Scaling with Belief

Mike Pinkus: Over the last 10 years at ConnectCPA, we've had the privilege of witnessing the incredible journeys of over a thousand businesses. We've been there for the thrilling highs and daunting lows of entrepreneurship. We've celebrated wild successes and monumental exits, and we've also stood by businesses as they've navigated the stormy seas, facing roadblocks and challenges that every entrepreneur encounters in their day-to-day grind.

Join us as we dive deep into the stories of these resilient individuals who dared to dream, who persevered, and who were a testament to the power of entrepreneurship. This is their journey, their lessons, and their triumphs.

Welcome to GrowthTales. I'm your host, Mike Pinkus, co-founder of ConnectCPA.

Mike Pinkus: Organizing business events is really difficult. You need to coordinate multiple vendors. You have to ensure you have the right venue, you have to operate within a budget, and on top of all of that, you need everything to go just right and on time. That's where the Idea Hunter comes to the rescue. They help you transform ideas into unforgettable event experiences that drive employee engagement, boost sales, and enhance meaningful connections.

I had the privilege in meeting with Hailey Dawood, owner and Chief Hunter of the Idea Hunter. In this podcast, Hailey and I discussed everything from what it takes to succeed as a second-generation business owner to working alongside her husband, Fadi, to help scale the business. We touched on both business processes and personal optimization tools like meditation and stress management. If you're growing a business and you wanna learn from an owner that seems to have an amazing handle on work-life harmony, this is one to listen to.

I really enjoyed my conversation with Hailey, and I hope you really enjoy the episode.

Hi Hailey. Thank you so much for joining me on GrowthTales today.

Hailey Dawood: Hi, Mike. Happy to be here.

Mike Pinkus: I love the business that you have built. Um, Idea Hunter is such a cool company and, uh, I've been learning more and more over this last little bit. Corporate events are something near and dear to my heart, and also just because I've had some painful experiences going through at ConnectCPA with our own corporate retreats as well as corporate events over the years. Uh, so I know it's not easy, but I wanted to kick things off to learn a little bit about where did the origin story of Idea Hunter come from — like the name, the brand, and also where you are.

Hailey Dawood: Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you again for having me today. The Idea Hunter is a family business. I am the second-generation owner of the company. I'm very grateful for that opportunity. My mom started the company. She always had a lot of ideas, and somebody asked her one day, like, when are you gonna start charging for all these ideas and not just sharing them? And that's where she came up with the name, the Idea Hunter, and basically started ideating for events.

Uh, she did have a specialty in entertainment and add-ons for events. I like to call it like the accessories to the event. Uh, and that's really where the company started — was that kind of curation of ideas and vendors and artists and entertainers and performers that you could have at an event to engage your guests.

Mike Pinkus: That's amazing. And so you've been in the business now for a long time. How long have you been running the business as an owner?

Hailey Dawood: Yeah, so the business itself is over 20 years old, and I have been in the industry — so I've been working in the company — for 10 years, and I've been an owner for five years. So I'm coming up on a decade, which is very cool. I definitely feel like having this amount of time in the industry has definitely made me more of an expert and really understand events. Um, so the time has been very helpful for sure.

Mike Pinkus: And I'd love to go a little deep on when we say "events." Like, a lot of people think of like, what is it that — it's an event. So if you run a company, and you want to put on an event, you're like, what do you mean by events? And just by going through your website, Hailey, it's quite clear that you guys do a lot of things — from live entertainment, virtual events, retreats, interactive experiences. What is it? How do you figure out for a company what they need and come up with, as you say, the ideas to make a perfect corporate event?

Hailey Dawood: I first of all love that you know that. I love that you know how multi-layered the events industry actually is. There's festivals, there's public events like marathons or charity galas, sponsorship events. Where we really specialize is on those internal corporate events. So a lot of the AGMs, meetings, award shows, holiday parties, team socials in the summer, executive corporate retreats — so really that internal employee engagement is typically where we tend to service the most.

But we also are a part of different public, but still corporate events. Like, our buyer is still the corporate in-house planner, right? So that might be for the Junior Jays program at the Rogers Centre or a halftime show with MLSE and putting performers there for a public sporting event, for example.

In terms of how people know what event to throw, most of the big organizations across the city or across the country have in-house event professionals — because the big accounting firms, the consulting firms, the law firms — it is a full-time job to manage events. And they've hired people in-house to oversee their meetings and all of that kind of planning.

What makes us very unique is that we're really a resource to that in-house planner. Now, it's not to say we only service in-house planners — we also service whoever's been assigned. A lot of times an EA has been assigned, an HR person's been assigned, somebody from marketing's been assigned. They are thrilled to find us because this is not their full-time job, nor is it their professional expertise. So we're very, very happy to help them.

But they come to us for the creativity, because they're in-house at a corporation and they're spending so much time with the logistics of that event, right? Okay, who is this for? Who do we need to fly in? What's their itinerary? What's their calendar? They're so in the minutiae of the details, they're not really exposed to as much as we are on a day-to-day.

As a creative agency, we are very much exposed to artists, performers, entertainers — through referrals, people find us, artists share information with us, they send it to us. So we actually spend a lot of our time growing a database within our company. We have over 600 performers, entertainers — yeah — and that grows every single week.

So we actually have somebody in-house who's responsible for taking the inbound of new performers, artists — even like if somebody has a tequila cart — that would be something that would vet through our company, because those are fun little add-ons, right? Like we take care of those little things that you can add onto your event.

So we would have somebody in our company who actually interviews that vendor, asks them a series of questions. We want to know insurance, we want to know how long have they been in business, do they have video, do they have photo — all those things.

Hailey Dawood: And then we build that out into our idea menus. So when a client calls us for ideas, our team is curating from a list of over 600 ideas that we're picking for your event based on everything that you've told us. That is instant creativity that's being delivered to their inbox — that would take them so long to find that they wouldn't even find it, because they just wouldn't have the time to be able to find it or even know what to search for.

Um, so because we've put such a focus on it, it really allows us to service them, which we love — 'cause we love being able to add value to the events that they're planning and be able to support them.

Mike Pinkus: Wow. And I'd imagine quality control too. Like, if I go to Google and I start trying to find a performer, I mean, it is hit and miss. Like, you need to have experience from other corporate events to know who are the marquee people to deploy, right?

Hailey Dawood: I can't believe how much I know — about how much I know — because of the amount of people we work with. We have become experts in so many different areas. But yes, you really, like, there are very clear red flags — as simple as if somebody doesn't reply to our email within, like, three days. I would say three days is courteous. If we're giving you three days, yes, and you still haven't sent us a response, a photo — we actually will not even put you in our database.

Like, those small things are just — we've worked with people for long enough that we know when somebody is right for corporate. They're eager, they're responsive, they're ready to jump on a call, they're clear in their answers — things like that. So we have just figured out the science to deciding if somebody's right for us or not. Because if you can't even reply to an email, we're likely gonna run into an issue with you showing up on time at the event — things like that.

So we don't want to put our clients at risk like that. We have enough amazing people in this city that we work with — and across Canada that we work with — that there's no reason to put your event at risk like that.

Mike Pinkus: Yeah. The saying "how you do one thing is how you do everything." And so it seems like a little thing with an email, but you're right — like, they might not show up to your event on time or, who knows what — they’ve shown a behavior, I guess.

Hailey Dawood: Exactly. And even the quality control — as simple as a photo booth — like, that's a category that's so saturated. And asking for the output, looking for simple things like the lighting, actually asking for somebody to send, like, photos that they've taken with the branded overlays that you're going to be buying from them, versus just trusting. Because there's photo booths that have been around since 2015, and then there's somebody who just bought a brand new one two years ago.

So it's like, same thing goes with — I don't want to get too technical here — but like pixel poi, the LED props. When you see circ performers spinning those — again, same thing — our performers have the most up-to-date technology, which means that's brighter for your logo, it's going to show up just really sharp images and look incredible, versus somebody that bought pixel poi in 2012 and is still using that pixel tool today.

These are like really minute things that you just wouldn't know from a Google search, to your point. So we get really excited about this stuff, because we feel like we are — we want to protect our clients. Like, we care a lot about them, and we care a lot about their events, and we really want them to look amazing to their teams and whoever it is that they're creating this event for. And yeah, we want the event to be amazing. So we feel like these small things are like our secret weapons that make the event really, really successful.

Mike Pinkus: I don't envy you, because you get one shot. It kind of feels like a wedding almost, where you're like — you show up, you're like — if this doesn’t go well… like, it has to go well every single time. Do you have, like… what happens when fires go off? Obviously, fires happen. You're dealing with people and companies and vendors, and like, how do you deal with that when — it sounds like your companies that you're dealing with are quite large, so they have quite a lot on the line — like, how do you stay organized so that things don’t explode? Because, like, it sounds scary to me to just coordinate all this stuff, all these vendors. You have to be responsible for what they do as well, right?

Hailey Dawood: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that is why our profession — which a lot of people don't know — actually ranks in the top five most stressful careers you could have, including like police officers and military personnel. Which I’m not saying I totally agree, but it is — it is high pressure stakes, to your point, that you are dealing with something that is live.

In terms of our team, we are incredibly tight with our processes. We have so many processes in our company. Like, everything is streamlined. We talk about an event multiple times — even if it is as small as a juggler. We have looked at everything, and multiple people have touched that event to ask a question or challenge something. We really encourage that on our team — like, challenge it. What is your gut telling you instinctively? Is there something that we need to do or add a layer of protection?

Does somebody need to be there with that particular talent? All those little things we go into. But what I will say is that — if you're still in the industry after 10 years, you have found your calm in the chaos. That is something, as an event planner or professional, that you have to overcome in this profession.

And I am glad that I stuck it out. I'm glad I didn't leave when it got hard. And yes, I went through all the anxiousness, the overwhelm, the stress — like, it was very overwhelming for the first couple years. But now I'm in a place — like I said — I have found my calm in the chaos. And what I always say is that you're not hiring me to make your event 100% perfect. You're hiring me so that when something goes wrong, I am calm in the chaos.

Hailey Dawood: I know how to navigate, right, that urgency probably better than you do because I've been around it for so long. And I know how to make a quick decision on the spot. And I'm prepared to do that. I would rather go in with the mindset that something could go wrong, because then I don't have to spend any time on the wrong — I'm already past that. Whereas most people get stuck on the fact that something actually is going wrong, I'm already emotionally past that and I'm into quick solution creation right there.

So I would rather have a professional on site that knows how to deal with it if something does happen.

Mike Pinkus: Yeah. That makes perfect sense. I do recall that the first time we did anything, you're going in with the mindset nothing's going to go wrong. You're just like, okay, we got it. Whereas you're going in with the mindset that you know something's going to go wrong…

Hailey Dawood: I'm going in with the mindset that I am confident in myself and my team if something goes wrong.

Mike Pinkus: Right. But what I'm getting at is, like, it could be something incredibly minor, but when people are ill-prepared for it, it's just like — yes, you can overwhelm them. Even the smallest of things.

Hailey Dawood: A hundred percent. Yeah. I don't think chasing perfection in an event is ever a successful mindset strategy. But you're going in knowing that you did everything to your absolute best. You've talked through everything, every detail. Everything you can do — you've done.

Mike Pinkus: Yeah. And I wanted to ask you about — so these customers that you help — I wanna talk a little bit about ICP, or ideal customer profile. And you mentioned, like, Big Four-type accounting firms, where they're obviously massive. And because they're putting on events for such a wide group of people, no matter how many internal people you have, to your point, the complexity is overwhelming. I mean, you need help to make things happen.

But I would imagine that a business with 50 people or 500 people or 1,000 people — they may not even have an internal person to deal with this type of stuff, but it's still a huge logistical thing. So I'm wondering — I could see for sure big corporations being a very, very good strategic fit — what is the makeup of your customer base, and who do you work with best, and what does that look like?

Hailey Dawood: Yeah, I'm so glad that you asked that, because really, you're right — initially, when I think of our clients, I do think of the big organizations. But we definitely help — truthfully — anybody that is planning a corporate event that needs the expertise, the knowledge, and the service is the perfect client for us.

I love working with a 50-person company or even a new company that has 10 people that want to do an executive retreat, just because it's so intimate with them. Like, it's their company, their heart's in it, my heart's in it, and then we come together and we create something really special.

So there's really not — for me — it's not really about the size or the brand name or anything like that. It's strictly like — I know if somebody needs my help. I speak to them and I'm like, "What are you trying to achieve? What are you trying to do?" And I can tell right away where they're already struggling.

Now, if I do speak to someone and, let's say, they're just as simple as looking for a photo booth for a holiday party, and they clearly are like super, super tight on budget and they're just looking — then I might actually suggest to them at that point, like, "Listen, I don't want to take part of your budget. You guys could do this on Google." Like, I will give somebody that advice. If I think something is very low risk for what they're asking for, I will tell them — go on Google, book it directly, you'll be fine.

So I'm really looking for people that want the service and the expertise.

Mike Pinkus: I think it makes a lot of sense. And I think if you can handle the big corporation, it means you have the processes and design to be able to cater to that type of client. Which means, yes, that there is an opportunity cost on your time for sure. If you've learned how to handle that type of customer, it means that you have the playbook for, I guess, all big businesses that need that type of help, right?

Hailey Dawood: Yeah. And everyone, ultimately — whether you're Ernst & Young or you're Shelly's Automotive — you're still a team. You're still in a corporate environment. One might appear a little bit more formal than another, but you're still in a corporate environment, and there are still things that we have to make sure are appropriate and professional.

I'm a team of seven, and there are still things on my team that are appropriate and professional. This is not a girls' hangout bachelorette weekend — this is still a company. So I think we also help — I actually like to think that we help — some of those smaller companies where maybe it is their first event or their second event, and we can actually add that quality standard.

Because we've done it for so many other clients, we can say, "Hey, this is actually a standard." Like you're saying, Mike, we can bring that standard into their company from an event standpoint and say, "This is kind of a standard that we suggest you follow." It does not mean it's stuffy. Honestly, a lot of the larger corporations are actually a lot more casual now, and they actually are quite fun. They're a little bit less structured than people think they are, just in this new age of what employees want at work.

So they actually have quite a fun culture too. But there are standards that we try and help bring in — even if it's filtering DJs' playlists, for example. That's a small detail that a lot of people miss. Little things like that we can still help them with.

Mike Pinkus: And that makes a lot of sense. It sounds like you remove the complexity. I mean, you gave the photo booth example where there are some things that are really simple, and maybe someone can just do it on their own. But then once complexity is starting to hit — whether that’s like a 50-, a 500-person company, a 200-person company — the reality is, it sounds like it's complexity where they're like, "Okay, I need someone that's been there and done this many, many times."

And I wanted to ask you, do you know how many events you guys have been involved with approximately?

Hailey Dawood: Well, we do about 200 to 300 a year.

Mike Pinkus: Wow.

Hailey Dawood: So I guess multiply that — many. But they’re all different sizes. Like, we work on such a range of events, so they're all different sizes, of course.

But yeah, I would say definitely we want to remove the complexity — that is our job. If we are not making your life easier, then what are you paying for, right? So 100%, we want to remove the complexity.

But the other thing I love — and I have loved since the day I got into this industry — is education. I love educating people on entertainment. I think too many times in events, people are told, "We need X," or, "You need to do X." I think it's really important to educate people — "This is why we are doing this. This is why we set up at this time. This is why we're asking for a monitor here."

If you work with me, you’ll learn so much along the way. And not that we take up a lot of your time with it, but just with every single thing we tell you, there’s a little bit of education with it, so that you feel really good about every decision that is being made or where your money’s going — and why that’s important.

Even when we first got into the industry, entertainment was not taken care of very well on-site. Most of the time, they were either not fed or they were ordered a box of pizza. We were one of the agencies that actually changed the way that entertainers were treated on-site, and I’m really proud of the work that we’ve done.

I would say in the early days, people would question and be like, “Oh, why am I paying for a meal?” or “Why am I paying for parking?” And now we never get that question anymore. All of our clients have been educated, and I would say the overall industry is educated — that you have these people that are getting up on stage and giving you a performance of a lifetime. Like, they’re going to give you everything for seven minutes.

Have you ever done a high-energy CrossFit class for seven minutes? You think seven minutes feels like an hour. That’s what they’re doing. So now you’ve given them pizza and you’re expecting them to go on your stage and entertain 800 people — or even 50 people. It doesn’t matter how many.

But again, it was the education that was missing. It wasn’t that people didn’t care. It wasn’t that people didn’t want to do it — they were never told why. And we came in, and we explained it to them, and we gave those little examples like, “Have you done a CrossFit class? Have you ever done a seven-minute quick marathon sprint?” Or whatever it is, so that we could put it in terms they could understand.

And then they were like, “Oh yeah, that makes complete sense. Let’s do it.” So I think that education is important.

Mike Pinkus: Yeah. And I think it allows you to maintain really close relationships with both the entertainers — the people that are part of your network — as well as your customers.

Hailey Dawood: Yes.

Mike Pinkus: Yeah. I wanted to ask you, Hailey — it sounds like a lot of work to coordinate all these things: the dates, the people, the logistics, the timing. How do you spend your time now that you're running the business? Like, how do you break up your average day?

Hailey Dawood: Oh, that is a good question. So, I use a couple tools that really help me block my time. And I obviously have to start with the fact that I have an incredible team — a really, really amazing team. I’ve definitely hired people that love details, like our operations manager. She loves information — loves it. She could sit in details all day long, which is amazing, and we’re so grateful for her.

So, I have an incredible team — that’s been really helpful. And I read Dan Martell’s book Buy Back Your Time and also Deep Work by Cal Newport. I would say both of those books were game changers for me.

Buy Back Your Time, for sure — one of the things that really resonated with me is, if someone can do your job 80% as well as you, that's 100% back of your own time. That’s when I really flipped the switch on being able to let go. I’m actually okay letting go — my team sometimes is like, “No, no, we want you,” and I’m like, “No, you’re okay.” And then, of course, sometimes it is something I need to see, and we’ve established that in our company — what I need to approve and what I don’t.

I’ve worked very intentionally with them not to take the low-hanging fruit. It’s so easy to answer your team’s questions. But ultimately, that’s not just about my time — that’s about their development. I care about them becoming really great at what they do. And to do that, they have to believe in themselves, they have to bet on themselves and be willing to take a little bit of risk that they might be wrong.

So Buy Back Your Time helped me actually even to care about my time. And then Deep Work allowed me to understand that in order to actually grow and move my business forward, I have to work on big projects that move the needle — not just emails in my inbox, which is very easy to get stuck in with events. There’s always a small thing to confirm.

So I block my calendar. In the morning and in the afternoon, I have deep work time. And then I use Trello. I put every small task or big project on there — whether it’s a side project or something client-related. When I have that deep work time pop up, I go to my Trello board, I check what project I need to work on for the next hour or two, and I basically turn off everything and dive right in.

I’m usually online around 7:00 a.m., so I get a solid two hours in before my team comes on. I’m an early riser, and my brain works best in the morning. That’s when I get big projects or decks done.

I have good discipline. I don’t run on stress. And I think stress is what causes you to get distracted by everything — you get hooked on the drama of it. I have a good ability to not let things become more dramatic than they are. Of course, if something is urgent, I can assess and pull myself away to handle it. But for the most part, I’ve trained my team to make decisions, and my calendar is scheduled to allow for deep work.

And honestly, I believe that’s why our company has grown so significantly in the last couple of years. Both Fadi — my husband, and our Chief Strategy Officer — and I have held ourselves accountable to these side projects that contribute to growth.

And one more thing — we meet every Sunday. Every Sunday morning, we sit down for our strategy meeting. We’re accountable to each other. I have to complete the projects I committed to, and so does he. There’s no “I’m the owner, I’ll get to it later.” There’s accountability on both sides.

Mike Pinkus: You two remind me of — I don’t know if you’re familiar with Alex Hormozi and Layla.

Hailey Dawood: We love them. We love them.

Mike Pinkus: I was gonna say — budding Alex and Layla here!

Hailey Dawood: Haha, yeah.

Mike Pinkus: When a husband-wife duo — like two partners — come together and build a business, it’s a very cool thing. And I think it breaks a lot of molds and stereotypes — people thinking it can’t be done. And yeah. That leads me to my next question: what have been the biggest challenges — not only with your team, but with customers? What’s been challenging over the last little bit, over these five years since you’ve taken over and been building the business?

Hailey Dawood: Yeah. I mean, there’s so many things along the way.

I would say the biggest blessing of the pandemic was that I rebuilt the team afterward. Unfortunately, we did have to temporarily lay off everyone. Then people ended up finding jobs during that time. So when we came back, I was rebuilding from scratch — which was a blessing in disguise, because our culture wasn’t great before the pandemic. There was a lot of gossip, drama, things going on. And I was adamant that we would not let that happen again if I had a second chance to rebuild.

A couple things I held myself accountable to as I think about challenges: not being friends with my employees — that was a big one. You hear it all the time in business books, but sometimes you don’t get a chance to start over. I honestly think you have to experience it to really get it. I went through that, and then I had the chance to start again.

So now we have a strict policy — no gossip, no negative talk, not even about a client. It’s not tolerated in our company. Even if a vendor is rude, we don’t tolerate our team talking about them negatively. We do not drop our standards for anyone.

I always start with team — because if you don’t have a great culture and a great team, everything else will stem back to that leaky hole. A lot of the problems you experience originate with how your team is run — are they frustrated? Are they facing issues? That can ripple out and cause more problems.

I’m very proud of that. But don’t get me wrong — we’ve had to part ways with employees that weren’t the right fit. So that’s definitely been a challenge.

And of course, the pandemic was a big one. We had no events.

Mike Pinkus: Is that when you started virtual events, or did you have them before?

Hailey Dawood: Yeah, no, that's when we started virtual. I knew nothing about virtual. And about two months in — it was like June of the pandemic — I got a call and someone was asking for cocktail kits to be shipped out. And I just thought, you know what, okay — we are used to getting unique calls. So I was already used to getting a phone call about a problem I had to solve or something that somebody needed.

So I just said to myself, “Well Hailey, this isn't really any different. Somebody's asking you to solve a problem, so look at the problem and solve it.” Now, of course, we went through reiterations of these cocktail kits, and I had to learn shipping across the country and all that stuff — which was brand new to me. And then it’s like, “Well, what can ship overnight?” There was a lot of learning that went into this.

But the mindset that got me through the pandemic — I would say two things helped us kind of rise above the rest. One: I don’t have an identity as anything. So I’m not glued to being a live event planner. I’m not glued to being a virtual event planner. I’m not even glued to being an event planner. A lot of people, their identity was that — and their comfort was there. So when it was taken away from them, they needed a lot more time to emotionally process that.

Whereas I was not emotionally connected — and I actually think that’s a strength, to not connect yourself. Because things will change. Our entire world is constantly changing, and it’s only changing faster with the rate of technology. So I’m ready to go with any change at any time. I don’t spend time worrying about it.

So that was one — I was already open to change. And two — I promised myself that it was okay to be a beginner. And this was after six years of being an expert, and everyone praising me and saying how great of a job The Idea Hunter did, and our team, and all that. So we were considered, already at that time, experts.

But I decided to come in with the beginner mindset. And why that was important was because I had to be okay with making mistakes — in an industry where you have a lot of Type A’s, you have a lot of perfectionists, and you have a lot of achievers. And I’m an achiever — that’s my personality type too.

So being okay with not being that anymore was really important. And I knew I had eight months. I kind of gave myself until January — until the new year — because after that, I knew the leniency would start to go away, and the clients would just consider this the new normal.

But for the first eight months, the clients — all of us — were learning at the same time. So I was okay to fall. But I had to fall as many times as possible, as quickly as possible, so that I could be ready for that when the door closed on being allowed to make mistakes.

I think those two things really helped. And yeah, in that time, we built out a massive virtual database. We still offer virtual events. I actually really love and enjoy virtual events. I am more than happy to run them.

We have clients across the U.S. who do virtual events with us. We actually run a tournament for a client — we’ve been doing it for five years — for over 1,200 employees, for four to five weeks every year. And it’s won two awards. It’s super fun, and we’re doing it again coming up in the spring.

So yeah, it’s just being open, I think, to learning — and being okay when you’re learning something new.

Mike Pinkus: That's so cool. We're a virtual company — we're a remote company — and yeah, there's not a lot of options for things like that. So it's really cool to know that you guys learned how to do that by being hit with what could have been like a black swan type event. Like, a global pandemic when you're in the event space is so... yeah. Crazy.

I wanted to go back to something you said, Hailey, which was — you were commenting on culture. The fact that you now, in retrospect, feel happy that you rebuilt — that there was gossiping, and that you now have all these standards. Were those driven through core values? Or like, how did you — it seems like you gained an awareness of what you wanted The Idea Hunter to be, and that when things weren't going in that direction, or you felt like you maybe had team members that didn't fully align with your vision — how did you build that out?

Did you get the right people on the bus post-pandemic through core values? Was it standards? Like, how did you go about figuring out the right people and bringing them on the bus?

Hailey Dawood: Yeah, that's a great question. Uh, and by the way, I very much was in the pool of people that was not operating at the highest standards. So it was also a correction of myself and my behavior as a leader. It, you know, you set the tone for sure. So it was also an opportunity for me to forgive myself and restart and bring better habits into the workplace. . Because I realized it's really hard to go backwards. It's not impossible. I don't wanna say that to anybody that's listening that wants to correct a culture. I really do think anything can change. . But it was just such a window of opportunity because I was starting with a blank slate in terms of attracting talent. There's no question that there's some obvious signs—if somebody's obviously complaining or very negative, mm-hmm, or talking about things from a past job.

Hailey Dawood: That's like a very clear sign. But truthfully, like most of the people we hire have a good foundation. They will have a natural desire to gossip because that is human nature. That is what 90—it's actually quite rare to find a company that operates like ours. Most people are used to being negative. We talk about the news. Yeah. We complain about the weather. It's a normal, actually part of natural just human connection. Right. So we explain to our employees why we don't do that. One example I like to give them—and this is how I am with everything—I like to give reasoning. I don't like to say, "We don't gossip. You're not..." It's like, okay, they're just gonna do it. Like, it's not like you—

Mike Pinkus: Have to like help them. They gossip about how Hailey told them not to gossip. Yeah, exactly.

Hailey Dawood: They'd be like, "Can't believe she told us not to gossip." Um, so it's not really like something, to be honest, that we say like forthright. Yeah. Um, but even what I said to them the other day was like, if we tolerate this in our company—in our Slack channel, let's say—and then you guys are in a green room at an event (green room being a space that the staff can go into), and all of a sudden you say something. And by the way, this has very much happened to people at events, near their clients. Now they go into the green room, they're complaining about their client. Hmm. And now all of a sudden, they don't realize that their client was standing by the door or somebody was in there that overheard them. And I was like, "I'm telling you, like I've heard the horror stories."

Hailey Dawood: I've heard it happen. You don't want that to be you. You don't wanna put in months of work and then ruin it because you brought the wrong attitude to an event. So it's a standard that we hold. And I always say, I'm like, "By the way, if you're gossiping about this, mm-hmm, well somebody else is gonna gossip about you." So this protects the employees within the company, and we always prioritize the culture as something that we all love and we really wanna preserve as a team. So I think it was just about doing it gently. It wasn't like coming in hard with any rules or anything like that, because culture—and gossip—lives on its own. It's not a rule. You can't make it a policy, but you can lead by example. You can continue to emphasize the benefits. Like, what if you guys worked at a place that didn't have that?

Hailey Dawood: Like, have you ever worked at a place like that? Wouldn't that be so great if, like, you could trust your team and not feel like people were backstabbing you? . Or doing these things? So I think over the year—and yeah, if we did feel—we will let go of a top performer if they do not fit our culture. That is not, mm-hmm, something that we will hesitate on. It is, in my opinion, it's a must. And again, you'll see it in every business book. It is hard to do, but culture is critical to the overall heart of the organization. So—

Mike Pinkus: Why are the right decisions always so hard?

Hailey Dawood: Because they make you bigger and better. And, uh, they're testing you. That's what they're doing. They're testing you if you're really ready for the next step.t

Mike Pinkus: Yeah. I only have a couple more for you, Hailey. I know we're running—we're running up on... This is—I love talking to you.

Hailey Dawood: Mike, I'm having fun too.

Mike Pinkus: And I'm wondering where you see the business going over the next three to five years. You guys have built up a reputation to work with big brands, midsize companies, doing all sorts of things. You've gone through a pandemic, which is obviously like—I mean, if you can survive that, that is like definitely not in the strategy book of like, "Hey, what could go wrong this year?" Oh, you can't leave your house. Whoops. Like, uh... So where do you see the business going in the next three to five years?

Hailey Dawood: Well, I would say that even though we've been around for so long, I feel like there's still so much untapped potential in our own city and country, 'cause we are nationwide. So we've definitely done a lot of improvement just on actually letting people find us. And thank you so much for having me today, 'cause this is another opportunity for people to find our service. So I really feel like we haven't even helped all the people that we can help in this city. So that's one.

Uh, two, we've expanded into decor and full event management. So we don't just do entertainment and activations—we do full events. And that has also been almost like a new baby coming out of the company. . So that's part of the next evolution. And again, talking about like now we can help even more people, because there's a lot of people who need support with those services that maybe don't need as much on the other IID side, but they need the coordination and the decor and things like that.

Hailey Dawood: . So that's one area just to say like there's still so much untapped potential in what we already do, and just continue to finesse it, grow it, and then optimize how people actually find us—which is something my husband works on. And then in terms of what's to come next, I am so focused on tech and digital and optimizing through tech. I think that—we have made a lot of strides. Hence even working and outsourcing with you guys—that was like one of the big moves that we made, and it was so important for the company.

So that is what we're really focused on, is like, how do we actually optimize the internal part of the company? . So that we can do more and we can service our clients better. If we're not using the right technology, if we're not outsourcing to the right providers—again, like yourself—we are not really able to fully service our clients. So I think looking at the arteries of the company right now is what's gonna let us like shoot into the stratosphere. And the more tech we can implement—mm-hmm—we can go into more markets, we can go into the U.S., we can bring The Idea Hunter anywhere. There's not a city I've been to or a planner I have met that didn't say to me, "Hailey, I wish your service was in my city." .

Mike Pinkus: I would agree. You have so much probably untapped, and those network effects kick in from hustle and word of mouth and all those things. And I could see that happening for you guys. And I was gonna ask you one last thing, Hailey, which is—you've been in this a decade. Like, which honestly, like you said, high stress environment, being an entrepreneur is not for the faint of heart. And I'm sure you have horror stories and other things—we could talk for hours about like things that go wrong beyond anything you can imagine. And we've all been there.

But if you were to give a lesson or two to someone that is maybe earlier stage than you and hasn't been in it for as long as you have, what advice would you give them? Because they are gonna hit troubles and issues and stress and all those things that you seem to be calm about now, I guess, after experiencing it for a long duration. But what advice would you give to someone who's newer into business or is looking to just scale their business and deal with those roadblocks?

Hailey Dawood: I think that's a great question. I would say that my belief system coming into this industry was that I did not have to burn out and be stressed. And it is a choice to tune into an industry's belief system. .

When I came in, I saw this—kind of the industry is my mom's generation because my mom started the company. So she was around all those planners, which, by the way, taught me everything I know. Not a bad thing to say about them. They're amazing, and they truly are some of the smartest, most capable people I've ever met.

But I did—I had the benefit that maybe they didn't have. I had the benefit of seeing it from the outside. . I was so new to this industry. I had a business degree. I did not go to school for events. When I came in here, I was like looking into a glass window or something. . And I'm very interested in human behavior. That is—my favorite class in school was literally human behavior and marketing.

And I picked up very quickly on how the overall ecosystem was working. And I saw a lot of burnout. I saw people, what I felt, was giving their bodies and their lives to this. And I was really determined to be in this industry but not do that.

Hailey Dawood: So I think the fact that I already came in with a bit of a personal challenge and a belief system—that even with my mom, like even though she was my mom—I still believed, even in the same company, same industry, that I did not have to operate under that level of stress. .

So one was a belief system. Because if you have a belief system, you will find the way, you'll find the answers. If I believed that I had to be stressed, trust me, I would be a mess. . By now, 10 years later—who knows, maybe I wouldn't even have been in this industry.

And this is coming from somebody that was actually quite an anxious kid. . I couldn't handle overwhelm. If you gave me a lot of things on my plate, I would cry—literally. . My only reaction was to just cry, 'cause I didn't know how to get the energy out of my body. Yeah. So it was something I really overcame—not just in the industry, but for my own personality and myself.

And I share that very confidently and happily, because I know a lot of girls and guys out there struggle with that. . Struggle with that anxious feeling, that feeling that there's too much pressure on them and they don't know how to handle it. So I was really determined to overcome that.

And the tactics that I used—if, you know, you wanna get tactical on it—again, I believe that if you have a belief, you will find the answers that are right for you. So you don't need to use somebody else's tactics. But if that belief has led you to listen to me right now, mine are for sure: meditation, having coaches. And we go deep on meditation—so I'm into Joe Dispenza, I've been to a meditation retreat. I'm not talking silent retreat, I'm talking about actually understanding the mind.

I had to go through tons of different things that I've done to handle stress: going to the gym, having a really good routine there.

Hailey Dawood: And then just continuing to reiterate—so, uh, if I have to block my calendar, like if it's becoming, "Okay, I'm giving so much energy," like, I'm very aware of myself. So if I'm giving so much energy, it's because I haven't blocked my calendar properly. I haven't given myself like one day off with no meetings. Or maybe it's a full afternoon with no meetings. So I'm not just letting life pass me by. I am getting into the nitty gritty of what's causing this stress and overwhelm, and where can I put a boundary? Where can I say no?

And boundaries, of course—again, the list goes on and on—but not answering calls on the weekend. Like, I never opened myself up to that in the first place. My clients get the fastest service from me, but they do not call me on the weekend, 'cause I never responded—mm-hmm—to casual texts on the weekend from them, from day one. So they would never do it now. Barriers... yeah, I could go on and on and on, but again, I'm just gonna say, if you have the belief system in the first place, you will find the answers along the way, and you will align back to what you're actually trying to achieve.

Mike Pinkus: It's so funny, I feel like the more intense your journey, the more people—there's commonalities across business owners and entrepreneurs. You're like, the way you're explaining beliefs and meditation, I feel like it's my own life. Like, I mean, everyone that you've talked about—Joe Dispenza, all these people, mindset of being a positive thinker—I feel like everyone I talk to, it's almost like everyone meditates. Everyone—because mental health is connected to physical health.

And like you said, it's a belief system where it's almost like there's this culture of, "You know it's gonna be hard." And so you have a choice to fall into that and get overwhelmed by that, or step back and go, "Do I have to be this way?" And it is a choice—but it's hard to learn that. And that's why I could see, Hailey, you've obviously gone deep on this by going to retreats and really learning the craft of all these things.

Mike Pinkus: And, um, I have a lot of respect for what—first of all, I've had conversations with Fatty as well over the last while. He's amazing and super technical as well. Yes. And I feel like you guys have broken a lot of molds. Meaning, normally, you have a business go with the next generation—it gets worse. Not because the next generation doesn't know anything; it's just they're less intense and intentional sometimes, or they've gotten used to watching things being done.

That's clearly not the case with you. And then, partners going into business together—again, stereotypes that aren't real—they're belief systems that people have. And so I think it's really cool what you guys have built and scaled, and I'm excited to see you guys go further.

Hailey Dawood: Appreciate it. Thank you so much. And I do just want to say one thing on that—how you're saying that you're seeing this commonality—'cause I was talking to somebody about this the other day. I think there's this idea that meditation is for calm, and it's for breathing, and definitely there's a mental health component there too. But what people aren't seeing is that meditation is a competitive strategy. But because it has this soft tone to it, it gets overlooked.. Easily. . And it becomes very optional.

I've heard a lot, "Oh, I go to the gym. That's meditation." That's not meditation, because you're conscious—you're not subconscious. You have to be in your subconscious mind in order to meditate. And then with meditation, you can get into actually attracting things to you, and there's actual science behind it. So if you're looking for that leg up and that competitive strategy, I would not overlook meditation.

And I'll leave it at that, because if I even try and open the door, there's way too many—

Mike Pinkus: Rabbit hole.

Hailey Dawood: —spend another hour—rabbit hole—we'd spend another hour on it. But I would say that if you've even been interested and been like, "Oh, maybe not," there's a reason why CEOs of companies—it's not because they're stressed. It is because they've actually overcome stress. Potentially—everybody's a different story—but a lot of them actually are using it as a competitive strategy. And I would say I use meditation as a competitive strategy. So something to look into. I always tell people, "I'll leave it with that."

Mike Pinkus: Amazing. Well, thanks again, Hailey, for spending the time and—really incredible story. And where can people find you if they want to learn more about Idea Hunter? Like, do they find you on LinkedIn? The website?

Hailey Dawood: Definitely. So, uh, we are very active on Instagram, so you can find us at The Idea Hunter. You can also find me personally—I'm active on Instagram as well. So hailey_dawood—that was the best I could find. And then Hailey Dawood on LinkedIn as well. And I would love to connect. If anything resonated with you on this podcast, please shoot me a message. I would love to connect with you.

Mike Pinkus: Amazing. Thanks again, Hailey. Really appreciate it.

Hailey Dawood: Thank you, Mike. You're amazing. Thank you so much.

Mike Pinkus: Hailey Dawood just gave us a masterclass in what it really takes to build a high-performing, service-driven company—especially in an industry as high-stakes and chaotic as events.

One of the biggest takeaways for me was Hailey's philosophy of being calm in the chaos. Hailey instinctively knows things will go wrong. However, it's her composure, systems, and quick decision-making that can turn potential disasters into seamless event experiences. I believe that mindset isn't just for event planners—it's a lesson in leadership.

Another thing that struck me is Hailey's approach to culture. After rebuilding The Idea Hunter from the ground up post-pandemic, Hailey made an intentional decision to lead with higher standards. That meant no gossip, no negative talk—even in stressful moments. That clarity of values creates a workplace where trust thrives, and clients can feel it too.

Finally, I learned that one of Hailey's key success tools is a deep commitment to self-development. From meditation retreats to building time for deep work, Hailey lives a life where performance comes from intention, not stress. Meditation for Hailey isn't just about relaxation—it's a competitive strategy. That's a perspective I think most entrepreneurs need to adopt.

That's it for today. As always, keep scaling up and breaking barriers.