We were lucky to catch up with Megan Halo recently and have shared our conversation below.

Megan, appreciate you joining us today. Alright, let’s take a stroll on memory lane, back to when you were an apprentice or intern. What’s a memorable story from that time that you can share with us?

My experience in producing events came from starting as a performer and graphic designer for my friends event Exotica/ Exoticon Detroit. I was living in Los Angeles and my friend Ally, who was also my modeling agent in Detroit, started these kinky events in the Metro Detroit area. I was hired as a model at the events and a vendor, then as an event host, then as a graphic designer for the advertising design. After spending a lot of time working with the event, Ally & her business partner Vena asked me to partner with them on producing the events and I got to really see the inner workings of the events. These were weekend-long events that we were producing and it got to be a lot to handle even for 3 of us and the event was eventually cancelled and replaced by my own event Liquid Red Detroit. Ally went on to create a successful circus production company in Metro Detroit and Vena went on to pursue her original professional career and spend more time with family. I went on to continue doing my event in Detroit annually and to produce monthly events in Las Vegas called Liquid Red Las Vegas.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My brand is called Liquid Red. I produce an annual event in Detroit called Liquid Red Kink Ball Detroit and monthly events in Las Vegas called Liquid Red Las Vegas. The Las Vegas events are different themes every month with stage shows, fashion shows, contests, DJ & dancing, photo booth, unique vendors and more. The themes range anywhere from vampire, pirate, steampunk, zombie prom, apocalyptic, latex, lingerie, Krampus, to kinky and naughty themes. The music is a rock/ gothic dance mix by different DJs every month. In addition to producing these events, I also partner with other similar events in Las Vegas by doing fashion shows, managing other events, or promoting similar events in the area. Some events I have partnered with or promoted include Torture Garden USA, AltStar Awards, ASN events, The Marquis DeSade presents Abandon, Fetish & Fantasy Halloween Ball, Bondage Ball Las Vegas and more.

I am also a pop up vendor at my own events and at other local events. I sell unique gothic accessories including harness designs, earrings, necklaces, fans, pins, buttons, stickers, patches, vintage clothing items and more that I either create or curate.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

When I was living in Los Angeles, I had a full time job as a graphic designer, which was what I went to school for, but the pay was too low and it felt like I had hit a ceiling with the company I was working for and also a ceiling in my career in some ways. My friend Monique had an entrepreneurial spirit and was working on starting a boot company. She got enough funding to pay my salary for an entire year and convinced me to quit my job and work for her. That was a huge turning point where I went from being a salary employee to jumping into being a partner in a business. I was only about 5 years out of college at that point and I wanted to jump on the wild ride that is the ups and downs of entrepreneurship.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

I’m very tech savvy. I went to school for graphic design and ended up also doing web design. My major was graphic design and minor was in marketing. I was always fascinated by marketing. I am not a big reader but I read marketing books for fun. I learned from my previous business partners that you can fairly easily build an audience in your city by using all of the tools that are fairly cheap and easy to use. My website is ranked fairly high on google for certain keywords relating to my business just by using the city name and key words that describe my events. I keep an email list going that I constantly add to and send out emails before and on the day of my events. I use social media to post about events, tag similar promoters in the area, repost fans photos of the events, post event photos & videos, hashtag popular city and scene terms, and boost my event page on Facebook. I also create printed flyers for events that go inside the venue and at locations around town in addition to social media.

When people ask me about promoting something, I tell them that promoting on a local scale is easy, but trying to promote nationally or internationally is very difficult and basically not worth it. Focus your efforts locally first. Business is almost all marketing, if you don’t like marketing, you need to spend a lot to work with someone who is good at it and it’s hard to really tell if the person you hire to market you will really do it correctly. So I suggest that it’s best to learn it for yourself if you’re doing a business of your own.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.liquidredlv.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/liquidredlv
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/liquidredlv
• Twitter: www.twitter.com/liquidreddesign
• Youtube: https://vimeo.com/liquidred
• Other: www.shopliquidred.com www.facebook.com/liquidredjewelry www.instagram.com/liquidreddesign

Image Credits
b/w photo credit @shotbyazn all other photos credit @ric.crews