that it was kind of an ever changing thing. It became a bit overwhelming trying to follow all of those rules as they were all changing from county to county. So yeah, I don't feel our experience was unique. I think we all went through it together, but I hope we never have to go through it again.
Speaker 1:But uh, I hope we never have to go through it again. Yep, knock on wood. Yeah, has the post COVID landscape, you know. Do you feel like it's back to normal? Does normal feel different than it did before? Talk a little bit about that.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, once we really ramped back up and and then we as an industry experienced the catching up and you know all the reschedules and then the new bookings. That was a big stressor to our team. Again, I don't think unique to not a unique experience. We had the staffing issues. You know we lost the majority of our staff so we had to regrow our team. I would say this year I feel really good about it, feels like we're ramping up like we were in 2019. So, you know, we're adding staff to the roster At this point. You know, mid-april, we're interviewing, we're trying to know we're adding staff to the roster at this point, you know, mid April, we're interviewing, we're trying to onboard, we're getting people trained and, and so I'd say it, it feels, it feels good. We're and we're growing. Prices went up. I mean, everybody's prices had to go up. It's been wild, but um, but we are, are I feel like we're seeing normal growth, not the explosion of events, uh, like with the uh, with all the catching up after, after covid yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, it does sound like we all went through it and I feel like you know colorado definitely opened up after wisconsin did so. I feel like I you know Colorado definitely opened up after Wisconsin did so. I feel like I'm actually still on the tail end of the COVID recovery here, which has been interesting because I got to experience it twice, but it sounds like your team is handling it with grace and I love hearing that you're hiring. That's like a really good sign for the business. I think you guys do great work. Thank you, of course. Obviously, I love, love working with you. I'm excited for our next wedding coming up here in june. I believe it is. Yeah, so I guess, as part of this is this podcast episode is part of your nace member benefits, so I'm curious who would be best? Uh, who should we connect you with? Like, who are the kinds of people that you and elite would like to be connected with more?
Speaker 2:Uh, we love talking to venues, we love talking to planners, but honestly, I you know those are my top picks, but I love talking to everybody in the industry. I think that there's opportunity to learn new things in every conversation that you have. But if I had my pick just for the business, the gatekeepers for us are venues and planners Awesome Yep.
Speaker 1:Same for my business, too, and that's what we're all about here at NACE. Is making those connections Very cool? Well, anything that I did not ask you, that you wanted to share about yourself or elite, or just fun things that you like to do in Colorado.
Speaker 2:Oh man, you're putting me on the spot here. There's a ton that I like to do. I'm hoping I get to go up snowboarding a couple more times. It sounds like copper was just dumped on, so maybe I'll get up snowboarding a little bit more before, before it all melts off and we have to get into season. But uh, I don't know that I have much more to add. I'm excited for wedding season. I'm excited to get through first quarter and actually start getting into getting back to work. Uh, the seasonality of it all is that, uh, that we get to rest up and recharge January through March generally. So I'm just excited to get back out there and see what fun things we can come up with this year.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Well, I'm excited for you too, and excited to be a part of what Elite does. Well, rob, one last question, which is how could our listeners find out more about you and the company? Where would you send them?
Speaker 2:Well, check us out wwwmyelitedjcom that's going to be the easiest way, and then from there, come see us at our office and let's let's chat about the cool things that we can do together.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. Well, very good. Well, thank you so much, Rob, for being on our podcast and to our listeners. Thanks for listening to another episode of the Denver NACE podcast. If you're interested in checking out any of our meetings and meeting really cool people like Rob and myself well, I don't know if I'm really cool, but Rob is then please check us out. At nacedenvercom, We've got our meeting schedule listed. We just recently hosted Alan Berg, who is a wedding sales expert, and I hear really good things about his talk. I unfortunately did not get to go myself, but if you want to learn from the best and meet the best, then go to NACE Denver dot com and check out our next meeting. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the Denver NACE podcast and go crush wedding season.