EP236: Immersive Experiences and the Power of Storytelling with Frances Vieras Blanc
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Immersive Experiences and the Power of Storytelling with Frances Vieras Blanc and Jens Heitland
On this episode of The Jens Heitland Show - Human Innovation, I explore the transformative potential of immersive experiences with Frances Vieras Blanc, a seasoned designer of unforgettable moments. With a background spanning filmmaking, cabaret, video games, and theater, Frances shares her unique journey from the U.S. to France, culminating in the founding of her own company, Eat the Cake Studio.
Frances dives deep into the concept of immersive experiences—how they go beyond mere engagement to create profound emotional and intellectual connections. She explains the core principles behind designing these experiences: putting participants at the heart of the design process, leveraging multisensory elements, incorporating storytelling, and integrating interactive components such as actors to bring the experience to life.
One standout example discussed is a Versailles-inspired team-building event where participants embody historical figures, investigate a real-life scandal, and interact with actors in an immersive chateau setting. Frances emphasizes how immersive experiences like these can forge deeper bonds, transform team dynamics, and inspire creativity in unexpected ways.
We also reflect on our shared experiences at the College of Extraordinary Experiences, where immersive design fosters collaboration, connection, and innovation. Frances shares practical tips for businesses to infuse their team-building and events with immersive elements—starting with identifying a clear purpose, embracing themes, and creating meaningful, human-centered interactions.
Whether you're looking to engage your team on a deeper level, innovate your event strategy, or simply learn about the transformative power of immersive storytelling, this episode is filled with insights and inspiration.
Listen now and discover how to design experiences that captivate and transform.
Highlights:
00:00 Welcome and Introductions
00:21 Francis' Journey: From the US to France
02:12 Life in the Pyrenees
04:38 Immersive Experiences: An Introduction
05:02 Defining Immersive Experiences
06:41 Practical Examples of Immersive Experiences
09:26 The Power of Role-Playing in Immersive Experiences
15:17 The College of Extraordinary Experiences
20:27 Integrating Extraordinary Experiences into Business
25:14 Uniting the Immersive Industry
27:08 Designing Events with Purpose
27:48 Practical Tips for Immersive Experiences
29:27 The Power of Themes
30:20 Creating Unique Seminar Experiences
33:01 Fun and Engagement in the Workplace
35:13 The Story Behind 'Eat the Cake Studio'
38:19 Inspiration from Hamilton
42:28 Advice for Young Innovators
43:36 Connecting with Francis
Frances Vieras Blanc Links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/francesvierasblanc/
Eat The Cake Studio: https://www.eatthecakestudio.com/
Jens Heitland Links:
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Transcript:
(This Transcript is AI generated)
[00:00:00]
Francis, welcome to the show. Great to have you.
Jens Super excited to be here. Thank you so much.
Yeah. I'm looking forward because we have had so much fun meeting in person and I think we were going to have a lot of fun today in the podcast as well.
If it's anything like it was at the college, it's going to be a blast.
Exactly. So let's go a little bit into yourself first. Tell us a little bit who you are and how did you get to where you are today?
Okay. Love this question. So, um, I'm Frances. I am from the U S born and raised in the U S, but my family's from Puerto Rico. Uh, so I was the first generation born outside of the Island. So I spent the vast majority of my life in the U S traveling around, um, different cities. Um, then I moved to Puerto Rico, lived there for six years.
Then I moved to San Francisco, um, and it was in San Francisco where my fate would be found. So I did [00:01:00] 13 years in San Francisco where I studied, um, filmmaking. So I'm a screenwriter and director. Um, and, uh, 13 years after being there, Well, 12 years, I was working for the university where I went to school. So I graduated from the Academy of Art University and I was their ambassador for a few years.
And I would travel to a lot of different trade shows, um, art and design trade shows and events. And at one such trade show, I met what would be my then husband. Um, and so that's how I found my way all the way here in France, where I've been now for 12 years. Uh, originally in Paris for 10 of those years and then now living in the south in the Pyrenees with a beautiful view of the mountains, um, for the last two years, so it's been quite a journey.
Um, I come from the arts and entertainment industry, so I've spent my entire life in one way or another, um, in arts and or entertainment, so theater, film, television, um, [00:02:00] cabaret, uh, video games. And then all the way to where I am now, which is my own company, which kind of envelops all of that. That's a abridged version.
That's awesome. So Pyrenees, why did you, why did you leave Paris and go to the Pyrenees?
It was a really hard, really hard choice at first. Um, but it was right after the first round of COVID, um, and confinement. And while we lived just outside of Paris and in a cute little home with a backyard and everything. So we were grateful to have that during confinement with twins and a nine year old daughter.
Um, we realized we needed to see horizon. We wanted to have space and we wanted to connect more again with nature. And the fact that we were all remote, we all, it allowed me to realize I don't need to be attached to Paris in order to continue to work in Paris. Because what I do, you think of shows, you think of events, culture, all of that is attached to Paris.
But when we started working remotely, we realized [00:03:00] that we could actually kind of be almost anywhere and still make things happen in Paris. So at that point we decided, Let's move. Let's go somewhere where we can see nature. I look out my window. I can see the mountains. I just wanted to be able to stare out and just kind of meditate, you know, think.
Um, and so then we thought where I didn't really know much of the South of France. And so when Yohan said, my husband said, uh, my brother lives down here. We were like, well, let's go for it. And so here we are now, two years later,
it's quite funny because we moved on the other side of the Pyrenees to Spain, Zaragoza, inside of the pandemic. So it's literally really on the other side.
but that's not where you are now.
No, now I'm in the Netherlands.
We, you would have been maybe, I think Saragossa is like an hour and a half from us. We would have been neighbors.
Yeah. Almost. Imagine that.
You gotta move back.
Yeah. If you ask my wife, she's definitely up for it. Like if I tell her [00:04:00] now, she's like, okay, when do we pack?
I'm gonna message her when we're done here. I'll let her know.
Yeah. Especially from a weather perspective, it's like, yeah, different planet.
Oh yeah. But it's actually what's really interesting from a weather perspective, just on one side of the Pyrenees and the other, it's a completely different
Yeah.
Because while here it's really green and lush, um, and it rains quite frequently, it's really tropical. The other side is quite dry,
Yeah. Desert.
much hotter.
So that's always really fascinating when we cross. And really, once we get over to Spain, we're like, all right, this is a new, this is a new country. Effectively.
Yeah, it is. So let's go into immersive experiences. Because that's something I'm really intrigued to learn more about and have zero idea. Now, maybe not 100 percent zero, but like a little, but let's, let's talk a little bit. Immersive experience. How do you define it? And how do you think, um, experiences [00:05:00] are designed when it comes to immersive?
So immersive experiences, um, is, is what we're seeing now. It's a bit of a loaded word. Everything can be immersive these days. So everybody's still kind of finding the best way to define it. Um, what I consider immersive, you know, and, and, and also exchanging with some friends and discussing and having kind of a similar conversation all around.
Um, there are quite a few different things that, Take place for something to truly be immersive, um, in my world. So there is designing for the participant. So you put the participant at the heart of what you've designed. So it's very much design thinking. You take the participant and you build for them so that they are a stakeholder in the experience.
So for me, that's crucial. Um, multi sensory. So there are multi sensory elements. The idea is to immerse you as much as possible. Now you might not have all of the senses and we go beyond five senses. We have so many, but you might not have all of those, but you will have a few so that they start to be a [00:06:00] robust container that, that brings you in, that immerses you.
Um, that there in my world, there's a level of storytelling and or theme that's coherent or consistent so that you're enveloped in this kind of concept. And for us, now this is not for everybody because we understand there's different elements in immersive. We always, almost always add an element of an actor and or a presence of an actor to allow you to really, to the participant to, you know, enter the story, enter the experience, uh, on a deeper level.
So those are for me, um, what I consider to be immersive, but that's because it's the, the way I designed immersive.
Yeah, let's, let's put a practical example, something you have done so that people who have maybe not an idea what you mean with it right now to get more granular.
Um, so what, in general, first of all, when people ask, well, what do you do? And there's always the, I'm an [00:07:00] immersive experience designer, and there's a pause and then you see in their eyes are like, I have no idea what this means. So then I always go to some of the basics. So I'll, I'll always start with, well, imagine escape games.
That's immersive, um, to a certain degree, theme parks, that also lives in the immersive realm. So those are two that most people know, um, and then I'll go into, okay, well, what if you could walk into your favorite film? It's all around you. And now you're interacting with the actors as if you were part of this film.
That starts to explain immersive to a certain degree. So what we do for instance, um, So on Friday, we've got a client where it's this one's a team building So I you know, it's one of those things where we can use immersive for business cases, um, and it's a team building this is a group of lawyers and for Since 2019 we've been working on a specific universe.
We Four main universes, and our signature is Versailles, and we really [00:08:00] specifically work on Marie Antoinette and her universe, and we try to bridge the gap between history and like contemporary understanding of history and people, and so for this team building, we've got, um, five actors that are, um, all part of this scandal that rocked Versailles, a true story that rocked Versailles, um, and it involves the queen and a lookalike prostitute of the queen, a smarmy cardinal, a dishonest jeweler, and a noble woman trying to rise in the ranks in a not so noble way.
Again, true story. And so we have these five characters in a venue that is very much, it's a chateau, and it's very much related to Versailles. It's not the Chateau of Versailles, it looks like it. And so these lawyers can come and they're going to investigate. this story, this scandal, find bits and pieces of it while interacting with the performers, while looking for, for clues, for enigmas, and at the end, they're gonna put her on trial, the [00:09:00] Queen, and they're gonna, they're gonna be able to choose who was guilty.
So that's, but, so we get them, we give them accessories, um, all of our actors are 100 percent in costume, everything is in theater. theme. The world is in theme. Um, what we're going to offer to eat and drink is all in the theme. Things the queen in her court would have enjoyed at that time. So, you know, that's, that's one example, for instance.
Of what's, what's really immersive.
Love that. So you basically take the, the, the lawyers out of their ordinary world into a different world where they kind of even themselves play a role of a detective or someone who wants to try to figure out this story. Yeah,
Exactly, and that's a really good point you said. There's this element of role or role playing. Now, um, again, I'll preface with the fact that, you know, when you go into something that's immersive art, depending on what you're seeing or experiencing, you may, as a participant, not very much have a role. We, [00:10:00] and when we try to really design immersive as comprehensively as possible, we try to give even the smallest role to the participant so that they can leave the ordinary, enter through that liminal space, you know, enter, have this kind of ritual to experience and to transform themselves into someone else, no matter how small it is, and be present in In the experience, not as themselves, but as a slightly modified or completely different version of the self depends on the level of storytelling we've designed and the level of interaction they've chosen.
And I think that's really key. We have one experience as the cabinet of curiosities. Um, and this one we do in a private venue where it's a mix between Victorian Cabinet of Curiosities and a Parisian Salon of the 1800s, and we invite, already before the experience and all of our communication prior, we invite the connoisseurs, the participants become And they're coming to check out the latest [00:11:00] curiosities that they may also want to purchase and showcase in their cabinets.
And so when they arrive, we didn't want to give them a lot of, um, characterization. Uh, but, so what we did was, um, we have these little stickers where we have adjectives, ways of being. And so depending on how they are, how they approach us and their energy or what they choose, they get a little sticker that's like, that says maybe seductive.
Or playful, or joyful, and then even to that degree, they are them, but with this little added layer. And then we encourage them to play out who they are on their little sticker. And when we speak to them, we speak to them as Madame, Monsieur, Joyeux, Joyeuse. Uh, and so that, or Désir, and that becomes really fun because they allow themselves to enter and play in a different way.
So that's one of the fun things about role giving, uh, offering small roles in an experience as well.
the cool thing is maybe bridging that a little bit to my [00:12:00] experiences. I took a new team and we have been formed like four weeks before to the College of Extraordinary Experiences, which, which is the place where you and I met and it was the first time ever and it was similar to that. So I used it as a transformative experiences without having a clue what's going to happen at the college, but it was.
We needed to dress up in different ways. And then at that time in 2016, it was that you are dressing up and you're staying dressed up like almost in a character for a whole week. And this transformed us as a team so deeply in the first couple of weeks being together that we have been so tied together and are still, we now work all in different parts of the world and in a different organizations.
And we're still tied. So I'm still talking to the guys, let's say every month, every two months. And it's, [00:13:00] it's super interesting that a different way of team building, maybe something a lot of organizations have never tried of enables you to build way deeper bonds because you are experiencing something that's not the ordinary world where.
You discussed your values, which is also, there are a lot of team buildings that make sense, but I think this one, especially for the bonding and then experiencing things together is, is deeply changing the way you interact with each other.
Yes, absolutely. And so that's when it's really great. So already that's the power of kind of an extraordinary experience. We are fully immersed at the castle and we are encouraged and invited to play differently because when we get those cloaks, um, we feel magical. You know, there's already, because, and also there's that context to magic.
So we add that context, for most of us these cloaks mean Harry Potter or magic, and so then we feel like we're magical, so we start being and becoming magical. And so it's a little bit of a role, because I may still be me, you're still Jentz, but we're us [00:14:00] with a layer of magic, and that allows us to play.
And that's one of those things that's really cool. And actually, you, you made a great point. When we started the Cabinet of Curiosities, Um, there's a social part at the beginning and at the end, um, before and after everybody kind of goes through the cabinet and interacts with the curiosities we've, we've brought.
And we realized that they started forming a bond, um, and the people really liked, uh, going through the cabinet with the groups, with the mini groups they were in. And we would see a lot of phone numbers exchanging. And so actually on the 22nd of October, we're launching a new version of the cabinet, which is called the social club, the cabinet of curiosities.
social club. And it was, and it is, um, to foster those connections that were made when you've experienced something rather extraordinary and unique and just interesting and fun. Um, and so we're, we're, while we still have the cabinet of curiosities classic version, we're now got the social club that really was born from this fact that we saw people wanting to [00:15:00] connect and kind of embrace their curious nature together.
And so that's, that's, we're getting, I'm curious to see how that, that plays out. Cause that's going to be a lot of fun and born from this idea of we go through these things extraordinarily together and we want to continue living it. Cause they've made a really great bond, a tight bond between us.
Yeah. And maybe that's something we can pick up even more so because we have been in the College of Extraordinary Experience this summer. Um, and what we both experienced, though, that we have been there already before. that when you leave this experience, which is for those who have never heard about the college of extraordinary experiences, it is happening in a castle in Poland.
And you're immersing yourself for a whole week from Monday to Friday into a different world. And then you are connected to the place, but you as well connected in a, in a completely different way in curated experiences throughout the whole week. And you bond with each [00:16:00] other. So in our case, you and I have led.
One of the houses. So the participants are divided into different houses and we have had, um, obviously the best house with the two of us.
But shh, don't tell anyone,
no, exactly.
it's our secret.
So. We have been getting to know each other and the participants of our group in a completely different way. If you compare this to a normal conference where you would be business like sitting and getting lectures and learning about things.
And then, yes, you have this networking things, but because of the experiences, and just to give one example, we have worked with a real samurai in inside of the castle, you go so deep. And then when you leave, this experience, you go home into your ordinary world. For some people, it's quite hard to get back because you have experienced things in a completely different way.
And that's, that's just to explain it more, more in detail to what, what you have been saying. [00:17:00] I think that's, that's something from a business perspective. So if I go into the shoes of, of our listeners, It's, it's, it's an opportunity where you can take your team members. If you do a team building, for example, with the team from eat the cake, you go into a different world and then you utilize the connections you have built inside of the organizations where you then foster the engagement with the rest of the organization in a very specific way, or at least that's the opportunities you have.
So I think there are a lot of ways. From a corporate perspective or business perspective that are not utilized today because everyone goes into normal team building if we just take that example.
Yeah, absolutely. And what I love is that, you know, it's great that you described it. It's so difficult to describe often, uh, what we did at the college. Um, but what is really fascinating is that we leave with this idea and why it can be so challenging for some people [00:18:00] to kind of assimilate back into quote unquote normal life is that you've realized there's another way of living life.
There are other experience, there's another way to experience life and that is amazing and extraordinary. And so how do I adapt that into my rather again quote unquote ordinary life? Um, and so when you see that there's a possibility to live and be and experience differently, um, What I, what we recommend and what we talk about is when you come back, how to integrate it is realize, Hey, there's always the extraordinary in the ordinary.
And so you look at your life and find what is so extraordinary about it. And then you also help cultivate this for others because you don't then keep it for yourself. Cause then it's, I, You feel disconnected. You know why we, after we left our house, our group still likes to chat on WhatsApp. Why in general, overall the college graduates still connect is because the moment we connect, we have that spark of extraordinary every [00:19:00] time.
And so when you leave and you realize, Oh, but I'm not near these really cool people are not doing these really cool things. You can make it happen every day. And you can be that spark for somebody else. And it's one of those things when we speak with businesses is that for their clients or for their employees, they can be that spark of extraordinary in the ordinary for those communities that they want to foster, um, and, and bring all to.
And so it's completely possible to, to take something that is so wow and dear and say, wow, how can I ever create that in my life? And actually consciously, Create that for yourself with yourself and others and then it really starts to have this beautiful kind of like ripple effect Where you are finding the extraordinary and the ordinary you are Sharing these with other people and then they're seeing what's possible I think it's kind of like a similar phenomenon like Burning Man when you go to Burning Man That's why there's these burners and why the small burns happen around the world now.
[00:20:00] It's because you want to continue to build that. And again, I always encourage those burners, and they do. I mean, I'm a burner myself, is that just bring Burning Man to your life every day. You know, the principles, the way of living. Share it, because then little by little that's, that's kind of that swirling love and play, as our motto was in our house, is to be able to just wrap it around everybody else and immerse them in your extraordinary way of being.
Yeah. That's so important. Linking that back to business. I'm keeping my business head today.
Always,
But what, what, what I did, what I did. And, and this is now way back in 2016, 17 and 18. So first, first time I was with my team in, in the College of Extraordinary Experience, and we went back and we have been internal ambassadors of change through the experiences we have done.
We have approached, so we have been there with the innovation and customer experience team. We have approached projects that are business projects in a [00:21:00] completely different way afterwards. And then other managers noticed the difference of how we are approaching just the basic brainstorming. And then what we did is we, we, we sent always two people after that.
So in the next years as well to the college to bring and inspire and bring the virus literally back into the organization and put it into different parts of the organization. So it was even strategically placed that we say, okay, it's not us going again. Let's find people who we want to get there. And I even internally, I did a challenge.
So people needed to do something to get and apply for it, but it really helps from a business perspective. And that's just the example with the college, but I think it's more utilizing. experiences and an immersive in a completely different way from a business aspect, then saying, if we just compare it with what you said in the beginning, Hey, uh, theme park, like Disney world is kind of an [00:22:00] experience and an immersive experience where I agree you can go to Disney world and you can have a lot of fun and immerse yourself.
And there are good reasons for that. But if you, if you link this to business, I think there are opportunities where you can do smaller things and more intimate things, which help you to go to the next level. Not just, yeah, let's go out and have fun. It's really, okay, how do we utilize things in a completely different way than we would ever think about?
And that requires professionals like yourself and the people we have been working with at the College of Extraordinary Experience to guide you through this. Because if you take me, I'm not an experienced designer. like you are, I might have learned over the last five, six, seven years, a little bit more.
So I might be already advanced compared to someone who has never done it, but it's still far away from what you guys can do.
And, and, so that's, and that's a good point to think about, cause some things are, [00:23:00] when it's, I always tell people, when it seems simple. It's because it was, there was a lot of work behind it. And, you know, sometimes we'll work with, um, clients who have this idea and they want to add all the bells and the whistles and we always bring it back to, but how do you want everybody to feel at the end?
Because you can have all the bells and whistles, but that's what, what is the most important is how people leave the experience, you know, how they feel and what they're taking with them physically, literally, like, you know, it was. Figuratively, literally, how, it doesn't matter. Just what, that's your most important.
And then we can add the bells and whistles that support that. And then a lot of it's like, Oh, but it's easy. Just, you know, put somebody here and put somebody there. You know, if it, if, if you want it to feel easy and seamless, it's because there's a bunch of work behind it to make that happen, because then you don't notice.
that everything is the framework has been constructed for you to have that feeling and walk away from it. And so that, that's also the key. It seems effortless, but there's a bunch of work. We really did think [00:24:00] behind the scenes of, and again, this is all that design thinking, that human centered thinking, what did these people need and how can we give it to them?
And for us, it's in a format that's immersive. And so, which is an offset of it's experiential, you know, it's not, it's all experiential is immersive. Um, I believe all immersive is experiential because there's an experience that's being lived, but, but the whole thing is how, again, put the person, the participant, the customer, the employee at the heart of it, and then build what they need.
Not what we think is cool. There's lots of stuff we'll come up with, be like, Oh yeah, that'd be really cool. But do they? Well, they think that well, do they want that? And sometimes we can just have fun for fun because sometimes just laughing is already transformative by itself. But then there's really the if we want to get participant from A to B.
Well, let's design that then. And we have fortunately some really great tools we work with. I cannot shout out enough the event canvas model. Um, that was also thanks to my first year at the [00:25:00] college, a college graduate. I saw that He posted it on LinkedIn, and I was like, wait, that looks really great. And then I started becoming certified in it.
And that for us is one of those keys that allows us to create events and experiences that are about human change. And so, and, and that, that's always really fascinating to see that. We did an event in April. I'm part of a collective of meaningful experience creators in France, and there was a lot of talk about wanting to unite the immersive industry for the first time, because we were all in our different kind of corners.
And we put together this event in April, that just happened in April, Les Journées de l'Immersif, French Immersive Days, and we brought in over 180 participants for the first time, um, in France. As many of the immersive, um, immersive experience creators from different aspects, so retail, uh, immersive theater, escape game, VR, you name it, everybody, [00:26:00] you know, as many as we could gather, we gathered for that event.
What I, what, one of my KPIs that I loved the most was, so we did a lot of design beforehand to put this event together so that it wasn't just a regular conference. And we had three post its that had three main objectives. And one of those main objectives was build, well, building a family and connecting people and making business happen.
And at the end, when I, when all those LinkedIn posts were coming with, I felt like I felt my family. I felt like it when, you know, in, in such great, um, in a, in a great atmosphere, in a positive atmosphere, people were exchanging, people were open with their information. And then I was at another event a few months later, another conference.
And I had one of our keynote speakers point me out to her partner and say, I've done a lot of events this year, but Francis's and her their team was the best one we've done so far. I've ever done because or done recently because they were really conscious about making sure we all [00:27:00] connected and how they made that happen.
That for me was like my KPI right there. I could see that little post it and I was like scratching it off mentally. Like, okay, we accomplished it. So that is, it's, it's designing with a purpose with the tools, you know, again, it doesn't just happen. Sometimes beautiful moments do just happen, but the rest of the time, especially when you have client money coming in, you design for that to happen and beautiful things happen in that framework.
yeah, I agree. And that, that's like you said it, that's the difference between amateurs and professionals and for everyone who is interested. I of course have had the guys from the event Canvas on the podcast as well, Ed's quite a while back already, I think a year or two. But I will put the link as well into the show notes.
So if anyone is interested in learning more about that.
It's a great tool
Yeah. So let's go a little bit practical. So if, if we have a listener that says, okay, I love what I've heard, I have heard about the different universes [00:28:00] you're, you're using the story part and how you do these things. Is there small tips and tricks that a listener can do at the company at whatever they're doing today just to take the first step into that, into that direction and experience it themselves?
already. I can recommend people to go to my website and download a PDF that talks exactly about that same topic and gives five tips. Uh, so we do have a PDF on that, um, to be able to share because we're so passionate about it. We'd love to be able to give tips. Um, one of the main ones I really love, it's, I guess, one I hold dear, near and dear.
Um, well, it's going to be coupled or it's going to go hand in hand. First of all, what is the purpose? Discover what is exactly the purpose of the gathering. It can be a meeting. Um, it can be a seminar. Find what is the purpose, really consider the purpose and then design around the actual purpose. Not, not all the, again, the bells and [00:29:00] whistles.
Um, so, and that doesn't come from me. That comes from Priya Parker who does the art of gathering and she's fantastic. And her big thing is really focused on the actual purpose. Then can you flip the purpose? You know, does a, does a, a meeting absolutely have to be, um, at X location in an X format, or can you find another way to support that meeting that actually truly brings out the best of what needs to happen in that meeting.
And then I'm a really big fan of theme. Give it a theme
Yeah. Yeah.
theme makes everything feel coherent and it's really easy to wrap concepts and ideas around a theme. If you're going to come in with the theme of, you know, again, we'll let the College of Extraordinary Experiences. There's this kind of magical Harry Potter theme we all talk about.
So then, everybody, you know, the cloaks, there's one of your tangible elements and touch points into that theme. Um, treasure hunts. surprises, [00:30:00] secret potions. They all support fairies, goblins, and they all support the theme. They're all touch points into the universe that allow us to little by little, get deeper and deeper into the immersion into the world.
Um, by just, again, it's all this, just a nice little envelope of a theme. And so we really, I really love to tell people a theme. No, However, big or small, I ran a seminar, we designed and ran a seminar for a company and it was a, it was a seminar and we spoke with them and realized their needs. Okay, so this is a team that's almost 100 percent all online.
They meet maybe once or twice a year and they're missing human connection and we're all coming from this post COVID kind of really stressed. And so my team and I decided, all right, well, the theme of this seminar is SPA and even SPA were acronyms for the company. And everything was wrapped around it.
There was a seminar with all the kind of things you needed to have in a seminar because of course there's objectives for the company. [00:31:00] But when the moment they, first of all, we found a venue that was specifically around wellbeing in the workplace. So we rented a venue that had an entire, um, outdoor, it was a fake outdoor, but all these beautiful like VR headset, music, noise canceling, everything that had these little ateliers or spaces for, for relaxation.
But when people walked in, um, we asked them to please take off their shoes and put on spa slippers. Which they could personalize. We had stickers and markers so they could personalize the stickers, the slippers as they wanted. There was a scent in the background. There was already aromatherapy. There was light spa music.
I was dressed as a spa director as I welcomed everybody as they entered. The program that they received prior to coming was, you know, had a lotus flower, looked like a spa program. And then we played with the names of the, of the, um, workshops. And so it was like, you know, the, the director, uh, the director's welcome speech.
We would say, you know, on the program, it said the director's welcome speech, [00:32:00] um, Effet Ben Min, which is in French, which is like, um, radiant skin. And so everything that was happening was all spa named. Even though, again, it was a seminar and the whole idea was that for over two days, it really was, you were enveloped in this spa seminar concept so that everybody approached it just in a relaxing mode with as with wellness at the heart of it, because we knew we really needed to kind of support and create kind of feeling a wellness and connection.
And so it can be as light as that. There was still business to be done. There was still, you know, the kind of more of the classic presentations when it came to the presentations, but the container was spa and, uh, and, and it was really fun. We got a lot of really great feedback on that. At first people were like, why am I taking off my shoes?
Why am I wearing these shoes? And then the second day they came back and they're like, where are my spa slippers? I want to put these things on. So it was really,
That's always the fun thing when you allow people to go a little bit outside of their norm, then it, [00:33:00] the magic is happening. We just did a super silly thing where, um, when, when someone had a birthday, they needed to wear one of this small birthday caps. So imagine me in an office building running around with a small head and it was not showing that it was the birthday thing.
It was just like. What the hell is this guy doing? He's, and I needed to run with it the whole day. And everyone was asking me, of course, what's going on. And I was not sharing it
oh, you couldn't, you couldn't tell them or you didn't want to,
no, I didn't want to just to keep,
the keep the, uh, keep the gag. You know, what's really cool. Um, um, uh, So as an aside for anybody who's listening and wants to try this at their work, I highly recommend it cause I think it's fun. Uh, works probably better with a dollar.
When I was in New Orleans, so I did a few months in New Orleans working on a project years ago and I went into a store and um, I was nicely dressed and the woman who was running the store, she's like, Oh, you look so beautiful. [00:34:00] I'm like, Oh yeah, it's my birthday today. She's like, Oh wait. And she took out a tackle box and she took out a dollar from the register and she put on me and pinned a dollar.
And I was like, Oh, and she's like, here you go, wear this around town. And you're going to see what happens. And she didn't tell me what at all, what's going to happen. Well, what happened is that any New Orleanian. from the town would come up to me with money and they pin it on me.
Oh, that's
And I had people from across the street, cross the street.
Um, I was in a museum that day. I had people tap me and give me 5. And so by the end of my day, I had 35 to me. And then I went able to buy myself some, some drinks. So I celebrated my birthday that way. I think that could work in kind of companies that have larger, you know, larger amount of people where you start a tradition where you, when it's your birthday, you just.
Pin something like a, I mean, in your case, it's five euros. Cause that's the first bill you paid in five years. You're bound to make quite a good chunk of money that [00:35:00] way and have fun. So it kind of goes with your hat thing where you can wear the tiny hat and pin five, five euros and see if you can get some more money that way for your birthday.
Yeah. That's, that's
you can try to make some cash that way. You can thank me.
So eat, eat the cake is how you named the company. How did you get to that name?
So eat the cake studio took us a while to get to. So first off, I had gone to, um, uh, when I, right before I started the company, uh, right, right. Run the time I was going to start the company. I went to a three day coaching, uh, weekend, um, with some top, uh, U. S. coaches. And one gentleman there said for a name, he always recommends to put a noun in it because we think visually and people will always remember a noun.
It's a visual. They can attach a visual to it and then link it. So I was like, okay, so I had that in mind. Fast forward, we were trying to come up with a name and we had a list of so many names. Tons and tons and tons of words. There was always a noun in there. [00:36:00] Um, we were trying to be really fancy or really philosophical and we had all these different ideas.
And then I went to an entrepreneur breakfast. And as we sat around, everybody had five minutes to share and get feedback on something. And I was like, I'm trying to come up with a company name. And I don't really know, we don't really know what it should be yet. And one woman shared an absolutely beautiful story that resonated with us so much.
And that one of my other business partners had already heard as well. Not the same story, but it's similar, which was, This woman shared that when her sister was, um, on her deathbed, the one regret she had the most was not eating this one particular cake for her birthday because she was so healthy that she didn't want to have the sugar.
And there was this one particular cake. And so her family then adopted this phrase, eat the cake for just kind of live your life. And I, to this day, I still get kind of chills because it's, it just moved me so much. But I was like, can I really call a company, eat the cake? I mean, people are going to think we're a [00:37:00] bakery.
This was like a challenge for a while. I took back that, that back to the, my business partners and we really liked it. It resonated. But again, it was like, people are going to think we're a bakery. Well, let's think about it. And we couldn't. We just kept coming back to it, especially because we'd been working on our, on our motto.
And our motto was live your life to the fullest, experience everything, which is where we ended. Our motto is experience everything. And for us, eat the cake really meant experience everything. And then it had that noun cake. And so what's really funny is that I've seen it come to life where people might not remember the full company name, but they'll always remember the cake.
And we've become, and many times were referenced as the cake girls. Or the cake ladies. Oh yeah, you're that cake girl. And so people remember us, even if it's not the full name, they remember that we're that cake girl. And really in most cases, who doesn't love a piece of cake? So they remember us as fun, as sweet, as celebratory and as [00:38:00] delicious.
So yeah, let's go for it. And so it's, it's, it's now our name that we really love because it means so much to us.
Super good example. let's get us into the last bit of the podcast where I'm asking every guest a couple of questions. So if you could work with a project that is impacting every human being on earth, what project would you choose to work with and why?
does this project exist already or something I'm
Whatever you want.
so I was Super inspired. I'm super inspired and saw how incredibly inspiring a project like Hamilton was in the world, how that was able to change the way people, um, experienced history, their place in history, the way we told history retold history.
And it was all with entertainment. And that's my thing. I [00:39:00] come from entertainment and I truly believe that the arts and entertainment industries have the power to transform. And for me, Hamilton was transformative. Um, and I know for many it was, and so I, for me, it would be a project similar to Hamilton where I can create something that really transform, transform.
people, create an entertainment experience that transforms people's perspective about life, history, our place in it.
For those who have never heard about Hamilton, what is it?
Hamilton, have you heard about Hamilton?
No.
Okay, I was wondering. So Hamilton, I highly recommend it. So Hamilton is a musical. Um, I believe it came out in 2017 in New York. It's by Lin Manuel Miranda, a fellow Puerto Rican from the U. S. He's a New Yorican, um, who I admire greatly. And I'm always asking my dad if there's any connection to him, because I would love to meet him.
As Latinos, we always have some connection to someone, [00:40:00] somewhere. A cousin and an aunt and an aunt. Um, and so in 2017, he, um, out came this, um, musical called Hamilton, which is based on the biography of Alexander Hamilton, who's one of the founding fathers of the United States, where the entire cast was a cast of color, except one character, which was the King of England.
But that means that he took, um, uh, George Washington. Alexander Hamilton, um, General Lafayette. He took all these characters, all these figures in history that we always learn as very, very white and played with that perception and made them all people of color. And then even cooler is that Hamilton, one of the things he put in there is that he, he wrote to survive.
He's, he's, he was a survivor. He was Creole and, uh, And he was born out of a Creole mix, um, so even, even if he passed as white, which is what we would say in that era, um, he had these Creole background and he [00:41:00] wrote to survive. He wrote his way out of all the desperation that he had. And so then Lin, Manuel Miranda added this hip hop and rap element, which is similar where in hip hop and rap culture, a lot of the beginnings was to write their way out Of their, that situation in order to create a better, a different, transform their life situation.
And so he paralleled that. So it's just really powerful in so many ways. Um, yeah. And so the music is fantastic. Extremely well written. Um, and the, it's just powerful. I, I, I, like that. I, I love it so much I often have hard, find it difficult to talk about it because it's so fantastic.
Yeah. I will, I will try to find a link so that people can. Have a look at it as well.
Disney did a fantastic. So Disney, because it's so smart, um, did a production of it. They shot a version of it, which is very, um, as if you're watching that theatrical production. So it's not the typical where it's a [00:42:00] static camera and you see the audience and then this, the stage, it's, it's on the stage. It looks like it's a film version of it.
Um, and they aired it, uh, they launched it on their Disney plus, channel streamer, um, during the pandemic. And of course, there were many, many people that then ended up getting, uh, memberships to Disney me being one of them, so that we could watch it and have access to it. But it is on Disney
Yeah. Okay, cool. Next question. What advice would you give to a young innovator? That's just getting started?
Question. I have, okay, my, my, I have, uh, it's three part, but it's one. Well, I guess overall it's trust your vision. Always go with your gut. The gut then also gets built on years of experience having the right tools. The more you do, the more you learn. But there is a [00:43:00] vision in you. It's why you stepped into that light to create and to do what you do.
So trust that vision. And also be okay with then asking yourself, Is this really my vision or can I adapt it? And then when creating, especially in our industry, Um, and in immersive and experiential for me, it's really big on is, is there value and access is what I'm creating, offering value and does it give access in a way that normally they wouldn't have.
So those would be my tips.
Brilliant. So last question, which is not a difficult one. What is the best way people can reach out to you? And where can people find you?
Um, find me everywhere. Uh, so our website. Eatthecakestudio. com on LinkedIn. I'm very active on LinkedIn. Please connect with me on LinkedIn. It's one of my favorite platforms. Um, LinkedIn, both me personally and the [00:44:00] company, and then you me personally on Instagram, Francis and Frenchie land. And then also Eat the Cake Studio is on almost all of the social media platforms.
So TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, we're everywhere.
I need to check the tick tock thing.
Yeah, we have the TikTok thing. Fortunately, we currently are marketing. Late woman takes care of the TikTok thing because I am not a big TikToker have to admit, but we're
you would be awesome. I've seen you on stage. So,
hey You know, I say I feel like if I had access to social media when I was
Oh, man. Boy, yeah,
I knew it'd be a whole nother story. I would be a star
honestly, I can't imagine truly
Thank you. I'd have so much fun with it. I wish I could rewind.
awesome. [00:45:00] Francis was great to have you on the show. Looking forward to our next calls, which we are not going to record and have even more fun. Thank you very much for,
Thank jens.
being in the show.
Thank you.