Hi everyone, welcome to Sudbury Interviews.

Today we have Derek Young from Derek Young Tourism and Events Marketing.

He's a very well known event promoter and marketing guy in Sudbury and we'll be discussing his his journey today.

Before we begin, you can find us on Sudstown and join the conversation.

If you would like to be a guest on the show, please reach out.

Hey, Derek Young, how you doing?

Good, Danny, how are you?

Good.

So what have you been up to?

Just keeping busy, man, Just living the dream, having fun.

And yeah, that's really what it's all about.

Just just having fun and try to keep busy.

Did you always know that you were going to be like an event marketing person?

You know, I guess it was something I, I guess sort of by accident that I had fallen into.

So going back to I guess, well, I guess if, if we want to even just look at high school as as an example, right?

Like I, I was sort of always involved in student government and things along that line.

And, and then as a result of being involved with student government, you know, like very simple things like, you know, organizing guest speakers at school or being part of a student food drive, different fundraising events that we'd be doing at the school.

So, you know, that's I guess kind of where, where some of it basically started more so from like an organizing perspective and, and just sort of getting a paste of those events.

And then from there, it's sort of led to my college experience.

You know, I, I had enrolled at Cambridge College.

I was in the business administration program and then I was asked to become the the chief returning officer for the student government elections at Cambrian.

And then that led to me being involved in student government.

You know, I take it on the role as chairperson.

And my best friend from college who had actually met during that campaign, he was elected as the vice president of social affairs.

And earlier in that school year, our our student programmer had went on a on a sabbatical to work with a large concert promotions company out of the United States.

And that basically left Kyle to take on the whole social events portfolio on his own without the support of a student programmer.

So that's kind of where I just kind of stepped up and, you know, worked alongside Kyle to be promoting like Frosh weeks, concerts, pub nights and and then as as that relationship had gone with Kyle after college, we'd still remained really good friends and we're best friends to to this date.

And a lot of my experience in the event industry, I kind of owe it to Kyle has throughout college, I kind of beaten became his right hand on some of the stuff and had a lot of fun doing it.

And one of the things that we talked about at college was, you know, our model was keeping it real.

And that's, that's one thing that I've that's that stuck with me for the last 2530 years.

It's just coming back to those principles.

Like even at Cambrian, right?

It wasn't what we learned in the textbooks.

It was what we learned outside of college by doing that, that that was more beneficial, right?

Like at 22 years old, I was president of the student government and we had a quarter $1,000,000 budget.

Like what 22 year old has the experience of managing a quarter $1,000,000 corporation?

You kind of look back on that now.

It's like, wow, that was actually pretty cool.

So, so I've always sort of stayed true to, to that event stuff and, you know, tried to make a goal of it as as an entrepreneur and as an entrepreneur, you know, we, we do struggle, but you just never know what sort of life path is going to take you on.

And then outside of college, we continue to do some events together.

And then he ended up moving to Guelph and I stayed behind and just continue to do event stuff.

And from there, it sort of led to a variety of different things.

Would it be, you know, getting involved with the Arts Council or getting involved with the Downtown Association?

Those experience sort of helped to strengthen my role in the events community, you know, and, and then that sort of led to festival planning.

Back in like 2008, I'd, I'd started the Sudbury Celtic Festival and, you know, tried to do my best with that, with the best of, of intentions.

And unfortunately that ended in 2011, but it was a really valuable experience at the time that sort of led to new opportunities, you know, working with like organizations like Little Ray's Reptile Zoo, which is like the largest exotic animal rescue in Canada.

And then that led to, you know, relationships with the Super dogs and, and, and and the Knights of Valor.

But had it not been for college and Celtic Festival, you know, I would not have had those experiences and I would not have had the journey that that I've been on.

So you mentioned the Moto keeping it real.

What does that mean to you?

Well, I think for us, it's, it's just about, you know, like just trying to keep things into its perspective and, you know, putting in an honest day's work, hard work and perseverance.

And you know, at the end of the day, we, we sort of ended each, each day with a handshake and like, hey, good day today and on to tomorrow.

Nice.

Did you, did you have a political run at some point?

I think I remember you running for office at one point, no?

Yeah.

So, you know, politically, you know, I I'd ran for city councillor a couple times, once in 2006.

And then in 2010, I decided to go for the gusto and actually put my name on on, on the marriage ballot.

There were 12 candidates on the ballot at that time, and I finished fourth overall.

But again, you know, like, that was a really good experience.

And, you know, like, but up until that point, there were two veteran counselors, you know, that that we're running.

You know, one was Ted Callahan and the other was Mayor Rodriguez.

And then just out of nowhere, Marianne Matichuk came into the picture and you know, she just cleaned right up on on that particular election.

But you know, Marianne and I had developed a friendship after that.

And but the whole experience of even running for mayor, right?

Like I remember my very first debate and the headline in the subway star that day was young shines that at debate.

I'm like that.

That's me felt really good like knowing that here it is, I'm standing my ground.

I'm debating a 16 that 16 year veteran on City Council and a current mayor and former member of federal parliament.

And I was standing my owner and I was actually starting to get some some good support and some good momentum.

But, you know, Marianne was just very well organized at the time and she had a message that resonated with the people.

And, you know, we became the city's first elected female mayor.

Is that something that still interests you, do you think or at some point?

I think it is something that is still of interest to me because again, right, like throughout the the event work that I've done, there's always sort of communities always being at the heart of all of that.

And that's, that's the one thing that that I do like about politics is that, you know, you can sort of look at both sides of the story.

I've also been one of those guys that kind of works quietly behind the scenes to get things done.

So from, from that perspective, you know, like, like I look at guys like Jerry, Jerry Lockheed, right?

You know, we were at an event one day and a lot of people try and encourage Jerry Lolley to get involved in politics.

And Jerry's like, you know what I'm more effective on on the outside just because you, you, you have greater influence on actually helping to shape policy sometimes as, as, as opposed to being sitting right at the table.

So I think at some point I, I still do have political aspirations, you know, but it's, it's, it's, it's again, it's going to be finding the right ward, the right time, the right messaging that's going to resonate with with the community.

The politics now is just so different too, right?

Like when you just sort of look at what's going on in in the world with a lot of very strong political views and, and how in some ways, you know, people may have just become disenfranchised with a system that is broken.

And you know, it's, it's like even now, right, Like, like I look at while I just look at the city as a whole, There are some very interesting things that are happening in our in our city.

And so every sort of in a bit of a resurgence in Renaissance kind of idea, you know, like there's there, there's so much positive that is going on, like new Event Center, new library, art gallery.

The current mayor is quickly approaching the goal of 200,000 new residents in the city of Sudbury.

And, and, and those are all good big picture things that are happening, But unfortunately it's, it's, it's being overshadowed by a lot of realities on the ground and, and, and on the street as it relates to, you know, vagrancy and, and, and, and downtown and people wanting to feel comfortable in investing in our city, right?

Like, you know, the, there are new businesses that are coming to the downtown and, and it's great to promote that, that, that this growth is happening.

We've got a vibrant patio program, but you know, unfortunately the reality is that that's being overshadowed by.

And I'm not saying anything out of turn.

You just got to take a walk down the street and take a good whiff.

You know, like businesses that are invested in in the downtown and simple things like urinating on a sidewalk and the sidewalks reek of of urine outside of beautiful patio that someone has invested their heart and soul into and and where is the support for that person right.

So great awesome beautiful patio program.

But the reality is we have people that are urinating on our downtown streets.

The streets reek of urine and there's no bathroom.

And businesses, when we talk about being open for business, many downtown businesses have decided to lock the door.

And you have to ring.

You have to ring a doorbell to get customer service, right?

Like that, that, that was stuff that we used to do after midnight when the stores would close because you had a 24 hour convenience store, right?

But that was fine after 12 midnight for the safety of the store worker.

But now, like when you have businesses that are leaving the downtown that don't want to be downtown, that are paying double the rent just so they could have a better experience, you know, all the wonderful things that are happening, right?

Like we talked about building an Elder St.

Greenway and, and, and how that would be a wonderful attraction to the downtown and have like this downtown Green Park.

But we can't do simple things like fix your retaining wall and cut the grass.

So how are we going to maintain a $40 million Elgin St.

Greenway, right?

So from a political perspective, yeah, there's a lot of good things happening.

But there's some very simple, basic things that we got to maybe come back to basics and take care of the simple things on the street so that the growth that we're poised to have is not being overshadowed by the reality of what's actually going on on the street.

And I know it's a very long political rant, Danny, but you know, and I don't want to get too off, off topic about that.

But you know, we we do have to face the realities that yes, there is growth happening and there's a lot of positive things happening, but there's also a lot of negative things that are happening that are negatively impacting and overshadowing the skills that people aren't seeing.

Well, you know, to be honest, I don't know anything about politics.

I'm clueless about it all and but I I understand what you're saying.

I didn't know about the the stores like locking their doors and I didn't know about any of that.

Well, yeah, you know, like in in my mom's office building, they've had people during the day come into the office and steal, steal the ladies purses like they're they're working at their desk.

They leave the desk for 5 minutes.

Someone snuck into the office and stole on a purse.

Those types of things are happening.

Our own MP, Vivian Lapointe for Sudbury moved her office from downtown to Bouchard Street, You know, and that office is occupied by Rick Bartolucci for a very long time.

And So what is that saying, right?

Like, those are the things that we're not talking about.

But that is the reality that our politicians and people that should be helping us to address these issues, even they're saying like, even I don't want to be downtown, right?

Like when our own member of federal parliament decides to move their office out of downtown.

But at the same time, Oh yeah, we believe in downtown and we got to support the downtown and we got to do this and that.

But you've moved your office out of the downtown.

What it what kind of a political statement is that making?

Right.

And then that just shows the reality of what's actually happening.

But you know, things like the new arena and an Event Center, that's, that's definitely going to help to revitalize to downtown and, and hopefully put more faith in in the downtown.

But again, there's a lot of things that are going on on the street that aren't being talked about that are overshadowing all the good positive things that that are happening.

And, and I love the downtown as, as do a lot of people that are invested in it, But I we're sort of in that weird spot, Danny.

We're like, you know, we're sort of on the verge of something really big happening.

But it's gotten to a point where it's like people have just had enough to So like how, how do you balance that, right?

Like you, you're trying to balance growth with people of that have just become apathetic, right?

And just, they can only believe so much and have so much strength and courage.

And then eventually it's like I'm done.

So when it comes to community, I know you're a big community guy.

Like what motivates you?

Like what motivates you in terms of community?

Like how?

How do you stay motivated with all that?

I just try and keep the faith really, you know, starting in January, I, I actually started attending All Nations Church and that, that, that for me has been a real eye opening experience.

And it's, and it's helped to put a lot of things into perspective for me.

And one of the things that I like about all nations churches that for me, it doesn't come off as as being preachy.

It's more about the life skills and the experiences, you know, So there are things that are said in church that I can relate to.

Like I, I remember a long time ago I was talking with Jeremy, Jeremy Mahood, who was our pastor at the time.

And like Jeremy, when I come to All Nations Church, I feel good.

This feels like a Dale Carnegie motivational workshop.

It's not stand up 316.

John said blah, blah, blah, like this to me.

I, I leave church on Sunday and I, and I, and I feel motivated and, and I feel a connection to the Scripture and to what's being said.

And he said, Derek, that's my job.

My job as a preacher is not to come here and preach scripture to you.

It's to help connect you to scripture and to see yourself in Scripture.

So every Sunday sermon, I kind of take something away from it.

Like, like a couple weeks ago, Pastor Brandon was talking about community and loneliness.

And you know, how 60% of humans identify as being lonely, 70% in a leadership role.

And so, but, but we do need that sort of community around us.

But you know what, What he was saying about Sunday sermons is that the Sunday sermon prepares us for the week ahead.

And, and again, that, that was sort of a message that resonated me, right.

So you go at church, you're going to hear some great things going to leave them motivated.

What are you doing on Monday morning, right.

So that, that kind of sets us up for for the week ahead.

So, so for myself, like, as, as far as community goes, right, like I just, I want to see a better Sudbury.

I want to see a more happy Sudbury and some of the experiences that I've had to travel to other cities and, and and work in other cities.

I sometimes go like, why can't that happen here?

Right.

So yeah.

So part of it is seeing those opportunities, what other cities are doing and try and bring some of those ideas back back home and, and just slowly keep chipping away and perseverance and, and I'm just trying to bring those types of experiences back home.

When I was working with super dogs, one of the things that they instilled in me was functioning at enterprise level, which at that time I wasn't quite familiar with the term.

But when I first started working with him, he says, Derek, you function at a certain level that we call enterprise level.

And I come from a background of Fortune 500 companies.

And when you send me an e-mail communication, it's clear, it's concise.

I know exactly what I have to do.

When you function at enterprise level, you don't settle for for mediocrity and you get to a certain point where things become predictable and you know they should be something to be called a hot plate.

So it was one thing to do an event budget, but on this hot plate it had every possible expenditure that you could think of, right down to toilet paper for the dressing rooms.

And when we hit certain sales targets, here's what our expenses are, here's what our revenues are, here's what our net revenue is.

And then you're sort of looking at that hot plate budget then to make the make make decisions to say that does this make good financial sense to want to continue with this project.

So when it comes to that enterprise level, those are some of the things that I try and put into my event planning.

Also looking at things more so from a patron experience, right?

Like how would a patron, you know, experience this, this, this event, you know, and even, you know, just just coming back, back to church, how it sort of changed my perspective at some point.

In the event industry, often times we're critical of of our peers, right?

And there was one of my peers in in the event industry, I've seen what they were doing and I'm like, and I go to their events and like, how do you run a festival for 5060 thousand people serving food and not have places for people to sit right?

So great event, awesome people are showing up.

It's got food like 830 on a Sunday night.

They still had lines up for people to get food at the Rib Fest.

The amphitheater was packed.

The band was still playing when I was on the downtown board.

We were, when we first did Ribfest, we said, OK, well, we were doing a Ribfest.

It was kind of like a local event that was promote and support local businesses, but it wasn't really catching on.

So we said, you know, we we need to make a bold step here.

And if we're going to do it, we need to bring in professional BBQ teams and we need to create an event.

And I had suggested, well, why don't we do it Labor Day weekend.

And I got some resistance from the board while, you know, it's Labor Day, it's back to school.

People are going to camp and they're getting their kids ready.

Probably not the best weekend.

And Jack the Riber said, well, it's actually the only weekend we have available.

So we gave it a go.

But we rolled up the sidewalk at

6:00 in the afternoon after a three day rib fest.

So to see now that it's experienced that growth to the point now where it's now attracting thousands more people and they're going solid till 10 o'clock 11:00 at night for three nights in a row on a Sunday, on a long weekend in September in Northern Ontario, and everybody's supposed to be at Camp church changed my my perspective.

And I reached out to that promoter and I said, you know what?

Yeah, we, we've been critical, but good job, right?

So part of going to church and part of being in this industry, sometimes you just got to kind of bury the hatchet too, right?

And, and so that's, that's, that's one thing that that I've been trying to work on in the last little while is, you know, changing my, my perspectives, changing how I might interact with my peers.

And taking the experiences that that I've had by working with national organizations like super Dogs, like Little Rays, and sort of working with the next generation of, of event planners to sort of share some of those experiences and, and, and perhaps even explore opportunities for, for collaboration.

So Derek, I'm going to ask you this.

We've already covered, you've already covered quite a bit of this, but it's the daily segment and it's a question I ask every guest the same words, exactly the the same every time.

And here it is.

What is one thing that you feel would make Sunbury greater?

We got about 5 minutes left.

Wow, it makes every greater again.

Gee, you know what I would say, maybe just a shift in, in, in perception, maybe.

And just everything that I talked about in this interview, just simple changes in, in mindset to sort of, you know, see how we look at the world differently.

And you know, how's it again, right.

Like through the church, I, I, I had an opportunity to volunteer and see what was going on at energy court by volunteering to help serve a BBQ for the Elgin St.

Mission.

And when we want to talk about community, you know, spend some time in a tent city and you'll get a really good sense of, of what community is all about, right?

Like those people stick together, you know, but there are times in, in our community when we might shun those people.

It's like, well, I don't go downtown because it's full of vagrants and beggars and I don't want to be bothered with that.

So I don't go down downtown, right?

But at the end of the day, those people are also human and we all bleed red, right?

So, so I think I, I would like to see a Sudbury that is, that is more understanding and compassionate so that it can really harness its true growth and potential.

That's so there we go, a more compassionate Sudbury.

The tent city down there, I didn't know it was there until I think yesterday or something.

I drove by and I said, what are all those tents over there?

But is that like are they, have they been given that area or are they just kind of there?

I would probably guess to say that they're just kind of there, right.

And but again, the, the big thing in that, in that industry is like meet people where they're at, right.

So, so it is sort of a bit of a tent city.

We, we know that the people are there.

At one point the safe injection site was operating there.

So yeah, you know, it's, it's, it's kind of important to meet people where they're at.

And I know, I guess was part of the theming behind the BBQ that was held last Wednesday, right.

So as as opposed to everybody going to the Mission for for dinner between the Mission and All Nations Church, we went to where they were, we met them where they were at and and we served dinner there, you know, and and that kind of felt good, right?

Just Just to be able to do that and and, and and to sort of see, you know, somebody from a different perspective.

Like, at the end of the day, you know, we're all good people on a path, you know?

And yeah, but but to your point, you know, what would I like to see for Sebri probably, you know, a Sudbury that's a little bit more kinder, gentler, more compassionate and really able to seize its full, full potential.

Good answer.

Sudbury interviews everyone.

And Derek, thanks for coming on.

Thanks for your your expertise.

I'd love to have you again.

Maybe in a couple of months we can talk more about the events because this flew by.

Yeah.

Well, event wise, this Friday, comedian Matt Desarro, he's a comedy magician and he's performed with cruise lines, Carnival Cruise Lines, Holland of of America, all over North America.

And he was actually recently on Penn and Teller's Fool Us.

And he'll be at Cousin Vinny's and Hammer on Friday night this week for a dinner and show.

And for all the upcoming details and other events, they can visit my website derekcountyevents.com.

Nice.

Right on man.

Well, thanks for coming on today and have a have a great day.

Well, thank you so much for the opportunity, Danny.

Take care.

Take care, bye.

Thanks.