And welcome back to lead the team.

What does it take to transform a childhood dream into a global leadership role at one of the world's most iconic entertainment companies?

That's right.

Cirque du Soleil.

They expect to put on over 8,000 shows and sell 10 million to 12 million tickets this year.

And Duncan Fisher's journey from a young gymnast in Leeds, England, to the chief show operations officer at Cirque du Soleil is nothing short of extraordinary.

He was a state champion gymnast and member of the junior British team, and then already performing at elite levels by the time most kids were just learning the basic basics of gymnastics.

And then he ran off as a teen to join the circus as an acrobat and eventually join a circus company in North America.

And then by 24, he transitioned from performing to managing show operations, a move that set the stage for a remarkable career behind the scenes.

And over the years, Duncan has held pivotal roles, including producing major events like the Inventing Flight Festival and the Independence Day speech for President George W.

Bush.

And then in 2018, he joined Cirque du Soleil.

And today, he oversees the entire worldwide portfolio of the company's touring and and resident shows, making him the first ex performer in the C suite since Guy.

Or I'll.

I'll pronounce it correctly.

G la liberte.

Wow.

Duncan, let's roll.

Welcome to lead the team, sir.

Thank you very much.

It's great to be here.

Thanks for inviting me on.

Yeah, yeah.

And that was a big intro, but I really wanted to lay the land for everybody because what a fun career and a fun business you are in.

But let's start this out by telling us about the day that the Secret Service showed up at your event in Dayton.

Oh, wow.

That was in 2003, as you just referenced.

We did a speech for.

For President Bush.

And we were working on the 100th anniversary of the Invention of Flight Festival to celebrate the invention of flight, which the Wright brothers obviously were from Dayton, Ohio.

So that's where the major celebration was from.

This is where I was.

I had my own production company, and I was hired by a company called MC Squared to produce this festival for 17 days to celebrate the hundredth anniversary.

And George Bush was scheduled to come and speak at the.

At the opening of the.

Of the ceremony, which was the festival.

Sorry.

Which was the.

The fourth of July.

And on the first of July, we were getting ready and we had a visit from the White House contingent to make sure everything was okay.

And there was them.

The Secret Service showed up and Basically every Tom, Dick, and Harry that had anything to do with this festival.

In the city of Dayton, the state of Ohio, there was 50, 60 people in this.

There was the White House entourage, and then the.

The government entourage garage.

And we walked around.

I showed them the whole place where the stage was going to be, where he was going to make his speech, and this is that.

And then over here, blah, blah, blah.

And at the end of this, there must have been a hundred people standing around.

And the.

The leader of the.

Of the Secret Service delegation said to me, says, hey, can I.

Can I have a quick word with you?

And he pulled me.

Pulled me aside and said, yeah, come on over here.

And we kind of ducked to the side of the stage and.

And he just said, I'm not bringing him here.

I was like, oh, okay.

What do you mean?

And he says.

He says, there's no way.

The way that this is set up with the.

The way to get in, the way to get out.

There's two.

It's too difficult.

I can't.

You know, I can't.

I can't deal with this.

We're not bringing him here.

There's no way.

He said, so we're going to have to tell everybody that.

And the leader of the White House delegation so was with us, and he said, is there anything else that we can do?

And I'm thinking, my brain's going like this.

And the guy at the Secret Service basically said, the only way we're going to bring him here is if he stays on the Air Force Base.

So I'm like, okay, that can work.

Because we had an event at the Air Force Base.

We were doing a balloon launch at the Air Force Base as part of the festival.

So I said, okay, we can figure something out and we can make it work at the.

At the.

At the Air Force Base.

So we were here July 1st.

I'm being told that I have to create an event from scratch for, obviously, TV and 25 to 30,000 live people in an audience in two days for the president of the US on the 4th of July.

So I'm like, okay.

And they're like, okay, can you make it happen?

Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, we can do it.

So.

So you said, yes, that was the appropriate response.

No problem.

And so.

So, yeah, so we spent the next day calling every supplier that we knew to get all the equipment we needed, the staging, the.

The seating that we had to put up, bleachers, a stage, the video screens, everything else that we needed for an event.

We.

We had everything that I mean, we had, you know, we had stuff for the festival anyway, so we knew who to call, but it's like, okay, you got more?

Can you send us something else?

Everything came into Dayton then on the next day, which is now, you know, July the second, we started setting up on the third.

The, the guys at the, the Air Force base commander was amazing.

The Secret Service worked with us.

It was things like, wow, we're looking like, you know, we're pretty bare bones.

We don't have much decoration here.

So the Air Force base commander says, well, I can bring you some stuff.

So we brought an F1 bomber on one side and, and, and, and something else on the other side of the stage, replaced these planes.

The Secret Service was building scaffolding towers to put snipers on top.

And because this is like 2003.

It was right after 2000, you know, 9.

11.

Yeah, 9, 11.

So it was heightened.

They were pretty serious about stuff.

Anyway, so July 3rd came along and we finished in the middle of the night on July 3rd.

Everybody had gone.

And of course, during all this, I still had a team that was trying to get this festival ready to open on the same day that we'd been working on for 18 months.

Yeah.

The main event that goes on for over two weeks.

Right.

This is your side project is getting exactly.

I split the team up to work on this and to work on, on the festival.

The opening ceremony of the festival happened on the night of July 3rd.

So I left the setup at the Air Force base, went to the opening ceremonies where we had Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and John Glenn on the same stage to open the, to open the festival.

I watched that, went back to the Air Force base, and in the middle of the night, everything was done.

And probably 4 o' clock in the morning is pitch black.

We're done.

There's only me and one military policeman left who's there guarding what we're doing.

And I was like.

And I, and I stood on the podium, you know, the podium that the, the President makes his speeches from when they go out of the White House.

The thing is so big and heavy, it's bomb proof.

He can get in it if there was a problem.

Like there's, there's doors and you can go in it and his lectern he.

Can climb into in case the one that we had.

Yeah.

When it's not in the White House, it's, it's, it's.

He can't get into it at least.

This was 20 years ago.

I don't know now But.

And I stood on.

I stood on the.

On the podium, on the lectern there.

And I was like, man, I wish somebody could see me now.

And the only thing I could think of was, you know what?

My mom's up.

I'm going to call my mom.

Because she's in the uk.

She's awake.

So I got.

I called my mom.

I said, mom, you'll never guess where I am.

So where are you?

I said, well, I'm standing on the stage where the president's going to give his speech tomorrow.

And she's like, oh, that's nice, dear.

She's like, yeah, sure.

Yeah, yeah, sure.

Okay.

So anyway, I just wanted to tell somebody.

Bye.

Wow.

That was that.

And then the next day, here we come.

Air Force One flies into the Air Force base.

They drive him from the plane to the stage.

He goes on, he does his speech, gets back in the car on the plane, and off he goes.

And it went off without a hitch.

But it was one of those things where it's like, okay, there's some lessons to be learned here about.

Yeah, what were the big lessons?

I can think of about a hundred potentially.

But, like, what are the big ones that really.

Yeah.

Stuck with you.

I think the, you know, the.

One of.

The first one was that the, the preparation that we had for the festival, first of all, was.

Was immaculate.

There.

We.

We had.

Because if we'd have been scrambling to finish the festival, there was no way that we would been able to have taken this other thing.

Right.

So, you know, you have the capacity.

At that point, we have the capacity to do it.

One of my, One of my old mentors.

Not old.

He's.

He's.

He's older than me, but he's.

He's not.

He always used to say when we were planning things, it was always, you know, make sure you plan for happens.

And, you know, you don't know what that's going to be.

You don't know when it's going to happen.

You don't know what's going to happen.

You.

But you better have time for that.

But still, I build that into your expectation.

Like, we don't know what's going to happen, but we know there's going to be something.

Yeah, exactly.

So we, we always have that time, the time that we try to put in the bank.

And if we can get ahead, we put some time in the bank, just like you would put money in the bank.

We always.

When we're.

When we're doing events, we always try to put time in the bank, because you never know what's going to happen.

So we did that, and that allowed us to be able to have the capacity to do this.

And then it's one of those things where you could be so overwhelmed by it.

Oh, my God.

We got to set up for the president in two days.

Okay.

But it's like, okay, break it down, Break it down.

Simplify it.

You do this little bit.

You do this little bit.

I'll do this little bit.

And small steps, and we can get there.

We know who to call.

They know what equipment to bring.

We know we can set up things.

We need a few more people.

Again, we know who to call.

So no panicking.

Break it down small steps, and we can.

We can accomplish this.

Love that.

So I think so.

It's an overwhelming.

It was an overwhelming moment, but you made it not overwhelming for your team because you were able to break it down into actionable steps because they were probably already exhausted, and they're like, really?

We're doing it over here.

But.

But you're to break it down.

And that made it more manageable.

Yeah, it turned out.

Turned out great.

It was.

It was an amazing thing.

And at the end of the day, I was not even there.

I was at the festival site and watched it on tv.

Are you serious?

You're like, well, I was just standing there last night talking to my mom.

Yeah.

Oh, gosh.

So I was actually didn't get to shake hands with George W.

No.

But he sent me a very nice letter which.

Which hangs on my wall in my office now saying, thank you very much.

Okay.

That was.

That was okay to have a little gratitude.

Yeah.

Oh, man.

Well, what.

What a cool story to open this up with.

And thank you for hitting that out of the gate like that, sharing that, because leaders need to think about these things, and who better to learn from one of the best event and show companies in the world.

And what you shared are really universal lessons.

And I love this idea about, hey, on your big projects, put time in the bank as you go along for a rainy day and.

Or a new opportunity like you had.

I mean, one, it was a bad situation, but what a huge opportunity to host.

Yeah.

President of the United States.

Yeah.

You know, it was great.

And at the end of the day, everybody looked like superstars and felt like superstars for pulling it off.

So it was great, you know?

Well, I want to dive into your background, but before we get there, something that I came across on LinkedIn and I thought was so interesting that you wrote, because the term circus is frequently used by a lot of people in the press as a metaphor for chaos and incompetence.

Like the leader coming in and saying, you guys are, you know this, you're running a circus around here, but you have really gone on a mission to dispel this notion.

And people can probably already hear why this is so near and dear to your heart.

But share with us, you know, what kind of like, what's your perspective on that?

And what is it real and what is it really like running the.

The top?

I don't even know if you guys really.

I mean, Cirque du Soleil is not really a circus.

Right?

It's a lot more than just that.

It's a lot more than.

I mean, it is.

You know, it's.

Obviously, it comes from the circus background, but now, you know, Cirque du Soleil really rewrote the.

The rules as far as performance goes and really created its own thing, which is called cir.

But it, it's circus, it's theater.

It's.

It's, you know, it's.

It's still incredible human performance at the end of the day, but it's wrapped in a massive spectacle of costumes and sets and storytelling and, you know, so it is a bit different.

But, yeah, this whole notion came to me.

I remember I was sitting on a flight coming home from Korea, so I had a long time to think about it, too.

And I was just scrolling and I saw an article in the Guardian from the UK newspaper.

And it didn't just say something was a circus.

The headline was, we don't need any more circus.

So that really set me off because you see circus all the time.

You know, people say this is a circus.

It's a political circus.

This is a circus.

But when somebody actually used our name of the company, I was like, okay, that's too far.

That's too far.

So I started pushing back, and then I started thinking more and more about this.

And just to finish that, I did push back.

It was on LinkedIn and I called the guy out who wrote the story.

Story.

He apologized and I invited him to the show in London, and we ended up meeting and talking about it.

So it was a great story, right?

Yeah.

And now here are two tickets, and let's see what you really think.

Say it to my face.

That's cool.

Exactly.

You'll find that on my LinkedIn as well.

And quick plug.

Any of you, any of your listeners that want to follow what I'm saying, please follow me on LinkedIn.

But, yeah, so we ended up as friends, and he's a big supporter of Cirque du Soleno.

But it inspired me to start thinking and talking about the notion of what a circus is.

And you're absolutely right.

I generally open my speech by saying, what would you think if I told you you run your business like a circus?

And of course, as soon as you say that, people will be like, it's an insult.

Or it's chaos.

It's confusion.

It's.

It's incompetence.

And the thing is that the circus is so far away from that.

We are one of the most organized companies, organizations in the whole world, when you think about it.

We have people from all over the world.

We recruit from everywhere for the performers, for the technicians, the people that work here.

We have employees from everywhere.

And when they're on the shows, whether they're on the stage or setting up the massive tents and the rigging, they're literally trusting each other with their lives.

Like, literally.

And that is not taken lightly.

It's the most serious thing that we.

We look at.

You know, we.

The most.

The biggest thing that we want is we want everybody to go home at the end of the day.

And that takes planning.

It takes organization to make the shows happen.

And it's not just the performers you see on stage.

It's the riggers that are holding people with the winches and the cables.

It's the timing of the lights going on and the lights going off so that people can see what they're doing.

We're looking after thousands and thousands of audience members that come in and have to come into our facilities and leave safely.

And then we pack everything up in three days into 100 trucks or sea containers, move it sometimes across the world, set it all up again, and do a show.

So the planning and the logistics around that, you know, we just did a documentary.

We flew a show from Sydney, Australia, to New York City.

You know.

You know, it took us a week to get from one, from one side of the world to the other and set up and doing shows in New York City.

So this notion that the circus is chaos, that it's unorganized.

So I've really been.

Been pushing back on that.

And I talk about how we operate with the teams, the teams that have chemistry, we operate with creativity.

And then at the end of the day, all that results in amazing customer experience.

So that's.

That's been my message that I have been talking about a lot lately.

So when someone says, hey, you're.

You're running things around here, Like a circus.

Your goal is to have them say, yeah, we are, thank you very much, and I want to raise.

Yeah, that's a compliment.

Yes.

So you already gave us a couple big ones from your days and, and the George Bush last minute deal.

What are, what are a couple of other ideas that you think leaders can learn from the circus slash Cirque du Soleil in terms of how you're running things, how you're doing it, And I got a couple of questions around that, but just take it in direction you like.

Yeah.

As I just said, you know that I, I talk about chemistry, creativity, and customer experience.

I think those are the three things that, that we try and focus on a lot.

When I talk about chemistry, I'm talking about the teams and how they work together and the way that we're set up to operate.

And I'll be honest, I, I take a lot of this from General Stanley McChrystal's book, the Team of Teams.

Okay.

Yes.

I think it's incredible.

And that, that mode of operating, it really fits us.

It really fits us.

And you know, it's, it's amazing how it, it's a very different end product.

But the military and the circus is very similar in the way that we operate.

Is, is it true, speaking about this, like these teams, so you have multiple, I'll say functions because you have the performers, but there's like everybody else associated with the show probably outnumber the performers because they've got to keep it safe, keep it flowing.

And is it true too, I read that you have people from 20 different countries working on one show.

On one show maybe, but across the whole company, maybe 50, 50 different countries, we have people from everywhere.

So it's like a real multicultural.

It is a legitimate global enterprise.

Yeah.

Not just, not just the people coming, but inside.

So you're having to tackle language differences, you're having to tangle, tackle different operational perspectives that they bring because the people that are the artists that are performing, they don't speak the language of maintenance and, and stage lighting necessarily.

And then you have the actual cultural differences.

So what are you doing to bring people together to work on these shows when there are so many differences to tackle?

Yeah, we, we have a quite an extensive integration process when, when people who are, you know, not speaking the same language or serious cultural differences or even acrobatic differences.

You know, you can take a gymnast who's a fantastic Olympic gymnast, but you still have to train them to be on the stage.

It's a bit of a different, A Bit of a different tact.

So we bring everybody here to Montreal and we, we work on what they're going to do in the show here.

Probably before they go out to a show or if we're creating a new show, you know, what they're going to do on the show.

And, and here we have a big integration process that goes from, you know, we, we have a bank of interpreters that speak every single language that exists that we can bring in as necessary.

A lot of times if we'll.

We bring, for example, a Chinese acrobat doing something, they may well come with a family member or somebody from their, their gym, their organization, their school who acts as a interpreter for them and travels with them.

So we do have that as well.

But then, you know, they'll come here, we'll make sure that they get a bank account opened up so we can pay them.

We'll make sure that, you know, they have all the, the necessary working permits to go to the different countries that they're going to go to, that they have the proper Social Security numbers if they need it.

That this whole integration of being able to work in our society is quite extensive.

They learn how to put on their makeup to do the show.

They learn, you know, which way it is to the kitchen to eat, which way it is to the toilets.

You know, it's all, all these different things that they, they have to learn.

And, uh, so it takes a while for somebody who's, who's coming from another culture to, to learn.

Obviously, it's not the same for everybody.

But, yeah, we, we've been doing this for 40 years now, so we, we've gotten pretty good at that.

Well, what's the key to making them a team?

So you kind of get them integrated into your, you know, into the.

I, I like the Cirque Company culture, so to speak.

But then you get to make this other leap of, okay, look, you know, you're going to trust your life to this stage person over here you've never met before, doesn't even speak your language.

How do you get them to play well together?

Well, it's them, but as you say, it's not only them.

It's the teams that build the tents that do the logistics.

There's on.

On any given show around the world, there's about 130 people.

50 of them will be performers, and 80 of them are our back of the house, as we call them.

So they're either stage technicians or they're.

No, they could be front of the house, which is popcorn Selling and merchandising, hospitality and they could be in the office doing the HR person or the lodging person.

So it's not just, you know, when we talk about stuff, it's really not just the artist, it's everybody.

And as we travel around the world, we pick up more and more people who want to work with us.

So what's critical for developing the chemistry within the teams, no matter what piece of the, the product, you know, people are working on is having that common purpose, having a clearly established goal of what we're trying to accomplish, which, you know, for us is very simple.

We're trying to entertain the world.

And when you, when you, when you get behind that and it's like, okay, we're going to do that to the best of our ability and you know, while we're doing it, we're going to have a little bit of business as well.

That which, what a lot of us focus on.

But for, for the people who are on the road, their mission is to entertain the world.

So it's a, it's a very clear purpose to get behind and, and, and then you can have that shared understanding of, of what it is that they're trying to accomplish, what it is, why we're trying to do it and the values that we have as a company to, to do it by.

So whether you're on the stage or whether you're, you know, making a deal with the local hotel for everybody to stay in, you still like, okay, I need a good deal.

I'm going to bring these 130 people.

You know, is it, is it a nice area for them to stay in?

Do they have a store here?

Do they, how are they going to get to the site?

All those things that go along with it, the what's the whys, the values.

And then we find that as everybody buys into those, you know, the purpose and the understanding of what we're doing, they start to trust each other.

And when the teams trust each other, that's when you, that's when you have that chemistry.

That's when you know, a Chinese person can, you know, allow, you know, somebody from Brazil to catch them as they dive into their arms.

Even though they can't talk to each other, it's like they know that they're going to be okay, you know, and on the, because everybody is, you know, wants the best for, for the company, for the mission and to entertain, to entertain the world.

And then on the, on the off stage side we really lean into the notion of empowered execution.

You know, we want, because I, I'm here in Montreal.

But the sun never sets on Cirque du Soleil.

Like we are currently performing in Hong Kong.

We're, you know, we have a show that's on its way to Australia right now so that we work all the way around the clock.

So while I'm sleeping, there's a show happening in Hong Kong.

So I can't solve every problem.

We have to push the decision making and the empowerment into the organization to the people who run the, run the shows on the ground.

And we can only do that if they share our vision of what they're trying to do.

And we know, and they know the values that we're trying to work by so that for 90% of the time they're going to make the right decision in what they do.

What do you do to reach them so they're on the road like you, like you get them in Montreal on your home turf and it sounds like you guys have, that's, you guys have got that dialed in.

But then they go to Hong Kong and they're kind of off by themselves in this giant city.

Yep.

Like, like they're with their own people from the show.

But you talked about your leadership vision and what you're trying to do.

How do you reach them as the Chief Show Officer to make sure the vision's clear, they're remembering it and it's being infused, you know, throughout their, throughout their day.

Yeah, yeah, look, we, we talk about it a lot.

We regularly share the vision and we have meetings, look, now with Zoom and Teams and the other video conferencing applications that we use.

It's much easier than it used to be.

So now we, we have regular touch points even with people on the other side of the world to make sure that everybody's aligned right with what we're doing.

I, I have huddles, just management huddles every day, every single day.

I have one in the morning and I have one in the evening.

One at the, @ the beginning of the eastern time day and at the end of the eastern time day because the guys on the other side of the world are just, you know, beginning to start their day.

And it's really just five, ten minutes.

What do you got today?

What meetings have you got?

What are you looking for?

Did anything important happen that everybody needs to know so that we have that regular check in.

And it also like, oh, you know, Jimmy, I need to talk to you about so and so hang on for a minute after this or can I call you at 10 o' clock.

And it just aligns everybody, everybody knows where everybody is in the world, what are they working on today, and if they need something, it's a good time to ask.

That's just my management team.

And then every couple of weeks we have what we call the operations and information sharing meeting.

Again, straight out of the team of teams book, where we get anybody, anybody can come, anybody can join, but basically it's.

The majority of it is managers, but it's going to be anywhere from 150 to 200 people around the world will join the call and we'll, we'll go through every day.

Or is that.

No, no, every two weeks.

Every two weeks.

That's like a global gathering.

Yeah, a global.

And you're leading this yourself?

Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah, either me or my vice president of operations will, will lead this.

And we have, we actually have so much stuff.

We have three agendas.

So it takes six weeks to get through everybody.

We do some of the shows, some of the departments, and then in two weeks time we'll go through some of the shows, some of the departments, and it's really okay, what's going on in your world, what's important for everybody to know, what, what's interesting, what help do you need?

So it could be, you know, the tour director for Alegria will get on and say, hey, you know, we're currently in Milan, we're doing this, that and the other.

We have these PR events, we're getting ready to move to Vienna and I need to call so and so, but, and so it's information for everybody.

And it's also a time to ask for help.

And we try to solve problems live, if there's is any.

So we have this constant communication between, not just, you know, between the managers, but the whole, the whole organization, so that there's this shared understanding of what's going on and people don't feel, oh my God, you know, I'm stuck out on the other side of the world by myself and there's nobody to help me.

That's not the case.

And these, these are all now recorded so, you know, people can watch them later if they need to.

So, so good to get people like you.

You said the word shared understanding and this is how the best in the world do it.

But one thing that I take is, hey, you're very intentional about it.

You're not just leaving these meetings up to chance.

It's on a cadence.

People are aware, they come, they learn.

You're listening to them as much as they're Listening to you and you're creating the shared understanding of the priorities and who you are as an organization.

It just sounds really, really cool in terms of how it's, how it's, how it's working.

Is there how thinking back to Covet and how that, you know, start to Soleil and every entertainment organization in the world had a very difficult circumstances.

How did you guys survive that and how did, how have you coming out of that?

You guys have done some big things.

So maybe share a little bit behind the scenes on that.

Yeah, absolutely.

So Covid was the worst time and the best time of my life or career anyway.

When Covid hit, we actually had 11, I think, shows that were running around the world and of course we had to, you know, close them.

It was the, the worst thing ever to say to 1500 people that were out there on the road, okay, the show's closed, you have to go home.

And of course, you know, it's not just as easy as saying, okay, go home.

We had all this, these tents are set up, the shows are set up.

Some of them are halfway between one city and another.

So.

So we started to, to take everything down, pack everything away.

We put equipment into warehouses in Sydney, in Amsterdam, in Houston, here in Montreal.

Packed everything away, started sending everybody home.

We had everything packed away.

Approximately 600 trucks of equipment all around the world.

Got all that packed away, got everybody home.

So As I say, 1500 people were out there on the road, got everybody home within the space of 10 days.

And you know, as big as we are, that also creates the problem.

We went from a billion dollar company to a zero dollar company overnight.

Yeah, because you can't have a show.

Right.

Everybody buy a ticket for Zoom and watch what we can do.

Right.

That wasn't nobody, that wasn't, nobody's interested in that.

Right.

So.

So, so yeah, so, you know, and along with coming the biggest, being the biggest company for shows, we have the biggest mortgage as well.

So within a month, we had declared bankruptcy and we went from 5,000 employees at the time, there was about a hundred of us that, that stayed.

And as I said, that was the, the absolute worst, worst thing that could ever have happened was to send all these people home, you know, and close all the shows.

As I said before, our mission is to entertain the world.

We couldn't do any of that.

It was done, finished over the missions.

In question at that point.

Right, right.

Is it going to come back?

You know, we didn't know.

Is this two weeks?

Nobody knew.

Right.

Is it two weeks, three Weeks, three months, three years.

Who knows what this is going to be?

So.

So we were.

That was that.

So everything got closed down.

I was one of the very lucky ones that was able to keep my job.

Very few people in the entertainment business kept their jobs through Covid, so I was very lucky to.

To be able to do that.

So when I say it was the worst time ever, I was at least very lucky to have a job.

And what I was doing was making settlements with suppliers, you know, calling them up, saying, hey, I can't pay you that, but I can pay you this.

And the good news, of course, is that we have such a strong brand that there was.

There was no real danger of us ceasing to exist, even though we did declare bankruptcy.

There was always going to be a path to either new ownership or a way out when it was time.

Because the brand had so much inherent value that you'd built up over 40 years.

Exactly.

It was almost like your protective umbrella.

Exactly.

So, you know, even though, you know, we.

We were.

We had zero revenue at that time, there was people lining up at the door to, you know, say, okay, let's have a look at this.

And.

And we ended up in November of.

By the end of that year, we had a new ownership group, and they recapitalized us to be able to start going.

And from that point, I would say it was the best time of my business career, because to relaunch Cirque du Soleil basically as a startup business, but with a massive global brand and enough capitalization with some excited new owners was a dream come true.

Right, because you have, like, a white light.

You had, like, a green field, like a black canvas to paint on.

I was like, okay, what are we going to do?

We got.

And at the time, I was in charge of.

Just in charge of the touring shows.

I wasn't running the resident shows.

There was.

There was somebody else in Vegas running those.

So I was just dealing with the touring shows.

But we put a plan together to.

To bring back eight of the touring shows within less than 18 months.

Now, again, these shows sounds like a lot.

Even Gila Liberte, who you mentioned earlier, said, you'll never get them out that quick.

I said, yeah, we will.

Yeah, we will.

And he's just an advisor now.

He's not associated with the company, but he was here at that time to.

To have a look.

And.

And I said, no, no, we can.

We can.

We can get this done.

And the teams did.

And we did it by, essentially by decentralizing everything and Pushing this empowered execution, as I talked about earlier.

But so.

So that wasn't necessarily a focus before COVID but you needed to go to that new leadership strategy of empowerment more.

Because you need to get these shows out realistically.

It started when we shut down.

That 10 day period of shutting down.

That's where it started.

That's where it really started in my mind about, you know, how are we going to do this?

And we had a meeting every single day.

The operations and information sharing meeting that's now every two weeks during the shutdown of COVID was every day because things were happening so quick.

It's like, okay, where are you at?

What do you need?

What can we send you?

What people do you need on the phone?

So we were doing it every day.

And that was really before we.

That just came.

You're like, we got to do this.

You're like, wait a minute.

We're able to do a lot when we're talking all the time.

Yeah.

And then during COVID I read the team of teams and I was like, oh, we were doing that, so let me do more of it, you know.

So that was super cool.

And.

And we got the shows back out.

Alegria actually was the first one that we.

We relaunched.

It was incredibly emotional to put the show back on stage.

And we went from there and we.

We relaunched eight touring shows in the space of 18 months.

How.

I mean, it's.

Wow.

I can see that it was the worst thing in your career and then the best thing of your career.

And it seems like you got to have every experience of a leader all within that time period.

All within the.

I think so.

Yeah.

I think so.

Oh, man.

Oh, how so cool.

And I've got to ask you, and I want to ask about your background some more, but I want to ask you about.

I have not seen the other.

The Lucia show, but I've been watching videos about the Rain Curtain.

Yeah.

And seeing this.

And for those listeners, you got to see the video or go see the show of this thing.

Where did this?

And I've also.

The.

The car.

Is it KA Theater.

The KA Theater.

A lot of you guys have been on the cutting edge of live performances.

So the Raincur and the KA Theater, these things.

What is it like to be an operations executive in an organization that's so focused on, I guess, advancing technology in terms of live events?

So maybe give us a little breakdown on KA and Rain Curtain and these ideas and how it plays in operationally for everybody.

Yeah.

So, you know, when we start talking about the on stage creativity and then the operations of it.

We're always pushing the envelope, whether it's with the acrobatic notion of what we're doing, that.

And that's the beginning.

Every show is based on incredible human performance.

Right.

That's what Cirque du Soleil is about.

But then we take that incredible human performance and we wrap it in, in the most amazing technology of the day when that show is created.

So the theatrics around the show is, you know, whatever, whether it's lighting, whether it's video, whether it's special effects with the water, the stage movements at CAR is all automated.

Those things were absolutely cutting edge when those shows were created.

And that's not to take away from the human performance, it's really to enhance it.

And you know, we, we do talk about technology a lot, but I was, I was with James Cameron backstage at, after a show one time and he said to me, he said, you know, when I, when we create movies, we're doing it with, with technology and we, we have no idea in 5 years time what that technology is going to look like.

You know, what I'm, what am I going to be working with in 5 years time?

I don't know.

It's going to be something incredible and we're going to make more incredible movies with that technology.

He says, but your shows, he says a thousand years from now, somebody can still watch one of your shows now and think it's incredible because of the human aspect of it.

Oh, cool.

So thank you, Cameron.

Sorry, I said thank you, James.

Cameron.

That wasn't, I said, you're like, wow.

Can you please say that into the microphone, James, so you can hear that with our.

Yeah, that's, that's incredible for a legendary iconic movie director.

Yeah.

To share that about one of your live performances, man.

Yeah, exactly.

And so we do use technology, but our performances are all about that human aspect.

And as we create these performances, we in operations are very implicated in the creation of them because you can't just let creative people run away with whatever they want to do because it might not work in operations.

So we might be insanely expensive too.

Yeah, exactly.

It has to work from a business sense and it has to work from a practical sense.

So we're very involved in what the shows are.

We try not to get involved, if you will, in the creative aspect, the story aspect of it, but the, the physical, you know, how many people is this going to take to operate?

How much money is this going to require every show to recreate how much is it.

How many trucks is it going to take to move?

How.

So all that has to be figured in when we're creating a show to make sure that it works from a business perspective as well as a creative perspective.

So it's very.

You know, there's a.

There's a lot that goes into it.

There are a lot of people involved.

Yeah.

This rain curtain, 100,000 liters of water.

Yeah.

It's recycled during the performance, and it has all these cool designs, and it's integrated.

I mean, and the people watching are not getting soaked, which I don't understand how that even happens.

That's it.

You got to remember that it's happening somewhere.

In a tent, in a parking lot, too.

You kind of lose that once you get into the theater.

You forget that you're in a tent in a parking lot some.

It's like a whole.

You're in Atlanta.

Yeah, I'm in Charleston.

But.

Okay.

But.

But the first show I saw was in Atlanta.

Okay.

In a parking lot.

And it was Alegria with the.

With the tent.

And it is like going into another world.

Yeah.

Because Luzi is going to Atlanta for Christmas.

Oh, really?

Okay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's going to be at Atlantic Station, so you have to go down, and.

Maybe you'll have to go over and bounce out there.

Yeah.

Gosh, so many questions.

Not enough time.

But I.

I gotta.

So let's cycle back to your story.

Take it anywhere, any.

Any highlights you want to give us.

But clearly you were pretty darn good at gymnastics as a kid, and I don't know how you got into that, but you apparently were able to do this really well.

And then you run off to join the circus, literally.

And you say, hey, I'm not gonna pursue, I guess, being a gymnast.

I'm become an acrobat.

And then.

Then you made this launch into the operations side.

So how does all that tie together in terms of.

Yeah, so my mom was the teacher at the.

A teacher at the elementary school, and when one of her colleagues said that they were going to start a gymnastics class, I got volunteered and that I was seven years.

I was seven years old at the time.

And I was like, okay, Duncan can do it.

He can go try.

So I did it, and it turned out I wasn't so bad.

And I did compete internationally for the junior British team.

I don't think I would ever made the Olympic squad.

So when I was close, but not just not quite there, and when somebody said to me, hey, do you want to come and get paid for doing acrobatics.

I was like, oh, okay, I can.

I can go with that.

So we did.

We.

I joined this act that was five.

Five man comedy, trump tumbling and trampoline act.

Okay.

And how old were you at the time when you got 19?

Okay, 18.

19.

Yeah.

And we did some cabaret's casinos around Europe.

And then we got a contract with the Tarzan zabini international circus, which sounds very grand.

And it's.

It's over here in north America.

And it has absolutely nothing to do with cirque du soleil.

It was spit and sawdust and lions and tigers and bears.

Old school, old school.

Everybody does everything.

And basically the day that we arrived, we hooked up with the show in.

In saskatchewan in Canada, in the prair in the field somewhere.

And basically it must have been almost the first day we were there.

Tarzan, who really is, you know, his name really is Tarzan, and he.

He owns the show.

He said, do you guys want to make some extra money?

So, like, of course, you know, I'm 20 years old.

I'm broke.

Of course I want to make some extra money.

So it was okay.

Start loading the truck, Start learning how to put the tent up, Start getting things done.

So we were performing in the show and also helping to move the show from city to city.

Now, this setup was about as big as the ones that we have at cirque du soleil.

Still had 2, 400 seats, but no frills.

It was just a tent and some seats.

That was it.

There was none of the stuff that we have.

And a cirque du soleil show moves probably every two or three months.

With Tarzan show, we move twice a week.

So.

So we got a lot of practice very quickly.

And after about six months, I was actually in charge of putting the tent up.

I certainly wasn't an expert by then, but by default, I had sort of got in charge of putting up the tent.

So I would be doing my acrobatics, my act during the week.

And then on Sunday night, it was like, okay, here we go.

Overalls on and let's take down the tent.

So.

And over the four, four or so year period that I was with Tarzan, we stayed to.

To do the act.

We ended up putting a new act together so that we could actually stay longer because he us to move the show more than anything.

So we put a new act together, and I probably moved that show more than 200 times in that space of 404 years.

So I got a lot of practice very quickly at moving circuses.

To the point where I was offered a job by a new show being created in Atlanta, coincidentally.

And they only wanted me to do the operations.

They asked me if I would come and take the job, to find them a tent, buy the tent, put it up, tour the tent for them.

And, and so I had this decision to make.

Do I want to be an acrobat or do I want to be a.

An operations manager?

And I, like, I've kind of done.

Every time there's a decision to make, it's like, well, you know, can I come back if it doesn't work?

And the answer was, yeah, I can.

So let's go and try it.

The same as when I left England to come to America.

If it doesn't work, I'll just go back.

It's all right, I'll go try it.

So I was like, okay, let me give this a shot.

And sure enough, it worked out.

And we.

That.

That was the Universal Circus out of Atlanta.

I joined them when they were being created in 1995.

And I stayed with that show for seven years.

We, we built it into a very successful organization, still going today.

And yeah, so I, I got into the operations and stuck with it.

So the, you know, the whole management aspect, logistic aspect, leadership.

Leadership aspect of, of that was very appealing to me, and I really leaned into it and went from there.

How.

So many lessons in there.

One of those I'm taking away is like your idea of, hey, I'm going to try this, and it's not an irreversible course for me, and it's worth the risk.

It's like that's been a guiding principle for you.

Uh, was there, was there something else in that?

Like, you had already tried the, you know, traveling and doing the operations of the circus.

Did, did you find something additionally meaningful in that than.

Than just doing the performing, or did it give you some additional energy, spark?

What was it?

I think it just, it really interested me.

I mean, the, that the, you know, it's.

As I said before, it's complicated.

Right.

None of this is easy.

So.

And the, the engineering behind putting up a tent and not having it fall down or blow down in the wind, you know, the anchoring systems that we use in the ground.

There is so, so much to learn about.

And, you know, although I didn't, you know, complete university or school, it wasn't that I couldn't have.

I could have gone back and done that.

So I didn't.

But I kind of learned on the job.

So for me, it was, it was A lot of learnings.

It's like, oh, wow, how does this work?

And then planning the moves for, you know, I'm 20 something years old and I'm in charge of 100 people who are, you know, going full speed doing different things.

So I was learning leadership on the fly, I was learning engineering on the fly.

I was learning planning and execution and everything that goes with it.

So it was super interesting for me.

And I think that, you know, that's what just kept me going for so long.

And then at some point it was like, okay, here I am, you know, I'm not going back to performing now.

Yeah.

It seems like you're, you're a person who, you permit your, like you give yourself permission to pursue your curiosity.

Yeah.

Even at a young age.

And then what I hear is then I got to this point where I had to make a decision.

I was still curious.

I'm going to move more into operations.

Is this an irreversible path?

No.

I can go back to the uk.

I can go back to performing if I want to.

Yeah.

And I can go back to university if I want to.

Yeah.

And I think a lot of leaders could, all of us could really benefit from that life advice in general.

Yeah.

And it kept going and going.

At some point as I started my own business, same thing.

I can always go back and be an employee if I want.

And I did.

And so it's, it's always been like that.

So, yeah, I think that's really good.

Well, Duncan, I am, I'm not even through, halfway through my questions and we're out of time, so I'm going to leave you the last.

Is there a question that I didn't ask you that you'd like to dive into here or a parting thought that you'd like to leave the listeners?

You know, there was one story that I had lined up that I think has been critical.

Critical in, in my, in my development.

And when I was at the Universal Circus there, I was working with a, a gentleman called Cedric Walker who, who launched the Universe Soul Circus.

And I was, I was with him one night, we were in Miami and we were taking down the show.

We were loading out the show.

And he's one of those guys where he's totally hands on, way more hands on than an owner should be.

He shouldn't have even been there, but he was, he was there helping me loading tent poles onto a truck.

And I was mad with him because he hadn't given me a promotion that I felt that I, I deserved.

I was in charge of the tent.

And he'd just promoted somebody to the director of operations position that I thought I should have.

And he said to me just very matter of factly, When I finally got the, you, know, the nerve to come, Because I was mad, I was like, okay, okay, I'm gonna.

How come, you know, he got the job and I didn't?

And he just said very matter of factly, because you didn't teach anybody to do your job yet.

And.

And that has absolutely stuck with me my entire career.

Because when I first started, when I was with tarzan, Even the old school circus mentality, and I was told this by people there, don't tell anybody.

Don't show anybody.

There's not many people know how to put up these tents.

So don't you go showing anybody, because then you're going to have your job forever.

Well, that's the curse.

Because I would have still had that job that I had 30 years ago if I hadn't.

So I.

When cedric told me that, he told me, I can't give you a promotion because you haven't taught anybody how to do your job yet.

It really changed the way I thought.

180 degrees.

And I became a teacher that day.

And I think from every step of the ladder, One of the most important things that I've done Is make sure that my team, My direct reports, at some point are going to be able to replace me.

And it's not a threat of losing a position or somebody's going to take your job.

It is the path to the next step for yourself.

And I think that.

That if.

If anybody asked me what is the most important lesson that you've ever learned, that was it.

And in one story, you revealed the key to getting promoted.

Thank you.

This has been an absolute blast, and I think our listeners are gonna have a ball with it.

Thanks for giving us your time today.

It's fun.

No problem.

Really enjoyed it.

Thanks, Ben.