Kevin Noonan of Majestic Circus: 5 Things You Need To Know To Successfully Run a Live Virtual Event

…You need to know your audience. Not knowing your audience is one of the big mistakes in any event live or virtual. We get a lot of information from our groups ahead of time and share that with the RingMasters. It allows them to interact with people by name, give props to the organizer (every group has one of those) and celebrate any special events and occasions with them. You also host a group of 100 Primary School Kids in Boston very differently than a group of 90 accountants in South Africa very differently.

As a part of our series about “5 Things You Need To Know To Successfully Run a Live Virtual Event”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Kevin Noonan.

Kevin Noonan is the Co-Founder of Majestic Circus, a new, virtual, family-friendly, game show-style experience. Kevin formerly worked in the cruise industry and pivoted to form his own entertainment company. While working in the cruise industry, Kevin led highly visible, world-class organizations to unprecedented growth in the international travel hospitality industry. Kevin was most recently the Corporate Director of Entertainment for an internationally known resort chain.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your “childhood backstory”?

I grew up in a small town in Western New York where my father was a county court and circuit court judge, and my mother was the administrator at a Senior Living Facility. I have three brothers who are now scattered all over the country in Boston, Las Vegas and Hawaii. Of the four of us I definitely was the most likely to end up in the entertainment industry.

Can you tell us the story of what led you to this particular career path?

After a brief stint at University of New Hampshire I took a job on a cruise ship and immediately fell in love with the entertainment industry and traveling the world. I met my wife, Gemma, who is originally from England (a dancer on the ship) and we spent 15-years at sea together before we welcomed our son Jaxon to the family and my wife hung up the sea legs. I left the cruise world for resorts when I was recruited to be the Corporate Director of Entertainment for a Major Resort Company and my family moved to Playa Del Carmen, Mexico in June 2019. We returned home in March 2020 when COVID-19 became more prominent. That is when I saw, what would be, the largest shift in the entertainment industry of my career coming and thought that with all of my talented friends that are soon to be out of work from all sorts of jobs in the travel industry that I could get a group together to create an online entertainment platform and have the PERFECT people to host it.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting?

Be careful what you ask for as you may just get it. Before we were available for the public to book us, we tested the Majestic Circus experiences on our friends and family. We tested the Get It! (scavenger hunt-style game) with quite a few participants from the UK in some initial test groups since my wife in from England. We used to ask for “PANTS.” To Americans pants are clothes that cover your legs, in the UK “PANTS” are more commonly referring to ladies’ undergarments. IT was so funny for us to have a guy counting out all of the pants that he had collected live on video in front of everyone.

Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

During a scavenger hunt-style game, be careful. We learned the emergency number in the UK. Our biggest take away was to be careful what we asked for. We are much more careful now.

Is there a particular book, podcast, or film that made a significant impact on you?

The book is Creating Magic by Lee Cockerell

Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?

Well I love how it is written. Lee Cockrell makes it both a leadership book as well as a bit of an autobiography. You learn through a lot of his mistakes and I was able to relate to most of them. I have probably given that book to 40 people over the years. He grows into a leadership role right in front of your eyes and by reading it you become a much more caring and effective leader as well.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending. I have seen it quoted as C.S. Lewis before and other people as well, so I am not sure who to attribute it to, but it is one of my favorites. It is never too late to change something in your life or in your business and head in a new direction. We have made a few pivots already in Majestic Circus that we think will make the end of our story considerably better.

Ok, thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview. For the benefit of our readers, can you tell us a bit about your experience organizing events in general?

I grew up going to and eventually working at summer camps. The two I worked at were (YMCA) Camp HOUGH and at Camp Stella Maris. Both located not too far from my hometown in Western NY. Working in the camp environment is like a crash course in organizing events. Then I spent 20 years working in the Cruise industry where every day is a massive event whether you are getting guests organized to make an excursion or doing a dance in the dining room. What I was reminded every step of the way is people are more likely to both listen to you and remember what you tell them if they are having fun.

Can you tell us a bit about your experience organizing live virtual events?

This was a new one for me and I would be lying to you if I said I had lots of experience in virtual events prior to the launch of Majestic Circus. That is where my partner Jake Spartz who is our brilliant Game maker comes in. He has been participating in ORG (Online Role Playing) games for years. I knew that I needed Jake to help build the games for Majestic Circus if we were to be successful.
Can you share any interesting stories about them?

We’ve shared a great Blog Post detailing how Jake created the games and his thought processes. You can read more here and I’ve included some of Jake’s creative insights below.

“After coming up with the base format I began to get to work on the games of Know It!. At its core, all eight games in Know It! is trivia based; but each game has an added layer that requires you to think just a bit differently. For example, one of our games Singing Gibberish requires players to guess the song title from a set of lyrics shown on the screen BUT, in our game the lyrics were translated to fifteen different languages first. Go Figure requires players to answer simple trivia questions such as how many sides are on a triangle or how many colors are in the rainbow. But what happens when those questions are linked with a plus sign, turning the questions into a math equation, which you must answer under the pressure of a ticking clock?,” said Jake Spartz.

In your opinion, what is an example of a company that has done a fantastic job creating live virtual events?

AirBNB has done a great job in pivoting during Covid, offering varied live virtual events from different experts around the world. Most businesses have had to pivot during this time, although we suit this environment, we are here for the long term in the true belief that the future will have the need for high quality, highly engaging and a whole bunch of fun Live Virtual Online Experiences.

What are the common mistakes you have seen people make when they try to run a live virtual event?

The first time I truly thought the concept of Majestic Circus would work was doing a Zoom wine tasting event with my family. I thought to myself, this would be so much better if one of my entertainer friends was hosting this. The execution was poor and there was no engagement, no structure, and the host was just going through the motions. It’s like hosting a dinner party, if you are the one cooking the food you don’t really get to fully enjoy the same way as you would if you went to a restaurant and had a chef cook the food. For us, enjoy, engage, have fun and hire the professional entertainer who will come right to your home virtually! So easy and so fun!

Which virtual platform have you found to be most effective to be able to bring everyone together virtually?

We try to use ZOOM as much as we can as the platform is well known by most participants even if they have never used it. It is like Kleenex or Xerox. If you are going to have a video call even if it is not on Zoom it is a Zoom call. I will say that in December alone we hosted our events on 6 different platforms: Streamyard, ZOOM, MS Teams, WEBEX, FB Live & Google Meet. When people book with us on our website (majesticcircus.com) it automatically sends a ZOOM link with the confirmation.

Are there any essential tools or software that you think an event organizer needs to know about?

As we learn more and more about entertaining virtually, we narrow down the needed tools of our hosts. RingLight is a must. If you are going to be hosting you need to look good, good lighting is step one and can help you virtual BGs look much better. We are starting to play with sound effects, music and those are best with a sound board.

Ok. Thank you for all that. Here is the main question of our discussion. An in-person event can have a certain electric energy. How do you create an engaging and memorable event when everyone is separated and in their own homes?

This is the perfect question for Majestic Circus. We came up with the concept in April and May but spent four months getting it all right before we launched in mid-September. To create that same electric energy you need to focus on ENGAGEMENT. Without that interaction be it laughter, a witty response or even a question and the answer, there needs to be engagement. We were pressured a lot in the beginning to develop an app or have people answer by pushing buttons. We even got an offer for us to gamify and automate our games. We have held being a LIVE event as a foundation for our company. It is what makes us the most fun, our talented hosts and their desire to have a fun interaction with every participant in the games.

What are the “Five Things You Need To Know To Successfully Run a Live Virtual Event” and why?(Please share a story or example for each.)

1. Web Cameras, our game Get It! Is a game where we ask our participants to solve puzzles and riddles and then find things in their location for points. One of our first bookings of Get it! refused to put their cameras on. The good news is it was a 16-way tie at the end of the game.
2. A talented and Experienced host makes virtual events even better. The very first minute of any of our experiences we have the full attention of the audience because of our Talented RingMasters.
3. Your Audience, you need to know your audience. Not knowing your audience is one of the big mistakes in any event live or virtual. We get a lot of information from our groups ahead of time and share that with the RingMasters. It allows them to interact with people by name, give props to the organizer (every group has one of those) and celebrate any special events and occasions with them. You also host a group of 100 Primary School Kids in Boston very differently than a group of 90 accountants in South Africa very differently.
4. Solid Internet — I don’t think this one is a surprise to anyone. When hosting virtually if you keep cutting in and out or if you are hard to hear then more participants will drop off. In February, Cookie, one of our Top RingMasters, was in Texas during the winter storm. We were not sure if he was going to have power for an event he was hosting so we had another RingMaster, John, come and be his back up for the game because if Cookie dropped out the game was over. John was ready to step in at a moment’s notice.
5. Finally, Patience When you are hosting events virtually you are not only the Host (RingMaster in our case) but you are also the IT department. We have gotten very good at helping people figure out their cameras, microphones, Apple TVs, tables, cellphones and any connectable device. Helping people who are a little less tech savvy at the beginning is always worth it as they always seem to be the most fun (and the most impressed with zoom itself!

Let’s imagine that someone reading this interview has an idea for a live virtual event that they would like to develop. What are the first few steps that you would recommend that they take?

Plan, practice and perfect. We spent over 4 months putting our experiences together in a way that we knew it would not only be fun but unique and engaging. It is hard to differentiate yourself from others in the same space so focus on the feeling and the experience you are striving for and keep tweaking it until you achieve what you have set out to achieve.

Super. We are nearly done. Here are our final questions. You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.

Just saying hello. That is it. I spent over 20 years working in the hospitality industry on cruise ships, in hotels and resorts and it comes as second nature to me to say hello to EVERY person I walk past. The last year, interaction with people has been something to avoid. Once things are back to normal, I would love to get people smiling and saying hello again.

We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.

There are so many people who I would love to mention here including, Josh Allen (Bills), Ryan Reynolds (Sabrina the Teenage Witch), or Richard Branson (no explanation needed) would be my top 3 and I think I would need to go with Richard Branson. His business successes have proved to be motivation for me, and I absolutely love to focus on innovation and thriving in new spaces, and that’s exactly what we are striving for.