Adam Torres and Brad Turner discuss the AI Vibes Summit.
Subscribe: iTunes / Spotify
Listen to coverage of the AI Vibes Summit in Santa Monica, California. In this episode, Adam Torres interviews Brad Turner, CEO of Marketing Completion Fund, Inc., explore Brad’s upcoming events and AI.
Watch Full Interview:
About Brad Turner
Investor, consultant, entrepreneur, brand developer and product inventor with experience in corporate finance, consumer and investor lead generation, marketing of corporations and financial positioning of start-up companies.
Served in a Senior Advisory position for a US/China merchant banking firm as lead engagement manager on a variety of merchant banking/merger and acquisitions consulting assignments, developing strategic relationships with Fortune 1000.
About Marketing Completion Fund
Marketing Completion Fund is a Media, Marketing and Capital Introduction Company
MCF publishes the Completion Fund website an online resource for Wealth Managers, Family Offices, Angel, High Net Worth and Accredited investors to learn about exclusive events and networking opportunities focused on Alternative and Emerging Technology Investing.
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of mission matters. My name is Adam Torres. And today I am at the AI vibes conference in Santa Monica, California. And I’m catching up with Brad Turner, who has been on the show before, but also has a conference coming up. First off, Brad, welcome back on the show, man.
How are you doing Adam? I feel like this is good. We’re getting our report. I feel like now I’m so excited. Yeah. So what brings you to the AI Vibes conference today? Well, AI is an area that we are helping bring to our clients. And Tal Navarro, who’s organized the AI Vibes has done a great job and just continuing learning and then applying this information back to our clients that are also trying to figure out what to do in this quick paced AI world, you know?
Hmm. So For yourself, you have a large platform. You’re holding conferences often. How did, I don’t, I don’t know this about you. We’ve talked many times. How’d you get started in that business and bring and building community? Well, that’s an, that’s a great question. So many years ago, right out of college. I started attending events.
For example, the first event I went to is a consumer electronics show. And after going to that experience, I started to, anytime I got new industry relationship, I then decided I would actually identify. A conference to go learn. So I would attend conferences and basically just network very rapidly. And then along the way I progressed in knowing about different industries, different relationships.
And then eventually I started to organize and. Help produce events large scale, small scale. And at the same time, I also started to do a lot of research and just guide people to this information about other events. So in between the events I do, just like AI vibes, I helped market the event, promote it.
Yeah. Cause I just try to help out the ecosystem. So that’s kind of the name of the game, just like you’re doing, just keep educating people. What do you enjoy about that part of it? Like bringing people together, bringing the community together, like, cause this is not easy work, business aside, like organizing and your events are large.
I mean, hundreds and hundreds of people attend them. There’s a lot of moving pieces. What do you enjoy about bringing people together? The question I hear a lot is what do you like doing? What do you enjoy? What I’ve learned is that. You know, my parents allowed me to be very entrepreneurial very early on and I just continue keep learning and as I keep learning, I just like to share the information.
So when it comes to the events, it’s just like we’re experiencing AI vibes. I’m learning. I have previous relationships that are exhibiting here. Like the gentleman that you interview with the robot, right? Yeah. So I just any I’m a fan of Jenny, right? So Tom bought you met him. I did an interview with him at my prior to the event He did an event in March and that’s where he met Tao that’s doing AI vibes.
Yeah, so to see him here and progress I just was finished talking to him. He met somebody new and It’s just about seeing This progression, just like I’m meeting you again. So there’s just overlap. I’ve got three events planned between now and the end of the year. So you just keep building and trying to help people out.
And ultimately it’s just kind of cool when you get a result, you know, people show up, they like it. They say they had a good time. That’s just kind of, that’s all you really can expect from people. Say they have a good time. So you met an entrepreneur early whenever somebody says that. That what was that first business?
You remember, I got to know I’m nosy, newspapers, candy, like books. What, what were you? That’s a very good question. The reality is my parents allowed me to back in the day, you could actually set up your own selling your products on your we lived in Sunnyvale. So I was able to set up and start selling products right out front.
We wouldn’t necessarily call it a garage sale, but really a garage sale. That’s awesome. So I had comic books, cause my dad would always I was a comic book seller. I was all about the comic books. In hindsight, we know we should have kept them, right? Yeah, exactly. So, but I had comic books and all this other stuff.
So early on, I did that. I started a window washing business. Oh, I missed that one. I wish I would have had that one. I started a wallpaper company. Oh, wow. So these are the ones that I learned from somebody else, and I started my own. Yeah. This was all You know, during college and then the first startup I started was actually with a buddy of mine from college, a fraternity brother and his uncle had sold a pacemaker company.
So we actually started a company called MedData and we did that in 1979. So I ended up getting a corporate 200 job, but simultaneously. I ended up getting this startup and our mentor was the uncle that had all this money and guided us. It didn’t go anywhere, but literally that’s the, you know, that was my first experience after college.
And, did you know at that point, like, was that the point or you knew before that, that you were always going to kind of go that entrepreneurial route? I really didn’t define it. I just did these things. Yeah. I just reacted. Yeah, well, you know now we call it entrepreneurial and then this and that to me.
I was just making money I was exchanging value. I can do this you want that. I never really took it further than that I did not know the word entrepreneur. I didn’t but what I will tell you is that ray crock the founder of mcdonald’s I went to san diego state. So he actually would come and be a part of our marketing.
No way So he was you know, he inspired me I’d already been in the pizza delivery business, so one of my papers in college was doing paper pizza delivery, and other guys in college were already working for the big companies, and so I, I was just having these experiences that kind of evolved out of that, but like I said, what happened is I, I don’t even know how that really originated, but my friend had his uncle, and all of a sudden we came up with an idea, and we developed it for a while, and I also learned.
How medical devices how even that, that problem is still not been solved till today. And I know more why it hasn’t been solved, but that I now, as you might know, have the medtech investing forum. And so now I actually talk about that because I had that experience way back then, and you know, the same trials and tribulations of that entrepreneurial thing is the same.
Yeah, as today, it’s really never, it hasn’t really changed. It doesn’t, it doesn’t like the, the landscape changes right now. We’re talking about AI. You got some on a years ago, we were talking about the information highway or the internet and what that would be. We talked about NFTs. We’re talking about all these different iterations, but still people, still people gathering ideas, melding and kind of planning what’s next.
Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. What’s your vision going forward for this for I know you have multiple conferences, which I do you have one coming up that I definitely want to talk about. But what’s your vision for let you use the word ecosystem. So I’ll piggyback off that for this ecosystem you’ve created of entrepreneurs and otherwise, investors, entrepreneurs and otherwise.
My experience, whether you’re raising money or if you’re trying to build a business, you either have the acquisition of a customer or you’re acquiring capital. The processes are somewhat the same, but there’s different nuances about both of them. Okay. So I’ve, I’ve been actually doing this again, almost 40 plus years.
And I’ve learned by organizing events, I accelerate The acquisition of relationships. And then along the way, we provide additional services to some of the people, but we just keep bringing people together along the way I keep learning. I get to work with other people just like yourself. I get to meet you and see your business model, which I’ve described to literally probably 50 people as just being a brilliant model yourself, your business.
No, man, it’s hard work. It is we, we grind, right? So. I use your ways to make money out there for everybody watching. Now that is, that is a fact, but again, just like today I’m like exhausted, but I just had that experience with Tom, but saw a new person being introduced to him. Wow. I was able to meet somebody else.
It’s been an AI forever. I listened to him and I learned he invests and then I connected the dots with this other individual and Tom Stevens of Tom bot. And, you know, you just get a little bit of satisfaction from our last event. He’s had some success and again, he’s here for the second time working with.
Tal, I found out that because of meeting Tal, he actually represented, she actually represented him in Israel last month. Wow. He actually was in Israel. That’s right. Yeah. And that all came from him doing the March event, which you were at. So it’s about, you just keep moving along, keep inviting people.
You tend to then focus on I tell everybody about you and that we have the potentiality why you’re here. You can do a podcast. We can do a video. We try to create content. So we just try to think about all the different things you can have at event and the way you can do after event, which you guys do a very good job of it.
And other people, you know, you just keep trying to help people execute on their strategies, but it all leads to, it has to lead to ultimately generating some revenue. And then maybe getting some exposure of your raising capital. You just can’t keep doing branding and spending money without getting some type of result.
For sure. So you mentioned you have, I believe, three events going on until the end of the year, like talk, tell me about those. So we have, what’s called the Los Angeles investor conference. We’re now going to brand. We already have done this. So when you went to, it was called the Newport beach investor conference.
We have that for October 17th back at the Marriott again in Newport beach. Our next event will actually be here at the fame cast creator brand accelerator here in Santa Monica. That’ll be on September 26th. So a lot of the people that are here today will be at that event. It so happens the founders of the fame cast also are doing the same thing with the team of people out in Las Vegas.
So they’re actually going to be replicating. So there’s some same ownership. In a replicated technology and a facility right across from the fountain blue in Las Vegas on the Las Vegas strip. So that’s, so what we have is synergies between Las Vegas, Newport Beach, which we’ve done four, we’ll have done five in the last year and a half.
We tend to those, we tend to do it. We’re doing at the Marriott again, we’ve done the Hyatt, we choose the venues based off of, you know, having some value proposition and again, getting, repeating myself, fame cast, September 26th, Los Angeles investor conference. October 17th is the Newport beach investor conference.
And then we’re going to have the Las Vegas investor conference. And then we also have sub branding that we have, which you’ve experienced. So we also have on the September event, we also, we also have the Las Vegas, Los Angeles, cannabis and psychedelics. So we’ve got a lot in that category. So we’re always doing somewhat industry vertical.
And then we have kind of an open forum and we just try to get, you know, try to engage as many people as possible in the one in Newport beach. We’ll probably do the medtech investing forum too. And then in Las Vegas, we’re going to actually introduce the sports investing forum. Wow. The reason for that is two weeks ago in Las Vegas, they launched another initiative to kind of repeat the CES model around sports because it’s really growing in that marketplace.
Yeah. Because of all the professional teams and everything. So we were aware of that event. So we’re now building the sports investing forum and that same group that we’re working with in Las Vegas held a big Superbowl event. And so we, again, there’s always a strategy of synergies. Yes. So we just kind of educate everybody.
And the events we do in Las Vegas are always aligned with the bigger event. And in this case, we’re aligning with another event called A4M, that’ll have like 9, 000 people. And then the ultimate goal of the space, whether it’s here in LA or down there, is there’s always these other events going on, so we always try to maybe do some sub event that’s aligned with these other events.
And that’s what the space here in LA has already done. They, there’s a lot of events they’ve done. They’ve done over 150 events here. Oh, wow. Yeah. It’s set up. It’s a beautiful place. And you’ve already done a couple of them. Yeah. Yeah. It’s set up. I like it. Yeah. And they’re building out more technology here and they’re going to replicate that in, also in Las Vegas.
It’s great. I love it. I love it. Well, Brad, I know there’s a lot going on in the conference. I know you got to go. I’m keeping you, but I will say, I want you to look into the camera. How do people learn about these events? How do they follow? How do they get on the newsletter? What’s the best way for them to stay connected?
So I have a few websites. If you go, my company is called marketing completion fund, the website for. Many events like the event today and other events, we keep track right now. We have over 200 events on the website for 2024. It’s www. completionfund. com. And then we also have the losangelesinvestorconference.
com. For our September event. We also have the MedTech investing forum. We have the alternate investing forum. So all of these are separate websites. And then if you go on Eventbrite and do a search for Los Angeles investor events, you can actually see a lot of these on Eventbrite. So pretty easy to find us.
Just look around, put in a investor conferences, LA, Las Vegas, or Newport beach. And many of these URLs and information will come up. So that’s how a lot of people find us organically, or we recommend that, you know, awesome. Well, Brad, Hey, appreciate you making some time out for us in the middle of the conference.
And I’ve been great to catch up. Can’t wait to see more of these conferences happen to the audience. Thank you for tuning in. Hope you got a lot of value out of this. Hope you had a lot of fun. I sure did. Don’t forget if you haven’t yet. Hit that subscribe or follow button because this is a daily show.
Each and every day, we’re bringing you new content new interviews, and hopefully new inspiration to help you along the way on your way as well. So again, hit that, hit that subscribe or follow button. And Brad, appreciate you, man. Thanks for all you do. Great seeing you again. Thank you