You’ll Never Believe How He Sold Out Events Using Only Instagram

Jim Banks:
Benjamin Shrader is the CEO of Schrader Promotions, an event production and promotion company based in Texas. He's been organizing and running concerts throughout Texas for over six years. In that time, he's worked with artists like G Eazy, Wiz khalifa, and Parker McCollum. Now, I'm sure young people probably know who they are. I have no clue. Actually, I know Wiz Khalifa, but that's by the by. He actually started his company while he was still a student at Texas A and M. Go Longhorns.

Jim Banks:
He's achieved a lot for someone as young as he is, and when I learned of his severe dyslexia and adhd, I just had to have him on the podcast to share his story. He's become a dyslexic advocate and given speeches to dyslexic students and student entrepreneurs across Texas. He almost exclusively uses social media to organize his events and I can't wait to get into that as if all that adversity wasn't enough, he's had to overcome About a year ago as if all that adversity wasn't enough, About a year ago he was diagnosed with a golf ball sized brain tumor. Thankfully he was able to have it removed, but did lose all the hearing in his right ear. This experience has given him new resolve and I've begun this experience has given him new resolve and he's begun speaking on the necessity of fortitude for young people, no matter what life throws at them. So Benjamin, it's great to talk to you. So Benjamin, it's so good to have you on the podcast today. I was reading, I obviously just read out your bio and for me I'm blown away, but blown away by all the adversity that you've had to overcome.

Jim Banks:
So why don't you tell us about some of that stuff that's happened to you in I guess, what's comparatively short life span compared to me?

Benjamin Shrader:
Oh, I don't know about that, but thank you so much for having me off the bat. It's going to be a wonderful conversation today, I have to say. I would say probably the the biggest things that have shaped my life. First and foremost dyslexia. You know, very severe dyslexia. To this day I read at about you're going to laugh at me, but it's technically tested at a second grade reading level. But I often say third because that sounds better to me, which I know is, yeah, are you smarter than a third grader or so? And that has been tough. And that is something that That's a burden I'll have to carry for the rest of my life.

Benjamin Shrader:
Unless there's a neuralink or something like that one day that can just fix that. But that difficulty really, I would say, shaped who I am. And I would say without dyslexia, dysgraphia, and dyscalculia, the big three. So that's trouble with reading, dysgraphia, trouble with writing, and dyscalculia, trouble with math. So I'm in the 1% for dyslexia. Extremely, extremely severe. I'm in about very severe. 4.

Benjamin Shrader:
Dysgraphia and dyscalculia made me who I am. And I think without it, I probably wouldn't. Turned out to be a jerk. It keeps you humble. And it inspired me to something my father told me when I was young. He said, benjamin, you're gonna have to work twice as hard as the other kids just to get to where they are on certain things. But you're good at talking. Become the best at that.

Benjamin Shrader:
That is how you will survive in a reader's world.

Jim Banks:
So how young were you when it was diagnosed that you had dyslexia?

Benjamin Shrader:
I was in kindergarten. I was very young. Which. Which was a blessing because the younger that you are diagnosed and the younger that you can get remediation and therapy. It's very important. You got to get reading therapy if you have dyslexia. I had nine years of it just to get me to the point where I could function, like, survive and just get around town.

Jim Banks:
Yeah. Because my. My stepdaughter, who's very, very. I mean, incredibly smart, she was at university when she was diagnosed with dyslexia. Right. So she had to change so much. She. She had ended up with a.

Jim Banks:
Like a specially supplied laptop with all sorts of different font colors and sizes and everything else. I mean, I looked at it, I'm like, God, how can you read that? But that was the only way she could read it. Right. So she. Again, she did really well because of having it diagnosed. But again, it was probably a lot later than maybe it. It could have been diagnosed, which would have helped her maybe earlier on in terms of.

Benjamin Shrader:
Well, I mean, a lot of times it is hard. It can be hard even to diagnose if someone does not have it very severe, because one in every five people have dyslexia. It's very common. And all it is is dyslexics are very smart. All it is is. It's a different distribution of neural net connections. So I got about half the neural Net connections of the average on one side of my brain, but all those others, they're on the other side. So I'm not missing any.

Benjamin Shrader:
Maybe I am, but not. Not actual. Not all dyslexics, but. So we have those same number of neural net connections, the same level of intelligence. It's just spread out differently. And I know often states, we were recognized very recently actually, as an official disability. But myself, I will always call it a learning difference because it is just. You give me an audiobook and you give me a way that I can take in media, that I can be a video instead of just text on a page, and I can learn anything just as well as anybody else.

Jim Banks:
It's like, I mean, so I've talked to lots of guests on the podcast over the last sort of few years, really. And one of the things that's really been highlighted to me, I mean, virtually every. Every time I have a podcast conversation now, we end up talking a little bit about AI. And some of the. I think a lot of people are frightened of AI, but there are some, Some amazing use cases for some of the capabilities that it has. And one of the ones that I came across, and I actually came across, I used to go out walking during the pandemic, walked every day. I did more than 10,000 steps every day for the whole of the year of 2020. And for me, it was great.

Jim Banks:
I lost 70 pounds, which I needed to lose, which. Which was important. But. But I. I found I was listening to podcasts on headphones, which was great, right? But sometimes I may not necessarily want to listen to a podcast. I might want to listen to the news, and I didn't want to download an app and kind of switch on to the BBC news or something like that. And I came across this. This AI tool called 11 Labs.

Benjamin Shrader:
And they have a. I use it every day. I use it every day, honestly.

Jim Banks:
And I just literally grab a URL.

Benjamin Shrader:
It was a godsend.

Jim Banks:
I grab a URL, paste it into 11 reader, right? I can have Burt Reynolds read a story to me.

Benjamin Shrader:
Oh, my gosh, that's amazing. It's. It's incredible. I. 11 labs. I. I literally. I mean, last night at 3:00am, I was using it, so I completely.

Benjamin Shrader:
Boy, that is awesome that you know about it. No, I love 11 labs.

Jim Banks:
Cause I found a good. I had a couple of. I mean, I was going out walking every day, and sometimes if I was trying to read a story on the news on my phone, right? On occasions I would trip up and I ended up like falling down, smash my face open. I'm thinking, this is, this is too dangerous. This is way too dangerous to be doing this right? So I thought, what, is there a solution I could use that would bring me the capability of doing what I wanted to do, which was to read the news? I mean, I didn't need to necessarily read it. I just needed to know what, what was in there. And I can obviously speed up the speed of it. So it doesn't, it doesn't need to be read at my pace.

Jim Banks:
It can be read much quicker if I want to read it quick, read it quicker, or I could read it slower if I'm slower in, in terms of the ontake. Right. So it's. So again, I, I loved having that capability, but I think again, as much as 11 labs and their AI sort of solution for, for reading the text is great. There's a lot of people that have latched onto it and they're using it for nefarious reasons and creating sort of fake voices for promoting things.

Benjamin Shrader:
The thing is, they'll always be, there'll always be bad actors. I mean, we see the same thing with deep fakes, AI of any kind. Like, there'll always be people that are going to use tech for bad things. And of course, we want to try to mitigate that, but the benefits that it brings. I am so pro technology because I remember when I was a kid and Reading for the Blind and Dyslexic was a big charitable organization in the United States. I actually did a lot of work with them. They were great, were just amazing, amazing people. But, you know, it was read by people.

Benjamin Shrader:
They would read the textbooks, and then you would get it on your victor reader, this little block with an SD card that you'd put into it. And the AI voices that did exist back then, I mean, robot, terrible, absolutely terrible, Unnerving, almost a little creepy. And I remember being shocked by some people as a small minority of the dyslexic community, that as things got better and voice to text and text to speech became widely adopted, they were against it. And they were thinking, oh no, you have to do it this certain way. And what I really explained, and I've talked a lot about this was it's not crutch, it's not giving you even an edge. It's leveling the playing field. And that's, I mean, with accommodations, with things like that, that's all that we ask is to level the playing field. Because, I mean, you, you put me in a room with a number two pencil and A test.

Benjamin Shrader:
And you tell me, okay, take this. I mean, I'm probably gonna fail that test to this day. I mean, you asked me to write, God help us all, so you know it. But at the same time, I'm able to run an event production company and been doing that. Oh my gosh, my math is terrible. Either seven or nine years. One of the two. But it's because you, because you start.

Jim Banks:
You started the business when you were still in Texas A and M, like, as a student.

Benjamin Shrader:
Go Longhouse, as you guys would say, Uni. But I started the business towards the end of my freshman year of college. And in the beginning, it was very small and just really the promotion of events was what we focused on. And then I said, boy, the real money's in events. And we grew that over the years. Just done some incredible events with people like g. Eazy, Parker McCollum, Co Wetzel, Wiz Khalifa, but not too many. I haven't had to the pleasure of working with too many British artists, sadly.

Jim Banks:
It's funny, when you, when you sent your, your bio in, I looked at it, I thought, I don't know, I, I, I, I randomly heard of Wiz Khalifa. I'm, I'm a big electoral dance music fan. So I thought, wow, these are, these are people. I mean, I'd heard of him, but, but, you know, again, like a big deal. I know Wiz Khalifa is certainly a big deal. I'm sure the others are as well. I mean, there's loads of.

Benjamin Shrader:
It was an immense honor. Yes. I think in the States, Kirk McCollum and Co Wetzel, the Parkland Collins really had a meteoric rise. And then G. Eazy is a popular rapper in the States. And yeah, no, it is, it's been an incredible opportunity. Some of the people that we've had the opportunity to work with, it's an absolute pleasure and an immense honor. And the real deduction behind the business was college kids like the party.

Benjamin Shrader:
If I control partying, college kids will like me.

Jim Banks:
Yeah.

Benjamin Shrader:
That was the simple why I got into it. Because. And I really attribute a lot of this to being left out as a kid, being that weird, dyslexic kid. When I got to college, I said, never again. Never again. That I will find a way that I can make sure I will never be left out again. And what better way to not be left out? If you're putting on the show, it's.

Jim Banks:
Your show, like you're in control. So. Oh, yeah. I'm always amazed at how many entrepreneurs they, they build their Business on the back of one specific problem that they're probably solving initially for one specific person. I mean, I worked with a. With a client who basically set up a dating website. He was a programmer, developer, and he set up this. This kind of dating website.

Jim Banks:
And the kind of. The technology on the back end and the only male profile that was on it was his. So all the. All the women was coming in and registering. So he had to sort of pick them and then eventually rolled it out so other men could be on there. Right.

Benjamin Shrader:
That's either like genius or absolutely morally bankrupt. Either way. That is hysterical. But that is awesome.

Jim Banks:
So he. He. He stacked the deck in his favor. Right? In much the same way you solved the problem. You solved the problem. It's like the guy who created ebay, he sold it because his wife had a. I think it was like his girlfriend at the time had this kind of thing about pez dispensers. She wanted PEZ dispensers.

Jim Banks:
And he set ebay up on the back of being able to trade those with. With other people, people that had them to sell. He was able to buy them. And that's where ebay started. Again, really interesting kind of how this business.

Benjamin Shrader:
I love ebay. I have to say, I got some cool stuff on there. But yes, no, I would say the two problems that I really saw myself solving was in the nightlife. A lot of times people get into it to party. They get into it to have a good time. It is a service industry. You are there to provide a service. It is a business.

Benjamin Shrader:
And I always. I never drink when I'm working. I would. Don't do drugs, nothing like that. Never go after expanding my love life or things like that. I'm there to provide a service. I'm there to do a good job. The audience is the client.

Benjamin Shrader:
And bringing professionalism. Really, one of the big reasons that helped me in the beginning was I always wore a suit. I always. Or at least a sport code. And at first, I mean, I was 19, desperately trying to pop it around. And, you know that a lot. I needed all the legitimacy I could get, all the legitimacy I could get. But, you know, as things grew, I continued that on just because it was about bringing that class order out of chaos and legitimacy.

Benjamin Shrader:
And then the other was fraternities and sororities are some of my first clients. I'm not sure if there's an equivalent in the United Kingdom, but, you know, we have these Greek organizations. They call themselves Greek organizations. They have no relation to actual Greece. But basically, it's social clubs and a lot of them.

Jim Banks:
Animal House is one of my favorite movies of all time.

Benjamin Shrader:
Yes, yes. You know what? That is not far from the movie.

Jim Banks:
I know visited a friend who was in, in university in. I think he was in like Cincinnati or something like that. And I stayed in his frat house at. I think it was at Freshers week.

Benjamin Shrader:
God bless you.

Jim Banks:
And it was, and it was amazing. I mean it was an amazing kind of experience to be there, but I never joined myself.

Benjamin Shrader:
But I, I worked with them all.

Jim Banks:
Really eye opening and, and what was really interesting is most of the people that like I used to. Way back in the very, very early days of starting out doing kind of online marketing, I discovered that like if you, if you were running, if you wanted to get links to other sites. Right. So the whole ecosystem of SEO was built on the back of authority and trust. Right. And one, one of the biggest kind of trust factors was education sites. Right. So edus and.

Benjamin Shrader:
Oh yes.

Jim Banks:
And in fact.

Benjamin Shrader:
And the databases.

Jim Banks:
Yeah. So what happened is I used to approach people who were in frat houses who worked in the IT department at an edu, like a university and I would ask them if they can place a link to one of my client sites or one of my posts or something like that on their website.

Benjamin Shrader:
Genius.

Jim Banks:
In return for me basically dropping a couple of kegs of beer at the frat house and they were like, sure, we can do that. So that's what I used to do. I used to send eggs and beer to frat houses and, and I would get a link from an Edu site. So I won. They won.

Benjamin Shrader:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Win win. Yeah. You know, it's a win, win, win as the tide rises. As do all ships on a river of beer.

Jim Banks:
Exactly.

Benjamin Shrader:
But yeah, no, what I saw with them a lot and I guess one little tangent I will tell you once. Thank God this wasn't my event, but I had been invited to a fraternity event just because I worked so much with them. I did so many of their shows and. But mainly when they had more bringing in artists and this one they weren't bringing in an artist. So they had this jungle party, they called it. And I show up and I'm chatting with some of the people, Glad handing as I call it. And it's a bit of a bacchanal, it's a bit of a wild time. And then I like do a double take and I look and I see a giraffe.

Benjamin Shrader:
They brought a giraffe, like a live giraffe. And I Am like, where did you get the giraffe? Where? What? What? I mean, do you need a permit for that? What the heck is. Of course the entire thing gets shut down because they literally brought a giraffe from some company that had a, like nature preserve that they, I don't know, paid off or rented it. I mean, so that was hysterical. But no, I mean, Animal House, it is shockingly accurate.

Jim Banks:
Yeah.

Benjamin Shrader:
So yes, no, as you can imagine, working with the Greeks is very, very stressful sometimes. I love them, they're great clients, but I prefer my corporate clients. No offense to the Greeks. I love you, but I'm sure they would be the first to admit that they can be a bit stressful. So. Yes, no, a lot of the, A lot of the companies though in the nightlife industry will greatly overcharge these fraternities and sororities to the point where it's a little ridiculous because I mean, some of them have budgets that are, I mean, we're talking even at A and M where fraternities aren't big. 100,000, $200,000 a year party budget. That's a bit obscene.

Jim Banks:
Maybe it is. Yeah.

Benjamin Shrader:
But yeah, yeah, that's a nice chunk of change. And then you've got these companies coming in that will charge them just, I mean, we're talking 30, 40% above what is normal. And so I said, boy, I've met enough people, I've got enough of the connections with these different managers where I can book certain different people. I've got enough connections with sound people that I can get the equipment. I mean, I can do this and only charge them 20% more. And so it is a win, win. Or charge them 10% more and so that I still make money. They get, they don't have to spend as much money and so thus they have more money for those kegs of beer.

Jim Banks:
Yeah, I mean it's like way, way back when I was in my 20s, so hundreds of years ago it, I used to be a sort of part time dj. So my brother was the main DJ at this particular bar.

Benjamin Shrader:
Oh, that's great. That's great.

Jim Banks:
And from time to time he would get private gigs to go out and sort of do, do a party or a wedding or something like that. So he would ask me to fully fill in for him at the club. Right. So I used to just go along and back in the day it was carrying big boxes of records and big heavy speeches, all that sort of stuff. I, I look at DJs now, I'm thinking they get to Fly around on private jets and they just take CDJs. Yeah, they just, they literally take like a MacBook Pro, stick it on, press play, Done. Put a headphones on, put some smoke up. Done.

Jim Banks:
Finished. But, but what it, what it really highlighted to me in that sort of, I, I was the person that stood between the people in the room having a great time or not not having a great time.

Benjamin Shrader:
Yes.

Jim Banks:
But also I had to manage things in such a way, I mean, I had to make sure that the people who were basically paying for me to be there to kind of like put on this entertainment that from time to time I would bring things down to enable people to flee the dance floor and go to the bar and spend money on drink. Otherwise, the fact that.

Benjamin Shrader:
You were and probably are a 10 times better DJ than so many, because a lot of people don't understand that you have to be able to feel the crowd and then you have to remember that you're literally, you're part of a business operation.

Jim Banks:
Yeah. So I, so I know, I know the people that were there were ultimately the people that I'm looking after, but at the same time, I needed to make sure I looked after the paymaster who was the person 100, because if he turned around and said, it's a great night, everyone was there, had a great time, but we, we took 10 of what we would normally take if we just drink all night rather than having a dj, and then that's not going to work. So it's important to, like I said, bring things down and then as soon as they, you think, right, they've had enough time to refresh, recharge, go to the toilet, maybe have a cigarette or whatever, you bring it back up, play another song that's a banger, you get them straight back on the floor.

Benjamin Shrader:
It's all, it's all about the wave.

Jim Banks:
Yeah.

Benjamin Shrader:
So you have the high point, the low point. The high point. The low point. Yeah, yeah.

Jim Banks:
No, I mean, at the end, at the end of the evening, most DJs.

Benjamin Shrader:
Don'T understand that fundamental concept.

Jim Banks:
And at the end of the Evening, the last 15, 20 minutes of the evening, what I used to do, I called it the erection section, where I would basically play slow songs to enable the people that were looking to maybe hook up with somebody to go and ask them to dance and do a slow dance and everything else.

Benjamin Shrader:
And you're, you are, you're a man of the people. So I'm sure that many gentlemen appreciated your efforts.

Jim Banks:
But, but, but I guess probably like you, I, I had some Challenges at school. I mean, like, I used to read my school reports and they would say, I've seen very little of Jim and even less of his work. And I didn't really leave school.

Benjamin Shrader:
Terrible.

Jim Banks:
I didn't leave school with very many qualifications. But I've done okay since then. And I think I've done it in spite of my education, not because of. And I think, I think it's, it's quite interesting to, to your point. I see young, really well educated people now and they lack the, the kind of personal skills to be able to communicate to people and talk to people and have the confidence to go up and shake somebody's hand that you don't know. And if you're in a crowded room of strangers. Right. Having the confidence to just go over there and hey, I'm Jim, it's nice to meet you and shake hands with people and what do you do and, and what have you.

Jim Banks:
Because I think, again, I think those are the skills, the soft skills that I think really help people get on in, in life. Right. I think you can have as much education as you like.

Benjamin Shrader:
But I completely, completely agree. I completely. I mean, I would say that the only reason that my business has had any success at all is because I can do exactly what you're talking about. That you guys walk into a room and I say, okay, who do I need to shake hands with? Who do I need to talk to? Who do I need to. Who are the power players or influencers in this community and how do I connect with them so that we may both mutually benefit.

Jim Banks:
Yeah.

Benjamin Shrader:
And you know that. But that stems from having that dyslexia of. That there was no better advocate for myself than me. And it was embarrassing a lot. It was so often humiliating. I really was. Did not want to speak up for myself, but I had to or I failed the test or I would not do this. Would not be able to do this thing.

Benjamin Shrader:
Yes. No, the, the value of forging those interpersonal skills of just how to have a conversation, how to go forth and introduce yourself to people and then always have an elevator pitch in your mind of whatever thing you're working on. Just a quick summary. Boom, boom, boom. I do X and such.

Jim Banks:
Yeah.

Benjamin Shrader:
And yeah, no, it is. That skill is something that should be taught. I was blessed at A and M. I went there for three years, then I had a brain tumor and then I went. I finished up at utsa to talk.

Jim Banks:
To just before you move on to kind of the, the next bit. Yes, yes, talk to us a little bit. About that, like the brain tuber. Because again, when I read that, that was probably the thing that jumped out at me the most. I'm like, holy crap, that's. You've had so many, so many things. Adversity to deal with.

Benjamin Shrader:
Forgive me. I can kind of show you, but I. Wow. A huge scar on the back of my head. 61. Forgive me for being out of frame for a moment. 61 stitches. So basically I had 2% hearing loss in my right ear.

Benjamin Shrader:
Only 2% and a little bit of pressure like I was on a plane, but just very minor, very minor. I had been nauseous for years, but I did not know that that was a side effect. I'm thinking, okay, I have all of these events, I am around loud music all the time. What a tragedy that I probably do have some hearing damage. That's what I'm thinking.

Jim Banks:
Yeah.

Benjamin Shrader:
So I get some earplugs, I start wearing earplugs very religiously. And then I'm like, you know what, I should get this checked out. Something doesn't, it just doesn't feel right. Yeah, no, no headaches, nothing like that. Go to the doctor. They look in my ears, then they give me a CT scan. They're like, your bones look a little weird, but you probably grew that way. You're probably okay, but we should probably get you an MRI just to make sure.

Benjamin Shrader:
I get an mri. And then so I had just finished this one big concert and then we had one more coming up, like very soon after. So I've been working like crazy. I get a call from my parents at 10pm and I'm very close. My. My family are incredible, incredible people. But, you know, it was just, it was unexpected. I pick up, I'm like, oh, hey guys, how you doing? And they're like, the hospital called us and they said, just come in tomorrow.

Benjamin Shrader:
That they called us because we're your emergency contact. Just come in and hey, that's in the States, let me tell you. The hospital calling you to just come in. I mean, I didn't sleep awake that night. I mean, that is, that is horrible news. Off the bat, something's grievously wrong. I go into the hospital, doctor sits me down and I arrive and they like, take me back right away. Doctor sits me down, says, okay, are you ready? I said, let's do this.

Benjamin Shrader:
I forget exactly what I said. Like, I said something like, let's dance, let's do this. I know, I know. And then he said, you have a golf ball sized brain tumor. Something called an Acoustic neuroma growing off your hearing nerve and pushing up against your brain stem. If you do not get it removed, you will be dead within one to two years of a stroke. And I'm 23.

Jim Banks:
Wow.

Benjamin Shrader:
At the time I was.

Jim Banks:
Yes.

Benjamin Shrader:
Three years ago now. And I, I, I just laughed. That was my very first reaction. I just laughed.

Jim Banks:
Some people, I was like, can I have a second opinion? I kind of want another. Yeah.

Benjamin Shrader:
Yeah. And he showed, I mean, he showed the MRI thing to me on the screen and there was this massive white just glob right next to pushing just like literally indenting into my brain stem. And he said, yeah. And I told me I was gonna have to get it out and I just said, alrighty. There's a joke, or not even really a joke, a little saying that I, I say a lot and it's a reference to World War I. I say sometimes the whistle blows and you just gotta go over the trench. Like it's time to go. You gotta do something.

Benjamin Shrader:
Yeah. Something has to be done. You don't have a choice and it stinks, but you gotta do it.

Jim Banks:
Yeah.

Benjamin Shrader:
And I went to a couple hospitals and then eventually I was very lucky I was able to have it removed at MD Anderson as they're one of the best, if not the best in the world, specializing in these things. That's 12 hour surgery team of three doctors to extract and I quote, a bloody fibrous tumor.

Jim Banks:
Wow.

Benjamin Shrader:
Yeah, luckily. And the one good thing too is that it was not brain matter itself. So it was myelom sheath, it was nerve coding. And that my little sheath just grew into this glob basically of this mass. But the sad thing, your balance, your facial and your hearing nerve are all wrapped together in your ear canal. My balance nerve was partially destroyed. My hearing nerve was mostly intact. However, the tumor was mostly coming from the hearing nerve and was basically one with it.

Jim Banks:
Yeah.

Benjamin Shrader:
But my, thank God they were able to save my facial nerve, otherwise it would look like I had had a stroke.

Jim Banks:
Yeah.

Benjamin Shrader:
But my lost my balance nerve. It was already so badly damaged they couldn't save it. So I had to learn how to walk again. And that was because when you lose a balance nerve, you stand up, boom, you'll just fall over, you can't tell where your head is. It's the strangest feeling, but I got a second one. So, you know.

Jim Banks:
But I take all these things for granted, don't we? We take the getting up and walking around and whatever else is completely for granted.

Benjamin Shrader:
Who thinks that a little, a little, a Literal, like hair. A little hair in your ear allows you to walk. And if you lose that, you're just going to be falling everywhere. That is insane.

Jim Banks:
Yeah.

Benjamin Shrader:
And so. And I also lost the hearing nerve in that ear, so I'm completely deaf in that ear. I, I don't have zero connection to the brain, but I still wear an earplug just in case one day I got all the parts still.

Jim Banks:
Yeah.

Benjamin Shrader:
But I have no connection to the brain. So they never reconnected. But no, that it was.

Jim Banks:
Maybe technology will kind of like find a solution. Right.

Benjamin Shrader:
I have no doubt that one day nerves like that will be printed from your own selves and then something inserted back in. So, you know, hey, we might as well keep everything good so that just in case. But you had to get Gamma Night.

Jim Banks:
So in the, in the US you have Dancing with the Stars. In the UK we have a program called Strictly Come Dancing. And there was a girl a couple of years ago who won it and she was completely deaf and she won this dancing competition because she could hear the music through the vibrations, through her body.

Benjamin Shrader:
Vibrations. Yeah.

Jim Banks:
Again, I was like blown away with it. And she became such a, kind of a great evangelist for the sort of signing and deaf people. And, and it's really almost put it on the map. I mean, it was always on the map, but I think it's really just cemented its place in terms of how important it is to recognize that yes, it's a, an impairment, but it's not a disability. It's not. It doesn't prevent people from doing things that other able bodied people. I'm putting everything in inverted comments, but able bodied people, right?

Benjamin Shrader:
No, I completely agree. And it's just about managing it. And we all have, as the saying goes, like across the bear. Like we all have difficulties, all of us, and so we just have to try to manage them and get around them and level that playing field. So I don't wear a hearing aid, a cross hearing aid, one that would transfer the sound to the other ear because honestly, it was weird to me and like clogged my good ear. So if I'm in a meeting or something, I literally will just sit so that I have people on my left side.

Jim Banks:
Yeah.

Benjamin Shrader:
And I will tell people. And I'm very, I'm a firm believer. You gotta be very open about these things. I'm very open with my dyslexia. I'm very open with the fact I'm half deaf. So I'm like, yeah, no, I can't read that. Sit over here so that I can hear you. But no, I know, of course I'm not that difficult about it, but.

Benjamin Shrader:
And most people too, if you ask for help, most people are so happy to help, they feel good about themselves. I mean, many times it's funny, I will be. Let's say I'm going on a date and if I know somebody relatively well or I've been on a few dates with them, I won't go through the whole process of busting out ChatGPT to calculate the tip, right? I'll just say, oh, you know what, what's the right tip? Or something like that. Just because honestly, the reading, the math, there's a little, it's a little painful. I don't know how quite how to describe it, but that's how I've come to. It's. It almost hurts a little bit, your brain, at least for me. But yeah, no, it's just another obstacle to overcome and everything can be overcome with some determination and a smile.

Benjamin Shrader:
Be the happy warrior and you can win in the end.

Jim Banks:
And ultimately you're not looking for sympathy. It's just a recognition of the fact that it exists. And people just have to be a little bit more accommodating because of it. Which I think, as you say, I think virtually everyone will be absolutely more than accommodating to.

Benjamin Shrader:
Oh yeah, it's amazing. People are, people are overall very, very nice. Now when I was young with the dyslexia, there was, there were a good number of people that didn't believe in it and that was a tragedy. And that was, I think that was the last, that was the last remnants of, oh, it's just a dumb kid. Oh, you're not working hard enough. But today it's very well accepted.

Jim Banks:
You know when you log into applications, like you put an additional layer of security and you do the two factor authentication, six digit numbers, right? I've got so many two factor authentication providers and every time I look at the number I'm thinking they're screwing with me. They just put that number in there. I always type it wrong the first time. I'm always like getting the sixes and eights around.

Benjamin Shrader:
You don't have an app up for you?

Jim Banks:
I mean, on my phone sometimes. Yeah, no, I'm on Android. Oh, no, I know on Apple. I know on Apple when you get.

Benjamin Shrader:
The text, it pops up and you can auto fill it.

Jim Banks:
Yeah, but, but, but, but for me.

Benjamin Shrader:
Tim, Apple's calling you home.

Jim Banks:
The last time I had an Apple was Apple. I had an iPhone4 and in a drawer I got an iPhone7 that used to be my wife's and she's still on iPhones but I just refused to go back to them even though I, I.

Benjamin Shrader:
There are some really neat things that Androids can do some really neat things and they are the ones that Apple made the tech and then Android really just was able to take it in a thousand different directions and do. My friend has this folding phone, I mean he unfolds it like origami and then is able to use it and it's got screens all over it.

Jim Banks:
Yeah, my son in law has one, I think it's called an honor. And he basically open it up and it and it becomes like a, almost like a tablet that's decent quality.

Benjamin Shrader:
Apple's got to step up the shame. Honestly.

Jim Banks:
Just a slightly thicker phone than you would normally have but it's got all that technology built into it.

Benjamin Shrader:
With seven cameras now and this chip we are going to just have the best phone ever. No. Yeah.

Jim Banks:
The stupid thing is most people have seven cameras on their phone but all the lenses are covered in grease from their fingerprints because they've been handling the phone the whole time and they never stop to go I'm just going to clean the lenses before I do something.

Benjamin Shrader:
If, if I'm ever out and about with the family and I say oh hey can you guys take a picture of me really quick or something like that. My father will take the phone and he will look at. Oh my God, man, this is disgusting. Like I get yourself smudged and everything. So no, yeah, you got boy, yeah lens that didn't grease. That is an excellent idea.

Jim Banks:
So we're some way into the conversation and we haven't really talked about marketing and this is really all about digital marketing stories.

Benjamin Shrader:
No, no, it's all good marketing.

Jim Banks:
I've really enjoyed the conversation thus far. But I'm curious because obviously on your, your bio you said that virtually all of your success has come on the back of social media. And I again I use social media but I typically buy ads on Facebook and wherever else. I'm curious because you know what, what, what do you think are the sort of secrets to your success with regards to social media for the purposes of.

Benjamin Shrader:
Your business, geographic representation and geographic targeting. So a lot of times on social media we're going to target a group of people and for a service. So we're going to say, let's say men 25 to 30 we're looking for, that's our target audience. What was lucky for me was that getting My start in College Station and then now operating a business that really exclusively operates in Texas and offers an in person service. I am able to build an audience here in Texas of people from the ages of 21 to let's say 45 or 18 to 45. That audience is a geographically based audience. So I'm able to directly put ads to them. I can target a city.

Benjamin Shrader:
I'm able to say okay, I have this event here, I'm out and get your tickets here. So that the power of that. And especially in the beginning, especially in the beginning where I was able to translate social media followers to people actually showing up to a concert, which is not something that is always standard. Then also I would do a lot of targeting of micro influencers in the community. So fraternity, sorority president, football players, baseball players, everybody gets a free VIP ticket. That's two VIP free. Two free VIP tickets there. Two free VIP tickets there.

Benjamin Shrader:
Boom, boom, boom. I have basically gotten all these people who have communities that look to that as leaders now. They're like, oh, I might as well go to the event. Then you have a hundred other people part of this organization who then have in their head oh, I might as well go to this event. I also used posters a good bit and more so taking pictures of the posters being out and about. We make really cool posters and then we put them up and then we take pictures of it. Not so much even tempting people to look at the poster in real life but.

Jim Banks:
But you don't want it to be like a sort of professional poster photo. It's like very.

Benjamin Shrader:
You're gonna laugh. We would make them like eastern block propaganda posters. Put a bunch up and red. Red and just gritty but like really, really neat. We the gentleman that designed them was really did a great job. But that really is the case. So you're targeting those micro influencers because regular influencers. It doesn't do anything like.

Benjamin Shrader:
Especially not in the music industry where it's. You don't. Their followers, I mean probably 90% of them are fake sometimes.

Jim Banks:
Yeah.

Benjamin Shrader:
And the rest of the time the people don't trust them.

Jim Banks:
And they're only. Those influences are really interested in what's in it for them rather than what's in it for the people that they're recommending. Whatever it is to.

Benjamin Shrader:
Exactly.

Jim Banks:
Kind of like you pay. There's a crisis of 5 grand, 10 grand. That's insane to put a post out on there to their followers. And it's 95% of their followers is probably not in my demographic locally to go To Texas. So that puts those people out. Right. By the time you drill into it and get down to the sort of specific nitty gritty of who's it actually in. In.

Jim Banks:
In market, in location, it's a much, much smaller number. Right. As you say, probably much better to find micro influencers and people who are local to where you are that can, as you say, promote it in a guerrilla fashion to then, yes, talk about it in a way that kind of the word spreads without. I've always said you just need to light the paper and like stand back and let it run. You know, I like the sound of that.

Benjamin Shrader:
I love me so. I love me. Let's light this candle. I always say that. Yes. No, really, there is a crisis of trust and a crisis of authenticity and a lot of influencers. The old way of influencers being is dying. You can't, you can't be so unrelatable.

Benjamin Shrader:
I often joke with people that I am human unrelatable, just like I was designed to be. And I'm just an AI over here. No, no. But really getting those. So we're talking people with really like 5,000 followers around there. Five, sometimes even less. Who are trusted in their community, who are well liked. And that can be difficult to identify sometimes.

Benjamin Shrader:
But really it's doable. It's doable just by, oh, looking through social media, figuring things out. You just look at a location, you look at who's tagged or who. Who's been there, and then you can just DM them reach out. And myself, I also put a lot of time and effort into building up a good following myself because really the business and me have always been synonymous. One in the same is that, yeah, I am the representative of God Bless rapper had once come up with the name and I used it. But I wanted you to know that I didn't come up with this because I am not that arrogant of the Schrader Nation. It's my last name.

Jim Banks:
Nice.

Benjamin Shrader:
S H R A D E R. My father would say it's sheep without the C, but I guess now. Oh, yeah, it's good. I. I'm glad. That joke, sometimes it kills it, kills it. And then other times people look at me.

Jim Banks:
What.

Benjamin Shrader:
So no, I, I'm glad.

Jim Banks:
But I, I always say to people, half of the cool things that are said about me are ones that I started the. I started it to begin with. I put it out there and other people have just amplified it.

Benjamin Shrader:
Amen. I mean, I think I have about 50, 50k something. But what's powerful about that is, that, that's not people from all over.

Jim Banks:
Yeah. That's Texas local.

Benjamin Shrader:
And that's why. And because, because of that and because of the personal based industry that the nightlife is, I seriously doubt that I will ever expand beyond Texas. The pie is massive.

Jim Banks:
Yeah.

Benjamin Shrader:
And there is, there are the two big companies out here. We've done stuff with both of them. Night culture and C3. C3 is the biggest one here in the state and I, Coach, is the second biggest one. I, we've done events and marketing campaigns with the iHeart people and it's always very.

Jim Banks:
Some people get too greedy. They go, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna expand and go elsewhere or go, go nationwide. And they just end up diluting the value of what it is that they do locally.

Benjamin Shrader:
Because if I'm going, if I'm going to Florida, I'm, if I'm brought on, on an advising role, sure, I can definitely help. But if you're wanting me to organize your event and you're wanting me to sell your tickets, I will not have the same ability to utilize the methods I do out here, which are relatively, relatively different simply because of this special situation that spent years building up. Then if I go to Florida, I'm going to need to pay for ads. I'm going to need to do Instagram, Facebook ads. I'm going to make sure that. What type of email list do we have out here? What type of phone number list do we have out here? Are we going to be able to do a text blast?

Jim Banks:
Are we going to be able to do anything? Start. Right, you're going from effectively zero.

Benjamin Shrader:
Yeah.

Jim Banks:
Presence in Florida and having to begin from zero and work your way up and the only 50,000 elsewhere. Texas is no, no value to you. Right? I mean, yes, it might make people go, he's got 50,000 followers, so he must be worth following. But you start from zero and go again. And, and also at that point in time you're then ignoring what's going on in Texas. Right. So you can't really be in two places at the same time. I mean, I had that.

Jim Banks:
I sold a business in 2006 and I was trying to be in three places at the same time. I had an office in the uk, an office in Hong Kong and I had a problem, a problem office in Raleigh, North Carolina. I was trying to be in three places at the same time and obviously couldn't. So I ended up like having to go, having to choose which one was the bigger priority. Right. So ultimately it wasn't my choice because I'd sold my company and I was at the beck and call of the people who had bought the company to put out the fire in North Carolina at the detriment of my office in Hong Kong and at the detriment of my office in the uk. But that was the kind of choice.

Benjamin Shrader:
A real difficulty that I have had with scalability is that when I send forth I have two people that are full time work for me and then we have a good number of contractors when I have sent them forth to events in my name and in my stead, the owner, the manager will be like where the bleep has been. And so that has been a difficulty of that because. And this is one downside of the business being so tied to me that it is. I am the brand of the. I am synonymous with the business and it's showing.

Jim Banks:
I, I work in. I go to an affiliate event in Vegas every January, February called Affiliate.

Benjamin Shrader:
Which one?

Jim Banks:
Shoot Affiliate something and might have been there.

Benjamin Shrader:
No, was it. I'm thinking video ranking Academy. Different, different conference, the same time period.

Jim Banks:
So there's about 6000 people go and they have something called a meat market. Small table, two people. That's what it started at. Small people, small table, two people. Now you've got people with big booths and everything else and then they have an actual proper exhibition on the second and third day. But what you tend to find is that there's a lot of. I used to walk the floor because I had clients that ran events and I would like basically run all the sort of backend ads for them and that sort of thing. What I found was that I'd walk the floor and I would talk to some of the people who were exhibiting and I'm like so how's it going? And they said oh everyone that's here, we know them, right? So there's.

Jim Banks:
Nobody knew that we're meeting. And I said so why are you here then? And they said if we're not here, if we don't exhibit then everyone will assume that there's something wrong, that we're in trouble.

Benjamin Shrader:
You have to show the flag.

Jim Banks:
And it's like you think show the flag.

Benjamin Shrader:
Yeah.

Jim Banks:
So if you're the event organizer, you've taken a booking for somebody that really doesn't necessarily want to be there but they, they know they have to be there and. But at the same time I think if you can get the ancillary. So again I, I always say take people along, take their best sort of affiliates and networks out for dinners and lunches and entertain them, take them to clubs, bottle service, whatever it might be to make them feel special, to make them want to commit to spend more money with you. I mean, I used to. To run an affiliate network and I had different people and I used to say, where do you want to go? Do you want to go do clubs and shows or whatever? They just choose whatever they want to do.

Benjamin Shrader:
Gift here will go so far. Whenever I travel, I will get a good number of small gifts. When I was in Scotland, I got a bunch of quakes. The little. The communal cup. Yeah, just little ones at the shop. And to my best clients and my lawyer. My best clients.

Benjamin Shrader:
My lawyer is also a good friend of mine, but I gave them quicks and I was like, hey, oh, it's a sign of friendship and family thing. Don't let it touch the table. You got to finish the whiskey before. And that small little act really goes a long way.

Jim Banks:
It's like every. Every time I go to the States, every time they see it, I always put like a. Probably half a suitcase full of basically gifts from the uk. So I always go with like shortbread from Harrods and tea bags from Harrods in a. In a tin. And I just give them out as just gifts to people that I know and everything else. And they love it. They love the fact that, like, I've even given cocktail waitresses in the Chandelier bar in Vegas, right? There's this girl saying, oh, I love.

Jim Banks:
I love a cup of tea and I love all this kind of posh English stuff. So I remembered that she did.

Benjamin Shrader:
Of course, the British man is able to just pull out the tea.

Jim Banks:
So I took a box of shortbread and tea bags and she was like, wow, this is amazing. Because again, she looked after me, so I wanted to look after her, right? I could, obviously.

Benjamin Shrader:
Are you a fan of Yorkshire tea?

Jim Banks:
No, I'm not actually. Really? I'm not a fan of Yorkshire tea. I like Marks and Spencer's extra strong tea bags. That's kind of my. My tea bag of choice.

Benjamin Shrader:
I'd say I'm an Earl Grey, English breakfast type of guy myself.

Jim Banks:
And of course, there's a whole kind of battle of to put the milk in first or after. And how long did you leave the tea?

Benjamin Shrader:
I love the milk thing. You guys. You guys really hit the nail on the head with the milk thing. The London fog, as we call it in the States.

Jim Banks:
But when I. When I sit with American friends right in somewhere and they go, I'll have A hot tea. It's. God, it's tea. It's not hot tea. It's just tea.

Benjamin Shrader:
Oh, you guys are missing out on the iced tea, I gotta say. We gotta broaden the horizons.

Jim Banks:
I've tried it. I've tried ice. Yeah.

Benjamin Shrader:
But I drink a lot of iced tea, but unsweet.

Jim Banks:
Yeah.

Benjamin Shrader:
So there's two schools of thought. There's the Dump a gallon of sugar in there with very American of us, But. Or unsweet. But. Yeah. No, it. It's delicious, but. No, I love tea.

Benjamin Shrader:
It's good copy. Old. Let's just say my stomach gets angry.

Jim Banks:
So. Yeah. So I lost my train of thought in terms of where we were.

Benjamin Shrader:
Oh, my apologies. I completely derailed. You were saying you were. You were given a tea bag to someone who.

Jim Banks:
And that's the sort of thing that they will remember that I will kind of like I'm recognizing. I mean, yes, whenever they would serve me drinks and everything, I would always tip well, because that's kind of what you do.

Benjamin Shrader:
Yeah. But.

Jim Banks:
But at the same time, like, when I would go, like, the next time I would go, I would see the person, they'd come up, give me a big hug and everything, and people going. They didn't come up and give me a hug when I ordered drinks, but it's like, I've looked after them. So I think when you do that, then people will remember it and recognize.

Benjamin Shrader:
A lot of times in these settings. In these settings, too, people don't even need to know your name, but if they do, that's great. But they don't need to. They just need to recognize your face.

Jim Banks:
Yeah.

Benjamin Shrader:
They just need to say, oh, I know that guy. He was really nice to me.

Jim Banks:
And, like, there was a. There was a lovely cocktail waitress that. I think she was from Somalia or something like that. Been living in the US for forever. And I. Last time I'd seen her was, I think, just before COVID Right. So probably January 2020.

Benjamin Shrader:
And.

Jim Banks:
And I didn't go. I think. I think I missed 21 because we couldn't go because we weren't allowed to go. There was this kind of restriction. So I didn't go there. And I think I missed 22 as well. So the next time I went was in 2023. So when I saw her in 2019.

Jim Banks:
Right. She was pregnant, and she was walking around with a tray, getting water in her drinks. When I went again in 2023, she was pregnant. I'm like, that's either the longest pregnancy in the world. So I remembered that she was pregnant and she was blown away. The fact that I even remembered, right, that's amazing that she was pregnant from the last time. And she got, she went and got her phone, brought it out, showed me the pictures of the baby. Oh, it's so cute.

Jim Banks:
Lovely. But I think a lot of people will treat that, that server as a server. I treat her as a human, and then that way she treats me as a human.

Benjamin Shrader:
I judge people so hard on how they treat a server or the person that they're checking out with at the grocery store because I. All my life takes no effort that it takes no effort to split a little niceness like just to be decent. And also too, it's good practice. I, for years I would practice on elevators, just making small talk. I would practice with waiters and waitresses. I would practice with the cashier. That it's good practice. And also too, it's just the nice thing to do to spread a little bit of sprinkle of joy in what can be a pretty gray world.

Jim Banks:
I'm going to share. I'm going to share one of my trade secrets with you. Can I share with one of my trade trade secrets with you? So every time I go to, To Vegas, right, You go up in the elevator and it's always full of people. There's always like loads and loads of people, right? And usually most people don't want to look at anyone. They try and look at the floor and look at the ceiling and they look at their phone and whatever else, right? And I always go into the elevator, the door shut, right? And I always turn around and face everyone and I go, now you're probably wondering why I've called this meeting. And everyone just bursts out laughing. And then after that, everyone starts talking to each other. And you're breaking the ice, right? It just breaks the ice.

Jim Banks:
And it takes the.

Benjamin Shrader:
I know you can say, I'll split the pair with you. Is one that I've used before. Yeah, no, that is, you know, and you can vary.

Jim Banks:
I, I sometimes will throw. Welcome to the first. The, the kind of. The inaugural meeting of the Claustrophobic Society of.

Benjamin Shrader:
That's funny, right?

Jim Banks:
Because again, some people are claustrophobic.

Benjamin Shrader:
Why have I called now? You're probably all wondering why I've called this meeting. That's great.

Jim Banks:
Anyway, any of my friends has ever been in the lift with me. They know every time, they know it's coming, I'm doing.

Benjamin Shrader:
They know it's coming, I'm doing it.

Jim Banks:
Who I'm with, with my wife. She Hates me doing it, but I'm like, I'm doing it.

Benjamin Shrader:
That is great. Yeah. No, I, I think one of the biggest things that I. That's one of the biggest things that I'll judge people on is how they treat people that are technically below them. They're not saying that they are but like in a social hierarchy because I remember how people mocked me, how people left were looked at me as just that dumb dyslexic kid. And how would they treat me if I was on the bottom again? Badly. And so if I see someone be rude to a server or things like that, I, I mean that is the biggest red flag to me in business because when everything goes bad, what are we going to work together to solve the problem or are they going to turn on me? And so that it's that. And if someone ever cheats in a gang, if you're ever like golfing or.

Benjamin Shrader:
I'm terrible, terrible at golf, but I. The look is nice. So you get a cigar, you go around the little car, you drink iced tea and I know, I'm sorry much as we butchered the queen's English. But you, you go to these things and. But if you ever someone ever cheats in a game, they will cheat in business especially because it is a, it is a game.

Jim Banks:
Any person that cheats themselves. That's it.

Benjamin Shrader:
Yeah. It is not about any. If someone gets angry at losing. I know that that is something that also too I have noticed because if I play a board game or even a sports game amongst friends, I am not there to win. I am actually there relatively much to have a good time and to make sure everyone has fun. That's why I'm there is to be much as you in the elevator. The facilitator is that that is the role that I play. And so yes, we want to win, we try as hard as we can.

Benjamin Shrader:
But if we don't, we take joy in our other friends success because their success by the fact that they are our friends elevates us as well.

Jim Banks:
And it's difficult. Like I've got grandchildren and like when you're playing games with them, right. They always want to win. Right. And I'm like, oh yeah, sometimes you don't win. Right. And you have to accept you don't win. And that's that again that's part of the education process.

Jim Banks:
Learning, learning about life and that sometimes.

Benjamin Shrader:
My father and I would play many military board games when I was young. I know it's strange but I. That was. We really bonded over Military history and played risk sometimes. But boy these ones that we, I mean that they had long German names and like the rule books were like this deck and you're moving the little pieces and cardboard dies across the battlefield. I think one that we did a lot was these two World War I, Battle of the Bulge and then, and then some Roman ones. So we had a good time with them. But he would crush me sometimes.

Benjamin Shrader:
Other times he would, I think he would let me win of course to inspire me or I would get super close.

Jim Banks:
He would never tell you he'd let you win. That's the difference. I think sometimes the, the again you need to help encourage your. Yes, your the right grandchildren to learn and, and learn to compete.

Benjamin Shrader:
And yeah, sometimes you lose but you don't give up, you don't quit, go down fighting and you do the best that you can.

Jim Banks:
It's like when I was at school we had, if we had a race at school, right. If you won the race, you got given a pendant and they got a first, second and third and you got to stand on the top step as the winner and then the person.

Benjamin Shrader:
Ridiculous that everyone gets a trophy. There are winners and losers.

Jim Banks:
Yeah. And I remember going into somebody's house and they, they took me up to one of the kids rooms and showed me around. I'm like, wow, is your kid like an Olympic athlete or something? No, it's really not. I mean it's just.

Benjamin Shrader:
That is a disservice. That is a disservice to everyone.

Jim Banks:
It's not helping them to set them out for life.

Benjamin Shrader:
Merit is all that matters. I do not care about anything else other than the job that somebody does.

Jim Banks:
Yeah.

Benjamin Shrader:
And yeah. No as telling everybody that they're always going to win a gold star is destructive for a society because I mean I have weaknesses. I have weaknesses that if you put me against others, reading your spelling competition, I will lose. But you put me on a debate stage or you put me on something like that and I can dominate. And the fact that I am able to admit that, understand that, find people who possess the skills I do not. But I possess skills they do not that I work with them and then we succeed together. Everybody wins.

Jim Banks:
That is so good. And I'm the same. I, I know my limitations. I know what I can do.

Benjamin Shrader:
If I can get a gold star every time, then why would I work with anybody?

Jim Banks:
I know what I can't do. And the ones, the things that I can't do, I enlist the help of other people to help provide it. If it's important.

Benjamin Shrader:
You have to, you have to delegate. You have to delegate and yeah, yeah you really do. And it's critically important that you find, find good people and let them do their job. Yeah, I, it's something been working on a lot lately. Was one organization that I've done a lot of work with. They had asked me to join their board and then help build it out. And I was focused on finding people who were good at their job and letting them do it. So I searched and I said okay, you're really good.

Benjamin Shrader:
I want you to do this and you have complete autonomy as long as things are going right. Like you, you do wit and I will trust you. And so yeah, find good people and let them go forth.

Jim Banks:
The only thing I add to that, I mean that's exactly how I treat things as well. But having seen sometimes the, the, the implications of that autonomy really catching you out. Right. I always say look, we have, we have a process for doing certain things right. And these, these, these are the kind of guardrails of what's acceptable within with anything within that is fair game. If you straight outside of that. If you straight outside of that. Right.

Jim Banks:
Because again, I mean I found myself on the hook sometimes where I've had members of my team that have really screwed up in an ad campaign and we've spent a ton of money that we really weren't authorized to spend. Was like not, not tracked properly so we couldn't see conversions. So we had no idea what was going on.

Benjamin Shrader:
That's a nightmare.

Jim Banks:
And it's kind of like you either forced a client to try and pay you and they, they hate you for it and they just don't do it or you suck it up. Pay the, pay their bill, right. Say yes, that's all on us. Change the process, make sure it doesn't happen again. I had to happen a couple of times so I had to rewrite my sort of state SOPS to ensure that that sort of thing you might, you.

Benjamin Shrader:
Might have saved me a lot of trouble with your wisdom. I really. It's funny you think things are going to be self explanatory, but they probably.

Jim Banks:
Aren'T always as much as autonomy is great. I'm. Again I'm, I'm a huge fan of empowerment and autonomy and I don't possess for one second all of the right answers. But at the same time there are some limitations as to where people can operate with it. And if they stray off the reservation knowing where they should stay, then the.

Benjamin Shrader:
Biggest thing that I had set out with them was that each person had their assigned tasks. So we've got our social, social media, you've got the in person events that we are not, you're not going to go into somebody else's domain but you're going to work with, let's say the social media person has to work with the live event person but you're not going to cross over and, and basically get into their territory. But no, I, I think that, yeah, making it very clear. Don't, don't go crazy. Don't go crazy. Don't say crazy things. Don't do crazy things.

Jim Banks:
And as much as the other thing I find with, with events, events themselves, right. A lot of people that work for the event company, they assume that when the event's not on, they're not like on the clock and they're not accountable. But again, I've seen.

Benjamin Shrader:
That is so ridiculous.

Jim Banks:
I've seen situations where there are people really letting themselves down and letting the company down because people know they work for the company and they're doing things that they really ought not to be doing, whether it's harassing somebody else or whatever. And you think, just don't be that person. So quite often I've gone over and said, look, just discreetly, you may just want to dial it back a bit.

Benjamin Shrader:
And I mean I've got a whole little, it's just a single page sheet of almost rules for. We'll have sometimes these. I mean they're like not really an intern but like a paid intern where it's someone who's going to be helping to manage things on the ground. And I have a whole basically list of rules. Don't drink, don't do drugs, don't go after anybody. Love interests, don't get political, don't. All these different things just. I have it somewhere here.

Jim Banks:
I think that stuff should be common sense. You shouldn't have to say.

Benjamin Shrader:
But it is not. It is not. Yeah. No. Oh my. I have had, I have had people where you get a hint of something from somebody, you feel, you're feeling a person out and you're like, okay, yeah, yeah, we, we agree politically or we, we agree on this type of thing, but we're not going to go into it. This is a business setting and some.

Jim Banks:
Of the events I go to, they have a blacklist of people that they weren't allowed to go to the events in the future because of the way they behaved in previous events. And they have a code of conduct. So it's like, don't do this don't do this. Don't do this. Even if it's not even the event organizer staff, it's any attendee of the event. Because ultimately in a lot of cases they're walking around wherever they happen to be with lanyards on with the name of the kind of the event organizer and their name.

Benjamin Shrader:
Yeah.

Jim Banks:
Making a computer.

Benjamin Shrader:
The crazies. Yeah, the crazies. And that's just a broad brush term for. I use really for the people that. I mean, I've had it at events where people will act completely inappropriately or.

Jim Banks:
And it's very tempting. You kind of like again, let's say you're married, couple of kids at home, and you've got a free pass to go out to Vegas and party. Right. And. And people get sometimes a little bit too carried away with that. And. And it really bites.

Benjamin Shrader:
What happens in Vegas does not stay in Vegas.

Jim Banks:
Up in social media and people talk about you. Right. For all the wrong reasons and forever. I used to make sure. Right again. I. I've always maintained a kind of watchful eye. I used to work in the police.

Jim Banks:
I'm watching what's going on around me to kind service.

Benjamin Shrader:
That's awesome.

Jim Banks:
To try and make sure that everyone within the industry has a good experience. And if I see people getting into difficulty, even if it's with somebody who is not from the show. Right. So if it's a you, you. By the time you go to a cocktail bar or something like that, there'll be people that are not at your show that will be there. Right. And if there's a, an attractive woman that's there or something like that, that's from our show. Right.

Jim Banks:
I will just keep a watchful eye. And usually I'll just go, is everything okay? Can I get you a drink? Blah, blah, blah. But really what I'm saying is, is is everything okay? Do you need help? Because.

Benjamin Shrader:
Yeah.

Jim Banks:
And. And if they go, no, no, we're good, I'm fine.

Benjamin Shrader:
I totally get where you're coming from. There's a term in the states that a girl will say to a bartender, it's I need an angel shot if she's got an issue. But yeah, no, no, I completely understand. And as a, as a leader of an organization of people or the organizer of an event, I do feel responsibility to my people. I gotta take care of them. And at the end of the day, the buck stops with me. So if you really badly screw up, like it's on me. And so.

Benjamin Shrader:
And I. We're both gonna have to Deal with it.

Jim Banks:
And I just, I just think as an industry, you need to keep an eye out for other people in your industry to make sure that, you know, the last thing I want to do is to sit having breakfast one morning and somebody will go, did you hear what happened to so and so? And they kind of like got roofied and woke up in the morning. And I would hate to think that that was an avoidable situation if somebody had been more diligent in looking out to ensure that that person.

Benjamin Shrader:
If you ever, if you ever put your drink down, it's dead.

Jim Banks:
Yeah. Yeah.

Benjamin Shrader:
That's just a prove one of the most basic, most important rules that you know. Yeah. In my mind I always set aside. Like a lot of times I will be drinking either a Red Bull or I will have a Coca Cola with a lime so it looks like something, or I'll just have a club soda. But moment I put it down, it's dead.

Jim Banks:
Yeah.

Benjamin Shrader:
That. The moment it leaves my hand, it's dead. And I will just get another one.

Jim Banks:
Yeah. I mean, I must admit, I enjoy. I don't drink ever at home. Right. So when I'm in the uk, I will rarely, rarely drink. I mean, very occasionally I might have a drink, but just generally speaking, I don't. But when I travel, because I know I'm not.

Benjamin Shrader:
Oh, I mean, I will, I, I drink occasionally as well, but it's just.

Jim Banks:
What I try and do.

Benjamin Shrader:
I'm allergic to it, funny enough. Vietnamese, 25% Vietnamese and they're the most likely to be allergic. It gives me a terrible headache. But I mean, occasionally I will. It's just, it's never been my life.

Jim Banks:
I used to get a headache because I used to drink so much. Right. But it's like now it's just. But, but again, what I try and do is I try and go into the event. You have to drink more earlier. Right. So I usually go in a day or two beforehand. Right.

Jim Banks:
And stay a day or two after. So I kind of like stack up some kind of off, off the grid time, kind of both sides to obviously getting there. I can decompress and get rid of jet lag a bit. Right. And then after the event I can decompress before going home. Right. So it's great.

Benjamin Shrader:
If you also can do those on the, on the ground operations there those couple days before you can know where you're going, you can know where the venue is. So that's that.

Jim Banks:
And also the nature of, of being a digital marketer is I can do my job anywhere in the world. Right. Laptop, WI fi. I'm good to go. Right. So I don't need to worry about four days out the office, because I don't have four days at the office. I've just changed the backdrop for the office. Right.

Jim Banks:
So that's what I do.

Benjamin Shrader:
Yeah. I'm lucky. I can plan my job anywhere, but when it comes to the events, I.

Jim Banks:
Have to be there, physically there. Yeah, I get it. I mean, and that's that. And obviously that's. That puts a different complexion on your stuff. But again, like, the planning side of things, you can do from anywhere.

Benjamin Shrader:
So now, like the smaller events, DJ bookings, smaller bar tabs. Not always necessary. Like, those are like every other day.

Jim Banks:
Yeah.

Benjamin Shrader:
But it's those big events, those flagship events, where, hey, I have to answer the call.

Jim Banks:
And at some point in time, I'm sure you'll. You'll start to think, okay, maybe. Maybe now would be a good time to start some succession planning and bring somebody in, train them.

Benjamin Shrader:
I gotta find an apprentice. Yeah, I gotta find. I've been tried twice. I have tried to train somebody up, but it is definitely a tough business because I know.

Jim Banks:
I know people that kind of, like.

Benjamin Shrader:
I might have found them. I know.

Jim Banks:
I know people that spend a lot of time, like, working in the evenings and what have you, and they basically become an absent parent. They kind of have kids and they never see them because they're either.

Benjamin Shrader:
Oh, yeah.

Jim Banks:
It is sleeping with the kids game.

Benjamin Shrader:
It is a young man's game.

Jim Banks:
Yeah.

Benjamin Shrader:
I. For me, my end game has always been to go into politics. It's what I love. I enjoy it. And so eventually, at some point, I'll make that transition.

Jim Banks:
Yeah, it's funny. Like, there's a. There's a senator with the same name as me, Jim Banks, and I get all of his hate tweets come directly to me. So people are. Again, I keep thinking, why would anyone want to go into politics if that's the way people treat you? I get so much hatred. It's.

Benjamin Shrader:
It is vicious, Brian. I. I have an odd compulsion in my heart that I. I really feel I wasn't put on this earth to do good, but to fight evil. Yeah, that was what I. I'm here for, that there are bad things, there are bad people, and somebody has to. There's a Captain America quote, and it's by where he. He says that I don't be a stick floating down the river, be a tree.

Benjamin Shrader:
And when the river comes crashing into you and tells you to move, you say, no you move. No, I, I always, I, I love it. I genuinely enjoy it. And it's funny. It, it was the one. Always have. Always have. I just, I'm very odd in that way.

Benjamin Shrader:
But. Yeah, no, the, the vitriol and the, the rage and the anger. That is tragic.

Jim Banks:
And honestly, he used to be a congressman.

Benjamin Shrader:
Not relied on.

Jim Banks:
He used to be a congressman and now he's a senator. So he's got even worse in, in that regard. But what's, what was quite interesting is when he was a congressman, right. He used to defend my honor. Right. He would say what a good man, an honorable kind of digital marketer I am. And you've got the wrong person and, and almost like deflected onto onto him. Right.

Jim Banks:
I mean, I just, I just find, I just find it funny. Right.

Benjamin Shrader:
I don't know anything about him, but that sounds relatively decent.

Jim Banks:
But again, he seems like a really nice guy. I kept thinking maybe at some point in time if I ever get over to. I think he's in Indiana. Maybe if I ever get over to Indiana, I'll go and visit him and maybe we'll go out and have some lunch or something.

Benjamin Shrader:
You bring. Rang a little bit of a bell, that Indiana sounds, right?

Jim Banks:
Yeah. So send it to Jim B. If you're watching this and I do make it to Indiana, I'm looking for you to pick up the tab for lunch.

Benjamin Shrader:
Oh, yes, for all those hate tweets. Amen.

Jim Banks:
Benjamin, thank you so much for being a great guest on today's show. I've really loved having the conversation. It's been great. I really, really enjoyed it. I don't think we talk probably talked anywhere near enough about digital marketing stuff per se, but I think we covered enough with the other, other things. Challenges and adversity and be decent for.

Benjamin Shrader:
Your fellow human beings and that'll go along.

Jim Banks:
We drop lots of nuggets along the way, so I'm sure that there'll be plenty of things in there that people can, can pick up and take forward. And clearly you're a man after my own heart.

Benjamin Shrader:
And just chatting with you, it's actually been a lot of fun.

Jim Banks:
And if you're in Texas and you are looking for an event, you're the get. You're the man for doing that if you're a student. Again, I'm, I'm not quite sure that my, my demographic audience will be Texas kind of students, but you never know who's going to watch.

Benjamin Shrader:
We love everybody from the uk. You guys are great. Sorry about the whole tea in the harbor thing. But, hey, we beat the Germans together. So let's party. Thank you so much for having me. That was a great time.