Today we’d like to introduce you to Eli Eisenberg.
Hi Eli, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
My father was an entrepreneur. He led by example and taught me 2 important traits – “Hard work pays off. Take calculated risks to increase chances for rewards.”
At age 9, I used to watch the NBC Baseball Game of the Week TV broadcast. I told my parents; that’s what I wanted to do, put together a sports broadcast. I studied sports broadcasts on television regularly and tried to dissect what was going on. I had an internship at a radio station and a broadcasting trade school when I was a senior in high school as part of my final senior project. This experience continued my excitement towards a broadcasting career.
I went to UMBC to study broadcasting. The university did not have a broadcasting program or even a communications major. I moved into a program called Option II, which was a precursor to the school’s interdisciplinary studies program. I essentially was customizing my curriculum and building a major. This was an incredible opportunity to chart my path.
Through my entrepreneurial spirit and the doors that UMBC opened for me, I had 3 great career opportunities between 1980 and 1985:
-An internship at a local cable news and programming studio for a national cable company.
-That internship transferred into a paid employee position at Storer Cable Communications within 6 months.
-UMBC recommended me to the Baltimore Orioles. I joined their production team in 1985 as the Orioles were the 5th major league baseball team to build a video scoreboard (aka DiamondVision Board) for ballpark entertainment. This paved the way for my initial broadcasting work as a very young professional at age 23.
I was involved in over 400 Orioles baseball games video board productions from 1985 – 1990, working 100-hour weeks to deliver the best show to the fans. This dedicated work paid off. The Orioles recognized me for my dedication. With a new ballpark being built in 1992, the Orioles and the Maryland Stadium Authority asked me to join the design team.
The challenge and the goal of the project were to design the most state-of-the-art production and technical systems in any ballpark in baseball while blending them into historical and old-fashioned-looking architecture, a throwback in time. This was an opportunity of a lifetime and it catapulted me into the national spotlight. For over 2 years, I worked over 4,000 hours annually to dedicate to the stadium design project of a lifetime.
Simultaneously, I was starting to freelance in the sports production world in the late 1980s for regional sports networks and then later national broadcasting channels. My positions ranged from camera operator and replay operator and worked my way up to the “front of the production truck”, becoming a game producer and director. But to pay off some of those dues, I would have to drive 400 to 500 miles to produce and direct smaller events such as college women’s soccer games or high school all-star basketball games just to cut my teeth and gain the experience.
The Oriole Park at Camden Yards project was an enormous success and became world-renowned. So much so, that other sports teams approached the Orioles and the Maryland Stadium Authority as they requested who was involved in all aspects of the project including production, technical, and broadcast systems. With that, I incorporated to create VPC, Inc. VPC stands for Video Production Consulting. I was fortunate enough to be contacted by a variety of sports franchises and municipality sports authorities with an interest in hiring VPC. Being a small company in the consulting marketplace, we were blessed to be involved in over 50 projects between 1992 – 2008.
Notable projects included:
**Coors Field – Colorado Rockies
**Petco Park – San Diego Padres
**M&T Bank Stadium – Baltimore Ravens
**Historic Renovation of Solider Field – Chicago Bears
**Citizens Bank Ballpark – Philadelphia Phillies
**Amalie Arena – Tampa Bay Lightning
My passion is clearly for production. While VPC started off providing consulting and owner’s representative services in sports stadium and arena design, the goal was to move the company to include production services. The particular focus was to bring the excitement of sports production into other sectors of the special events genre.
In 1996, we re-engaged with UMBC who gave us the opportunity to produce their spring commencement. VPC was not only in charge of the video production but also the sound, theatrical lighting, and video screen systems. This was the start of building our production model as a turnkey production services company. We also landed a contract with Comcast Cable Eastern Region the same year where they needed support producing local content and government affairs segments for insertion on CNN Headline News. That contract gave us visibility in the corporate space in the mid-Atlantic region.
From there, the rocket took off, building trust with our clients and creating a turnkey experience in various industry sectors including higher education, non-profit, corporate, and civic/government organizations. I wanted to bring the excitement and sizzle of sports production and the multi-discipline execution of theater production to those sectors and their special events. Building around the core pillars of an organization or the corporate message being delivered by a CEO, we delivered programming a 1-2-3-4 punch of sight-sound-theatrics-video content so it kept audiences engaged in the programs VPC produced from start to finish.
At the start of the millennium, VPC was producing about 125 events annually. Just before the pandemic, we were approaching 300 events annually. Coming out of the pandemic, the company is still producing more than 250 events annually with a greater emphasis on larger-scale events on a national level. VPC has also built a robust video content department creating all sorts of content for the events we produce and for social platforms. We produce a few thousand videos annually.
Can you talk to us about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
The road to success is never smooth or in a straight line. Adversity and mistakes lead to growth, and opportunity and can create new successes. We survived 3 times being on the verge of bankruptcy. The company also got through being voluntarily selected for a tax audit and the rigors involved
I was blessed to receive an award in 2019 as one of Maryland’s Most Admired CEOs. This was recognized by The Daily Record, a Maryland-based business and legal publication. And while many might feel that could have been a highlight of my career, I had only begun to scratch the surface of what a CEO’s role might be with the biggest obstacle of my career unknowingly looming. That was leading the company through the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic crisis.
For a company that is built on serving clients and their audiences when they gather in person and celebrate, we faced uncertainty as there was a “mandated world lockdown”. I’m a person that pushes away negativity and looks at positivity. So instead of first looking at how to save money and survive, I looked at how to make money and thrive. I charged our engineers to create a custom “broadcast virtual model” that I could see would be a good fit for some of our clients. As it was being developed, I was marketing to current clients and being introduced to potential clients outside of Maryland who could benefit from what our engineering team is developing with the virtual programming model.
Once that was launched, I then took a hard look at the company finances and worked with my business partners to make the difficult decision of laying off half of our workforce of 16 people with the remainder of staff absorbing salary cuts for the attempt of survival. These were some of the most heartfelt and difficult conversations to have with colleagues whom we have treated like family during their tenure with VPC and who worked very hard to build our company reputation. But this is what we needed to do to survive.
Luckily and thankfully, we coupled our robust broadcast virtual model with our in-person production and technical expertise. That combination guided us to create a virtual event boutique model that was engaging and that people wanted to utilize. At the end of the day, we were not necessarily the best model as larger companies had more resources than us. But we got out ahead of the curve and went to the marketplace fast. From the time the lockdown had occurred to our first virtual event was less than 50 days. Our virtual events model took off and in the long haul, we not only survived but thrived when compared to most companies. From the end of April through the end of 2020, we produced over 150 virtual events.
The pandemic matured me as a CEO and the pandemic reshaped VPC to become a more nimble and efficient company. Overcoming all of these obstacles and challenges over the last 20 years has made VPC a stronger, nationally recognized company.
We’ve been impressed with VPC, Inc., but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
We have been told by clients, venues where we work, and outside observers that we are excellent executioners of our craft and the most thorough project management firm that anyone has ever worked with in their careers. This is what sets us apart from competitors and is our signature hallmark.
We collaborate very well with our clients and our partners. We have a vision and then document all of the details in various customized playbook documents that our team has created. Another unique aspect of our company is that we have an in-house video content department. This is an attribute that again sets us apart from other firms. We can strategically and cost-effectively produce video content as part of the turnkey and bundled services that we offer to our clients. We’ve been working with many of our clients for over 15 years.
As we get to know their brand, we have the opportunity to create video content that supports their event production and organizational activities. The workflow becomes very streamlined between our client and our video content team and this distinguishes us in the marketplace.
If there is one takeaway for your readers, it is that VPC is fully vested in every project all the time whether the project is valued at $5,000 or $500,000. Our job is to be curious, hard-working, and forward-thinking. From those attributes, the VPC team develops the best production experience and technical flow execution for our clients and their audiences and customers. We are in lock-step with our clients from the first day to the last day of each project and it is our job to understand every aspect of the project.
What I am most proud of on a day-to-day basis is the family work ethic and engaging and caring culture that we have built within the company. It has taken over 30 years to do this. The culture coupled with our expertise is a winning formula for our success.
Three of our most successful and recognizable projects have occurred as the company turned 30 years young in the 2020 decade.
**Producing 14 virtual commencements for the University of Maryland at the start of the Covid-19 Crisis.
**Serving as a senior production consultant to the Pittsburgh Steelers to manage their preseason television broadcasts.
**Supporting Showtime Sound in support of Comedian Kevin Hart’s North American Tour.
The crisis has affected us all in different ways. How has it affected you and any important lessons or epiphanies you can share with us?
Treat everyone with kindness, empathy, and respect. I learned during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis that everyone’s circumstance is different from yours and you have to be mindful of the stresses your staff, colleagues, partners, vendors, etc. face every day. You don’t know if a spouse lost a job, childcare is lost, someone is very sick or passed away, working with homeschooling, etc.
Treat everyone the same way you would like to be treated. Be patient and courteous. And start every conversation by asking them how they are doing. It allows the opportunity for us to personally connect. By sharing, we forge stronger relationshipsand more unified together.
Contact Info:
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- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vpceli/
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