Decision Vision Episode 127: Should I Diversify My Company’s Revenue? – An Interview with David Audrain, Exposition Development Company

Intro: [00:00:01] Welcome to Decision Vision, a podcast series focusing on critical business decisions. Brought to you by Brady Ware & Company. Brady Ware is a regional full service accounting and advisory firm that helps businesses and entrepreneurs make visions a reality.

Mike Blake: [00:00:24] Welcome to Decision Vision, a podcast giving you, the listener, clear vision to make great decisions. In each episode, we discuss the process of decision making on a different topic from the business owners’ or executives’ perspective. We aren’t necessarily telling you what to do, but we can put you in a position to make an informed decision on your own and understand when you might need help along the way.

Mike Blake: [00:00:43] My name is Mike Blake, and I’m your host for today’s program. I’m a director at Brady Ware & Company, a full service accounting firm based in Dayton, Ohio, with offices in Dayton; Columbus, Ohio; Richmond, Indiana; and Alpharetta, Georgia. Brady Ware is sponsoring this podcast, which is being recorded in Atlanta per social distancing protocols. If you would like to engage with me on social media with my Chart of the Day and other content, I’m on LinkedIn as myself and @unblakeable on Facebook, Twitter, Clubhouse, and Instagram. If you like this podcast, please subscribe on your favorite podcast aggregator, and please consider leaving a review of the podcast as well.

Mike Blake: [00:01:17] Today’s topic is, Should I diversify my company’s revenue? And, you know, I’m not sure if this is COVID driven or not, but it’s an interesting topic because I find more companies are asking this question. Certainly, I see more being written about this as to diversify a company’s revenue stream. And I think it’s important because it offers an alternative path to growth. We normally think of growth as occurring through two paths. One is by increasing sales and activity and what it is that you already do or by making an acquisition. And those are both fine.

Mike Blake: [00:02:02] The challenges by simply focusing on increasing your activity and what you already do, that’s a lot easier said than done. Do you sell harder? Do you work more? Do you make more investments? Is there even room in the market to buy more of what you’re selling? And on the other end of the spectrum, there’s acquisition which is expensive, time consuming, and is fraught with its own risks as well.

Mike Blake: [00:02:32] And so, you know, diversifying revenue, I think, is a little bit of a halfway house between the two, if you will, where you gain the benefits as if perhaps you made an acquisition. But you’re creating that new revenue stream on your own. And, you know, one place I think that we see this in pretty sharp relief is in the restaurant and hospitality industry. In those two particular industries, of course, during the coronavirus, their core operations were sharply curtailed or, frankly, entirely shut down. And those companies, I know, had to seek and find alternative revenue streams in order to survive. It simply wasn’t going to work. They simply were not going to survive otherwise.

Mike Blake: [00:03:20] And I think many other companies, whether through survival or simply once something is proven, people are going to copy it. I think a lot of other companies now, whether it’s in accounting or law or retail or whatnot, are also looking for alternative revenue streams, if you will. And so, I suspect that a lot of our listeners, if they’re not asking this question yet, they will be, either as a result of listening to this podcast or they will on their own accord in the next year or so. Because I do think that this is the next big trend in business, is diversifying company revenue by adding new sources of revenue.

Mike Blake: [00:04:03] And joining us today to help us explore this is David Audrain, who is CEO and partner of Exposition Development Company, Incorporated or ExpoDevCo. David is CEO and partner producing trade shows and conferences across North America. Previously, David was President of Clarion Events North America, President of Messe Frankfurt North America, Chief Operating Officer of ConvExx which is the producer of the SEMA Show, and held senior positions at Advanstar, Hanley Wood, Miller Friedman, and the Texas Restaurant Association. As of January 1st, 2016, ExpoDevCo became the management company for SISO, the Society of Independent Show Organizers, where David serves as Chief Executive Officer.

Mike Blake: [00:04:45] Offers more than 28 year career in the exhibition industry, David has managed numerous shows across multiple industries, including eight top 200 shows in North America. David is also a strong advocate for the industry, having served as Chairman of both SISO, and the IAEE, and on many other boards and committees. Founded in 2012 by David Audrain and Stephanie Everett, Expedition Development Company, Inc. is a show development company designed to produce platform for partnerships with other show organizers and associations through strategically grow existing events, as well as launch new events. David, welcome to the program.

David Audrain: [00:05:20] Hi, Mike. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Mike Blake: [00:05:22] So, David, we’ve had this conversation off air, but, of course, we’ll bring it on air, so to speak. What was it that prompted you to start considering alternative revenue sources? And about when did that take place?

David Audrain: [00:05:37] Well, we started our company in January of 2012, and had been running several businesses in the industry for decades before that. So, we love the exhibition business. I say, I’ve been in it almost 30 years now. And it’s a high volume, high margin business when it works well. But as COVID just showed us for the last year-and-a-half, it doesn’t always work well. So, when we started it, we were not overly heavily capitalized. So, we had to be careful how we were utilizing our capital as we got it started.

David Audrain: [00:06:16] And when you start shows in particular, there is a fairly long ramp up period, a year or more in many cases, of getting a show running before it actually happens. And so, there’s a lot of overhead and staff costs leading into that. So, we started at the beginning thinking of ways to minimize our risk. And that meant that not just launching our own shows, but taking on management of other people shows, other association shows. And we even looked at providing sales agency services, which we had done for other international shows around the world in the past, as well as now managing a couple of associations.

Mike Blake: [00:06:59] And so, why consider new revenue streams as opposed to simply doubling down on the existing ones? Why not go that direction?

David Audrain: [00:07:09] Well, certainly, any time we can launch a new show or expand our show – I mean, any of our existing shows – that’s certainly optimal. And that’s what we try to do. But if we take a show that is creating X revenue right now and we can increase that revenue stream, that’s a very high margin business for us and it’s terrific. But it’s all your eggs in one basket. You know, if anything happens to that show – we had to cancel five events last year because of COVID – then you lose the whole basket.

David Audrain: [00:07:41] So, providing different revenue streams, frankly, enabled us to survive COVID. Again, you know, ten years ago, we didn’t plan for COVID. Nobody could have. But we knew that we needed to have different ways to generate revenue that wouldn’t put us all at risk all at one time. Because some things don’t work. We’ve launched conferences and events that we’ve had to cancel. And that can be a very expensive process for us.

Mike Blake: [00:08:07] So, as much as anything, although it was, of course, trying to see growth, but it sounds like, also, maybe even more importantly, the need to add additional sources of revenue is also a risk management strategy and a way to build resiliency into the company.

David Audrain: [00:08:23] It was very much a risk management strategy. And it was very much for the the purpose of providing us with potential different streams for cash flow and to minimize some of the risk. Say, if we launch a show, we’re all in. We are responsible for that entire risk of expense in running that event or conference. If we are running one for somebody else, we have cash flow benefit coming through and we’re not at risk of anything happening to that event. So, it minimizes our risk and it improves our cash flow.

Mike Blake: [00:09:00] So, you know what I’d love to ask you, I understand that diversifying your revenue sources was a decision that was made and started to be implemented before coronavirus. But, of course, coronavirus hit. You could argue it’s still here. I call this the trans-pandemic period, not post-pandemic. But my point is that, once coronavirus hit, how important was the fact you’d made that decision earlier to ensuring that your company would, frankly, be able to survive coronavirus?

David Audrain: [00:09:33] It was key, to be honest with you. We’re a small business, 15 employees. We were scheduled to run 11 events last year, several of which we owned or were partners in. Some of which we managed for others, you know, more than half, we managed for others. We had to cancel all of those. But two-and-a- half, we got through two in the beginning, first quarter. And we were halfway through a third before COVID shut us down. And we were also lucky or somewhat good planning, in that, we had event cancellation insurance on most of our event or all of our events that we had.

David Audrain: [00:10:12] So, we had, obviously, some results from that as well. But we didn’t have to lay off any employees. We were able to continue throughout the year. We, obviously, were impacted. Obviously, we lost revenue and lost profits for the year, but we had sufficient revenue and sufficient resources to be able to maintain our business. And, now, we’re rolling events out again this year.

Mike Blake: [00:10:36] So, you know, it’s hard to find positives in something like a global pandemic, although some were there. And I kind of wonder – and you tell me if I’m just way off base – was it perhaps, maybe not a blessing in disguise, but at least you’re presented, maybe, perhaps with the opportunity to then redeploy resources within your firm to develop those, whether it had been secondary revenue sources, if you will, have now become primary. And I wonder if as a result of that, you emerged actually a stronger company.

David Audrain: [00:11:18] I wish I could say that was the case. The challenge in our industry in particular was, when we had the lockdown in March of last year, we were all hopeful this would be a few weeks, we’d all be through it. So, in our industry in particular, we started just postponing things. So, we had shows in April that we postponed to June, we had shows in May that we postponed to July, that sort of thing. And so, we ended up doing twice as much work, sometimes three times as much work, because we’d been planning for events for a year. And, at some period, whether we were a month out, a week out – I had to cancel one event, we were a week out at the end of March that we’d been planning for a year up in Boston. And we started off by postponing it, and then re-postponing it, and then eventually canceling it. And then, we had to cancel it again the beginning of this year.

David Audrain: [00:12:11] So, there was an awful lot of work that went into those and took up an awful lot of our staff’s time. And in the end, in most cases, we didn’t get anything out of it at all. So, we had to ensure that we utilized our resources appropriately to continue managing the clients we had, where we were managing their events or managing the associations. And, in fact, for us, in the association we run is actually the association for our industry, we ended up having to do five times as much work just helping all the rest of our industry through this crisis.

Mike Blake: [00:12:47] That’s fascinating. And it shows my lack of knowledge of your industry. It hadn’t occurred to me that, in effect, you sort of have this rolling blackout, if you will, within your industry, that there’s a hope that the pandemic would be measured in weeks as opposed to months in its duration. And, therefore, all your resources or many of your resources were, in effect, occupied by continuing to reset those events. It wasn’t just simply a one cancellation and move on. And it seems to me that made your job about ten times harder.

David Audrain: [00:13:23] It did. The last year-and-a-half has not been fun.

Mike Blake: [00:13:27] Yeah. I can imagine. So, you ultimately chose a number of additional revenue sources or streams that you implemented. Were there others that you considered and decided not to implement? And the ones you have were sort of the winners of that internal evaluation process? And if so, among your ideas, how did you select the ones that you ultimately went through with? What was the decision process to choose those particular additional revenue sources as opposed to other possibilities?

David Audrain: [00:14:03] Well, I say in our industry, we run trade shows, conferences for the most part. And I say, I run an association. But there’s some basic legs to our industry. When you produce an event, you have to produce content, you have to produce revenue, and you have to produce attendees. So, it’s all about sales, marketing, and operations on that.

David Audrain: [00:14:25] For events that we own, we handle everything. And we have to basically underwrite everything and we’re at risk for everything. If we manage an event for somebody else, for an association or another company, then we don’t have the financial risk and we have better cash flow that comes in. But we may end up with a higher volume of work actually having to do things for them that take longer than if we were just doing them for ourselves. So, we have to take that into account as it goes forward.

David Audrain: [00:14:57] Obviously, also, from our own business perspective, when we build an event of our own, we’re building equity, we’re building value. If we’re simply doing work for hire, for another entity, then there’s no intrinsic value that we’re building long term. It basically is good cash flow, good revenue. It keeps the lights on. It pays the bills. So, ideally, we would focus exclusively on our own shows and our own events because we want to build value.

David Audrain: [00:15:24] But, again, risk mitigation, cash flow, doing things, things for others. What we looked at was some of the aspects like, for example, we’ve had an opportunity to take on just doing sales work for other people. That doesn’t interest us as much, because it takes an awful lot of time and resources, a lot more risky. And the end result isn’t necessarily beneficial to us. So, we’ve turned down some of that work over the years.

David Audrain: [00:15:49] We looked at doing sales agency work, which we’ve done for Mr. Frankfurt, actually, for years running that. And there were shows where, again, the investment for us to do that sales agency work for a show that might be a year away, again, was not good business for us to potentially or possibly end up with revenue a year from now. So, we turned that down and stopped doing that work as it went through.

David Audrain: [00:16:14] So, we looked at many aspects, and for the most part, we’ve really focused on our own events and management work where we take on a substantial enough role. But there’s good value to us in being able to generate the income from it.

Mike Blake: [00:16:32] So, it sounds like you focused on things that were, at least, pretty close to the kinds of work that you’re already doing.

David Audrain: [00:16:40] Yes. Very much it’s stuff that we have a good team, we have the resources, we have the knowledge. It makes sense. What we haven’t tried to do is go into other areas that, frankly, are not areas we have that expertise built up in already.

Mike Blake: [00:16:56] So, when you are establishing or when you established the new revenue sources, was there a lot of upfront investment required on your part or were they things that were natural extensions and, maybe, they didn’t require a whole lot of investment?

David Audrain: [00:17:12] It depended a little bit on what it involved. For example, if we take on managing another show for a client, as we’ve done several times, we do have to invest in staff to add on that. We don’t sit around with staff with extra capacity twiddling their thumbs, waiting for things to do. So, we do have to hire appropriately to support that new event, whether it’s one of our own in new launches or if it’s a client’s show that we have to take on. So, that’s a commitment and that’s a resource that goes forward.

David Audrain: [00:17:48] And, for example, we had looked at doing the sales agency work. We had invested in hiring somebody years ago to do that. And we gave it six months to see how it worked. And it wasn’t generating enough revenue to justify continuing. So, we dropped that business stream that we were looking at for that very reason.

Mike Blake: [00:18:13] So, in making those investments, were there risks involved that were concerning to you? What were the downsides in your mind or the potential downsides that would make the addition of those revenue sources not viable potentially?

David Audrain: [00:18:31] Well, as the example I just gave, the sales agency is an easy one because it just didn’t generate enough revenue to justify the investment and the time with the staffing levels and so forth to do it. On the flip side, for the events that we do manage successfully for others, the downside risk is that the amount of work is more, because we have to estimate our fees. We have to agree in advance of what those fees are going to be. And in some cases, there may be revenue share fees. In which case, we’re at risk to some degree of our own ability to succeed, just like with our own shows.

David Audrain: [00:19:11] And in those cases, again, it’s a matter of we’re investing, we’re committed. If we have to hire staff and take our own time, my partner and my time, to run the event and run the team, then, obviously, we have to make sure that it’s going to generate enough revenue to, not only cover those costs of that staff, but also to provide a profit to make it worthwhile. We don’t need any more hobbies. So, obviously, we know enough about how we run our business and how we run shows and conferences to be able to estimate that time. But we’re not perfect, so sometimes that can be off. But for the most part, we have been successful with it.

Mike Blake: [00:19:55] I really like that statement, we don’t need any more hobbies. Of the revenue sources or streams that you’ve added, as you look back now as we record this in mid-2021, have they all been successful? Have they been as successful as you’d hoped?

David Audrain: [00:20:13] No. For sure they haven’t been. You know, over, say, the last ten years, we’ve tried a few things that have not worked. We’ve had some failures that were all on us. We made a small acquisition of a conference that didn’t pan out for us, and we invested a bunch of money in it, and that didn’t work. And that’s an example of why we have the diverse revenue streams. Because knowing that we had cash flow coming in and secure revenues from fee income or these other sources, enabled us to take a few gambles, so to speak, on either making small acquisitions or launching new events where there was a risk. And some of those risks have not panned out. And we’ve lost money on those efforts.

David Audrain: [00:21:01] But that is, if they do work and we just wrapped up, as we record – just last night, I wrapped up one small show that we own in the manufacturing industry – and it’s not a golden goose laying egg yet, but it’s a profitable event. And taking the time and risk to invest in that is something we were able to do because we had confidence that we could generate enough revenue from our other sources to be able to pay the staff and cover our costs and, hopefully, make money each year.

Mike Blake: [00:21:34] You know, that’s really interesting. That’s an angle of this question I candidly had not thought of, which is, not only do additional revenue streams allow or reduce the risk of the company, but they actually can put you in a position to take other risks that you otherwise would not have felt comfortable doing.

David Audrain: [00:21:56] To be honest with you, that’s the primary reason we do it. You know, there’s an easy way to reduce our risk, and that’s to lower the overhead of the cost of the company and do fewer things with fewer people. But that doesn’t enable us to grow. What we want to do is, obviously, like most businesses, we want to grow. And the best way to do that is to take some risks. In our case and our business, launch new shows, or conferences, or businesses, or invest in others as partnerships as we’ve done as joint ventures.

David Audrain: [00:22:29] But in order to do that, we have to have some confidence that we have enough revenue and income each year to be able to afford those risks because they don’t all pan out or far from it. You know, it is a risky business. It may not be as risky as the restaurant business, but it’s still a risky business. Not all shows succeed. Not all conferences succeed. And failures can be very expensive, to be honest with you.

Mike Blake: [00:22:55] So, I’m curious, as you add these new revenue sources, did you have to add staff or, particularly during coronavirus, were you able to redeploy your existing staff to support those additional revenues?

David Audrain: [00:23:13] As I said a little bit before, typically, we don’t have a lot of spare capacity. It’s not like a factory where you’ve got a machine that’s being used eight hours a day, so use it for 10 or 12. Pretty much our staff objective, we start asking them to work an extra set of hours every night, as most would. So, what we can do is, we can reallocate responsibilities so that we can focus people. We’ve got marketing teams, for example, and operations teams, they’re experts and they can focus on multiple projects at once. So, we can have the multitask across multiple events, multiple conferences, and so forth.

David Audrain: [00:23:55] But if we take on a new show or we launch a new event, we almost always have to bring on new resources, which, obviously, is a cash commitment. It’s, obviously, a time commitment for management to train and bring them up to speed. It expands the requirements of managers to actually have more people to manage.

Mike Blake: [00:24:15] And was there any kind of risk, or concern, or maybe even an impact that as you added revenue sources that might change the culture or the tenor of the company somehow? It seems to me like, if one doesn’t handle that exactly properly, it may actually confuse some of the people that are already there as they start to wonder, “Well, what business are we really in? And what’s my future here? Am I going to be needed? Is the company going to switch business models?” Things of that nature. Was that ever a concern? And if so, how did you address it?

David Audrain: [00:24:51] I don’t think it caused concern because we were very communicative to our team from the beginning. And, obviously, ten years ago, we started with no team. We started from scratch. And as we hired people and brought them onboard under the team, we were very open with them about our model, and our goals, and how we were planning to move forward. So, there were very few surprises with our team as we went forward.

David Audrain: [00:25:17] We were also somewhat lucky in that we had structured a business model from the beginning to be a completely cloud based infrastructure and home office based team. So, our entire team actually is spread out over five states and they’ve worked from home since the beginning, which meant that that was the only thing we didn’t have to change when COVID hit last year. So, we were already in that model going forward. And so, that side of it has not been an issue. I say, I think our communication with the team has been good from the start.

Mike Blake: [00:25:56] So, may I ask you of the revenue sources or streams you’ve added, which one has been the most successful and why do you think it’s been the most successful?

David Audrain: [00:26:05] Certainly the management fees that we generate from managing shows and events and the associations for other customers is, certainly, the majority of our non-internal revenue. Because it’s our primary focus and it’s been the most valuable to us because it’s what we do, it’s what we know, and it’s the expertise we have for our own events that we run. It’s just that we’re doing it for somebody else. And in some cases, it’s turned into virtual partnerships, for example, where we may not be true equity partners, but we may have revenue share deals in place.

David Audrain: [00:26:45] We’ve been running one particular portfolio for many, many years. And it’s an ongoing partnership, effectively, with the client. We’re invested in it. We have the expertise. We deliver the complete management of the events. The client is very happy with us. We’re very happy with the results. And it’s an ongoing long term relationship.

Mike Blake: [00:27:09] So, I’m curious, have the new revenue sources added complexity to your business and made it harder to manage? And if so, how have you addressed that?

David Audrain: [00:27:20] It does add complexity. A simple example, if we launch our own event, we make all the decisions internally. We generate everything. We’re responsible for everything. And we just do it. If we are running an event for somebody else, then we have to first make all the decisions of what we think should be done, or what steps need to be done, or the processes that need to be gone through to actually sell the space, market event, provide the operations, logistics, et cetera.

David Audrain: [00:27:57] But we then have to, in most cases, liaise with the client that actually owns the event as to why we think that needs to be done, and they may not agree with us. So, there’s an awful lot more communication and decision making time involved than if we were just doing it for ourselves. So, we have to factor that in when we are estimating our time, resources, and costs in actually providing those services. Because the time and resources to do it for somebody else are higher than if we were just doing it for ourselves.

Mike Blake: [00:28:33] We’re talking with David Audrain of Exposition Development Company, Inc. And the topic is, Should I diversify my company’s revenue? Have the new revenue sources impacted at all how you conduct your primary business?

David Audrain: [00:28:47] The biggest challenge we’ve come across is, obviously, if we make a commitment to do something for a client, then we’re going to live up to that commitment and we’re going to do whatever we need to do to make that happen. There have been times where maybe our own events have ended up taking the second seat to the client’s events because we can’t tell the client, “Sorry. We’re busy this week. We have to do another show that’s ours.” Whereas, we can tell our own team, “Hey, we’ve got to get this done before we do our own event.”

David Audrain: [00:29:21] So, we have to be very cautious and careful not to affect negatively our own events. And that we pay attention to as we’re developing the plan for the clients’ events, as we’re developing, frankly, our proposals for the clients to ensure that we have dedicated resources that are not going to be pulled in two different directions.

Mike Blake: [00:29:42] And I suppose that speaks to the ongoing complexity or the additional complexity that additional revenue streams, in effect, you’re serving two masters, if you will. Whereas, you only had to serve one.

Mike Blake: [00:30:00] David, this has been a very good a good conversation. I think, you know, I’ve learned a lot. I think our listeners have learned a lot. There may be topics that either we didn’t cover or that our listeners wish that we would have covered more. Would you be willing to take a question from somebody? And if so, what’s the best way for somebody to contact you for more information?

David Audrain: [00:30:20] I’m certainly happy to. The easiest way is to email me. And I’m sure you’ll put it on the website when you post this, but david@expodevco.com is my email address and I’d be happy to respond to people.

Mike Blake: [00:30:36] Well, thank you. That’s going to wrap it up for today’s program, I’d like to thank David Audrain so much for sharing his expertise with us.

Mike Blake: [00:30:43] We’ll be exploring a new topic each week, so please tune in so that when you’re faced with your next business decision, you have clear vision when making it. If you enjoy these podcasts, please consider leaving a review with your favorite podcast aggregator. It helps people find us that we can help them. If you’d like to engage with me on social media with my Chart of the Day and other content, I’m on LinkedIn as myself and @unblakeable on Facebook, Twitter, Clubhouse, and Instagram. Once again, this is Mike Blake. Our sponsor is Brady Ware & Company. And this has been the Decision Vision podcast.