Meet William Petz | CEO

We had the good fortune of connecting with William Petz and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi William, putting aside the decision to work for yourself, what other decisions were critical to your success?
You can’t do it all! No one can sell the product like me, no one cares as much as I do, I can do it quicker and better than others; these are just some of the thoughts that entrepreneurs think/say; as they know the product in more detail than anyone else. This midset is what could kill a business because as a business owner; you need to “work on your business” vs. “work in your business”. To do this, you must hire people. The single most important decision was to hire that 1st employee to share the workload with. Hiring someone is not as simple as you may think. There’s a lot of legal documents to be signed, insurance that needs to be paid, etc. to be in compliance with city and federal employment laws. Additionally, you are now responsible for the lively hood of another person; your business needs to make enough to pay for his/her salary to pay for their bills. It’s a lot of pressure for an owner to have. Without a doubt, my company could have not been as successful as it is without the amazing team of employees that we have. It allowed me not to focus on the day to day activities, but to focus on building partnerships and new opportunities to generate more revenue.

Alright, so for those in our community who might not be familiar with your business, can you tell us more?
Innovation and creativity are what sets Quiet Events apart from others in the industry. Established in 2012, Quiet Events was the first Silent Disco company in New York City that hosted a silent disco experience. The ability to tune into three different DJs with specially designed headphones that glow the color of the DJ you tune into. It quickly became a staple of weekly nightlife entertainment. As the parties grew to thousands nightly, so did the requests for private events across the country. Quiet Events then transitioned into a nightlife & equipment rental company established offices in: Texas, California, Florida, Illinois, and even in Ottawa and Vancouver Canada. The first innovation was our Quiet Events app! An app that would allow people to see all the upcoming events, get discounts for sharing, download music from their favorite Quiet Events DJs, and even a tool that allowed them to vote. As parties started to get into the thousands, managing equipment became a concern. Therefore Quiet Events built a tool that was able to track each headphone and tie it to a person’s credit card. If the equipment ‘walked off’ the clients card would get tracked. Additionally, we could also generate useful reports on how many and long people had headphones for, yet another innovative tool that helped us and our rental clients manage inventory. In 2016 Amazon came to us and wanted to use the silent disco technology in their conferences. The first event had over 3,000 attendees with three different stages of content. It was a huge success, but after a few months, they wanted to host more stages at the same time. We designed a 10 channel model that was perfect for their meetings, expos and conferences. In early 2020 as Quiet Events was feeling the impact of bars and clubs closing down; so did our DJs. We knew that in-person events was going to take a while to come back, so we created a platform that allowed our DJs to battle online; just as if they were at a silent disco party. The platform branded “Uber Battles” became a huge success with not only hosting our parties; but being rented by huge companies like Spotify, DELL, and even the US Army to entertain their teams. Covid-19 has even had an impact on our equipment manufacturing. When all of the bars and clubs closed down, so did the gyms as people could no longer workout inside. However, a few of Quiet Events fitness clients reached out to rent equipment to host outdoor fitness classes. Everyone wears headphones while the instructor’s voice and music is streamed to them without getting any noise complaints from their neighbors. Instead of using our current headphones that were only good for Silent Disco type of events, we created a dual-mode headphone that included Bluetooth. This allowed them to pair with their phone for enjoyment at home as well. Innovation and creativity are tricky to implement at a company. You spend a lot of time planing and hoping that what you build will be used. You have to weigh the benefits to focus on building something that may make money vs. investing in something that is already doing well. Quiet Events has done a great job of listening and identifying our clients’ needs, having the technical expertise to plan out, test, and verify the need before investing money to implement. It’s important for any company; especially post-COVID to look at what their clients need, how they interact with their products, and if there’s any room for improvement. Quiet Events is a perfect example of a way you need to be dynamic to go from hosting parties, to supplying conference equipment, and now leasing software to create streaming DJ battles.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
With Covid and most places being shut down. When visiting; I’d plan out a day for fitness, food, and fun. The day would start out for a walk/jog/bike ride around Buffalo Bayou Park. It’s sometimes hard to forget that Houston isn’t just about large buildings, but nature as well. We would then enjoy epic pounds of tasty meats (we deserve it, we worked out in the morning); by going to Feges BBQ at THe Hub at Greenway Plaza. People out of town love the bats at the Waugh bridge, so heading over to the bridge at sunset to see something that I bet they never saw before.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
The Quiet Events Team! I wake up every day wanting to come to work, because of the people who work at Quiet Events. They are the ones that keep the company going and created the culture that you just can’t help want to be a part of. Everyone is an integral part of the business and the reason for our continued success. I would like to give a Shoutout to all the Quiet Events Team across the country over the past eight years, specifically, those over the past year who had to deal with hundreds of orders weekly, huge events, and challenges like no other. In alphabetical order: Alex Bickers, Audra Fryberger, Austin Case, Brandon Farley, Carol Maugeri, Daria Seriakova, David Doyle, Ezequiel Ramos, Gina Bambinelli, Glenn Molina, Jason Finerty, Juan Cabrera, Joseph Quijano, Kemrick Huggins, Matthew Commodore, Melissa Santos, Janiece Benbow, Thomas Fitzimmons, and Zackary Glover, Additionally I’d like to thank all the DJs and onsite staff who make the parties amazing as well.

Website: https://rentals.quietevents.com
Instagram: https://instagram.com/quietevents
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/quiet-events
Facebook: https://facebook.com/quietevents
Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/quiet-events-new-york
Youtube: https://Youtube.com/QuietEvents