Welcome to this week’s episode of the MoreCheeseLessWhiskers.com podcast.

A couple of weeks ago I was in Toronto and attended an amazing event called the Archangels Summit. The gentlemen that puts it on every year is Giovanni Marsico. I’ve been able to spend a little time with Giovanni and gotten to know him, and the mission they have for the event. 

It was held in the Sony Center in Toronto, which has capacity of 3,000 people. He had over 2,500 people in the room. It had a fantastic vibe and energy to it. The year before, he had 1,500, so he's almost doubled the size. He has some amazing speakers. This year, Simon Sinek, Damon John and Dr. Shefali Tsabary. Last year, Gary Vaynerchuk and Seth Godin. This year, he had Akon do a performance which had everybody on their feet. I was watching this thinking, "The energy of this is just so incredible, he really puts on an amazing show."

What he's essentially doing is creating a community of people who are taking moonshots, who are building tribes and communities that he calls superheroes.

I had a wonderful idea while I was at the event that I shared with him a few days later when we had breakfast, just to see if he was interested in the idea.

He was, and we decided that rather than discuss it further then, we’d explore the depth of the idea here on this podcast.

I can't wait for you to hear it.

Show Links:
ArchangelSummit.com
ArchangelMasters.com

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Transcript - More Cheese Less Whiskers 063

Dean: Giovanni Marsico, Dean Jackson, how are you?

Giovanni: I'm having an awesome day.

Dean: Well that's great. I am to, I'll tell you, I have been looking forward to this since I was with you in Toronto a few weeks ago. It's been on my mind percolating ever since.

Giovanni: Nice.

Dean: So I'm very excited about it. Now this is a little bit different in that I know you and normally when I have people on more cheese less whiskers it's kind of the first time I'm hearing about it, so I get to have people tell me the back story and I'm going to have you do a little bit of that, but I want to set the stage about what I already know just to kind of bring people up to speed so that we can build on that, but I recently attended Giovanni's Archangel Summit in Toronto over just after Labor Day, second weekend in September. This is the second time that I've been to this event and the guests are amazing. The production value, the orchestration, every single thing about this event was world class in the way that it is put off. I mean, the opening that you did this year for the event, the venue, the Sony Center in Toronto holds 3000 people roughly, is that the capacity?

Giovanni: Correct.

Dean: Yeah, and there was people in the balcony, in the area it's a beautiful world class theater and just the speakers this year Simon Sinek and Damon John and Dr. Shefali Tsabary and this last year with Seth Godin and Gary Vaynerchuk, it was nice to catch up with Gary, last year I hadn't seen him in a couple of years. I got to catch up with him in Toronto at your place last time, so the guests, the environment, the vibe, the energy, everything about it is just amazing and then when we had breakfast a couple of days after, then I find out that you had background in promoting and that made club promoting, party promoting, that made a whole thing. So that's my side of the back story, what I know so far, it's just been completely impressive, I've been fascinated by all of it, but I don't really know the back story of the whole Archangel idea of how this all kind of came about and got to this point. How long have you been doing it? When did this start?

Giovanni: We launched the company in 2013. Our first event was in January of 2014 in Toronto. We had 120 people and it was quite smaller and it came out of, well, I'll have to start at the beginning.

Dean: Yeah.

Giovanni: So, I used to work at Strategic Coach, this was like 15 years ago and that's actually when I met Joe Polish back then running the marketing for the company. I left there to do marketing, coaching, and consulting, which let me into real estate, so there's a lot of alignment between our stories there. And I did really well in real estate, but I wasn't happy and I wasn't fulfilled, but it afforded me the chance to start going to a lot of events and conferences and joining Masterminds and I joined Genius Network and Strategic Coach as a client, which is a big deal for me, coming back as a client.

And I love everything I did and I'm a huge fan of lifetime education, but I felt like I didn't fit in 100% to any of the groups and I wanted to almost ... I scratched my own itch and I created the tribe and the event that I would want to attend. And it started off with a private annual Mastermind type of event in California and that was in the summer of 2014, so we've done four of those now. And at the beginning of 2016, I made a big decision to quit real estate, which I was doing both at the same time and put 100% of my time into this Archangel Project and it allowed me to scale up in so many ways and that year we created the first summit event in September 2016 and we had I think 1500 people at that one, 2500 at the one that just happened two weeks ago and we're looking to do 4000 next year.

Dean: Right and then you look at that trajectory from 100 and what did you say the first year? 100 and 15?

Giovanni: 120.

Dean: 120 the first year and then three events later, you're up to 2500, it's amazing, it's awesome man. Part of that is that you ... there's such an amazing affinity in that group and so I know that that's an important part of it. That it's not just about the information or about the event itself, but the mission and the vision behind the why people are attracted to this. What is the ... what's the overriding idea about Archangel?

Giovanni: We always say that Archangel is a tribe first, it's not an event, and it's definitely not a typical or traditional business conference. We are a community of what I call superheroes, so mission driven entrepreneurs who want to create big impact, make the world a better place and our role is to facilitate connection and collaboration and community and curate people who all are aligned with their beliefs and their values and they have giant hearts and want to actually serve humanity, but more importantly serve each other and help support each other’s missions. And it becomes like a giant love fest, so the energy of the event is way different than a typical event.

Dean: Oh, absolutely and I mean the addition of Akon this year was like, it just put it over the top, you know, I mean it really ... you didn't have a musical act last year did you? Or, I don't remember.

Giovanni: Not in the same way. We opened and closed with a singer, but not someone with a big platform like that.

Dean: Yeah, so right in the middle of the afternoon of this event, it's this big Akon party that turned into your birthday party at the very end, which is something. Akon brought all these people up on stage to dance for your birthday, fantastic. And you're right, like this, the energy, everything about it that everybody is just completely of the same mind I think. That's really the great thing. We throw that word tribe around and it's become kind of a jargon and stuff that I think really I get it, what you're saying there with this group. Just always fantastic and the fact that it continues to grow like that is really something.

Giovanni: We always tell people, and this is the message that I would share, you have to put the mission and the movement first and create something that's bigger than you. And that's what people align to, they don't align to you, they align to the ... and that's why we always say tribe first.

Dean: Mm-hmm (affirmative). I got it, and so that, all that back story, that leads us up to let's kind of now look forward and kind of work on a couple of ideas here. Because I've had a couple of ideas since being at that event that might be the perfect fit for what you're doing and I mentioned it briefly to you when we had breakfast and the big idea that I had in being at your event and seeing it was that how amazing it was, the content of it, but that it was what I would call sort of, I don't know what the right word is, neutral content or agnostic content, it wasn't like specific. It would work for ... that could have been anybody's event is what I was saying thinking about it. You could imagine people bringing or having groups around this event and I thought it would be a really interesting thing for some of these people I'm sure are building communities themselves who are in the audience that what an amazing opportunity if we gave somebody the chance to build their own event around the Archangel Summit event.

That you do it on that first Saturday, but wouldn't it be amazing if somebody who had a community that could bring a hundred people or something that would be ... there would be no way that they would be able to get somebody like Simon Sinek and like Damon John or Akon to come and go to their event, but they could promote their summit at the same time and do a day after the summit that would be their specific event.

Giovanni: I love that.

Dean: What an amazing thing, then it could become like a summit of summits.

Giovanni: When you first-

Dean: I was just going to say, I didn't want to go really deep into it just because I said to you when we had breakfast, I'm just going to share the general idea with you and I just want to see if you're even onboard with something like that and then let's not talk about it until we get here, but I'm anxious now to hear what you've been thinking.

Giovanni: Well, when you first gave me the idea, I'm a huge fan of science fiction and comic books and story and the imagery that came into my head, do you remember the movie Avatar?

Dean: Yes.

Giovanni: Near the end where, I forgot the character's name, but he has to go to all the different tribes and ask for their help and it becomes a gathering of tribes. I thought that's kind of the imagery I see where it's like the meta tribe or the gathering of tribes all coming together with a common purpose.

Dean: Yes. And I think ... I came up with a word, I know you have Archangel Academy and you have Archangel Summit, but the word that I thought maybe fit for this is Archangel Alliance.

Giovanni: Nice.

Dean: Do you see what I mean? It just hits like that galactic alliance, you know or whatever, the planetary alliance, but this whole idea of that it's not an alliance gives people a chance to be an independent tribe and come and be aligned with this without the like Archangel Academy implies that you're sort of a student of or underneath that overriding them thing, but alliance is something that you can be aligned with. I think there's just a subtle thing, but I think it could be a ... you know words matter and I think that they have energy and that might be a good fit for something like that.

Giovanni: I love the word.

Dean: Perfect, so now we're getting somewhere. What really struck me was that when we were talking, as I was complementing you on just the seamlessness and the extraordinary grace that the event just went up. Everything about it from the way people were greeted and directed and so many people, it takes a village to run a big event like that and you had so many people that were just right on it to just direct people, organize people, help people, from the check-in to getting people to the seats, to the hallway, you have the VIP area, everything was just amazing and you shared with me that that's one of your superpowers organizing events like that, you just love the logistics of things like that.

Giovanni: I do.

Dean: I can't imagine that somebody loves that, you know?

Giovanni: I've been doing it since I was 16 and I think you slightly mentioned about when I was 16 I started producing parties for teenagers and the first one we ever did, my best friend and I in high school rented a banquet hall. I don't even know how we got away with it at 16 years old and we had 1000 people show up. And then our biggest was 5000 people in the venue and it was a nightclub that we rented, and 2000 people outside that couldn't get in because we were just way past capacity.

Dean: Right, and that's amazing, so that's in your DNA, organizing events like that. Now, I think that when you look at it that among the people in the audience at probably both or maybe even all three of the big events that you've had so far, that there are people who would love to have an event like that, but the logistics of doing it would cripple them. That they would just get completely blocked and stopped by that.

Giovanni: Right.

Dean: And I think if there's a way like you imagine, I was looking ... I went to the convention center's website just to see the venues and stuff that they have there, and there's so many varieties of venues that it would be probably convenient to set up different sized rooms for people who wanted to do an event around that event. You know like if somebody could, if you start with a minimum of like 50 people kind of thing or however it would work out that they can bring their tribe to the summit, but get to promote it as if it's their event with the speakers that you'll be able to align. And people would feel so excited about being able to promote an event like that.

Giovanni: Right.

Dean: In addition to their own event and it's like such a cool thing. I love that idea. Do you know, can you think of just among the people who you know are in that room, any people that that might be something that they would embrace or love to do?

Giovanni: I know that there have been people in the past that have bought multiple tickets for that very purpose where they bring their clients essentially to the event on the Saturday and then they'll have a followup mini-Mastermind kind of event on the Sunday to go through everything they've learned and how do they execute it in their own business or in their own lives and almost create a support structure for each other and an accountability group based on what they've learned. So it has happened on a small scale, but I think what you're saying is more of the 50-100 people tribes where it becomes a mini event the day after, which I think is amazing and there are definitely people in the group or who have attended in the past that could facilitate that.

Dean: Mm-hmm (affirmative). If they knew that was a possibility and planted that seed and it we could make it as easy to hold their own summit as it is to be a guest at your summit. That would really be the ... I thought about that as the buzz word, we make it as easy to hold your own summit as it is to be a speaker at ours. That it-

Giovanni: I love where you're going.

Dean: You know what I'm saying? That's the thing, if they could just ... the thing that they could do is promote it and tell people about it and shout it from the mountain tops and get people excited about coming, if they knew that all of the details of it were handled, if all they had to do was get people into the room, committed to get into the room, and then show up and turn on their mic, or not even if the mic's turned on and they start talking on the second day. That the room's all organized, the AV is all done. All of the logistics and details of the actual event and all they have to do is promote it and then show up and stand on the stage and host their group. That would be a dream come true for a lot of people. Myself included.

Giovanni: I love it. Let's do it.

Dean: Yeah, so I mean if you like that idea, then what would it take ... because then it becomes an opportunity for that event to grow in leaps rather than incremental individuals. The promotion of it gets more and more. And imagine that if that becomes the thing that ... I thought about it afterwards like there's not really any benchmarks for that aside from, the only thing I could think of was burning man, really, is the closest kind of-

Giovanni: With the camps.

Dean: Yeah, with the camps, because burning man is just all the individual ... at scale, you know there's probably lots of individuals that go, but primarily, people are going as part of a camp and then the camp continues to grow, right. And so you start to think about if you had an alliance of people who are planning and building an annual event around that second Saturday in September, that that becomes ... that would get that momentum and I think this could be a pretty amazing thing.

Giovanni: It also solves one of the potential hurdles that I've predicted we may face as we scale the size of the event where what I don't want is for people to feel like they're just a number in the room. I want people to feel like they're connected to the group and in a room of 4 or 5000 people, you may not feel that, but if you are a part of a mini tribe within the tribe and you have people to connect with, then that not only actually solves that problem, it creates even deeper value and more connection between people who are there.

Dean: Yeah and on a deep level, having as part of an Archangel Alliance allows that tribe leader to be the leader. In a way without feeling like they're ... and this is all like I'm talking deep down stuff. That it would allow them to be sovereign in a way. That they're not part of your tribe or I don't know how to describe, do you understand what I'm saying?

Giovanni: Totally, what they're doing is still distinct.

Dean: Yes, exactly, that it is, that it's distinct, and that the event is ... I think this could be something here.

Giovanni: What is the ... in your head right now, what is the offering, or what is the value proposition to someone who is a member of the alliance? What is the pitch to them?

Dean: Yeah okay, so I think that part of it is ... I'll have to have you just explain the different ways that people are involved with you. I know you were talking about you Archangel Academy and how your sort of, what different groups you have, but what my thought was is that it may come from within one of those people who are more deeply involved in your group or it may be people who completely align with your mission, your principals and I guess my interpretation of what you're really doing is you're building a group of like-minded people who are outwardly focused in building and taking moonshots that are going to have transformations for people, that help people ultimately. So what would be some of the characteristics of somebody that or a group that would be aligned with what you're talking about and who wouldn't it be for, for instance?

Giovanni: I feel that anyone who is a superhero that serves other superheroes would be perfect for this. Where there's already the alignment of who their client base is and I'll give you an example, someone who is an expert in teaching people how to build a speaking career, or someone who is an expert in helping people publish a bestselling book or someone who helps people with some kind of skillset that allows them to achieve their mission.

Dean: K.

Giovanni: And typically they'll build their own tribe based on what their superpower is.

Dean: Perfect, okay.

Giovanni: It's in their best interest to connect their own tribe members together as a way of building accountability and support and community that way. I think it's already happening, but now we can offer them the chance to do something more.

Dean: Right, so now, is there any that jump out that you think would be a perfect fit for something like this? Like anybody that is within your group already that you know could potentially have that kind of opportunity?

Giovanni: Absolutely. A million percent. Angela Lauria for example.

Dean: Anybody we can name? Yeah, okay, there's a perfect one. She would be perfect absolutely right, okay. So Angela Lauria has then Author Incubator and yes she's got amazing group, right. Now this was the first time that I got to meet her. I mean we've been in the same circles and stuff, but then I met, who was there from Author Incubator last year?

Giovanni: It was one of her ... so Angela couldn't make it last year, she had one of her team members come out and do a quick little thing and-

Dean: Right, so I met them and that was great, but then I got to spend some time with Angela this time. So she's perfect, this would be the perfect kind of thing that if you think about it for if Angela had an opportunity to build an event around the Archangel Summit and do an event on that Sunday after, she would be the perfect kind of example of this. And the reason I asked for somebody specific there is that it's always about when we start applying the profit activators to this idea of it starts with the during unit, right it starts with what would be a dream come true for our specific clients, so Angela can be our perfect Avatar for this.

She'd be the perfect example, so hello Angela, I know you're going to listen to this now, so this'll be good. We're going to talk about you on your behalf, we're going to create a dream come true for you. So what would be a dream come true for Angela if you could think about this. It would be a dream come true for Angela to have, even if we just took this last event to have Simon Sinek, to have Damon John, to have Akon come at her own event and then to have the time to have a summit or event or mastermind specific to what her group would be completely focused on and have it go off seamlessly as her own event. It almost doesn't have to, in this thing it wouldn't be that she would be promoting Archangel Summit as something separate, but she would be promoting her event and it's in alliance with Archangel Summit so that all of the website, everything that she's promoting can have all the things that would be attractive to her tribe and guess who else is going to be there? Simon Sinek and Damon John and Akon and it would be like, "Oh my god, I've got to come to this."

Giovanni: Totally and it would be promoted as an Author Incubator event-

Dean: An Author Incubator summit with a little thing in association with the Archangel Alliance. But now it becomes it's almost like the Archangel element of it is as in service and support of making Author Incubator shine.

Giovanni: Right.

Dean: Right, which is I think that alone, that would be a dream come true for anybody building their own tribe and getting people excited around that and building it. I think with that long term view, like we talked originally, but I know that this is one of those things that you look at the long term impact of this is a fascinating thing if you project out what could happen over the next 25 years.

Giovanni: I just had a crazy flashback and in revelation, you're going to love this, the way when we were ... that event I did in the past that was 7000 people, I was at the time 19 years old and the way we scaled to that size was by hiring ... well we had a crew of 100 promoters and this is pre-internet, like this is 1996, like pre-social media, pre-cell phone use, things that make ... so it was all hardcore word of mouth, but what we did was we actually took these kids and we turned them into crews and we named the groups, so it was like Supreme Promotions and The Outlaws and each little group based on geography in the city had their own name and their own little territory and we literally created a gathering of tribes. It's something I've done in the past, I just totally forgot and blanked that I did that, but this is how we were able to grow because then they had their own little-

Dean: They had complete pride of ownership of it.

Giovanni: Right, and they were the alliance. They felt that a pride of saying, "We are the leaders of our crew," and it was just bringing all the crews together and we facilitate the venues, and by the way back then we also used to bring in dance performers like the Venga Boys and all these like Akon type of thing, that's why I didn't do it because I know how to do it, and it was creating a co-created immersive experience with all these tribes.

Dean: I think that's amazing.

Giovanni: They used to even have their own jackets which they each had a logo, like it was all little tribes.

Dean: Imagine, that's what I see, this sea of people with all their own tribe gear.

Giovanni: I love it.

Dean: so logistically for somebody like Angela, like it would also be a dream come true if she just knew that this is the event and that she just needs to see how many people she's going to bring or end up having and that the whole space would be configured and set up and everything that she would need to put on the show would be organized for her.

Giovanni: Right, and we would do everything we'd normally do so, we can handle all the logistics in terms of production, whatever she's doing the day after, we would have a camera crew filming the whole thing so that she could have video for it and all the things that we just normally do anyways, we can just do for each of these tribes.

Dean: I think this could be amazing.

Giovanni: I agree, I love this.

Dean: I'm very excited about that. So that would be when you think about this, there's enough time right now, it's still September, there's a year out, do you think that would be something we could pull off for next event? For the move to the convention center? Have you already reserved all the space and stuff?

Giovanni: The main room and we're working on some other breakout kind of rooms now, so it's perfect timing to figure this out.

Dean: Yeah, it seems like it would be, right? Like I think that that could be an amazing thing and I think that initially to do something like this it might be a good idea to think through the people like Angela to see who is already in the ecosystem here to pilot project something like that.

Giovanni: Yeah, for sure, even as we're talking, this is already in the works in my head.

Dean: Is it? That's great, so already people popping up in your mind who that would be a perfect thing for.

Giovanni: If I didn't want to give 100% of my presence and attention to this call right now, I'd already be on my computer emailing my team saying, "Okay, let's get this rolling."

Dean: Well, to be there, my mind is already thinking about how I can do one of these events myself too, so we got that going for us, that's fantastic. I can always bring in my own event group coming to it too, so I'm in too.

Giovanni: What would that look like for you?

Dean: Well this is as I'm describing it for Angela, that would be a dream come true right, that you think about ... and I guess then logistically you'd think like what would be the basic things, like you'd have to like a minimum unit of say 25 and maybe if it were 25, 50 and 100 kind of people, but being also have accommodation that somebody could grow to 200 people or more as you kind of look through right how this could go, but I don't know what the options are. I was looking as I said I went to the convention center site and there are lots of different sizes of breakout rooms that can accommodate from 20 people to 1000 people. So the configurations could be pretty amazing to make that happen, but then all they would need is to decide how the room whether it's going to be classroom or cocktail or open or whatever and the AV stuff, like those would be micro logistics kind of thing, but the basic idea being that the room is set up with the right number of chairs, the stage is set with the screen and projector if somebody needs that and the sound system and I mean you would need that with 50 people, you wouldn't need it with 25, potentially, you wouldn't need mic-ing or whatever.

Giovanni: You would if they want it recorded.

Dean: Yes, exactly, actually, yeah, you're right, so you want to have all those things available for people. I just think this could be a home run.

Giovanni: It is.

Dean: So do you think looking through ... I guess then it just becomes of what would be the where does it draw the line, where would it be worth it to do that. I guess because the smaller groups that you have right now, it would be very attractive to people, there would be a lot more people who could bring 25 people than would bring 50 people or 100 people. Initially.

Giovanni: Right, but it's almost something we would have to experiment with to see what that would like.

Dean: Absolutely, and it gives them ... what might work is to have that aspiration that somebody could start out in a 25, in a mastermind room and then grow to the 50 person room, grow to the 100 person room, grow to the 200 person room, you know that people can have that scale, have that ability to over a few years, because that's really what would be the awesome thing is to get people into this rhythm of an annual summit of their own projecting out their growth of their tribe as well.

Giovanni: Right, exactly. On our end we'd have to determine how this all gets packaged.

Dean: Yes.

Giovanni: And even a pricing model because there's always the hard cost of the venue and the AV and all these things, so we'd have to figure all that out. And is the person, is Angela pre-buying a giant package that includes all the tickets before she sells anything? So that-

Dean: That's a question right, like that's a thing that would be ... that then becomes part of the idea that I would imagine that what a dream come true would be a single price per person for the ticket that includes the general admission for the main, the Saturday and the seat, the prorated portion of what it costs to be in the 25 or 50 or 100 person room.

Giovanni: Right and is that person paying Dean Jackson or paying Archangel, these are the kind of things that I'm assuming-

Dean: And those are logistics, right, so if you say, what would be a dream ... if we take the poles of this, if we take, what would be a dream come true for you, would be that people prepay and commit to 25 or 50 or 100 people in advance and then they sell their own tickets and you put the show on that way right, so there's no variation in your process as we take the other pole of that, what would be a great thing for Angela would be that the tickets are sold in conjunction with ... you used Eventbrite for your ticketing?

Giovanni: Yes.

Dean: So if there was a way for you to handle the logistics of the ticketing things, like if you take what would be a complete dream come true if we're just supporting Angela here, that the event website with her, all those guests plus her guest or her content there with the click here to buy and that the ticket sales are handled there and that Angela shows up at the event, does her stuff, and gets a check for whatever the different was between what the ticket sales were and what the cost was. That would be the ultimate dream come true. Where she's not in any of the logistics and not at risk in any way financially. Now that might not be logistically feasible on your side, right, because then it's the other way around, that that would be the thing for you that would completely 100% protect your interests is having her commit to 25 people and write a wholesale check for that package, which includes the 25 tickets plus the room plus the AV and support and all that stuff and then she can sell them on her own at a markup. That would be a dream come true for you, right? But it adds more logistics on her part. So somewhere in the middle or as close as we can get to leaning towards Angela's dream come true, how could that work?

Giovanni: There's a juicy solution in there somewhere.

Dean: There really is, that's absolutely it, that's the thing because there's always that anxiety of ... you want to have this thing there's a little bit of anxiety around what if I don't sell enough tickets or what if I, you know what I mean? What if I lose my shirt or I'm not going to pull this off or I'm going to be out thousands of dollars or whatever it is, there's always that anxiety sort of around doing an event like that and to kind of be able to calm that or ease that without putting yourself in a bad position.

Giovanni: Right. It's interesting, so I'll have to start with what that would actually ... if you look at it, what would it cost.

Dean: I'm not sure how big Angela's tribe is or what the group would be, do you think with just what you know about her, do you think that she would have an event with 25 or 50 or 100? What would, I mean-

Giovanni: I mean for her it could be 100, she typically does events all the time for her authors and that's happening multiple times a year, so she's specifically used to doing events where it would be easy for her to have a higher number, I believe.

Dean: Okay, cool and then can you think of anybody that would fit for the 25 person event side?

Giovanni: I don't really have a specific example right now, but I know there must be a ton of them.

Dean: Yeah, even in that room there are some ... yeah, I think about that, there's something ... so many, so many. I think about Kathleen Bokrossy who remember I mentioned was sitting with your mom, that she has a group of dental hygienists who helps all the dental hygienists in the ... and she was just, so she loves to put on events like that too, but that might be something. When you just think about what I'm thinking about now as I'm going through my mind of the people that I know that were internship the room that this might be a cool thing for ... there's so many.

Giovanni: As long as someone has ... anyone who has a coaching model where they're teaching, they can just use this.

Dean: Yes, I think that could be an awesome thing. Yeah, somebody who would normally be having a gathering with their groups and this just makes like this one time a year something very special.

Giovanni: Right.

Dean: They have a chance to get excited about who the speakers are going to be for next year.

Giovanni: I'm often asked, "Can you recommend a venue? I want to do an event with 25, 50 people, where in Toronto can we do it?" That question came up yesterday in my other group. It's a constant question, so I think there's huge potential. Even just to give people space, and the co-branding of what we're doing, but the idea that you can have this space. Another question I'll have to ask is the duration. Is this a full day thing or a half day? What does that all look like and that's another question we'll have to ask in the future.

Dean: I think you're going to have to make it that, because there's not going to be any discount having it be a half a day on that Sunday, like you're going to have to commit to that room of the breakout rooms for the day, I don't think you would get a better price for a half day, would you?

Giovanni: No. On that level no, so the thing is, you're going to have to kind of I think make it those standardized things that you get this room can accommodate 25 people, this one can fit 50 people, this one for 100 people, and get the root cost for that of what that's going to be. That way to allow somebody to promote an event that-

Dean: feels like probably if ... a sweet spot for somebody that's promoting an event like that might be in the like 797 range or 997, but it's to allow some early bird some whatever, if they could pull that off, that might be a dream come true, but we'll have to see right, like if that's logistically feasible.

Giovanni: Right after working out all the numbers.

Dean: Yeah, working out all the numbers and knowing that ... trying to make that work for people. It's pretty exciting.

Giovanni: It's pretty exciting, I know, you can tell we're both like introverts our minds are like our sock puppets are talking right now, but our minds are already hatching the schemes for it. I think that's amazing.

Dean: So what do you think now, let's kind of put some legs to it here, what do you think. I want to hear what you've heard or how this has landed kind of thing or what's formulating.

Giovanni: So next steps for me would be to get my team to figure out numbers and what's available and what the capacities are and spaces and all that kind of thing and work out some super quick packages to figure out what the numbers would be for someone and then approach the Angela's of the world and say, "Here's the idea we have. How could you use this? What would you want? What would make this a dream for you?" Just to get that one-to-one feedback and then create some super basic packages and then use next year's event as an experiment case study for this. See how it works and if it works as well as I think it will, then we can scale that up for 2019.

Dean: Isn't it great to think like, I mean, we're talking about this like to have ... that's one of the things I think comes with having a long term vision that, and I haven't asked you this specifically, but I certainly get the sense that you're looking, that this has a 25 year life here of the whole movement of it, and when you have that kind of vista, when you have that long term approach it's like in feels luxurious in a way that yeah, we know that we can test and develop this idea this year as a thing with an eye to next year really rolling it out, so it's like a hatching, that planting a seed here that's going to fully harvest in two, three, five years and I kind of ... that's pretty exciting, you know?

Giovanni: It is and this is almost an art form for me where I get to have creative expression in different ways. I love experimenting, to me, everything I do is experiments, so I love ... and we have super long term vision. I kind of live in the future, it's one of my super powers, it can be a curse, but we have a three year vision of getting to 10,000 people at the Air Canada Center for the main event, and then I'm not sure if I mentioned it, but this specific event is a fundraiser and in the past we've donated the funds to different charities. A lot to do with building schools and now we're shifting to phase two which is offering grants and loans and micro loans to our tribes, so entrepreneurs who want to create impact. It started with our, we started with a 50,000 moonshot pitch competition at this event which was amazing and based on attendee feedback, it was their favorite part of the whole event, outside of dancing with Akon I think.

And phase three is as we scale up the size of the event and have more proceeds coming in, part of the plan is to use the proceeds towards Angel Investment and that's kind of where the company name comes from. To invest in superheroes, to invest in mission driven entrepreneurs. The sort of nontraditional vectors that aren't necessarily in the tech world where there's an easy exit and it's all about returns, to me it's more about return on impact than return on investment.

Dean: Right. That's awesome. There's so much depth to this, it's amazing, but it's rewarding and it's something you can really wrap your arms around. Right at that level of testing your abilities and keeping it exciting and knowing that it's going to have an amazing impact in the world. I'm excited.

Giovanni: Me too.

Dean: So I can't wait, I want to help you with this however I can and we'll continue to talk offline and I think this could be an amazing thing.

Giovanni: Thank you and I appreciate and I love the evil scheme, and I love our, what was the analogy you came up with?

Dean: I love, I should sell that you know, there's so much goodness in your heart that it kind of pain you kind of wondering why I call things evil schemes. Well, it's said with irony from Austin Powers, from Doctor Evil, but so we came up with the acronym E.V.I.L. and so I think we were at exponential valuable ideas lab or something. You know what I always laugh at Phineas and Ferb that cartoon kids show, there's the Doofenshmirtz Evil Incorporated is the funny thing and it's got a jingle and if you look on YouTube for Doofenshmirtz Evil Incorporated, everything they do an establishing shot, they show the big tower with the Doofenshmirtz logo and the do a little jingle "Doofenshmirtz Evil Incorporated." Into the office there, but it's so funny. I'm excited, I think we've really ... this is something that's going to have an impact and get very excited about stuff like that.

Giovanni: Me too.

Dean: Thank you.

Giovanni: I’ll follow up on this.

Dean: Yeah, absolutely. Me too. Alright, so we'll put this up and let's let Angela know that we were talking all about her, she'll love it, this'll be her favorite episode.

Giovanni: Thank you.

Dean: Hey by the way, where can people find out about Archangel Academy or what can people who are intrigued by what's going on here, where can they find out more?

Giovanni: Archangelsummit.com is the main sort of landing page for the event and then archangelacademy.com is the main site.

Dean: Okay, perfect. Very good, we'll get this up and then I'll let you know.

Giovanni: Thank you Dean.

Dean: Thanks Giovanni, buh-bye.

Giovanni: Bye.

Dean: And there we have it. I am so stoked about how this idea formed and came about. I'm already thinking about how I can wrap an event around next year’s summit in September and this idea of the Archangel Alliance I really love. Now here's the thing, we're talking about this specifically for Giovanni and the Archangel situation, but there's something going on here that is a deeper sort of underpinning concept that may work for you. If we look at really what's happening here if, not if, when Giovanni's able to pull this off, he's excited about the idea, I'm really looking forward to seeing how this unfolds, but what's really happening is he's creating an event that is in support, potentially, of other people having their events, so his dream come true event is helping support other people create their own dream come true event and build a community of people that year after year in this second weekend in September, we may be able to create an incredible movement around this and so when you start thinking about it, what are the kind of things that you do that could be so good that your, let's call them competitors, but not your colleagues would pay to be a part of what you're doing or to take the service that you're doing.

Tom Peters, the wonderful management thought leader who's written several books including In Search of Excellence, one of the things that he talks about is he talks about having the visions of your company become professional service firms that offer service so good enough to pay for and he talks about that through all of the divisions. Imagine if instead of just having your accounting department be an in house accounting department, what if your accounting department was independent at a professional service firm that offered a level of service that was so good that you could provide it to other people or if your graphic design department was so good that you could offer it to other people, there's an example of that in disc makers is a wonderful catalog that they put out for bands and independent musicians and independent audio producers that's kind of their audience, but they put out this wonderful amazing catalog and then they spun out the design team that would put all that together, they started offering their design services to other businesses.

So that's an interesting lesson, is thinking about how can you create something that you're doing that could be a core service for other people, so that's an exciting idea and I'll keep you posted on how this all plays out, but if you'd like to join Giovanni at next year's event, I don't think he's got the speakers selected or announced yet, but you can keep an eye on archangelsummit.com and his main website is archangelacademy.com, so very excited for you to take a look at all of that and as always if you want to continue the conversation here, you can go got morecheeselesswhiskers.com and you can download a copy of the more cheese less whiskers book and if you'd like to be a guest on the show, so we can hatch some evil schemes for you, just click on the be a guest link and we can take it from there, so that's it for this week. Tune in next time and we'll have some amazing new evil schemes to hatch.