Jared Judge: 0:01

What's up? Denver event professionals? Welcome back to another episode of the Denver Nace Podcast. I am your host, jared Judge, music Director of Extreme Strings Electric Violins here in the Denver area, and we are joined on today's podcast by two extraordinary human beings and one of my favorite Denver companies. I'd love to welcome to our podcast the owner of my High Entertainment and the sales manager for my High Entertainment, jeff Libby and Sarah Shevlin. Welcome, guys, hi, thank you. Yeah, it's so great to have you. Thanks for being here. Obviously, you know, my High Entertainment has such an incredible reputation and I had the privilege of performing at the latest event that you guys threw, which was Feel Famous 2024, and you pulled out all the stops. So I kind of got a feel for what you guys do, but I don't know that all of our listeners know everything that you do. So, jeff, would you mind kicking us off and just telling us in a nutshell what does my High Entertainment do?

Jeff Libby: 1:02

Yeah, so in a nutshell, that's quite the nutshell right there. We provide mostly photo video activations for corporate clients as well as for social events. A lot of our photo video activations are geared around marketing, so that's kind of where we specialize, but we also offer a lot of creative services, av services and other event services as well.

Jared Judge: 1:29

Yeah, wow, that's pretty broad and exciting. So it sounds like you do a lot of social events and corporate, and you and I recently chatted offline about this. But tell us a little bit about the corporate side, like, how do your photo activations really help corporations with their marketing goals?

Jeff Libby: 1:48

Yeah, so the the biggest thing that we're doing right now is we're utilizing AI to not only generate a lot of buzz for trade shows, but we're also using it to make giving information about yourself really fun, and it's not like anything personal, it's just the types of information that you'd normally give, to give to people that kind of help, you know, determine if you're like a viable client for for a business, and what we've done with that is we're using AI to create fun personality quizzes that you know give you a really cool AI rendering, but it also gives our client a lot of information about you as a buyer.

Jared Judge: 2:35

Yeah, that is exciting, and especially because you know people don't necessarily want to fill out lengthy forms that self-identify if you are in the following segments. No, they'd rather have that like in their super fun format. And so could you kind of describe that format you were telling me the other day, but tell it for our listeners too.

Jeff Libby: 2:56

Yeah, so what we do is we use a personality quiz, essentially, and it's uniquely generated for each of our events. We're using AI to generate those quizzes and essentially, they're themed to the theme of the brand or the theme of the client's campaign or anything like that, and the way we do it is we match the information about the client and the company and their product with whatever theme it is. We're matching those two things using AI. So, because we're using AI, we're experts in every single field and our clients love us because of it.

Jared Judge: 3:34

Yeah, that's awesome. I imagine this helps generate lots of leads and then future clientele. How did you figure that out? How to do that?

Sara Sheveland: 3:45

Still figuring it out every day.

Jeff Libby: 3:48

Yeah, I mean it's. It's been like a. It started off as a discussion and we realized we could do it, and then we just kept taking it one. Every time we talk about it as an internal team, we add more to it because our you know, our imagination just goes wild and this is obviously a very unique product and it's also a really unique way of marketing. So we're kind of making it up as we go, but it's been extremely successful.

Sara Sheveland: 4:13

That's awesome. We have the added benefit of being able to be our own client as well. We go to trade shows where we are marketing our services as ourself, and so each time we do that, we get better. You know, figure out what we can do better for the next time and what we can do better for the clients as well.

Jared Judge: 4:32

Yeah, that sounds like a healthy organization that solicits feedback and actually implements it. So, sarah, would you mind kind of sharing what your role is with my High and how did you get involved?

Sara Sheveland: 4:46

Would you mind kind of sharing what your role is with my High and how did you get involved? That's a long story as well, but I'll try to keep it short. So I joined Jeff's team back in early 2018 or mid 2018. At the time, he was still kind of like just a photo booth company as it was in its infancy, and I kind of I actually I could tell the whole story, but I again I'll keep it short I convinced him that he needed a salesperson because at the time he certainly wasn't the only person on the team, but he was trying to be the salesperson and the operations and the you know training of his onsite staff Like he was trying to do it all, the you know training of his onsite staff like he was trying to do it all. And so I convinced him like no, you, you need me to. You don't need to make a single phone call to a single person that inquires. Like, let me do that while you handle, you know the rest of it and I'll just make sure that there's constantly events coming in. Um, and so we rocked it at that for from 2018 until 2020 when COVID happened. Um, jeff was very valiant when COVID very first happened. He was like we're going to keep all of our staff on um, you know, admirable goal for sure. You know, march 2020, we didn't know how long that was going to last. Um, by June I think it was either June or July of 2020, I had to go to him and say, hey, look like if there's going to be a company for me to come back to you, you got to let me go. So I kind of fell on, felt, feel like I fell on the sword a little bit to you know, help, help them to be able to get through the pandemic without a, you know salary that was higher than what could be afforded when there's no events.

Sara Sheveland: 6:31

And then January of 2021, I asked Jeff if he was ready to bring me back. And for all of you in the events industry, I'm sure you remember the uncertainty of January of 2021. Nobody had any idea if events were going to be back that year. Leads probably hadn't quite started coming in yet for that year because everyone was kind of on pins and needles of whether anything was going to start happening. So he, graciously, was like I'll offer you whatever reference you need if you need to start looking. So I did and I ended up finding a position at catering by design, so accepted that and I think within like two weeks I don't think I had even started at CBD yet and Jeff was, like leads are poor again, why didn't I bring you back? Um, so I I saw that through and and loved my three years that I had at Catering by Design and as of what is it now? Jeff, like three months ago he convinced me to come back.

Sara Sheveland: 7:30

So I'm back home, where I belong, and handling all of the sales for the Colorado market, that is, for all different segments, that's social, that's corporate, that's trade shows, that's AV, so pretty much anything that you need here in the state of Colorado. I'm your girl, I will. You know. Joyce is here as a support system to help, but she's really focusing on business development. So you know, shoot me an email. Yeah, I was trying to keep it short. I'm not good at that in general, but also it's a very long story.

Jared Judge: 8:07

No, and it's a very relatable story. I think we all have gone through similar things through COVID and both on the employer side and on the employee side, and there's something that stuck out to me about that story and I'm all about asking the hard questions here, so I hope that's okay 's okay. But hopefully this isn't too hard. What is it about my high Sarah that made you so loyal to it that you were willing to fall on that sword and that you just knew when the time is right you'd be back?

Sara Sheveland: 8:38

That is a really great question. I mean, there's a lot of different answers to that. I think that Jeff and I's working relationship he and I, you know, brainstorm really well together, like we just kind of feed off of each other's energy, and I think that my his strengths are a lot of where my weaknesses are and my strengths are where some of his weaknesses are are. So I think that that definitely plays a part of it. And then, just on the personal side, like I come from a background of hotels which are very corporate, very large, you know, very this is how we've always done things. And that's kind of what I didn't like about working in hotels is because I'd have ideas of new ways we could do things or new ways we could sell things, and was often answered with well, that's not how we do things here.

Sara Sheveland: 9:25

And then, you know, left hotels to work for Jeff where the answer was pretty much like, yeah, let's see how it works, like let's see if it works, or if, obviously, if there was experience of like, hey, that won't work, but it was always, you know, a collaboration of trying to do what's absolutely best for the company, for the client, for our team, whatever it may be based on the situation. And then going to CBD, I feel like that was kind of a middle. It was not as small of a business as MyHigh, but not as large of a business as um, as big box hotels and I. I enjoyed that for a time but I really I was excited to come back where my opinion and my voice is heard and matters and I'm able to help push us in the right direction for for continued growth.

Jared Judge: 10:21

Yeah, that's awesome, that's great. Like, congratulations to everybody for creating that environment where you feel valued and and heard, and so that's great. And I also get the sense that, like, that's kind of your philosophy with clients too. Like, we want to create these custom experiences that truly meet their needs. You're not just a one size fits all photo booth company. Maybe that's how you started. Like, we've all seen Facebook ads buy a photo booth for $250. We'll teach you how to make a lot of money on it.

Sara Sheveland: 10:50

So it grinds my gears and they always come to me, I guess because I'm sure the voice is listening. Hear us talking about photo booths and think, oh man, she obviously needs a photo booth. I do not need that. I do not need that $250 DIY experience.

Jared Judge: 11:09

Yeah for sure. So, Jeff, I'm curious how did you kind of shape the company to be more than just a photo booth company? How did we end up where we're at, where you're throwing these giant parties like Feel Famous, and you're providing custom experiences both here in Colorado and in so many different cities across the country?

Jeff Libby: 11:32

We get bored easy, I guess. So once we mastered one thing, it was kind of on to the next. I remember when I was visiting family back in New Hampshire, I walked by an antique store and saw an old vintage camera and so we decided to turn it into a photo booth. And so we all of a sudden had themed photo booths, which helped, you know, get us the type of clients who wanted to have more themed events and more creativity, and people started seeing our company as like the creative company, like what's coming up next, and you know, that fueled us and gave us the confidence to really just let our imaginations run wild.

Jeff Libby: 12:13

And next thing, you know, sarah and I were doing a showcase and it wasn't, it was just on my high showcase. We did a couple of those and then they were great, they were successful, they were fun, people really enjoyed them. They kind of achieved the goal that we were trying to achieve. And then it evolved. We added a name to it, we added brand, we decided we wanted to make it feel like red carpet 2.0 and what it could really look like. And then, after the first one it was such a success, the second one we, you know we had more freedom because we knew that what we were doing was awesome and fast forward. We've gotten three under our belts now. All of them were great and wonderful.

Sara Sheveland: 13:06

We specifically feel famous. We've had two or three showcases before that, before it became branded Yep.

Jeff Libby: 13:15

Three feel famous is under our belt and we're excited for the fourth one.

Jared Judge: 13:20

Yeah, that's awesome. I can tell that. Like you know, maybe they started out as simple showcases, but they've definitely evolved into something much bigger. Like you create a community around them and people really walk away feeling changed, like they've experienced something more than just a marketing event. What do you think contributes towards that feeling like, why are they such talked about events?

Jeff Libby: 13:46

um, that's a good question. There's so many things that go into it I can't really pinpoint it, but I can say that we do put a lot of effort into trying to, um, you know, make people feel unique experiences, even though there's so many people at these events. So, even though it's a what was it? 600 plus person event, we make it feel more intimate than that and we focus on little details as well as the big picture. We also just do things that people don't do or see as frequently. And then, lastly, of course, you know people want a photo booth at their event because they're fun. What happens when, all of a sudden, they people want a photo booth at their event because they're fun? What happens when, all of a sudden, they have 25 photo booths at their event? They're 25 times more fun. So, if you're listening, book more than one photo booth with us and you'll have an amazing event.

Sara Sheveland: 14:34

Because there's so many different things that you can do with it, and I just want to add that to me, it's that our team puts in so much energy and passion that I think you can feel that walking in the door that this was very well thought out. We thought about every single point of you know, what is somebody going to feel and experience at this point in the event, and this point and here and here, like it's just the passion that's put in, I think, really exudes the night of.

Jeff Libby: 15:06

Yeah, not only that, but are all of the sponsors are given creative freedom, and we've done a great job picking sponsors that we feel kind of aligned with our vision and how we run our business, in the sense of we're very creative and we like to push the. You know, we like to push the envelope quite a bit. Um, so giving everybody creative freedom within very minimal bounds has served us very well yeah, that's, that's awesome.

Jared Judge: 15:36

Um, and then, yeah, the fact that you even have sponsors for for this large event is a true testament to the community that you build. How important is like networking and collaboration in this industry to you.

Jeff Libby: 15:50

I think it is one of the most important things that we can have. Collaboration allows you to do so much more. You know, like Sarah was saying earlier, build off of each other's strengths and having a network allows you to just have so many other opportunities in different ways. So when you pair it all together and we build this amazing event for the entire community, not only do we hope that these people want to work with us in the future, but we also just hope to inspire them to take their events to the next level in any way that they've seen, not only in the photo video activation realm, but maybe in the decor that they see, or the types of performers that we have, or just really anything from the pre-event with the quizzes that we do, or any type of the activities that we're doing before the event that generates buzz all the way to after the event, seeing the fun videos that we make.

Jared Judge: 16:48

And I think you truly embody that. What kind of networking organizations are you guys involved in?

Sara Sheveland: 16:57

I can answer this one because Joyce and I were just discussing it earlier today, but I'm probably going to miss some.

Sara Sheveland: 17:08

Nace was probably the first one that that Jeff and I got involved in, um, but definitely MPI, um, destination Colorado, venue, hub, emerge I feel like I'm forgetting one um, but we I mean we really try to be as as active as we can in all of them because we truly see that the more involved you are, the more you get out of a networking event or a networking organization.

Sara Sheveland: 17:31

You know Jared, before your time, but I used to be on the board of NACE as well and really try to explain to people as I'm saying like hey, get involved with NACE, but like, don't just become a member. Like you're not going to get anything out of it if you just pay the membership fee and never show up. Like, show up to the events, make those connections you know, make a goal for yourself to meet three new people at every event. My goal is someone who already knows, usually at least 50% of the people in the room, if not more is to try to be that glue. Like, if there's a new person, I try to say like hey, who are you here trying to meet.

Jared Judge: 18:31

Let me introduce you to XYZ, because then, even if they don't need a photo booth today, maybe next year when they have a client who asks about it, they're going to remember me as the person that, like helped introduce them to who they needed to know. So I really try to be the glue that helps keep all of that together. That's awesome. That's incredibly powerful, very valuable. It reminds me of a. There was a book I forget which book it was, but they were talking about like there are three kinds of people in the world and one of them was connectors, and connectors are, like, some of the most valuable people because you are that glue, you bring the community together and you create those nodes in the network that just help it spider web out, which is really cool. So I can tell like this is a great strategy for you both, like from a marketing perspective and just a community building perspective.

Jared Judge: 19:07

I think one of the things that one of the first things I heard about you, jeff, was that Jeff is good at SEO, which is kind of a weird thing for somebody to hear through the grapevine about somebody before meeting them. So I'm curious, jeff, you know some of our listeners will know what SEO is. Some of them will not. Could you kind of describe what it is and how did you master that and use that to help springboard my High Entertainment?

Jeff Libby: 19:34

Yeah, yeah, so SEO is essentially where you're ranking in Google and other search engines, so it's important to be on the first page, preferably number one, after the sponsored postings. If you're number one, it's a race and all you have to do is be better than your competitors in a race. So that's kind of how I started. My mindset was I just need to be better than everybody else, and I learned one new thing every day and I was actually practicing my SEO before I even started my photo booth company, which was fun. I have a. I started a photo booth company and a solar panel cleaning website company and a few months later I started getting phone calls for the photo booths. About a year later, I was getting phone calls for the solar panels. But I was already so deep in photo booths at that point because I bought one and then I ended up buying another one and I was working on a tugboat when I first started the website and I was able to get off of the tugboat and develop my sales skills and it was just. One thing led to another.

Jeff Libby: 20:47

But essentially, what I like to say is make sure you're doing all of the technical things that Google will tell you to do for your website, like page speed and things like that. Create really high quality content that's loaded with your keywords but not too stuffed. You can look all of that stuff up online as well, but your keywords are words that you want people to search on Google for and find you. And then, lastly, is backlinks. So find some people to link to your website. Create great content, make waves in the industry, whatever you have to do. But if you can do those three things, you're going to end up on the first page and you know it's just incrementally better from there when you can rank number one. But yeah, that's kind of that's how I started and that's my mindset on it. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out and ask me. I'll do my best to answer them. I'm not an SEO master, I'm just I know enough to be dangerous, as they say.

Jared Judge: 21:47

Yeah, well, that's awesome. I mean you. I love that it started out with two competing businesses, so, had things gone differently, my high may not have existed. You may have just been cleaning solar panels, is that right?

Jeff Libby: 21:59

Yeah, or just I would have been a digital marketer in the background. I wasn't planning on opening up a business besides doing like freelance digital marketing stuff. And now here we are. But it's great because we're kind of getting back on track in the sense of all of the marketing. Not that we're getting back on track We've always been on this track but marketing is kind of in our blood and my high's blood and that's how we've structured. This company is so focused on marketing with all of our products.

Jared Judge: 22:30

Yeah, for sure. I think that's very clear, especially with what we started today's conversation about, which was one of your products. That helps corporations with their marketing and I have seen this fairly often is that marketing driven organizations are healthier because they don't have to worry about the money problems that many other businesses do, right? So how did you, I guess, adopt that mindset Like, was that always? Your mindset is like let's, let's be financially successful and then the rest will come. Based on that, Not really.

Jeff Libby: 23:05

It was actually kind of the opposite. It was let's. I mean, I definitely get distracted. So sometimes I talk marketing all day, other times I talk creating experiences all day, but I talk about things that are really fun and interesting for not only me but my team, and that alone has helped us thrive and be super successful. I think when you put the money in front and when you're focusing on the wrong things is kind of when you start to misstep and that's when you lose control and success and everything. So focus on you know, focus on your passions, because if you can do that and if you can add a little bit of business acumen to that, then that's all you really need.

Jared Judge: 23:49

Yeah, for sure. I feel very blessed that I'm in a position where I get to play music for a living, but I have had to pair it with some marketing and sales skills in order to get the word out there and generate enough business to sustain my my crazy music hobby.

Jeff Libby: 24:07

Definitely, and that's that's one thing that I think is unique about this industry is a lot of people come in as creatives and they don't know much about running businesses and they don't know much about running businesses and so they just learn as they go, which is great, but they have to make sure that they're not leaning too hard on being that creative, because they do have to learn basic marketing, basic business, basic accounting and all of those things in order to be successful in business. And as much as I hate accounting and bookkeeping, I've had to learn the basics, and this year is the first year. After nine whole years of running this business, nine and a half of running this business, I finally get a bookkeeper, and it's like the biggest best present to myself.

Jared Judge: 24:51

So nice. I don't have a bookkeeper yet, but that sounds like a very nice thing to do. What does it? Kind of helped you with your business with a very nice thing to do.

Jeff Libby: 25:01

What does it kind of helped you with your business, with the bookkeeper.

Jeff Libby: 25:03

Yeah, categorizing my expenses, so I don't have to do it Just gives us time to focus on other things. Yeah, exactly we. I mean we do about a thousand events a year and so we're buying new equipment, new supplies, we're paying our staff. We have so many like we have literally millions of dollars worth of expenses and they're small to you know, I don't know, one to $10, all the way up to 100 plus $1,000. So we have 10s of 1000s of expenses that come in, and if I have to categorize them all on my own, like it, it it's hard, um, but you have to do it because of taxes and things like that. So, um, it take, it used to take over, you know, a hundred hours to do it and I didn't even know if I was doing it right. So I have a bookkeeper, she handles it. She asked me questions here and there and it's, like I said, the best thing I could have ever gotten that and it's, like I said, the best thing I could have ever gotten.

Jared Judge: 26:05

That sounds awesome. I feel inspired to now look for a bookkeeper for myself.

Sara Sheveland: 26:08

Sarah, I'm curious about you how did you develop sales skills and now sales management skills? Oh, I mean, I've always had like events in general. Event sales is in my blood. Both my mom and my grandma were both and my mom still is in the hotel sales industry, so that's how I got started and a lot of it. I mean sorry for anybody who it doesn't come naturally like it just comes naturally for me a large part of it but I also have been through, you know, numerous different types of sales training. I feel like almost every hotel that I was ever at did different versions of sales training, and I am big on listening to an audio book person, so I like listening to two different books and everything like that on on sales.

Sara Sheveland: 27:01

Um, so that sort of helps. Um, yeah, that's I mean. As far as the management side of things, it's just, you know, rather than picking up not knowing anything, I know how to not only sell it to somebody, but also, you know, look at the data and what does it tell us about how we? You know what's trending and what. What should we do in order to continue that upward growth year over year?

Jared Judge: 27:31

Interesting. So you're like we talked about before, using feedback and data to then adjust maybe, your product offerings or the messaging that's on the website. Cool, sarah. Well, that sounds amazing. I mean to learn all those skills and you know you do say that there is some level of innate talent that you were born with, which is definitely helpful, but you know, I feel like I was not born with any sales skills whatsoever and it is a skill that can be learned.

Sara Sheveland: 28:01

It is and I certainly have a tip. One of the biggest tips you know if I had to narrow it down to one thing is ask questions and listen more than you're talking. Like you, I recently was watching a webinar, a podcast, about sales, and they use the word pitch slap. You don't have to edit that out. I'm not saying a bad word, but it you know it is definitely something that some people will do is they'll just say here's a here's everything that.

Jeff Libby: 28:28

I have.

Sara Sheveland: 28:29

What do you want to buy? And it's like Whoa, whoa, like why don't you just take a, take a step back, ask a couple of questions and figure out you? You, as the expert, should be again asking them all of questions and figure out. You, as the expert, should be again asking them all those questions and then telling them what it is that they need, based on everything that you've learned. So it should be like 75% them talking, 25% you talking and really most of it should be you talking at the end, once you've learned what it is that they actually need from you, not just again shoving everything in front of them and saying here you go pick one. So boiling it down to one sales tip is listen more than you talk.

Jared Judge: 29:11

That's an excellent tip and that's definitely one that I've heard a lot. I recently I've been diving deep into this sales framework called NEPQ Neuro Emotional Persuasive Questions and the fact that they have questions in the name of the sales method is a hint that it's all about what you're talking about. It's just asking a series of structured questions and then only once you deeply understand what their needs are and why they have those needs, do you have permission to possibly help them.

Sara Sheveland: 29:43

Interesting. Is there a specific book that you're or sorry, did you say you were reading a book or listening to something, Cause that sounds very interesting?

Jared Judge: 29:52

Yeah, there is a book. I don't know if I have it here. I mean, I have it somewhere on my shelf. I will send it to you afterwards. Maybe I'll link to it in the thing. But yeah, there are two books. One is like the book on the methodology and then the other is like a black book of questions that has the actual questions that you would use in your sales. Very cool. Yeah, but no, it makes perfect sense. That's a great tip, so thank you for sharing that.

Sara Sheveland: 30:20

Yeah.

Jared Judge: 30:21

So it sounds like my high is growing. So I'm curious, Jeff, as we wrap up this episode, could you kind of talk about the direction the company is going in? What are we looking at in the rest of 2024, 2025 and beyond?

Jeff Libby: 30:38

So the direction is definitely really led by my team, and I've always said that if we're not all passionate about what we're doing, we're not going to succeed. So I do take quite a bit of input and advice from the team to help steer us in the right direction. Right now, because of AI and because of technology and because of our passion for AI and technology, we're really just like digging into it and we're learning how to run our business better and just how to use AI so well. And also, though, like marketing, like I said, that's something that we do enjoy doing. We enjoy marketing, we enjoy creating experiences, we really love the AI and embracing the future. So I don't want to get too specific because we have a lot to share in the upcoming months, but those three things combined, you will definitely see a lot of those three things and what we've got brewing right now.

Jared Judge: 31:41

Awesome. Well, that's so exciting. Well, jeff and sarah, I really appreciate you both coming on to the podcast. Where could our listeners learn more about you and my high if they wanted to check you guys out?

Jeff Libby: 31:53

I'd say a nice event we do like to sponsor a nice event.

Jared Judge: 31:58

But if you're not going to a nice event, or you are going but you have questions between now and then, you can visit our website at wwwmyhighphotoboothcom she's a salesperson come on, at least kind of give the website plug, right absolutely, and if you're interested in meeting really cool people like Jeff and Sarah and learning more about our industry, check out NACE's website. Nace stands for National Association for Catering and Events. It is nacedenvercom. You'll see our calendar of upcoming events. Our next one is June 11th at the Denver Art Museum and we're going to talk about getting more referrals. So come check out one of our next NACE meetings. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the Denver NACE podcast and go crush those events. Thanks so much for listening.