In this special podcast episode, the host interviews Larry Smith, president of Worre Studios, to show their unique capabilities in creating the ultimate hybrid event experience. The studio was created during the COVID-19 pandemic to provide a live event experience to their audience while maintaining a sense of community and connection.

Marina, the founder, wanted to build a venue that incorporated all the best elements of live events while eliminating the negative aspects. The result is a 25,000 square-foot venue that can accommodate 300 people in person and hundreds of thousands of remote attendees via Zoom.

In this episode, Larry shares how Worre Studios addresses the common challenges of space and cost associated with traditional venues, offering a fraction of the cost of hosting events in arenas or ballrooms. Their pillar-free design ensures an unobstructed view for all attendees. Worre Studios' borderless approach allows attendees from all over the world to participate, either in person or remotely.

Larry discusses how the studio's low latency allows for natural and one-on-one conversations between speakers and remote attendees. Before events, speakers are guided on how to engage with cameras and connect with the at-home audience effectively. Worre Studios offers a flexible event space with a 40-foot diameter stage that accommodates up to 300 seated attendees with various seating arrangements possible.

Worre Studios offers a full turnkey solution for events, including cameras, furniture, and catering, allowing clients to focus on their content and audience engagement. The studio uses Unreal Engine 5 to create virtual environments and seamlessly integrate remote keynote speakers or talent into the event through the use of green screen technology, allowing them to participate as if they were physically present.

Worre Studios provides an ideal solution for hosting world-class hybrid events, merging in-person and virtual experiences. Interested parties can visit worrestudios.com or email info@worrestudios.com to learn more and start planning their event. Worre Studios excels at maintaining community and intimacy while reaching a larger audience. For those visiting Las Vegas, a visit to the studio is highly recommended to experience its full capabilities firsthand.

Want to learn more about Worre Studios and how they are revolutionizing the hybrid event space?

Website: https://www.worrestudios.com

Email: info@worrestudios.com

Instagram: ​​https://www.instagram.com/worrestudios

If you'd like to be a guest on the High-Profit Event Show, click HERE.

Welcome to the show. On today's episode, we have a really special edition. Today we have Mr. Larry Smith from Worre Studios. Welcome, sir.

Thank you so much for having me.

Larry, I'm really curious today to interview you because this isn't just like a standard normal interview. This is actually a demonstration of the power and the majesty of Worre Studios and what you guys are capable of and I want to share with our audience here. Go ahead.

I was going to say, it's just a small snippet of exactly what we can do.

This is a really unique and exciting opportunity for our audience. I had the privilege of getting to personally tour Worre Studios with Larry just about a month or so ago, and walking into that studio was this big, just a wow factor. I think we captured it on camera. It was so impressive what they've created there. And Larry agreed to actually come on to the show and do a demonstration as best as possible. There's no replacement for seeing it with your own eyes, but as best as possible today, we're actually going to get a walkthrough of what it's like to have an ultimate hybrid experience. And for those of you listening to this show, who run live events, who want to reach a global audience and want to figure out how to do it both virtually and in person, this is definitely the way to do it. So, Larry, that being said, sir, I want to turn the show topic over to you and just have you share with us a little bit about the story of Worre studio, maybe a little bit about the industry and what led to the creation and what you guys are capable of.

Awesome. Thanks so much for having me. It's going to be a lot of fun with you today. As you can see, you're right over my shoulder here and I've got you in other locations throughout the studio, too. Kind of gives you a look and feel of what it's like to be on the middle of our 40 foot stage and still feel that connection between the person that's here and people that are at home or remote speakers coming in via speaker links. But there you are, bigger and brighter than I am here in the studio. So it's awesome. It's so good. The creation of the studio came to be really in the throes of COVID. Eric and Marina Worre, who are in the personal development space within network marketing, would hold an annual event for about 14,000 people at The Mgm Grand Garden arena. And as we know, in 2020, venues were shut down. What was important for Marina specifically was that they wanted to keep community, they wanted to keep connection and they wanted to still bring a live event to their community of attendees that would come annually. So she decided that she wanted to build a venue around everything that she loved in live events, eliminating all of the things that she didn't like in live events. And many of those types of things were the venues themselves where the lack of flexibility is probably the best way of putting it. And then she also wanted to provide everybody a front row seat. You just can't do that in any venue.

And even when you have a front row seat, you still are more or less having to look around. You have to crank your neck around. You really don't have that front row seat because the stage can be 1216 ft above you. So the long and the short of it is she set out to build this spectacular 25,000 square foot space. And we have a venue that is 70 ft in diameter, 15 ft tall. But the best part is we can have 300 people seated here in person, in the studio, but then we can have hundreds of thousands of at home audience members who come in on Zoom platforms. But we blow up the Zoom platform like no one does. And even Zoom has questions about how we do what we do? But you now have someone that's an at home audience member who is bi directional, who can be a part of the show, who can ask questions in the chats, who can be pulled up just like I have you pulled up right now on the screen behind me. And now they are engaged just as they would be in person, but now they've got that front row seat. So the challenge is space. People run out of space in hotels. The challenge is costs. And we operate at a fraction of the cost that you would in an arena or in a ballroom. No pillars here that are going to block anyone's view. And it just really makes for a beautiful environment for everyone involved, whether it's the person on stage, the talent, the at home audience member, I say at home, but also at the office. And then up to 300 in studio audience members as well.

Wow. Yeah, it's impressive. I like how you address some of those normal challenges that event leaders face with constraints with ballrooms and hotels and travel in some cases. And you guys are able to provide a solution to multiple things and operate at a fraction of the cost when people are trying to reach tens of thousands of people at one time.

So, Rudy, you bring up a really good point about travel. Travel is a challenge even still today, which post COVID you still deal with visas, you still deal with costs, you still deal with people just not able to leave family sometimes, and they can't get the appropriate care or child care or even their fur baby care. And so they're torn. How do I still attend an event or a three day meeting and take care of what I need to take care of since we're borderless and because everyone can come in from wherever they need to be. People can come from all countries. Like I said earlier, we've hit 140 countries on any one particular event. We still have those that can come into town and they fly in and they're a part of the 300 in person audience. But now you've got people who really are finding that they can come to a music event, they can come to a speaking event, a personal development event and now be here where before they had to juggle. Do I pay the costs of my travel and not be able to invest in myself? Or now I can show up, invest in myself, invest in my family and not worry about the travel aspect. So we really provide that best of both worlds for everyone to be able to attend. So that's why we like to talk about borderless events.

Yeah, that's really cool. And then back to the point of creating that at home audience. So even the people who are not there physically, they feel like they're not just watching from the sidelines, they're actually there with you. And also for the speakers, it feels that the people at home are in the studio with them as well. I know that's one of the main differentiating aspects because one of the things I've learned in this industry is, especially recently with the introduction of virtual events, one of the most common mistakes is trying to do a hybrid event. But then one of the audiences, whether it's the in person or it's the at home, they feel ignored. And ultimately it impacts the quality of their experience and impacts the quality or the amount of sales that could happen on the back end. If half your audience is ignored, would you mind sharing maybe a little bit more about how you guys solve that problem or maybe even demonstrating?

Yeah, it's interesting. When we have clients come in we always do a walk through with all of our clients first and really we speak to the need to address everyone at home. So it's like you see all of these people behind me, right? This is an example of the up to 2000 faces that you could see at any one time. And we rotate all of these attendees throughout an event. So if you have 50,000 people coming in for a multi day event we are showing different faces throughout, different chats throughout. And let's see if you can't follow me over to see some of the chat features that are coming up here behind me. And so essentially during a live event, people are chatting, they're asking questions, they are really engaged all the way through. When we have someone on stage that says hey, throw some fire in there because I know that you just love what we talked about. You will see that chat just roaring with fire. You will see hearts, you will see answers to questions. And the engagement is unbelievable. So then what we're able to do is pull up those individuals like we have you behind, and the person on stage can then chat with them. They can be there within three to 5 seconds and they're face to face, eye to eye. We really have no latency in this facility. So it's very natural, it's very one on one. But now your at home audience is waiting to be called up. They're on the edge of their seat waiting to even just have the cameras pan the screen and for them to be able to see themselves, then you start to see them putting up messages or they're dancing. It's incredible how engaged they become. So when we have people come in the day before, we're actually walking talent through how to engage with the cameras, where to engage with the cameras that are speaking specifically to the at home audience, or a jib that we have that's always a part of every event where someone will look straight up at our jib, where I'm facing right now and talking right down the barrel of that camera.

And it gives and sends that message of importance to everyone at home. Or maybe they said, hey, Emily, I saw your chat and I just want to tell you, and as they're talking into that camera, Emily now has this person face to face, eye to eye in that front row seat having this engagement. And it's that engagement that totally changes up everything.

Wow, that's so cool. And I noticed you have a camera that's kind of following you around right now. It's really neat. Could you maybe show us a little bit of what the studio looks like?

Yeah. So right now, I'm really in the middle of our 40 foot environment, 40 foot in diameter stage. It's totally flexible, what we have. But you're going to see an area as the camera is starting to follow me, you're going to see the environment where we have all of the walk on title sites that come on that really create kind of the fun, enthusiastic, high energy feel with the music is pumping and blaring. And as you're following me around, you'll see another area where your image currently is. And right behind me is where we have the 300, up to 300 seated. We can go more. We've done an award show out of here where we had 450 attendees that came in and we were broadcasting globally for that. So we can go higher, but we like to start at a 300 theater style seating if needed, or do classroom. We could do that too. But anyways, that's all right behind me here. And then we have a full production and interactive village in the back where my team is fully monitoring, managing, producing any event 100% of the time right there. So we're fully turnkey in that when someone comes in the only thing we need to talk about and do is identify what the production needs are from camera needs to furniture and food and bev.

Wow, that's so cool, man. And I know we weren't able to see it here, but you described it in that section you have on the side behind the curtain where the team is managing production. And that is just as impressive as what we're seeing here on the camera. I remember seeing all of that organized and all the different stations that are there to allow for interpreters, allow for chat management, allow for sales management, and customer service. All right there in one spot. You guys do it all in one place.

We totally do. So that's when we refer to that full turnkey space that we are studio event space. You've got all the graphics, you've got the Yamaha Ravage audio board, you've got the GrandMa Three lighting console. All of the equipment that we have here, including the video switchers and the camera switchers, all that kind of good stuff is what you'd find at any of the theaters, any of the arenas here in Las Vegas. And my crew, they also work and support many of the big name residencies at nighttime. So not only do we have spectacular technology, but we have spectacular crew who are highly talented in the live event space.

I've had the opportunity to work with some of your crew on the AV side at an event, and they are world class at what they do. You guys bring a full solution. That's cool. Now we're in a different place.

I like to refer to this as my house, but this is one of our environments where we operate on eleven unreal five engines, UE Five. And so that kind of adds that gamification piece. So if you had people that needed to come in and they want to say, come in as a keynote speaker or key talent, and they can hop into a green screen studio, we then place them there within the environments. And it's as if they're right here with us, but yet they could be as far as Shanghai.

Very cool. So, as an event leader who might be utilizing your space, we could potentially line up speakers from all over the world, and they have a green screen or what have you at home. And then they pop up right here on the screen like they're sitting in the room with everyone else.

Yeah. So you might see the TV that's just behind me here in this environment. And that TV is where we can bring in additional speakers. We can bring in someone's keynote, we can bring in talent that needs to be here for a special set. But really, we can bring them in either into the furniture. You can see how it keeps coming forward and moving forward. But it's however we dream it on a run of show basis, we can make it happen, which is really cool, really neat.

Any other unique things that you guys do that you want to share with our audience?

Well, listen, the great news is that we always like to say whatever you imagine or dream up for an event, we can without a doubt execute, whether that's being within a metaverse space and having physical within the meta space. If you want to have a ticketing solution that is fully white labeled and customized and potentially minting commemorative NFTs, we have that ability. We bring everyone in through a dashboard process, meaning the attendees, and it's on this dashboard where you can have your event sponsors and we do direct hyperlinks from the dashboard into their merch stores, or we have sales lounges, or we have really whatever you dream up from an ecom perspective, we can for sure add on to the dashboard as well. And it's all passed through. So basically, no one's ever leaving the event. The event is running, you can say from the stage, hey, we have a development program, and you want to take advantage of this. It's live now on the dashboard. Go to your dashboard and click through. It’s that easy. You just toggle over your dashboard and click on through, never leaving the live event itself. So there's a lot of really cool features that we can add on. In fact, we did an event recently where there was a keynote speaker who happened to be in Rome, and she's a chef, and she's a coach, life coach. And she was showing us how to make her pasta and her pomodoro. And then at the end of it, she said, as a gift for everyone attending on your dashboard, you'll see my newest cookbook waiting for you to download.

And so what we did was we had that ready to go the moment she said it. We threw that live, and then people were able to download her cookbook. And so it really is all in the moment of the event, just as you would in a live environment, but now you have reach and scale that you didn't have before.

That's awesome, Larry. Thank you. And you were kind of pointing to it with a couple of examples there, but maybe you can share from your perspective, who is the ideal person that would use this studio? How does someone know that they're ready for that?

Always a great question. The great news is that you can be a company with tens of thousands of attendees that are either in the development world, or maybe it's just a corporate event and you can only bring in X amount of people, but yet they still have another 25,000 worldwide attendees. We are a space that's so flexible that it can be a small entry point meeting, or it can be a global worldwide meeting. So we really find that entrepreneurs who come on to launch products have exceptional experiences. Your coaching and personal development, multi day speakers, they are just thrilled because not only are they on a stage, not only do they have all of these cameras that are featuring them, but they're connecting with everyone in a very intimate way. Those people that you saw earlier, and I'm going to throw them back up, it changes the way you engage because now you see them in their space, you see them at home or you see them in their audience, you see them with their kids or their pets, and you now can really have focused conversation with people. And we've even had some talent on stage who have become very emotional with those that are attending because they've never seen anybody this close. So to answer your question, who's it best for? It's really best for everyone because we're able to make this intimate environment for small groups, all the way up to large groups, for a small startup organization, to a large organization like Dell, when they were doing a computer laptop launch out of here.

So we're so flexible on what we do and customize the environment with what we do that it's different every single time. But everyone leaves ready to book for the next time, which is the best part.

Excellent book an event from the event. That's great.

Exactly. It's crazy. We had an event maybe two months ago where they had a corporate team here. It was put on by their local office here in Las Vegas. And the corporate team was like, can we do this in June and January and every third month and we're going to just start selling tickets now? I was like, we don't have a date. They're like it's okay. They'll just buy it because this is the best thing we've ever seen.

That's awesome, Larry. Thank you. So for our audience who's tuning in and they want to learn more, they want to figure out what the next step is, they want to create something for their organization or their company, what is the next best step for them?

So a great spot to start is going to our website, which is Worrestudios.com. And checking out the site, you can see that there is an option to submit a request for information and it comes directly to me and my team. If you want to send in any requests or want to get some more info from us, you can email to info@worrestudios.com as well and the team will reach out and get you all the details that you would need to start the conversation around crafting a world class hybrid event from Worre Studios.

Excellent. We'll be sure to include that, the website and the email in our show notes as well for this. Larry, any last comments for our audience as we wrap up?

Listen, I think we're all headed to one direction now, and that direction is to a hybrid world where you're going to have half in person, and I say half, but you're going to have a percentage of people in person and an even bigger percentage of people that are coming in as an in home or at home audience, at home or at home office audience. And it's about scale and keeping community. And that's one of the things that we do best, keeping community, whether it's within organizations, whether it's within corporate companies. And now you've got that ability to do that from our studio and yet still keep it very intimate. We're not a or to a hotel. We are an and to a hotel. And when I say that if you're doing things in certain hotels, but you still want to have the rest of your community connected, we'll ingest the stream. We will send it out to everyone else worldwide, because we have, obviously, those types of capabilities as well. So then you're even having a second stage, like what we have here as a B stage. So you've got your hotel, you've got them going into a great resort, but that's always limited. But then the rest of your community can still come in through here and be a part of it. And then we're sending streams back and forth and everyone's in one space.

Wow. That's a powerful integration. So even if they're off site in other physical spaces, you can still hybrid with them through your studio.

Absolutely. Even if they're in Yankee Stadium, we can take the feed from Yankee Stadium, send it out to 50,000, 100,000 people, and send that stream back to Yankee Stadium. So the talent on stage there can still interact, and it's still bringing people together.

Remarkable. Bringing people together all over the world. Wow.

In a very intimate way.

Larry, this has been really insightful, and I've learned quite a few things today as well. So thank you. I appreciate you investing the time with us to do this demonstration on the ultimate hybrid experience. And for our audience, I couldn't recommend more. Check out the studio, check out their website. If you think you're a fit, reach out to their team. And if you're passing through Vegas, check out the studio. It is a huge wow factor. Just go in there. This virtual demonstration doesn't do it justice. You have got to see it with your eyes.

Exactly. No, this is a wow factor. But it's a huge wow factor when you come in in person.

It sure is. Thank you. And, Larry, I appreciate you being on with us today, and we'll go ahead and call it a rap. Thank you, sir.

All right. Awesome. Thanks so much.