The client called it a shrimp luge. 🦐

I had another word for it, but I kept that to myself.

This was a VIP reception. Somewhere in the planning process, my client had attended another event - I don’t know whose, I don’t know where - and seen this thing. This ice block full of shrimp, pouring into a tray below it. And she had fallen completely, irreversibly in love with it.

She brought it to us with the energy of someone who had found the answer. Not a “what do you think?” The excitement was palpable. Genuine. The kind of enthusiasm that makes you pause, because it doesn’t come from nowhere… she had been carrying this idea around for weeks, maybe months - waiting for the right event to finally deploy her shrimp luge.

I quickly did the client service math - and the answer was not favorable.

Could we argue against it? Yes. Would we win? No. And more importantly… should we?

Here’s the thing about producing events for real humans: the brief is rarely just the brief. There’s a “brief-brief” - the deliverables, the logistics, the experience flow - and then there’s the emotional brief underneath it. The thing the client actually needs to feel when they walk into that room. Sometimes it’s confidence or pride. Sometimes it’s the relief of finally getting to use the shrimp luge idea they’ve been carrying around with you.

We could have pushed back. I have a whole library of pushbacks developed over the years - diplomatic ones, strategic ones, ones where I redirect by asking a question that makes the client feel like they reached the new conclusion themselves. I use them often. When the idea would embarrass the brand, confuse the guest, or undermine what we’d built.

But a shrimp luge?!

This was a pick-your-battles situation… and I knew it.

The night of the event, the luge appeared. I watched it the way you watch something you’ve been dreading - bracing for impact. Guests approached the buffet. They picked up tongs. They selected their shrimp. They walked away.

No gasps. No Instagram moments. No health inspector materializing out of the crowd. Just guests, shrimp, tongs, cocktail sauce. The branded ice block melted gradually behind them, the logo slowly disintegrating, and nobody seemed to register that anything unusual was happening.

The client was thrilled.

I’ve thought about it a lot since. Because there’s a version of this story where I fight harder, where I redirect her toward something cleaner, where we land on a more “elevated” seafood presentation (whatever that means), and I feel better about the aesthetic of the buffet. But she feels a little less seen, a little less heard. The event still happens, it’s still a success, and somewhere in the back of her mind is the idea she didn’t get to use. The shrimp luge that never was.

Is that better producing? I genuinely don’t know.

There’s a question I come back to often in my work: who is the experience for?

The easy answer is the guest. The guest is always the answer. Design for the guest, obsess over the guest, map every touchpoint to the guest’s emotional journey. I believe this, and I teach this. It’s right.

But events are also for the people who commission them. They carry weight too. They have visions - they have ideas they’ve been waiting to try, images they’ve saved, experiences that moved them and that they want to recreate for the people they care about. Our job is to translate that - to honor it, to elevate it, to protect them from the versions that would actually hurt them.

The shrimp luge didn’t hurt anybody (thankfully). The guests got cold shrimp. The client got her moment. The logo melted beautifully into a puddle by the end of the night.

I’ve pushed back on far less and been right. I’ve pushed back on far less and been wrong. The skill that took me years to develop isn’t knowing when an idea is bad. It’s knowing when bad is the wrong frame entirely.

Sometimes the idea isn’t bad. It’s just not yours.

— Rob

British roots. Scrappy team. The kind of place with a start-up mentality where things moved super fast.

One day my boss introduced me to a guy named Ned. Old friend of his from back home. Ned was putting together a new music festival upstate and needed a desk for a few weeks, plus some help navigating U.S. production stuff he wasn’t familiar with. Could I just be a resource for him?

Sure. Welcome, Ned.

Ned was fun. Funny. Quietly charming in that very British way where you genuinely can’t tell if he’s being sincere or taking the piss.

I’d overhear him on vendor calls, and he always opened the same way.

“Hey, it’s Ned Rock’n’Roll.”

Best nickname ever? A festival-circuit thing I guess. Seemed to fit his energy.

What I couldn’t figure out was that he never really opened up about himself. Friendly… but vague. Warm… but closed.

One day I had to fill out billing paperwork for a vendor he was contracting. Standard stuff. I got to the field for last name and realized I had absolutely no idea what it was.

I’d never asked.

“Sorry Ned… this is embarrassing. What’s your last name?”

Just a little chuckle in response.

Weird.

I asked how he wanted to pay. He said put it on his Amex, tossed me the card, and headed out for lunch.

I looked down at the card:

NED ROCK N ROLL

I went a little feral.

I grabbed two co-workers. We huddled around that card like we’d found a relic.

This is his legal name. On an actual credit card. This is his name.

Then someone opened a browser.

Real name: Edward Abel Smith. 🇬🇧
Family: Nephew of Richard Branson. 💋
Former title: CMO of Virgin Galactic. 🚀

We stared at our screens in complete silence.

Somehow, I composed myself before Ned got back from lunch. I didn’t say a word about any of it. I think he knew that I knew. He finished out his time in the office, did his festival, and then - like a lot of people who pass through your life - he was just gone.

Cut to a few years later…

I’m living in LA now. It’s the Golden Globes. Rob Lowe and Julianne Moore are on stage. Best Actress in a Mini-Series. The award goes to Kate Winslet for Mildred Pierce.

Camera cuts to Kate at her table. She’s beaming. She leans over to hug the man sitting next to her.

I was off the couch before I knew what I was doing.

That’s Ned Rocknroll.

I’m texting my old co-workers before Kate even gets to the microphone. The group chat absolutely lost it. Turns out Ned and Kate had met the year before. Now together. Eventually married.

There he was. Tux. Golden Globes. Kate Winslet.

Ned Rocknroll.

This industry is small. Genuinely, surprisingly small. People cycle in and out constantly. The freelancer from three years ago is suddenly running the program at a brand you’re pitching. The quiet person who borrowed a desk for a few weeks turns out to be Richard Branson’s nephew.

You just never know.

You don’t know what someone did before they walked into your orbit. You don’t know what they’re building on the side. You don't know who they are once they leave the building.

So treat everyone in the room like they might be the most interesting person in it. Because sometimes? They genuinely are.

— Rob

Big space. Big client. Big expectations. The kind of night where everything looks effortless only if it actually is.

We’d hired an emcee to host the evening. A professional. Someone with a lot of experience doing this. The kind of talent who is not supposed to need much from you.

Before the event, we did what we always do. A phone briefing (with his manager). Walked through the run of show and a messaging outline. Talked background, beats, tone, transitions. Asked the obvious question.

“Do you need a script?”

The answer, via his manager, was immediate.

“No, definitely not. He likes to ad lib.”

Great - works for us!

Day of the event, the emcee arrives.

And it becomes clear very quickly that he has no idea what the event is… because he walked in the door, I greeted him myself - with my exec clients by my side - and he says, “Hey, nice to meet you, great to be here. So what’s happening tonight?”

He didn’t know what the event was - its purpose, the audience, nothing. He hadn’t seen any of the prep materials.

The event hadn’t started yet and we were already in trouble.

There was no formal script prepared. No note cards. No safety net. Just a confident “no” from days earlier and a person who was about to walk on stage and talk to a room full of people.

So we scrambled.

We pulled together talking points on the fly. Printed note cards. Rewrote transitions standing in hallways. I became his shadow for the rest of the night.

Every time he was about to go on stage, I’d walk him through what he needed to say. What the moment was, our story and intention, where we were headed next.

Hit. Walk. Whisper. Reset. Repeat.

To his credit, he pulled it off. The night worked. Most people never knew how close we were to a full derailment.

But I knew.

And that night burned something into me.

“Probably won’t need it” is not a plan.

Especially when the person saying it isn’t the one who has to fix things if they’re wrong.

Since then, I plan for the version of the night where someone forgets. Or panics. Or arrives unprepared despite every promise.

Scripts can go unused, and note cards can stay in pockets. But contingency is not optional.

If something matters enough to be on a run of show, it matters enough to be backed up.

I don’t trust confidence anymore… I trust preparation.

That lesson has saved me more times than I can count.

— Rob

This was a full transformation of the old Aladdin property into something loud, glossy, and aggressively Hollywood. And to celebrate, we shut down a lane of Las Vegas Boulevard to host what was billed as the world’s longest red carpet.

It was a big deal.

Celebrities everywhere. Cameras. Press. A true who’s-who weekend. The hotel was completely booked with talent, which meant every part of the property was operating at full capacity.

Or, more accurately, being stress-tested.

Especially room service.

The morning of the grand opening, I was in our on-site production office with the event’s Executive Producer, Kris, and our office manager. The phone rang. She answered.

We could hear her side of the conversation.

A VIP guest had tried to order room service for breakfast. He’d been told it would be a two-hour wait. He wasn’t angry. He was polite. But he was hungry, and he was wondering if there was any way to expedite.

She hung up and looked at us.

“So… how are we getting breakfast to Danny DeVito’s room?”

Kris didn’t hesitate.

We had craft service in the production office. Not room service or a kitchen—but… food.

So we grabbed a spare delivery cart and got to work.

We pulled together what we could. Fresh fruit. Croissants. Bagels. Lox. Cream cheese. Coffee. Juice. Tea. We arranged it as nicely as possible, given that it was assembled by two people whose culinary training topped out at “has eaten before.”

Honestly, it looked pretty good!

Then we took off.

We pushed that cart through the service hallways of the hotel like we were in Ocean’s Eleven. Long corridors. Sharp turns. Multiple elevators. At one point, I’m pretty sure I yelled “make way!” like a total idiot.

We got to the room. Knocked.

The door opened.

Danny DeVito looked at the cart and said, “Wow. That was fast.”

15 minutes from phone call to delivery. Two sweaty production people standing in the doorway.

We exchanged a few pleasantries. Kris said something like, “Hope you like bagels and lox.” He smiled. Rhea Perlman was there too. It was all very normal and very surreal at the same time.

He tried to tip us $20. We declined. Not because we’re heroes, but because it just didn’t feel right.

We wished them a good morning and headed back to the madness.

The rest of the day went exactly how grand openings usually go. Controlled chaos. A thousand tiny fires. A lot of adrenaline.

But that moment stuck with me.

Not because it was Danny DeVito. That part is just a fun detail. What stuck was how obvious the solution was once someone decided to own the problem.

No one said, “That’s not our job.”

No one waited for permission.

No one escalated it into a meeting.

We just did the thing that needed to be done.

I’ve carried that with me ever since.

Titles change. Seniority changes. But the fastest way to earn trust on a team is to show that you’re willing to step in wherever the gap is. Especially when it’s inconvenient. Especially when it’s unglamorous.

Sometimes that means running point on strategy. Sometimes it means pushing a cart through a hotel hallway with a bagel platter.

Both count.

And yes, there’s a non-zero chance we violated a food service regulation or two. This was 2007. I think I’m in the clear.

I know - that’s one of those stories that sounds fake until you remember how live events actually work.

Up next time: a microphone, a crowd, and an emcee who didn’t know what any of it was for.

— Rob

It was a celebrity fashion show. Very glitzy, very glamorous. Hosted at the Beverly Hilton, in the same ballroom where the Golden Globes take place.

This was fancy.

Celebrities. Stupidly wealthy people. A live auction. Musical performances. All in support of an incredible cause.

Our run of show was tight. Or at least, we thought it was.

Dinner. Then a live auction to get the room warmed up. A few musical interludes throughout the night. And the centerpiece: a big, glamorous fashion show with celebrity models.

Jennifer Aniston. Cindy Crawford. Beautiful people.

We’d built 20 minutes into the run of show for the auction. It wasn’t something you could really rehearse, but we’d talked it through with the auctioneer. Based on his experience, 20 minutes felt safe.

It was not.

The auction lasted seven minutes.

Seven.

Which meant we were suddenly thirteen minutes ahead of schedule. And immediately after the auction, we had a live performance. Aerialists. Silks and rings. Center stage. Very dramatic.

Here’s the problem:

I hadn’t called them to places yet.

Before I could course-correct, the dominos started falling. The show caller moved us forward. The house went dark. The stage lit up with a big, cinematic lighting sequence. The score swelled.

The audience leaned in.

And then… nothing.

Silks hung in the air. Rings floated above the stage. Completely still. Occasionally moving just enough when the HVAC kicked on to feel… intentional(ish).

From the audience’s perspective, they were watching dramatic lighting, a rhythmic score, and a stage full of absolutely no performers.

From my perspective, I was backstage freaking out.

I was sprinting. Whisper-yelling. Apologizing to anyone in my path. Doing the mental math of how long this had already been happening, while praying it had been less time than it felt.

It had been about three minutes.

It felt like thirty.

I remember wondering what the audience thought.

Maybe they assumed it was avant-garde performance art. A bold statement on absence. The tension of anticipation. The silence before beauty.

Or maybe they thought something had gone very wrong and they were politely sitting through three full minutes of nothing happening on stage.

Both are possible.

Eventually, we moved on. Straight into the celebrity fashion show. Hopefully enough glamour to erase whatever that was.

The rest of the night went great. Tons of money was raised, and the cause was very well supported.

But obviously that moment stuck with me.

You can rehearse cues. You can estimate durations. You can build buffers. But live events have a way of reminding you that timing is not a promise. It’s a suggestion.

Especially when people are involved. Especially when big money is involved. Especially when adrenaline is involved.

Since then, I’ve been a lot more careful about what sits in the run of show immediately after anything unpredictable. I’m faster to get performers to places. I assume things will run short just as often as they’ll run long.

Some things you simply can’t rehearse.

And sometimes, the most important thing happening on stage is making sure someone is actually… you know, there.

Hey - thanks for reading! I’m now a few issues into this Substack, and I hope you’ve been enjoying it. But honestly - I have no idea.

I would love you forever and always if you could answer a quick, 4 question survey for me right here.

Shouldn’t take you longer than 20 seconds unless answering yes/no questions is super difficult for you. Appreciate it! 🙏

Oh - and next time I’ll be telling you about the time I ended up delivering room service to Danny DeVito.

— Rob

Part of the job was giving performance notes to the cast. Totally normal, especially on tour. Especially when actors rotate in and out and the show needs to stay consistent.

What was less normal was that I was 23 and most of the actors were not.

One of our leads joined the tour halfway through the run. She was 62 years old. A real veteran. The kind of actress my parents immediately recognized.

“Oh, I loved her in that show in the ’80s.”

She was terrific. Experienced, commanding, deeply committed. But after her first performance, it was clear she was playing the material much heavier than it needed to be. Heavy enough that the ensemble had trouble playing off her. The show stopped… breathing.

I needed to give her notes.

I did what I was instructed to do. I typed them up. Clear, concise, professional. Then I had them delivered to her hotel room that night.

No conversation. Just paper (nice bright white paper, of course).

The next day, during pre-show prep, I got a call asking me to meet her in her dressing room to discuss the notes.

I knocked.

She opened the door crying. Fully crying. But also not fully dressed. She was clutching the printed notes in her hand and waved me inside.

I froze.

I told her I’d be happy to come back later, once she was dressed and ready for the show.

She insisted we talk right then.

So there I was. A 23-year-old stage manager. Sitting in a dressing room. Across from a sobbing, legendary actress. Because of some dumb notes I wrote.

I remember thinking:

• Did I just emotionally devastate someone who has been acting longer than I’ve been alive?

• Is this some kind of power play?

• Is this what management feels like? Because I hate it.

We talked through the notes.

I explained, very carefully, that my intent wasn’t criticism. It was support. That I wasn’t trying to dim her performance, but make room for it to shine with the company, not against it.

Eventually, she calmed down. We aligned. The performance shifted. The tour continued.

But that was a huge learning moment.

That was the first time I really understood how powerful words can be. Especially written ones.

Written feedback feels permanent. It feels louder than you intend. It leaves no room for tone or care or adjustment in real time.

A conversation does.

You can see how something lands. You can clarify. You can soften. You can listen, comfort, and adjust.

And listen - I still get nervous giving critical feedback face to face. I always will. That means I care, right?? But I will never lead with written notes again.

Because I never want to find myself back in that dressing room, holding space for tears.

And yes, she was an actress.

And yes, she was being dramatic.

But that’s not really the point. The point is she was only half dressed and it was one of the most awkward moments of my life.

Woof, that one still haunts me. But it permanently changed how I choose my words… choose carefully out there!

In the next issue, I’ll share the story of three very long minutes where absolutely nothing happened on stage.

— Rob

For about 20 minutes at a time, I pretended to be a Hollywood professional explaining how movie magic worked. And I took this job very seriously.

Probably too seriously.

As part of the show, I had to select some volunteers from the audience to help participate in shooting a special effects scene. Our instructions as employees were to just pick people as quickly as possible (we’ve got a show to do, after all, and an hour-long line outside). But like I said, I took all of this very seriously.

I was young. Maybe with a bit of an ego. And part of it was that I grew up going to theme parks myself, watching shows exactly like this, desperately hoping I’d be the person who got picked as a volunteer. So now here I am, on the other side - the one choosing people - and I wanted to make that moment count.

During one particular show, I swiftly picked 3 enthusiastic looking volunteers who would be harnessed into a giant submarine set piece, holding onto hidden safety rails inside while everything rocked back and forth simulating a float on the surface of the water.1

My show stagehand talked them through the setup. Smiles all around. Everyone seemed excited and ready to go.

When it was time to shoot the scene, I gave them direction.

“When I say action, point out toward the audience — like you see something at sea, way off in the distance.”

Action!

Two of them nailed it. The best pointing you’ve ever seen.

The third… didn’t.

But hey, it happens. We had tourists from all over the world coming through the park. I figured maybe he couldn’t hear me. Maybe English wasn’t his first language. Maybe he was overwhelmed. He was smiling. He seemed present. He just wasn’t doing the thing.

And instead of slowing down, or checking in, or adjusting the direction, I did what 19-year-old me thought you were supposed to do as a “director":

I pushed.

I actually… screamed.

I tried to control the moment.

“You, guy on the end — point toward the audience!”

He was gripping the safety rail with his left hand.

And then he lifted his right arm.

Or tried to.

That’s when I saw it.

He didn’t have an arm. He physically couldn’t.

I was yelling at a one-armed man to point.

The audience realized it instantly. Like out of an actual movie, there was an audible gasp from the crowd. The whole thing probably lasted two or three seconds, but it felt like an eternity.

“And, cut!” I yelled quickly. Finished the scene. Wrapped the show. Did what you do when something goes wrong in front of an audience of 200 people: pretend it didn’t.

But I knew I had made a huge mistake. I felt terrible.

After the show, I found the guy and apologized. And he was super gracious - much kinder than he needed to be. He told me I was just going my job… apparently playing an asshole film director.

The audience filed out of the soundstage, and I made my way back out front to start another show. From that point on, I didn’t necessarily discriminate and only pick volunteers with two arms - but I definitely paid a little more attention to what was going on, instead of operating on auto-pilot.

I’ve thought about that moment a lot over the years. Clearly, given how much detail I still remember.

I wasn’t trying to be cruel or embarrass anyone. I was just doing what I thought you were supposed to do: keep things moving, give clear direction, don’t lose momentum.

Back then, I believed that if you just directed harder, you could fix almost anything. What I didn’t understand yet was that sometimes direction isn’t the problem—speed is.

That day, I wasn’t paying attention to the person standing in front of me. I was paying attention to the show. To the timing. To the next beat. And in the process, I missed something pretty damn obvious.

That moment stuck with me longer than I expected.

Not because it was dramatic (though it was), but because it showed me how easy it is to miss what’s right in front of you when you’re moving too fast.

Since then, I push less when something isn’t landing. I pause more. I try to notice when momentum is actually helping, vs. when it’s just making me careless.

Every experience has a point where direction stops being useful… and attention matters more.

It took me a while to learn where that line is.

I’m still learning it, honestly.

—

This felt like the right story to start with - it’s one of my favorites for good reason. In my next issue, I’ll tell you about the time I made a famous actress cry. 🥺

Thanks for reading, and for being here this early.

— Rob

Before we start, let me set the scene.

Run of Show isn’t just about brand experiences. It’s about the moments that shape how those experiences get made—long before anyone’s thinking about the tote bag swag.

Essentially, it’s my stories. I’ve got unbelievable ones. Hilarious ones. Perplexing ones. Maybe a few sad ones, but those will be infrequent!

Some of the stories you’ll read here happen on stages. Others happen in rehearsal halls, costume shops, airplanes, casino floors, or during long stretches of silence on conference calls (horrifying, I know).

They’re pulled from my own experience producing this work: learning in real time what audiences notice, how people respond to pressure, and how small decisions can change the entire feel of a moment.

Along the way, you’ll hear about:

• the time I embarrassed myself as a theme park performer and learned, in real time, how fast an audience decides who you are

• standing face to face with a sobbing, elderly actress and realizing how much care feedback actually requires

• getting stuck in a conference room in Korea, waiting for a meeting that was never going to happen, and learning a hard lesson about cultural differences

Not every story will explicitly be about experiential.

Every story will be about people.

Because experiences don’t just happen on show day. They’re shaped by how we listen, how we lead, and how we treat the humans inside the work.

That’s what this is. Or at least what I’m experimenting with.

Glad you’re here. Tell your friends.

— Rob