Episode 7 – Make Experiences Worth Measuring – Hillary Self, CEO – Higher Self Services

In this episode:

Matt Widdoes 

Welcome to Growth@Scale. I’m your host, Matt Widdoes. This is a podcast for leaders who want to bring sustainable, predictable, scalable growth to their businesses. Every episode, I sit down with world -class growth experts across product, marketing, finance, operations, you name it. The hope is that these conversations will give you real, actionable advice for building and sustaining company growth. Our guest today is Hillary Self, ex -Red Bull, ex -Fiji Water, and founder of Higher Self, an elevated, experiential company. Hillary and I chat about the differences between good and bad experiential, the argument for investing in unique brand activations, and what truly heightened experiential marketing can do. Welcome to the Mavan Podcast. I’m Matt Widows, your host and CEO of Mavan. Today, we have Hillary Self joining us. She’s going to be talking to us about experiential marketing, event, a bunch of other things. Welcome to the podcast. 

Hillary Self 

Thank you. I’m so happy to be here. Great. Tell us, who are you? What do you do? What’s your story? I’m Hillary Self, and I am an event marketing consultant. I’ve been in the industry for over 22 years, working with brands all different sizes, from startup all the way through acquisition. 

Matt Widdoes 

Awesome. Well, Hillary, you’re one of the people I’ve known the longest in business, and you were my first boss at Red Bull. You’ve gone on to work at some pretty serious companies. You did five years at Red Bull. You did seven years at the wonderful company, which is Fiji, Water, Justin Wines, pomegranate juice. Two years at Core Hydration that was acquired by Keurig, Dr. Pepper. More recently, you were at Weed Maps. You were at Soundbox, is that how you say it? And you took that, that was from Kickstarter to Y Combinator. You’ve worked at massive companies with very serious remits in the event and experiential space. Walk us through that. From event, experiential, some of the considerations you have to make, you’ve kind of done it all in a number of areas. What do you think about when you’re thinking about running an event or doing something that is highly focused on experience? 

Hillary Self 

Yes, well, I absolutely adore this vertical in marketing. And I think so often it’s overlooked. We focus so heavily on the brand development. What is our logo? What’s our visual identity? And then those traditional levers that you pull, like out of home or paid media, right? And so often people forget that this is just an essential part of the marketing mix that I think should always be considered no matter the size of the company. Because experiential is really just that. It’s curating these branded experiences that bring the brand to life. But they effectively create emotional connections with your clients or your customers in a way that basically creates more brand evangelists for you. These are the types of experiences where people are gonna go home and say, I tried that product. You know, when they go to the store and they’re faced with a wall of different things or they’re looking in the app store and they’re trying to decide which app to download, they’re going to go for your brand because they’ve had experience, they’ve had a chance to try it, they’ve had a chance to. face to face talk with someone from the company about it. It’s just truly a way to really close that loop and get to the sale quicker, get to that brand loyalty quicker and then amplify your efforts because now they’re evangelizing on your behalf. 

Matt Widdoes 

Yeah. And I think, you know, it’s like the opposite of an impression, right? So much of marketing is around impression. We’ve got billboards, we’ve got ads on Facebook. This is like a one hour, two hour impression that you can like touch and feel. And it goes really deep. So the like cost per impression is super high, but the quality is really unparalleled essentially. And there’s a lot at stake because of that, right? Because if you have a bad event, the length was just as long and people will remember a bad event and they’ll talk about a bad event, maybe not more, but certainly as much as they would talk about a great event. We ran some pretty cool events at Red Bull. I think Red Bull is pretty well known in that space for doing that. I remember back in the day when you were at Fiji, you were doing stuff on the catwalk with models and all sorts of other things. Kind of talk to us about like, when you’re planning an event, what are kind of the first things that you start to think through? 

Hillary Self 

Truthfully, all events require the same amount of planning and thought to go into them, to do them well. And so I often talk about how it doesn’t matter if it’s a children’s birthday party or your friends wedding shower all the way through, you know, producing the screen actor, Gilda wards or Elton John’s Grammy party, right? You’re going to need a few key things you’re going to need in the industry. We say chicken and chairs. It’s all just chicken and chairs, but you know, you need a place for people to sit. You need something for them to eat. You need music and ambiance. What’s the venue? What’s the temperature of the room? You know, and really incorporating all of the five senses is so important. You know, if you’re thinking about what they’re visually seeing, that wow moment when they walk in the room, what’s the first thing they see? What are they smelling? What are they feeling? Where are they sitting? What are they getting to taste? What are the drinks? You know, but if you really start to think through those five senses and surprising and delighting at every turn that you possibly can or making them brand relevant, those are the keys to making a standout birthday party or a standout, you know, at age award winning event. Now for me personally, whenever I’m I’m thinking about these events, I always want to see first and foremost, what are the goals of my customer, you know, or the client or the brand, you know, are we trying to get people to sample or try a new product? Are we trying to get app downloads? You know, what are our ultimate goals? Because impressions are so in a lot of the industry, I think we all know that impressions can be manipulated, right? You know, you can say, Oh, 35 ,000 people drove past this billboard. 

Matt Widdoes 

Yeah, they’re not all created equal. Yeah. 

Hillary Self 

Yeah, you know, exactly. And so for me, a lot of times, I’ll work with my clients specifically to determine what do they think really moves the lever for them or what is valuable. So it might be, do we get press on this? Is this a buzzworthy press event? Do we get certain influencers to come that we can gift and then bring them into our fold and then utilize them later on? And it’s so important to think about the lifecycle of an event. Just like you said, yeah, we’ve got this. four hour concentrated window when the show is on. But how do we increase excitement and do some messaging and brand awareness plays leading up to, what’s the invitation look like? How do we confirm that they’re registered? When they come and, do they come with like a secret skeleton key and go to the back alley to enter this speak easy or do they go to the box office of the Staples Center? For all of those kind of customer journey points, just like you would think them through for the user experience on a website, you’re doing that from the start of the event, all the way through the execution of the event and then the fall off. And if you can lengthen that tail and get people to wanna share on social media photos of what they’ve done there or get the press to write about it or get people to say, man, I hope I get invited to the next one. I can’t believe I missed that one. Those kind of things I think are so important to consider. So we don’t just focus on that four hour window. We’re focusing on building excitement. And then how do we taper off and kind of like that long tail out till the next blip on the radar? 

Matt Widdoes 

Makes sense. I’m so glad you mentioned starting with the goals because I think oftentimes in really many aspects of growth, not only in marketing, but in product and other areas, I think companies sometimes are moving so quickly. It’s very easy to forget to not stop and ask like, what are we trying to actually accomplish? Because it will inform so much of what you do. And I’ve certainly been a part of events that didn’t feel like what are we trying to accomplish was really well thought out. When you kind of take on a new client, do you have kind of a go -to playbook? Or is it always different? And if so, what are must -have approaches that you feel like listeners maybe should understand? 

Hillary Self 

Yes. Well, my go -to playbook is really all around getting down to that strategy and the goals. And then we customize it from there. So I always seek first to understand what the client or the brand or the customer needs or desires out of an experiential activation. Or why do they want to bring their brand to life? Why do they think this is important? Is it just because they think it’s a one -year anniversary party or a brand launch or an album? release, you know, what is that? But then I also go to that next step and I try to point out their blind spots. I’m going to point out what the competitors are doing. I’m going to point out, you know, consider industry standards. And then I’m also going to try to think outside of the box to turn that on its head, right? Just like we learned at Red Bull, we were cutting our teeth 20 whatever years ago. 

Matt Widdoes 

Yeah, 10 years ago, maybe five, just five short years ago. Now that we’re 28 we have it all figured out.

Hillary Self 

 And then once I’ve gotten kind of these ideas of like what they want and then also the blind spots, then we can get some really clear, concise overarching goals. And then we can start coming up with a tactical plan, you know, and that’s when it gets really custom that tactics. 

Matt Widdoes 

Well, and budgets can dictate so much of that too, right? You’ve got somebody who’s like, Hey, I’ve got like, I need to run an event. I have 10k. That’s it. And then you’ve other people, I remember at MotoGP for Red Bull, we threw an event that was for the drivers and for some celebrities and for some important like Red Bull athletes that were not drivers, but they were skateboarders and snowboarders and stuff like that. And I remember we had a, it was probably 150 people, but the budget, if I remember correctly, was like half a million. It was some insane event. We had people on stills. There was, I don’t know, they, it felt very weird at the time. There was like a monkey like catch coins if you throw him at him and he take pictures with you. And there were like, there’s just like all sorts of crazy. There was at one point two of the athletes there, expert, like motorcycle trick riders that we’d like block off a not, not a very big space, like maybe 15 meters or something. And they would just go, do all these crazy things right within the circle and they’d stop. And at one point he like does like a wheelie on the front. I don’t know what that is, a stoppie, I guess, probably what they call it. And he goes up, I think it was his girlfriend  I hope it was somebody he knew, but he does this like stoppie and like kisses her on the forehead and then comes back. But like these master technicians on motorcycles from Germany that were Red Bull athletes, but things like that, that same event, you probably remember the Red Bull skydiving team. And these are guys with a quarter million jumps. Like they are pro pro guys that can do all sorts of crazy stuff. They would have like smoke come out of their shoes so that you could see them as they were coming down and they would do this. Like it looks like they’re falling and that they’re going to crash. Like one of them is parachutes, not opening kind of thing, but that’s like a planned thing and it makes everybody super on edge. And then he pulls it off for the last second. It’s like even like talking about it now, I get like kind of like remember that feeling of thinking you’re watching somebody potentially die, right? It was just terrifying. But then they’re like, ta -da, it was all a trick. So, you know, the budget obviously is going to play a major role. And I feel like a fundamental, not even I feel, I can say this with high confidence that a fundamental piece of growth is failure. You see it even in plants, right? If you cut off the top of a plant, it’ll grow back stronger. If you do, you know, you prune, you do these different things. And so, you know, when thinking about how fundamental failure is any sort of company that’s growing quickly with strength, any man. mistakes along the way that you’ve made that kind of have made you better today at what you do? 

Hillary Self 

Yes. Oh yeah. I have a couple that come to mind immediately. You know, there’s kind of like the just the tactical like activation mistakes, which by the way, when you’re in events, things always go wrong. 

Matt Widdoes 

Everything goes wrong constantly. Yeah. The caterer doesn’t show up. Somebody slept in. The booze wasn’t delivered. All sorts of things. Right? 

Hillary Self 

Yes, exactly. And I mean, I think Newsweek comes out with a study every year and they’re like the top five most stressful jobs. And it’s like, you know, SWAT team firefighter and event planner is like always there. And truthfully, you know, I mean, to be totally honest, it’s one of the reasons why I stopped doing weddings so many years ago is you’ll never have a more emotional client than 

Matt Widdoes 

Sure. And you get one shot. There’s no second. Well, some people have multiple events. But yes, it’s that day. It is the most important day of their life. 

Hillary Self 

Yes. And you know, they’ve been dreaming and playing with their Barbie for years as has their parents been imagined. What they would be like, you know, so, um, yeah, I’ve never truly had a more emotional, but client than a wedding. But that being said, okay, I’m thinking of an activation tactically that was, whoop. Basically, the lesson here is don’t lean on what someone did in the past just as a stop at because you’re moving too quickly and assume that it’s going to be the right solution for you. So we were producing the X games in Aspen and they’ve been producing this game for years, you know, they’ve they’re always erecting, you know, tents on the side of the mountain and creating these half pipes out of snow. And, you know, they hire the same contractors year after year and you just feel quite confident that like, okay, it’s kind of like a rinse and repeat thing. Right. Yeah. So it’s my first time coming in as the producer on this project. And, you know, we’re moving very quickly. It was a nine month build and, you know, planning phase, but still there’s just so many moving parts. And so we’re erecting, it was the first time Major league gaming was coming to the X games in the winter X games. And so we were going to repurpose this, you know, this tent that’s always erected there. You know, they’ve got to come in before the ground freezes and put in subfloor and then they’ve got to erect the tent and then they’ve got to put in the walls and then we’re bringing in risers. And so there was a few unique things being added because gaming needs, they call them ISO booths, but it’s basically a soundproof booth. Okay. And there’s a whole stage and these, you know, just really cool lighting like game show style. And then we were ticketing the event. So there were risers and then there’s shout casters, which are kind of like ESPN, you know, sports casters. So we’re planning this entire deal and kind of just, I remember one of the quick first calls, you know, we got to get the subfloor down in the tent. So that we have some place to do all of the fancy lighting and the ISO booths and all these things. And so I called the tent company that’s been doing this for 20, 30 years and they were like, yeah, we’re just going to throw up this, you know, 60 by 30 tent. We always do it. It’s the same one, same place. No big deal. We’ve got all the materials. I’m like, dope, go for it, sounds great, you know? So about two or three weeks into the build, I’m on a call with my client ESPN on the phone and we start talking about lighting, how are we gonna rig the lighting, you know? And this is different kind of lighting than they’ve done in that tent or that activation space before. So the tent company is on the phone with me and ESPN as well, my client, as well as my senior event producer. And they basically say, this tent isn’t even rated for snow load. And we definitely can’t rig any lights to it because your danger is collapsing on everyone. And so I’m just on the phone, like trying to dance as fast as I can. I’m like, okay, wait a minute. And so the first thing I said, I went out my mouth was like, okay, at what point when we were erecting a tent on Buttermilk Mountain in Aspen, did you think it wouldn’t snow? 

Matt Widdoes 

Yeah, we’re in the middle of, we’re here for the winter X Games. 

Hillary Self 

Yeah, and they’re like, well, we just, we’ve used this tent every year and we just haven’t worried about it, but we definitely wouldn’t add the added risk, putting lights and that weight overhead. Okay. And so I’m kind of saying, I’m like, okay, so we’re going to switch to ground rigging, which is 

Matt Widdoes 

how many days by the way until the event? 

Hillary Self 

Yeah, at this point, we’re about six weeks out. Oh, okay, good. 

Matt Widdoes 

So it’s not it’s not 48 hours, but yes, but still six weeks and it’s a not a small thing. 

Hillary Self 

And yes, and we and the biggest problem was we decided to switch to ground rigging, which is basically using those scaffolding those metal, you know, poles you see at every concert. 

Matt Widdoes 

They kind of like crisscross things. 

Hillary Self 

Exactly. And so we’re going to ground rig, we’re going to just put these ugly looking things where we need them in the in the building inside the tent. And we’re going to rig the lights from there. So we did do that. But the problem was then we knocked out about 18 pay like really high ticket seats, you know, and so we 

Matt Widdoes 

Right. That already were assigned. 

Hillary Self 

Yes, people that are flying out, you know, they’re going to games are so excited and we’re gonna put them, you know, so we had to basically shift everything around with the floor seating and how we were going to greet and treat our VIP guests. And I ended up hiring I always, always, always put in my budget a 10% cushion that I do not tell anyone about. And that’s because things like this. So I hired a couple of guys that would just come every two hours and just squeegee the top of the tent and get the sand, the snow off. Because for me, I couldn’t live with the idea of that’s not rated for snow. Like, right, I’m not gonna be asleep at night. So we just added extra budget line item and they just squeegee it. Well, the best thing of all is, you know, ESPN was on that call with me, they heard how I handled everything. The day of the event comes, we’re like kind of doing the site walk with the client. Like how do you feel about everything as the signage okay does the lights look good? How do your sports casters feel? 

Matt Widdoes 

And the event was shot casters, they’re more extreme than sports casters. It’s X games. Yeah, sorry. 

Hillary Self 

Extreme, you know, so anyways, we’re walking and as we’re walking out the tent, here come my squeegee guys, right? And they’re like squeegeeing the tent and I’m thinking, Oh God, you know, and the my client turns to me and goes, You’re seriously the best. We have never had this level of attention. I can’t even believe they’re squeegeeing the snow off like, Wow, you’re so amazing. And so anyways, it ended up turning out like to where it was like a feather in my cap and they were like actually quite pleased with the performance. But I had been terrified and losing sleep for weeks over that. 

Matt Widdoes 

Yeah. So I mean, one big piece there for sure is budget for, I mean, again, you know, it’s a, this is like Rumsfeld’s talk on known unknowns and unknown unknowns. And you know, there are some unknown unknowns, right? And so that’s, that’s the unknown unknown budget. Do you know the story behind Van Halen’s Brown M &Ms? Do you ever hear that story? So they had, they had in their rider, right? For like things that they demand whenever they go places. This is back like heyday Van Halen, call it mid 80s. I don’t know. And one of the things that they had to have in their green room was a bowl of brown M &Ms separated out, right? So somebody literally had to go buy a bunch of M &Ms. This is before M &M stores in Times Square where you could just buy a bucket of whatever color you want. So part of the deal for them coming to your event was, you know, and they probably had sandwiches and other things, but they wanted this bowl of brown M &Ms. And this leaf. And everybody was giving them shit for being prima donnas. Like, why do you want this bowl of brown M &Ms? It’s so silly and like petty and whatever. It’s so Hollywood, like, you know, somebody, some interns got to go do this. Right? Have you ever heard that story? 

Hillary Self 

Oh, and it feels like a test. 

Matt Widdoes 

So, yeah, I see. Right. So this was something that the production manager, the lead who kind of toured with them had in the rider. And the reason why is because they had these really insane pyrotechnics, as you might imagine Van Halen might have. They had really high consideration, just everything. The buildout was really difficult and they’re coming, they’re doing a lot of shows. And so they don’t have a lot of time in between for setup. It’s like they just showed up. They just came from Milwaukee and now they’re in Chicago or whatever. And the stage manager, whoever that would be the producer, I guess, the first thing that he would do is he would walk straight to the green room and he would look and see if they had a bowl of brown M &Ms. If they had a bowl of brown M &Ms, he felt pretty good that they had done all the other stuff. If they didn’t, then he would go, he would pull out the thing and go line by line by line, because he’s like, you missed that. And that was the easiest thing for him to check because if they missed some of the stage stuff, literally things could catch on fire, things could fall down. So it was usually, it was a test. It was a, it was like a little Easter egg to see if how on point the local staff was. But nobody really knew this until later. And so Van Halen took a bunch of shit for being like, Oh my God, these guys have to have a bowl of brown M &Ms, but it was really a sanity check against other things. So, you know, when, when thinking about like the different stages of a company’s life cycle from, you know, seed to series C, you know, companies start off very small, usually founder or two with very little money. They grow quickly and all of a sudden they have a hundred million, they have 400 million in budget, you know, they can do a lot more. Where does, you know, and I don’t know if it’s always consistent, but where does like brand campaigns, experiential marketing, you know, generally kind of fit in and, you know, what type of budgeting and resourcing allocations make sense? Like, is it, is it worth cutting budget, you know, in certain areas to make it happen or skip it all together? How do you, if we think about like startups and then maybe like series B and then maybe later stage, like how do you think about that progression of a company’s life cycle? 

Hillary Self 

Yeah. So I’d say traditionally, just no matter what stage, part of the marketing budget that would be allocated would be anywhere from 5% to 15%. That was doable. Anything above that when you get up to the 20s, 25s, you’re like, awesome. I won the marketing lottery and I have more money to spend. 

Matt Widdoes 

You’re saying of their marketing budget. There’s a lot. That’s more than I would have thought because user acquisition is usually like digital user acquisition stuff is usually 20%. Yeah. That’s a big jump. 

Hillary Self 

And really truthfully for these startups or people with smaller budgets, because the larger the budget, the easier it is to do things as you know, but there’s so much creativity that can be done with literally $300. I think of if you want to start, okay, if you go from startup to series B to late, late stage. So these startups, you’ve got to have this entrepreneurial spirit. You’ve got to be willing to kind of be scrappy. I always say scrappy, not crappy. Yeah. So it’s taking advantage of things that are… you know, relevant on your social calendar, your cultural calendar, things of that nature. One of the most impactful, really simple activations we ever did was a community mural. We hired a local mural troop and I think it was around $300. There was a wall. 

Matt Widdoes 

I love that there are local mural troops. Yes. Yes. It’s like a break dancing team. 

Hillary Self 

Yes. There are a couple of things people should put in their, you know, in their branding toolkit and that is get familiar with your local art syndicates, mural muralists, dancers, things of that nature. A lot of times they’re nonprofit organizations that want to work with you. There’s also- 

Matt Widdoes 

And they just want a wall to paint on where they have approval, right? Or they’re just like, give me a place where I can do this because they’re trying to grow at the same time, right? 

Hillary Self 

Yes. And so what we had done, it was I was at this startup called Core Hydration that, you know, at the time we had no brand awareness and eventually we did get acquired by Dr. Pepper, you know, Keurig Green Mountain. But when we were starting it was, okay, we’ve got to establish a foothold in Philly and here is your budget or whatever. We ended up only spending about three because we went to a local swimming pool that needed, I mean, this pool had been there for 20, 30 years. And as you know, in Philly, there’s only about two months of the year that you can really enjoy the swimming pool. Yeah. So it was just kind of a neglected pool that would pop open for a couple of months, you know. And so we went in and asked them, you know, number one, will you carry our water all summer? We’ll donate it to you. Number two, can we beautify this wall that looks like crap and the paint’s all peeling? And they said yes. And so. 

Matt Widdoes 

Easy yeses, yeah. 

Hillary Self 

So then we hired a troop and they painted the wall in such a way that it was kind of like a paint by numbers. Okay. Then the opening day of the pool, we could have people come over and, you know, get a paper plate with blue, which is the number one. And you can paint anyone inside of any of the number one shapes, you know. And so pretty soon the whole community is collaborating on what becomes a really stunning piece. 

Matt Widdoes 

Free labor too. 

Hillary Self 

Yeah, free labor. If we’re taking pictures of it, they feel like it’s a part of it, you know, that they’re getting to be artistic. And so, you know, we ended up on the. the local news, that mural stayed up for three years and it was branded course, you know. And so there’s some really creative things you can do at a startup stage that just require a little bit of networking and ingenuity. 

Matt Widdoes 

Yeah. And so then, what about somebody that has like, they’ve grown up a little bit, they have some money to play with and they’re kind of thinking about like 10 to 25, I don’t know, maybe they’re thinking 50k, like how do you start kind of shifting that? And again, they may still want to say, hey, you may have a 100k budget for the whole year, right? So how do you start thinking about how to split that up? Like what does that progress to outside of some of those smaller things? 

Hillary Self 

I always try to think about, you know, the entire calendar year and I call them tentpole events, but you know, once each quarter you want to do something relevant or maybe there’s a high season, you know, for instance with water, when we were working with both Fiji water or core hydration, there’s kind of a water season and that’s really from like spring, you know, starting with spring break and road trips all the way through the summer. 

Matt Widdoes 

It’s funny to think about something like it’s like an air season. It’s like so fundamental. But again, we’re talking about high quality bottled water. So it’s a little bit different. 

Hillary Self 

So at those times, I would basically anchor my calendar with four tentpole events. And those might be something like, for instance, with Fiji, it was let’s kick off the year with the first red carpet award show of the year. Let’s ask. And the first one that we did was the SAG Awards, because they were the first ever seated dinner. And I knew that we had a chance to put our bottle in those silver sleeves. And as the camera panned across the audience for all of their reactions to these awards, there’s just Fiji water everywhere. 

Matt Widdoes 

Sorry, what’s a silver sleeve? I don’t know what that is. 

Hillary Self 

Oh, they call them signature sleeves. And as they created the owner of Fiji, Linda Resnick, is brilliant in this way. But she created a silver sleeve, literally, that you would chill and you could bring that out and put your Fiji bottle on it. 

Matt Widdoes 

And so it made it look like it elevated it a bit. OK, got it. So with these Fiji branded, too? 

Hillary Self 

They weren’t. They were low enough that the Fiji logo still stood out. That makes sense. And so it was something that you could hold and serve. And she started it to give to really nice restaurants like Nobu. And because Nobu would say, oh, I’m not bringing plastic into my restaurant. I don’t even know who said that. But the buyer. 

Matt Widdoes 

They’re managing their own brand and things, yeah. 

Hillary Self 

Yes. And so she’s like, OK, let’s make something that kind of heightens this bottle experience. So when I was thinking of ways to get us some PR and spend our money in a really smart way, it’s like, OK, let’s just spend to go in at this high -profile event. Let’s be on the tables. Let’s be on all the PR that follows. And that kind of thing. That’s how we started. And as the award shows started to show more PR impressions for us and really be useful for us, that’s when we switched over from not just dinner events. Because at first it was just SAG awards and independent spirit awards that we could serve the Fiji and the sleeves. But we later went on to tray passing on the carpet at the VMAs or whatever different type of awards there might be. So that way we could get in. And that’s whenever we created the straw. There’s like a cap, a blue cap still like that signature blue cap, but the straw went through. And that was another learning from being on the carpet. The first year we had these bottles, you know, open and trying to trade pass and women with their lovely red lipstick were like, I’m not gonna mess up my lipstick, you know, so we had to create some sort of thing for that. 

Matt Widdoes 

Which is so obvious looking back. You’re like, of course, right? Like, you would be in the same position potentially, right? 

Hillary Self 

Absolutely. And it’s like those kind of things where you have to really think about the end result of like, like we talked about the consumer experience. What are they experiencing? But yes, when you mentioned these budgets and planning, I think, you know, pick some quarterly events that can kind of anchor your calendar, and then figure out how you can stay relevant or keep the conversation going in between. So for instance, Like let’s say you’ve got an award show in the springtime and then you go into a music festival, award show in January or February, and then in a music festival in April. And then you go into maybe a summertime late, like Labor Day kind of festival and then something in the winter, you know? And how do you keep the conversation going? Do you do flyaway getaways or sweepstakes? Do you give away tickets to the event that you have coming up next, you know, those kind of things. But once you’re able to anchor your calendar, then you can kind of plan your communications around that and how to stay relevant around people’s radars throughout the year. 

Matt Widdoes 

Well, I feel like so much of that too, you know, that I’ve seen is how do you, you mentioned some of this already, but like, how do you leverage other things? Some of this comes down to contract, but like, how do you leverage one part of what you’re doing into many more things? So for example, finding a team that can do the painting of the paint by numbers to get that set at maybe no cost and then leveraging the community to do the painting at no cost. So you end up just paying for the paint, essentially, or in this situation where, you know, you’ve probably, is it safe to assume you had to pay to be on the tables at SAG and stuff like that? Right? 

Hillary Self 

Yes. So then it’s like sponsorship fees. 

Matt Widdoes 

Yeah. So and like that’s SAG is not the best maybe example because let’s say instead you paid to be part of a festival, then it’s like, you could just do that. Or it’s like, okay. And by the way, as part of this, we would like X number of tickets because, you know, you can leverage that and you get this and like trading essentially your way into a bunch of stuff and just leveraging the co -marketing, finding out who else is going to be there being like, Hey, we’re going to do this thing. Do you want to be a part of it and cover 80% of the cost? Because we can like, we come up with an idea for you that you really like, we’re going to be a small piece of it. So you’re going to cover most of the cost. Would you agree that like trading is a huge lever and something that maybe, I don’t know if it’s overlooked, but it may be under leveraged. 

Hillary Self 

Oh, absolutely. In fact, when I was in CPG, you know, any, like whether it was Red Bull or a bottle of water, I call it liquid currency. But, you know, you come in and say, you know, okay, Okay, for all your green rooms, your VIP areas, things like that, I’m gonna comp all that product. 

Matt Widdoes 

Yeah. Which is cheap at the end of the day, in the grand scheme of things. 

Hillary Self 

Yes, and then I’m going to also have this activation for the general public. You know, let’s take Coachella, for example. Yeah. Okay, I’ll provide all of this for the green rooms and the VIP areas. Then I’m gonna have an activation for the general public in which if they interact with my branded booth in some way, in exchange, maybe their data, they’re gonna get some swag and a complimentary bottle. Then I would basically back into, you know, their original asking price. And that’s one other piece of advice I would definitely give people. When you get a sponsorship deck, they always, you know, obviously from an event production standpoint, we’re trying to sell packages to cover costs, right? We’ve got to pay for the stage and the lighting and the talents and even the porta -potties, you know? Yep. So, the sponsorship fees, it’s not that they’re not for naught. I think it’s always very honorable and good to pay some sort of fee if you’re able to. But you also have to understand that, you know, your product is currency and you can offset some of their costs. And so I would always instruct my team members to go in with a partnership mindset and don’t look at these event packages as concrete, but look at them like an a la cart menu. You know, you’re telling me that I’m going to get a 10 by 10 booth or a 90 foot by 90 foot booth and I’m going to get branding on the main stage or I’m going to get branding on a gift bag or whatever. But you start looking through that and it’s like, you know what, I don’t think my logo on the back of an event t -shirt with 90 other logos is really that valuable. So I’m going to scratch that and I don’t love vinyl banners. So I’m going to scratch that and I’m going to make this ask instead. Can I have two VIP tickets that I can do a giveaway on my Instagram? You know, so those kinds of things. 

Matt Widdoes 

And you mentioned PR earlier too, which is another one where it can be essentially free, right? And get you, again, if we go back to that cost of impression, you can kind of leverage a cool enough event to pick up some of those. You mentioned it on the, on the example from Philadelphia. Did you ever hear the trade Jordan story? It’s from upper deck. You know, upper deck they make like baseball cards, essentially they were bigger in the 80s and 90s when baseball cards were bigger. Do you ever hear that story? 

Hillary Self 

I don’t think so. 

Matt Widdoes 

Okay. So this is like, I think the Bulls had just won their third championship. So it was like three Pete kind of thing. And it was like the morning after Chicago is on fire. They love it. Everyone’s so excited. It’s like Christmas morning in Chicago and Jordan is their Santa Claus, right? So Jordan Jordan is can do no wrong, right? And overnight that morning on like Monday or something, everyone’s driving into work and there were four billboards that were put up. And all it said was trade Jordan, right? Nothing else. No branding. It’s just like block letters trade Jordan at fairly strategic interchanges on various highways. So that basically, no matter where you were coming from, if you drove into or out of Chicago, you saw these trade Jordan signs. 

Hillary Self 

It’s almost blasphemous at this point. 

Matt Widdoes 

It was absolutely blasphemous and people were pissed, right? It was like the best day of the year. went to the worst day of the year. Sports news across Chicago was talking about it. Everyone’s like, who would do this? We have to find out who was behind this, or everyone’s pissed. And then another day goes by, it’s getting worse. It’s kind of like, it’s like the recent FTX news stuff, where it’s just every day something else comes out and it’s worse and worse and worse. People are pissed. Now all of a sudden, Houston’s picking up the story. Los Angeles is picking up the story. Three days, four days later, it’s national news. It’s this huge thing. You know, the bull has just won this. Some financier put up these things that say, trade Jordan, everyone’s pissed. Well, it’s like at fever pitch. And the following Monday, the billboards are still there, but now it has the upper deck logo. And it’s like, trade the card, right? And so everyone’s like, oh, but now there has to be a resolution to the story. And so it goes back out as like, oh, okay. The shenanigans were from upper deck trading company, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, the, you know, the, the baseball card company, and they were fairly new on the scene. They were competing with Tops. They were trying to get attention and everybody loved Tops. Nobody really cared. Well, they did, but it was, they were still emerging and they got basically the full attention of national and local news for about a week. And so that’s a perfect example of, of a, not exactly an event, although in some ways it is, it certainly would fall into the category nowadays of like guerilla, but perfect example of saying, okay, how can we potentially get, I don’t know, 300 million impressions on this, right? Or something like that. So, you know, do you kind of draw a line between B to B, B to C, you know, how do you kind of think through who experiential is right for? Cause it can’t be right for everybody. We were, I don’t know, the podcast it was brought up that was actually speaking with Jeremy Leal, who, you know, well, and he was like, you know, you probably wouldn’t do it with Geico. I was like, funny enough, I’ve seen a Geico event where I was at like a local, local, local art and crafts fair kind of thing, just like in a downtown strip kind of thing, nothing, you know, I don’t know, 50 booths or kind of thing. And there was like a Geico lizard mascot and a booth and people handing out like Geico squishy balls or something like that. Again, not like amazing, but it certainly would fall into the category. How do you think about that? Like where do you draw the line? Who’s it really good for? Does it matter if it’s direct to consumer or, or maybe not direct, but B to B or B to C. 

Hillary Self 

I think I actually, traditionally, I think that people think of it as a B to C play, but I find that if you do want to use it in B to B, you can really make yourself stand out. So the traditional playbook in B to B is trade show booths. And, you know, basically those are incredibly expensive. They require months and months of planning. You’ve got to work with the union schedule, all of these things. 

Matt Widdoes 

And you’re competing with a lot of other people doing the same thing, right? You see people with like 15 tote bags walking around kind of thing. 

Hillary Self 

Exactly. I know, I know an example would be, uh, we did Rubicon event, you know, while I was working at Weedmaps. And so, you know, this is for developers is very much B to B. This is not the normal lifestyle. play where I’m having like, you know, Wiz Khalifa headline a concert or the B2C play for that job. But basically we went in and Rubicon, you know, of course we did the traditional trade show booth, which was an incredible investment, you know, trade shows are just very expensive. And so I always encourage my clients to think outside of these kind of stuff you play. It’s like maybe downsize your trade show booth. Like, obviously, yes, be there, participate, have some of your employees speak on the panels. Like, yes, be a very active member of this trade show. But instead of spending on a 90 foot booth, get a 15 foot booth, do a really good job there, and then throw a killer after party because everyone about five o ‘clock is wondering what’s going to happen next. You know, I think we did the California Democratic Convention also, which kind of felt like a B2B play. 

Matt Widdoes 

This is for WeedMaps? 

Hillary Self 

And I’m thinking to myself, oh God, how do we do this at the California, like literally like Maxine Waters is walking through, you know, like, is she going to talk to us? You know, so. We had our little 10 by 10 booth. We just did not invest in this huge multi six figure build. We did a very simple booth where we talked about the legal and regulatory environment and the things that we’re trying to educate people on and on the trade show floor. But then afterwards we did this huge after party. And I remember our after party was right next door to where Bernie Sanders after party was. So they put us at a convention center. We both got these two rooms. So Bernie’s like speaking next door and I can hear him speaking through those like thin, you know, comforts walls. 

Matt Widdoes 

Partition walls, yeah. 

Hillary Self 

And I’m like, I’m kind of like, I hope we get a crowd. You know, like I just hope we get a crowd, you know. But we had hired the DJ that spends every week at the Golden State Warriors basketball game. He’s amazing. And so we brought him in and we had a couple of other influencers that we had invited to come out obviously. And the crazy thing was is whenever we opened up, like our party ended up taking over and we had a bigger crowd than Bernie’s. It was spilling out into the hallway and causing issues for people. 

Matt Widdoes 

Causing a problem, yeah. 

Hillary Self 

They ended up wanting to open the partition walls between the two so that we could all just jam together, you know. Here we are at this kind of stuffy convention. And we’re throwing a party there. Which was so- 

Matt Widdoes 

You did it in a way that was like true to you and wasn’t like, you know, passed hors d’oeurves and champagne. 

Hillary Self 

Yeah, we definitely did have the open bar, you know. We definitely had some snaps there, but it was yes, so on brand and true to form. And I think that’s a great way to stand out in the B2B sector is if you can do something. And like that Rubicon event too, we did an after party there and we hired DJ Z -Trip, which if you love mashup, like he’s the godfather, you know. He’s threw it and opened up for LL Cool J for 20 years or whatever. And he’s incredible. And so we brought him out and we rented this old theater, you know, I think we’re in Minneapolis. Like, yeah, where the Target headquarters is. So after party for Rubicon, a whole bunch of like pretty serious, very intelligent, you know, programmers and artists. they all come out to this party and he ends up, and I’m thinking to myself, oh god, is this party gonna be fun? Because it’s mostly men. It’s a male -dominated crowd. Yeah. You know, are they even gonna enjoy themselves? Are they gonna like get a drink and leave? Right. Hell no, Z -Trip killed it. And at the end, he was like, he was having so much fun because these guys were like getting out on the floor and dancing and just like, moshing and going crazy. He’s like, you know what, I’ve never played this live, but I’m gonna play this mash -up now. And he played this incredible mash -up of like, Led Zeppelin with like something new. And I just remember like, I went, I’m like, I’m working, but I went out in the middle and just started like pushing people like, gosh, because I was like, I can’t believe y ‘all are so fucking cool. You know, like, I thought you’re gonna be standing on the wall, like just drinking their cocktails and not enjoying themselves. So. 

Matt Widdoes 

Well, I guess that’s probably, you just, you know, you kind of two stories that you just told where you’re really afraid that it’s not gonna work out. I’m assuming that’s always the case, right? It’s like, you’re always like, I hope this works because you kind of don’t know. There’s all this planning. There’s all this buildup. There’s money that went into it. There’s expectations from whoever funded it and you just. kind of don’t know until you know. Right. And so there’s probably always a bit of an anticipation there. You know, I’m curious, like talking about money being involved, let’s talk about the ROI and like how is that measured? Can you measure it? You know, I think oftentimes people, you know, you mentioned earlier, this is oftentimes an overlooked portion of a marketing budget or even just marketing strategy broadly. And my knee -jerk reaction is probably because people kind of assume like, well, we spent 50K, how are we going to get that money back? How do we even know we got it back? And digital, that’s very straightforward, by and large, certainly in comparison. How do you measure it? Like, and can you? 

Hillary Self 

Yes. Yes. 

Matt Widdoes 

And by the way, I think like in the example I gave of the upper deck trading one, that’s really easy post. But in a world where nobody picked it up, how would you measure it? And so it’s like sometimes easy looking back, but can you plan for ROI measurement? How, and if so, how? 

Hillary Self 

Yes. You know, truthfully, I feel like being in this industry for 20 plus years, I have been through the gamut of different ways of trying to slice and dice this pie. You know? And so what I’ve learned is it’s really important to understand what’s important to your leadership or your C -suite team. You know, are, are they trying to get like a cost per acquisition kind of cost? And if so, what is an acquisition in the event world? Is it downloading the app? Is it signing up for email newsletter? Is it just sampling the product? You know, if it’s a CPG scan, you know? So you can start with, you know, how much you spent on the budget, you know, on the activation of the event, obviously. But then you can start factoring in things like social media impressions, PR influencers. You can work with your sales team and invite them out to bring in some high profile clients and sit in the VIP area and hopefully they close some deals and you can factor that in. Some, it’s funny, but I have some ROI worksheets like from, you know, my Fiji days all the way through like my Weedmaps days or then, you know, on to now my private, you know, my private practice and some of them, you know, they factored really heavily and we weighted really heavily like just the PR because we’re trying to get brand awareness and things like that nature. And then others, they’re like, we don’t give a shit about that. We want to know if they downloaded the app, you know, or, you know, things of that nature. But you can ultimately measure ROI. But I think it’s just a matter of defining what matters to your leadership team or to your core team. 

Matt Widdoes 

Yeah. And there’s promo, there’s QR codes, there’s different things that you could only have gotten at the event. There’s, you know, there’s, of course, heads and stuff like that. But it can, I guess it does depend on the goals of the company. It can be squishy if it’s a squishy type event. But, you know, there are things that you can do to kind of kind of that. I’m curious, you’ve ran a lot of great events. You’ve spoken about a few of those. And I know there’s dozens more behind that. Any like best events ever, most memorable, fun stories, interactions, you know, did Brad Pitt pass out on the red carpet one time? Like what, any, any fun stories you could share? 

Hillary Self 

Oh, gosh, yes, I’ve had some good ones. Okay. So, well, my favorite, my honest to goodness favorite, one of my favorite events we ever did was a world record setting event. for the most people hanging out in hammocks in one place at one time. And it was on the Santa Monica Pier. And so, and we invited entertainment tonight out to do it. So essentially my client had a infused water product that had like camomile and lavender and things and it was called Bliss and it was meant to make you relax. And they wanted people to know, hey, this product helps you to bliss out. And so how do we make a big splash internationally? Try to make the news as much as possible. Well, I looked at the calendar and there was like this upcoming hammock hangout day or whatever. And that doesn’t sound very interesting, but I thought, well, maybe if we set a world record in a really beautiful picturesque place. So that’s what we did. We rented the pier, we brought out 150 hammocks. We had to call Guinness and find out how to do that. And basically they had told us, well, you can have a continual hammock. They’re all in a row. You can do it. They’ll tell you different ways you can set it up. And I’m like, no, I just want the biggest one. So we said we needed like 150 hammocks, but then it was so fascinating. We had to coordinate. People had to sit their butt in the hammock and put their feet up at the same time. And then they had to keep their feet up for 15 minutes in order for us to break the record. So we’re doing this with entertainment tonight. 

Matt Widdoes 

By the way, was there a record already? Or was it like that they said 150 seems like a good high watermark? 

Hillary Self 

Yes, that’s it. For this particular record, there was not a previous record holder. 

Matt Widdoes 

Okay, that makes sense. But they were like 150, we’ll feel good about that. Yes. They don’t want it to be 25. 

Hillary Self 

Exactly. And so we had literally like, we had all the way down, like I talked about thinking through every detail, we had the hammock set up. We had kind of like flight attendants almost that would guide the guests to their hammock, set them down. We had a safety card, just like whenever you get in an airplane that shows you sit in the middle of the hammock, then turn, then put your feet up. 

Matt Widdoes 

I would not have thought to make a safety card. 

Hillary Self 

And then we led them through a guided meditation. We had some really cool people on the, MCing the event, that kind of thing. But the fact that we had a guide, But the funny thing was, someone toppled out of their hammock when we were about 12 minutes into our 15 minutes. And so we had to reset the whole thing and do it again. 

Matt Widdoes 

Some people just need all the attention, right? 

Hillary Self 

It’s just like, you had one job, like sit down and lay there. 

Matt Widdoes 

Just relax for 15 minutes, please. That’s funny. You know, that’s actually a really great hack in some ways. I think oftentimes people, so if anybody goes out and you go just research any, search for King, Candy Crush makers, they almost always try and attach a world record to everything they do. And we did it when I was part of the Candy Crush game show with Mario Lopez and all these things. We broke the world’s record for the largest touchscreen. We had two of them and they were like made in Australia, but they were needed for the game show anyways, because we wanted to have people swiping and doing all these things. And recently King, I think they just did, or they’re about to do the largest like Candy Crush ad using drones above New York. I was like, I don’t know if we’re living in a dystopian future, if this is cool or not. But they actually, funny enough, did World’s largest hammock, which was, I think, in New York, for a release of a game that was an island themed game. But they’re always breaking these world records, and most people don’t realize this, but you say you can just call Guinness and they’ll work with you on it. But to have the person come out and sit and verify and check off that all that stuff happened is like $200. It’s not a large fee. So if any of you out there want to break a world record, you can go find, hunt one down, and you can claim, you can honestly claim that you have the Guinness World Record for how many minutes on one foot or something, but although that probably exists, but that’s a great way, super newsworthy, an inexpensive way to get attention on something, and it can be kind of silly, and you can find ways to tie it into what you’re actually doing anyways, so that it’s relevant. It’s not just standing on one foot. So I think, I’m glad that you brought that up. Any other fun stories or ridiculous moments or other events that you think back on fondly, even if they were just cool? 

Hillary Self 

Oh my goodness. I think about, I have a few like celebrity reactions that, so I was working one of the events, one of the award shows, and that might’ve been like the HBO, Emmy After Party or something like that, but basically taking a break. I’d been there on my feet for 12 hours. You know, when you’re in event production, you’re the first one there and the last one to leave. 

Matt Widdoes 

Yeah, and always on, and everyone’s looking for you and you’re looking for everyone else, yeah. 

Hillary Self 

Yes, and so the way that set this up was, you know, it’s kind of like a seated, beautiful tented area, like for the party and the red carpet, the arrivals, all of that, but then in the back for the smokers was kind of like a speakeasy type tent that was just as equally as beautiful and decorated in things, but that’s not where the party was meant to be. That was like, look, if you need to sneak out and have a smoke, you can do that there. There’s a nice bar and a few banquets, but we’d rather you be in here where the entertainment is, that kind of thing. So I had snuck out to have a smoke break and sometimes that’s just one of those things. you do. It’s like caffeine or nicotine to keep you on your feet. Right? Okay. So I snuck out there to have a smoke and I found that that’s one of the best ways to meet interesting people in Hollywood, particularly is to smoke. But anyway, 

Matt Widdoes 

You heard that here first kids, you got to smoke. If you want to meet cool people, no, but but they’re the truth though is that they are captive, right? For I don’t know, five minutes or something, right? So it’s like, and you’re all you’re there for the same purpose. So there’s a little bit of coming ground. Okay. So you’re back in the smoke tent. 

Hillary Self 

Yes, I’m back in the back and I’m smoking cigarette by myself. And first Kathy Bates walks up to me and she’s like, can I borrow your lighter? And so I handle my lighter and she hands it back. And so then we’re sitting there kind of visiting and kind of awkward, you know, but it’s like, we’ve got seven minutes here together. Like, so I was asking her what she was working on or what project she was excited about. She’s really nice and then Al Pacino walks out. So Al Pacino walks up and he pulls out a cigarette and so now he’s smoking. I’ll go ahead and get another cigarette. 

Matt Widdoes 

You’re gonna smoke all night if you have to. 

Hillary Self 

Yeah. Yeah. So I pull out another cigarette and while I’m kind of lighting that one, Mr. Big, I think his name’s something Norris, you know, Mr. Big from Sex in the City and, you know, CSI or something. But anyways, he walks up. Christopher Noth, is that his name? Anyways, he walks up. So now I’m sitting in this really awkward or odd, unique, eclectic group of people and we’re all talking. 

Matt Widdoes 

Those three people will never be together again like that for sure. Right. They’ve never been together before and they won’t be again after. So okay, so now you’re there in this kind of four person group. Do you have a circle going or is like Pacino off of his own? 

Hillary Self 

Yeah, a little quad circle. 

Matt Widdoes 

People are hanging. By the way, how big is this tent? Is it 20×20 kind of thing? 

Hillary Self 

No, it’s probably like 40×40. 

Matt Widdoes 

Okay, so it’s good size. Not massive, but it’s like a large room, right? 

Hillary Self 

Yes. Multiple bank heads around. 

Matt Widdoes 

Not big enough to really walk away from each other, right? 

Hillary Self 

Exactly. And so I’m obviously chain smoking at this point because I am not going to walk away from this moment. Yeah. So I pull out to get my second cigarette and I light it up and Kathy says to me, can I borrow your lighter again? And I was like, oh yeah, of course. You know, so I enter my lighter only this time she pockets it and I’m kind of like, uh -oh, it’s like I’ve got like eight to 10 more hours on site here. I really need that lighter. 

Matt Widdoes 

Bates just took your lighter. Yeah. 

Hillary Self 

Yeah. And so I’m just kind of sitting there. At first I was like, she forgot or she didn’t realize her. Just force of habit. So then after my second cigarette, I’m like, okay, it’s kind of awkward. I’ve already smoked too. It’s time to go back to work. So I put that out and I stayed here. I was like, it’s so nice meeting you guys. Hey, Kathy, can I get my lighter back? Yeah. And she looks at me and she goes, I need it. Oh my God. And I look back at her and I go, so do I. Yeah. And she goes, oh honey, yeah. There’s matches at the bar. You can go to the bar and get you something. 

Matt Widdoes 

Kathy, Bates, you dog. 

Hillary Self 

And I’m like shot and then Al Pacino goes, Kathy, give her her fucking lighter. 

Matt Widdoes 

Oh my God, that’s great. 

Hillary Self 

She gave it back to me. 

Matt Widdoes 

So maybe I wonder if he knew her or if he’s just like, I’m Al Pacino. I can control, that’s amazing. What a great story. So and then she gives it back. 

Hillary Self 

Yeah, she gave it back and you know. 

Matt Widdoes 

Is it all like a wink and a nod or yeah? 

Hillary Self 

Yeah, it was, it was. I guess she was kind of like, well, he, you know, he’s got me, you know, 

Matt Widdoes 

she’s like, yeah, I look like an asshole. She is. Yeah. What a shitty thing to do. Yeah. Well fuck Kathy Bates. I’m just kidding. 

Hillary Self 

Don’t get me sued. 

Matt Widdoes 

She’s a bully. She’s a bully. No, allegedly says Hillary self. Kathy is a bully. No, this is a yeah. Yeah, you’re fine. She’s, there’s a factual story. That’s great. Cool. Well, you’ve recently launched a Kickstarter for a passion project called Outlaw Oracle. people feel free to Google Outlaw Oracle. It’s already oversubscribed. Can you talk to us? Like, what is that? And, you know, why’d you do it? What’s the inspiration? Tell us all about it. 

Hillary Self 

Absolutely. Yes. This was one of those products of the pandemic, right? You know, you’re at home, you’re on it, you’re quarantining, you’re unable to get out and about and socialize the way that you want to. So a lot of people were making sourdough starters and I decided to dive into the occult. 

Matt Widdoes 

Okay, perfect. 

Hillary Self 

So I started teaching myself the tarot and, you know, I’ve been reading tarot for years, but I knew that this is a deep language. It’s really nuanced. You know, you pull one card and there’s 100 different symbols and one card that mean different things. 

Matt Widdoes 

Those are very old. Like, how far back does tarot go? 

Hillary Self 

I think it’s like 1650 or something. 

Matt Widdoes 

Okay. So it’s actually newer than I would have thought. I would have thought like 600 or so. I have no idea, but it’s out. It’s been around. 

Hillary Self 

Yes. And so the original artist, her name is Pamela Barrett Coleman. She put all sorts of interesting imagery and symbology in these cards and things that go back to like the Masonic Lodge. I mean, like Solomon’s Temple, I mean, really deep religious truths in these cards. So I’m reading them and trying to learn them. So I bought a book, I bought a big deck, I’m going through and I always make associations to remember things. And so my Oklahoma country ass, as I’m reading, is like making these country music associations. So it’s like, okay, the Empress is this woman that’s like laying on a bed, like laying across a couch and she’s like being fed grapes and just opulence everywhere. And the symbol of that is just this woman that’s whole and complete into herself. She doesn’t need a man, but wouldn’t mind having one kind of thing. She has all her needs are met and she shares from the overflow. So I’m like, that sounds a lot like Dolly Parton. 

Matt Widdoes 

Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. 

Hillary Self 

Yeah. And then they get onto the devil card. And like the devil is kind of scary looking. But when you read the meaning, like the devil card in the traditional tarot is this kind of scary horned man. And at him, his feet are two naked humans and naked male and a naked female that are chained by dog collar to his throne. But when you read about it, what the meaning is, the dog collars are very loose and they could slip them off at any time and leave, but they’re willingly submitting to a temptation or something else or giving their power away. So what Pamela Barrett Coleman Smith meant by this art was this is a temptation, an addiction, a choice to give your power away, you know, this kind of thing. And so I was like looking at that and I’m like, man, this kind of sounds like if I was dating Waylon Jennings, you know, like, I could see that. Sexy, like you could totally and he always tells you like, you know, ladies, you know, mamas don’t let your babies be like me, you know, like, right, right, right. So I started making those associations. So got Sharpie started 

Matt Widdoes 

And this was to kind of memorize what the meanings were. 

Hillary Self 

Yep. And I just literally ordered a blank tarot deck and from Amazon and I started drawing these Sharpie figures and memorizing them. And as I was sharing them on social media. My friends were like, I want one. I want one. I think I could learn the tarot from this. And so that was where the Outlaw Oracle brand name and concept and the niche came from. And then as I went to publishers and things, you know, I developed the VID, the brand, the website, all these things, just flexing all of my little marketing muscles, because I was so bored during the quarantine. I decided to go ahead and like try to move forward with publishing. And I contacted like 12 publishing houses and basically every single one of them were like, you’re using the celebrity likenesses. Like it is fan art and you did draw them, but you’re going to need to go through and seek 78 different country artists like approval to do this. And I was like, well, it’s kind of outlawed. I like not, you know, like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Do it and see what happens. I don’t seek approval. Yeah. Yeah. And so basically I found a publisher that was like, look, I’ve looked at your Instagram. You’ve been taking beautiful photos of this whole Western aesthetic for years. Like that’s what you do. You go on road trips, you take photos like that. Like let’s do an Oracle deck first, because an Oracle deck can be any number of cards on any subject. Let’s show a brand that it’s viable in some way. And then if that goes well, then I’ll be willing to take this risk with you. And basically you’ll have to drop the last names of every artist. Like I can’t say Dolly parton and I’ll just have to say Dolly. So this first round is entirely self funded. I paid on my pocket to do this first print run. And we’re doing Oracle deck. 44 cards, earth, air, fire, water. The water suit is things like moonshine, cold one, you know, saloon, you know, the fire deck is like, you know, sacred heart, wild hearts, things like that. So all of these are just different outlaw country kind of aesthetic photos. And they look like Polaroids, vintage Polaroids, the cards themselves on the back are line drawings that I’ve done myself that are very similar to what you would get if you get the Honky Tonk Tarot later. And then in the guidebook, I’ve written, you know, two pages on each. of their meaning in the upright or the reverse. And then I’ve assigned country songs that kind of bring those cards or those energies to life. So this Kickstarter particularly is for the Outlaw Oracle. And if this goes well and we sell through this whole print run, then I’m going to move on to the Honky Tonk Tarot as well. Right. 

Matt Widdoes 

Well, I’m excited to see it. I recently, today actually, I had forgotten to do it. I’m trying to get some for Christmas, but I did the whatever the max was and I encourage our listeners to go at least get the deck. There’s some other stuff you can see, I think on what’s your what’s the best social to find some of the pictures of these? 

Hillary Self 

The Outlaw Oracle on Instagram. I also do have a Facebook page, but I just don’t spend as much time there. 

Matt Widdoes 

That’s okay. Yeah. Look at the Instagram on the Outlaw Oracle, but these are super cool and great stocking stuffers and a very fun project I’m excited to see. You know, there’s a lot of people who will be listening to this who are senior leaders or maybe even the CEO, founder of companies that have recently raised 10 to 20 million. They’ve shown some early product market fit. They’re just starting to scale more significantly. Any advice that you might give them as it relates to marketing generally, as it relates to events, as it relates to life, anything that you’d recommend? 

Hillary Self 

Yes. Well, I would say it’s so important to come up with systems that scale. Once you’ve gotten through that entrepreneurial spirit of your startup and what it’s taking to get there and you’re wearing all hats, and once you’ve gotten to this system where you’re ready to do systems that scale, that’s where looking at scalable concepts that you can repeat in multiple markets as you grow or as you’re acquired, those kind of things, and then executing them in the most efficient, precise way possible. During your growth phase, your team may grow where you have maybe 10, 12, 30 people in house helping you with brand and events and things of that nature. When it comes time to late stage and acquisition, the people might be looking for you too. To create some efficiencies there. One of the ways that I always found to do that would be to almost create a touring concept. We’re going to create an event kit that we can use at music festivals throughout the year. We’re going to figure out if we’re national, I’m going to do one event kit that’s housed on the East Coast and one event kit that’s housed on the West Coast. We’re only paying storage and travel for those within a 500 mile radius. 

Matt Widdoes 

Do you have localized physical infrastructure essentially? 

Hillary Self 

Yes. They can go out and they can pop that up at Governor’s Ball in New York City while someone else is activating at Rock and Rio in Vegas. You’ve got two teams going. Those systems that scale meaning you can still have really big impressive activations, but you can schedule and make them very efficient. If you’re not able to staff or have that large team in house, it’s so nice to be able to bring in fractional teams. Just the way that Mavan does for brand and growth, there’s so many different ways that you can can bring in outside resources to help you just activate for this certain period. So those are things I would definitely think about. And when I’d mention scalable concepts, if you can find a vertical, like Fiji water, we wanted to position ourselves as the best tasting water in the world. So how do you do that? You put yourself next to the best tasting food in the world. Where discerning people that are into Epicurean and food type things are going to be. So what we did there is we completely put our media spend into Food and Wine Magazine events. And then we said, OK, Food and Wine Magazine print ads. But then how can we activate at your live events? And how can we maximize those? And then how can we create like a sweepstakes or something exciting as dealer loaders or volume drivers for our different stores that are selling it? So we had this huge overarching campaign where we got the print ad in Food and Wine Magazine. And in that print ad, we’re featuring different chefs that are serving Fiji water in their restaurants. And then we’re going to the events that they’re doing quarterly and we’re having these beautiful dinners and these different activations on site. And we’re getting a bank of tickets, instead of having our logo on the back of a t -shirt, we asked for tickets and other things instead. And we used those as sweepstake giveaways, either for sales incentives or for customer, you could actually put something at the end cap display in every Kroger went a chance to go to the Grand Cayman cook-off. When I talk about scalable concepts and efficiencies that allow you to execute at speed and precision, that’s what I would recommend at that time. Because by the time you’re looking at late stage or acquisition, they’re going to come in and just go, how quickly can you work? How efficiently? Why does this make sense to us? And so if you have all of these systems in place, it’s just so much easier to make the sell and keep your team intact through an acquisition or that kind of thing. 

Matt Widdoes 

Yeah, it makes sense. And that kind of 360 mindset where you’re thinking about it from kind of all fronts, what are the things that you have on your side from sales teams to other areas of the business that you can leverage? And then how are we showing up for that audience, for that target kind of in the areas that they’re going to be multiple times, in multiple places, in multiple ways? It makes a lot of sense. Hillary, thank you so much for joining us today. Always a pleasure. I look forward to the next time. 

Hillary Self 

Me too. 

Matt Widdoes 

That was Hillary Self discussing experiential marketing. Hope you had some great takeaways. Thanks for listening. See you next time.