Joel Wolh on Building Powwow Events Into the Go-To Brand for Business Conferences - EP05

 Joel Wolh didn’t just build an event company. He created Powwow Events—a fast-growing brand that's redefining how business networking gets done across real estate, healthcare, retail, and tech.

In this episode of The Wealth Clock with Steven Weinstock, Joel walks us through the full journey. From backyard meetups and Amazon expos to 1,200-person industry blowouts, he shares what it really takes to build a brand people want to show up for.

We cover:

• How Powwow started during COVID with nothing but a backyard and a big idea
• The real story behind the chaos of ReBeach and why it worked anyway
• Why managing egos, billionaires, and logistics all comes down to one thing
• How Joel’s network fuels charitable giving every week
• What’s next for Powwow (and why there’s no 5-year plan)

🎙 Hosted by Steven Weinstock
 💼 Sponsored by We Capital and The Goethals Capital Fund
 📩 Accredited investor? Reach out if you want to partner on our next NJ deal

If you’ve ever attended a Powwow event or thought about hosting your own, this episode is a must-watch.

#PowwowEvents #JoelWolh #EventMarketing #BusinessNetworking #TheWealthClock

🎙 About Steven Weinstock
Steven Weinstock is a real estate investor and founder of WeCapital and the Goethals Capital Fund. Since 2001, he has built a diverse portfolio of residential and multifamily assets while helping investors access passive income through strategic real estate opportunities. On this podcast, he shares real-world insights on investing, capital raising, and what it really takes to build and scale in today’s market.

📩 Want to invest or get in touch?
Visit: www.WeCapitalX.com

📱 Connect with Steven:
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/stevenweinstock1

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wecapitalx/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheWealthClockPodcast

Transcript

Steven M Weinstock: 0:01

Hi everybody. Welcome back to the Wealth Clock with Steven Winestock. I'm your host, Steven Winestock, and on the show I talk to top operators, founders, and closers about what really works in business, real estate, and life. Today's guest is Joel Wolh. The driving force between powwow events and specifically. Notably for my real estate audience, the Redeal conference, which was just held a week ago. Yeah. From the time of this recording, it has quickly become one of the major events in real estate in its fourth year deal is already drawing over 1200 attendees, including some of the biggest players in the industry. Joel's also someone who says he didn't just start a business, he started his life. At the age of 40, we'll find out why this podcast is sponsored in part by my company, We Capital and my Goel Capital Fund. And just a quick note, if you're an accredited investor, my company is currently buying property in New Jersey. Reach out to me if you're interested and let's start this interview. Okay, Joel, thank you very much for being here. I appreciate it.

Joel Wolh: 1:18

I'm not a founder operator or whatever it is you said that this podcast is intended for. But you invited me on, so I'm here. I'm very excited to be here.

Steven M Weinstock: 1:29

Okay. So I met you recently I've been attending your events the last couple years. I've seen you, i've seen the powwow name all over. Take us back to the beginning. How did powwow events get started and what was the moment you realized that this will be something big?

Joel Wolh: 1:46

I'll try to make it brief. I've always trended, towards events and in person in-person networking because. I don't know, I've tended towards it. A number of years ago I organized a large event a fundraiser event. And that probably is, somehow helped in my building blocks. That was after Hurricane Sandy organized a large fundraiser I attended a large business conference, the LTB, it was Frum, in the Jewish community conference run by Menny Hoffman. And it also gave me a little bit of a kick, a little bit of a it pulled me somehow in some ways. I got into Amazon. Amazon was booming. And there was conference after conference, so that got me going to a lot of conferences and whenever I went to a conference, I remember telling Menny, next year I'll be on your stage. I felt the. Urge to be in the center of it. At that point. I thought it meant being on the stage. Later on I learned that, you'd rather be the guy that pays the talent than be the talent. I saw that line somewhere. I think it's great. You don't wanna be a singer, you wanna be the guy that pays the singer in Amazon events were very important. So many things were going on in the industry. There was a constant need to attend events and get educated and meet new vendors., I spoke at some events and then I started helping out some events. And during that time , Berel, Solomon and I on LinkedIn, we were like the early OGs of when LinkedIn started going social. This is 2000 and 17, . And then in 2018 19, we launched a giant LinkedIn global event. It was the first LinkedIn, big LinkedIn event, a thousand people at Bell Works. And that really also, gave me Shout out to Berel Solomon for giving me that push. And things started coming my way. My partner, Yehuda Susskind reached out to me in 2019, I believe, and said, I'm working with this organization called Hope and we help families in Lakewood, New Jersey with a one time, event. They wanted to jump onto the event, bandwagon, specifically Amazon, and use it as a fundraiser. Would you help us? And I said, sure. It sounds like a great cause. At that time I wasn't leveraging money, I was leveraging attention. That's all I cared about. I was running a pretty large Amazon advertising agency. And so I was just happy to help out. And we built a really nice event in Lakewood. We called an Amazon for Hope. Then COVID hit, and then my business took a little bit of a dive. In the meantime, , I did a startup meetup. So we had tech guys in, in the city. We did one in the city. We did one in, in, in Miami, just smaller meetup with some investors, some with some speakers. So we, so I started dabbling a little bit in that space. It pulled me, obviously, for some reason. And then COVID hits my business, which relied heavily on me attending events I'm a people's person. I go out there and I just get visibility even online, I. When you can't go anywhere, you can't post. There's nothing much you can post. You can just post yourself in your backyard. So going to events is something that creates a lot of content for you, especially if you're speaking, if you're helping to organize. And so my business really started taking a hit. I was also getting very bored, very antsy, so I wasn't paying as much attention to what I needed to do. And then my neighbor and good friend, max Schlesinger, who was also in the Amazon space says it had just held a, so he got a house with a flat. Backyard, right? It's one acre of flat grass. It is just perfect for large gatherings. And Riverside had reached out they were doing a lot of events. It was towards the end of COVID and they wanted to do an event outdoors and somehow they got his number and he said, sure, he will host it in his backyard just because he is a nice guy. And when we attended that event. I said, Mac, why don't we do a meetup for Amazon, make a couple of bucks, we'll bring people out here. We will get the hookah, we'll get the cigars. We'll just do it all in the backyard. You can have tables with for booths and. Okay, so we started planning Yehuda Suskin hears about it, and he calls me, he says, oh, I hear you doing an Amazon event. I'm like, Yehuda, I wanna make a couple of dollars. So leave me alone with hope. I love you. I love hope, but, and I didn't know him that well. I knew him from helping him organize that one event. He was persistent and he says, you don't understand. I already have a sponsor. They already were asking us when the next event is. It was actually a great event, the Hope event. So he had sponsors that wanted to come in again for this event. So I said, you can join us with your sponsors, but we're doing this for profit., We'll make hope the charity beneficiary. But , this is a for profit event. He says, okay. He went back and forth. He says he was in, we did a proper conference at the Eagle Ridge Golf Course was a jam packed house. It was incredible. And at the after party on the golf course. Overlooking. It was just beautiful. We're standing around with cigars and drinks. We're feeling like on top of the world, and I just. Like it clicks and Shimmy J goes on video and says, Hey, Joel what is this Amazon meetup here? And I said, don't tell anybody. But this is not about Amazon. This is about bringing people together in a big but intimate way and, helping them grow together. 30 second video. And it's exactly what we're doing today. And that started us off. We did another Amazon event. And then we said, okay, we have to spread our wings. We're gonna go for real estate, we're gonna do healthcare. And that was gonna be our first two general events. So we created this big business event with different categories. And what it was a feeder to to attract different companies. To eventually do other events in other industries. So that event, people looked at us like, oh, I don't know. It didn't make much sense. It was too general. But that's where we attracted our first exhibitors for our, our real estate, our healthcare. And as we started planning healthcare my brother Mordechai. Who runs a large healthcare consulting comp, a home care consulting company in New York reached out and says, Hey, at the healthcare show, which is for nursing homes, I don't know where home care agencies fit in, but maybe we do like a party or like a networking event within the event. So we start talking about that and then that becomes the event. So our first event ended up being a large home care event. It was immediately the number one home care agency event, in the Northeast. So we got these home care agencies in, it was in speakers booths. We did at El Caribe in Brooklyn. Gorgeous, beautiful. Everything was top of the line. And it was amazing. It was followed by our, healthcare event that we actually were planning. And then we came to real estate. And , we're planning, we're talking to different people. We're actually talking to Riverside because we wanted to find those insiders, right? So with home Care, it came to me somehow.. And healthcare, we had, hooked up with a couple different people to see who could be that insider who can help source the speakers and get us some of the early sponsors. Get us some of the early. Attendees and, it snowballs from there. If you wanna know how to do this type of stuff, you, all you need is to start with a couple of basic ingredients and then it just, one speaker brings the other, or one attendee brings the other. And so it's not rocket science, but it definitely helps to have those partners or hosts or whatever we, choose to call them that, that could, give us that shortcut and amplify our presence in that industry., So we're going out there, we're meeting Riverside. They had this event, maybe you were there. It was at one of the stadiums in New York and it was in some kind of suite upstairs. And they had some kind of real estate education event. So we came to meet one of their guys. He says no offense guys, but you could do this yourself. You don't need us. Everyone's in real estate., You don't need us. We're just gonna hold you down. And we're like, okay. We'll, they were open to help, but we're like, okay, we'll see. So we leave the event. And as we're it was Mac and myself, were at this event. So as we're leaving this event I tell Mac, there was this ReBoat event in in, during, in this last summer, this, so this is in June, and I said last summer there was this ReBoat event. We saw it all over pictures and people coming big boats and big and speakers, and it was very grand and a lot of fun. And I said we should maybe reach out to them. Because they already, Riverside was more of a corporate type of thing with more focus on education. Rebo was more fun. It was more our style. So I said maybe just reach out to them and see if they would join, or, and Max says, oh, by the way, these guys this guy, Chaim Lefkowitz call me a few weeks ago. And he asked me something like that. I'm like, Mac, are you kidding me? So we get in the car, we dial Chaim's number and . This was June. They'd had zero plans, I think they bit off more than the, more than they could chew. And they were they weren't planning on, on, on having an event. I said we're building a real estate event. You got, some of the local real estate guys or a lot of the local real estate guys. Why don't we, why don't we do this together? And they said, great, let's go. So by the time the drive ended, we had a, a date of August 1st, it gave us six weeks to plan the event. And I said, we, a boat is not a great idea because we want to do a full conference. With booths, with proper sessions, proper auditorium. At this time we were ready into our third non-Amazon event, and we've done like eight Amazon events. We the production list, so to speak. We knew what it takes , to the formula for a great event. And, so I said we can do a boat, but what if we did that Reboat and we turned it into a beach, did a ReBeach. So we find a venue on a beach and you still get the, you still get the party. But you do have the proper building. So I found that venue, found a building with a beach. And that was I don't remember where it was, new Rochelle. Rochelle. So it was New Rochelle. The surf club and it was it was chaos. It was a disaster because we planned for, as it was moving forward, we had thought 500, 600 people, because, people weren't buying tickets fast enough. And we didn't realize how the hasidish crowd, the Hasidic crowd for those not familiar. 10 to book last minute. So at the night of the event, and then the morning, suddenly we've got 1200, 1300 bodies showing up. Food, it was chaos, but we got it together towards the evening. By the time was eight o'clock at night, everyone was fed., But I thought it was great because we brought the crowd together and we made it happen. Of course we planned a much improved event for the next year. And we got to know a lot of the real estate guys in the interim. And as we build out other events, it's interesting what happens. The overlap, there's nursing home operators, there's home care agency owners, there's real estate owners, construction guys, and it just starts overlapping where you start getting to know everybody and it becomes, somewhat easier to plan these events. And because we're hitting one event after the next, we can pivot and learn. So instead of, learning a year later, we learn a month later because we've got something else going on that gives us the. The grounds to to fix things up. So that's, that was the real estate thing. That was a long introduction.

Steven M Weinstock: 13:13

Oh yeah. I had a bunch of bunch of questions, but I think you you answered most of them with your with your intro. Yeah. I've been to I've been to the ReBeach event. It was great. As somebody, as an attendee, I didn't notice the chaos. I'm friendly with, Chaim Lefkowitz Afterwards, he told me. That they were expecting less people. A lot of last minute bookings. He said there wasn't enough food. We didn't notice it. I didn't notice it. The people I was with didn't notice it. Maybe a few people. And I was there till the end maybe'cause I got fed at eight o'clock. Maybe that's the reason. But I think I saw you post somewhere. It's better to have people leaving hungry than to have nobody show up and have lots of leftover food.. Joel Wolh: Would you rather have food But yeah it, to me it was, this is great, this is Fire Island but in the real way without the scam not Fire Island, whatever you call it. Fire a fire Festival. So that was to, to me that was great. And it we're. Every I find, they say every failure builds you, blah, blah, blah. It really does because if you learn from it, if you take your ego and throw it in the garbage and you say, okay, what did we do wrong? Or what did I do wrong? How can I fix this? You just improve and you improve. Now it's an event a month basically, or more, and we're constantly improving. There is no event that goes by that we're not driving home at 11 o'clock at night. And calling each other our partners and saying, okay how do we improve this? How do we improve that? And the scariest thing for us is an event that's like flawless and perfect. Because, how do we top this? How do we improve it? How do we make it better? So I've been attending like I said, the events the last couple of years. The real estate events keeps getting better keeps improving. Just the level of. The guests, the attendees the shows the panels just keeps getting better. I had, we did have

Joel Wolh: 15:07

an amazing Emcee this year. Yes. So you talk about

Steven M Weinstock: 15:10

that. Yes. I had the privilege of being the mc at the last deal event. And I guess that goes to my next question. We're managing these high stakes big personalities that are showing up to this event. There's thousands of details, how do you manage. Every specific detail. How does that even, how do you manage your own mental bandwidth by doing this? There's so much, there's so many details You're dealing with a sophisticated audience. You're not dealing with low level executive. You're dealing with owners. You have guys who, could own 5,000 apartments in New York City, where you could have a guy who's doing, $2 billion a year in commercial finance. These are people showing up and if they want to slice a pizza from your event or they want a steak, you gotta make sure every detail is really, spot on. How do you do that? Is that just your team?, Are you just a detail fanatic?

Joel Wolh: 16:04

There's two things there. One is like, how do you deal with a ca kiosk? Things just. So many things and the other, how do you actually do it? I'm gonna answer what Rubie Schron, which I was very impressed that he answered because we had Ralph from Meridian speaking to rubie Schron from Cammebys, and he asked him, for years and years, Ruby, you're waking up super early, you going to pray. And then you involve yourself with, you study and then you do charity and, but like you have a schedule like early in the morning and.. But he answers first of He's a nerd. The man is a nerd. He wakes up early. If you told him, Ruby, go wake up at for the nine o'clock minyan and walk into shul and have a coffee. He doesn't know how to do it. I don't know him very well, but I can imagine I grew up in, in Seagate where his brother lived. I, I don't know if he was, I don't think he was involved in the business. Very simple people. But it's the same, type of person like you, so it's important to know my brother actually, who's very different from me, posted on LinkedIn yesterday. Like, how do you I'm getting more and more messages and WhatsApp I'm doing so much more of communication. How do you focus on actually building, the company and doing the stuff that need to happen within the company? So Yehuda says, ask your brother Joel Wolh and. The answer is that, that's to me just, that's how I operate. If I have to just, if I have zero, if my phone is on silent all day and I just have to focus on, building a project, like I can never do it. I need that chaos. So to me, I thrive on. This guy's arriving. We need a golf cart to take him from the parking lot. At the same time the security needs to move two feet up and the pizza guy's gotta start cleaning up. Sushi guys coming in and we gotta make sure the ice at the bottom of the milk bucket is cleaned up.'cause I noticed it was, cloudy. And then we're picking stuff up off the floor at the same time. And then make sure that Steven Westock, oh shoot, does he have the next speaker? So I thrive off that. But of course you have to have a big team that is and shout out to my partner. So first of all, in real estate Chaim and Joel are the industry insiders that have the group. At this point we know a lot of the people and, but at the same time they're sweating, calling people, inviting 'em to the shows. I got my partner, Yehuda Suskin, who is a sales wizz who manages our sales team and brings every single sponsor in and makes sure that the, the finance runs well. Then we got Max Leisinger, who just runs. All of our logistics, our technical our communications so much that needs to happen in the background. And then we've got a lot of different people doing different things and graphics and website design and phone calls and bookkeeping. And so there's a lot going on behind the scenes. And then I get to just be in a thousand WhatsApp chats. Constantly just coordinate this event.

And, so they're usually at 3: 18:58

00 PM or so at an event we're working on already, starting to shift the website over to next year and then move, and then we move immediately to the next event while we're still managing the event. We're, okay, what do we need for next event? What marketing do we need? What do we need to do in terms of communication? What do we need to do in terms of venue, whatever. So we start actually. And then we take notes of, okay, the pastries were good. This was not good. Let's, switch it around next time. So it's a lot, but that to, to me it comes natural. So it's not really an answer that people want to hear.

Steven M Weinstock: 19:33

Yeah, you mentioned Chaim, Lefkowitz and since this is a real estate focused podcast. Chaim Lefkowitz, I know probably, definitely pre COVID, so I guess it's at least six years. I met him when he was still a commercial mortgage broker. He actually set me up with a seller of a few apartment buildings in Ohio, which I ended up purchasing I believe in early 2021. So that worked out. And, I've been friendly with him for a long time. I go with him to other event other events sometimes. A couple of weeks ago we were at an event in Florida, in Miami Beach. It was a nice event. It wasn't a powwow event. It definitely wasn't a luxury event even though it was a real estate event. But I had the opportunity to be speaking there, so that was very nice. But yeah. Between you and Chaim this ReDeal event has really become. A must-see when it was announced that I was gonna be the mc first of all, Chaim asking me, do I want to be the mc? Can you do me a favor and be the mc? I said a favor. This is, I would love to be the mc, I'm gonna go into my closet and find some sort of nightclub jacket so I stand out from the crowd so I could wear it. And people, and I had all these people like reach out to me even before the event for the few days. Can you get me tickets? Who else is gonna be there? Are you speaking? And I said, no I'm just Mc. I'm there to introduce the celebrities. Maybe I'll make some jokes in between. But, I'm really just honored to to be a part of it. It really was an honor to, first of all, to meet, to see everybody behind the scenes. You were talking about golf carts and making sure people arrive on time. I believe the first panel was called for 11 o'clock, and I reached out to Chaim. I said, what time should I be there? Maybe I reached out to you and you guys told me to be there 10 30. So I, I live in Brooklyn. This was in in Jersey. I put in my GPS. Okay. It says I'm gonna be there 10 22. And while I'm driving, I'm also working at the same time. So I'm texting I'm calling, and I made two wrong turns and all of a sudden I see my GPS is now 10 54. Okay, no problem. I got six minutes. Anyways, I pull in and I see that the parking lot was a little further away from the main building, but right there. And then I see a golf cart pulling up. And it's got room for about eight people. And there's one seat left, one seat. And I actually felt bad because there was a gentleman waiting for this golf cart. And he was a little older than me and I usually never do this. And I said to him, Hey, I'm part of the talent. I need to be on stage in five minutes. And the guy says, no problem. Now. He probably thought I was lying. And I got into the golf cart, came in. Everything worked out. Thank God this guy came over to me during the show and said, I thought you were lying, but I said, eh, whatever. And so he knew I was telling the truth, but it was really, and I

Joel Wolh: 22:19

called you Steven, where are you? And you're like, I just hit the parking lot. I'm like, I okay. It is, this is not happening. You're not gonna be on time, but. Two minutes later, I'm like, how in the world did you get here so fast?

Steven M Weinstock: 22:33

Yeah, it was the golf cart transportation. That was very good. I see you on I see you're active on LinkedIn. I see you're very active on WhatsApp status. I'm personally not on Instagram guy, so I don't know if you're active on there. You mentioned earlier that you did some events for some sort of charities and obviously for other business ventures. I see now, specifically now that I have you on WhatsApp status, I see you take your networking skill and it's not just about making money. I noticed recently that you started raising funds for various causes or specifically for families in need. I happen to be a big fan of charity, of personal people. Who need it. Yes, it's always nice to give to large organizations. Charity is great no matter what you're doing, whether you're, supporting this or supporting that. But the way you collect, and I've seen you, there's a family that needs food for the weekend, for Shabbos or for Yom Tov the holidays they need $1,200 and you just put it up on your status and you're okay. Now we need 1150. Now we need 10 75. All right, I just got 360. It's totally you're leveraging your power of networking and your network to really give back. It's really tremendous that you have no fear of subjecting your network to that. You have a lot of people who are in business and they deal with a lot of rich people and they don't want to mix and match. Hey, I, I deal, he's my lawyer, he's my client. I don't really want to. And you put it out there, now you're not. Yeah. Re you know, as far as I know, you're not reaching out to people personally, but you're putting it on your network. And whoever wants to give, they give. And it's really commendable.

Joel Wolh: 24:21

You came in when, you're seeing 200 donations, 300 donation, 500 donation. You're seeing that. But a few years ago, it was $10 at a time. Okay, I need, I'm at 4 78, who's in for $22? And who's in for 18? Can I get 10 people to gimme $18 today? And that's how we built it up., I don't reach out. I started once a year. Before Passover I'll reach out to anyone that I think with 90% certainty can afford 50 bucks. If I think there might be a chance that you can't afford 50 bucks, I will not send you a message. And then I send out a broadcast message to those people and I say, I'm saying this to everyone. So feel free to ignore it. I don't really send to everyone I send to a curated list. But, so it gives them the out because the one thing I hate is people being presumptuous.'cause I get this all day. Oh, Joel, can you sponsor, I'm batting for something. I'm like, I'm very bad at batting. What? He says no, I want, can you give money to my page? I'm like, okay. Yeah. Like I don't like it. Leave me alone. I'm biking for Chai. Great organization, but go bike. Leave me out of it. I don't want to mess up your your jive over there. And then with rich people or people that I do business with. So it's funny because the attendees we have nursing home owners, real estate owners large organizational, like we, we do 10 plus different industries. They're really not. People that we do business with, we do business with the sponsors, with the exhibitors. They tend to be more down to earth people. Even the, billion dollar companies. And I'm at war with the ego, so I, if you have an ego, it's your problem. I'm gonna reach out to you or I'm gonna post to my status. And I had a billionaire, a guy that ran a multi-billion dollar fund and watched every single one of my statuses. And I gave him opportunities here and there. I. And then and I start it really annoyed me. Like he wouldn't pitch in 50 bucks. I never asked him, but I'm posting him, some others. So I started like calling them out and a couple of them stopped following me. Like I didn't call 'em out by person, by name. Yeah. Dude, they're a billionaire and you can't gimme 50 bucks. And I think part of that is also they're used to being solicited for 5,000, 10,000. And they don't know how to just donate $50. It's beneath them. So that, yeah, but I don't care. I really don't care about other people's egos. It's their problem. And if you look down on me, because I'm busy raising, $500, it's fine. So I got into it. I had a partner that was a business partner that he lived in Israel and he was somehow somewhat affiliated with an organization there. And they raised money for a widow's, like they showed a picture. Her ceiling is like falling in. Can we get a contractor to come and then we just need $200 for supplies. So things like that. And really spoke to me and I started, and I helped for a few cases and I tried helping the organization because their marketing was terrible. They're like promising this and telling stories. I'm like, all you gotta do is your ads. Roof, $500, one electrician, three donors, like it's a no brainer. They wouldn't listen to me. And then every time one of my people donated, they would start calling them every month. I'm like, forget it. Goodbye. And somehow one person reached out to me, another person reached out to me and I got a, I got this following where I made people, not a new following, but people that I, already am networking with on WhatsApp relationships, friends. I made them feel very comfortable to reach out if they needed help. So the, they feel like this is and a lot of people end up giving, putting in more than they took out in the past. So as business moves, as their work improves, they feel like they want to give back. So it's a great community.

Steven M Weinstock: 28:00

Sure. If someone came to you tomorrow and said, I want to build the next pow wow. What's the one piece of advice you'd give them or the biggest trap that they should avoid?

Joel Wolh: 28:12

I. So the biggest trap is thinking, which is all events and all event organizers. The majority of em is it's about them. You mentioned the blazer. You said the party blazer. I actually have one in my closet. I can bring it and show you. It's got the sparkles and the black velvet lapel. And I bought that when we had Damon John at our, we did a very upscale Amazon event one time. It was called the Aggregator Show. It was at the time these large. Companies, private equity, they were buying, they were creating these aggregators and buying Amazon accounts. It was a disaster. Everyone knew it was gonna be a disaster besides these billionaires. And we all thought they were nuts. Because , there was so much you had to know to, it's not like running a company like Amazon is, and they all failed. They all crashed one after the other, but at, this was at the height of it. And we, we brought in big Amazon guys anyway, so we thought, okay, this was like a retreat. We'll bring Damon John in and. He'll speak, but he had two tiers of what he did. One was the keynote, one was a fireside chat oh, who's gonna do the fireside chat with him? Me, of course. Who else? So I got this sparkly jacket, and we did this thing, we had this gorgeous LED wall behind us and , so I had that jacket, I realized, and this was two years ago, in the past two years or so, as we were getting more and as we had to really prove ourselves, we had the disaster with the food at re beach. The first healthcare of the setup was two ballrooms was it was a mess. A lot of people were unhappy. These experience humble us and we say, okay, so it's not about us. It is not about, us arriving in fancy dinner jackets. It's about the guests, it's about the hospitality and more. Most importantly, it's about getting business done so that the right people on the room and the right people are talking to each other and we are out. We're picking up garbage from the floor. Pretty much. So that jacket is there in the closet. And maybe I'll frame it once once I really get over my my ego. But the first thing I would say, long story short, , it is not about you. So if you want to create an event, you wanna create a conference, a business conference look, I'm wearing the Trump hat. Okay? So we did an event last year, I dunno if you follow that, but we in deal New Jersey and it was a Trump fundraiser and we ran everything. Pretty much. So we were, it was the hardest eight days of my life. We came in on Sunday morning and it was the following Sunday. Like literally we, I. Acquired the gig on Sunday, and it was every single day. Site visits Secret Service walkthroughs Trump advanced teams, walkthroughs practicing the songs and the walkouts and who comes first. It was insane. So we would create these cool Trump hats that say powwow on them.. And then they had Trump 47. And when I made this Tuesday or whatever, I was hoping like, okay, Trump will sign it or whatever. What ha because we worked so hard and hard work humbles you. We worked so hard and it was like every detail. So Trump did two hours of like an hour of pictures and then an hour of, the big donors and stuff. I don't wanna say names, but some of the real estate guys were there and I had to literally one guy had to literally walk him past Secret Service. You, this was. Let's just say this guy owe me a big favor. So we're doing, we were doing so much that it started becoming like we just have to execute and we just have to make sure that at six o'clock when Trump walks out. This and that. They all come together. So I literally did not have a moment to even go pose for a picture or do anything, or get an autograph. And then the second he leaves the stage, like the AV and this and that, this has to go.. And then at night when it was over, everyone's like, where's the selfie?, The autograph? I'm like. There's no selfie. It was work. And really that's really what it's about. It's about delivering. And then, if you keep on delivering and you consistently deliver well at the end, the glory will happen. The only problem is that you, at that point, you don't care about the glory. So that's, it's a slight issue, if you run away from it at the end, you don't really care about it. I, of course I care about glory very much. I'm just saying that what's important to me and to my partners is understanding that it's not about you. And because if you want that paycheck. You need to deliver quality. And quality has nothing to do with putting yourself out there.. It's quality. It's creating an environment.

Steven M Weinstock: 32:41

So you mentioned we're gonna end off over here, but you mentioned that taking selfies by these events. Yeah. And when I was Mc by the ReDeal event, I wanted selfies with all the. Panelists, they're all big names and it would look great on my LinkedIn. And I consciously didn't take a selfie'cause I didn't wanna bother them. But there was one person Ruby Schron, who I had to, and being the only other person on the stage with him and Ralph Herzka I figured I'm just gonna do it. And I, when I got it and I posted it, it was real nice. It was very nice to get. And you mentioned we were talking about the jacket. Just to give you an example I was driving home from the event and I was driving with somebody in the car. I was giving somebody a ride home, and my wife calls me and , tells me that, there's an engagement party of vort. Can you stop by just, whatever to say mazal tov, congratulations. And I'd say, sure, but I just wanna go home and put on a suit or a jacket. And she says, oh, aren't you wearing a jacket or a suit? So I say, yeah, but it's not something I could wear. Really. So she, okay, whatever. And I hang up and the guy in the car says to me what's going on? Why, what, why can't you wear it? I say this jacket, this is not real life. This is what I'm an mc on the stage. This is not something I could wear in Brooklyn or, show up to a shul event, a synagogue event. I thought that was funny. One last question. Where do you see powwow in, five years from now? I know you're putting together what is it called? The BOH show. The Building Show. I know you're in a bunch of different verticals, so to speak, different industries.

Joel Wolh: 34:10

Yeah. Where do you see yourself in five years? Pow. Before the building show, that's in August. That's in less than eight weeks. There's the retail show, the brick and mortar show.. Also, we're getting a lot of retail guys that own strip malls. It's it's for the retailers, for the store owners, but it is, we also want the retail, like Meridian retail leasing is there, right? So that's in two weeks or three weeks. I don't know. Where do we see powwow? So I used to have a plan. I used to have a map that, okay, in three years we're gonna be here and then we're gonna do X, Y, and z. Now there's no more plan. So it's just really like the plans through I know if I, if we play our cards right, God willing, there is going to be either a big exit at some point or like we know where this could go, but instead of focusing on that goal, we're learning that the only goal we have is to make the next event incredible. Grow it. We're barely scratching the surface. New York real estate a thousand people or whatever it is it's nowhere. And not to say that you need to have 10,000 people, that doesn't necessarily give it a better event. It probably, hurts the event. But we're really early in this journey. So our mission is just the next event. Improve, and. We'll see where this goes.

Steven M Weinstock: 35:24

Okay, Joel, it was a lot of fun to have you here. Definitely enjoyed your interview very much. I, like I said, I had a bunch of questions, but luckily for me you know how, sorry you

Joel Wolh: 35:34

asked for the history. That's why I say you're good. You're good. Don't ask for history because just, it's too long. I started at 40 because the event company started at 40. My life really started at 42 when I started battling the the ego we're still, that's gonna be a long like Netanyahu says, it's gonna take, it's gonna be a long battle. We'll see.

Steven M Weinstock: 35:52

Joel, it was great having you to everybody else. Thank you. Joel is a power player. Powwow events powwow

Joel Wolh: 35:58

player.

Steven M Weinstock: 35:58

A powwow player. Yes, he's great. Really fun interview. If you enjoyed watching click, like subscribe, share. Joel it was great to have you and thank you. And we're out.

Joel Wolh: 36:09

Appreciate it. That was great.