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Iain Morrison - Beyond Burnout: The True Cost of Event Excellence

• W4 Podcast Studio • Season 2 • Episode 2

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Iain Morrison - Beyond Burnout: The True Cost of Event Excellence

With over 35 years in the event industry, Iain Morrison has seen the effect the industry can have on people first-hand. This week on EventNewsDXB, the founder of The Imagination Collaborative opens up about the pressures facing today’s event professionals - from resource cuts to unrealistic timelines and the silent mental health toll that comes with them.

Iain shares his own experiences with burnout, why the industry’s "just push through" mindset no longer works and why he's not afraid to speak up and get the conversation started. Iain shares his own journey, the patterns he’s noticed across the sector and how leaders can take practical steps to create healthier working environments - from better planning and structure to simply giving people the space to speak up.

This episode is a must-listen for anyone feeling the pressure, anyone leading a team, or anyone who believes there’s a better way to deliver great events -without burning out in the process.

EventNewsDXB is powered by -45dB - Sound Reduction Specialists.

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:

Ian. Welcome to the podcast, ian thank you for having me. We're not going to forget each other's names here are we. Hopefully not, ian. And Ian, your spelling is slightly different to mine, though. I'm the traditional I-A-N and I have the blessing of being Scottish.

Iain Morrison:

Well, I'm not. I'm Australian, but my parents, from England, chose Scottish spelling because Morrison being Scottish, heritage.

Ian Carless:

Of course, I spent my whole life trying to explain why the second eye sits.

Iain Morrison:

How do you pronounce that eye off together? Yeah, exactly, so a lot of the time in America, I'll use Fred.

Ian Carless:

Well, let's dive in, shall we? I mean, we don't usually waste time at the head of the podcast, so how did you get into events?

Iain Morrison:

I started very young. At school I had to take part in the school theatre play and I think I was about 11 or 12 at the time and I didn't want to be on stage and so the only other option was to be backstage. And I fell in love with it and as I went into senior school I was very lucky. We had an amazing school theatre and an amazing school theatre program, yeah, and I grew up through my teens working in theatre, but then a lot of kids that were a bit older than me were working professionally as well, just pushing road cases and doing whatever they could on gigs, and I just got into working in the industry that way and I was really fortunate that. You know, we had this great theatre. We did some amazing big productions and school plays and dances and things and I got an introduction to the industry and I never left. I went to university, studied stage management at university, decided I did not want to be a stage manager. I knew that I'd tick that box.

Ian Carless:

All stage managers were out there going well what's wrong with that?

Iain Morrison:

Just not for you Stage managers credit to you. But yeah, it wasn't going to be for me. So I got a job just out of university working as a mechanist building sets at the Opera House, went on to be a rigger and worked for Opera Australia for quite a long time there and then got into my proper events career in the late 90s.

Ian Carless:

Right? Well, listen, obviously I'd be remiss not to do a little bit of research, so the first place I normally start is your LinkedIn page. Okay, and to quote after 35 years delivering some of the world's biggest events, that's a great start, isn't it? 35 years?

Iain Morrison:

Yeah, and I was thinking about this talking to somebody the other day it's actually a little bit longer than 35 years.

Ian Carless:

Oh, showing your age now.

Iain Morrison:

Let's just call it 35 years. Yeah, I've had a pretty fortunate career where I've got to work with some really cool people on some really cool events.

Ian Carless:

Just give us a brief overview because I know we were talking just before the podcast started. You ran your own companies a couple of companies prior to where you're at now and obviously we'll get on in a short while to talk about the Imagination Collaborative but your first company was Hum, is that right? And then you went on to form Raging Empire. Tell us a little bit about those two ventures.

Iain Morrison:

In about the late 90s I got into corporate events and I had a pretty good run in corporate events. I was working at the time for a fairly large company in Sydney who are a public relations and corporate event company and they had a number of clients in the World Trade Center and also Ansett in Australia, who were a big airline at the time, who folded around September 11 as well. They went through a big just before Christmas, a big round of redundancies and layoffs because the work had dried up and I decided I didn't want to work for anyone anymore. I wanted to be my own boss, decided I didn't want to work for anyone anymore. I wanted to be my own boss.

Iain Morrison:

So I started a company and I couldn't think of a name and Hum sounded good enough. So I registered that and we delivered events site management, operations, logistics, anything to do with the nuts and bolts of delivering major events in Australia for a period of just over 21 years and we did some pretty good shows. We did, you know, the likes of U2s, Taylor Swift's, Foo Fighters, big public events for up to 200,000 people in Australia over the period and was very fortunate thousand people in Australia over the period and was very fortunate, I sold it just before COVID, or we did a deal to sell it just before COVID, and through that process came out the other end and started Raging Empire, which sort of led me to the next 18 months of my career. And then we did a pivot, as a lot of people like to say, and here we are with the Imagination Collaborative today.

Ian Carless:

So yeah, Well, for those people listening who aren't familiar with I mean, I know, it's only 11 months old as well, isn't it it?

Iain Morrison:

is you mentioned?

Ian Carless:

So tell us a little bit about the Imagination Collaborative.

Iain Morrison:

It's a bit of a mouthful. Sometimes I'm like what was I thinking? But I think the name says really what we want to be, and we specialise in event pre-visualisation so we show people exactly what their event will look like virtually before they build it in reality, before they sell tickets, before they set budgets. So we're about emotive storytelling at pitch stages, but we're also about the realistic representation of events in a 3D virtual environment where you can navigate the event and the event site virtually and stress test all different elements of the events, including signage, risk furniture. We do weather forecasting and modelling. Everything's geolocated so it's in its real world position. We do do a lot of outdoor events, but we also have a number of clients that do indoor events as well.

Ian Carless:

And you've got a presence now. Obviously, you're based in Australia, but you've also got a presence here in Dubai. Can you tell us about that?

Iain Morrison:

We do. We have spent the last few months setting up a local trade license mainland trade license here in Dubai. We've got a number of really exciting opportunities and we're working with some local clients. A lot of what we do, unfortunately, is under NDADA, so I can't talk about it. It's so frustrating.

Ian Carless:

Well, that's gonna be difficult on a podcast it is.

Iain Morrison:

We did, we. We got to a stage, probably about six, eight months ago, where we we were doing so much great work we will that we couldn't show. We had to go and make our own video, promotional videos which are on our YouTube channel, just so we could show people what we do. Because it sort of got to the stage where we do this incredible work. But our clients are very protective of their intellectual property rightfully so. So a lot of what we do is locked under NDA.

Ian Carless:

Yeah, and you mentioned clients. Who's your target audience for what you're doing?

Iain Morrison:

We work with clients who have a lot of money on the line. They invest many millions of dollars into their events and the events are so temporary you don't often get a chance to see what the event is going to look like in place until it's built, at which time you'll sit with clients on site and sort of have this awkward conversation Maybe we need to move that structure. The client says and you're like yeah, I thought you'd say that, but you can't disagree with them. And a lot of the time you might have tried to explain to them we've worked in a 2D environment. So site plans or maybe a static render, but they just can't visualize it. They can't picture what the end result's going to look like.

Iain Morrison:

And that's really the 35 years of my experience has been so many of those conversations and so many times when we've showed the client exactly what it's going to look like in a 3D environment, they're like, yeah, get it. Now, I see it. I understand what you're trying to say. Maybe we could move that here and we can do that virtually and it's low cost, right, it doesn't impact a lot of people, it doesn't cost them thousands of dollars in overtime. So, yeah, that's really where we're at and what we're trying to deliver.

Ian Carless:

Yeah, now I'm going to force a segue into the next topic there. Obviously, when you're in situations like that, that obviously puts a lot of stress on all parties, and what caught my attention was you popping up in my LinkedIn feed and I know you don't want to be known as the burnout guy, but I think that was the post that really popped out. For me was the information that you were putting out around the topic of burnout and stress within the industry. Now, obviously, you've been in the industry for 35 years. What's your personal journey been with stress and have you been through burnout?

Iain Morrison:

Look, I don't know that you sit there at the time and go. I'm stressed and burnt out.

Ian Carless:

Yeah.

Iain Morrison:

I think you just the events industry is a funny place you just, well, we've got to get the gig on, or we've just got to get to the next gig, or I'm on tour. Yeah, we've finished pumping out at 3am and I know my flight's at 7am. That's just the way it's been scheduled and people don't necessarily relate to it as I'm burnt out and stressed. I think now there's a lot more awareness of that. People are becoming more aware of it, of course, but I come from that history of well, the show's got to go on. I'm male. I don't talk about my feelings and emotions.

Ian Carless:

Yeah.

Iain Morrison:

So the answer to your question is yeah, of course.

Iain Morrison:

I think everybody at some point in the events industry that's been around for this long probably has faced burnout and stress, and I think a lot of people that know me pretty well would say at times I didn't deal well with it. But that's just the nature of the industry, whether that's right or wrong. It is something that I've sort of now a little bit qualified to talk about, but at the same point in time, ian, it's a subject I kind of fell over accidentally. I'm in the process of a new business, trying to get my personal brand out there, trying to build the business up, and I stumbled on this sort of topic that has resonated with so many people and it seems that a lot of people want to talk about this but they don't know how, they don't feel empowered to talk about it. They might work for people where they're not able to post on LinkedIn or publicly that they want to talk about it, but I get a lot of messages directly to me from people saying thank you for talking about it.

Iain Morrison:

Thank you for bringing it up. We need awareness, and I know you've got some statistics in front of you that we'll probably talk about, but when you hear these statistics, they're quite sobering, right. They're huge.

Ian Carless:

They really are, and I think perhaps it's not surprising that you've hit a nerve there, and I think if we all take a moment to reflect and well, there's something we don't always take a moment to reflect but if you were, I think perhaps we wouldn't be surprised that this is such an emotive topic within our industry. I mean, you mentioned the stats. I mean, I did some research on this and here's a few and they're actually, as you say, they're very sobering. Here's one A 2022 survey by EventMB found that 79% of event professionals reported feeling burnt out at some time during their career.

Ian Carless:

67% had said they had considered leaving the industry due to the pressure and workload. I mean, I'll go through a few more. Careercast's list of most stressful jobs regularly ranks event coordination among the top five, alongside firefighters, military personnel and airline pilots. I mean, I think we were chatting just a little bit off camera just before the podcast started. I mean those roles firefighters, military personnel, airline pilots I mean those are, in a couple of them, life-saving roles, aren't they? And events are not about life-saving, are they?

Iain Morrison:

They're about enjoyment and entertainment. In many cases, you would think that an open heart or a trauma surgeon would rank above an event manager. Right, yeah, let's put this in perspective that I don't want to take away from the other four people in that category, because they deserve to be.

Iain Morrison:

Yeah, absolutely they're incredibly stressful jobs and careers, I'm sure, but you're right, as event professionals, I don't see why we should be up there, but we are and it's an incredibly stressful environment and a lot of that comes down to the deadlines that are imposed. But on top of that, the budgets that are imposed to meet those deadlines often don't allow for the resourcing, adequate resourcing, and it puts a lot of pressure on people and I know I've spent a lot of my career in that position. I am at the point now where I'm 35 years. You know what I'll speak out and if people don't agree with me, I don't care. I'm not here to be. You know, I'm speaking from experience, yeah, and I know what I'm saying resonates with a lot of people, and I think you've got the statistics in front of you that you've just read out. You know 79% of people are burnt out. Yeah, that's maybe 21% of people that have spent less than 12 months in the industry. I don't know how that statistic works, but it's, you know, good on the 21%.

Ian Carless:

Yeah.

Iain Morrison:

But the 79% is a bit of a concern.

Ian Carless:

Isn't it Jess? Well, here's another one for you. Another recent study, in 2023, found that over 70% of event professionals work more than 50 hours a week during peak seasons. And bear in mind, yeah, our industry is very seasonal. Many report always being on call, even during supposed off hours or holidays. Here's another one for you. One in three event professionals experiences depression or anxiety symptoms, and 85% feel that their employer does not adequately support mental well-being. When you read all these out together, it's almost like a litany charge, isn't it? You know, I'm tempted to go away and think, wow, I need a lot of introspection here, we need to have a serious. But you're right, we do need to have a conversation about these things, and I think, in a time when mental health and wellbeing is at the forefront of everybody's minds at the moment, I actually find it really reassuring and really pleasing in some way that you know, I come across posts and people like yourself who are not afraid to put this conversation out there and get the conversation started.

Iain Morrison:

I think that the more we have this conversation, the more we dig deep and the more people that feel supported to talk about this stuff, the better we're all going to be. We took a a massive, massive hit over COVID, the industry. A lot of people I know never came back. A lot of my staff that worked with us for many years. I mean we had some team members that worked with us for over 20 years that found other jobs during COVID that were like we're not coming back, we've got a nine-to-five job or a nine-to-four job and we've realised that it doesn't have to be like that. There's more to life and I don't actually blame them. I see why, and I think this conversation is one that definitely needs to be front of mind for a lot of people now.

Ian Carless:

You mentioned COVID and again I saw another one of your posts that I thought really resonated and I'll just give you the. I'll give for the listeners, I'll give you the gist it was we're back, but not without the bruises. And you say after 35 years in events, I've seen what burnout looks like, but this past year something has shifted. You're not just tired, you're drained, not just by tight budgets or big ass, but by the kind of exhaustion that just doesn't clock off. And then you go on to say and here's the truth, the industry did come back. We pushed on, but with a lot of mitigating factors in place, for example smaller teams, shorter timelines, higher stakes and no room to breathe. Is this just part of our industry? Are we just kind of? Should we just kind of I don't know put on our big boy pants and just go yeah, okay, look, it's part of the industry. We need to suck it up and get on with it.

Iain Morrison:

I don't think you can say to people anymore put on your big boy pants. I think that was you know. I spent the 90s and early 2000s in rock and roll. That was the time for put on your big boy pants. You know that was you know you finish a load out at 3, 4 am and you're on the 7 am flight and just put on your big boy pants, be in the lobby at 5.30 am to get to the airport.

Ian Carless:

I think you termed it actually better than me, didn't you? You called it a badge of honour that kind of attitude. Yeah, you put in these ridiculously long hours and you wear it like a badge. Of course, and at the time you thought yeah yeah, yeah, that's great.

Iain Morrison:

But actually it plays on you years later and you know we're at a whole new juncture of the industry and one of the topics I actually just wrote a post on today is a recurring theme that, since COVID and we've just touched on it was an exodus of talent from the industry and that's been a or lack of experience, rather, is now starting to play out in a number of areas Shorter timelines, tighter turnarounds, not necessarily lower budgets, but tighter budgets, and we're just starting now to see a ripple impact coming around the world from some tariffs in America. Events are moving, a lot of people in America are starting to struggle with less work and there's a whole new, I think, wave coming of change through AI on top of that. That will ripple through the industry and, again, an experience and I don't think the industry has not got back to a post-COVID, to a pre-COVID point. We struggled through COVID. We fought to come back from COVID with, as we said, less talent, less experience and probably tighter budgets because people were trying to get back on their feet.

Iain Morrison:

Businesses struggled I know our business struggled through COVID and now we're just getting to the point where you would think we'd be able to sit back and relax and go yeah, okay, we made it through, we're back, we're on top of all this, and now we've got a new wave of challenges that are surfacing in recent months, and that's again on top of all of these statistics we've just talked about. On top of everything else, there's another possibly crippling event on the horizon. I don't want to be a doomsdayer, I don't want to be the burnout guy. I've got a new business and I'm really excited about it, but, at the same point in time, you can't ignore these topics, and if I don't talk about it, who is going to talk about?

Ian Carless:

it.

Iain Morrison:

I think somebody needs to lead the charge, and there are a few good people around the world doing that. But the more voices we get, the more support we get, then, hopefully, the more support we can offer other people to bring this to light. What?

Ian Carless:

proactive steps do you think that leaders in the industry can take to avoid some of the pitfalls of stress and burnout?

Iain Morrison:

I think the first proactive step people can take is take a breath and recognise that 79% of people in this industry feel burnt out. That's not a small number. It's huge. You're not going to meet a stressed and burnt out person. You're probably working with. Nearly 80% of the people you work with are claiming to be stressed and burnt out. So take a breath, look around you, think about how you can shape your environment better to support the people around you as a leader, and just have an honest conversation with people and look at how you might be able to make their life a little bit better, a little bit easier, and do some research into how to mitigate some of these pressures that exist in the industry.

Ian Carless:

One of your other posts just recently as well I mean, the heading was burnout isn't personal, it's operational which I found really arresting. And you also then went out to list, sort of you know 13 of the most common traps that you see in high-pressure environments and how to sidestep them. And actually one of them obviously ties into the business that you're now embarking on and that's skipping the pre-visualization. I mean, how much you know, how much stress and work can you save yourself, obviously just in that aspect? You know, as you said, run early simulations, spot issues before they escalate. I mean, that was one very, very obvious one. Another one I really liked as well ambiguous hierarchies clarify who does what and when. Decision chaos creates stress. Can you elaborate on that a little bit?

Iain Morrison:

I think a lot of event teams are made up of very temporary people who may or may not have worked together. I mean the majority of the industry, and I'm terrible with statistics, so I'm pleased you've come armed with them, because I have not. But if you dive into how much the industry is freelance or casual or temporary, I think you'll find it's a vast majority. So when you form teams, it's very short term and there's very often the team is formed by a client who's delivering an event and there's not a lot of conversation about how that team performs. And I've spent a bit of time looking over my recent years into military teams and how the military perform. And when you look at how they structure teams, it's very well, it's very structured, it's very you know, it's very clear who has what responsibility.

Iain Morrison:

I think a lot in events there's a lot of blurred lines that aren't cleared at an early enough stage and what happens is then you're covering, you suddenly realise you've left all these gaps, but you don't find the gaps till it's too late. I think you really, when you form these teams at a very early stage, you need to be having the conversations about okay, well, how's the team structured, who's responsible and what processes are we putting in place? What's our project management? You know I've done so many events before and I'm still involved, actually, with a lot to this day, where there's no project management system in place. So there's no surprise you get to event day and realise that somebody hasn't done something because you haven't got a system in place. So there's no surprise you get to event day and realize that somebody hasn't done something because you haven't got a system in place. And that's where a lot of burnout comes from, because people are now working 18, 20 hour days trying to fill the holes.

Ian Carless:

You know I've used this anecdote before. I mean, my background before events was television production and I've often said that I'd be on a set and sure we have a lot of moving parts, you know. And then I obviously got involved in the event industry and I'm on event setups and events and I see also you've probably got even more moving parts. But for me and I hope this isn't just indicative of the events that I've worked on or the market that I'm in but when I'm on set with a television production, everybody knows what they're doing, everybody knows where they need to be and they know what's coming up and they know exactly what they need to do. I don't see that with events. I see it more as people herding cats. I really do, and I really hope that that's not the case across the board. I mean, I'm interested to get your perspective on that because obviously you've got 35 years of experience in Australia running huge events and yeah, I'm hoping that you haven't been herding cats all these years.

Iain Morrison:

I'm sitting here thinking retrospectively of how disorganised Look. I would like to think that the events I've been involved with we haven't been herding cats and we've tried to put these processes in place at an early stage. Yeah, but again I'll come back to the structure of the event is very temporary. A lot of the time you're brought together by a client who is a promoter or a producer or a rights holder, and they will choose a whole heap of different individuals who haven't worked together before and they'll just pile them in for a month or two to plan this event and deliver it. And you may never have worked with these people before and you might never work with them again.

Iain Morrison:

And it's very hard to produce a high performing team in that short space of time when there's so many other things on the line and happening. And I'm not surprised that it does from time to time come across as herding cats, and this is, I guess, part of my encouragement of people. When you're engaged with an event, one of the first conversations you should be having is okay, well, how are we structuring this team?

Ian Carless:

Yeah.

Iain Morrison:

And what processes are we putting in place to manage the team? Don't worry about managing the event just yet. Yeah, let's talk about how a team manages. How do we communicate? How do we respond to each other and interact? Do we respond to each other and interact? And once you have that, then you can start putting the pieces of the event puzzle into place.

Ian Carless:

And I think another important aspect of that and again you touched on that in your LinkedIn post was expectations and, in particular, unspoken expectations. Again, just elaborate a little bit on that.

Iain Morrison:

I think there is a lot of assumptions made, and again I'll go back to the temporary nature of events and the way that people put these events together. They assume they know if I call you an event producer, I assume I know what you're going to do and I might put a bit of a job description together or a scope of works or however you're engaged. To this day, though, surprisingly, there are many, many people within the events industry that are temporary freelance, that don't even get a contract, let alone a proper scope of works, job description, kpis. They're just brought on as a freelancer. Hey, come work with us, we've got this event to deliver. They might be brought on by an event management company. They might be brought on by the rights holder. They're busy, they're often small businesses. They don't have time to produce proper contracts, proper engagements, proper structure in place, in place, and that creates ambiguity and confusion, especially when you're knee deep in it trying to.

Iain Morrison:

You know things go wrong with events. We work in, unfortunately, a lot of variable environments, especially if you do outdoor events. You're dealing with the weather and environmental things that will throw huge curveballs. You know, I was talking to a client the other day that was building an event on an island and they'd lost of a 10-day build. They'd lost nearly four days to bad weather. So they were already on a pretty tight timeline. They had a lot of barging issues, a lot of island issues, and anybody that's done an event on an island before knows what I mean by island issues.

Iain Morrison:

Yeah, and then to lose nearly four days to bad weather is a phenomenal amount of time and the pressure that introduces alone on that event build is significant, but then to be unsure of your role and clarity around that on top of that is even harder.

Iain Morrison:

So you know, I think people, especially the people leading or managing, or I'll talk about leaders but the leaders really need to spend time engaging teams well and setting a good structure up, a good communication structure, a good safety net for people. And I don't know if you've got this post, but one post I posted the other day on LinkedIn was that if your event can't run without you, you've failed as a leader, because essentially, you need to have every member of your team to be fully replaceable. And I don't know many events that operate in this day and age where you could lose a key person and that event would still go on seamlessly. I think there would be a lot of pain and suffering around most people in the events industry right now if they lost a key person. And the reality is that in this day and age you can't put that sort of pressure on people and expect good outcomes.

Ian Carless:

Budget obviously plays a part. I think in an ideal world and often I'm not going to say an unlimited budget, because nobody ever gets an unlimited budget but if budget were no problem, things like double, triple crewing we'd all like to do that, but at the end of the day, we'd all like to do that. But at the end of the day you have to balance budget with what you need to deliver, and that's not always an easy task, is it?

Iain Morrison:

I don't think it is. I think it's, especially in this day and age. I mean, the post-COVID pricing is just crazy across the board and you just have to go to the supermarket to experience what I'm talking about in any country. You know, I was in the US the other day and what I'm paying for a cup of coffee here in Dubai as well is eye-watering nowadays. So I think unlimited budgets are never really going to be a thing. There were some fun unlimited budgets in the late 2000s.

Iain Morrison:

It really now is about risk and sitting down and saying, okay, well, what's our risk here and how much is working through that risk worth? Because if your event is hinging or hinges on the fact that nobody can be sick or nobody can be replaced, then that risk is pretty great in this day and age. You know. Because again, we've all learnt from COVID if somebody's sick, just stay at home. It's not worth making the whole team sick, especially if you've got a touring show or you've got a very long lead show where if sickness goes through the whole team, then it's detrimental. You want to be able to have people stay at home when they're sick. You want people to be able to have a life If they've got a sick child or a sick partner or something else happening in their life. Again this comes back to stress and burnout. That feeling of I can't take a day off contributes significantly to that.

Ian Carless:

I know you're not an expert and I want to stress that, but for people, so this is obviously just your personal opinion but for people who perhaps have felt burnt out and stressed, what would you say are the first steps towards sort of recovery in inverted commas or just rediscovering the joy of work, you know, actually rediscovering what it was that got you into this field in the first place?

Iain Morrison:

One of the first things you need to do is talk about it.

Iain Morrison:

I think unless you can communicate what you're going through and feeling, you're probably not going to be able to rise above it. I think, unless you can communicate what you're going through and feeling, you're probably not going to be able to rise above it. I think then you really need to dig deep and think what brought me to the industry in the first place? I know I don't deliver events anymore like I did. I was boots on the ground and I no longer do that. But I know, no matter what happened during the lead up to the event, when I walked into a stadium of 100,000 people as the act walked on stage and they all eruptedpted, there was that moment of. That's why I do it. That's that's the joy.

Iain Morrison:

It needs to be above all else and you really need to, at the end of the day, go home thinking, yeah, I've got a great job and some days you're not going to, but it needs to be more than less right. So if you're not feeling that, talk to. Talk to people, but it needs to be more than less right. So if you're not feeling that, talk to people about it. If you can't talk to colleagues, go and find somebody a friend or a family member or a professional you can talk to. You're right, I'm not a professional, this is not my area of expertise. This is all from personal experience. But talking to people and vocalizing it, I think it's the first place. Just accepting that you are feeling overwhelmed can be the first step to hopefully getting on top of it. But 79% of people are feeling that. So you know I'm speaking for the majority. I think not the minority, which is scary.

Ian Carless:

I think I don't want to be rude here, but I think you know you and I are obviously a little bit older than perhaps some of the younger event professionals. In light of, perhaps, our experience and where we are in life and in particular, with regard to, you know, the experience that we have of stress and burnout, has your definition of success changed and, if so, how?

Iain Morrison:

If you talk to my wife, my definition of success is a very, very high bar, because she's like look at everything you've achieved. I'm like, really, no, no, hang on. But so I think I'm one of those people that needs to take a step back and look at my own work and go yeah, look, I think, as a career, I've had a pretty successful career. I've been very fortunate. I've delivered some great shows. I'm at a great point now where I'm talking to people like yourself and traveling the world and having these amazing experiences. We've got this exciting new business that you know is just starting to get some traction, and that in itself, I think in this day and age, I should see a success. You know I should be sitting back, going yeah, you know what 11 months in, we're doing? All right, I, of course, sit there and go oosh, I've got to pay wages this week.

Ian Carless:

We're often our own worst critics, aren't we?

Iain Morrison:

It brings you back down to earth pretty quick. Every time you've got to pay wages you don't feel quite so successful. But yeah, look, I think you're right. It's sitting back and just looking at what you've achieved and the period of time in which you've achieved it and realizing that we actually had this conversation before, that. Overnight successes. There's no such thing. You look at the people that are tagged as overnight successes and they have spent years and years in the background pushing and pushing and struggling and failing and trying again and they get to a point where overnight, everybody suddenly realizes they're there, but that success has been many years in the making.

Ian Carless:

If we wanted a healthier event industry in, say, the next five years, what has to change? What has to change, what has to change tomorrow?

Iain Morrison:

That's a good question. I think that we would really need to change from the top the expectations of what is actually achievable in the time we're given to achieve it. Actually achievable in the time we're given to achieve it? Yeah, we are seeing tighter budgets, shorter timeframes, much. I mean the lead times on events globally. You know and I'm still involved in events day to day and we work on a lot of pitches nowadays and a lot of delivery and we are seeing a trend of shorter and shorter timeframes being given by the rights holders. So the people who are going out to tender and their expectations that you know of how long it will take to get a tender in, to deliver, the job, to turn all of this stuff around is getting shorter and shorter, and that's from the people holding the events. So we need those people to understand that to get the best result for them and their events, we need better timelines.

Iain Morrison:

For a start, the budgets probably aren't going to change. I mean the cost of living, the cost of delivery, everything. All the costs are increasing and the budgets aren't increasing proportionally. That's just a fact and you know it'd be great for me to sit here and go. We need bigger budgets, but the reality is I'm just going to get shouted down right. So you know, at the end of the day, you have to accept that the budgets are the budgets, but the timelines, the understanding of what it's going to take to deliver these events, especially in today's climate, I think that's the first big place we all need to start in realising what's going on.

Ian Carless:

Well, I think we mentioned this earlier in the podcast. I mean, this is the proverbial can of worms, isn't it? We could really, if you really start digging deep into this, we could go on forever. I'm conscious, obviously, of time. I do try and keep this podcast down to a reasonable level. We're certainly not running at the timelines of Joe Rogan. So before we wrap up, let's do a little bit, make it a little bit more lighthearted. I've got a few quickfire questions for you. Yeah, biggest on-site challenge you've ever faced, and how did you solve it?

Iain Morrison:

Oh look, I've had some great weather challenges. You can't change the weather. I know there was one where we were finding trackway with metal poles in the mud and we had massive cranes pulling sheds and infrastructure out. We've had to delay big shows by days because of big storms. I think there's probably off the top of my head in 35 years I'd struggle to think of the biggest, but there's quite a few of them that we've been faced with.

Ian Carless:

One thing you'd ban at events if you could. I would ban at events. You would ban at events.

Iain Morrison:

Oh, wow.

Ian Carless:

I've got one.

Iain Morrison:

Yeah, pet peeve Mobile phones at concerts. Get rid of them.

Ian Carless:

That's mine, that's mine. What's yours? Yeah, I don't get it. I'm clearly at the wrong end of that age say I'm the old grumpy guy.

Iain Morrison:

I used to always say events would be great without the artists and the punters. But you know we just got to build them and pull them out. But I think, you know, I don't know that there's anything I'd necessarily ban at events, but there's some things I'd rather do without.

Ian Carless:

Go on. Most underrated event role. That's a good one.

Iain Morrison:

The underrated event role. That's a good one. The underrated event role.

Iain Morrison:

I'm always going to come back to the bloke that's left pumping the toilets at the end of the day and I always would instill in my team that you should never be above any role on site, and I've made pretty well everyone that works for me. They will vouch. I've made them go and pump toilets at some point in time or an event Humbly, it's humbly, and you realise how important it is. Everybody's role in an event is equally as important as the other. Some are just more glamorous than others.

Ian Carless:

Here's one that might make you think a little as well, a message for the next generation of event professionals.

Iain Morrison:

I don't know what events are going to be like in five to ten years' time, but if people didn't need human connection then we would never have come back from COVID. So whatever this next generation of events brings and however it shows, just enjoy the fact that you're connecting humans. You're bringing people together, because I think we're at risk of losing a lot of that human connection nowadays with the state of AI and the development of AI and you know, we're starting to see some pretty realistic video coming out of AI of you know people and I think human connection and events will be more important now than ever, because it's one of the most trustworthy means of communication and connection.

Iain Morrison:

Yeah, and the next generation of people coming into events are going to be responsible for that.

Ian Carless:

And then, before we wrap up, penultimate question. So obviously you're 11 months into your new journey with the Imagination Collaborative.

Iain Morrison:

Yes, pleased, I wore the shirt for you.

Ian Carless:

You have absolutely. Well, if you can't promote yourself, who can? What's next for you and where are you hoping to go with this?

Iain Morrison:

It's a great question. We are really excited about the future. We see the future of our world being around informed decision making and really about integrating technology of how people engage and interact with events. We create digital twins of events so we create virtual representations of real-life situations and one of the things as you learn about digital twins is their ability to handle vast amounts of data and we see that as the future that really understanding that data of how people integrate with events, how they interact with events as being the future. So we're putting a lot of time and effort into that space.

Ian Carless:

There's one question I always ask of every guest. Obviously, you've done a lot of music concerts over your time, so I'm guessing, like most people, you're a music fan. I know I am. My vinyl collection is increasing once again, much to my wallet's dismay. But what's on your playlist at the moment?

Iain Morrison:

I have an immense, an immensely eclectic collection, but at the moment I'm actually listening to a lot of podcasts, funnily enough, so I've been sort of listening. Probably the music I'm listening to is a lot more sort of just background instrumental as I work, just something you know. So, funnily enough, I actually couldn't even tell you what's on my music playlist at the moment, but I'm listening to. I've really engaged a lot with Stephen Bartlett and a number of other podcasters. I have listened to a couple of yours as well.

Ian Carless:

Wow, yeah, okay Well, ian, thanks very much for joining me on the podcast. My pleasure. Thank you for having me.