Cameron, starting from your days at your childhood church, how did you go from a curious 12-year-old to building avad3 Event Production into a national company?

I love Arkansas, but there’s not a lot here. As a twelve-year-old just starting to volunteer running the technology, sound, and lyrics for church, I loved it. I think a lot of us find things around that age that we love—sports, hobbies, or different activities. I loved that. It just so happens that in Arkansas, there’s not much here. And so perhaps if it were a bigger state or a bigger city or something, you know, certainly I could just get a job at the local event production company or something, but that didn’t exist.

There are less than, I think, about 3 million people in our state, and less than half a million in our kind of hometown area. And so there just wasn’t anywhere to go to develop that hobby into a part-time job, let alone a career. And so, you know, I suppose if it was kind of a small hobby or something that I was slightly interested in, I could just settle. But it was something I would describe as extremely passionate about. And extreme passion drives you to do extreme things. Just like when we fall in love, it causes us to do crazy things. And I think I was passionate enough about production and what I was getting to do that I said, well, I can’t find anywhere to do this, so I suppose I’ll have to just make it myself.

And so from twelve to eighteen, I also, in parallel, while developing my production skills, was developing my entrepreneurial skills, my small business skills of finding a people group who needed something, bringing them what they needed, and offering a trade. And that’s just all that small business is. And so I think it’s silly to rewind all the way back to twelve to say, oh, well, that’s how it started, but only in an incubator like that, with the curiosity of a junior high age and the passion of finding something that I was in love with and kind of being ignited, was I driven to become entrepreneurial as a skill and a mindset.

And then that led to continuing that, not just through high school, but through college and starting it in my dorm room and officially, and on to what drives me today, offering something useful to a people group who needs it. And I think that was kind of our path towards what we call today a national company. But you could identify that as the path at any mile marker along that journey.

Events seem to be in your blood! What sparked your initial passion for event production, and how has that passion evolved over the years?

If you spend much time around events, it’s undeniable. There’s an energy, something special in the room.

As a young teenager, you feel that energy at the events teenagers go to, like summer camp and youth concerts. That energy was undeniable then. It really transformed and cemented my belief in the power of events for the rest of my life during college, attending an annual national conference. I was, I would say, awakened, enlightened. Throughout history, there are stories of epiphany moments, and mine happened at the annual national conference in Atlanta, Georgia, in 2010, when I was 20 years old. What happened in that room could not have happened at a desk or on a regular weekday in our hometowns. It took gathering.

Being in a room with like-minded people, hearing from like-minded presenters, and being challenged in our thinking required something extremely special and, I would say, supernatural. I was transformed, and transformation happened in that room. I am passionate about helping others have those transformation moments. There are national annual conferences for every tribe of people group you can think of in the world. They all gather—dentists, lawyers, business people. There’s an opportunity for every one of us to take a pilgrimage to an event. It costs us mostly our time and attention, but I believe something special happens in those rooms. Sometimes it’s simply networking; you can’t network without getting together like that.

But I believe something special happens when we gather. I saw that even as a twelve-year-old gathering at summer camp; something special happens during a week of summer camp. It started then, was cemented when I was 20, and around 30 or so, when we started growing more nationally. My eyes were opened to seeing our clients and their people groups gather like that. For us to play a small role by ensuring it was distraction-free with quality audio, video, and lighting so that the stage and presenters could bring their best and attendees could give their full attention—my goodness, that’s something I want to devote my life to.

As the mastermind behind avad3 Event Production, what are some key principles or values that drive your leadership style?

All progress starts by telling the truth. Growth, I think, is the lifeblood of life. It is the key to life. Look at the trees. They are either growing, or they are dying. I think that growth is what we all need to spend our days doing. Growth in the business context always gets misconstrued and simplified down to simply sales, scale, or our capitalistic pursuits of just more, which is fine. That’s also growth. I don’t have a problem with that. It’s just that growth, to me, actually starts with the individual. I believe that companies are really just the sum of their parts, and their parts are people.

We are only as strong as our people. We are only as strong as our strongest person and only as weak as our weakest person. So, the key to company growth and business growth is individual growth. I think that individual growth is the key to life. I love contributing to nonprofits and organizations that help individuals grow. Even though we operate in a business environment, which means we have a profit and loss statement, instead of just a nonprofit with donors and benefactors, which arguably has similar accountability of accounting, helping people grow is the key and the secret to our success in business.

As I said at the start, all progress starts by telling the truth. I would describe my leadership style as coined by the word acceptance. It is very important to me that an individual is accepted for who they are so that they can begin their journey of growth. No growth or progress can come from shame and guilt, or from beating yourself up, or from someone else beating you up for not being good enough. Acceptance means I accept exactly where you are if I’m your leader. We are talking about leadership styles here. If I’m reaching out a hand to say, “Will you join me?” I am extending an opportunity and an invitation for you to allow me to lead you. I am saying, “I see you and I accept you where you are, and I’m still extending my hand out in spite of whatever the voice inside your head says.”

Whatever the voice inside your head says, however you beat yourself up for not being enough or not having enough experience yet, whatever these things are—imagine being in the final stage of a job interview and being extended the job and perhaps being surprised. I accept you for who you are, but that’s not the end of the story. I think I would be doing a disservice to people as their leader if I was saying, “Hey, I accept you for where you are. You got the job, and you don’t need to grow at all. In fact, you can come here to just rot, die, and wither away.” No, I accept you where you are because I want to lead you to something greater. I want to lead you to grow, and let’s grow together. I’m growing.

I invite you to grow with me, and let’s invite some others to grow with us. Together, let’s call that a company, and that’s a company that I want to lead. So I would describe my leadership style as acceptance, but not to be misunderstood as saying, “We can stay here.” I accept you joining the journey here, but we can’t stay here. The boat is setting sail, and we must go. But growth starts with acceptance.

Creating a good company culture is crucial. Can you share some effective strategies you’ve used to build an awesome workplace vibe at avad3?

 This one’s laughably simple, naive, and childish, even saying it this way. Quite simply, when you start a business, you are creating a job for yourself. And I want to build a place where I want to work.

I don’t want to look up after working hard my entire career and toiling away at something only to realize I’ve been climbing a ladder leaned up against the wrong building, or working towards something that I don’t want to be a part of. So, workplace culture, to me, starts quite selfishly, frankly. I want to build a place where I want to work. However, I don’t want to be alone in that work. If I wanted to be alone, I would stay a freelancer. I don’t want to be alone. I want to invite others to come with me. So it has to transcend just building a place where I want to work. It has to become building a place where we want to work, which is where the selfish transitions to the selfless: Well, what do y’all want?

What does an important workplace look like for you? So, each person that I’ve extended my hand to is an invitation to come join me in building a place where I want to work. Along the way, I’ve lent my ear to them to say, well, what does building a place look like to you? In the early days, the first person I hired, team member two, had my full, undivided attention, my full ear, and team members three, four, five, six, all the way up to 10, 20, 30 as we go, as we scale. What’s sad is I can lend my ear just fractionally, proportionally. It’s just a function of scale: less listening to one individual person.

But I’m trying to build a place where we all want to work, and we each get a voice in that. To me, a vibe, a workplace culture, is simply, what do I want? What do y’all want? I want a place where I can show up and work. I want a place that’s free of harassment. I want a place that enables me to focus. I don’t want to have to go to the library to get work done because work is too noisy. I also don’t want to build a library where work is just a study hall and there is no collaboration. So, the selfish pursuit of “what do I want” in a workplace and “where do I want to work,” and then the selfless pursuit of “who’s with me” and “what do y’all want?”

That’s how we meet my needs, meet your needs, and meet our needs together of what it is that we want to build. That’s how I would describe our company culture.

Your articles focus on team motivation, community engagement, and leadership. Any insider tips you can share for business leaders and HR professionals looking to level up in these areas?

I think everything starts and ends with leadership, and that’s where I’d like to focus. Like I said earlier, all progress starts by telling the truth, and acceptance is key to our culture here. I think leadership goes hand in hand with that. It’s important to be able to stand up at the front of the room, whether that’s with four people or 40, and tell the truth. So often in the world, decade after decade, there have been lawsuits after lawsuits.

We’ve learned many lessons as a society about what to do and what not to do, when things have gotten folks in trouble, and what you can and can’t say. But if we’re not careful, decade after decade stacks up where you almost feel imprisoned and chained, unable to say anything. In 2024, it already feels that way. If we’re not careful as leaders, three decades from now, it will be even tighter. In leadership, you have to be able to tell the truth and start progress for your team.

All progress starts by telling the truth, standing in front of the room, and being really honest. Sometimes honesty comes in a low time. It’s saying, “Hey, we’ve got a situation on this project,” or “Hey, we’ve got a problem in this area on the team,” or “Hey, we’ve got an issue with the finances in this area.” These are things that are hard to say and easy to run away from as a leader. But I define leadership quality as someone who runs towards conflict. We often say that about our heroes. Firefighters run into the flames. Soldiers and infantry stand up, leave the trench, and charge ahead. Navy SEALs are leaders who run towards conflict.

It’s easy to be advised by valid cases and intelligent, sophisticated attorneys on what you can’t do or say. But if all of that advice leads to avoiding conflict, it doesn’t make you a leader. It makes you a follower, someone who goes along with the flow, who doesn’t want to ruffle feathers or really speak the truth or address something. That’s what people need, what the team is counting on you for in leadership. If we’re talking to HR professionals or leaders, I would advise that the attorneys are right. I’m not trying to go to battle with what is legal and what is right, but there’s a case for everything out there.

If we’re not careful, if we stack all of those up, you could have an argument on both sides to not say anything. In leadership, we have to stand up and say something. Sometimes that means taking risks. Often, we forget there are risks involved, whether we turn left or right. But we have to be able to live with ourselves tomorrow with the decision we made. We can’t stay paralyzed and allow conflict to continue. We need to stand up, face it, and be the leader who is willing to say, “Hold on.”

We appreciate how you’re all about giving back! How do you think community service plays into shaping a company’s culture and impact?

I think community service is a personal thing.

It’s something that’s very near and dear to my heart, my wife’s heart, and our family’s. It’s very important. When we think about what a company is, Sam Walton coined the phrase, “Our people make the difference.” I love that phrase. We quote him and that phrase around here all the time at avad3. I believe that our people make the difference. The company is just the sum of its parts. An important part of me as an individual is community service. It’s an important part of many of our individuals. You’ll see our people giving back, but they give back to things that they care about. I think it’s a little difficult for a company to try to give everywhere.

It can be challenging in the corporate world to say, “Okay, well, we need to support this cause, oh, and we need to support that cause. And, oh, here’s another cause we need to support.” It’s infinite how many causes we need to support. I think it’s important that, at the company level, we’re showing that our leaders support the causes that matter to them. Then, other individuals on the team support the causes that matter to them. As a company, we certainly give, but we give in a meaningful way to a select group. We cannot give and support all things. There are certain events that have meant something to us. There are certain clients who have been with us in hard times.

There are certain relationships that we have in our community that have made an impact on our lives. We turn and reciprocate, shining a light on the good they are already doing, helping empower and put wind in their sails so they can do it for other people. To me, community service and community engagement are individual choices, and those individual choices shape the company culture. We’re a bouquet of diverse perspectives, supporting individuals in giving to the causes that matter to them, which might literally be polar opposites from different individuals on the team.

Time management can be a real trouble, especially for busy executives. What have you found helpful in wrangling your schedule and staying productive?

Time is the most valuable resource that any of us are given.

I get the same 24 hours in my day that the president of the United States gets in their day. The CEO of the largest company in the world and the executive director of the local nonprofit each have 168 hours in their week, just like me. And I often say, as leaders and executives, as managers, if we can’t manage our time, what can we manage? Time is the first and foremost thing we must manage. And I don’t really empathize or tolerate busy executives who say, I just don’t have enough time, or I didn’t have time to do that, or I couldn’t get that done on time, or a lot of us are just late to everything.

You know, I was four minutes late to that meeting, and that made me be eight minutes late to the next meeting, and then I was twelve minutes late to the next meeting. And so then I had to actually cancel that meeting. And when we’re that busy, we’re just running around disappointing everyone in every meeting, every interaction, and that’s a day full of meetings. What about the people that you’re not responding to who have emailed you or texted you or called you? We have to face the fact that there are only 168 hours in a week. We have to put our priorities around that in order. When I was a student in college, it was pretty much my dedicated mission to graduate and not lose my scholarship. Life was simpler then. I wasn’t married. I was not a father.

I also didn’t have a job while I was trying to learn something. And so I could allow school to consume the majority of my life if I was doing homework at 11:00 p.m. That wasn’t a bad thing. It was my job to be in school. But as we’ve progressed from students to grown ups, from children to adolescents to grown ups, professionals, adults, it’s important that we realize that there’s a lot of things that need to fit into a week and that we like the metaphor of putting the big rocks in the jar before the sand, that we put those priorities in there first. And so I would advise very serious boundaries. I would recommend a lot of self esteem and self respect and self discipline when it comes to the boundaries in which we will let things consume us.

Work will expand to whatever volume of the container that you give it. Just like a gas in a beaker is going to expand, that’s different from a liquid or a solid. It’s going to expand in the same sentence. So can our personal lives. If we’re not taking care of our health, suddenly our health can expand to where we’re constantly at the doctor or at appointments or even in the hospital. We have to give appropriate allocations of time where time is due. And for me, that starts with my wife. It starts with my spiritual health. Then it goes to my children and my family, my mental health. After that, it goes to my work. What hours do I need for my work? After that, it goes to fun and so on and so forth down the line.

It’s important that we allocate those hours, that we have a hard start and a hard stop to our work day that we give ourselves principles such as I’m not accepting meeting invitations before 09:00 a.m. Or after 03:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. I’m not accepting any meeting invitations outside of the traditional work week. I’m not calling or texting work teammates outside of 08:00 a.m. Monday to 05:00 p.m. Friday. These boundaries that we give ourselves are measures of our self esteem, our self control, self discipline, and help us manage our most valuable resource, which is our time. We have to put that time on the calendar. We have to allocate even time simply for doing email and communication and coming up for air and not doing too many back to back meetings.

These are timeless principles that I live by in my calendar and every Friday afternoon, reviewing the week behind, looking at the week ahead, making adjustments accordingly, and then sticking to the schedule. It’s very possible to systematize this. I know how many hours a week I am able to be in meetings, and if I exceed that, I know that I’m going to be behind on other communication and writing and things. So being willing to say no, saying yes to the right things and respecting ourselves.

Building a strong team is key. How do you keep the vibes positive and the communication flowing smoothly among your team?

I think a lot of teamwork comes down to the mission at hand. Healthy organizations certainly have a mission statement, a vision statement, and core values.

The vision is necessary for someone to sign on to the team, as it represents something they want to be a part of. The core values are a crucial litmus test before extending an offer to join the team, ensuring that their values align with the team’s. Once you’ve signed up for the vision and been given a key to the office based on your values aligning with what we’re all about here, the mission, in my opinion, is what truly aligns us. Every instance where friction has originated or conflict has abounded, all the moments that I can think of when two or more people are not getting along, can often be resolved. A healthy vibe can be attained by reminding us of the mission.

When we can envision the mission, the goal of what we are working on, then we can align around what we’re doing. When someone has a different opinion about what matters to them versus someone else, we can ask ourselves, “What’s the mission we’re working on? Are we trying to build something? Are we trying to fix something? What is it that we’re working on?” That fosters positive vibes.

Regarding communication flow, I think it’s very important to have boundaries and structure around our communication. I see a lot of dysfunctional teams because they don’t understand the difference between a call, a text, or an email. Perhaps a team member is constantly calling when things really aren’t urgent, interrupting others’ productivity unnecessarily. Conversely, some team members might email something urgent, expecting an immediate response, creating a culture where everyone feels they need to constantly refresh their email inbox every few minutes.

Instead of urgent matters being addressed through a phone call or even a text, they get lost in emails. Communication channels matter; we need designated places for different types of discussions. This requires a level of sophistication beyond just an email inbox. Recurring channels are necessary. We use Basecamp as a tool. I’m a big fan of Basecamp, which is why we’ve stuck with it for so long. There are other tools out there now, many more than when we first chose Basecamp. We’re still with Basecamp due to the high cost of changing at this point for minimal benefit.

I believe in having a more sophisticated system for asynchronous communication. If we move as an organization at the speed of in-person meetings, requiring physical attendance for collaboration or progress, that is too slow and will not work. Human nature, PTO, travel, schedules, and projects all make it impractical to rely solely on meetings. We have to have asynchronous communication, especially in our line of work, event production.

Navigating the startup journey sounds like a wild ride! Any standout moments or lessons learned you can share from your experience?

I think it would make for an interesting book. Perhaps I would be the only reader, and it wouldn’t sell too well. But starting up a business has been the greatest challenge and joy of my life. I’ve loved the startup world. There have been so many ups and downs, almost like a Richter scale of an earthquake or a roller coaster with extreme rises and falls. To me, that’s living a vibrant life. The life that I want is one with a broad spectrum of experiences, and startup life has certainly provided many stories and lessons. It is yours. Be the leader.

At the end of the day, either the blood is on your hands or the cash is in your bank account. I think we can often, in the startup world and in the American spirit, accidentally believe that we’re running a democracy. But I didn’t create the system. Capitalism is not something I made up. In capitalism, as a small business owner, the government has one person they’re coming after if there’s a problem. The lawyers have one person going after the bank, and there’s one person on the insurance policy—that is you as the startup owner. So I encourage small business owners to still care for their team but remember that it is not a democracy. Sadly, it is not. I would love that, actually.

I love living in a democracy as a country, and I would love to somehow make it equitable, where it can truly be a full democracy, where we all share the burden. But that’s not the broader system in which we operate. Don’t forget that it’s not a democracy. Realize that if you’re the smartest person in the room and you’re counting on yourself, that’s probably a bad thing. I’m not a genius. I’m not that smart. It’s impossible for one person to have all the answers. Over the years, I’ve done different things. Early on, I attended a lot of classes, seminars, and cohorts. That was the first third of my journey so far.

The middle third was forming an advisory board and having a council of people who were open-book, examining every part of my work and finding weaknesses and faults to help me mend holes in the boat before they became large. The last third of my journey has been more focused on direct mentorship, finding someone whose work I respect and think they’re the best at that part, asking them if I could sit at their feet and be a student of what they have to offer. I love being a mentee, and I’m happy to be a mentor in return, helping others and enjoying mentor moments as well.

I’m a student, a lifelong learner, and I love to sit at the feet of people, reciprocating by following through with the homework they gave me. If you really want to have XYZ, then you need to do one, two, three. I love coming back and saying, “I did one and two, but I’m stuck on three. Can you help?” So I would advise in the startup world to remember three things: don’t think you’re the smartest person in the room, don’t think it’s a democracy, and don’t forget to build a place where you want to work. If you’re creating a job for yourself, make sure it’s a job you actually like. Pay attention to your unique abilities.

Find out what you are not only the best at but also what you could do every day, sustainably, for the rest of your life, and never get bored. Make sure that’s the job you give yourself. Often, I see other small business owners becoming giant administrators of all the systems—the accounting system, the security system, and the HR system. If you’re a chef who opened a restaurant, you’re likely not cut out to be the best administrator. Consider delegating those administrative responsibilities and allow yourself to be the best chef in the world.

I think that often gets forgotten. Out of a big heart, wanting to create great jobs and provide opportunities for those who are alongside you, we often give the best parts of our day away and hold on to the worst parts and the mess we need to clean up as the grown-up, the person who’s been there longer, the more tenured person. “I’ll keep all this hard stuff; you do the easy stuff.” I’ve learned that lesson multiple times over: you will be there longer than anyone else. You’ve been there longer than anyone else. There is something special in you that gave you the confidence to start this business. Customers, clients, vendors, and teammates see something in you. Maximize your strengths, delegate your weaknesses, and enjoy your job.

Finally, what excites you the most about the future of event production, and how do you plan to beat your competitors?

Well, my plan to beat our competitors is the same way Sam Walton did with the largest company in the world. I believe that our people make the difference in event production. It’s a very asset-intensive business. If you’re not familiar with event production, I think it’s a lot like building construction. You have people and assets, and you work on projects. We’re not a construction company with welders and backhoes building office buildings. We’re an event production company with audio mixing engineers and giant stage screens, and we do events that happen for three days and then are over.

I plan to beat our competitors by having our people make the difference. In this industry, as you can imagine, the gear is a commodity. We don’t manufacture proprietary custom equipment. We use the same equipment on our shows as the competitor who was in that ballroom last week used and as the company that will be in that venue next month will use. The equipment is a commodity. On peak days, when we have multiple events going on, we can get more equipment. You can subrent and bring in supplemental subcontracted equipment. But what we’ve seen is that when we subcontract the labor, it’s not the same. Our secret sauce of project management, client relations, and customer service is not something that you can delegate outside the team.

People have to be a part of the brand and take pride in the name they represent as an ambassador to the customer. They need to have the pride it takes to do what we do with the excellence that we have. So, we plan to beat our competitors by having the best project managers, technicians, and people in the industry, building a place where they want to work, caring for them, and hiring people of character. We trust that by caring for them, they will feel fulfilled and, in turn, pour that care into our clients. That’s how I plan to beat our competitors.

What excites me most about the future of event production is how much the technology is becoming accessible to the younger generation. If you can imagine an airline pilot, you have to be of a certain age to have that responsibility to start flying. If you’re going to be a doctor, you typically can’t do that at a very young age. But in event production, the technology is enabling younger and younger people to gain experience. I love hearing stories of high schools that have started live streaming their sporting events. That’s the same equipment that we use, just at a much more entry-level, consumer-level, basic configuration, but the principles are the same. Getting the repetition of multiple broadcasts, multiple events, and multiple shows is the same.

When we meet young people, sometimes they’ve been serving in their churches since they were in junior high, or serving in their school auditoriums or local theaters since they were ten or twelve. What excites me is that we’re going to start seeing younger and younger people able to perform the services that we do in event production. I bet big on this younger generation. I am very passionate about 18 to 25-year-olds. Event production has a bad reputation for having a lot of grumpy old sound people or jaded lighting people—folks who have just been on the road a little too long and are a little too touchy.

I’m excited about younger people getting involved in this, getting to travel the way we do, getting to serve the way we do, and getting to be a part of these incredible events at such a young age. I’m excited to think about how that’s going to shape their lives and their generation, and the stories they will tell their children about the things they got to see and do. I’m excited about the next generation.