Albuquerque Business Podcast with Special Guest Robert Smith

This is the Albuquerque Business Podcast with your host Jason Rigby

Each week we interview leading local business leaders to inspire the vision and the spirit that is in every entrepreneur. Discussing strengths, weakness, strategies, systems and the problems we can all solve together to fulfill a shared vision of a new future for Albuquerque.

Our Guest Robert Smith is a father, husband, entertainer and speaker. He started his entertainment career as a magician in 1997 and went on to have some of America's largest companies and events as clients including Walt Disney World and Sea World.

In 2004, Robert made his first fair appearance at the Nevada State Fair. He'd spend the next 7 years struggling to find long term success with his magic show in the fair market. In 2011, recognizing the fair industry was saturated with magicians, Robert knew he needed to make a change or he would continue to struggle.

In May of 2011, a friend suggested Robert build a fortune machine, like the one in the Tom Hanks movie, "Big." Hesitant at first, Robert set out to design what would come to be known as Conjurer Fortune Machine.

The act featured Robert portraying the mechanical fortune teller and went on to be booked into America's largest fairs including the Los Angeles County Fair, Ohio State Fair, Arizona State Fair and OC Fair in Costa Mesa, California.

SOCIAL MEDIA 434 Over the course of his career, from 2004-2016, Robert sat back and learned as much as he could about the fair industry's marketing tactics and approaches. During that time, the world began to transition in the largest communication shift humanity has ever known, smartphones and the internet at scale.

Robert quickly noticed that many fairs and brands were spending hundreds of thousands of dollars marketing like it was still 2003. Or worse, 1993. Billboards, pop-up banner ads, print, and traditional 30-second ads on radio and television.

The problem? Moving forward in a modern digital world and beyond, those mediums are ridiculously over-priced.

In February of 2017, Robert started sharing marketing information with fairs and outdoor event planners. As Robert began to expand his personal brand into the realm of digital marketing, there was immediate push back from traditional marketers. Robert was told "everyone is laughing at you behind your back." Unaffected, Robert continued to sculpt his personal brand and message. Robert knew the name for his presentation needed to reflect the content. This would not be the 101 level information many others share. It needed to go beyond the 101 level tactics and get into a real understanding of "why," digital marketing works in a tech driven world. With that, SOCIAL MEDIA 434 was born.

SOCIAL MEDIA 434 is an advanced level session on digital marketing in the modern world. It's purpose, to help your group move beyond the, "what and how," and understand the, "why," of today's digital marketing. If you would like Robert to consult with your group, or come and speak to them go this website at https://meetrobertsmith.squarespace.com/aboutrobert/