Blaze Your Own Trail - From New Orleans to Broadway: Alan Seales' Journey of Creativity and Tech

Episode Date: June 18, 2026

Join us as Alan Seales shares his extraordinary journey from childhood in New Orleans to a diverse career spanning theater, technology, and Broadway production. Discover lessons on teamwork, resilience, and the power of creativity in navigating career shifts and building impactful projects. Key topics Career transitions from sports to tech to theater The importance of teamwork and trust Leveraging creativity and technology in career growth Sound  bites "Be the best you you can be." "Think big, think outside the box." "Find what you really want to do." Chapters 00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome 00:37 Early Years in New Orleans and Florida 01:03 Moving to North Carolina and College Choices 02:01 Early Interests in Tech and Entertainment 02:26 Lessons from Playing Sports and Teamwork 03:48 Key Lessons on Teamwork and Humility 05:13 The Power of Building Great Teams 06:34 Choosing NC State and College Experience 09:22 College Years: Theater and Engineering 10:46 Transition to Professional Acting and Tech Roles 12:04 Work at Google and Tech Innovations 19:20 Transition from Tech to Broadway and Podcasting 23:31 The Impact of Digital Auditions and Networking 30:01 Google Culture and Creative Initiatives 39:16 Culture Shift at Google and New Opportunities 41:27 Starting Broadway Podcast Network 43:09 Leaving Google and New Ventures 50:50 Investing in Broadway and Future Projects 52:33 Advice for Aspiring Trailblazers 53:54 Final Words and Inspiration Connect with Alan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alan-seales-158a469/ https://broadwaypodcastnetwork.com/     Are you an entrepreneur?Join my FREE Group Coaching Community where we have live calls, Q&A and more! Our Trailblazer Ecosystem also enables you to network with other entrepreneurs and creator hub eliminates multiple subscriptions and logins creating a one stop shop to take action! Join here: https://byotgroupcoaching.com/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Blaze Your Own Trail podcast. My name is Jordan Mendoza. I'm your host, and I've got an incredible, not just guest, but co-founder of mine. On the show today, super excited about this conversation. Alan Seals, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, Jordan. Yes, sir, yes, sir. Well, my favorite part of the show, Alan has really taken a rewind, and this is cool for me, too,

because I don't really know your beginning. I don't really know what you're made of, where you came from, in the sense of the early years. So where were you born and raised? And then what kind of kid were you? And we're going elementary, middle, high school year. Wow, back in the day. Okay.

Born in New Orleans, Louisiana, moved to Florida, was a huge Disney kid because my grandfather helped build Disney World. So we were living in Florida, go visit them. We get in for free when we visit them. So before I was 10, I probably went to Disney World like 20 times. It was crazy. Now I'm a Disney adult. Anyway, maybe that contributes to my love for entertainment.

But as I grew up, moved to North Carolina eventually in seventh grade, and that's where I now say I am from. I say, yes, I'm from North Carolina, and then I went to college at NC State. So I tell people, Raleigh, if they don't know where Wilkesboro is. If you do know where Wilkesboro is, it's probably because you love NASCAR. That's where NASCAR was invented. But what type of kid I was, I was a kid who would go outside, play lots of sports. sports, sing, dance, and take apart our first computer. When we were eight or nine, we got our first

IBM 386, and I first just opened it up, and I was like, how does this work? And so I was always just kind of jumping between these worlds of creating entertainment. We got our first camcorder around that age, too, the big over the shoulder with the VHS you would pop in. And I was directing kids in my neighborhood to make like little skits and whatnot. So I was creating short film. songs, singing in chorus. I was in show choir in like third and fourth grade and got into theater. They got me into theater later, all while still just being able

to not give up this love of technology and mechanics. So I've just been like jumping around these buckets for years. So always creating, taking stuff apart, and then finding a way to get your energy out, it sounds like. And so what sports kind of did it for you back then? When I was little, I did little league. little league. And then when I grew up, soccer became, I grew up middle school, middle school, high school, soccer became my thing. So I was, I started playing soccer and then, yeah, like all through high school,

I was on the varsity team for soccer did that for for three of my four years. My freshman year, I was still, I wasn't on the school team. I was still playing recreationally. But yeah, I ended up doing that. And then I had dreams of playing in college and then senior year of high school blew out my ACL. And such is life. Yeah, that's a very common, but frustrating nonetheless injury that you hear about and people that want to go collegiate, but in their senior year, it just happened. You hear about it in soccer, you hear about it in football, you hear about it in basketball. I mean, it's like almost every sport. And it's very unfortunate, you know, you were able to leverage your other skills that you had as well,

natural talents, gifts, and abilities to do some other stuff outside of sports. But on the sports subject, what would you say are some key lessons, maybe you extract? You extract. during that time, you know, Little League soccer from playing sports, from being part of team, from having coaches, what do you think if you look back and dive into the bag a little bit, what lessons can you extract that maybe still add value to what you do today and how you build teams today and how you, you know, live your life today? Our coach is only as good as their team. I mean, obviously you're helping your team get better, but as a manager, as a leader, you can't get anywhere without having a good team.

You have to trust them to do their jobs. I've learned a lot of humility as well because you can be doing great. You can be up or tied or whatever the case is metaphorically or literally. And then one teeny tiny little mistake can just throw the game going completely in the other direction. You can't do it alone. Obviously, I played team sports my whole life. And that's what I like. I don't like solo sports.

And I enjoy sharing the responsibility and relying on my teammates and being relied on. That gives me a lot of satisfaction to know that I am with other people and together we're working towards a common goal. So I think no one's ever asked me that before. That's a really great question. But yeah, ultimately, you have to be the best you you can be, which then translates into the entertainment and whatnot too because you have to embrace what makes you different. Be the best you you can be. But when you're put in the right scenario, all of you together lift each other up and become a great team. You can't do it alone.

And it's interesting too because it seems like, and I don't know any of the kind of middle background, which we're going to get into here from college and past that, but it seems like that's a through line in your career where you've tried to build the best teams, create the best ensembles, the best cast, the best people. And what would you say is the biggest value add when you can put together like the A team or the Avengers or an all-star team? I've always just kind of gone off of the official or maybe unofficial mantra of a rising tide lifts all ships. I want to, going back to the team dynamic, I want to be able to stand on the shoulders of others while supporting others above me. And ultimately, yeah, I really like the idea of creating something, whether it's technological, whether it's a sports outcome, whether it's an application online now, whether it's a show, you know, an original show or helping somebody else's original work, get to the, get to see the light of day. Like all of this, when you're just working towards

a common goal, that's what really gets me, right? Because when you're working together, you create bonds, you create friendships, you create goodwill. And I think that's ultimately what most of us or most of the world right now seems to be lacking. And if I can pull that goodwill from business into the real world, which if you're doing things right, you will, then it just makes everybody feel better, makes everybody more productive and makes, at the end, everybody more money. Absolutely. Love it. So let's talk, you tear your ACL, right? So the soccer career is over. Now you make a decision at some point that you're going to go to NC State. I think that's the Wolfpack, if I remember. Russell Wilson, I believe, went there and to Wisconsin. I'm a Seahawks

fans. That's why I would know that. So why NC State? Was it because it was, the local school being in North Carolina and maybe someone you knew went there. Was there something that drew you there? And then what did you decide to study now that sports was out of the equation? Sure. So I always knew, not always, I was through high school flip-flopping between the idea of pursuing theater full-time and pursuing engineering full-time. And I wasn't sure at all what to do.

And then my mother basically just laid the gauntlet down and said, you could act with a theater, I mean, you could act with a computer science degree, but you can't do computer science with an acting degree. And I said, okay, all right. So that's some advice. I'll listen. And then NC State, being that I was in North Carolina since seventh grade, NC State, or North Carolina has tons and tons of great in-state universities.

And, you know, sometimes it came down to a money decision too. I was like, do I go to Columbia and spend out-of-state tuition on this hugely private school? or do I stay in state and go to NC State and get a really great education in engineering? And at NC State, I did theater. I could do theater. I could do sports. I could do engineering. So it was kind of like, you know, it was local, less expensive.

And still for the education that I needed, gave me everything that I did need at that time. So I was able to just go there and blew up my ACL. So I was like, I guess no sports are kind of out of the picture. Back two years prior, I had met my still best friend. So I was 15, he was 16. We met at this summer program. And we're still best friends to this day. So, you know, 20-something years later.

And he was going to NC State. It was a year ahead of me. So we became sweetmates when I was a freshman. He was a sophomore. And then like automatically he's super into engineering. It's a great programmer today. He's a CTO of another company. And we've just, you know, helped each other out and stayed in touch.

But that, by being with him and kind of, again, being part of that team, I already felt like I was part of his team and part of that world because I'd come visit him in college prior. And some of my friends from my high school became also were in our suite. I was his, my best friend's roommate. And then all of us just kind of immediately became fast friends. And it grew from there. It was great. That's awesome. So you finish with a engineering degree.

I'm assuming, and you were doing, you said you were doing theater as well in college. So what were the plans when you finished up? Did you already have something lined up? Did you decide to lean into the theater side? You know, I'd love just to see which direction you decided to go. So the last two years of college, I was a student, I had a student job. It was an engineering job. I was a developer at SAS, which is, I think, still one of the largest privately owned

companies in in North America. Jim Goodnight founded it. I don't know if he's still there, actually, but SAS, not SAAAS, but SAS, it was this statistical analysis software company that was way ahead of its time back in the day. And so I was working at SAS as a student. When I graduated, I lost the eligibility to keep the job because I wasn't a student anymore that was part of the requirements to have that particular job. And so then I went to just to get a paycheck, I became a network administrator for an environmental consulting company. And that was super fun-ish, I want to say, but it didn't like fulfill me creatively. So all while I was doing that, I was working or I was auditioning for theater. I was doing so many things just to get my

creative itch scratched. And, you know, going to that job wasn't really, it wasn't fulfilling at all. And then literally on my year anniversary of that job, I wrote the CEO a long letter, you know, this is what, 22 year old me, right? And this goes back to one simple mistake can have a huge impact on the game. I wrote the CEO a letter on my year anniversary of the job. And I was like, I deserve a raise. Here's why. And here's all the things about the company I would change if I were you. And the next day, I got fired. So you live, you learn, right? And so at that point, I was like, okay. So then I became a professional actor and did that. I supported myself as an actor for five, five and a six, six something years.

And then the writer's strike happened in the late 2000s when they were striking over DVD residuals. And that's when I had just moved to New York City and needed a paycheck because it was New York City, fell back on my degree, started doing computers again, and ended up getting a full-time job as an IT director in 2008 in New York City. And then I worked for Thompson Writers after that as a cisadmin, a senior net admin. And then from there, I went to Google. And I was at Google for 11 years until I started a Broadway podcast network. And that got me back into the, or got me into Broadway producing.

And so now I am a somewhere between part and full-time Broadway producer while still doing app development because the AI tools are here in front of us. and all while still, you know, merging the love of theater and tech and creation. So it's been a really weird and I guess pinbally type of journey. Yeah, all of them are. You know, every journey is like a pinball machine. You know, you get launched out and you're going to hit some stuff. Sometimes the bumpers are going to fling you right down to a hole.

Mm-hmm. Yep. You know what I'm saying? And you just got to. hopefully muster up a quarter to be able to play again, you know. So let's talk about how you got into acting. So I know obviously theater acting, those are one and the same, but was this like a professional actor in film and TV and commercials?

Like what did you actually do? Did you all of that stuff? I love to just get some context. And then how did you actually get your first gig? Because that's something that a lot of people have questions about. I was like, how do you even audition or apply or do you have to know people? Well, yes, all of the above. You can get a job through all of those things.

But for me, because, you know, I remember my earliest public performance with a group with a chorus was like third grade. So I remember just when I was even little, little, I loved being on stage and singing and performing. But when I was in high school, I started doing performances, theater performances at the community college. that was in town. So I would go at night after high school or after my sports whenever I could and go to rehearsals and do performances and whatnot. So I was always performing with local theaters in town or the college. And then when I went to NC State, I was performing with the college there. And because they were doing shows. Every university has a theater program. So I was doing shows there. And it was all just, you know, looking, seeking out the auditions and you've, you know, if you've auditioned, you know, like,

they want you to sing a certain length of a similarly typed song from the style show you're auditioning for and or do a monologue and or they, you know, they give you specific things to do. It's always different. But seek out the auditions, prepare for it, obviously. And then after graduating college, and while I was working that net admin job before I got myself fired, I was doing local community or not community theater. Well, yeah, I was doing community theater and some professional theater in Raleigh. While I was still there, because I stayed in Raleigh for a while. And then at that point, I'd learned about the world of unified auditions and SETC

South Eastern Theater Conference. The SETC Unified Auditions was the one that I went to quite frequently. That was, they had a spring one and a fall one, and I'd usually go, I think it was the spring. brainfarts now, but the spring usually you go there. It's a unified audition, meaning that you have 90 seconds, you get up on stage, you sing, you do a monologue within 90 seconds to a room full of casting directors. They're all there from all over the East Coast, sometimes farther, and then you go to their hotel rooms for callbacks because it's in usually a conference center. So it sounds creepy now, probably was creepy then, but nothing bad ever happened to me.

but you would go do these callbacks or they'd say like, oh, I want to see you for a dance call, whatever the case is. And then I would get my entire year's worth of casting out of usually that one audition. And so I did that for the first two years and then word of mouth. Like if you're good and people want to work with you again, they call you back. And so that's why it kind of speaks to your question about, you know, is it people you know, is it relationships? Yes, but first you have to meet those people.

So how you meet those people, you work with them, they move on to director, you know, people that are in your cast, become directors, become choreographers, they need people that they know can do certain things. They've worked with you in the past. They reach out to you. So it's just like in the business world, when you become known to have a type of work ethic or being able to do certain master certain skill sets, then you get called for that a lot. So I just kept working and doing these unified auditions through referrals, through, you know, like, yeah, just reputation for a while and then moved to New York where then I didn't know anybody in that ecosystem. And that's when the writer strike happened and I moved back to into the computer world for what I thought was just going to be like a temporary couple of month thing until until the auditions came back and the writer's strike was over. But while I was in North Carolina, the Screen Jam Studios is in Wilmington, North Carolina. So like Dawson's Creek was filmed there. And then when I was, my peak audition number, One Tree Hill was being. filmed there. So I had, I was on one tree, one tree hill a couple times is as like extras and whatnot.

Like everybody, like everyone in New York, you can't tell you, call yourself an actor unless you've been like an extra on law and order. The North Carolina equivalent was either Dawson's Creek or or One Tree Hill. So yeah, I did that. I even went down to Atlanta for some auditions. But yeah, it was, I got a lot of parts in small indie TV, not TV, but movies like up and coming directors and writers who were putting things together in that area. Elon, of course, is a big theater school, so there was a lot of the creativity coming out of that. And yeah, gosh, I mean, small things. I never had any parts on anything big that you would have seen unless you recognize me

in the background from One Tree Hill or something. But yeah, it's, it's, you never know. You just never know in that world. Yeah, no, that's good. Well, I think what I took away from that is it's, you put in a lot of reps in order to have yourself ready and prepared so that when you got to the one to many auditions, you could go out and crush it, right? And, you know, if you think about that in the context of like 2026 where now you have these same meetings probably happening, but I would assume it's virtual.

You know, so you got 50 people, some of them cameras on, some of them cameras off, and you just got to basically get in front of all these people. But it only takes one, right? It only takes one connection and only takes one yes to create some type of momentum that could lead to the next audition. Yeah, it's definitely, definitely like that. You just have to be in the right place at the right time with the right preparedness. So it's like if you're always training, you know, I'll never stop learning. Take classes. Take, take lessons. Because even through the classes, the other people you're taking lessons from or with, they're going to get to know you and your skill set and might recommend you for things. So, or you might decide like, you know, hey, let's share an Uber and start this thing

together. You know, you never, you never know what's going to happen when it comes to social situations and similarly like-minded people who need to create and build things. 100%. Yeah. And that was just kind of a teaser into the first time we ever met in person, which is in January, in Orlando, Florida, of all places. And it was a frozen land. which was also very strange. It was super cold. Yeah. Like, I don't know, 17 degrees or something like that.

But we're going to get into that story here in a little bit. We got a little bit more to dive into on your journey. So you do five or six years of, you know, being able to pay the bills through these different auditions, these parts, these shows. And then that brings you up to New York. So now here you are basically at ground zero again because you've got to build your network again. In your mind, did you already have kind of a,

thought process of how you would go about doing that, knowing what you knew from North Carolina, or what did you end up doing as far as work was concerned? Because there was the strike, I know you mentioned. So that probably wasn't the first thought when you got there was probably not that, I'm assuming. No, it was not. And it was really unfortunate timing or fortunate, I guess, depending on how you want to look back on it. It was a sliding doors moment where if I had not, If that had not happened, then I was applying for jobs when I got to New York, and I had the two job, two job offers at once. One was this job at USA Studios that I took as director of IT. And the other one was becoming a Somali at Dos Caminos.

And they were like, you don't have any Somalia experience, but we like you. We're going to, we'll invest in training you and get all this stuff and whatever. And they literally like had offered me the job. I had accepted it and was supposed to start the next week. And then I got the USA Studios job. And I was like, oh, gosh, this is like a really pivotal moment where my career is going to go one way or the other most likely. And just because at that time, the writer's strike was still going on, I was like, all right, I'm going to go for the sure thing for a second. And just for a minute, I'm going to take this other computer job.

And then I said, oh, a regular paycheck. This is, this feels good. Okay, I'll continue with this for a little bit longer. And all of my friends who were, who had come up with me around that time and moved up around the same time and whatnot, like everybody was doing that, doing the plan that I, that I probably would have done, which was working a flexible waiter job or some sort of flexible job that didn't pay so much, but gave you the flexibility you needed catering or whatever.

And staying out until two, three, four in the morning, because that's what you're, you're your job needs you to do and then getting up at 6 a.m. and go doing cattle calls because you don't have an agent yet because you don't have any specific appointments yet. You know, when you move to New York, it's a shell shock for a lot of people who in their local world are the star of the show. They're always the lead. And then they get to New York where everybody is on that level and they say, oh, crap, why am I not getting cast right away? And it's a much different world now. But, you know, like you were saying about auditions and whatnot. Like now post-COVID showed casting directors,

oh, we can take digital submissions. We can have actors do self-tapes. And now that's become a lot of the thing. Usually you don't call somebody in until it's a callback. But I remember when I was first starting out, I was trying to get myself, my auditions seen by, I was on the East Coast trying to get my audition seen by people on the West Coast, like casting directors out there for TV pilots.

and whatnot. And they were like, no, you're not here. We don't want to see you. Like, what is this? What is this? What is this? File you are sending me with your audition? What is this? We don't want a file. This is stupid. And like, I auditioned for Chuck that Zachary Levi got made his career. I auditioned for Superman, the Superman movie that Henry Cavill ended up getting. Like, I was a skinny little bitch. I wasn't going to get that movie. But, you know, I sent, anyway, I sent in self-tapes before self-tape's was a thing and probably just got laughed out of the door because of that. So anyway, ended up going down the tech route and that's that. So talk about this role.

So now you're essentially head of IT for studios. Had you ever had? I don't think I remember you being head of IT before. So what was this responsibility like? Did you have a big team? And how long did you stay there before you ended up at, I mentioned earlier. You were at Google. So I'm assuming that might have been the next step.

after that. Between that and Google was Thompson Reuters. I was at this company as head of IT for over two years. And I learned a lot. I learned a lot about the politics of a company in that, like, I'm a fixer. I'm a creator and I'm a fixer. And that goes back to that email. I wrote the head of the company I worked for. It doesn't like fixtures and creators. No, no, no. And so like when you're a cog in the wheel, they want you to show up and do what they hired you to do, not like try to improve things. So that's what got me fired from my first job right out of college, right? And then now learning from that experience, I was like, all right, so I'm going to try to,

I'll make suggestions. Like, this is really hard, but I got a, I got to swallow, just swallow my pride. Swallow my tongue. What's the, what's the phrase? Anyway, swallow down whatever. I'm like, listen, guys, if we can do this, this and this. then we'll be X, Y, Z, more productive. But sometimes they don't want to change.

The owners are doing their own thing. You know, it's small company politics. And so I kept my head down for the most part. And that was during the transition time when everybody was starting to get broadband. So, like, when I first came in to this company, they had two T1 lines, which is 1.5 megabytes, right? Like just that was super fast at the time because we were coming from modem days.

But they had two T1s that didn't do automatic failover. If their primary went down, they went in unplugged, reconfigure an IP and plugged in the other cable, like literally just terrible management that was there. So brought them up to speed, got, I think we had a T3 at one point. And then we got like, there was a hundred meg copper line that came in. And I just remember all of these stair steps of internet connectivity. And now I'm sitting here talking to you on my gigabit fiber connection at my house. I'm just like, you know, this stuff's been advancing pretty crazy.

But yeah, that was during the time when the internet speeds were really picking up. And this was a company that I worked for that was basically spot distribution, like TV and commercial spots. A commercial is called a radio spot. Like an ad is just called a, whoops, an ad is called a spot. And so they made their whole bread and butter and were like wildly successful. with massive duplication. So back in the day, you would have a New York company that would create a commercial and they would need it literally copied, like hundreds or sometimes thousands of copies made and overnighted to all of the TV stations in the country so that the TV stations

could take that tape, pop it in, and play the ad. And I came on board. They brought me on to like kind of modernize their tech stack because the internet was getting faster and faster. And then we ended up partnering with another company that now has tech. taken over in the entire spot distribution space, but I helped my company and this other company develop a completely digital workflow. So we would get the tapes from the marketing agencies and the creative agencies digitize it. And it was a complete digital workflow from that point on. And we would have, you know, a TV commercial that was 100 megs large. It would take sometimes hours to upload, but it still got there faster and much cheaper, much cheaper than

it would if you were literally copying and shipping overnight, which, you know, you're subject to delivery delays and lost tapes and damage tapes and whatnot. That was a really interesting time. When I kind of did that, it was after the two years, I was just looking for a bigger opportunity because I had sort of done everything there that the company wanted to do. So, and then you went to what was the name of the company? Thompson Reuters. Right. Yeah, Thompson Reuters.

How long were you there before you took the opportunity with Google? So I was there for two and a half years. I came in as a contractor, and they, after six months or so, they flipped me over to full time. And that was weird. I literally, it was a cold outreach from Monster.com. I'd put my resume on Monster at that point. And this consulting person reached out and was like, hey, I got this role with Thompson Reuters. You should go in for it.

And I was like, okay. And so, yeah, I ended up really liking it there. and I was working in the department and doing a lot of hardware work too, because this was, this was 20, no, it was 2000, 2011. So cloud was just getting born. Cloud wasn't really a thing at all yet, no cloud technology. So for Reuters, these massive technology companies, you would have whole departments that would just,

just maintain an entire floor of a development data center. So I worked on the third floor or something, and then the fifth floor above us right in Times Square, the building's still there, the Reuters building. And I'm sure the data center doesn't exist anymore because why would you need it? But before there was cloud, I was there as a sysadmin like setting up network configurations and building out machines. And then VMware, those were the years when VMware just exploded under the scenes.

like virtual machines. What? And so I became an expert in VMware, and we were spinning up all of these dev machines for the developers to beat up, and then we destroyed them and cloned them. And again, they go. And so then a friend of mine from college, going back to relationships, a friend of mine from college that I used to perform with,

who also got a comp side degree, was at Google and said, oh, hey, my team's hiring for a technical program manager. Can I refer you? I think you'd be great for this. And I was like, okay, fine, you know. And I was like, I'll never get it. And I went into the interviews again, this being kind of like, all right, yeah, let's cool.

I'm having fun because I don't think I'm going to get this. And I got it. And then I spent the next 11 years bouncing between teams at Google, a few different teams. So I was at Google from 2013 to 2024. Cool. Yeah. What I love so far about your journey to this point is it's a lot of indifference, you know, but just being open.

you know, being open-minded. And I think that a lot of people that like to build stuff, that like to take things apart, that are big vision and ideation people, we just can't stay in one place for too long. So the fact that you were at Google for 11, they let you play, it sounds like. I don't know yet,

but my assumption is they had to have let you frigid play. And then the fact that I was in the same company 15 years is because I got to play. You know, I learning, when you're learning, you're playing, you're having fun. And they kind of kept me doing that until recapitalization happened, then culture change, and then things kind of shifted to the opposite direction. And I was like, I can't do this anymore. I got to go blaze a trail here.

So, yeah, talk about this. One question that most people have about Google, and I have the same question is, is the interview process is like quirky? and wonky as people make it out to be where they're going to ask you just questions and it's less about you being right, but more about your creativity and how you get to the end result.

You nailed it, yes. The questions are weird. They're off the wall. They're designed to expose how you think and how you communicate, not, because they know you can Google a solution, no pun intended. They know you can look it up.

Like, what the, famously, not famous, I guess people are like, yeah, stack overflow. That's where I get all my best code from. But somebody's already written the code you want to write already anyway. You need to be a good coder. You need to understand the concepts. And that's what they are, that's what they're looking for.

They're looking for you to think big, right? Think outside the box. Think about redundancy. Think about scalability because this is Google. After all, they're not building for one person. They're building for millions. So how do you design systems that will fail over that will be that have built in backups and redundancies and health checks and all these things.

So, and then part of that process, too, is how do you communicate your ideas? How well do you say, here's my, you know, we're going to build this service over here. We're going to build this service over here. Because they told me when I wasn't, I wasn't interviewing for a developer position. I was a TPM position. So I didn't need to write actual code, but they were, they needed to know I understood it. So they were like, write pseudo code. And so I just, you know, they asked me the questions and pointed me at a whiteboard with a

couple markers and I would just make these giant diagrams of like, okay, here's, here's what we're going to do. And then they throw, you know, they throw additional things. Okay. So now we need to scale it for the other side of the world. How are we going to, how are we going to do that? Or that part that you just did, that you just built, it went down. It's got a, it's got a major bug. How do we diagnose it? And so you just go through and, and literally just ask lots of questions and communicate and make sure that you're open, show that you're always open to learning. You know what you're, know what you're doing and you can explain what you're doing very clearly and ask questions for clarification because they know too, like you said, it's a place where you can play. They expect

you to work very hard, but they let you play hard too. And at least it was before the culture shifted. The exact same thing happened to Google. Yeah, at that point in 2013, it was still what I want to call in their startup phase. They were growing like crazy and money. was raining from the sky and they were just trying everything that they could. And they wanted to encourage people, native people, to come in and bring that creativity to the, to the technical realm. And that's how things like, like Chrome was built because, you know, famously Google had, not anymore, but had their 20% time, right?

So you were allowed, as long as you were getting your core job done, you could take 20% of your day and or your week or whatever and do a side project at Google. as long as it didn't compete with Google. And that's how Chrome was born because some people didn't like Internet Explorer. That's how Gmail was born because some people didn't like a hotmail. So some of these major things that we just think of as being here that came out of 20% projects that someone was like, I'm going to go try to build something better because I can. And I feel like it's necessary. And then they got some other teams to do it or some other friends and that developed into a team.

And then a leader was like, we need to formalize this. So that was the idea behind 20% was just do something to play and be creative as long as it was constructive. Love it. Well, I'm glad that you got to go through that experience because that's not a lot of people's dream jobless. So that's awesome that you got to go through that, but also grow through that, testing out stuff, being able to just go and play with kind of an open budget. It had to almost feel surreal like you're just playing with. funny money and be able to use the cool technology and then over your journey, I mean, essentially going from dial up to now you fast forward to 26 where AI and machine learning

and all this, you know, crazy stuff is happening. And if you look back to the beginning, if the technology that was out today was out when you were back then, like we wouldn't even be talking right now because you'd be on a boat in the south of France somewhere because of all the startups that you exited, right? It's just wild how things can shift. And it's really not that much time. I mean, you're looking at 25, 30 years and there's these massive, massive shifts. So before we get into all things technology, which will kind of segue into how we met, let's talk after leaving Google. So you mentioned culture, recapitalization, restructure, culture started to shift that, you know, I know for me when that happened, I was like, all right, I got to figure out my exit strategy, right?

because I don't want to be part of this mess. What was your mindset like when those things started to occur? And then how did Broadway come into play? So by the time I got to Google in 2013, a lot of the actors that I had performed with in the five years prior and had moved up to New York, some of them had made it on Broadway already. And so when I got to Google,

there was a 20% project that had, that it hit a couple offices called Talks at Google. And it was still relatively unorganized and just kind of sporadic. And it was only in some of the major offices that Google had at the time. And so I thought, I'm going to spend my 20% time while I'm not doing engineering Cody Cody Data Analysis stuff over here. I'm going to go over to the other side of the building. And I'm going to bring in my friends who are Broadway performers and have them sing

for an hour and do an event. And we'll talk about their careers and talk about their shows. And I very, very quickly learned that the relationships there have to be with the press agencies for the show, the marketing and the press agencies. And so when you get those official relationships going, then it's a one-to-many relationship because there's only three or four like really major agencies in each little genre within New York that represent all of Broadway. And so you can go to one contact at one agency and they can bring in half of the new shows this season. And so it became this thing where I was spending a little bit more than 20% of my time planning these events, bringing Broadway casts into Google. Like there was probably two to a month for a while at the beginning. And then in the shows, there were sometimes TV and film celebrities that were in the shows.

that so they would come in with their press agents, their personal press agents, and their personal press agents would rep other TV and film celebrities. And so everybody was like, oh, I'm going to do this. This is cool. This is great. Like, this is something really nice that my clients could enjoy.

And so it became this thing where it caught the attention of some other people in another office who then had other connections to TV and film. And then kind of like the three of us between the West Coast. in San Francisco and Bay Area and LA offices. And then me in New York here, we were building up this pipeline of massive, like, TV film celebrities. I mean, I've escorted Harrison Ford to the bathroom and hung out with Jake Gyllenhall

and taking a nap with Morgan Freeman before his event. Like, you know, we didn't cuddle. We were just next to each other. And I mean, the kind of stuff this led to got the attention of, like, execs at Google. And they said, we either need to kill this because this is really getting a lot of attention or formalize it. And lucky for me, they decided to formalize it. And then, long story short, I became the first global lead of the talks at Google program.

And that's what I was as my official role at Google for the last, no, from 2016 to 2022, those six and a half years. And then the culture shift happens post-COVID. By then, all of the original execs of Google had exited. They've taken their fun retirement stock, and they are living in boats in the south of France. And I was in culture as culture. So the execs were being replaced by people from big pharma,

big banking, big finance from these places where, like, culture was never a thing. They came from a world where it was always, It doesn't matter how much money is rating from this guy. Don't frivolously spent. And there's something to that. But the soul, what I will call the soul of the creativity of Google, creativity even in the technical space, I think, was lost relatively quickly.

A lot of people have felt that. A lot of people exited. And then, yeah, 2022, I was, because I was a relatively senior person at the company by that, point in my particular department I was in and they needed a particular group of people with a particular group of skills. So they picked out a couple Liam Nessons, about 70 of us, and put us on this confidential project. So I was literally told like I had no choice. I had to leave the talks program and became a PM for what now became grad, which it was an internal program, confidential at the time to totally replace the performance management system that all 180,000

full-time people at that time were evaluated on. So that was just pushing me back into this world of uncreativity, policy writing, really like not fun stuff for me. And I never let go of the theater and the podcasting side. And that's when I dove into really starting the podcasting world. Because I guess, Yeah, back in 2018 as well, through my theater connections I was doing with talks, I started doing my own podcast where I would interview Broadway celebrities, and it's now turned to TV and some film celebrities as well. And I would interview them. And that, again, the creative need, the entrepreneurial need,

I was like, oh, there's a problem here in discoverability because I wouldn't have started my podcast had I been able to find others that already existed, but I couldn't because Spotify and Apple and everything at the time just wasn't surfacing what I needed. And so then I found a producer in the Broadway space and the two of us co-founded Broadway podcast network. I had it cleared with Google, you know, didn't compete with anything Google was doing. I'm totally on the up and up. And so on the side in my spare time at night, essentially, I was running BPN and growing this podcast network and doing my own podcast work while still having this full-time job at Google. and then when I got moved into grad

culture shifted I just ended up kind of doing I wasn't interested in growth at Google anymore because it didn't seem like there was any because the writing was sort of on the wall with AI that was also when AI started to become a thing Gemini had come out. Open AI was just starting to release this brand new thing called ChatGPT

and fast forward long story short to January 2024 I get a meeting put in my calendar and you know what's coming. So me and several thousand other people, like literally, I think this is part of like a 10 or $15,000 layoff round or something. But yeah, I got put on garden leave January 24. Finally was not on payroll anymore, April 24. And that gave me the push I needed to start doing really my own thing in many different avenues, including producing and SaaS development. Yeah, I love it. Well, you know, you've had such a well,

rounded amount of experience and in different facets of technology and industry and, you know, just been able to surround yourself with some incredible people as well over the years that where all these relationships, they seem to just come back full circle and intertwine themselves. And, you know, so we originally got connected. I think this was in end of 25, I believe. Yeah. Maybe initial conversation. Because I'm head of audience development for Jamex and a buddy of mine, Joel connected, I think, Evan and Evan.

You were already partners on something. And so we ended up meeting and getting you all involved with JamX and helping your network, which was kind of crazy. But the craziest part of this story for the audience is we, I don't think I knew you were going to be in Orlando. I don't think you knew I was going to be in Orlando and we end up going to a karaoke event. We were down there, we were down there for for a podcast. Oh, you were there for a different conference.

Oh, right, right, right, right. Yeah, we were down there for Podfest Orlando. Yep. Yes. Because, okay, so Joel Lodgey and Evan White, yeah, I partnered with Evan White on Purple Acorn Network. He brought me in to start another network

about HR and talent acquisition, H-R-T-A. So yeah, and then I've already been working with you through BPN and Purple Acorn. Yeah, but never actually had a phone call, never had a video. It was just all through email. And then end up hopping and getting introduced in person from Neil, who crazy, him and I had been at a Oregon Washington game on a Saturday and a Seahawks game on a Sunday. A decade prior did not even know. But just wild, right? Wow.

And so we end up in a 19-minute Uber ride. And in that, you tell me about Calendar PA, which I said, like, where do I sign up? Like, I just knew this thing was going to be incredible. It was already better than some of the other guys' tools that are out on the market. And so that ended up where we decided, hey, we want to explore partnering. And then, you know, now we're co-founders in Calendar PA, right? And so, you know, you never know where you're going to meet people or, you know, when a connection will turn into a partnership, you know, and it's things like this.

These things happen to me all the time, but I think it's because of curiosity. It's because of being open, having the right mindset and saying, yeah, let's go. Let's move. And you and I both know with the speed in which technology moves today, you can get things. There's no excuse anymore on why you can't make things happen, why you can't take an idea and instead of throwing it at a wall, you literally just go build it. Yeah, just go pick it out.

You don't have to throw it at a wall anymore. You know, you can just go build it and then you can test it out and see who likes it and get feedback. And it just happens so much faster now. And so I want to say, hey, you know, hats off to you, kudos because you've been, you're a Broadway producer,

which I don't even know what the heck you do in that role. Couldn't even begin, but there's probably a whole other podcast episode we have to do about that. but you're doing that. And then you also are building a show that has got rave reviews in Boston when playwrights kill. So talk a little bit about that as we're wrapping up here. And then I want to make sure people can get the information on how they can actually have the opportunity to invest in that project.

And then also we're going to get them all your social links and everything. And I know people are going to want to reach out. Very cool. Yeah, thanks. So a Broadway producer is a very loose term. Some people write checks because they want to be able to stand on stage. If it wins an award, some people write checks. And they call themselves a producer because they want to have lunch with the celebrity that's going to be in the show. There's all sorts of different things.

And essentially a producer is part of producing the product. But at what level you are producing is all, it determines all sorts of different kinds of responsive. responsibilities you have. And so now you mentioned when playwrights killed in Boston, this is the first time I've been lead producing a show because before I've been co-producing, which means I'm responsible for bringing in less money than I am now. Lead producer has to bring in a lot more money, but also lead producer. I have opted in to also be part of the discussions around marketing and press and show direction and development of, you know, like during staging of the show like, oh, can we try this? Do we have the budget for that? Like it's kind of a CEO, C, C, C, FFO role in a sense. And going back to relying on your team, you rely on, you want to hire the great lighting designer, great custom designer, great set designer, great director, great stage manager, all the people who are running their departments because you need to be able to focus on the bigger picture of the finances and the marketing and the ticket sales and whatnot, right? essentially now a show before it gets to Broadway sometimes I mean I don't know what the average is it probably takes four or five years at least for a show to get from conception to to Broadway on average

some shows take a decade something some shows take longer because part of it is this show in particular was inspired by something that happened in 2019 the playwright started writing it in 2020 it went through so many reviews visions to get to where it is now with multiple workshops. All of the workshops needed to have money to pay the actors to get to make it happen rent the space. And those workshops, some of them are just for the playwright to say, oh, is this going to work when it's read out and loud? It's coming off the page. Now it works. The pacing's right. Pacing's wrong. Some of it are presentations for potential investors. So the potential investors can kind of get an idea of what they might want to put their money into. But then at the end of the day, it's kind of like series A, B, C, etc. Fundraising. So the workshop money is Series A. That's the highest risk, highest rewards,

the people invested into that original time get the biggest payback from the profits. And then right now we're still in what I'll call Series B, which is raising for the out-of-town tryout. So because it is so much cheaper to put a production up outside of New York, you want to work out all the bugs, get all the kinks out, not in New York, before you're spending top dollar to be in front of the best audience. So we are in, we're actually, as we're recording this, we're in Boston at the Huntington Theater. And it's a great theater with a great theater audience. They are loving it. And so this is our series B raise where it's lesser risk because now the reviews are out. This is the whole point. It's a press thing. So you want to

get your out of town tryout out there. You want to get your reviews out. there. You want to prove that you are real, prove the script is good, and prove people like it. And then you can go say, all right, now we're going to do our series C. We're going to get to Broadway. And usually Broadway is the biggest raise because that's the most expensive destination. So right now, yes, we are still, as we're recording now, we're still raising money because we want to be able to say, as soon as the call comes in for a Broadway theater, we have the money to do it. Yeah, nothing gets to Broadway without a lot of money. That's just the reality of the business.

I would say this. If you like comedy, if you like storytelling, and if you want to invest in something that is going to have longevity, because this could scale into full feature film, this could scale into so many different assets in the future, do not walk folks run to the show notes, because I know that the opportunity is not there forever. There's only a limited amount of time.

And we've got a pretty good size off. audience, I think 90 countries. So any of you that hear this, seriously, reach out to Alan. He'll be very transparent with the numbers. They'll be transparent in what you get. It'll be transparent in everything. And I would just say, take action now, because this is something that you might be seeing on the big screen one day. And while Alan is sitting on his boat on the south of France, you might be watching eating popcorn in the theater. And you could be right there with him. And your name could be in the credits. That's right. And credits are all. also pretty cool. You know, the accolades that come with it. There's some really unique things. I really

like the structure of it all. And it makes sense that, you know, you built out this investment calculator with all the tech stuff that you've been doing your whole entire life. So, Alan, you know, you have been such a great guest. I've enjoyed learning more about your story and journey. I know our listeners are going to get a lot of value out of the conversation. So I want to just give a couple parting words. If there's a Trailblazer listening to this, it goes, man, man, I just want one of these things that he's been able to do. You got Broadway, you got Google, you got all these things. What advice would you give to someone that's just, you know, they have something in them

that they just maybe have been too afraid to kind of step out on the trail to go blaze it? It's along those lines, I mean, it's so cliche. You miss 100% of the shots you never take. I mean, what was that? Wayne Gretzky, right? That's something that I've always struggled with is I try to take too many shots at once. But if you never try anything, you will never succeed at anything. And while anything, this is hard for me still, even to this day, when something doesn't go my way, when something I put in air quotes fails, it hurts. It hurts a lot. And I have to let myself sit in it and acknowledge it and learn from it because at the end of the day, again, it's going to be another one of those moments, if we go back to the sliding doors moment, where something doesn't go how you wanted it. But as long as you're open and keep your head up, you will continue to find.

opportunities that will still get you to where you want to be. Like when I was a kid, I was like, I'm going to be an actor. That's great. And then now I'm an adult and I know everything I know. And I'm like, I'm really glad I don't have an actor life. That sounds terrible. Like you're in a full-time job doing eight shows a week and you still have to audition for your next job all at the same time.

You find the thing that you really want to do if all you do like you said, you're open to new opportunity. And if somebody, when you're at a karaoke bar is like, I'm going back to the hotel, you want to split a Uber, you say yes. You never know. You never know who you're going to meet. That's it. That's it. Great advice, my friend. It was awesome having you on. I know our listeners are going to get a ton of value out of this conversation. Thanks so much for coming on the show and keep blazing your own trail, my friend. Thank you. So great to talk to you. Yes, sir.