Turning Event Planners into
ROCKSTARS!
Working with elevation Event Talent Consultants is unlike any talent buying experience you have ever had. Find curated headline entertainment, high-profile keynote speakers, and legendary sports personalities for your event delivered with unmatched attention to detail, personalized service, and price transparency.
Are you ready to ROCK?
Why elevation
highly curated recommendations
There are no generic laundry lists at elevation. Together, we will do a deep dive into your goals, objectives, and audience, delivering a curated list of recommendations that are specifically targeted to your event. This will usually include a few out-of-the-box ideas for your consideration as well. Included with every recommendation is an explanation of why booking that speaker and/or entertainer will make you look like a Rockstar!
Jerry Maguire was on to something!
In the hit film, “Jerry Maguire”, a sports agent portrayed by Tom Cruise famously wrote a manifesto stating that fewer clients and more personal attention would result in a better business model. Jerry was on to something. The mission at elevation is to build strong personal relationships with a small number of clients and deliver truly customized recommendations that generate unprecedented value.
price transparency
Do you know exactly how much your talent buyer made on your last event? Was it clearly indicated on the contract? There is a very good chance that your agency has sourced the talent for your event through an invisible third-party vendor without your knowledge. I know, because other agencies have turned to me to help book talent behind the scenes many times! Working with elevation, you will always know exactly how much we are making and what partners we are working with – if any – to source talent for your event.
There are no small details
Who manages the crucial logistics involved with your event talent investment? Contract rider negotiations, travel and ground transportation details, load in/out, soundcheck, and other factors can be complex and are vital to the success of your event. Ensuring that you, the talent, the production company, and the venue are all on the same page is critical. At elevation, the same person who books the talent manages every aspect of the engagement from start to finish.
About Me
My name is Arnold Sand and I have worked in the event talent industry since 1992. As Executive Director at the private events arm of Live Nation, one of the largest entertainment companies in the world, I led a team that booked headline entertainment, keynote speakers, and sports personalities for Fortune 500 corporate, international industry association, not-for-profit, and private events globally for 25 years. In 2017, I was recruited to join a global keynote speaker management firm as Vice President, Americas & Europe to launch and grow operations in those regions. I have also served in leadership positions with the International Association of Speakers Bureaus (IASB), including serving as Chairman of IASB’s ENGAGE Annual Convention. In 2018, I received the IASB Above & Beyond Award for my service to the association and to the industry.
I started elevation Event Talent Consultants because I saw a need to elevate the level of service provided to event planners. My mission statement is very simple:
I turn Event Planners into Rockstars!
It’s awesome when things go well!
An international pharmaceutical industry association was faced with a big challenge. They were forced to move their annual conference online due to COVID-19 and were concerned about engaging their audience through a computer screen. The solution I proposed was keynote speaker Pauline Nguyen, one of the most engaging storytellers on the planet. Here are the results in the words of the organization’s Executive Director and President:
Dee K.
Executive Director
Pauline was beyond incredible. Not one person dropped offline during her keynote – the entire audience was riveted by her keynote and her story – we definitely hit the jackpot with Pauline! Today still on LinkedIn people are posting about her and her story – this we have not seen before in this volume after speakers. Thank you, Arnold, as always, for never failing to deliver to us suggestions for keynote speakers and for only bringing the best of the best to us for all our events. We appreciate it! We appreciate you also always thinking “outside the box” and never having us go with a speaker that so many others have – we are always unique and stand out with our keynotes – kudos!
Kathy R.
President
Arnold! Where do I begin? Pauline Nguyen was more than we ever expected. I have received calls from people asking how long they could replay it because they wanted to do so alone to soak up everything she had to say once more. I don’t even have words to express how good she was, for all of the 30 minutes or so she spoke and additional time spent on Q&A, she was engaging, charismatic, entertaining, riveting, candid, transparent….I’m running out of adjectives. Hands down the best decision I’ve made since becoming President. So now here is the BIG problem. What in the world will we do to follow that up? She will go down in history as they best keynote we’ve ever had. Thank you for all you do and representing such great talent! We appreciate you.
But the true measure of a company is how they respond when things don’t go as planned!
A US-based insurance industry client planned a beachfront concert with the band, Collective Soul, at the Hard Rock Hotel in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic to honor the top 10% of their sales force during an incentive trip. Everything was going very smoothly…until the morning of the show. I received a call at 7:00am from the head of the A/V team asking me to come down to the beach. I could tell by the panic in his voice that something was wrong. I raced down to the beach to discover that an unprecedented high tide caused by an off-shore storm had washed over the stage. Seaweed and debris were strewn over the stage and it was left leaning as the sand under one side of it had been eroded away. Much of the A/V equipment was also damaged.
Click to read the rest of the story…
I called for all hands on deck, assembling the band’s technical director and tour manager, the head of the client’s A/V team, the convention services manager, and head of the in-house A/V team from the hotel to discuss our options. There were only two feasible courses of action. First, there was a large patio adjacent to the beach. We could try to salvage as much of the equipment as possible and set up a stage on the patio. Second, another group had held an event the evening prior inside the main ballroom. The sound, lights, and décor were still set up, and I was able to convince the hotel to let us use the room and existing setup at no additional cost to the client.
The A/V director called the CEO of the company and presented him with the two options. He had envisioned a concert on the beach and was adamant about making the patio set-up work. Upon hearing this, I asked to speak to the him. It is not easy to tell a CEO that he is making the wrong decision, but having produced hundreds of events over the course of my career, I felt that it was in the best interest of everyone involved for me to do so. I explained that while it was technically possible to get a new stage built on the patio in time, everyone, including him, would have an incredibly stressful day. Even if we were successful, it would look like we threw a stage together at the last minute because that is exactly what we were doing. If we chose to have the show in the ballroom, we would have a more relaxed day than if nothing had gone wrong to begin with, and it would look like we planned to have the show in the ballroom the entire time. Thankfully, the CEO took my guidance. We had a massively successful show – our first together – and an ecstatic client at the end of the evening.
Pics
Ready to ROCK?
Let’s connect and chat about your next event. Please use the contact form below to reach me. I promise to reply by the next business day, but it will likely be faster than that!
You can also
call me: +1 (661) 772-7643
email me: arnold @ elevationetc.com (no spaces)
or schedule a 15-minute Google Meet or Zoom meeting: