GTM: Why AI Is Killing Your Outbound and Making In-Person GTM Inevitable, with Healey Cypher, CEO at BoomPop

Healey Cypher (multi-time founder and CEO of BoomPop) joins GTMnow to unpack one of the fastest growing channels for company growth: in-person events.

As AI floods digital channels with perfectly personalized messages, trust is becoming harder to earn online. Healey explains why events, dinners, and in-person experiences are becoming a premium GTM channel, not a nice-to-have, and how founders can use them intentionally for distribution, alignment, and acquisition.

In this episode, we discuss:

- Why in-person events are becoming a premium GTM channel in an AI-first world

- How founders can de-risk distribution before building the product

- The most common internal missteps that derail startups early

- Why offsites are the new HQ for remote and hybrid teams

- How to design offsites that drive alignment, not just fun

- What makes a dinner actually work — including overlooked details like acoustics

- How teams use events for customer acquisition and partnerships

- Why kindness and positivity can be a real leadership advantage

Healey also shares a powerful insight from Sam Altman that reframes how we should think about AI’s impact on trust and human connection.

If you’re interested in scaling events as a growth channel, this episode will give you all the details you need and an understanding of what is working in today’s world.

Timestamps:

00:00 – Why founders underestimate distribution

03:30 – Product vs distribution: what actually matters early

06:45 – Why most startups fail from internal misalignment

10:30 – Culture, communication, and focus as scaling constraints

14:40 – Hybrid work broke alignment

17:45 – Why offsites are becoming the new HQ

21:30 – Events as a go-to-market strategy

25:00 – AI, outbound fatigue, and inbox trust collapse

28:40 – “In-person experiences are becoming a premium”

32:30 – How to use events for customer and partner acquisition

36:15 – What makes a high-impact event vs a wasted one

39:50 – Dinners, summits, and unforgettable experiences

43:30 – Leadership, kindness, and “don’t be a jerk”

47:40 – Mental state as a competitive advantage

52:30 – Final reflections and advice for founders

Sponsors:

HockeyStack - the AI platform that unifies GTM data to help teams convert, expand, and scale. Learn more at hockeystack.com

Guest links:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/healeycypher/?hl=enHealey’s podcast: https://www.dontbeajerkpodcast.com/

Mentioned Resources:

Host (Sophie Buonassisi) links:

X (Twitter): https://x.com/sophiebuonaNewsletter: https://thegtmnewsletter.substack.comHost (GTMnow) links:

The GTMnow Podcast
The GTMnow Podcast is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth.

Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

You are a multi-time founder, you've had multiple successful exits, helped atomic scale to almost 800 million assets under management, over 40 companies. If you zoom out across all of those experiences, like what are the things that founders are consistently underestimating early in company building? Healy Seipher is the CEO and co-founder of Boom Pop, an AI-powered events and group travel company. He spent his career building and selling companies that center around great customer experience.

SPEAKER_00 0:28

Events are now the number one go-to-market method for scaled AR businesses. As AI becomes more and more pervasive, it's going to become increasingly hard to know if something digital is real or not.

SPEAKER_03 0:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:38

A product, of course, really, really matters. Distribution matters just as much. If you can't figure out a way to scalably and efficiently reach people, then there's a chance that they're never going to get a sense of your product even existing. And you know, my favorite example of this is Kim Kardashian, and they have such insane reach with like zero cost to acquire customers.

SPEAKER_01 0:56

A lot of people wanting to leverage events for acquisition purposes.

SPEAKER_00 1:00

Someone who's interviewing Sam Altman, obviously the CEO of OpenAI, and asked him, what do you think the biggest change AI is going to have on society? What's it going to be? And his answer was really surprising. He said, the biggest change AI is going to have on society is.

SPEAKER_01 1:31

Thanks for being here. And now, you know, you are a multi-time founder. You've had multiple successful exits. You've been an operator, you've helped atomic scale to almost 800 million assets under management, over 40 companies. If you zoom out across all of those experiences, like what are what are the things that founders are consistently underestimating early in company building?

SPEAKER_00 1:55

It's a great question. So uh a quick pitch for Atomic, which is which is an absolutely amazing organization. When I joined, I had sold my third company, which I'm happy to tell you about. And I kind of thought like I knew how to do things. You know, I was like, I know how to raise venture, I know how to hire a team, I know how to sell. Like I can do this. And I came into Atomic, which is which was founded by Jake, Jack Abraham and Chester Ng and Kristen. They're all amazing over there. And the first 30 days were so insanely humbling, Sophie. I had no idea you could do the things that they figured out how to do Atomic. And one of the things they taught me, and then what I ended up teaching founders over and over again early on was that while product, of course, really, really matters. Distribution matters just as much. And what that means is if you can't figure out a way to scalably and efficiently reach people, then there's a chance that they're never going to get a sense of your product even existing. And you know, my favorite example of this is Kim Kardashian or the Kardashians. I have no idea how good their products are. I'm sure they're fine, but it kind of doesn't matter. They have such insane reach with like zero cost to acquire customers, they can nail it. So one of the first things that I learned at Atomic, and I think founders often underestimate, and I admit I'm a very commercially driven CEO, is you can de-risk distribution very early on. You can get a bunch of positive signals before you even start building the product on the messaging, on the pricing, on the features, on the competitive set. And this is one of the things that we did often at Atomic, as we put a little bit of money in, we get a sense of is this thing going to really sell? And then we would uh start building the product. So, and I'm happy to talk about some tactics there. I think another thing that a lot of founders forget to do, Sophie, is they forget to really empathetically get into the shoes of investors. And I can tell you, you know, I come, we were talking about this beforehand. I come from Nebraska, which is a, you know, pretty conservative. I'm from a farming family, you know, like you'd think, hey, I got a good business, it grows 20% year over year. Why would someone not want to invest in this thing? And it turns out that that is not what venture is interested in, especially, especially now. They subscribe to this thing that you know called the power law, which is if they make 100 investments, they're kind of assuming that 90 are going to be zeros, that there's one investment that's the Airbnb, the booking, the Facebook, the whatever it is, the Uber, that's gonna return more than the entire portfolio combined. And then you have a number two investment, which won't be close to as good as number one, but it'll also produce more than three through the bottom. And that's how they invest. And so basically, if you are a founder and you have an idea, you have to think about okay, is this in a big enough market? Can the exit here be big enough? It can return the entire fund for my investor. And do they think that I'm aggressive enough to be swinging for the fences? I'd say those are probably the two biggest mistakes that a founder makes. The third, maybe if I had to do a three, because you know, you're supposed to do that, is I think founders, especially early on, struggle to tell their story. And I've done so much coaching on this. There's actually 12 perfect points if you want to tell your story, which I'm happy to go over at some point. Um and I think if you can nail the story efficiently, you have to have your one-sentence version, but you also have to have your 12 points. If you can nail it, you'll bring along an investor with you, oftentimes, and and anyone, by the way, someone you want to hire, someone you want to sell your, your, your product to. But if you just jump in in the middle, people you haven't brought them with you and they have no idea what you're talking about. So it's distribution can can de-risk, understanding your investors, and it is learning how to tell your story and making that something you really, really focus on.

SPEAKER_01 5:31

I mean, incredible points, all of those. I know you're you're speaking our language with the first one on distribution.

SPEAKER_04 5:36

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:37

Um, but those subsequent two ones are really, really interesting too, especially because you'd found in multiple companies and you're coming in and still having that perspective from Atomic.

SPEAKER_02 5:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:46

And for anyone listening unfamiliar with Atomic, it's a venture studio that helps to incubate and grow startups.

SPEAKER_00 5:52

The backstory is Atomic is a venture studio. It's an LPGP fund, just like GTM, which means LPs are investors in the fund and GPs are the managers of that fund. But the big difference is instead of taking pitches from companies that are already formed, Atomic only invests in companies that it started. And of course, Boom Pop, the company that I'm very honored and grateful to be the CEO of now, um, I found it at Atomic too. So it came out of Atomic.

SPEAKER_01 6:16

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And I want to get into all of the kind of company building aspects around why you started Boom Pop and spun out and so forth. But I'm also really interested to hear more about kind of the pieces of what makes a company successful as a whole with your holistic perspective.

SPEAKER_02 6:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:34

You know, from our side and our seat on the venture side, what we see across the entire startup ecosystem and landscape, because we're constantly keeping an eye on it all, is it's often not your competitors that creates uh the friction that dissolves companies. Sometimes it's things like misalignment and so forth. So I'm curious why that is, because you've seen that from your seat too.

SPEAKER_00 6:58

Yeah, a thousand percent. So there I I have some stats, we'll have to research and make sure the numbers are exactly right, but directionally they are right, which is it's something like 80% of failed startups, it might even be 90%, is not because of an outside threat. It's because of it's because of internal unforced errors. Founders are misaligned, lack of communication, lack of, you know, lack of focus, lack of priorities. I don't know if you knew this, but it wasn't until the 1900s that you could even make priorities or plural. The word priority just meant the most important thing, starting in the 1400s, so the 1900s, and it was only in the 1900s they were like, what are your top priorities? Yeah. And so there's just like, you know, the there's the the kind of adage that anyone that goes a mile wide and an inch deep is not, you know, it's like if you imagine your energy, and this is a ball, if it's going everywhere, you're not gonna get that far. But imagine all that energy just going straight. How far and fast you can go if you focus. Focus, communication, alignment. Those are the things that I'd say in the mid-stage of a startup are critical. Early on, it's just grit traction. Can you can you figure it out? There's nothing more important than talking to your customers, iterating on the features, and doing that nonstop. That's all that matters. Like nothing else matters. It doesn't matter. Don't don't go to conferences, don't do anything except for talk to your ideal customer profile ICPs and iterate and make sure that you got something that they absolutely love. Um, by the way, there's a there's a measurement for this.

SPEAKER_04 8:23

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 8:23

Which is if you measure your customers and you say, how upset would you be if this product no longer existed, you know this. If 40% say really upset, then you've got product market fit. But that's the general rule. But but back to your point, Sophie. Uh, this is why, you know, if you look at some of the most successful companies, especially when you've got product market fit and you're now growing, they have this relentless focus on culture.

SPEAKER_04 8:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:49

And there's that that famous Peter Drucker saying, which is that culture eats strategy for breakfast. It's absolutely true. Um, and I'd also say that one of the cornerstones of culture is communication. It turns out as a CEO, as a as a revenue leader, as an executive, one of your primary jobs is just to communicate effectively, repeatedly, with focus, with tenacity. And if you don't do that, that can be a huge reason that companies sadly unravel.

SPEAKER_01 9:17

Definitely. It's like any any good relationship. It's like a marriage, too. Communication is the cornerstone.

SPEAKER_00 9:23

Yeah, yeah, it does. Yeah, yeah. And and you know, to to bring it to the to the point of, you know, what are the tools? I think look, the world has changed a lot. We all know this. Um hybrid is kind of the default way that companies, companies exist. I I remember seeing the stat by Castle, which is this big kind of real estate um company, they expected post-pandemic office occupancy to level out around 40%. Now, it actually is 50%, but it's still only half of what it was pre-pandemic. And even even the companies that have maintained offices, smaller footprint, you come in every now and then. It's very rare that you have like the 996, you know, people are in the office all the time. And so what it does is it makes it incumbent upon leaders to put even more of a fervor around intentional communication, even more of a fervor around writing things down, even more of a fervor around debriefing and making sure that everyone knows.

SPEAKER_04 10:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:17

And so there's tools for this. I think, you know, if you were to, if you were to um force me to rank it, the best way to work on the planet is you're all in the same room. There's no question. The second best is actually probably you're all remote. The worst is hybrid. And that's where we've all landed because now you have first class citizens, you have second class citizens. It makes this mishmash. It's we've landed in the absolute hardest place to work as a business. And so what we see a lot of our clients doing a boom pop, and boom pop, you know, which you know is we're an AI native platform that makes it very easy to put on group travel and events for corporates, um, think off-sites, SKOs, client, you know, client events, customer summits, is we're seeing the best companies putting a bunch of intention, not just on internal alignment and communication, but on a regular cadence of getting together.

SPEAKER_01 11:05

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SPEAKER_00 11:58

Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, I I didn't come up with it. There is uh an off-site um article in the Wall Street Journal that said off-sites are the new office.

SPEAKER_01 12:04

But yeah, I think um you can coin the HQ side. Yeah, HQ, yeah, yeah. Offsite's the new HQ. That's right. That's fine.

SPEAKER_00 12:10

Yeah, that's that's our statement. Is so yeah, I mean, w when you get together as a whole company in person, it is this incredibly intensive, effective time to make sure everyone's aligned. Also to remind everyone why they're doing what they're doing. But it's something I think people forget. You know, everyone's like, oh, you want to build a big company. Yeah, but but that gets, you know, there's a spectrum of who works at your company. Are they like mercenary employees or are they missionary employees? A mercenary employee is like, I'm just doing this to pay the bills, get rich, whatever. A missionary employee might be motivated by those things, probably as is all humans, but but perhaps more importantly, has a very real why that motivates them. I want to make this positive dent on the planet. Here's why I care about this. And so on that spectrum, you want to get as many of your employees towards the missionary side. And so when you get together in person, it's a really good opportunity to remind people hey, here's why we're doing this. Here's why, here's why it's so important. Here's why you are important in this important mission, and here's why you should be incredibly excited about it. So I think that's it. And the third thing is um it is very easy. Communication has so many different layers to it, you know, like we're communicating, I'm talking, but there's visuals, there's tonations, there's all these things. When you just uh narrow down to a single component of that, just the words in Slack, yeah, or just like the voice message and in audio messages, you start to lose things. And so there is a lot of room for misinterpretation or misalignment without knowing it. In person, there is no room for that. You're in the room, you're solving the problem. And so what we have, we kind of subscribe to is this, and I think it's a generic belief that a lot of folks have. People inhabit 90-day worlds, which means if you don't remind them of why what they're doing is important, why they are important, what matters, the context, they will lose it and they'll lose a lot of things. They'll lose efficiency, they'll lose excitement, they'll probably lose loyalty to the company. So we've seen that at a certain size, the best companies get together four times a year, which seems like a lot. But if you actually do the back of the envelope bath, it's still cheaper than office space, which is interesting. And then there's a certain point, around 100 folks, 120 folks, where the whole company will get together definitely once a year. And then the teams, certain teams will get together on a regular cadence. And so, you know, I think one of the bigger mistakes people make when they think about getting together is they don't do enough advanced planning. It turns out if you plan an event like six, nine, 12 months in advance, you can get insanely great everything flights, hotels, activities, it's all a really great people tend to kind of wait till like 90 days before and then that's a little more expensive.

SPEAKER_01 14:51

Yeah, definitely. We've got, I mean, so many operators in our network that are are planning kind of 90 days out. I know we connected. So thank you for all of your work on the offsite. Yeah. Of course, of course. That's in our community. But um, I want to get into more of the tactical side of offsites.

SPEAKER_04 15:06

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:07

And then swing back to more of the building side because you talked about how you incubated out of atomic. Love to circle back to that. But now that we're on the topic of offsites, there's so much to unpack here. So what you know, you've seen you've seen thousands of off-sites put on the company. We've seen a lot of it. We've seen a lot.

SPEAKER_00 15:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:24

What differentiates a really high ROI off-site from one that's maybe just more fun?

SPEAKER_00 15:30

Well, so I want to I want to dispel a myth, which is sometimes a more fun off-site is a worthwhile investment. Um, so there is there's broadly speaking, if you were to, if you're gonna be reductive, there's three categories of of like off-site types.

SPEAKER_04 15:44

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 15:44

You got the um internal, kind of work-focused one. You've got the external, which is like client-facing, partner facing, which by the way, as as a as a as an aside stat, events are now the number one go-to-market method for scaled AR businesses. And I don't know if you've seen this, I've seen it. The amount of dinner invites, the amount of it's just it's nonstop because as AI becomes more and more pervasive, it's going to become increasingly hard to know if something digital is real or not, including Zoom, including Google Meets. Like, is Sophie real? Like, I know you're real now.

SPEAKER_01 16:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:17

But like it's very hard to know.

SPEAKER_01 16:18

I also have a theory that we we were able to get away with these intermediary methods like online and so forth. But at the end of the day, it's always just come down to trust. And so now that it's harder to establish trust than ever online, people are swinging back the other way to in-person. But really, it was it was always about trust. It was always more effective. We just had the optionality before.

SPEAKER_00 16:40

Completely agree. You know, it was it's interesting you say that. So someone was interviewing Sam Altman, obviously the the CEO of OpenAI, um, and asked him, what do you think the biggest change AI is gonna have on society? What's it gonna be? And his answer was really surprising. He said, the biggest change AI is gonna have on society is a premium on fantastic in-person experiences. And even recently, at Masters of Scale, Brian Chesky, the co-founder and CEO of Airbnb, said, Look, I think the future is gonna be people put their phones down and they want to be in person. And that is the way you gain trust, is if you're in person, you break bread with someone, you look them in the eyes. I have a personal rule. I will never hire anyone to don't meet in person. I love it. You gotta meet them in person. There's just things that you know you you kind of understand better about people. And so I think, you know, to go back to your question, which is what are what what makes these things incredible is one, people are intentional about the theme and the programming of the event. Have some fun stuff in there. People love award shows, they love people love seeing the C-suite do funny things. They put a lot of thought into it. I think another thing you've got to remember is that the human condition is such where every human wants to feel important. And so when you think about your event, think of it as you, the executive team, hosting everyone. And there's a different mindset there. If you're hosting everyone, how do you make this incredible for them? How do you, how do you make them feel important? How do you think about every minute of their day? And then the third thing is a very common problem is people over-schedule. And I it's funny, I feel like I'm talking to my parent friends who over overschedule their kids, like people need time just to have serendipitous connection, to do nothing, to have free time that's also important in events too. So don't, don't over-schedule. That's another big thing that I've I've seen happen a lot. And then, of course, the obvious stuff is you know, logistics of events are so uh arduous today. This is why Boom Pop exists. If you're not using a company like Boom Pop to make it significantly easier, you'll over-rotate on like all the details of the logistics and under-index on the content. And that's also a big problem. Is if like if it's the night before and you're you're trying to figure out your content, it's just it's gonna be a lot harder to be hard high impact.

SPEAKER_01 18:56

And how does the sequencing work based on the three different models that you shared before around in-person, remote, or hybrid? Does the sequencing of how often you should be hosting offsites vary based on which of those three buckets you're in?

SPEAKER_00 19:10

For the first, if you're in office all the time, yeah, then your need for regular company offsites is probably relatively small. Like you should probably have certain things you're you're conscious about. Like, are there certain things we go and you have a task you want to do together? Is there the incentive trip? I'd say, you know, customer events continue to be important no matter what configuration you have. Customer events are so, so important. If you're remote, I think it's it's very important you get together on a regular cadence. Um, you don't want to tax your people too much. Like if they're spending, you know, four weeks out of the year, that's an eighth of the year. It's 12% of you know, everything's going towards offsites. Like you got to be careful about that. Uh, and then hybrid kind of depends on the setup. Um, I found that hybrid is uh the most common thing we've seen in hybrid is people will do their offsites on site. And so they'll say, hey, here's the week where everyone's gonna fly in and just be in the office together for the scheduling, which I think is it's a good way to use the existing assets you already have. Like you may as well use the office if you've got it. Yeah. And then it's just hotel expense in flights. The cadence of remote and hybrid is basically the same. It's like you want to have a drum beat that people can rely on. I think um for um for in-person, it just depends on the business, the scale. I'll also say this that there's this moment, and it's generally around 50 people, where just because you're in office actually doesn't matter as much anymore. Because you're gonna be on multiple floors, you're gonna be all over, people are doing their own thing. And so I think early small teams, especially before a product launch, before you know finding a PMF, if you're in person, it really matters. It's like past that, you still want to think about getting together events, whatever form that is on a cadence, just to kind of bring people together. Because like think about the Google campus. Yeah. It's massive. You know, and I remember when I worked at eBay and PayPal, I would spend hours every week just driving between campuses. Yeah, it was just like, you know, oh my gosh. And so there is also just the truth that even when you're in person, like we at eBay would have, we'd have, I think it was twice a year, we'd have these all company events, and there was directors only, there was VPs only, there was like whole company, there was sales kickoffs, like events just it turns out are kind of a staple of communication and inclusion and importance, which in turn is a staple of just how you operate businesses. And this is why, you know, if you got to level up and you and you wonder like what is the size and impact of meetings and events in general. Because look, it sounds pretty boring, you know, like you're like, oh, I'm a meetings and events company.

SPEAKER_01 21:39

Like, I mean, that sounds pretty interesting to me, but maybe I'm biased because of events.

SPEAKER_00 21:43

You're definitely biased in a great way. Is you know, travel is 10% of the global GDP. Yeah. It's $11.7 trillion. It's so, so big. And if you just look at the numbers for hotels, 30 to 40% of all of the revenue comes from group. Travel. So it's 30% of all of travel easily, which means it's a three to four trillion dollar industry. It is such a massive part of how we all operate as humans already. It's not like I need to pitch it, I guess. It's more like as a founder, think about in your annual cadence of how you want to bring people together, what can people rely on? What is the bookmark? What starts the year off? What ends the year off? What are the moments, at least every 90 days, that people can rely on? And then just that that should be your event strategy.

SPEAKER_01 22:32

From a strategy perspective, what are your thoughts on the different kinds of mandates? So we've seen from our side a couple different styles of mandates where a revenue operator, say CRO, will simply be tasked with, hey, run the SKO.

SPEAKER_02 22:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:48

Uh your marketing leader, run uh like an MKO or equivalent or an RKO and set up and so forth. And then there's the alternative where this is actually a true deep-rooted strategy where everybody's coming together and understanding how they actually want to sequence it in a very intentional way.

SPEAKER_02 23:04

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:04

Outlined the value of that really well.

SPEAKER_02 23:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:07

Do you see both scenarios happening, or do you see and help you know singular operators that are tasked with these kind of events?

SPEAKER_00 23:15

Uh totally. So um when you have relatively small companies, it's easy to have a cohesive plan for how you're gonna bring people together on a on a cadence. Because like you just talked, you kind of know. When companies get bigger, one of the biggest mistakes that I've seen is until you have um a certain maturity, we have the time for this stuff, people don't really think about the fact. Well, they don't people don't think about what the experience is gonna be like for individual employees. And so there's certain employees that are gonna go to like eight events a year and they're like they're taxed by it.

SPEAKER_03 23:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:49

And there's certain employees that don't invite it any.

SPEAKER_03 23:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:52

And that's really hard. And so I'd say one of my encouragements is as a CEO or a COO, is just like when you're thinking about your annual planning and you're thinking about all the things you're doing to keep your company operating as part of your operating schedule, include the company wide and team events and just get a sense of when all these things are gonna happen. And it's very tactical, but you know, it goes without saying that if there's certain important moments as a company, like an important product launch and you need all the sellers ready, but they're all gonna be at their RKO, that's a problem. And so there's tactical reasons for it. But I also think that there's very like logistical reasons for it, which is you just want to make sure that you understand what the employee experience is. More often than not, we found that it's the leader or their EA who is tasked just to do it.

SPEAKER_03 24:40

Yeah, that's what we see all the time too.

SPEAKER_00 24:42

And and it starts small and makes sense. Like, oh, I'm an EA for the CMO and I'm I'm gonna do this this marketing kickoff, and it's 50 people. I can do that. Next year it's 100 people. You're like, oof. And then all of a sudden it's 150, and you feel way underwater. You've never done an event like this. And as simple as an event sounds at the kind of cursory level, when you go beneath the water, it's so it's it's it's it is surprisingly nuanced and challenging. That's been the most big the biggest surprise running boom pop. And so there's this natural moment where like the event's just too big and you can't do it yourself.

SPEAKER_04 25:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:18

And so we tend to have, I'd say the first engagement uh can often be that person who's like, help. I don't know what to do. We can jump in, we can help. And then once they've seen how wonderful it is to work with boom pop, then it's like, oh my gosh, let's just do this all the time. That's that's a sequence you've seen a ton. So anyway, to wrap it up, I think as part of annual planning and you're thinking about operating cadence, which includes, you know, like what your goals are for the year, think about the structure of how your team's going to get together, how they're gonna receive communication, what the experience is like for every employee, and weave that into the annual planning. That's my biggest push for any leader.

SPEAKER_01 25:56

I love it. Great, great advice. And we we're talking a lot about internal events and you do customer events and other types of events too. But what we're seeing right now on our side is a lot of people wanting to leverage events for acquisition purposes too. Yes. Customer acquisition partners and so forth. How do you think about that sequencing from an event perspective? Do you advise companies a lot around strategies for that?

SPEAKER_00 26:21

A thousand percent. Um, this is probably the fastest growing segment of our business.

SPEAKER_04 26:25

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 26:26

Is customer and partner facing events. It is, I I don't know about you, but every day I've got 15 perfectly worded outbound SGR emails. They know something about where I grew up and about my wife's preferences and about my kids. And they like, it's like the perfect frickin' email. Yeah. And they make it past all my blockers. I don't know how they do it. I don't listen to them anymore. I don't even read them. Because it's just like ugh, obviously, this is another AI. And you you can see it. The email's written in a way you can just see it. You're like, okay, this is obviously written by AI.

SPEAKER_03 26:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:53

And so what it means is a lot of the outbound tactics that used to work no longer, it's just there's too much noise.

SPEAKER_01 27:01

Way too much.

SPEAKER_00 27:02

And so then the question is, how do you cut through that noise? And again, it comes down to, you know, and we we kind of talked about my favorite books. One of my favorite books I encourage everyone, especially in a revenue position to read is How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. And one of the core truths about people that he always says is people want to feel important. People love being invited to stuff, it makes them feel important. And so if you can do that, when they show up, think of it, as I mentioned before, as a host. And I think I don't know if you talked about this. I grew up in the Middle East. And the Middle East is all about hosting. It is, it's like this fabric of society there. And so part of why I love to host events is I love hosting.

SPEAKER_03 27:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:40

And so from the moment that person hears about it, accepts the invite, gets there, arrives, how do you make that experience wonderful? How do you think of that as the beginning of the relationship? Where you are you are setting the tone for what it would be like to work with you as a partner. So eventually down the line, they go, Yeah, of course I'm gonna work with this company because it was amazing. Um, and I'd say that, you know, step one is start planning the event. But step two is, okay, how is this gonna be really useful? Like, what's your goal in the world of your attendee? What are they gonna get out of this? When the ending, when this thing is over, they've made some great connections with other like-minded folks. They've learned some interesting things about the industry, and they've learned that you are a wonderful partner who is available whenever they need. Like, what are those things? And make sure that as you do that, it's a really thoughtful, good event. Is it great just to host an event and say, here's a private dinner, let's all go? Yeah, it actually is, it's totally fine to do that. But the best people have a huge amount of intention in what are the guests really going to experience and take away from this event. So that's the biggest push.

SPEAKER_01 28:41

Always the how, not the what, always the how. Yeah, yeah, totally.

SPEAKER_00 28:44

The how. Yeah, and the why.

SPEAKER_01 28:45

And the why. Always the why.

SPEAKER_00 28:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:47

And what are you seeing in terms of different strategies for companies on the acquisition side of events right now? We talked about dinners. Yeah. We're getting a ton of requests for dinners, just overall advice. A lot of dinners. We've got people publishing a lot of media pieces on dinners that are reaching out asking for advice and who to talk to, who's doing it well, for example. What are you seeing other than dinners?

SPEAKER_00 29:08

Yeah, for sure. So there's there's there's like a few things. So the obvious one is dinners because it's easy.

SPEAKER_03 29:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:14

The second, which is becoming more elite, is uh these unforgettable experiences. So, like, hey, we're all gonna go and we're gonna do racing Lagunaseca. We're gonna do, I'm not gonna say paintball, but like we're gonna go to this like crazy circuit sleigh dinner thing.

SPEAKER_04 29:29

Right.

SPEAKER_00 29:29

We're gonna do something where you're like, you would not normally get a chance to do that. We're hey, we're gonna take you to uh a suite at the 49ers. Yeah. A suite at the Warriors. Like the thing where you feel like, well, I would never do this personally. It's so interesting and memorable. And I want to be invited to more of these. And it makes you then want to be a partner. Like one of my favorite companies who's always been great at this is Silicon Valley Bank. They are known for this. They have dinner series, they have sports suites, they've made this investment, but it is a huge way that our clients and prospect clients gain close, trustful relationships with those members of the crew, but also like you want to be part of the SVB squad because you're gonna keep getting invited to come back to stuff. So I'd say really cool experiences is one. And the third is um is uh I'm seeing more companies host, it's like industry specific with wonderful guests and talk tracks and studies, um, like summits. And so if you're in a space, hey, you know, we're gonna host the revenue summit. And this is all about the best revenue leaders at all walks of life, the lessons they learn, the biggest mistakes they made. You're gonna hear from, you know, the CRO of Twilio, and you're gonna hear from the, you know, the VP of growth at Cursor, and you're gonna hear from OpenAI, like whatever it is. And those things I found are interesting because it's a combination of one, people are now gonna uh learn a lot of stuff. And as a result, they're gonna say, hey, like it was amazing I was invited to this. And and like you can go back to your boss and say, and here's all the things I'm gonna apply to you know to my daily job. But the second thing is they also know just by default, by walking the hallways, sitting down at breakfast, going to the you know, the lawn and doing doing drinks or something, they meet a bunch of other like-minded folks in the industry that will be wonderful either mentor or coaching or just like you know, colleague relationships.

SPEAKER_01 31:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:20

Those are the three I've seen.

SPEAKER_01 31:21

Definitely, definitely. And I actually think that we'll see more skew towards your second bucket, which is more of the unique experiences because dinners are increasingly more popular because, like you said, they're easier to execute. And once that becomes the status quo, it's a differentiator.

SPEAKER_00 31:36

I'll say this. Every dinner you have, if you're gonna host a dinner, just know there's two things you have to do. Yeah, you have to have a welcome speech and you have to have a thank you speech. You gotta do it. If you don't do it, it just feels like you're kind of there for whatever reason. Host it. And then the best thing you should probably also do is you should have a bunch of either prepared or ready to go questions that can kick off the conversation. If you don't do those things, it is a wasted dinner. And so just be ready. And there's a very easy, like it's so easy. Your welcome speech is one, thank everyone for coming. Call people out. It's so easy. The second thing is you say, here's the goal of this, here's what I want you to achieve. And the third thing is you then ask a question to go around. Like it's such an easy way to kick off a dinner.

SPEAKER_04 32:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:19

But so many people just don't know that. And it's so easy. So I'd say there's a big difference between a very well-hosted dinner and just like a dinner where you got together.

SPEAKER_01 32:28

Absolutely. The how and why.

SPEAKER_00 32:30

Yeah, the how and why. The how and why. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 32:32

Those are those are great dinner tips. Are there any other dinner tips that you've seen really work really well? Because we get a ton of questions about dinners and executing dinners from revenue leaders and um yes.

SPEAKER_00 32:44

Uh, not all private dining spaces are ranked the same. Uh the big thing you would ask them is, is it quiet? I've had this mistake before. You have a big private dining and it's just like a curtain from the rest of the space and you you're screaming. You can't hear each other. You want people to have, you know, um uh the ability to hear each other. I think there's also perfect sizes. So just note that if you have a 50-person private dinner, your job should be at some point to do musical chairs. Yeah. So people can can can kind of swap around.

SPEAKER_03 33:13

Definitely.

SPEAKER_00 33:14

Um, I'd also say uh don't forget about, and this is like obvious stuff, but don't go somewhere that is is such either a niche food category or doesn't have enough of an aperture where like if someone has specific dietary restrictions, they can't get it done. That just is a small thing, but don't make that mistake. And then little touches matter, you know, like even in advance um printing out name tags or or like having one of the menus with your little logo on it. There's little things that kind of make it feel special, but the biggest thing is sound. Don't don't just assume because you have a private dining space that it's gonna be like ask, look, look at the qualifications. I will tell you on Boom Pop, if you go, you can search private dining options in 180 cities worldwide. We will tell you the sonic quality of these things. Really? We'll tell you the configuration, like all these. Yeah, that's one of the big things we spent a bunch of time building out is like private dining is a really hard thing. And by the way, if you're a revenue leader and you want to do this, just go to Boom Pop now, check it out, app.boom pop.com. You can you can easily book private dining.

SPEAKER_01 34:13

So you spun boom pop out of Atomic?

SPEAKER_00 34:16

Uh well, it wasn't spun. It was, it was, it was co-founded at Atomic as Atomic does. It was like kind of a standard course.

SPEAKER_01 34:24

How did you decide to go from operating within Atomic to actually founding and building Boom Pop?

SPEAKER_00 34:30

Yeah, well, um I guess the the full backstory is I I moved to the Bay Area after having a great consulting job in New York. I followed my my then girlfriend, now wife, and it was really hard to get a job.

SPEAKER_01 34:40

Who is Italian?

SPEAKER_00 34:40

Who is yes, but Italian, yes, she is. Are you Italian also?

SPEAKER_01 34:45

Uh not by blood through marriage, but I feel like I'm an honorary title. You know, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:50

Italians are incredibly fun, but also it's it's a thin line on the side. You're almost always in trouble. Anyway, um, and and uh it was hard to find a job. I was, you know, the global financial crisis was happening. I finally got a startup job and I kind of hit a lottery, Sophie, because we sold within seven months of me joining. It was amazing. And I then went from having, you know, like very, very little money in the banks, I could get married in California. And I've been running and selling companies ever since. I sold my third company in 2019. And what it was was if you ever walk into a McDonald's or a Burger King or Wendy's and you see one of those touchscreen kiosk you order food. Have you ever seen those?

SPEAKER_02 35:25

I have, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:26

We did all those for the top 40 crook surf restaurants. And I have some really fun stories about what that was like. Uh it turns out people like them, they order a lot more.

SPEAKER_02 35:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:34

Um and so, and so after I sold that, I was kind of trying to figure out what to do in life. Like, do I move to Oaxaca and eat crickets for a while? Turns out I don't like crickets, you know.

SPEAKER_01 35:44

Understandable.

SPEAKER_00 35:45

Or do I, or do I kind of get get back into it? And then my good friend Jack, who runs Atomic, we, you know, we always chat on and off. He was like, hey, come join Atomic, be my chief operating officer, help me to run this zero-to-one program, help me to scale the platform and the team. And so it was a ton of fun. And I and I did that uh for almost almost six years, actually. And as we did that, you know, one of my jobs was to start as many high-quality companies as possible. And the thing that I knew, and I did warn Jack about this when I started, I said, Hey, just so you know, I am an operator at heart, and there's a really high chance I fall in love with the company here.

SPEAKER_03 36:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:23

And it had just happened to my good friend Andrew Dudem at HIMS, who when I started, he was just leaving Atomic because he did the same thing at Hymns that I'm doing at Boom Pop. And he said, I'm just warning you, you're probably gonna do what I'm I'm doing. And I was like, No, no, no, this is it. And lo and behold, I fell in love with Boom Pop. It's all the things that I love in a company. It's a massive TAM. It is an overlooked market with a very fragmented low NPS set of, I mean, all mom and pop event agencies. Um it is an enduring trend, I believe will persist. I think AI is doing a lot of things, including creating a deeper need for people to get together. The distribution, all the all the tests I did as we were talking about initially, were really good results in distribution, like just wildly fantastic. We've grown very fast. We continue to grow very, very fast. And I just love it. I love traveling, I love bringing people together. You know, I I kind of think this is a little meta, and I'll try, I'll try to make it work. It probably won't. But I think often about humans.

SPEAKER_04 37:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:20

You know, we're not the biggest animals, we're not the strongest, we're not the fastest, but we have done one thing which has made us the dominant species on this planet, and it is we have come together and worked together. And as I think about that, the kind of you know, innate quality we have as as a as a race, I'm like, gosh, this is something I just believe in. Like, I love bringing people together. And what not higher calling could I have than just spending all my time on that? And you know, you you could you could say, hey, Healy, yeah, cool story, bro, but aren't you focusing on corporate events to start? And like, yeah, we are. Because it turns out after sleeping, you spend most of your time at work. And why not enjoy it? Why not have a really great experience? Why not have friends, lifelong friends come from work? I mean, a lot of my friends are lifelong friends, were my my first jobs. And especially in a world that I think is people are kind of figuring out the landscape of what it looks like, setting, setting a corner, just saying, this is we're planting a flag. You should get together, you should make it a part of who you are as a business, of your strategy and as you go to market. Like that is why I love it so much. I also, you know, one of the wonderful things as as a co-founder is a lot of hard things.

SPEAKER_04 38:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:34

One of the wonderful things is you get to choose the team you work with if you're lucky. And man, this team is so great. You know, we talked about Simon, who's our VP of sales, customer service and marketing. Um, he is amazing. And the fact that I get to work with people like that who teach me so much every single day is so fun. You know, when whenever we we have problems, I've learned one thing, which I love about Boom Pop. It hasn't always been the case for companies I've been in, which is whenever we bring up an issue for the company and say, this is an issue we've got to solve, we solve it every single time. And it's because these people are so they're not just fun and and hilarious and witty, but they're just so focused and they're so talented at solving, solving these problems and doing what they do. So every part of it I absolutely love. And and you know, I I haven't worked in travel before. I was in retail for a while on commerce before that. Um, it's a very addicting industry. Like when you're in travel and just the things you think about, the people you meet, it's it's it's a smaller industry than you think. Everyone helps each other out and it's so fun. Yeah. I think it's gonna be hard to not do travel uh for the rest of my life.

SPEAKER_01 39:44

Yeah. Well, hey, you might. You might continue to travel in different flavors and and kind of themes.

SPEAKER_03 39:50

That's the goal.

SPEAKER_01 39:50

And now you talked about the incredible team that you have, you know, the privilege to work with and bring on. It also on the inverse relates to your leadership style. And I know you have a very bold perspective around leadership. You even have your own podcast. I just the name is quite literally don't be a jerk.

SPEAKER_02 40:05

It is podcast. Yes, it is.

SPEAKER_01 40:07

Great podcast, also for anyone listening. Please check it out. It'll be in the show notes. Um incredibly engaging conversations. But what is that philosophy philosophy that you're super bullish on around kindness is a competitive advantage?

SPEAKER_00 40:20

Yeah, thank you for that question, Sophie. Um look, I think early on in my life and in my career, I this has been a fabric of who I am. I I want to have fun, I want to laugh. And I remember there was this um the this first consulting job I had out of New York. I had my engagement manager at the time, I won't say this person's name, pulled me aside. And they were like, um, Haley. And I was like, Yeah. He said, Um, we're hearing you laugh a lot around the office. And I was like, Yeah, you know, I I try to have fun and whatever I do. And this is my second week out of college, by the way.

SPEAKER_04 40:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:56

She goes, or they go, yeah. Well, if you want to have fun, maybe consulting isn't for you. And it just felt so wrong.

SPEAKER_03 41:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:05

And and I I felt like there were so many moments in my career growing up where I believed that it was not right to not enjoy work, to not have fun in life, to do the right thing, to be a good person. And as I collected more and more data and experienced more and more, I found invariably over time, while the headlines were villainizing people and saying how awful they were, the reality was that even those same people, the reason they got there was because they were really good people that were givers and helped other people along the way. And every leader I've ever met who has been the most successful, I'd say 99.9% of them, it's been great. They pay it forward, they, they kind of they they just they focus on making everyone better. The kind of rising tide lifts all boats. And so, and so the belief is, as you said, I do believe that one of the best strategies you can have for being successful in life is doing the right thing, being a good person, and giving without the expectation necessarily of getting back. And so don't be a jerk, is it we have a wide range of guests, it's FBI negotiators, it's neuroscientists, it's CEOs, it's VCs, it's actors, celebrities, Stanford professors. It is the common threat across all of them, quantum physicists, which is that they have all these proof points where when they have been, they've seen people who are good people and do the right thing, it has led to tremendous success. And so my hope if, and this is this is my hope, if even one person listens to the podcast and it encourages them to be a better person or to hold to their, you know, hold to what they believe to be true and and and do the right thing, that to me is success of the podcast. Um it's a ton of fun. Yes, please check it out, of course. And uh and that's that's it. And you know, m my wife, my Italian wife, as you mentioned, she asks me all the time, like, what's the goal of this? And I honestly don't have a goal. I just want the content to be out there in the hopes that it affects even one person positively. And if it does that, I feel very happy.

SPEAKER_01 43:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:06

That's that's it.

SPEAKER_01 43:07

I love it. We should do more in life with that goal. Helping one person and also just bringing things into existence without an end goal.

SPEAKER_00 43:14

I I agree. Yeah, I agree.

SPEAKER_01 43:16

I love it. Any specific words that you live by? I know.

SPEAKER_00 43:19

So I have a couple ones. One is related to don't be a jerk, and then one is is maybe esoteric. So early on when we had our son Theo, which by the way was a long, hard journey to have a kid. We're older and it was we had a bunch of false starts. So we were so grateful he's he's with us. I remember I'd be in I'd be in business meetings, often the kind of like behind closed doors, like CEO and board meetings. And if it was ever like a decision point, I would ask, how would Theo feel about his dad if he learned about the decision that I just made? And it made it so clear every time. It was so I'd say, if you have someone that looks up to you or that you love, try that as a barometer and see see how see how it's Simplifies and makes easier um your decisions in life. The second thing is you know, I think people often forget that their mental state has a tremendous effect over their lives. So there's a study done recently, and it looked at the top 25 uh tennis players on the planet.

SPEAKER_04 44:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:21

And it said, okay, of the top five tennis players worldwide, how were they different than the rest of the other 20? And this is related to mental state. And um and the question was, okay, well, we're we're gonna figure this out. What makes them the top five players on the planet? Was it their diet? No. Was it how early they started playing the sport in life? No. Was it how much sleep they got?

SPEAKER_04 44:45

No.

SPEAKER_00 44:46

Was it how hard they practiced? No. Was it their coach? No. It all came down to their mental attitude, specifically after they lost points in a game. In the game, they lose a point, and instead of thinking, oh, and having a bad mental state, they said, I love this game. I'm pumped to be here. I love that I'm playing it, and I'm gonna win the next one.

SPEAKER_04 45:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:10

It was that micro positivity, which makes them the best players on the planet. And I think, especially now when the news is so negative and headlines are so rough, it's hard to see a bunch of realities. You know, like if you were to, if you were to pull the average um person on the planet, they don't trust each other more than ever. They don't trust government or politicians, they also think that the world is worse off. In contradistinction to that, we have the lowest percentage of violent crimes in the history of man. We have the lowest poverty in the history of man. We have the highest quality of life in the history of the human race. Yet people don't realize this stuff. And so I'd say the thing that I try to do all the time, I try to teach it to my executives, I try to teach it to my children, to any anyone who will listen to me is you have to remember if you stay positive, everything will absolutely, without a doubt, work out in your favor. You have to remember that. You have to know that deeply. And the moments where you start to forget that is when things start to go off the rails. Um, and so it's a bit esoteric, but it's it's something I've known to be true my entire life. If you are positive and you know things will work out, your life will do literally anything you want it to do.

SPEAKER_01 46:25

Wow. What a what a place to actually end off, Healy. And I completely agree. And that notion resonates. I feel like we could now talk for an hour about it and get a little get a little further esoteric on it. But this has been just wonderful. Really appreciate the time. Thank you for all the insight on offsite. And Healy, where can people follow along? With you, with Boom Pop, obviously the podcast.

SPEAKER_00 46:48

Yeah, yeah. So uh so boom pop is easy. It's boom pop.com. I'm on LinkedIn, I'm on Twitter, I'm on Instagram. Um, the podcast is don't be a jerkpodcast.com if you want to see it, or on Spotify or on Apple or on YouTube, on Instagram. Um, and uh and then of course, you know, Healy at boom pop.com is a pretty easy way to get a hold of me.

SPEAKER_01 47:06

Brilliant. Thank you, Healy.

SPEAKER_00 47:07

Thanks, Sophie.