Crafting Experiences That Stick: Mark Billik on the Rise of BeCore

Justin Levinson (00:10.254)‍

Hey everybody, welcome to the Agency Side podcast. My name is Justin Levinson and I'll be your host today. I'm here, I'm joined with Mark Billick, who is the owner and managing partner of B Corp, one of the top experiential marketing agencies in the US. He launched the agency in 1999 and has since led award-winning campaigns for brands like Nike, Red Bull, Nestle, and Xbox. Known for his leadership, creative vision, and operational excellence,

Mark continues to push boundaries of experiential marketing. Thanks so much for being here today, Mark.

Mark Billik‍

Thanks Justin for having me.

Yeah, hopefully I got the intro correct. But maybe for the folks that might not be familiar with B Corp, you can tell us a little bit about what you guys are doing or have been doing.

Yeah, well, we have been doing it. This is our 26th year at B Corp. Started it in my garage a long time ago on the relationship with the first employee of Red Bull in North America employee, guy named Sean Hackney. And so it was very fortunate that I had a relationship with him and he asked me to deliver a wigwam. And I was like, what's a wigwam? I'm like, it's a star tent. And they still use that kind of, that's that structure to this day. But so.

‍

Mark Billik (01:21.262)‍

Um, started just as a simple, uh, ask and the company just kind of grew from that relationship and, um, kept growing in the world of event production. don't know. And in 99, I don't think it was called experiential marketing at that point. Um, but since then, uh, what we really do is create amazing experiences for some of the largest brands in the country.

And a little bit outside the country too, but predominantly working with the brands around the United States and helping them connect to consumers in a physical way.

That's awesome. And how did you, I guess, like before you started the business, know, what was sort of your plan? Like when you were in college, did you see it going this way or did you have other plans?

No, I was in the hospitality space, which is very much very similar to event marketing, or experiential. I was at a restaurant called compadres and I was putting myself through the university of Hawaii. My college, that I chose to go to growing up in Hawaii on Maui. it was kind of a layup. So I went to and, put myself through college by working in the restaurant business and

Really enjoyed being at service of people, especially around food serving and that kind of environmental experience in the restaurant business. So when I was about two years out of college, I got an opportunity to take a job at Cheesecake Factory in Marina Del Rey. And that was the second location of Cheesecake Factory. And it was a very, very busy environment. And what a great restaurant to move to because the systems.

‍

Mark Billik (03:04.938)‍

And the guest experience that cheesecake provides is exceptional. And still to this day is pretty much one of the best restaurant experience that you could have. It's very consistent across wherever you go, whether you're in Buckhead or whether you're in Florida or Los Angeles, your experience is exactly identical from the food to the front desk to just your, you know, enjoyment of the environment itself. So I learned a lot from there and it really helped me in my career. And it really, a lot of the

Some of the principles that cheesecake was built on, I've adapted to B Corp and doing so when I was working at Cheesecake kind of at the tail end of my career, I took, was like antsy about doing some events. So I started this golf tournament with Meals on Wheels, that Cheesecake still supports to this day and doing some internal events for the teams and things like that. you know, and in the process of that, how I actually got my career started was

I produced a inline skate tour, um, came up with an idea back in 1993, you the truth, to produce this particular tour, created it into an international property and then sold it. Um, and in doing so realize that, you know, event marketing and experiential marketing, um, was really for me, it combined it hospitality operations, logistics.

guest service, being at service, and then the creative side, which I actually didn't know I even really had, but I'm fairly creative in coming up with, besides just solutions, but creative ideas around brands and what they should do to connect authentically to their consumers that they're after. It's kind of how it started. Then it just, it just rolled. Then it rolled into Red Bull. Red Bull came to North America, asked me to help them. And after Red Bull, Microsoft,

Was launching a product called Microsoft zoom, which was an iPod competitor. Not many people know about it. It only lasted about three, four years. You know, Microsoft's not great with hardware. great with software, but an Xbox is kind of an exception for them. But anyway, so they, hired me to put on some programming around the launch of the zoom player.

‍

Mark Billik (05:18.722)‍

which we did this whole live at the barbecue and did a tour around the country of hip hop brands like LL Cool J and Common and Most Def. And that was really very, very fun and challenging in itself. So got noticed by Microsoft doing that. And then Red Bull, you know, was growing and then Nike was launching a shoe called Nike 6-0. I don't know if you remember that shoe, but the 6-0 was kind of to...

signify the six different action sports that they were supporting. Freestyle motorcycle, surfing, skateboard, BMX, snowboarding, and wakeboarding. And most people don't even know that why it was called 6.0, but that was their foyer into kind of action sports or edge sports. And they were supporting it by producing the shoe. And then they hired me to do all kinds of things like the do tour and the US Open of surfing and.

all kinds of different experiences that we created. We did an Olympic activation in Vancouver at the top of Mount Seymour. And yeah, it just started growing from there and got noticed even more. And now those relationships are still intact. And actually Nike and Red Bull are my, still my two biggest clients to this day. And we're having lots of fun. In fact, this week we're producing the Nike night market and strike night. As long as the riots calm down.

Hopefully in downtown LA, which is kind of a bummer, but we'll see if it calms down, then we're going to do it. And if it doesn't, then we might have to postpone it.

Did all these different clients, did they come to you like the Red Bull work was great and then Microsoft noticed that it was great and then did it sort of, was it kind of organic like that or were you out there patting the pavement for the gigs? Thanks for tuning in folks. This episode is brought to you by Coming Up Creative, a relationship first boutique creative recruitment agency.

‍

Justin Levinson (07:11.394)‍

We disrupt the creative ecosystem by running sophisticated multi-channel campaigns with custom video and voice outreach that actually gets responses. We actively market the agencies and brands we represent to help them stand out to today's industry's top talent, all backed by real human connection and AI-powered targeting. If you're ready for a modern recruitment approach, visit www.comingupllc.com and get started today.

No, I found the payment a lot more after all that. They kind of kicked it going. It kicked it off. was really Red Bull was first, then a buddy named Ian Trombetta, who was at Red Bull and now is at NFL. The SVP of social media at NFL gave me a reference to a friend that he had at Microsoft. And that guy came by my shop and said, you know what, you guys are cool and gritty and

You get it. We want to do this live, the barbecue thing. and so they, they hired me and while we were doing live at the barbecue, we actually got noticed through Xbox and we started picking up a lot of gaming events in the process of, there's still a good relationship that we have to this day. So, then Nike came after that by they visited one of our events and they said, this guys are really cool and interesting. And we're sponsoring how it started. They were sponsoring the do tour at the time. It was in Portland.

And so they said, Hey, we want to know, we need an activation idea for the do tour. And so I put a yurt in front of them. Most people don't even know what a yurt is Mongolian hut as an activation space, which is really cool because you kind of come in and it's circular. So you go around the yard and the interior and then you come out. So it really kind of flowed very well. And so that kind of started it. And then it became a sponsor at the U S open of surfing between Nike Hurley and Converse. And then I started activating with them there and it just grew and grew and grew.

Currently right now I'm probably in like 20 different doors at Nike from basketball to women's basketball to soccer to running to action sports and whatnot. And so yeah, it's just, it's been this wonderful growth currently at 70 full-time employees. And we've got lots of other clients like Alaska Airlines and Visa and Fanatics is growing. We have Kohler, the city of Kohler, Kohler bath. We also have Halo top.

‍

Mark Billik (09:30.388)‍

ice cream, we're doing a sampling tour and right now currently around major league baseball. And, yeah, it was just got really lots of fun things that we get to do. We're aging and see a record for Bay area host committee doing some Superbowl activations coming up. just finished last year's NBA All-Star game with them. We get to do, we get to be connected to so many different wonderful events, whether it be sporting events or lifestyle events like Coachella or other events like.

You know, governor's fall and things like that were really rooted around some of big beat moments that happened around the United States to be able to activate it. Most of those.

You've got a cool gig, Mark. I dig it. That's pretty awesome. When you were in the food service business, a set of curiosity, which roles did you have? Did you sort of do everything from like prep cooking, waiting, bartending, managing?

I mean, my history is way back from, you know, when I was 15 on Maui working at Makawell steakhouse and I was a dishwasher to busboy to server. Then when I went moved, I stayed in the restaurant business, but then when I moved to the mainland and took a job at Cheesecake, I came in as a manager and then worked my way up to assistant GM. And then I was the training manager. I was.

engaging all the new managers and training them around. it, you know, it takes four months to actually get onto the floor cheesecake. Um, so it's very adept and you work in every station in the kitchen to the bakery. Got to be able to make a dollop, a whipped cream dollop on top of that cheesecake perfectly. So all that is a super, was super important to, to learn. And all those, lot of those systems I have adapted to B Corp. You know, we have the B Corp way and

‍

Mark Billik (11:16.95)‍

We train, we try to make sure that we're hiring the Bikorians and making sure that the people that we hire are really our secret sauce to tell you the truth. And that's critical to our success and making sure that everybody has 10 second likeability. You kind of know if you like someone in the first 10 seconds of talking to them, they feel like either they're good people or maybe shady, but either way you look in their eyes and you kind of get a sense of the person's personality and their character and their integrity. But all that.

really has been vital to our success and taking some of the training and the in-depth detail on how you really want to make sure that the team is set up for success every day at our events because, you know, we're only as good as yesterday. And if we don't perform, there'll be someone else nipping at our heels to pick up our business. We just did this massive Bloomberg tech conference in San Francisco, and it was a huge success with massive 50 foot.

screens and all kinds of all kinds of technology discussions and things like that. And that's normally that's not usually kind of our in our wheelhouse. But we've really expanded. We have a technical producer on staff. And so just what we can do for people has just grown from from mobile tours to pop up events to, you know, one off moments to activating it, big moments or trade shows or

You know, an experience is not just to consumers. You know, if you're B2B is just as important as B2C is B2E, you know, to your internal employees. We do lots of activations for Alaska Airlines integrating. They just purchased a Hawaiian Airlines. So integrating the two teams together and in experiential ways is super important and really, you know, bodes well for our industry because, you know, you can't

You can't AI or chat GPT and events. Some of it you can plan, but you physically can't do it. And so we're going to be here for the long haul. we're really where I think consumers get to truly connect with brands. And that's really at events.

‍

Justin Levinson (13:28.995)‍

And do you guys all work like remotely then come together for the events? How does that sort of structure?

I used to have a beautiful 30,000 square foot facility that you'd walk in and be like, damn, man, it's like a home court advantage. And we had this tree that.

busted through the roof and went to the second floor and we had these industrial fountain that was made of industrial parts and all this kind of stuff and reclaimed wood and all these things. And we had this deck at our office that had a pinball machine and a foosball and a lot of our employees were musicians. And so, you know, we had a band set up there. We would do parties and art shows and things like that. So yeah, I mean, look, we're remote now. We do have a small location.

that the LA folks gather at and it's actually called the Gathering Spot. It's not a WeWork, but it's more of an inner city work environment that allows young entrepreneurs a place to work from and launch their careers from. And so we've married up into that and it's a great place for our team to kind of.

meet at, but predominantly, yeah, we're, and we're spread across the United States. So I have people in Seattle, Wisconsin, Cincinnati, New York, but so we are remote. We gather twice a year, one of which is called the B Corps beach week. It's going on for 10 years now, where I gather the entire team and we train. We bring in last year, we brought in LA 2028, one of the spokespeople from that. We brought in some from FIFA. We brought in some of the Bay Area host committee to come in just talk to our team about exciting opportunities and things that we're, we'll

‍

Mark Billik (14:56.568)‍

be working for and on. yeah, and so that's a little bit about our work environment. We're very much kind of fluid with where we work from. Most of our team are on the road all the time. They work from hotels, airports, you name it, their backyard. We're very flexible about what people do and where they do it at. Most important is, you know, do good work. And when you get it done, as long as it's on time, then it doesn't matter where you are and where you're working from, you know?

Yeah. it a tricky business to scale based on like, you know, is it hard? How did you kind of grow from, you know, from where you started to said you have 300 people? 70 people. I'm sorry. So LinkedIn does not.

no, I have 70.

No, not 300. Thank you.

70 people, but 70 people, still, I mean, it's still quite a few people. You know, when you just started out with you and one other individual to get to this many people, I imagine you really need to have the right amount of people for each event. gotta, it must be challenging.

‍

Mark Billik (15:58.606)‍

Well, look, you know, we live in a world of freelance and we've spent the last 26 years collecting a pool of resources that we can rely on, right? And so when we're pitching, let's say with the last airlines, we're bringing in our strategists that work on travel, you know? And so that's how we win a lot of our projects by bringing in aces and we put them in the right places. And it's always...

been a big part of our success trying to force a square peg into a round hole, like trying to put the right people on it. You know, back in the day when we had this creative team, we were, you had to pitch on a project, maybe on a brand that you didn't even know, right? Like someone who was a vegetarian really can't pitch on meat. Okay. It's not like something that makes sense. Right. So you got to, you got to really

collect and put the right people in the right place. And so, you know, as we've grown through the years, we've, we've grown this resource pool on the side. So has it been difficult to grow? Yeah.

I mean, we, we typically try to hire before we need the people, you know, like build it before they come kind of a thing. I heard in Switzerland, they build the railroad tracks before there were trains. And so we kind of try to do that as best as possible. then, but things, you know, move really fast in our industry. You know, I wish we had months and months and months to plan things. And often we just have weeks. And so, you know, to do that, we, we have to have a great network of people to, add to the mix. And so we often are also doing kind of this freelance the full time.

So we vet people by giving them a freelance opportunity if we love them and we bring them on full time and then, you know, expand with and grow with them. That's been very successful. You know, the event world is very tricky. There's so many elements, you know, we're not just like, you know, an advertising agency that got.

‍

Mark Billik (17:44.99)‍

They have their lane. Our lane, it looks over lots of different areas because we have social media, we got PR, we got digital. We have to market and promote the events. We then have the physical event to produce and you have to creatively make it. It's got to be strategically thought through. Does it make sense? Does it really connect? mean, you know, nowadays we're not just doing a spin the wheel and you win a little

pair of glasses and we give you a branded pair of glasses, that kind of stuff just doesn't work. And so, yes, we may give out some swag, but it's not really the main reason that you're coming. We're coming to get liquid to lips and butts in seats and you got to try it. You got to get in it. We did this launch of a product for Columbia a few years back, Columbia Sportswear, and they came up with this lining of their clothes, what's called OmniHeat Freeze.

and it kept you 20 % warmer or 20 % cooler, depending upon which one it was. They now have a product called Omni Infinity. So they're taking it to the next level. The idea behind it was we had to get, how do get people to try an Omni Heat product when it's the middle of the summer, right? So we.

We created this sleeve and we would miss people with water. We also created this freezer, this karaoke freezer that people got inside in the middle of the summer. They put on a jacket, they get in this freezer and they'd be singing hot, hot, hot or whatever song, you know, and we record it. We send it to them. It was really cute idea. Being able to crack that code for each particular client is, very difficult. It takes an army to really do it right. And so we've expanded our team to be, it got client services. We've got production. We've got strategy. We've got creative. We've got design.

We have a finance team. So all that adds up to 70 full-time employees, all hopefully humming and working together and creating great music, building a fun, productive environment, because we've got a lot to do.

‍

Justin Levinson (19:35.128)‍

Does the client usually have an idea of their own or do you guys get a lot of free creativity to come up with multiple scenarios that could be the final event?

question. It comes in different shapes and sizes. So we definitely take an order. Hey, I want you to do this. For the most part, it's rare when they say I want you to do this and here it is. And it's all built out and exactly what you want what they want. There's usually some version of that and then like, but we don't know, you know, what it looks like. We don't know.

exactly what the interactive experiences should be for each guest when they come up. We don't know, you know, kind of what we want from it. You know, what are the results we want from this thing that we just created that we have to do? We have the hundred year anniversary of QP Mayo. I don't know if you know the brand and you know, we're doing an activation for them and we're doing a pop-up experience in central, Grand Central Station, which is down below. And we're doing a takeover of this little space and celebrating the hundred year anniversary. it's, you know, it's very cute.

So everybody in this world wants different things for their brand. so being able to come up with everybody's individual solution is not easy. And we're not a rinse and repeat company. don't just like, we did this over there. So why don't we just take that and do it for you, brand B over here. It could work technically, but in theory, it doesn't work for us. We want to be unique with.

with everybody as much as humanly possible. We pride ourselves on really doing a deep dive into the brands, their brand guidelines, what they want, their KPIs, and what's successful in the industry that they're in, what isn't successful. All those factors are really important with kicking out a great idea, you know, it's going to work.

‍

Justin Levinson (21:18.892)‍

Yeah. Do you have a favorite, like one that you're most proud of in your career?

my God, I have 12 Guinness Book of World Records that we've produced for our clients over the years. Yeah, really? Some of which are still intact and some are not, you know, from the world's largest cheese carving for the melt on a national hamburger day or, know, the which we cheaply carved a hamburger and put it up at Hollywood and Highland. It was quite quite.

challenging, or the world's largest paper airplane that we produced for Pima Air and Space Museum in Pima, Arizona, the third largest aeronautical museum in the United States. They wanted to get more people into the museum and care about aeronautical travel, which most people don't, which is, but you go to a flying museum, you're like, God, this is fascinating. I'll spend hours there looking at the planes, right? I mean, you know, and so you would, if you went to the Smithsonian, you know, I still think that the flying one is probably the most interesting one.

That's, you know, we produced the Red Bull Stratus event, which had three world records on and off. know, the Red Bull Stratus where the guy Felix jumped from outer space, right? In the pod. So we produced that event. That's at the Smithsonian. We've got the world's largest shower. We've got the most kids cooking rice in a public library for Uncle Ben. So they, they come up and they're really cute and they don't all have to be world records. They're all very challenging. We produced a skate park on a barge for go skate day for Nike and cruisin' around Manhattan and...

and the Hudson and that was really challenging. There was no record to be achieved on that one except for how many hours we worked in six weeks to pull that one off. Yeah, a lot of fun work, a lot of interesting solutions for people, which we try to, as I said, try to change as much as we can and not rinse and repeat great ideas.

‍

Justin Levinson (23:03.0)‍

Do you look for people who are pretty nimble and who can call an audible in a last minute? I imagine there's times in this line of business where something unpredictable happens and you've got to make some real decisions.

That's like every day. you get a, work at B Corp, you got to be like a chameleon. You know, you got to be adaptable to the, you know, the situation. I'll give you an example. Tomorrow or Wednesday, we're supposed to be activating a soccer event in downtown at this venue called the rolling hills. And it's about a mile from where the riots are happening right now related to the ISIS take, you know, taking people in and it's, it's a mile of this crow's fly. So it's difficult.

You know, it's a long mile, but it's close. I have a client.

rightfully so is pausing and thinking about what this going to, how does it reflect on us? You know, we have over 350 people that are working that event. We have to park them. Where are they parking? How do we get them there? What if they take a right turn instead of a left turn and they end up over where the National Guard is? All that is being evaluated today. I don't know if we'll produce the event. So talk about being nimble. You know, we've had that. I mean, we've been involved in lots of wonderful things that we have to be nimble about, whether it's Mother Nature kicking our

or different things like that, or just adapting to the client's needs and last minute, can we make this green when it was supposed to be red? That happens all the time. Clients are very indecisive and they're wonderful, but they also wanna try to make the event the best they can. And sometimes ideas come late and sometimes brand changes and things like that. And you gotta roll with the punches. So rolling with the punches is definitely something that we're used to. And you have to do it with a smile and you've gotta kind of say.

‍

Mark Billik (24:42.616)‍

Thank you, ma'am. I have another. And if you're not that type of person, then you shouldn't be in the event business. And, you know, one of the reasons why we do a lot of freelance to full time is that because you've had people out pretty quickly. I mean, I just, we just pulled off the Bloomberg tech conference. This was wonderful event. The guest experience was off the chart was flawless and it was just a difficult build. had a day and a quarter to build an event that

probably needed three days. And we did it in a very difficult hotel in San Francisco that had union labor. Okay. When you're dealing with union labor, it's like watching paint dries. It's hard. You know, we've faced lots of things. It's a wonderful industry to be involved with. create, you get to do things no one else ever gets to do. And I take a lot of pride in the work that we've done, you know, for 26 years. It's been epic and it's been...

incredibly difficult, but it's been amazingly gratifying and satisfying. And I think that our, team members, the Pecorians will say the same thing. If you're going to be involved in the event world.

You got to it's almost like when you finish an event, it's like, okay, you're done. You're moving on to the next thing. Right? So if there are lot of people that want a nine to five and they want this routine, okay, we have somewhat of a routine, but it's so different every day today. I'm working on a Bloomberg tech conference and tomorrow I'm working on soccer event for Nike. And the next day I'm working on a Kohler, you know, trade show for their bath product. Those are all completely different things and different clients altogether and different approaches and different end use of.

experiences.

‍

Justin Levinson (26:10.69)‍

Did you, when you were starting out this business, did you kind of see it that it was going to be going to where it is now? Because it's really like experiential marketing is like, you know, feel like experiential marketing and influencer marketing. These things are just like leading the charge. You know, I do a lot of work in experiential marketing, but I also do a lot of work in theatrical marketing. And that's something that's, you know, that's, there's a lot of challenges in that space, getting people to go to the movie theaters and with the streamers and there's so, you know, it's a roller coaster.

Did you think it was going to be this relevant for this long?

Look, I didn't even know when I started this, to be honest, I didn't even know where this was going in my life. It was just an opportunity. And I was like, this feels fun and it's exciting. It's so different. I never have the, I've never had the same day twice ever, not even close. Okay. And if you want that in your life and you know, that was where I was going. If you want nine to five, this is not your space. If you want total change every day. And I mean, a lot of times you get in the punch in the gut, but you know, you have to be able to be able to handle that.

So I think that I had no idea where the space was going to go. mean, in the beginning, it was called consumer marketing and event marketing made. so now with experiential marketing, it's very broad. As I said, it's social, it's digital, it's physical. Fidgetle was a word back when somebody invented that, I don't know, 10, 15 years ago.

And it really does speak to who we are. mean, what we do, we do do we work in the digital world, we promote it and then we get there, we do it and then we amplify it, you know, and this industry has come a long way. And I believe that there's still a lot more that the industry will evolve and change. And it's been quite a wonderful ride to be part of kind of the forefathers of the founding fathers of

‍

Mark Billik (27:55.598)‍

of Experiential, there's a guy named Gary Reynolds who owns a company called GMR, which is a very large experiential agency, is probably him and I are, you know, and a few of John Rowdy, Dead Revolution, there's probably a few others that are kind of the OG, if you want to call it, of experiential marketing. But it has come a long way and it, you know, look, the use of technology has really evolved the industry drastically. I mean, like I said in the beginning, it was like a spin the wheel. It was an easy up tent. You walk up, you know, you have some pictures of things you might be able to try on, shock

radio thing from Panasonic and listen to it for a few seconds and be like, cool, that's interesting. Where can I buy it? And you go, oh, you can buy it at Best Buyer, Allen and Ed's. That was kind of it. know, Got Milk was out there. They want that Got Milk mustache with the little, they were kind of the first photo kind of experience company a little bit.

little photo op, little takeaway. So yeah, mean, nowadays it's 360 photos when you walk into those things, you know, those cameras spin around you. mean, that's come so far. There's so much use of technology at events from

screens to robots to you name it. The really the industry is like a sponge for the new and latest things, which is cool too. What might be working in theatrical then immediately, you know, experience is like, well we need cosplay. Okay, well let's get people dressing up and coming out and being in character and coming on site somewhat new from before. And so it's evolving and adapting pretty much every day, which makes it exciting and makes it ever changing.

What do you like to do outside of work? Just for personal...

‍

Mark Billik (29:29.772)‍

That's one of B-Core's interview questions, so I could appreciate that.

Interesting. The tables have turned.

I didn't invent that. was one that we, that Cheesecake taught me. We would always ask about just what do you do? What's your perfect day off? I think that was the question. What do I do outside of work? Well, I've got three kids. One's up in San Francisco and is off in her life at 25 and doing amazing things as an educator and designing curriculum for afterschool programs and whatnot. And then my other two kids are 16 and 14. So spending time with them. And like yesterday, I just played tennis with my son. I had him beat and then he came back and beat me, which was kind of sad.

That's fine. Which makes me happy. I don't need to beat him. He's a good player. I'm a hack. But what I like to do the most is play golf. Something I'm enjoying and competing in the golf circuit. I'm actually playing in the L.A. City Championships coming up next week. I enjoy that. Going on trips. Hanging with my wife. We religiously have date night every Saturday. We've been together for 25 years and we have not. We missed a few Saturdays in there. I can't say every single one, but pretty much we're big proponents of date night and doing that. so and then, you know, I love my

It's not even a job. is. This is my life. am through and through. You cut me open. I bleed B-Core. I enjoy it. I really, I just love it, man. It's so much fun. It is a, it's a tiger's tail that you're trying to catch and then possible to really catch it. But when you finish up events like a Bloomberg tech conference or like a Nike night run and they're just flawless. It's just satisfying, man. It's just, it feels so good. And so I work a lot, but don't mind it. I'm going on vacation, but I'm working right through it. I'm going to have a wonderful wife who supports

‍

Mark Billik (31:05.556)‍

me and doesn't care. balance my life the way I need to. And so yeah, so that's a little bit about Mark after work. I love surfing. I haven't been surfing in a while, but growing up on Maui and in Hawaii my whole life, I'm through and through a surfer to the core and watching surfing and when I can get out, when the water's warm, Southern California, the water's not so warm. Go down to Putamita and surf down there or trying to get to the Maldives before maybe it goes away. I don't know when it will go away. Hopefully it won't, but I want to get to the mall.

and surf in some beautiful, warm, tropical, incredibly clear water.

That sounds really nice. Is there any books that you really dig that have inspired you?

Malcolm Gladwell to me is inspiring, the tipping point, that kind of book is just kind of

to plex a little bit about my life and being a networker and a connector, I've always generally felt like I wasn't threatened by bringing my clients together, bringing other people into my clients world. I always felt like that was going to serve me in the end, that they knew that I was genuine and I wasn't scared. I didn't operate from a scared place. So I think, you know, things like that. And my father-in-law wrote three books about Israel and the Six Day War, which I just read recently and enjoyed thoroughly learning about Israel's history.

‍

Mark Billik (32:20.176)‍

and British when Israel was awarded a state, the British, the Great Britain was controlling it and really kind of messed up not allowing Jews into the state. And so there's just all kinds of stories around that and how they fought, you know, be an independent state. that stuff is really legit.

It's current and obviously there, they, Israel is going through a lot right now too, currently. So yeah, I'm inspired by those things and I'm inspired by my wife. She, she has a great little business. does, she runs a medical marketing business, similar to kind of mine and the event space, but she helps drugs get to get to market through stage three clinical trials and all that stuff. And that's inspiring work that we do good stuff, but that's, that's important that those drugs get to market and get vetted and tested and all that stuff. So yeah, those are kind of things.

You guys are power couple. What kind of advice could maybe you give to folks that are looking to get into experiential marketing? know we, you know, we, sometimes place experiential producers or different, you know, designers, people that are, you know, and some people are talking to you're just, you know, they're trying to just get into the business and trying to say like, Hey, how do I get the attention of Mark? You know, how do I, you know, how do I get into this space? Where would you, how would you recommend somebody is aspiring to get into this?

Good question. You know, it's interesting. I've been taking interns on, we used to do an intern program before the pandemic when we had an office. We would have 10 interns from LMU, USC, UCLA, mostly local. And they were great. One intern that became a producer and is still with us to this day. But the University of Indiana came to me several years ago and asked me if I would be interested in.

developing an interim program for them for their sports marketing department and teach kids experiential marketing. So we started that and it's turned out great. It's been really impactful. And then we've done, I speak at certain Merrimark College and University of Indiana, USC and different colleges that are looking to have experiential marketers like myself come in and kind of drop knowledge and educate the kids on.

‍

Mark Billik (34:20.525)‍

Hey, how to get in the business industry? What is the, what is experiential marketing about? It's weird. Most people don't even know what it is. You know, if I say that, what I do, people go, what do you, what do you do? mean, you know, it took a while for my mom to understand what I do. It's not an easy industry to explain. You know, it's not an easy job.

to understand, you know, and it's not an easy space to get into, to be honest. You you might say, go into theatrical and work at a stage or you could do that. That's, that's part of it. You could work in the restaurant business to get the service end of it and the guest experience end of it. You could work in the advertising world to get the strategy and digital and social marketing.

end of it, right? And all that gets cobbled together. But where is a place to say, I want to learn experiential marketing? So I've been talking to the University of Indiana about developing curriculum for the school to try to be the first university to offer an experiential marketing degree. That's in the works. And I think they're going to be very aggressive about it. They see the opportunity as well.

To answer your question directly, the best way to get involved is to go to a staffing company that supports experiential marketing agencies like myself. There's one, Ascent or ATN or Encore. All these are kind of event marketing or meant staffing company, right? I'd say that's the first place to start.

Because you got to understand when you get out there, what's it like to be work outdoors, to work under these conditions, to sample some soda or this or that. You might not like it. You know, so I'd say first start there and you make good money. mean, 50 bucks an hour and things like that for these shifts and you make five, 700 bucks a day to work a day. And so it's great money. It's a little inconsistent because, know, they're also trying to find the right person to put into the right product. You just take me and put me towards a, a female based product. That doesn't make any sense. Right. That you there's, got to.

‍

Mark Billik (36:09.73)‍

pick and choose the jobs and they put the right people into the right place. I'd say that is the first place to work. Then the intern thing is a great avenue if you can find an agency that is doing internships. There's groups like Oakview Group and other larger groups that do lots of interns and you get great opportunities to kind of work in the space itself. And then I think lastly is attend events, look around, poke, ask questions.

find the agencies that are working on the events. I was just in our event at the Grove, the ex-botique, the registration portion of the night women's night race and 20,000 women had to come there to get their registration packet. And we had this whole experience on the top of the Grove parking lot where it beats and.

these, this, wellness area and this like education thing. We had all these different programming things going on and there was a guy there and he just kind of walked up to me and he was pretty lucky. I have his card right here. This guy, Robert Costano and he's a, he's, owns his own fab shop. Okay. So he's got a little fab shop in inland empire and you know, it's not very big. It's like 7,000 square feet and he's got a CNC machine and does woodwork and meta work and things like that. And he just asked me, he just got his head. So who's doing, who does all the scaffolding set up and all this kind of stuff. And I said, well, we have lots.

of different partners from Premier Display to Blue Revolver and all these different companies that do all that stuff. And I said, but I'm always looking for like a, you know, a smaller guy who can work quick and build me a wall or build me this or set these things up. And so he just reached out and I said, got his card and I'll stay in contact and put him, give his information to my production department.

You know, say, Hey, there's a resource for you. And so I think attending events is super important to understand. they look sexy from the outside. Don't get me wrong. We go to a venue like, Oh my God, this is great. I would love to be able to put this together. It sounds so simple. Just add water. Well, no, it's definitely far from that. Right. And there's lots of ways where you can get your took us beat down just in, because mother nature and the clients and the venue and permits and insurance and you name it. There's lots of hurdles to face, but yeah.

‍

Mark Billik (38:16.11)‍

I think those few are a good way to start. And then from there, hopefully you get a little bit of skills and you understand a little bit more, then you can apply for kind of an associate coordinator position or associate producer that's kind of the lowest level on the hierarchy in the production world.

Yeah, cool. Awesome, Mark. Well, thank you so much for your time today and telling us your story. A lot of really exciting golden nuggets that know our viewers are going to enjoy. So I really appreciate you taking your time today and speaking

Yeah, no, my pleasure. Justin, there's, my industry changes, my company's changing and evolving, doing so many wonderful programs. I mean, we have so many great events coming to the United States, coming to Los Angeles. I mean, we've got an all-basketball, NBA All-Star game. We've got a World Cup. We've got Club World Cup. We've got the Olympics coming to Los Angeles. We have another Super Bowl coming to LA. So there's a lot of places that you can go see great events. And there's a lot of agencies that are going to be looking for some great people to work on those events that are the biggest

in the world and attracting millions and billions of eyeballs. So exciting time for experiential and I'm looking forward to the future.

me. Awesome, Mark. So am I. Appreciate it, man. Have a great rest.

‍

Mark Billik (39:24.866)‍

your day. All right, take care. Bye, Justin.

Yep, bye.