EventNewsDXB

EventNewsDXB - Tyler Davis-Smith: From Stage to Spotlight & Turning Adversity Into Success

• W4 Podcast Studio • Season 1 • Episode 3

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EventNewsDXB Ep.3 - Tyler Davis-Smith: From Stage to Spotlight & Turning Adversity Into Success.

Supported by Warehouse Four - Dubai's best independent event venue.

Join host Ian Carless as he talks to Tyler Davis-Smith, founder of Energie Entertainment, about his journey from aspiring performer in the UK to building a thriving entertainment agency in Dubai.

Hear how he turned adversity into opportunity during one of the worse times in living memory for the events industry and how he now manages the challenge of maintaining quality amid rising demand.

Tyler also discusses expanding into Saudi Arabia, the need for cultural and skills-based training, and initiatives like BeastEd to develop local talent. Plus, he shares personal anecdotes, music tastes, and upcoming ventures in an insightful and entertaining chat!

Podcast Rundown
• Tyler's early career and transition into event management 
• The founding of Energy Entertainment during COVID-19 
• Challenges and successes in starting a new business 
• Importance of maintaining quality in a budget-conscious market 
• Insights on the growth of the event industry in the GCC 
• The role of Saudi Arabia in the Middle Eastern event landscape 
• Knowledge transfer and training opportunities for local talent 
• The balance between short deadlines and quality delivery 
• Tyler's thoughts on upcoming events and personal interests 

Production Credits:

Presented by: Ian Carless
Studio Engineer & Editor: Roy D'Monte
Executive Producers: Ian Carless & Joe Morrison
Produced by: EventNewsDXB & W4 Podcast Studio

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Ian Carless:

Welcome to Event News DXB. Before we begin, I've got a quick favour to ask. There's one simple way that you can support our show, and that's by hitting that follow or subscribe button on the app you're listening to the show on right now. It really does make a huge difference in helping us get the show out there to as many people as possible. So please give us a hand and click that button right now. Thanks a bunch. Thanks a bunch.

Ian Carless:

You're listening to the Event News DXB podcast. Your behind-the-scenes look into the world of events in Dubai, the UAE and the MENA region. I'm Ian Carlos and each week I'll bring you the latest news, industry trends and insider stories shaping one of the world's most dynamic event markets. From professional insights to Dubai's most inspiring success stories, we've got everything you need to stay ahead in that ever-evolving event industry. So, whether you're an event planner, a brand manager or just someone who's utterly passionate about the power of events, you're in the right place. This week we're talking to the founder and CEO of Energy Entertainment, tyler Davis-Smith. After originally studying for a career in musical theatre, a freelance project saw him land in Dubai, where he quickly began to see the potential for starting his own company delivering events. Fast forward to 2025 and Energy Entertainment has quickly become one of the leading companies specialising in talent booking and delivering high-profile entertainment events.

Ian Carless:

Tyler, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me, most welcome. I want to start at the beginning. How did you get into events Now? I did actually have a quick look at your LinkedIn page last night and you seem to be one of the few people that seem to know exactly what you wanted to do from an early age. You studied for well, certainly for theatre design, didn't you? Which led into events? Yeah, so initially.

Tyler Davis-Smith:

I mean, I actually wanted to be a performer. It's funny because every day on our accounting software I've got secret questions and it says what did you want to be when you grow up? And the answer was actor as opposed to.

Tyler Davis-Smith:

I haven't grown up. Yeah, exactly peter pan, that was what I wanted to be. No, so it was performing from a young age. I performed in lots of different things. Obviously you start with amateur dramatic and then when I left school, I had to sort of make some decisions on what options I wanted to take to study and I initially started with law, politics, sociology, sociology, critical thinking and performance studies. I lasted about a week of doing that the AS levels of that and then I changed to BTEC in musical theatre. I carried on with the law on the side, but then I went to drama school in London, toured in theatres, worked on cruise ships, so singing, prancing around, and that was kind of the entertainment segment segment. So all of that and that's actually what brought me out to Dubai, right, the UAE initially at what point did you realize?

Ian Carless:

actually, I want to make the switch here. I don't just want to be the talent, I want to be the organizer.

Tyler Davis-Smith:

I never realized that there was no point, there was no strategic decision no, you know definitely not.

Tyler Davis-Smith:

It just sort of happened. Suddenly someone says can you stage manage on a job? I think people thought I had my head screwed on and I started stage managing. And then the next thing was an old can you show call an event. Then it was okay, can you production manage? And it was like, okay, now you're building an event, which always I found a little bit bizarre because I can't even hang a picture frame up at home and I am literally useless at building anything.

Tyler Davis-Smith:

So then doing the production management and then producing. But I think that when you are producing there's all different sort of segments of my life where I utilize and pick from all of those strengths. So I didn't study events and sometimes I wonder, you know, if I'd studied events and done that at 21, come out of university and done that, you know where would I be? But actually I took a route that has given me sort of lots of experience in lots of different aspects of events, which now I think put me in a good position to be where I am. So I've done lots of kind of learning on the job.

Ian Carless:

Yeah.

Tyler Davis-Smith:

Although I did apply to do a master's the other day, although I'm not entirely sure if it's a good idea whatsoever because I'm really really busy. But yeah, lots of it comes from just learning on the job, so it just sort of happened.

Ian Carless:

Now. Energy Entertainment is obviously your company now and it's going from strength to strength and we'll get on to talk about that as well. But interestingly, you actually formed the company during COVID.

Tyler Davis-Smith:

Yeah, I think it was. A lot of people thought I was slightly mad. Well, you certainly had time on your hands. That was the big thing though it was. I think I'd gone into, I say, lots of what I did initially with the stage management. The show calling all revolved around, you know, still the show of an event, because an event isn't just made up of a show. Events can be all sorts of different things and you know I was involved in corporate events and summits and government events and things like that.

Tyler Davis-Smith:

And during COVID was a time, ultimately, where we all had a chance to stop and a chance to think about what we were doing and I sort of looked at what have I been doing for the past few years? What do I want to be doing in 10 years time? And ultimately I didn't want to be doing some of the roles that I had been doing. It gave me a chance to sit there and look and assess what is in the market currently in the sort of GCC region, what I thought I can do better than, and ultimately, had there been no COVID, there would be no energy, because I thought I was happy as a freelancer in certain roles. It was that pause that chance to reflect and that chance to sort of you know, decide and reinvent your own future.

Ian Carless:

Yeah, and I think that was the case for many people across many industries. Wasn't it that chance for introspection and that chance to be just still and be present? And I think people came out with it with some quite revealing truths home truths, didn't they? Some people had complete career changes. Other people just decided that a better work-life balance was something they wanted to try and work towards yeah, a hundred percent.

Tyler Davis-Smith:

It's taking that time to just stop and sometimes, you know, wouldn't it be nice. Now I said the other day uh, obviously we're now sort of four and a bit years old as a business. I said, do you know what? I just like it to stop for a minute so I could reassess again, yeah, on where we're at, and go okay, what is the strategy for the next five years of the business? Yeah, I don't have that time to do that anymore because we're constant at what we're doing.

Tyler Davis-Smith:

Yeah, but but that time during COVID, not only did I, you know, assess where I wanted to be, it gave me a chance to build a. I didn't want to build a business, I wanted to build a brand and a sort of strategy. So it gave a chance to to build a. I didn't want to build a business, I want to be able to build a brand and a sort of strategy. So it gave a chance to look at what did I want the logo to be? Like, you know, have time to consult with other people, competitor analysis, all of that sort of stuff.

Tyler Davis-Smith:

You know what? What is it that makes us different? What am I going to go? What's our unique selling point and and all of that, I looked at the different businesses that are there. I booked a lot of the entertainment agencies because I'd worked event agency side and what was a challenge for me when I was booking an entertainment agency. So it gave me a chance to really sort of, like you know, look at that and do a lot of research so that when I did launch the business I was in a really good place.

Ian Carless:

How difficult was it to actually start the business and get up and running? Very difficult.

Tyler Davis-Smith:

There were no funds. I ultimately ran out of money. I took a bank loan from the UK on the mindset of if I go bankrupt, at least I go bankrupt in the UK rather than here, because that would have been a problem. That was a, you know, a starting point. Then, uh, launching the business to being sort of first of all, getting people to trust you, and then the next thing was, when were we coming out of covid? So I, I launched in august and then we had a little bit of a break and it would be like, okay, the entertainment can happen. Then there was an entertainment ban again, then there was a little break and then, you know, it was really difficult to sort of get gain any traction at the start. But we did a good job and I was lucky to have some really really good people around me. But it wasn't easy and it's still not easy. Just, the problems are slightly different problems than they were then.

Ian Carless:

Yeah, you mentioned you're four years down the line now. How have you managed that process of scaling the business then? Obviously, you know cashflow is one, but there's a whole host of other things that you've got to consider in terms of scaling as well, and you know there's a lot of businesses that grow too quickly. A hundred percent.

Tyler Davis-Smith:

Scaling is hard Knowing when to scale, when not to scale. Are you scaling too much? It's a challenge. And then also, I have big ambitions and I want to run away and you know, scale immediately. But, yeah, I don't necessarily have the money to do that. There's no millionaire that's behind me, there's no investors or anything like that.

Tyler Davis-Smith:

So you know, we started out by a lot of freelancers and a lot of people you know, just jumping in. Then you take on your first full-time hires. That's scary because you're really committing to something and I think that, as an owner of a business, you are committing to looking after people, looking after their families. It's really, really, really important to me that you know all of those people we are. We have security for them. If they're working alongside me, they should know that it's a safe space.

Tyler Davis-Smith:

Um, so you, you scale up and then, you know, your challenges become different. We're now, I think we're about 13 or 14 full time and it's difficult when to scale. I always look to scale up in January and July because we can look at the end of a financial year, sort of a January to December year, but then also we work in an event season, so we're looking at kind of September to June, so we'll assess and see where we were. I feel like we're always kind of playing catch up, because we scale up, we get more work and then we're like, wow, we were really busy again. You get more people and then you get more work, and then you need more people and then you get more work.

Tyler Davis-Smith:

And this year was a year where we didn't want to grow too much. This year we decided that we actually wanted to. It was really important to us to sort of stabilise everything that we were doing, because we had to change trade licences, we needed to get new systems operate in procedures, we added a bit more support in the finance and admin department because I felt like we were potentially a house of cards that could come tumbling down and we really, really needed to get that sort of bottom layer stable. This year, 2025, is a year of growth again for us and how about the industry?

Ian Carless:

we talk about this a lot and it's come up in quite a few of the podcasts. Where do you see the industry now versus where we were pre-covid? Do you think the industry has bounced back? Inverted commas.

Tyler Davis-Smith:

I think, look, it's most definitely, you know, the GCC region is the place to be. We only have to look at. If we looked at pre-COVID, you know there were a number of events happening in the Middle East, but right now we've had a World Cup, we've had a World Expo. We're seeing, you know, if you look at Saudi Arabia, we're seeing major, major sporting events. So I think the sort of desire for large scale events in the Middle East is hugely there and I think it's still got lots and lots of growth and I think Saudiia plays a huge part in that. The uae is most definitely now a kind of secure hub. We look at the travel statistics. Um, we've seen the dubai airport is, you know, the busiest airport in the world with the most amount of visitors to tourism is back up. There's lots of new things opening. We look at ras al khaimah casinos, etc. Et cetera. It's in a really positive position.

Ian Carless:

It's interesting that there was an article released today that says, basically, the headline was Dubai secures 437 global business events for 2024, which they say is up 20%. That's a 20% increase on last year, so clearly the appetite is there. I think one of the things that I'm hearing, though, in the industry is that, you know, as this news article suggests, the numbers might be up, but the spending doesn't seem to have matched that, and also, I think there's a question mark from some quarters as well certainly the event organizers that we've spoken to about the quality of the events, and I think you know we are in a market that is incredibly, you know, budget conscious.

Tyler Davis-Smith:

It's budget conscious, it's competitive, it's challenging. You know, we pride ourselves on being kind of a higher end entertainment agency and we're not going to just sort of drop down our standards or our costs because of that. Because we believe that there's certain you know, if you work with us you get a certain service. We do find it. It's going to happen. It's always going to happen.

Tyler Davis-Smith:

But I think that, from my perspective, as long as the standards that we are delivering don't slip and you know we look to be premium, people want to work with us because of that. So the spend, yes, it is reflective, but we need to make sure that we sit in that market. We're not suddenly just going to drop everything and we won't take certain jobs if it doesn't align with us. Let's see where, where we go because of that. But I do think that People ultimately appreciate quality and, regardless of, you know, budgets going down, if you are a high-end brand or you are a government entity, you cannot risk your event failing. It's happening once. Probably the eyes of the world could be on that event. You need people that know what they're doing, that are going to deliver and, yeah, you're going to have to pay for that.

Ian Carless:

Do you feel that's an attitude that's adopted by a lot of procurement teams?

Tyler Davis-Smith:

No, no, most definitely not. You know we that wasn't a leading question no, not even slightly. I mean, we're always going to have the arguments with procurement teams and then it's up to us whether or not we take it. I recently had a situation where there was a procurement department and they said you know, they talked about comparing apples to apples. And I said you're not even comparing fruit to anything. I said you know, we're miles off.

Tyler Davis-Smith:

You want a circus artist? We can get you a circus artist from down the road. That's done. A day's training, or I can bring you someone that's been in Cirque du Soleil. Correct? You know, this is what I'm offering. This is maybe what my competitors are offering. Yeah, so be it. And that means we lose things. We will always lose things because of that. But what we can do is guarantee you a high level and a quality of delivery, a quality of communication. You know all of those things. Certain people want it. You know we have, we do. We have certain people where procurement. We know we're not winning the job. We have to apply on a portal and we just put a number in and no one's really looking at the creative or the quality. Fine, that's for somebody else then yeah for us.

Tyler Davis-Smith:

We, you know we pride ourselves on having good communication, speaking to people, ensuring 100% that there is a high level of delivery and you pay for that.

Ian Carless:

And I think that's reassuring to hear as well, because I think there's certainly been a few people on the podcast that have commented that there does seem to be a little bit of a lack of attention to quality these days. You mentioned Saudi as well earlier. How important is Saudi, not just as a market, both to the region but also to energy?

Tyler Davis-Smith:

We licensed in Saudi Arabia this year. We've been delivering events there previously, but always through the Dubai license. I have worked there since about 2017, but was working as a freelancer have seen massive change and you only have to look at the scale of events that they are putting on to know that it is a big marketplace. You only have to look at the event industry from Dubai and virtually everybody is opening an office there now. It comes with challenges, of course it does.

Tyler Davis-Smith:

It's a new marketplace. It's a young, young marketplace. Things are not quite ready and you have to go into it with your eyes opened and understand what you're going into. But what's a good thing is there is a huge desire there to be successful, not just from people that are attending events there, but from the population, and we've been at the saudi event show a number of times. I've hosted a few panels for the saudi event show. I've spoken to people and they are desperate for success there and you know laws are having to be relaxed slightly, but it is 100% a huge destination for not just the GCC but for the world. You look at the boxing, the tennis, the F1, the E1. It's on everybody's global touring calendar now.

Ian Carless:

And I think those events are obviously the ones that grab the headlines worldwide. I think the bigger issue, perhaps, or the bigger question mark, is is it sustainable? We're talking about big events and obviously a lot of money Now, over a short term period, yes, you can, probably if you want to make a big wow in the marketplace, that's the way to go. But long-term, are they sustainable? And if not, where does the industry transition to?

Tyler Davis-Smith:

I mean, if we talk about the industry in general, I think that it is sustainable, but not at the pace that it's going at the moment. Everything has to plateau at some point. If I was to talk about the growth of energy, it was mad the first few years. If we went, okay, the percentage of turnover increase was, you know, okay, we're 400% on the year before. But it can't go like that all the time. This year we kind of plateaued out. We. We did better than we did the previous year, which we were really happy with, considering we had cop in the previous year. But it had to plateau out and it needs to for anything to be sustainable.

Tyler Davis-Smith:

And I do think that you know, sa, they can't just keep growing and growing and growing at the pace that they are. It will have to plateau out. But ultimately, there is a huge population there. There are. You know, if we look at it in comparison to the UAE, just in terms of sort of the size of the country, the different areas, they've just won the World Cup. Well, they've just won the world cup. Well, they haven't won the world cup, they've won the right to host the world cup in 2032. They've got the world expo there in 2030. So we're looking at what it's another six, seven years of global events that are going there. So I don't think we see it slowing down right now, but obviously they need to ensure that they are ready to deliver this scale of event. But they are showing that and we're excited to be involved in it.

Ian Carless:

You mentioned. Obviously there's a whole train of event companies and other industries all decamping in Saudi. In order for that to be sustainable, there has to be a transfer of knowledge. I mean, I'm sure initially it's about bringing teams in delivering and then often those teams will leave. How do you then ensure that transfer of knowledge with the local talent market so that you know in three, four years time you can actually now start sourcing some of the talent there, rather than having to ship everybody in?

Tyler Davis-Smith:

It's a really hard part and I've had this conversation with a couple of people and I actually, when Energy were on soundstorm, which is middle beast we were there in december. I was there personally and I was chatting to we employed all of our talent managers locals, yeah, which a lot of people don't do. Yeah, transfer of knowledge works two ways. We also need to have the transfer of knowledge from them. Yeah, and understand what people there want and how we work in this culture, because it is different to the UAE. So there's, I think, there's the transfer of knowledge that comes from the people that are going in, but there's a transfer of knowledge the other way and I think with that, we will find over the next three to five, maybe 10 years, the sort of middle ground which works. But it is a challenge.

Ian Carless:

Because I think it's happening on two levels. The transfer is on two levels, isn't it? I mean, there's a cultural knowledge transfer, but there's also a basic skills transfer, like this is how you become a show caller, this is how you become a lighting designer. So, and I think, unfortunately, you know, training is a bygone word, isn't it? I mean across a lot of industries. I know, for example, I used to be in television and I can't think of any training courses now.

Tyler Davis-Smith:

Well, training opportunities vocational training opportunities for people who want to be in the broadcast industry.

Tyler Davis-Smith:

Within Saudi. You are seeing that now, middle Beast are doing a lot of courses. They're calling it BeastEd, so BeastEd. We're seeing security companies that are training that now, middle beast are doing a lot of courses. They're calling it beast ed, right, so beasted. We're seeing security companies that are training there with. There's entertainment and event academies there.

Tyler Davis-Smith:

Now, okay, I actually spoke with some of the saudi entertainment academy whilst I was there last time and they spoke about me going in and doing some lecturing and things like that. So, health and safety, security, security, crowd management, production management they are investing in it in Saudi because there is, you know, a quota that has to be local. The hard part and I find this quite challenging is, you know, yeah, you can find people for an event, we can find ushers, we can find ushers, we can find hostesses, we can find certain roles. We need to give people the opportunity to learn alongside people, but to find full-time people there, that is a challenge that I am looking at at the moment and one that I don't have an answer to right now, and I need to navigate do you think there are enough opportunities currently for talent to come in and shadow companies?

Ian Carless:

I mean often companies shy away from that because it's an extra headache. You've got to babysit someone, you've got to give them a task. It's extra cost and I think a lot of companies you know they're just, I mean the bottom line kicks in and they just go you know's.

Tyler Davis-Smith:

It's hard again, you know, I think some of these courses that I am seeing from from the middle beast team particularly, I think that's really really good for the country because again there's a desire of people to work in events and people are going to these courses. Opportunity to shadow is hard because people if they're booking a stage manager, they're booking one stage manager at X day rate, or how are we going to pay the other person to shadow? But then I guess, you know, for long-term strategic growth, potentially it's people like myself that need to invest in that.

Ian Carless:

And just bringing it back to Dubai and the UAE, do you see talent moving into the, young talent in particular, moving into events? I mean we read a lot about Gen Z and about them, you know not necessarily wanting to put in the hard yards. I mean you know events like television production. It's a tough industry. You know long hours, a lot of stress. Do you see young people now wanting to move into this industry?

Tyler Davis-Smith:

I mean, I like to still think that I'm a young person. So, and lots of my friends are young people and they want to move into the industry. But maybe I'm not young anymore, maybe I need to look at that. But you know there are young people moving into it. It's a cool industry to work in, but I don't think. Yeah, you know people maybe don't understand the hours that go into it. I think you know even my family. I'm producing a show and I think they just think, oh, you know, these people go up there and they sing and dance and I don't realise I'm like, I know I haven't spoken to you for three weeks because I've been incredibly stressed and I can't speak to anybody right now unless it's about this, to anybody right now unless it's about this. So that in itself, like it, that proves a challenge, because some it's not.

Tyler Davis-Smith:

For some people, I think it's got a positive sort of outlook, because I think it is a is an exciting thing. You know, I actually like going to work and with events. One thing that I've said to colleagues of mine is we could be on a bad job and I say do you know, the best thing about events is there's an end date, because if we've got a really, really difficult job, then we go okay, right, we got through that, at least that ended. But then it means that you're not doing the same thing every day. It's exciting, it's you know, what are we doing this time? Okay, there's some kind of twist, but that is you know. I think that's quite exciting for young people to be involved in.

Ian Carless:

What about the talent pool locally? I mean, clearly there is a freelance market now. I mean, I've been here what 20, 22 years, and if I certainly move back to when I first arrived, there wasn't a freelance market. How easy is it now, you know, for somebody like yourself who needs to staff big shows not just with talent but obviously with production personnel as well. How much of that can you rely on the local market now, versus having to bring people in? We?

Tyler Davis-Smith:

have a number of freelancers that are core freelancers for us. I looked a little while ago and between artists and sort of production team, over a two-week period we'd employed 400 people, which is quite a lot of people, and majority we'd managed to source locally. We are lucky that we have a pool of people that want to work with us. We've been sort of really from day one. One of the core ethos of my business was making sure that we look after people and looking after freelancers. People know they're going to get paid on time by us. People know that they will be looked after on a job. So we're lucky that we've got sort of a really good bank of people and there are a lot of people locally.

Tyler Davis-Smith:

Certain things, you know, we do have to outsource internationally. When we were working on COP, we had a huge workforce on COP and we had to bring in because you know it's a seasonal market here, so everyone wants everyone at the same time and late sign off doesn't help as well. So again, we might be sat here today and then suddenly we've got an event in 10 days time which is all hands on deck and potentially the good people are booked, and and that's where again, because we have a certain standard that we like to think that we hold. Sometimes, you know, the seniors and things like that. We've just got to bring it in from international and we have to do that. But on a whole, we're in a good place in region.

Ian Carless:

How do you manage the short deadlines? Because, I mean, I think I'm not going to say anything controversial by saying that you know this region is notorious for short deadlines. I mean, you know, you and I both know that some of the deadlines we get for events in this region versus what we get in other parts of the world are significantly different.

Tyler Davis-Smith:

We are constantly faced with short deadlines, and one of the things that I'll say to my team because you know I can be in work and people are like, oh no, they've. You know we're never going to get this over we need to manage expectation and say first of all, you know what, what can we achieve right now? What's realistic? You know we can get you a proposal and a budget, but you know two hours is not acceptable. You're not the only client that we're talking to either. We can't just go okay, drop everything right this second.

Tyler Davis-Smith:

What's the budget? Let's not waste time here. Let's try and get down so that when we do this proposal at a short period of time we are, you know, going to get signed off pretty quickly. But what I will say to my team as well is if you don't like it, it's the wrong industry for you, because unfortunately it's part and parcel of things here, and I for some reason seem to be a go-to phone call for lots of people when they say we've got a job no one will take, no one would take this on because it's so short notice. You can do it, and I'll be like oh, can I? Okay, here we go then, and we tend to throw ourselves in work really long hours and we get a really big sense of achievement and a sense of pride when we deliver.

Ian Carless:

I think what I've noticed from being in the region for sort of 20 years is it's a confluence of reasons. I think generally the region is a little bit risk averse. I also think that many of that middle management aren't empowered. I think there's also not a culture that encourages failure, and I think the result of those three things is that I think everybody puts off making decisions until the very last minute and then they also make the decision that will have the least impact on them if it goes wrong. So that usually means that for us, unfortunately, who are at the end of that chain, that we get three weeks or six weeks to prepare for an event that should have taken three or three months and we get a minuscule budget which in many cases isn't realistic.

Tyler Davis-Smith:

I don't think honestly. You know we only it comes from the top and you know it's quite demanding at the top working with governmental clients. They, they can expect things. You know there is a level of it needs to check. Like you know, we need this event. It has to happen now and ultimately we always do make it happen so you're never going to change it. Because if we make it happen every time, why does it need to change?

Ian Carless:

yeah, absolutely, that's that you're guilty by success yeah yeah, if you'd fallen over and failed, then maybe people would have gone. Oh, yes, next time, yeah, yeah, but the fact that you deliver the job, yeah 100.

Tyler Davis-Smith:

I've, I've done things. I remember being a freelancer and thinking I could do with three stage managers on this and it's just me. But I'd still deliver. I'd make sure and I'd run around like a madman and I'd be in every single position that really there should be other people on. But I'd be flying across the back of the stage to make sure that I'm, you know, on stage left when I quickly get that person on. And then I'm running around the back of the stage to make sure that I'm, you know, on stage left when I quickly get that personal. And then I'm running around the back and, right, I'm at stage right as well. It's mad, but it's done, yeah, and then we don't teach anybody, but I wouldn't have let it fail because it's not in my nature. Yeah, and that's the same for every other business here.

Ian Carless:

So it's not going to change what are the events you're looking forward to in 2025?

Tyler Davis-Smith:

What events. I mean that's a difficult one, because obviously lots of our conversations are kind of under a non-disclosure agreement or let's rephrase that a little bit.

Ian Carless:

So if there's events that you can talk about in relation to energy, please do, but otherwise, what are the events? Perhaps you're looking forward to just going to, perhaps as a spectator?

Tyler Davis-Smith:

Well, I'm looking forward to seeing Oasis. I was one of the fortunate ones that got tickets to see Oasis and I've got tickets to see them in Scotland and I've got tickets to see them in London. So for me, as a kind of big Oasis fan and actually meeting up with the lads from football and going and being a Britpop kind of English man, that will be thoroughly enjoyable in terms of energy. We we're we're looking forward to delivering an event in saudi arabia next weekend, which is one that we've delivered previously. I plan on visiting japan this year. Uh, there's a world expo there and I kind of thought to myself I'm never really sure what to do when I'm going on holiday, so why don't I just tie it up with a event because I feel comfortable an event? I'm not very good when I go on holiday on my own and just don't really know what to do with myself. So I thought, right, I'll go to an event for my holiday. That's a good idea. So I'm going to go to Japan and look at the World Expo there.

Ian Carless:

Now you mentioned Oasis, so you you've given the game away a little bit, but like yourself, bit of a music fan, vinyl collection growing again. What's on your playlist? What's?

Tyler Davis-Smith:

on my playlist. Oh, there'd be lots of different things on my playlist because it could vary from lots of kind of acoustic or indie. I'm a big fan of the sort of indie era. So I was into the Zootons and the Kookooks and razor light and oasis and a bit blur like a bit of scar. So, um, yeah, which is a bit of a first mention on the podcast.

Tyler Davis-Smith:

Yeah, so I'm into madness, specials and things like that, and then I could end up with defying gravity from wicked. So you know, musical theater was a big part of my life. So I am a male that likes musical theatre, which is probably a little bit odd for most people. But you know, I could definitely listen into some of that as well. And it ranges Half the time I drive in the car in silence because I've had people shouting at me all day and I think please, let me just have a moment to myself and I turn everything off and I just drive home and think, make it home safely and just have that moment of pause and reflection and don't crash. The car on the way home is the usual plan.

Ian Carless:

Tyler, best of luck for you and energy in 2025 and thanks for coming in on the podcast.

Tyler Davis-Smith:

Thank you very much for having me, thank you.

Ian Carless:

Event News. Dxb was presented by myself, ian Carlos, the studio engineer and editor was Roy DeMonte, the executive producer was myself and Joe Morrison, and this podcast is a co-production between Warehouse 4 and W4 Podcast Studio Dubai, and if you haven't done so already, please do click that follow or subscribe button. See you next time.