BLOG & Company News

OK, so we're going to see who's interested in what here. This will be an informal blog of what's going on in our crazy world of creating fun events for college and corporate clients. Plus, amusing stories from the road, and perhaps a little tooting of our own horns.

March 1, 2008 - Entry #5 - C.J. Johnson - We can fly!!! After several years of telling schools and corporate groups in the states that are a long way from us (Texas) that we couldn't make it to their show because we were in another part of the country the day before, now we can send three of our shows via airplane and make it to almost any show, anywhere in the country. We've taken some pretty big steps to keep the production level up the Game Shows To Go standard, but some sacrifices had to be made, mostly in the area of sound and lights needing to be provided for us, but we're finding that it's not too big of a deal and the shows are looking great. It's our great hosts that make all the difference in the shows - so now, if you're in Washington State, Minnesota, or Maine and want a show, what you'll hear is "no problem"! The shows we can currently fly with are: Do You Remember Being a 5th Grader, Beat the Banker, and Brain Cell.

February 15, 2008 - Entry #4 - C.J. Johnson - OK, here's the big announcement. At NACA Nationals we're formally announcing our new show "Brain Cell". It's a perfect show for the college market, but I'm seeing so many great uses for the corporate and association market too that the idea of the show is almost all consuming right now. I'm sure I'm a huge bore to be around because all I want to talk about is this new game show! Check out Brain Cell today - then book it for your next college event! Book it soon and we'll throw in a special "Post Show Marketing Package" that will help you get more students to your event. Call us at 800-462-4424, ext. 1 for details and to get your event on the calendar.

February 1, 2008 - Entry #3 - C.J. Johnson - Oh my God I'm so excited about the new show that we're announcing at the NACA conference later this month that I can hardly contain myself. It's all I can do to not launch it's web page yet, but I'm trying hard to contain my excitement so that it'll be a big splash. Unless I know absolutely nothing about the college market (and I like to think that's not true), this is going to be THE big game show for colleges for the next 2-5 years! It's the perfect blend of medium and market. Did I mention that I'm excited about it?

January 24, 2008 - Entry #2 - C.J. Johnson - The guys had several days off driving from events throughout Florida last week up to New York and Philly this week. They got two days off and stayed in New Jersey, on the bus route to Manhattan (it's impossible to park "The Beast" in Manhattan). Until this trip John (our techie) had never been this far east in the US and had never been to Manhattan. They got a two day "Gray Line" bus pass and took the tour of NYC, rode the Staten Island Ferry past the Statue of Liberty and got tickets to go see a taping of "The Late Show with David Letterman". Since it was John's first NYC experience I figured it wouldn't be complete without experiencing Broadway, so I told Gus to take out some money from the road account and get them tickets to a Broadway show. Last night consisted of them going to a taping of "Letterman", leaving the taping, grabbing a quick dinner, then going to see "Monty Python's Spam-a-lot". John's phone call afterwards made me feel pretty good... "You may be the coolest guy ever, Thanks!" I love giving people experiences that they'll remember forever.

My reward? They picked me up 6 boxes of Drakes Ring Dings - wonderful chocolate snack cakes that we can't get in Texas. I hope they hurry home, a Ring Ding sounds great around now!

January 14, 2008 - Entry #1 - C.J. Johnson. With only 10 days notice we assembled our teams to meet up in Tampa, FL to help put on 3 game shows all running at the same time. Hosts Gus Davis, Mike Meadows and a host who will remain nameless because he took a sick day from his "real job" all got to town a day early to work with the clients. Two of our crew drove in with all of the equipment, two flew in from Austin, TX, one flew in from Charlotte, NC and then I flew in from Denver. Everyone, except me, arrived within 2 hours of one another - quite a good job of scheduling if I say so myself (and I just did!). Our team managed to rehearse with the client and make sure that we had their technical needs met.

I did not host a show as I was in Greeley, Colorado the night before performing my Comedy Hypnosis show at University of Northern Colorado. I was, however, able to get a flight out of Denver at 1 a.m. and get to Tampa at 8:30 in the morning, rent a car, and be on site for the final walk through's at 10:00 - just in time! It's a good thing I didn't host, because the lack of sleep made me fine to run tech, but I was having a hard time speaking clearly. It's amazing what a lack of sleep and food will do to your body!

What a fun group these folks were! We scrambled at the last minute realizing that they were relying on us for some technical needs that we weren't prepared 100% for, but creative thinking, incredible flexibility, and our attitude of "we can do that" carried us through like champs and we met all of the clients need on budget and on time! Even the needs that we found out about last minute. It's amazing what you can do when failure is not one of the options that is on the table. And that option is never on the table for us!

At 1:00 we started rolling and ran a total of eighteen 30 minute performances over the course of the next four hours! As soon as the shows were over I immediately took our "mystery host" to the airport back in Tampa, then drove back up to the event where our awesome crew had everything packed into "The Beast" (our box van) and we met for dinner. We laughed until it physically hurt during dinner and then continued laughing like school children into the very early hours of the morning, slept for 4 1/2 hours then got up and came home.

The whole experience reminded us how lucky we are that we have jobs that we love to do and that we have a great time doing. We hope it shows that we love it. The sentence at the beginning of this paragraph also reminds me of the great quote from Elmer Letterman "The harder I work, the luckier I get." The client loved the event, the event planner loved the event and we loved the event. It's just the way we like it - Win-Win-Win, exactly the way we strive for every relationship to be.