Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Donovan Friedman. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Donovan, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Before we get into specifics, let’s talk about success more generally. What do you think it takes to be successful?

From my life experiences, I have learned the two key ingredients to success are “Passion” & “Tenacity”. There are a lot of extremely intelligent people with great business ideas; however, I have observed most people are not motivated to actually execute them. I have come to understand these people were just not “passionate” enough about the idea. Without passion, you cannot have drive. Without drive, you cannot succeed. If you are very passionate about an idea, you already have an unfair advantage over others with the same idea. Your passion is what fuels your drive that greatly increases your chances of success. As an artist and entrepreneur, you are going to face a lot of challenges, a lot of setbacks and a lot of failures. I’ve come to learn its very few who don’t let these setbacks discourage them. They brush themselves off and get back on the horse. That’s “tenacity” and you cannot have tenacity without passion. But it takes a certain type of person who can take a lot of punches (and believe me, you are going to take a lot of hits) and keep moving forward. I think an artist and/or entrepreneur will almost always face a breaking point moment in their careers where 99% of people would quit and give up on their dreams. That’s “The Moment”. That’s “The Test”. Do you have it in your heart to be the 1% who drag themselves off the floor and keep fighting.

I left Corporate America to pursue my dreams as an artist. I went from a high-paying tech job to struggling artist overnight. I was barely making ends meet month to month. But I was intoxicated with excitement of getting to do what I loved and using my God-given talents. I had just DJ’d a famous radio show in San Francisco and was on Cloud 9 as I walked out of the station to my car. However, my car was gone! It got towed. It cost me close to $1000 to get it out of the tow yard. At that time in my life, that was a lot of money which left me with not enough to pay my rent. For the first time my life, I had to call my father to borrow money. I was mortified. I felt defeated. I remember being curled up into a ball in the corner of my living room telling myself “Who did I think I was to think I could make a comfortable living as an artist? Who was I to think I was talented enough to do it? This is why people have normal jobs.” I began to think about quitting and looking for a corporate job again. However, after a night of feeling broken, I woke up that next morning with refreshed vigor. A week or two later, I marketed and produced my first big event on my own that literally made more money in one night than I had previously made in weeks! I was able to immediately pay my father back. From that point on, my business continued to grow. I always attribute that night tucked in a ball defeated in my living room my breaking point “Moment”. I didn’t let that moment of temporary defeat break me. And because I didn’t give up, I passed “The Test” and right around the corner was success waiting for me. So for all you struggling artists and entrepreneurs out there, when things get really tough, when you are at your breaking point, that’s a signal you are really close to success! It’s right around the corner! It’s a trick to trip you! Don’t give up!

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I have been an artist my entire life. Growing up, I used to draw, cartoon, oil paint, write poetry, short stories, and produce short films for school projects. The summer before college, I wrote and produced a 45-minute Alfred Hitchcock style movie with an old-school VHS camcorder and two VHS players in my garage as my editing studio. This was long before smart phone cameras, video editing apps and social media platforms kids have today!

Back in 2001, I began my career in the events & entertainment industry as a professional DJ in San Francisco. DJing was just another art form of creative expression to me. However, I quickly realized I was also very talented at marketing the events I was performing at. Ideating and designing attention-grabbing and brand-building creative for event advertisements gave me a whole new way to artistically express myself. I learned there was a lot more money in event promotion than simply being the DJ talent.

So I began to market, produce and DJ my own parties and created a special niche for my style of events that catered to an upscale, fashion-centric audience in the San Francisco market (www.donovansf.com). I had the privilege of producing many high-profile fashion shows and events for world-famous brands such as Prada, Dolce & Gabbana, Giorgio Armani, Calvin Klein, BCBG, Saks Fifth Avenue, Marciano, Macy’s, bebe, Kenneth Cole, Diesel, GQ and Vogue. I hosted red-carpet, movie & television premiere parties for Columbia Pictures, Miramax Films, HBO and MTV. I had the opportunity to produce large New Year’s Eve galas at some of the most famous, iconic San Francisco landmarks such as the Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco City Hall and Fireworks on the Embarcadero. Over the next 14 years, I marketed and produced over 500 events.

The events I was most proud of were my annual theme party productions. This is where I got to express my creativity at a whole new artistic level through decor, set design and live performances. Three of my most successful theme events were “The Haunted Ball” Halloween Party, “The Mad Hatter’s Party: An Alice in Wonderland Production” and San Francisco’s annual “Masquerade Ball: A Venetian Carnival Affair”. Back in the mid-2000’s, I was intuitively designing immersive environments and experiences before the word “immersive” was a term for events. I was intuitively creating compelling themed backdrops for customer photo opportunities. I was hiring an army of photographers costing me a fortune to create memorabilia for my guests before smart phones and “selfies” existed. All of these things helped build my brand and reputation in Northern California.

In 2015, I was yearning for a new creative medium and was inspired to form a new company called “ThemeDream Productions” to produce themed immersive experiences around food & beverage. Rather than a “Haunted Ball” Halloween party, I created a “Haunted Dinner” show. It was a 4-course dinner with plate presentations in the spirit of Halloween, designed to visually entertain and get people taking their cameras out. We had a “Lobotomy” course that looked like a brain served in a laboratory petri dish. It was a shrimp cocktail shaped in gelatin mold. We had a dessert called “I left my heart in San Francisco” that literally looked like a severed bloody heart with oozing blood. It was a fondant cake with a red berry sauce center. Guests went crazy over these culinary spectacles and pictures were all over social media.

We also created a fully immersive show with eerie acts like a vampire ballet, a “Ring Girl” contortionist and a “Freddy Krueger” violinist that performed around the dining area and interacted with guests at their tables. This led to other immersive dinner shows such as “Dinner in Wonderland”, a “Game of Thrones”-inspired pop-up bar and dinner series, creating a new Halloween Season “haunt” attraction for Winchester Mystery House, and producing San Francisco’s first-ever New Year’s Eve gala at the iconic Palace of Fine Arts: a 140,000 sq ft fairytale-themed “Disneyland for Adults” activation for over 4200 guests.

ThemeDream’s events attracted some of Silicon Valley’s largest tech companies such as Cisco Systems and Samsung Semiconductor to begin hiring my company to produce private events for their executive conferences, department retreats, company picnics and holiday parties. For the past 8 years, ThemeDream has produced everything from “1920’s Speakeasy” cocktail receptions to “Gatsby” holiday parties to “Barbieland” department dinners to immersive “Pirates of the Caribbean” themed company picnics to “Once Upon a Time” fairytale themed worlds at famous amusement parks such as California’s Great America.

However, one particular project I am most proud of was back in 2017. I pitched a corporate client on an immersive technology concept for an executive dinner. I called it “Immersive Dinner Theatre”. It was a 4 course journey through land, sea, fire and snow that utilized 360° video-map-projection and surround sound to immerse guests into each course theme. I learned about the concept from a small restaurant in China seating only 8 people. We expanded this very intimate immersive concept to 400 dining guests! From my market research at that time, I could find nothing like it in the United States. Since 2017, immersive experiences utilizing video-map-projection has become extremely popular. I’m not claiming to be the first, but I am proud to have had a finger on the pulse to where immersive entertainment was headed in the years to come.

I think one of the greatest values I bring to the table for my corporate clients and public attraction customers is my creative intuition and my imagination to dream up new ideas for events, experiences and food & beverage that most people have never seen or experienced. I am always trying to push creative boundaries and break the cookie-cutter mold for event experiences. My goal is not to just please, but to “WOW!” people. I’m sure most folks have been to more than their share of 1920’s parties; however, a ThemeDream “1920’s Speakeasy” event completely immerses you into the world of the 1920’s like you have never experienced before with elaborate set designs, trilby hat stores, underground gambling casinos, ‘password required’ gin joints, interactive “wise guy” actors, “flapper girl” singers, dancers & piano players, police raids, prison mug shots and period-costumed-staff serving modern-day riffs on famous Prohibition Era cocktails.

Although I’m now a “grown up” business owner, I’m still that “little kid” who could spend his entire day up in his room drawing cartoons. I take great pride in everything I creatively do, down to the smallest, most meticulous detail. Even my bar menus and food station signs for a themed event have to be a work of art that elevates the experience. I strive to have guests walk away from a ThemeDream event with a smile ear to ear talking about what a one-of-a-kind experience it was and wanting to show off photos to friends. Deep down, everyone still has that little kid inside of them. I try to bring that inner child out with my events. I try to make guests escape reality for a few hours and play in my imaginary worlds. My favorite Walt Disney quote is “You’re never too old to be young.” I wish I could hang that quote above the entrance of every event I produce to remind people to leave their worries behind, be a kid again and have a good time like nobody’s watching.

The next chapter in my creative journey is Las Vegas. I relocated to Las Vegas two years ago. ThemeDream is still very actively producing events and experiences in the San Francisco/Bay Area, especially for our Silicon Valley corporate clients, but Las Vegas has become the new mecca for immersive entertainment with public attractions like Area15, Meow Wolf and Lost Spirits Distillery. In addition to wanting to produce next-level corporate events for Las Vegas tradeshows, I have a lot of innovative immersive concepts for casinos and public attractions I would like to bring to the Las Vegas market. So I’m excited about what 2024 brings and where it creatively takes me.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Back in 2015, when I created ThemeDream’s first immersive dinner show “Haunted Dinner”, it was extremely challenging to sell tickets because most people did not yet understand what an “immersive experience” was, let alone an “immersive dinner”. I had no photo or video examples to educate people on what we were doing because it was our first production of this kind and there was nothing else similar to it. I was trying to trailblaze a new form of dining and entertainment in San Francisco, thinking people would be immediately excited about it. However, as I’ve learned through the years, being “first to market” with a great idea doesn’t guarantee immediate public excitement and interest. As much as people complain they are bored with their entertainment options and want something different, when new exciting options are offered to them, people often stay with what they know and are familiar with.

So I had to spend a lot of additional ad money and exert a lot more energy creating attention-grabbing content for Haunted Dinner’s marketing campaign to educate people on the experience and get people excited. Although we sold a lot of tickets, we didn’t sell enough to be profitable. Nothing feels more disheartening than months of blood, sweat and tears and lose money. Most people would have quit. Many friends and colleagues told me I was wasting my time. However, I observed how the audience responded to the show, how many smiling faces I saw, the positive guest feedback I received, and I knew I was on to something special.

So the following year, with hundreds of amazing photos from my 2015 show and an incredible sizzle reel for marketing “Haunted Dinner”, it took much less effort to sell the shows. By Year 3, the Haunted Dinner brand and ThemeDream’s reputation for producing immersive dinners and experiences grew to a much larger audience. We had so much public demand, we were able to raise our prices and add more dates. What once was a $100 dinner show taking weeks to sell out was now a $150 dinner show selling out in less than 60 seconds!

Just because something doesn’t make money at first and people are telling you it can’t work, if your creative intuition tells you it can, follow your gut. It’s almost always right.

Alright – let’s talk about marketing or sales – do you have any fun stories about a risk you’ve taken or something else exciting on the sales and marketing side?

New Year’s Eve is the biggest party night of the year in San Francisco. Every nightclub, bar and hotel is hosting huge parties. It’s the most competitive night in one of the most competitive markets in the country. When I was a nightlife promoter, I had always partnered with a venue and done a revenue share. After several years of sold-out New Year’s events, I had the confidence to take on all financial risk and rented a venue space. My financial risk for the entire project was over $60,000, which was a lot of money for me at that time. However, the upside was if the event successful, I would make tremendously more money than ever before.

I launched my New Year’s Eve marketing campaign and, of course, things didn’t go as they always had gone before. Unlike my past years’ parties, ticket sales were moving at a snail’s pace. After weeks of heavy promotion, It was less than 3 weeks from the event and I was in a complete panic. Never had sales been this slow! I was going to lose a lot of money! I approached the venue about my concerns and the possibility of cancelling the event. The venue said they would not refund my $15,000 deposit because of such a late cancellation. I didn’t know what to do. If I cancelled the event, it would be publicly humiliating. My reputation would be tarnished. Do I cancel the event, cut my losses to $15,000 and damage my name? Or do I roll the dice with a 50/50 chance of taking a $60,000 blood bath? A very close friend of mine talked me off the ledge and convinced me cancelling was not an option.

So I mustered the strength to put my hands up and fight. If I was going to crash and burn, I was going to go down swinging, knowing I gave it everything I had. So I made some adjustments to my marketing strategy. I called, texted and emailed everyone I knew for support. However, day after day, tickets kept moving at a sluggish pace. It was now after Christmas and the final week sprint to the finish line. Ticket sales were picking up, but not at the velocity I needed to simply break even. I was so stressed out I couldn’t even eat. I lost over 15 pounds during the month of December! It was literally the day before New Year’s Eve and we were not even 50% sold out! I was still deep in the red. But I kept swinging. I kept marketing. I kept calling people. If I was going to go down, I wasn’t going down without a fight.

Later that day, something magical happened. People who had been sitting on the fence all month finally decided to make their New Year’s Eve plans! Ticket sales exploded. In less than 24 hours, by afternoon the day of the event, we sold-out! The party became one of the hottest New Year’s Eve spots in San Francisco. All of a sudden, hours before the event, my phone is flooded with texts from last minute people asking to buy extra tickets! Had we the room, I could have sold an extra 200 tickets that day! Not only did I dodge a financial blood bath, the event turned out to be one of the most lucrative and profitable events of my nightlife career!

I was so exhausted that evening. I felt like I had just ran a marathon and had to immediately put on a tuxedo, a big smile and host a a huge party. However, as I looked around the room at all the beautiful people and happy faces everywhere, it was one of the most rewarding moments of my life.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.themedreamproductions.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/themedreamproductions
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/donovanfriedman/