Five generations on your festival team - and nobody told you how to lead them. Here's why the fault line forms and what to do about it. Here’s the thing. Your 55-year-old stage manager and your 24-year-old production assistant are standing three feet apart on the same site visit. Same briefing. Same directive from you. And somehow…
Read MoreIt was a Sunday. Main stage. Ninety minutes to showtime. And the headliner's representative just told us the beloved closing artist that fans had been waiting for all day wasn't coming. Details were a bit sketchy…
Read MoreThere's a frog in boiling water that doesn't know it's in danger. You've heard the analogy. The water heats so gradually that the frog never registers the threat. By the time it's obvious, it's too late to jump…
Read MoreLet me ask you something most leadership books won't. Not what your values are. Not what they should be. But this: When is the last time your budget reflected your stated values — dollar for dollar? If you had to pause before answering, you're…
Read MoreMark Cuban just did something surprising. The billionaire investor—known for calling AI the "ultimate timesaving hack" and warning that if you're not learning AI, you're "f—ed"—bypassed the plethora of AI startups and invested in…
Read MoreLast week, a festival director told me something that broke my heart: "We have the most talented team in the industry. But by show week, half of them are in tears, and the other half have stopped talking to each other." Sound familiar? Here's what I've learned after…
Read MoreWe need to talk about something that's keeping me up at night—and if you're leading a festival or large-scale live event, it should be keeping you up too. I've spent decades producing one of America's most complex cultural events. I've watched this industry evolve, grow, and face challenges…
Read MoreI’ve been scratching my head wondering when our beloved music festivals turned into these brand-saturated extravaganzas. Was it really George Wein in the 1950s, or did the shift creep in later? The truth is, sponsorship in music events has a long pedigree, but it exploded as…
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