Latest / Event Industry News Podcast / From Hotels to Events: Nick Oxborrow’s Journey to Becoming an Event Business Coach

Transcript

From Hotels to Events: Nick Oxborrow’s Journey to Becoming an Event Business Coach · Event Industry News Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello everybody and welcome along to the Event Industry News podcast with me James Dixon
• 0:11
  wishing you all a very good morning, afternoon or evening, whenever or wherever you tune
• 0:15
  into today's podcast from.
• 0:18
  And it's my first recording of the year, excited to be back behind the microphone.
• 0:23
  Great end to 2025, some really exciting events.
• 0:28
  We obviously had Event Tech Live, the Event Industry News team had the great sort of privilege
• 0:33
  and excitement of going down to the Allianz Stadium at Twickenham for a fantastic day,
• 0:40
  launching the meetings and conference guide and recording some of the podcasts down there
• 0:45
  and running some panel sessions with some great people.
• 0:49
  And that brought to an end a really exciting 2025 and onwards and upwards with this new
• 0:54
  year.
• 0:55
  I'm in a bit of a new location as far as recording the podcast goes, still at home, but decided
• 1:01
  that we'll change things up a little bit for this year and just give ourselves a little
• 1:05
  bit more, I suppose, flexibility with what we're doing.
• 1:09
  You may still see the dogs wandering around behind me, which has sort of become a feature
• 1:13
  of the podcast over the years.
• 1:16
  It's usually the ginger one, Mabel, that decides that she's going to make an appearance on
• 1:20
  the podcast.
• 1:21
  If you do see a dog in the background, please do ignore if you're a first time viewer of
• 1:24
  the podcast.
• 1:26
  So let's crack on with today's episode and a really sort of great way to start the year.
• 1:34
  Not necessarily talking about a product or a specific event, we're going to be talking
• 1:37
  to a person.
• 1:38
  And these are the sort of podcasts that I love because there's very little prep that
• 1:42
  goes into it.
• 1:43
  And we're never quite sure where it's going to go.
• 1:47
  And I'm also really, really pleased today that my guest, who's joining us for the first
• 1:51
  podcast of 2026, himself hosts podcasts.
• 1:57
  So in theory, that makes my job really, really easy today.
• 2:01
  Let's meet the person that we're going to be talking to today.
• 2:04
  My guest today is Nick Oxborough.
• 2:08
  He is an event business success coach with a vast amount of experience in the events
• 2:13
  industry, having begun in London in the early 2000s.
• 2:17
  So Nick, a very warm welcome to the event and news podcast.
• 2:20
  Hi, James.
• 2:21
  Good morning.
• 2:22
  Yes.
• 2:23
  Good morning to you.
• 2:24
  And yeah, we always we tend to record on a Monday and I'm always flabbergasted by how
• 2:33
  enthused the guests are actually on a Monday morning.
• 2:36
  I don't know how we got into the habit of recording on a Monday morning, but we kind
• 2:41
  of just fell into it.
• 2:42
  But it always seems to work, which is maybe counterintuitive to what a lot of people think.
• 2:47
  I think maybe it's just fake it till you make it.
• 2:49
  I'm giving the impression of being awake.
• 2:54
  Well, we've got I've got orange juice, I've got coffee.
• 2:56
  Yeah.
• 2:57
  I've got all the things necessary on a Monday morning in early January to kick things off.
• 3:02
  So, yeah, we have a bit of a chat today, really, Nick.
• 3:06
  Well, thank you very much for having me, James.
• 3:08
  No, it's not a problem.
• 3:09
  And I introduced you as event business success coach.
• 3:11
  But kind of into there, could we maybe rewind to the early part of the early 2000s?
• 3:18
  Tell us a bit about how you started in the events industry.
• 3:21
  Okay, I'm going to jump right back to the 90s, which is when I graduated from a hotel
• 3:29
  school in Switzerland in 1995.
• 3:32
  And I as a teenager, I loved going to hotels and I love the entire environment of a hotel.
• 3:39
  And I used to think I want to work in hotels, you know, when I grow up.
• 3:43
  And so I went to hotel school and then I worked in hotels.
• 3:47
  I went and worked in a number of five star hotels around the world.
• 3:51
  And but I ended up in Boston in the US.
• 3:54
  And I don't know if you know anything about the well, everyone knows that the US loves
• 3:57
  a holiday from July 4th to Valentine's Day to Easter to Thanksgiving.
• 4:03
  And I was the food and beverage manager in the hotel.
• 4:06
  And my job was to make sure that every time we got to a holiday, we had lots of activities
• 4:10
  and things happening. And and that was kind of the first time I saw the concept of an
• 4:16
  event where I had to plan some kind of occasion, some sort of activation, activity,
• 4:22
  decor, get entertainment.
• 4:24
  And I really loved that part.
• 4:26
  And in the back of my mind at the same time, I thought I really don't like the operations
• 4:31
  of hotels. And anyone who's worked in service is going to know this.
• 4:36
  It's hard work. And not to say events is not hard work, but it just didn't captivate
• 4:40
  my creative side.
• 4:42
  And running the events in the hotel captivated my creative side.
• 4:46
  And at the same time, I met someone in the 90s.
• 4:50
  And, you know, those of you who would be working in the 90s would know this.
• 4:54
  The event industry is something that has evolved over the last 30 years.
• 4:58
  It's it really in the 90s was not, you know, there certainly wasn't event management
• 5:03
  roles in big ways and big organizations.
• 5:07
  And and hotels did a lot of the event planning work and, you know, admin departments
• 5:12
  and sort of marketing, which obviously still happens now.
• 5:16
  But the point what I'm trying to say is that it was evolving and I was part of that
• 5:19
  evolving. So I decided I would jump out.
• 5:22
  I met this I met this guy who was working in events.
• 5:25
  And I just thought the way he talked about his job, I thought, that's what I want to
• 5:30
  do. And so in 2000, I left the U.S.
• 5:34
  and I moved to London as in my 20s.
• 5:37
  And I got a job working for an event catering company at the time.
• 5:42
  It was it was called Epicure, but it doesn't exist anymore.
• 5:46
  The guy who used to run it, actually one of my main mentors at the time was
• 5:51
  fantastic. And what I learned, it was event catering, but we were working in events
• 5:57
  and I was essentially doing my operational job from the hotel in an event situation.
• 6:03
  And I was serving champagne and making sure everyone got their canapes and basically
• 6:07
  running the event from beginning to end.
• 6:09
  And I and I and I loved that.
• 6:12
  I love the project in this of it.
• 6:14
  I love, you know, you in the hotel I had that the restaurant ran every day.
• 6:20
  It was like a it was like a steamroller whether you like it or not.
• 6:22
  Whereas the events, it's project to project.
• 6:25
  You conceptualize and design it and think about how you're going to create, you know, this
• 6:31
  this this experience.
• 6:32
  And so I really loved it.
• 6:34
  But I also didn't want to get stuck in operations.
• 6:37
  And I was feeling stuck in operations and entry level food service and what have you.
• 6:42
  And so I jumped out of it and I start I.
• 6:48
  Well, I did a couple of things, but I actually studied to really understand how to sell
• 6:53
  the concept of an event and and how to sell ideas.
• 6:57
  How do you put ideas out on paper and then sell your idea?
• 7:01
  Because one of the coolest things about events is you're ultimately selling something that
• 7:04
  doesn't exist. And you've got to create that in the mind.
• 7:08
  So I was studying how to do a really good presentation.
• 7:11
  I was studying Photoshop and to have like put together cool ideas on my on paper.
• 7:16
  And I had all these ideas for events and I saw these people doing some cool stuff.
• 7:21
  And in in the early 2000s in London, there was a lot of really, you know, the event
• 7:25
  industry was definitely getting into full steam and there was some really cool things
• 7:29
  happening. And and I was trying to I started applying for jobs for these cool event
• 7:35
  companies. And I thought, you know, I have five star service background on hospitality
• 7:40
  driven. I have all these cool ideas and absolutely no one wanted to hire me.
• 7:46
  And I and I thought, you know, I I'm not going to say names, but that was a very large,
• 7:53
  well-known event company that actually offered me the job as as warehouse manager and
• 8:00
  for props. And I just thought that's going to be stepping back.
• 8:03
  I mean, I'm I'm sort of running, you know, I'm front of house.
• 8:06
  I'm good at organizing.
• 8:08
  I'm very good at delivering and serving.
• 8:10
  I really want to go into more sales and event conceptualized conceptualization.
• 8:15
  And really planning.
• 8:16
  So that was kind of it was just a really interesting I was thinking, how am I going to
• 8:22
  get to do the events that I want to do?
• 8:25
  And at the time, the guy that ran the event catering company, he said, just do your own
• 8:31
  events, set up your own business and sell your own events.
• 8:35
  And I was like, can I do that?
• 8:38
  I was like, really, that happens.
• 8:40
  And I had some really good people around me.
• 8:42
  And, you know, it's it's it's probably a bit cheesy, but I have a fantastic father who
• 8:46
  runs his own business.
• 8:48
  And he really kind of also helped me sort of conceptualize the idea of running my own
• 8:53
  business. And it took a long time in my mind to sort of figure out the components.
• 8:58
  And I then really I got a really cool job doing sales for a soft furnishings company
• 9:05
  that was running events for exhibitions around the world.
• 9:09
  And they were doing events in London and but also Paris and Milan and in New York.
• 9:15
  And I was able to go to these cities and I was traveling, setting up their exhibition
• 9:19
  stands, conceptualizing the ideas like what are we going to do?
• 9:21
  How are we going to sell it? How are we going to market it?
• 9:23
  And those I mean, I didn't think about it at the time, but that was really fundamental
• 9:28
  to my growth as an event conceptualizer, because and the other thing is, is that there
• 9:34
  were two components to this that were really magic for me, was that working for small
• 9:39
  event, small event catering company and now a small soft furnishings company, I was able
• 9:44
  to see the nuts and bolts of the owner of the business running their business.
• 9:49
  And that's when I started playing with profit and loss statements and looking at sales
• 9:52
  targets and understanding cost and profits and cash flow and all of these sort of
• 9:58
  business concepts that I did not study.
• 10:00
  And I and and taking that knowledge and then, you know, sitting down with mentors like
• 10:07
  my father, who was able to say, you know, I do not you know, every every week I sit
• 10:13
  down with my profit and loss forecast and I match it to my current, you know, you know,
• 10:18
  sort of actuals and also run cash flows and look at targets and understand my, you know,
• 10:25
  pricing versus my cost and all the rest of it.
• 10:29
  I just I had some great foundations and I did build the confidence in 2008 to set up
• 10:36
  a business. So I set up my event business.
• 10:39
  It wasn't in London. I set it up in Asia and Singapore.
• 10:42
  I'm from Singapore originally.
• 10:44
  So to step back a little bit, I'm I was I'm English.
• 10:48
  You probably can tell I was born in Singapore and I grew up in Singapore and Malaysia.
• 10:54
  So I'm an expat kid, basically.
• 10:57
  And my father lives in Singapore and he runs his where he ran his business in Singapore.
• 11:03
  He is retired now.
• 11:05
  And so he he said to me, listen, one of the characteristics of being sort of in your
• 11:12
  now now early 30s in 2008 in London was that I didn't have any funding and I didn't
• 11:19
  have I always say my my trust fund got misplaced.
• 11:23
  I didn't have any money.
• 11:25
  I just I was, you know, I'm very much I was, you know, I was spending my month to
• 11:31
  month. I was month to month, my rent, you know, going out for a couple of drinks, buying
• 11:36
  some things and my money was out.
• 11:38
  And there was no way I could set up an event business because something someone had to
• 11:42
  pay the rent and some when I had to, you know, had to cover my costs.
• 11:47
  And in London, 2007, 2008 was just not not possible for me.
• 11:54
  But in Singapore, my father said, I'm going to give you one thing.
• 11:57
  You can stay and stay at the house and you can run the business.
• 12:02
  You can start your business.
• 12:03
  You get one year from the day you arrived and you get one year of rent free.
• 12:08
  I like that. There's a timescale.
• 12:10
  There's a deadline. Yeah, he did.
• 12:11
  And it's funny because one year was well, it was 25th of April 2008.
• 12:16
  And on the 25th of April, well, probably the 1st of March 2009, he was like, yeah,
• 12:24
  just reminding you you'll be moving out in just over a month.
• 12:28
  And so there's an element of synchronicity there because events are all about that.
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  There's no there's always a deadline to an event.
• 12:36
  So you're always working to a deadline.
• 12:38
  100 percent. I mean, the deadline factor of events.
• 12:41
  And that is actually what, you know, going back to my hospitality standards,
• 12:45
  that that that was bred into me in my earliest careers.
• 12:49
  You know, you cannot keep the customer waiting.
• 12:51
  And I'm a very kind of customer orientated person.
• 12:54
  So, yes. So there I am.
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  I'm setting up my business in Singapore.
• 12:59
  Then then the financial crisis came along and I thought I'm setting up a completely sort of at the time.
• 13:06
  I mean, I felt like it was a really sort of effervescent business, you know, like just
• 13:11
  it's like not needed in a financial crisis when everyone was reducing their costs and trying to actually.
• 13:19
  I think sort of before 2008, I think the event industry was having a laugh because they were just charging whatever they wanted to charge.
• 13:26
  And people were paying it because companies had so much money.
• 13:29
  And during the financial crisis, there was a massive recalibration of costs.
• 13:33
  And so the financial crisis, if I just add to that, the financial crisis or the crash in 2008 also came about, you know, just sort of pre technology as well.
• 13:45
  So just prior to that, you had this scenario where companies had a lot of money to throw at events, but very, very little way of tracking whether or not they were getting any sort of benefit to them because the technology that we have now to track it doesn't exist.
• 14:00
  So, you know, I've always thought that there were two sort of considerable sort of not benefits as such.
• 14:07
  But if you look back in hindsight, the financial crisis of 2008 and as far as events are concerned, it forced people to rethink their budgets.
• 14:14
  And when they really started to spend again, we'd kind of leapt forward and people had iPhones and iPads, et cetera, et cetera.
• 14:20
  But apologies for interjecting, but I thought it was important to add that.
• 14:25
  And I often say, you know, I started my business when Facebook was one year old.
• 14:29
  So, you know, from a social media kind of technology component, you're absolutely right.
• 14:34
  But I've never thought of it from that perspective because you're so right, because ROI is such an important aspect of the event industry now.
• 14:42
  And, you know, people now really have to think about the money that they're putting down and the value that they're getting.
• 14:49
  Well, you think about, you know, the early days of Facebook and when people realized that you could put your event on Facebook and post about it, just just just in its simplest form.
• 15:01
  And a lot of people would sneer at this from a marketing point of view.
• 15:03
  But just being able to see people liking that post was absolutely something that had never happened before.
• 15:11
  You know, website metrics and things like that were still in their infancy, relatively speaking.
• 15:16
  And not many people knew how to look at the traffic and the engagement on the website.
• 15:20
  So, you know, when you look at the early days of social media, Facebook really offered for a lot of event organizers the first real tangible way of seeing how many people are interacting with them.
• 15:29
  And just seeing that 100 people had liked your post was something that we'd never had before.
• 15:34
  Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 15:36
  I mean, my first steps to building my business were not through social media at all.
• 15:42
  And that became a fantastic, you know, tool that we now use.
• 15:48
  But I think I also say, you know, I often look back at that and think, you know, these tools are still just tools and we still need to know the fundamental functions of what we're doing.
• 16:01
  And I think sometimes there's an over-reliance on these tools to do magic thinking for us.
• 16:06
  And we forget that we've actually got to do the thinking ourselves.
• 16:09
  We've still got to be the leaders of our own organizations.
• 16:13
  Yeah. And I mean, on the point of sort of running the business and being an events person, events businesses are unique in some respects.
• 16:24
  I'm trying to think of another industry where there would be a, you know, a similarity or a parallel.
• 16:29
  But when you think...
• 16:30
  You're only good at your last job.
• 16:31
  Well, yeah. And also that in the events industry, the people that start event businesses are very good at running events.
• 16:39
  Whereas in other industries, the people who start...
• 16:42
  I know people who run businesses who are fantastic business leaders and managing directors.
• 16:48
  And actually, they'd be useless at actually being the boots on the ground of what their business does, if that makes sense.
• 16:55
  That they're great at running the business.
• 16:58
  They're great at running the business, but they wouldn't have a clue about how to actually deliver what their business or businesses actually supply.
• 17:06
  Yeah. What you've hit the nail on is exactly what I'm finding, because I love business and I was really lucky to understand the components of running a business.
• 17:18
  And a lot of my, a lot of the people I coach and a lot of people, you know, my clients now, they're very good at events.
• 17:24
  They're very good at what they do.
• 17:26
  They're very good at being creative.
• 17:27
  They're very, you know, and I've got a really nice cross section of different individuals from, you know, but all of them starting event businesses.
• 17:36
  And the common denominator is this sort of kind of grey area of financial planning.
• 17:42
  What's that? You know, hopefully if I just make enough sales and cover all my costs, it's all going to be great and I'm going to have enough money.
• 17:49
  And that's kind of what I'm trying to drill down on a little bit more.
• 17:53
  And I help creatives and, you know, these professionals and they're fantastic professionals to really understand the commercial aspect of the business concept.
• 18:05
  I, it is, you know, for one, I'm trying to put it into the right words, but ultimately speaking, if you're going to start a business, you're there to make money.
• 18:14
  And so you've got to kind of wrestle your own talent and professionalism into a funnel that's called making money, aka business.
• 18:22
  So and I think a lot of people kind of don't align that to quite late in the business process and then find themselves kind of struggling with all sorts of, you know, mistakes, which we all make.
• 18:34
  And we all make mistakes.
• 18:36
  But I think I'm trying to sort of say that I will help you try to sort of smooth out some of those sort of teething processes and kind of be my, I hate this, it's so cliche, but try and be my dad to some people that don't have that kind of support and understanding.
• 18:52
  Well, it's interesting because there's a lot of people out there who are, you know, event consultants, event freelancers, people who are experts in events, who will offer their services to event agencies and event organizers to bring the event organization experience as a consultant to them.
• 19:13
  But not many people who are there in the role that you now have.
• 19:17
  This is, I suppose, where ultimately your event business led you to is that, you know, you then set up your own consultancy, if I'm right in saying sort of during COVID or post COVID to actually help event organizers specifically with the business side of things.
• 19:31
  Yeah, so so the story happened is that Singapore 2020, there was this little thing called COVID, which is now what, six years ago and five years ago.
• 19:41
  And, you know, I had to shut my business for two years. And in that process, I left Singapore, my partner and I moved to Spain, and I live in south of Spain, but I work between London and Spain now.
• 19:54
  And I realized that I didn't want to start another event agency, but I love the event industry and I love business.
• 20:02
  And I thought, you know, rather than start another event agency and just build another business from the event industry, help other people build their event businesses and actually be part of that journey.
• 20:13
  And so I still get to talk about events, I still get really excited. And it's really cool. And some of my clients, I mean, I have a very, very strict, you know, from an ethical perspective, total privacy, right? So I can't mention any names.
• 20:27
  But I have one client has just signed up last week, who's worked one of the biggest events in the world, which everyone would know. And she's trying to step away, because she's been involved in that event
• 20:40
  for almost over 10 years now. And she's now looking to build her career outside of that. And she's trying to figure out how to negotiate that. Do I go freelance? Do I set up a business?
• 20:52
  And so my role now is going to help her kind of just make sense of all that. And that's, you know, it's super exciting development in my career to try and help people as they're sort of entering the next phase of that.
• 21:05
  Because I had my sort of what I call professional growth period, then I had my business. And now I'm kind of stepping one step further and going into sort of, and I like the word, you know, you've used the word consulting. I know
• 21:17
  a lot of people like consultants, but, you know, I'm making, you know, making a real difference. And that that makes that makes me really happy.
• 21:26
  Yeah, I was always a Tony Soprano always said that he was a consultant. So there's got to be something cool about that word.
• 21:33
  Good if Tony, Tony Soprano
• 21:35
  Soprano, it's gonna be the events industry has always struck me as as filled with extremely talented people with so much to offer, who a lot of whom have no idea how to monetize the skills and the experience that they've got, you know, that they love doing it. They're great at it. But, you know, and I would go as far as I'm probably one of those people. I'm a freelancer. You know, I work in the events industry. I have done for
• 22:05
  this will be I'm now into my 16th year of being self employed as a one man and freelancer.
• 22:12
  And so many people do really well.
• 22:14
  myself around the face and go, What are you doing? Why? Why? You know, you're actually quite good at this. Now. Why are you, you know, not either pushing yourself further exploring new options, or, you know, making a little bit more money now, but I'm not destitute by any stretch, but
• 22:29
  you know, I, it would be, it would be foolhardy of me to sit here and flag up the fact that there's talented people in the events industry who don't monetize themselves very well without addressing the fact that I'm probably one of them.
• 22:43
  Yeah, maybe we need to speak James.
• 22:46
  Maybe so. Maybe this could be the start of 2026. And we both.
• 22:52
  But yeah, that it is that, that, that, you know, I can, you know, identify that myself, but I can see a lot of other people out there who do it as well. People, great people who I work with, who I think, well, you should be, you should be doing, you know, so much more than you are. And that business is critical.
• 23:08
  I've just encouraged, you know, fantastic friend of mine, just a real, you know, professional, the same, same age as me, we're in our early 50s, you know, and, and just a real top professional worked in some of the, you know, biggest organizations, you know, stadiums, sports events, all things that people have heard, and just for the first time stepped in to his own role.
• 23:33
  And, you know, I'm so encouraging of that, because I just think that, you know, I take it to a baseline, but you know, money is important, right? And, you know, I, I think that there's so, earn the profits that you're, you're worth, you know, earn the profits that you're worth, you just do have to align a couple of, you know, get some ducks in the road.
• 23:53
  And you do have to kind of just sort of sit back and think about it. And one of my, you know, something that has come up, obviously, in this world, I mean, you cannot ignore AI now. And I have a, so, so something else I do as well as I, I teach for the event school London, and I love this, this is my absolute sort of, it's real passion work, it doesn't make me much money, but it's real passion work.
• 24:18
  But it does do one thing super cool. And because the event school London, we actually, our students are actually professionals, most of them, you know, 75% of them are working in the event industry in some way, they're usually quite entry level roles, you know, they're in their 20s, early 30s. And a lot of them have kind of sort of been stuck with events, because maybe they got a role as a personal assistant, or they're working in sort of office, you know, administration.
• 24:45
  And suddenly, someone's come up to them and said, you know, can you organize this conference? Can you book this, you know, year end party, and they don't understand any of the tools of the trade.
• 24:54
  Classic scenario.
• 24:55
  Yeah, classic scenario, right. And, but what I'm doing is I'm learning, exactly, I learned from them exactly what's going on in the event industry. So I'm, I'm staying completely current. I'm listening to how, you know, they're, they're, they're, you know, they're, they're operating.
• 25:12
  So I might have stopped my business in 2020. But I'm staying completely current, because I'm getting, you know, up to date experiences from these, from these students. And one thing that I've learned is that no one knows how to do Excel spreadsheets.
• 25:28
  From a financial management perspective, right? Yeah, you know, we all we all use, you know, Excel spreadsheets for our, you know, plans, and, you know, timesheets and all, you know, management and all the rest of it, but not from profit and loss statements and cash flows.
• 25:42
  And, and it just amazes me.
• 25:44
  What it was designed to do.
• 25:46
  Yeah, it was designed to really help us understand finances.
• 25:50
  Yeah, I guess. Well, we were all guilty of using for Excel for a million and one other things other than what it was designed to do.
• 25:59
  I am Mr. Excel.
• 26:01
  I mean, it's great. I mean, it's, on the one hand, it's good having those two is going back to sort of the tech side of things, you know, that we mentioned earlier, yeah, the way that you can sort of hack, you know, any of those sort of platforms or bits of software now to do different things.
• 26:17
  Yeah.
• 26:17
  And, you know, people have used probably Excel for visual things. And, you know, I know, I know, I know, a musical artist who uses it for their set lists, because they can literally just just drag the cells around and reorder things, they find it really easy to just drag the cells around in Excel to do their set lists, never want to use it for any financial management.
• 26:41
  We have really interesting conversations about project management tools, you know, all these sort of, you know, and I don't want to mention any names, because, you know, I think that there's a lot of companies creating some super cool online tools, but that a lot of them require, I think the event industry is such a sort of a unique industry in the sense that it's so individual to the person working in it, and trying to create one program that everyone can use, you know, simultaneously.
• 27:11
  And align the way everyone functions is proving to be quite difficult. And Excel just continues to have that flexibility, and that operational flexibility, you know, so that it still is the main tool. Like I have not yet to see another tools really rising up outside of AI, obviously. And it's interesting to see how AI is, you know, going to affect this.
• 27:35
  Yeah.
• 27:36
  Planning on Excel is just still the best.
• 27:39
  What would you, what would your opinion be on something? I've said to a couple of people that I know, who've been exploring tech, tech options, platforms, management tools, whatever it may be. And I've said to them, well, what are you really familiar with already? What do you use day to day, on your phone, on your computer that, you know, that you're already familiar with, that you could maybe, you know, push a little bit further, or that maybe has some functionality that you're not aware of, you know, and I took even in its most simple
• 28:08
  simple sense, if you've got an iPhone, the notes function on there, and using and checklists that are on there, because I think sometimes people get that they run before they can walk, so that they're thinking about, or what platform do I need to help run my event, when actually, they're probably not using stuff that they're familiar with, to its maximum capacity at the moment.
• 28:27
  Notes is amazing, by the way. It's something that I've evolved in the last couple of years. And I have now, I mean, I've folders, it's like a, like an encyclopedia of Nick's brain.
• 28:38
  Yeah, I've used notes. I remember running a sort of a live music event. And it was actually it was in the education sector. So it was like a sort of music festival for young bands run through a local authority in a big arena. And we had no comms, it was all on a very sort of tight budget. And we had no, you know, headset comms between front of house and side stage. And we had a very small crew. And what we did is, you know, from a running order,
• 29:08
  point of view, yeah, changing over, we had like 10 minutes of
• 29:12
  lot of updating real time on everyone's side. And so we created an I created a note on Apple Notes, shared it with the people who are involved. And as each act performed, we would take it off and then use a function where it drops the checked items to the bottom of the list. Yeah, whatever is at the top is always chronologically in the correct order. And we just use that as a way to re to do real time
• 29:38
  updates during the event, because we had really good Wi Fi. So we knew that things were updating instantly. So, you know, just a simple way to use something that everyone's got in their pocket, as a means to communicate live during an event.
• 29:50
  I love the ingenuity of the event industry. It's one of the things I love about the event industry is the people in it. Yeah. Yeah. So clever. I love that. Because I know you're so I mean, just to use a really basic form. I mean, if I'm going out and I need to do a checklist, I love that, you know, when you check the thing, and it just
• 30:07
  comes to the bottom. So you just don't have to think about it anymore. It just keeps everything relevant at the top. Yeah.
• 30:14
  Taking the conversation back to the sort of the business management side of things. Is that something that does also translate into the actual management of a business? Did you find that the clients that you're working with, and maybe sometimes thinking in too complex a way that do you sometimes have to bring them back in the opposite direction and, and simplify things when it comes to financial management or planning?
• 30:37
  The financial management of clients, because I mean, I, so I was very lucky to be working with some being in Singapore in sort of the teens, so to speak, and coming from London and bringing sort of my London sort of knowledge to Singapore, just helped me kind of just immediately hit the ground running and work with some of the biggest, you know, big
• 30:58
  I, everyone, Microsoft was my, you know, longest running client, but I work with luxury brands, I work with, you know, Netflix, I did stuff with my Google and Instagram and Facebook, and all these companies would work with me to do to run events. But I never financial management and not not so much with them, because, as you probably know, the client never tells me what their budget is.
• 31:25
  Yeah.
• 31:26
  So the other great paradox of the events industry, the guesswork involved in pricing.
• 31:31
  I've, I've, I've actually sat at a conference and excited a lot of law firms as well. I have a lot of clients who are in, you know, law firms, and I actually sat at a legal conference once and just told the, the, the legal world in Singapore, sit down with your event, or, you know, organizers and talk about, you know, what you're trying to achieve over the year, like, tell me all of your events, let me help you save money.
• 31:58
  You know, trust us, make us your partner. Don't, don't just think that we're sort of some kind of, you know, money sucking enterprise. I mean, yes, obviously, we do obviously all want to make money, but we're not, we're not stupid either. We understand ROI, and we want to give you value. So I used to try and tell a lot of my clients that. But back to your question.
• 32:18
  Yeah, I, you know, running financial, financial management of my business, I mean, the only thing that kind of comes, comes into play here is obviously running the budget for the client, because if, you know, once a budget signed off, I can't play with that. Like, I can't sort of, sort of come back to them and say, oh, look, there's extra costs I haven't factored in, because that's going to look, look very unprofessional on my side. So I have to present the costs. And I have to just stick to those costs. So it's just more from my side, but I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I
• 32:48
  just, you know, budget planning right at the beginning to hand a budget in and to sort of, you know, sign off on a budget that I know I can deliver the event at the standard and level that I promised, and not come back and with a bowl asking for more money. So, so no, the financial planning, and in my role as a business owner, and my clients never really, you know, I don't think so.
• 33:11
  Yeah. But yeah, I sort of said that slightly tongue in cheek, but the guesswork that's involved in pricing is, but it is true, is it because you, you know, there's sort of this cat and mouse Mexican standoff between organisers, and the client with this client. Yeah. Can you organise our event? Yes. What's your budget? Well, we don't want to tell you a budget. And the reason I don't want to tell you the budget is because I think that you're going to take all of that money, because that's their budget and give them one microphone, one speaker and a spotlight.
• 33:41
  Yeah, thank you very much. There's an invoice for 100,000 pounds, which of course, you're not going to do you want to know that. So you know, how much you can physically deliver? Yeah, as an organiser, but there's this sort of funny cat and mouse thing that happens where you kind of put a price in and they go, Oh, okay. Yeah, that's okay. Can we come down or sometimes you get and I've had it before where you price something and you kind of there'd be poor poker players,
• 34:11
  because their eyes light up and they go, Oh, wow, this is much better than we thought. And you're like, Okay, right. So we're in a good place here. But it's a hilarious sort of cat and mouse game. It is. It is. It is. And I and I, and it's not going away at the moment. No, no. Well, you know, we've all been there. Yeah. And I guess I understand it from the client's point of view, you know, that they don't want to give the game away, they will have a figure in mind, ultimately, that
• 34:40
  somebody's given them to say, it can be no more than this, this is your maximum amount, and anything below that is good. So I do get it. But yeah, it would be nice on occasion to work with people who say, Look, can you price it based on Yeah, can you price it based on this initially? And can you deliver it for this?
• 34:59
  That's why I'm a big fan. I mean, this is not the easiest thing, because this is a one job at a time business. You know, they very rarely to be I mean, you do get contracts, but it's quite hard to build that kind of business. And even though I've had some clients, I mean, I had clients long term that I knew the business would come to me, we had great relationships, but it's good old fashioned relationship building, you know, going out for a couple of drinks after the work, you know, after the job is done, and trying to like, you know, get their, you know, get their feedback,
• 35:29
  talk about budgets, talk about, you know, and then soon enough, you may do eventually, I mean, marketing teams, when I've had times where marketing teams are like, Can you just send me an invoice for 20 grand? And we'll just use it in next year's event. So I'm like, Okay, well, I'm just holding your money for you, because they don't want to lose the funding, right? Because if they underspend, they won't get it next year.
• 35:51
  It's like a local authority, isn't it? Well, they would dig up the roads in March in the UK, because they found 10 grand at the bottom of a sofa. And they go quite, dig up that road and fix those potholes quick. Otherwise, we won't get that 10 grand next year. It's a funny one. And the human element that you just mentioned there that, you know, the sort of the interaction, the contact, and I know that we all live in a world of emails and all the rest
• 36:20
  of it now. But, you know, events themselves are built on human experiences and human interaction. So it would stand to reason that if you want to build an event business, you have to have that human interaction as well with people, you have to get out there, shake some hands, have some drinks, meet some people.
• 36:37
  And this is where I'm going with technology as well. And you've absolutely, this is an absolutely human experience and try not to automate the human experience. Automate, you're going to use AI, you're going to use technology, which you should be using now, and you should absolutely adopt some programs. But don't, I'll give you an example, a really small one. I'm working with a client, and she does some super cool events. And she has this thing where if you post on her, if you send her a message on Instagram,
• 37:07
  you get an automated message. Thank you very much for contacting us. We will be in touch shortly. And so sometimes she'll post a story about an event she's doing, and I'll give her a thumbs up. And just to say, you know, awesome job, love what you're doing. And then I'll get this, thank you very much for contacting XAXA Vendors. And I sort of think it's kind of impersonal, like it's sort of, we've now established a relationship.
• 37:32
  And now you're, I'm still getting impersonal chat from you. So that's, to me, an example of just like a, you know, customer experience that actually, to me, it's not human led.
• 37:43
  Yeah. And it can have a negative impact, you know, because when you feel like you've built a relationship with somebody, and you send them a message, and you get their automated response, which I get why they're doing it, they're doing it for new business, so that they get, you know, a new client or a cold contact. Yes, that's a response. Lovely. There's absolute mileage and merit in that. But don't underestimate the negative impact that can have on an on existing people who feel like they've got a relationship, who have then been treated like they don't.
• 38:12
  Yeah, because that's the underlying context of it, isn't it?
• 38:16
  Absolutely. And also, but I'm, but I would argue that even as a new client, you don't want those automated messages, because we now see them so often, we know it's just an automated message. So it's still not, we know it's not. So, and I'll give you a really interesting example, like, you know, 10 years ago, well, probably 20 years ago, you know, was the rise of the call centers, and you'd call the call center, and they just give you this kind of formulaic responses to all of your human problems.
• 38:42
  Nothing worked, and you all got super frustrated. And then they went sort of, you know, bots version. And now we've got AI bots doing the same thing to us. But the best, you know, the best businesses now do actually have phone lines where you can talk to human again, it's kind of like come full circle.
• 38:58
  Yeah, I absolutely agree. I fly backwards and forwards, Spain to London, Spain to London all the time. And I use EasyJet. And if I've got a problem with my flight, I can call up EasyJet, and I get a human and I can sort out my problem every time. And I think that is, I think it's well done EasyJet, for figuring that out. And I think we've got to remember that in the AI world to remember that we're humans.
• 39:22
  Absolutely. And don't allow it to take away that personal element. I want to share something with you very quickly. And some people may find this completely irrelevant. Some people may think, oh, I can relate to that. But there is, I live in a town called Barnsley in South Yorkshire.
• 39:40
  And I've lived there for 27 years. And I live very close to my local pub. In fact, it's opposite my house. And the lady who runs the pub is as Yorkshire as it comes, with the accent and the colloquialisms and everything. And what became, what I used to chuckle at was that their Facebook page when they're advertising that, you know, their Sunday lunches, their live events when they have music at the weekend, stuff that's coming up seasonally.
• 40:09
  Her written English would be colloquial to her accent. So she would actually write things in almost a phonetic way based on the local accent. So it was terrible, you know, grammatically, and by the letter of the law, it's terrible written English. But it was funny, because it'd be literally spelling errors, but it sounded like her.
• 40:31
  Yeah, super charming.
• 40:33
  Yeah. And I've noticed recently, and I've clocked it, and I haven't asked them directly, but I guarantee this is happening. They're now using chat GPT to write their social media posts. And I can tell you the day that it happened, because I saw the first post. And the image that they put was so chat GPT generated, you know, generate me an image of people having a party and having a great time. Because you can tell that it's been generated.
• 41:02
  It has its own inherent sort of style, doesn't it? And the text, suddenly the vocabulary, you know, was completely wild. And I'm like, this is clearly not.
• 41:14
  This is not Yorkshire.
• 41:16
  They haven't employed somebody to start doing that. And it's just an example, I guess. And I'm not knocking them. And I'm not using this as a way of kind of poking fun at them. I'm using it as a way of highlighting the fact that, yes, it's a very good tool. But the more people use it, the more obvious it becomes. And if it's so obvious in that respect, that it takes away that personal element, that contact, and that connection that ultimately people are built on.
• 41:45
  It's giving us a way of contacting a broader range of people quite quickly, but in quite a personal way. And it takes away that option.
• 41:57
  Yeah, it's human led. It's got to be human led. And I think that's going to be the rise of authenticity. And authenticity is going to be mistakes. So where we used to prioritise, you know, everything being perfectly written, now it's going to be like, okay, so there is actually some mistakes there. That's a human writing it. So therefore, it's good. So I think sort of everything, you know, unpolishedness is going to rise.
• 42:20
  Yeah, without a doubt. I thank everybody for indulging me with that for a second, because I thought it was relevant to the conversation.
• 42:27
  I loved it. It's so nice.
• 42:29
  I noticed it over the Christmas period, obviously, there was a lot of stuff happening in hospitality, as well, you know, seasonally. And I clocked it one day and I thought, oh, no, don't go down that route. Use it as something to support by all means.
• 42:47
  Automate the operation, but don't automate the human connections. That's how I see it.
• 42:56
  We're ending on a buzz. We're ending on that today. What a phrase to come out with. Before we wrap up today's episode, Nick, it's really important that we give people the option of sort of getting in touch with you, finding out a little bit more about you.
• 43:12
  So yeah, before we wrap, shout out websites, social media, how do people, you know, reach out directly?
• 43:18
  Yeah, so everything is Nick Oxford. So Nick Oxford on Instagram, Nick Oxford on LinkedIn, NickOxford.com, email, website. So Nick at NickOxford.com. You're very welcome to anyone to reach out to me. I'd love to have conversations around the event industry. And if I can help you build a business, I would be more than happy.
• 43:36
  Fantastic. It's been a joy to have a chat with you today. I'm genuinely enthused. And this is why I love talking to new people and different people. You always remember that story. And I'm like, I don't know where or who I would have told.
• 43:51
  I love a good story, James. And I think that was great.
• 43:55
  There we go. It's out into the ether now. Just a little shout out at the start of the year for a sort of a few things coming up and a few things to look out for with event industry news. If you have started your journey today, by listening to this podcast on your podcast platform, thank you very much.
• 44:12
  Please do make sure that you go over to eventindustrynews.com to check out the A to Z supplier directory. If you work in the events industry and you're looking for a supplier or a service, the chances are you will find it on the A to Z supplier directory over on eventindustrynews.com, where you can also find all of the special supplements that the team there produce.
• 44:32
  Have a look around there, because now is the time of year where the new media pack is out. If you're interested in getting involved in event industry news at all, as an advertiser, as a contributor, as a guest on the podcast, now is the time of year to get in touch and find out about that stuff.
• 44:48
  All of the podcasts are available on video over on eventindustrynews.com. So again, if you're listening today via podcast platform, do make sure that you check out the website to have a look at some of the video versions of the podcast as well. You can watch those as they drop each week.
• 45:02
  You may of course have started your journey on the website by watching this podcast today. If you have, thank you very much. But please do make sure that you go in the opposite direction and subscribe to the podcast wherever you get your podcasts from, whether that be Apple Podcasts, Spotify, etc, etc. We're on all of those platforms and make sure that you subscribe to get all of the episodes.
• 45:20
  So it brings me nicely to the end of my first recording of the year. Nick Oxburgh has been my guest today. Nick, thanks very much for joining us. I didn't ask, you said you split your time between London and Spain. Where are you today?
• 45:32
  I'm actually in London. So this is like a little corner office that I've found just to jump into to have this call with you.
• 45:39
  Amazing. You put the Zoom suits on.
• 45:45
  Yeah, it was great. James, really, thank you very much for having and everyone to happy 2026. I hope it's a good one for everyone.
• 45:52
  Yep. Thanks very much, Nick. And we'll see everybody on the next edition of the Adventist News Podcast. Cheers.