Well I don’t know where to start. The bottom line was it was (from what we were told by our guests and clients) the most successful, life changing event anyone has ever been to. And it was all thanks to the misses, and of course the Bocelli’s. My point is that without the misses, it would have been a total train wreck. Thankfully I stepped in a few weeks ago and put her 100% in charge.
We landed in Austin about 1pm on Thursday and headed over to our hotel. Upon arrival the staff was essentially lined up waiting to greet us (can you believe it) standing in a row like a bunch of servants. We were handed our keys to the only Executive Suite in the brand new Westin Domain Hotel. We opened the double doors to our room which was actually 2 rooms and 2 baths that went from one side of the hotel to the other. We had windows on 3 sides of our room. In the sitting room there was a gift basket of fresh fruit, cheeses, edamame, crackers, and a bottle of Vodka and Tequila with some Izzy sodas to mix with. It turns out, they did this for everyone in our group. What a nice touch, all because we know the owners, the Whites, who have the ranch in Wyoming.
The rest of the day was spent with people arriving from as far away as Kazakhstan. At 7pm we all went over to Maggiano’s Italian Restaurant for a family style dinner that I arranged ahead of time through their National Buyer. We were greeted by the manager who insisted that he be allowed to buy us some cocktails in the bar before dinner. I couldn’t say no, so by the time we made it to our table, everyone was feeling pretty happy. One of our guests was an investment banker from London that turned out to be quite a character as the evening went on. There were 8 of us for dinner and Josh and I were trying to figure out this “investment banker” guy during dinner. His friend, who wants to invest in China distribution, was arriving Friday and is a doctor in LA. More on him later. Anyhow as the evening went on and the wine flowed (I shipped in some really good bottles ahead of time) our banker friend was getting quite a buzz. At one moment we had our attention diverted to a discussion at the other end of the table and when we looked back, our friend Marco was slumped over asleep in his chair in the middle of the restaurant! We decided to carry on with dinner and just let him be. As we were finishing up dinner, he woke up and made a bee line for the other end of our table to sit next to Laura, our attractive 27 year old Brand Director who worked her way into the business with us right out of art school, 7 years ago. She now lives in Lausanne Switzerland and splits her time between here and there working for us. Anyhow, it seems Marco had awoken and decided he had taken quite a shine to her. We wrapped up dinner and as we were walking out, he decided he wanted to hug and kiss Laura! Now this was quite a shock and she turned her head at the last moment to avoid full lip on lip contact but did get a big wet sloppy one, right on the cheek. He was obviously totally hammered. The misses, Laura and I jumped in my car and drove the 3 blocks back to the Westin to head up to our suite before Mr Grabby Hands got back. We made it to our room around 11pm and sat around until around 12:30am talking about the next day and coming up with some captions for the photos that would be displayed the next night.
Tomorrow I will share the details of the day of preparation and the big event. We only had 4 hours sleep last night so I’m a bit tired to go on right now, plus the house needs a little cleaning. Just to give you some sense of the success, the misses was so impressive, that she and I were asked by the promoter and artist management company, to be the ones to work on all the upcoming dates in the future. We have New York, Chicago, Houston and a few other cities this fall and then more in 2013. They think we’ll have a Denver date early next year! Anyhow I don’t want to short change you on all the details of the event so you’ll have to wait until tomorrow for more. The good news is it looks like the misses might have found her calling!
Hope everyone is well, sorry we missed yesterday and stay tuned for tomorrow.