Tell us a little bit about the company yourself and how you got to where you are.

I’m the owner here at Avad3 Event Production. Production means we do AV and sound and lights and all those things at events. We do it at conferences here in Northwest Arkansas and then over the past five years, we’ve really started to go national with the conferences that we support.

Where does the name come from?

We loved Avad when we picked it because it starts with AV and audio visual is what we do. Avad is an old Hebrew word and I’m not Jewish I don’t know the Hebrew language really well, but we found this word that is Hebrew for serve. I think a lot of the hospitality industry has forgotten that it’s all about service. I put in our name, avad, we’re here to serve. And then the three at the end is audio, video, lighting.

What makes a great production experience at an event?

I think about production value at an event as communicating the importance of the event. Every attendee, whether they’re at the presidential inauguration, or they’re attending a big national conference, or a breakout room, you are communicating to that attendee how important is their time and the room that they are in. When people think about spending money on production, it’s important that you’re conveying to the attendee, hey, this is an important room. This is an important moment and an important hour of you are life you are spending here. Production value is about conveying the importance and retaining their attention that the attendees are not walking out thinking, why did I come to this? I want them to say this is important to you so it was important to us. Our event spent something on production here because this is an important moment.

What do you like about living in Northwest Arkansas?

I’ve been here forever. I plan to be here forever. It’s my hometown. It’s where I want to raise my kids. We have grown a lot as a business here. With more national work, every time I fly home, I ask myself: Would I rather move my family to the place I just visited? The answer is always I’d rather be in Northwest Arkansas.

Northwest Arkansas will always be home for my family, for my wife, for my kids, but it gets to be our home because work is really accessible here. We’re so blessed to have the wealthy families and Fortune 500 companies that are here. They have chosen to invest in making Northwest Arkansas a very livable place, which is the most beautiful, selfless, selfish thing, because this is their home. They can’t possibly ride those hundreds of miles of trails, go to every show at the Walmart AMP, or regularly use every other amenity but they have invested in them anyways.

Why would an event planner want to choose Rogers or Northwest Arkansas as a home for their event?

We operate in some of these big cities and they have the big city amenities. They have the arena, they have all of the big things, but those cities, sadly, hospitality people forgot what the hospitality industry is. They’ve become machines of having events. They know exactly how to get the arena, get the hotels and get the block. It’s a machine, whereas what I see here in town is the level of care is 10X. Someone coming here is going to have the owner of the company is going to be on their site, the owner of the catering company on their site, etc.. This is not a machine yet and it doesn’t have to ever become one if we can remember our roots here in Arkansas. And so I encourage people to consider a smaller market like our hometown because of the level of care that they’re going to get compared to the machine.

What are the biggest pitfalls you see when it comes to event production?

Biggest pitfall I see is choosing the wrong vendor. One of the most impactful books that I’ve read the past four years was called “Who, Not How”, by Dan Sullivan. I love using that phrase “who, not how”, as a lot of event planners are very “how” oriented folks. They’re saying, how do we need to do this? How do we do that? However, I think the first decision when you’re planning an event is who. Who’s in charge of the catering? Who’s in charge of the production? Who’s in charge of the decor?

What do you think about Northwest Arkansas National Airport (XNA)?

We are running a national company out of Northwest Arkansas, so I’m at the airport a lot. I’m also an airplane nerd and I’ve become a private pilot. I love to fly Cessna airplanes. I pay attention to airplanes. I love airports, and I’m a detail oriented guy, and I unashamedly will tell people I think XNA is my favorite airport In the whole country.

I love starting and ending my journey at XNA. I love going through TSA at XNA and I love parking at XNA. I think Northwest Arkansas National Airport gives the best passenger travel experience of any airport. It’s amazing how much earlier I have to get to the airport in those big cities when I’m coming home.

Tell us about your favorite restaurants in Rogers?

I love Wright’s Barbecue! I was talking to an uncle and he said, do you realize that the number one BBQ place voted by Yelp is in Northwest Arkansas? He was really proud that his town had one at #8. You you can find me at Wright’s once a week.

I also love Parkside Public in downtown Rogers. Parkside gets the vibe right. My wife knows if it’s my birthday or we hit a big milestone at work or something I’m probably going to want to head to Wright’s or Parkside.

What does your family like to do here?

We’ve got two young boys now, five and six. We love raising our family here. We’re really trying hard to raise them similar to how my wife and I were raised outdoors in nature. A lot of fresh air, a lot of playing, running around in the front yard with the neighbors. They they can run in the street, in between our little neighborhood houses. They’ve got friends, they can hop on their bikes and get to The Railyard Bike Park. We love to go to Lake Atlanta and walk around. We love fresh air and we love nature. I spend enough time in ballrooms and 14 hour days.

How do you measure success?

If you’re not growing, you’re dying. I want to see a project grow, account, and event grown. Grow doesn’t have to mean headcount. I hear planners say we did 900 people last year now let’s do 1,000. Growth does not necessarily mean more people in the room. Growth to me means the event more interesting than it was last year and that attendees feel like their time is important.

There is an event planner I know that is an engineer and he has it down to a science. I love working with him because he’s got it all figured out, but I’m always challenging him to say, hey, success to me and success to us looks like changing this up enough that your sponsors are still engaged, that your attendees are still engaged, that this recording doesn’t sound the exact same as last year.

What what excites you the most about the future about of Avad3?

Avad3 started in my college dorm room. For our first five years, we were your hometown audio visual and event production company. I loved those years. Every year I was thrilled and thought, if this is it, I feel like I’ve made it. All I ever wanted was to run a small business and do this craft.

About five years ago, something happened. We did a great job for a client doing an event here in town and they explained to us, wow, your level of service is way better than we have had. We’re going to miss you next year because this event, we move it around and we’d love if we could take you with us. I said, well, we’d love to go on the road, but surely it wouldn’t be competitive to take us, but I’ll quote it for you. I’ve never had somebody sign a quote so fast. You would not believe the rates people are paying in these really large markets and Arkansas prices even with the truck and the flights, is competitive.

That moment changed our company history forever. The majority of our growth comes from that national fork in the road. We had about eight people at the time and we are 42 people, which is 5X growth. 4X of that 5X is from national growth. I don’t want to abandon my hometown. I don’t want us to turn into a rock’n’roll company that’s always on tour. We are still very much here in the community, but with a team of 42, 30,000 square feet of warehouse now and all this equipment, we can serve our hometown with a national level of event production.