“We Weren’t Supposed to Win” | Inside the Miracle on Ice (Rob McClanahan)

Andy King on Fyre Festival, Fame & the Art of the Event | Cleared for Takeoff

[00:00:00] 

Introduction [0:00]

Andy King: My business partner calls and he’s like, Andy, you told a Fyre Festival story, 

News Anchor: the failure that is Fyre Festival chaos has erupt fish. 

Andy King: I’m like, yeah, I told a story. And he’s like, well, how would you like to be known as the job king after a 35 year successful career as an event planner? 

Charles Eide: Coming up this week on cleared for Takeoff, I have the one and only Andy King on the podcast.

Andy’s best known for the disaster of Fyre Festival and his desperate attempts to save it, but there’s so much more to Andy and I cannot wait to share with you. 

Andy King: I got the job and within three weeks, I’m on the front page of the Wall Street Journal as America’s first corporate concierge. It made me into an expert immediately.

Oh, you need a baby elephant for your daughter’s birthday party. No problem. I had all the animal rights. Activists coming after me in New York City because I had purposes in people’s swimming pools. This is the fire festival, it’s the orange tile. It was promoted better than any other thing. We’re gonna have an amazing music.

We’ve got Blink 180 2 and Little Yachty, and you go down the list and I mean, we got the [00:01:00] Kardashian had six weeks to save a music festival in The Bahamas with no infrastructure. 

Charles Eide: At what point did you go, this thing’s done? 

Andy King: You know that that chief sandwich went viral around the world, paid 60 I think seconds.

If that hadn’t gone viral and some of these top acts arrived, 

Charles Eide: it would’ve happened. I am proud of what I tried to do to save Fyre Festival. I am not gonna put my head in the sand. I am not gonna hide from it. 

Andy King: One of the pieces that didn’t, you know, get into the documentary is that 

Charles Eide: Andy King, welcome to Cleared for Takeoff.

Welcome & Getting to Know Andy [1:34]

Charles Eide: It’s so good to have you, man. 

Andy King: I’m happy to be here. 

Charles Eide: Yeah. I was racking my brain on how we first met and you just remember just now. My God, 

Andy King: I you dmd me and of course, 

Charles Eide: years ago. 

Andy King: Years ago. Yeah. And here’s the, the irony is like, I, you know, I had my little bout with fame. We’ll talk all about that. And I did one post on Instagram and I got [00:02:00] 40,000 followers with one post.

So, and I didn’t even know how to use social media. I didn’t even, and then suddenly, um, someone said to me, Andy, um, um, you got all these dms. And I’m like, what is a dm? Like, is it a down MO or a do? They’re like, what do you, you have these messages waiting for you? I’m like, what? Oh my God. Then I was completely freaked out.

There were thousands of messages. Yeah. And 

Charles Eide: I made it through somehow. 

Andy King: And you made it through. And it was ironic because of course it was the same time. Ryan Reynolds finally got my phone number and texted me and he is like, Andy, I’ve dmd you three times. I want you to do a commercial with me for aviation gin.

I’m like, oh, okay. Well, yeah. He said, do you understand how dms work? I’m like, no, but you can explain it to me when we’re together. Pretty bad. But anyway, I’ve gotten, I’ve gotten a little bit better at it now, 

Charles Eide: so I wanna, I wanna start by asking you, 

Who Is Andy King? [2:50]

Charles Eide: who is Andy King? There’s a lot of stuff out there, but I want to know who, who is Andy King.

Andy King: It’s funny, you know, I’m writing a book right now, which we’ll [00:03:00] talk about, and, um, the intro starts with The party began long before I was born, and so, um. Yeah, my father’s mother was a Portuguese princess, so she was always in the spotlight and always going to these big events. Um, my mother’s family was an a, a affluent family from Boston and they were leather barons.

And when my mother had her debutante party, she had the cast or the Wizard of Oz as her entertainment because that movie had come out that year. And my grandfather’s like, uh, my great-grandmother’s like, I think I need to do something nice for my granddaughter. Oh my word. So it continued for years. 

Early Life & Family [3:37]

Andy King: I catered my first wedding when I was 16 years old.

Whoa. Without a driver’s license. 

Charles Eide: Wow. 

Andy King: And, um, my grandmother’s chauffeur helped load everything into the Cadillac. We brought everything over to this place. Um, so the party’s been going on. I’m one of nine children, nine, and so there was a party around our table every night, and my mother loved to have a good time.

So, um, what the world really doesn’t [00:04:00] know is that it is just been a, it’s, it’s been a party for me since, you know, I was zero years old Now, fast forward after being an event planner for 35 years, you know, I’ve seen a lot going on in this world. 

Charles Eide: You have seen a lot. 

Andy King: Mm-hmm. 

Charles Eide: You, I mean, you’ve done some really big things, but you, you started when you were very young.

You were 16. Yeah. And how did you know you wanted to be in the event business? 

Andy King: God, it’s funny. I, I got such joy bringing great things to people, and I found that, you know. Small things made a huge difference. My mother was a big drinker and so, um, but she loved to have people over. And we lived in a very fancy community on Cape Cod in Massachusetts in the summer.

And there’d be the who’s who and everybody would come over. And mom’s idea of entertaining was, there’s always plenty of liquor, but there’d be like a box of Triscuits and a little cracker barrel cheddar cheese. And I’m even at six years old, I’m like, [00:05:00] shit, mom, you can’t do that. Like, just no one cares.

I’m like, no, no. I do. 

Charles Eide: You’re six years old. Six years old. 

Andy King: This is, I’m on a stool. I’m in the kitchen, you know? And of course we had a bunch of people that worked for us, but they weren’t all great cooks. And so I’m literally like shaving the cheese, putting it on a piece of cracker, finding something in the fridge, like a piece of sausage, putting it on top.

Popping ’em under the broiler, six years old. Wow. And this is when it started. And I’m like, it’s really, it’s a lot about, and we’ll talk more about this too, I mean, in this disjointed world we live in. It’s about getting people together. It’s about creating community. And I’ve been that way since I was a little kid.

I’ve always loved getting groups together, doing something kind of nice, and it doesn’t have to be fancy, but having people feel like they belong and it’s so vitally important. 

Charles Eide: It’s like woven into who we are. 

Andy King: Yeah. 

Charles Eide: Okay. So you’re really well known for something, a Netflix documentary about fire, [00:06:00] but before that, you were a very well known and still are a very well known event planner.

Tell me about that career, like leading up to being involved in Fyre Festival. Like what, what did, what kind of stuff did you do? 

Andy King: I’ll tell you, it would, it would be almost anybody’s dream and what you may know or may not know, um. 

Career Beginnings: PepsiCo & Corporate Concierge [6:23]

Andy King: I had a pal of mine who was starting a business, um, called Manhattan Intelligence, and I was living in New York City.

I had written my first cookbook, this was in 1994. And I was writing the book and doing photo shoots. And, um, he called and he said, you know, I’ve got this company. It’s a database of whatever you, what, what do you want to know about New York? Where to buy it, where to find it, where to see it, where to eat it, where to do it.

And, um, he’d gotten a phone call from, um, a, uh, employee benefits company called Towers Perrin. And Tara’s parent had been contacted by Pepsi. Pepsi being, I mean, this huge employer. And as you know, taco Bell, [00:07:00] FritoLay. Kentucky Fried Chicken, California Pizza Kitchen. Now you can go down the list of what PepsiCo owns.

They were known at that point and they had just been featured in Forbes and Fortune. It’s like one of the worst places to work, just the worst. And they tracked smart people and they grind ’em up and they spit ’em out and on and on. And they wanted to change their reputation and they decided that they wanted to add some kind of department in the building at corporate office that would help employees, um, with mundane tasks that weren’t necessarily work related.

So my friend Alan calls like, Andy, would you consider doing something like this? Like it just can be running a little department and someone’s in a call and they might need a dog sitter, or they’re looking for a painter, or they want a theater ticket or what. I’m like, sure, you know, whatever. And I went through nine weeks of interviews and um, and they kept saying, you know.

He’s Andy, he’s kind of fancy. He drives a Mercedes, he wears these expensive watches like he’s, you know, I don’t know he’s gonna be the right fit for, [00:08:00] ’cause I needed to be able to like help people in the mail room all the way up to the CEO. And so finally, obviously I got the job and within three weeks I’m on the front page of the Wall Street Journal as America’s first corporate concierge.

Can you imagine people work their whole lives to get on the front page of the Wall Street Journal? And there I am, my dot matrix picture in the center column. And guess what? It was April Fools Day. Yeah, but it wasn’t an April Fools, but when I called my dad, I’m like, geez, dad, I think I just need to warn you, I’m the front page of the Wall Street Journal’s.

Like, oh shit. Andy, what did you do now? Actually, nothing wrong. I mean, this is something actually kind of cool. And ironically, one of the things that I ended up doing was I got, I got a call from the head of tax for all of PepsiCo. It’s like, Andy, I’ve got 200. Business executives coming in from Japan to New York in three weeks and not sure what to do with them.

And I, and I’m at a loss and I’m like, Hey, just gimme a day. I’ll [00:09:00] come up with some ideas. Boom. Being Andy, being the resourceful guy, I find an abandoned loft in the meat packing district in Manhattan that was about to be converted into a luxury apartment building. I find out that Jean George, um, uh, has written a cookbook and he is opening one of the fanciest restaurants in New York.

I get him to be a guest chef. I take over the loft. I set up 

Rising to the Top: Wall Street Parties & Big Events [9:20]

Andy King: this incredible dinner. All the executives are brought by luxury coach with champagne into this weird area of Manhattan. They get out, where are we? They walk into this loft. That’s absolutely stunning. The chef comes out who’s famous, who prepares the meal, and then we make an announcement at the end.

We have a little surprise for everybody, and I got. All 200 guests, second row seats for the Elton John concert at Madison Square Garden. 

Charles Eide: No, 

Andy King: they couldn’t believe it. They’re like, oh my God, what is going on here? It was a, an evening they wouldn’t forget. And there was a investment banking firm going public on the New York Stock Exchange.

And I got a call at my office saying, Andy, can you go meet Lane Grins? He’s the chairman of ING Bank, you know, ING Barings Barings Bank. [00:10:00] And they’re going public on New York Stock Exchange. He’d like to meet with you to talk about the concierge service, but also maybe talk about a, a party that he wants to host to celebrate going public.

I’m like, oh sure, okay. You know, so there I am. I’ve hosted like two events for PepsiCo and I’ve done all my little parties through the years, but what the hell? So I go down to Wall Street, this fancy office, and Lane says to me he’s very tall and he is Dutch, and he goes to this whole thing and he says, we wanna be known as a player on Wall Street.

You know, we wanna be cool like JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs, and you know, um, and we want you to host a opening party for us when we go public after we ring the bell. I’m like, sure. I didn’t even know what to, I said, well. Do you have a budget in mind? And he’s like, yeah, we’ll spend like 1,000,004. I’m like, and I couldn’t, I was just trying to keep myself together because the most expensive part I’d ever done was maybe a hundred grand.

I don’t, I’m like, oh, 1,000,004. I didn’t even know how to respond. And I said, well, do you have any [00:11:00] flexibility? And he’s like, shit. Yeah, listen, if you come up with some great concept, we’ll spend two or 3 million. That was the first party I did. 

Charles Eide: And this was back, this was in 1994, so that would be like four or 5 million bucks today.

Andy King: Absolutely. And don’t even, I mean it was unbelievable. And that was my start. And I literally hit it out of the ballpark. And then that party was so successful, he said, Andy, we need to do a nice, an early, nice fancy dinner for 800. Boom. I took over the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the American Wing. I brought in.

I mean, I had the, the Boys Choir of Harlem and I. Patty LaBelle lowered from the ceiling and she’s singing and then I had you. No, I had anyway, just kept going and then I be, that was the basically kind of the Wolf of Wall Street days. They couldn’t spend enough money and then Goldman called me and go, Andy, what did you spend on that ING party?

I’m like, I can’t tell you. A million mm two. Ooh three. [00:12:00] Okay, if we give you three and a half million, can you blow it outta the water? This went on for years and I literally, my average fee coming out of the gate was $175,000 to do a party. What goes on 20 something years old. I buy a brownstone for a million and a half bucks, and then of course they’ve said it was rotten from the inside out.

I put another million and a half into it, 27 years old, like I had a driver, had my boat captain. I bought a 60 foot sailboat with a commission from that first party. Full-time captain kept it in the Caribbean, like life went crazy quickly, and I was blessed because you know, once again we’ll touch on fire, but it’s like when you get that affordability of like you’re on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, it made me into an expert immediately.

I had to rise to the occasion like there was no, tomorrow. I was on the [00:13:00] front page of the New York Times front page of the New York Post at Pepsi. He’s the right one. Uhhuh. I was on the front page of the National Enquirer. Oh, you need a baby elephant for your daughter’s birthday party. No problem. I had all the animal rights activists coming after me in New York City because I had purposes in people’s swimming pools.

I didn’t know I was just doing whatever anybody wanted. I was the party guy for sure. 

Charles Eide: You must have been doing something right? Mm-hmm. Because I mean, obviously you always delivered on what you were doing. 

Andy King: Knock on wood. I always delivered. 

Charles Eide: What was your, what was the secret to delivering? 

Andy King: I was really lucky because being handed the role as America’s first corporate concierge and going to work for Pepsi, I was helping over 250,000 people across the country with things that they needed and was Now, did 

Charles Eide: you have a team or was it just you?

Andy King: I had a team of probably three or four people that were [00:14:00] helping me, but predominantly the main tasks all came from my chair. And what was amazing is that the buying power I had, I could call anybody anywhere and I’d say, Hey, I need, back then it was like, yeah. Oh, the best restaurant in New York. Er I’m like, I, I just, I I need to get a reservation for somebody next Thursday.

Sorry. How about in six months? I’m like, okay, but can I talk to the GM for a minute? You know? I said, Hey, listen, I’m Andy King. I’m the, I’m the head concierge for PepsiCo. Do you read The Wall Journal? Yeah. Hello? I mean, don’t you know who I am? And I’m like, um, I can fill your restaurant on nights where no one would ever go.

Oh, people don’t like to go out to eat in New York at 5:00 PM Oh, my clients do. I’ll fill your restaurant. Oh my God, are you kidding me? I call Delta Airlines. I could call the Ritz Carlton anywhere. Anywhere, because. Any organization has downtimes where they need to fill them. And there’s a note, it’s a non-solicitation policy where you can’t go and call any big corporation, [00:15:00] get ’em an inside track.

I wrote a little newspaper that got passed out to all the corporate employees of PepsiCo once a month, and I could write anything I wanted in that newspaper. I could recommend your business, anybody’s business. And so I developed this buying power. But with the buying power, I developed all these amazing connections.

And so with the connections I had to deliver a lot of business to them, which I did. But uh, in turn they gave me trust. And so I knew I could walk into any room and go, oh, you want me to blow this out of the water? I know who to call. 

Charles Eide: How did that change you? Like from who you were? All of a sudden, all this success is hitting you.

You’re delivering on these things. You could make a phone call and make anything happen like that had to change you too. What did that do to you? Did it make you dream bigger? Did it unlock a piece of you that maybe you didn’t know? Or did you always have that? [00:16:00] 

Andy King: I felt like even as a young kid, that I would be famous in some way.

And then I, when the Wall Street Journal piece hit, think about this, like it was before social media. So if you go back right now and go, oh, I’m gonna Google Andy King, front page, wall Street Journal, April Fools in 1994, good luck. Find, well, you’ll find it, but you gotta dig. And um, at a young age, I knew that I was gonna get into some kind of a situation that would make me somewhat famous.

And I wasn’t sure if it was business or would be entertainment or what have you. And so it was all just starting to happen for me. So it wasn’t like I laid in bed night going, oh yeah, I knew this would happen, but I had a rough idea and I was on my way. And so. I owned it. You know what, and I think, not to kind of switch this subject a teeny bit, but as a gay man, 

Coming Out & Personal Growth [16:53]

Andy King: I didn’t come out until I was 38 years old.

Mm-hmm. So I wasn’t out as a gay man at that point. And [00:17:00] I, you know, it was a huge insecurity for me. But I was lucky because I was handsome. I had this voice. I, I dressed well. I, I did all the right things. I belong to the right clubs, you know, on and on. And as this part of my life began to blossom, it gave me such confidence, A, to come out.

B, I could walk into any room as a gay man and not be embarrassed. I could say to you, geez, Charles. What made you pick that shirt today? And you go, you don’t like my shirt? I’m like, no, no, no. I like your shirt, but I like, and you go, can you take me shopping next week? ’cause I just wanna look good. Okay. Yeah.

I could walk onto any train trading floor and any investment banking firm, any of my clients, I could come in and I’d go, okay guys, they go, Andy, listen, you just tell us what we need to do. Tell, I’m like, yeah, yeah. Do you have reservations for your anniversary? ’cause your wife’s gonna kill you. Okay, no, no.

I’m gonna help you do that, that, that, that, that I could own any room and I would say, I’ve got entertainment for you. Here’s a venue I found. This is what we’re gonna do for these million dollar [00:18:00] parties. Do you think one person would go, oh, I don’t trust you. Hell no. I was the expert. I’m the guy who walked in the room that everybody looked at and said, Andy will handle it then knock on wood, you know, the first big failure I ever faced was fire.

And that was not because I wasn’t planning well. As you know, through the documentary, I had six weeks to save a music festival in The Bahamas with no infrastructure. No infrastructure. So it wasn’t like I could call my contacts and go, Hey, I need to, we need to like bring in a different beach. And I, I think we gotta try to do the No, no, no, no, no.

I was, you know, it was pretty crazy. So 

Charles Eide: I’m gonna ask you a lot about fire, but I have, I have a question. ’cause you said something that I thought was so interesting. I’m such a believer that when we think about things, we attract who we become and we attract the things that we are thinking about all the time.

Right. Or at least a lot of times a 

Andy King: law of attraction. 

Charles Eide: Yeah, I did you, you had said you knew you were gonna do big [00:19:00] things from a young age, right? You knew you were bound to be famous and successful. Do you think that knowing that in you is what led to that? Like did you, do you think you attracted it? 

Andy King: I’d say.

Likes, attract likes. My grandmother would always say, but to back up a teeny bit, I’m one of nine kids, six brothers, they’re all pretty tough. My father was very tough and I was the weak link. And as a kid I would go to sleep at night, often hearing my dad yelling at my mom, saying, I can’t even look at that kid.

Can’t even look at him. And, and you know, was I probably gay at eight years old? Probably. I don’t know. Yeah. Did I like trade my GI Joe for my sister’s Susie Homemaker, easy Bake Oven. Yeah. It should have been like ding ding red light or green light. I don’t know. But you know, we [00:20:00] kept going with that until I was 38 years old.

I was the only one that didn’t know I was gay, I think in the room for a long time, but. What happened to me was that I was constantly put down and constantly it was a real struggle and especially going through your adolescence and questioning who you are and on and on and on. And, um, my, my parents got a divorce.

Um, my father was a very successful businessman and, um, he actually was involved with Watergate and, um, we had a private investigative firm that my family owned. Um, we ended up moving to Cape Cod to our summer house. We left our big place in New Jersey and New York moved up there. I went from a big school to having.

37 kids in my class and 140 kids in high school. And I was the most hated kid in that school. When I arrived, of course I arrived, I was wearing my little blazer and my little Gucci shoes and gray flannels and some things never changed. I probably had an expensive watch on, I had boxer shorts with my initials.

I arrived in a limousine. Um, you know, and everybody, you were 

Charles Eide: [00:21:00] different. 

Andy King: I was different. And everybody at the school where I was your father was either a fisherman, a gas station attendant, or a carpenter or, and we were summer people that ended up moving there year round. You can be sure that I, that I graduated from that high school as president of the student body, editor of the yearbook.

I owned that school and I owned everybody in it. Well, no, I don’t wanna say it that way. Yeah, I bought a lot of ’em off, but, but e even at, even at 14, I knew what to do and, but I, I got. Everybody became my cheerleaders and everybody fell in love with Andy. And that’s sort of who I am. Fast forward things started to burst in my career and one of the things that, that I regret a teeny bit is that I could still go back to, I had a, I had a, um, psychiatrist that I would work with everyone small in New York and they would say to me, so one of my favorite books is Catcher in the Rye.

And, um, Holden Caulfield was the main character, you [00:22:00] know, JD Salinger wrote this book. And so he went to this boarding school and um, he would always, he was popular, but he was kind of critical and he wasn’t perfect. And, but he’d stand in the middle of a room at a party, but he could tell you what everybody was saying around him.

He could tell you what everybody was wearing. ’cause he was always like in the middle, but he was outside looking in. And that was me for so many years. What ended up happening is somewhat of a negative from 

Proving Himself: The ‘I’ll Show You’ Mentality [22:25]

Andy King: my dad and my brothers, is that I had this thing inside me forever, which was I will show you. Yeah, you fucking, you were mean to me.

I’ll show you never to hurt anybody. I will. I will buy the biggest house in the neighborhood. I will buy the biggest Mercedes at 27 years old. I will have a boat captain. I will have a house in Greece. I will, I will show you. And I did, but it got me into a little bit of trouble because I probably would ’em been nice if I’d saved a few million dollars back then.

But I have no regrets. I don’t have any regrets. I [00:23:00] still live a blessed life. I don’t have the money I had then, but I have a lot more because I have history, I have stories and I have an amazing life. But it was. The jet fuel that was created by my dad and sadly was amazing on his deathbed. And 

Father’s Deathbed & Reconciliation [23:18]

Andy King: he got pancreatic cancer and he died in six weeks and he summoned all his nine children to his Newport, Rhode Island mansion.

He was a professional yacht racer. And on and on he was in his room. And my oldest brother, who you know, was head of mergers and acquisitions for pharmaceutical and, and like the Deadliest Catch and Alaska, who we on all these Alaskan fishing boats, like this is all based on my family. It’s all crazy, you know, and they’re all sea captains and you know, successful guys.

But I’m Andy, you know, and of course I arrive at my father’s house, we’re all in his room. The nurse is there and some staff and whatever, and all the nine children. And my oldest brother says my father. So what words of wisdom do you have for us? And my brother John looks around and he says, well, don’t ask me.

No, [00:24:00] no. John says, well, um, 

Charles Eide: and dad says, well. 

Andy King: Don’t ask me, ask Andy. Andy’s the one kid in this family that just did it on his own, like he has done more than, and I’m like, oh my word. This guy who was so mean to me, my entire childhood is now pointing me out in front of all of my brothers. Well, my oldest brothers is huge success.

And saying, dad, what words of wisdom do you have for us? And dad says, ask Andy. And I’m like, whoa. And then my second oldest brother who’s like head of sales for our family’s national company that had gone public on the New York Stock Exchange, and then the stock split twice and you know, it’s worth millions and millions of dollars.

And so Tom says, so Dad, well what, what? What are we supposed to do with the company now? And dad’s like, well, Andy, what would you do? I said, I’d probably focus on sales. I’m like practically fell off his bed. The guy never barely spoke to me my entire life, but he rewarded me six weeks before he died. He [00:25:00] couldn’t say, I’m proud of you.

He couldn’t say. He said it the best way he could. 

Charles Eide: How long ago was that? 

Andy King: Oh, 1996 on my birthday. So it’s like this always holidays or April Fool’s day. Yeah, 1996. But what was amazing is that he passed away. I felt great. I didn’t feel like I hated him. I, I learned like the guy had nine children, like, and then he left my mother after 30 years of marriage, then married somebody else and had more, and she had kids and like he should never, like he was, his father died early and he was running this national company and with nine kids, can you imagine nine kids and you’re in your thirties, you’re running a national company.

Like the poor guy did his best. And so I was able, in his funeral, I’m sitting there, I’m still in shock like, wait, dad actually really loved me. He was really proud of me, but he could never tell me. So at his funeral, one of his best friends came up, prominent surgeon in New York. He’s like, Hey Andy, I think I should tell you this story.

Remember how you were on the front page of the Wall Street Journal? I’m [00:26:00] like, you know, I, I remember. And he’s like, um, he’s like, well, um, your dad sent three assistants out to buy 250 copies. He sent a copy to everybody he knew, 

Charles Eide: and you didn’t know that. 

Andy King: I didn’t, he never told me that. And I’m like, he what?

Yeah. And so I, I just was spellbound, but at the end of the day, it got me in a little bit of trouble. But I think him making me more tough as a young kid really helped me to be successful as an adult. And I needed to be able to learn how to, I was able to, I think in my older life now as I’m turning 65 this summer, I’m like, you know what?

I don’t need to have the biggest house in the neighborhood anymore. I don’t need to drive the fanciest car. I still have some nice things, but. I don’t have to prove anything to anybody. I can walk in a room and own it, and people respect me and they [00:27:00] don’t look at me and criticize or, you know, unless they saw the documentary and only wanted to see one thing.

But it’s amazing in situations like that. So that jet Fuel helped me to, to get to that pinnacle time. And then the challenge for so many entrepreneurs today, I’m sure you feel it every day, is like, how do I keep this going every month? I knew that if I didn’t put $50,000 in my checking account, my personal checking account, I said, supported my mother.

I have a mentally disabled sister. I, the bills just every month kept coming in and I’m like, and I supported a huge team of employees and my assistants and all my homes and on and on and on. So I, besides all payroll, it’s just my little personal life was like, all right, Andy, 20 something years old. I’m like, I need 50 grand a month.

My, my friends are making 50 grand a year. Not 50 grand a month, but that pressure kept me going. I don’t want that anymore, so to speak. But [00:28:00] it was amazing to be able to, you know, to survive in New York City and to rise to be one of the top event planners. I mean, was a lot of work, a lot of work. 

Charles Eide: Your back to your, your dad, you know, and that upbringing and that fuel it gave you.

Do you think you would be as successful had he given you the cushy, you know, uh, what, what you would’ve wanted, or do you think that you attribute a lot of your fire in you to that? 

Andy King: When I look back at the, you know, in my early, early years of. Being at a private school and not really understanding that the struggles of the average person having the gift of being sent to Chatham High School and learning that, you know, my dad would always say, we live in the top 99.9% of the world, 1% of the world lives better than we do 1%, [00:29:00] but we and 99% of the world lives much worse than we do.

And we’re like, 

Charles Eide: and you didn’t know the difference? 

Andy King: No, we have nine kids. Like we lived in a big house, but it wasn’t like we were just oozing with money, but we had anything anybody ever wanted. And I think going to a little public high school, learning the struggles of the average person, that’s, if I hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t have become America’s first corporate concierge.

I wouldn’t have been going down. I mean, I got a call from a guy in his fifties in the mail room at PepsiCo who said to me. Andy, I have a favor. Can I come meet you at your office? And I said, sure. I’m thinking, well, he probably wants tickets to lay miserable. I can fix that. Whatever. The poor guy, you know, he comes to me and says, listen, we’re in New York.

My mom is in Hollywood, Florida. She broke her hip. She is, doesn’t have much money. Lives in a small apartment. She can’t even leave her apartment right now. Um, and neighbors are bringing her food. I don’t even know what to [00:30:00] do. I’m like, oh my word, this poor guy. So I said, okay. Meanwhile, my family’s business and we work in the healthcare business too.

And so I knew I could make a few calls and with the private investigating part of the business, we do a lot of insurance investigating and market research. So I was able to call someone at the firm and I’m like, okay, fine. I found out who her insurance carrier was. I found out that she was eligible for a visiting nurse to come to her home every day, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

I made it all happen. The mail room was probably a half a mile from my office, and for one year, that guy would arrive every morning, walk a half a mile to come say good morning to me and go to his job at seven o’clock in the morning. And he would thank me every morning for a year for saving his mother’s life.

And I’m like, oh my gosh. But I wouldn’t have been that person if I’d gone to my little snotty private school and continued through boarding school and never realized like, you know, and I’m not saying. My siblings are all pretty, they’re pretty [00:31:00] down to earth. But that was a, you know, I think a memorable thing that carried, that has carried with me.

I’m the guy still, my partner will say to me last night, out to dinner, I sit down, waiter comes over, which come, what’s your name? Oh, Amanda. Amanda. Nice to meet you. Do you, have you worked here long, Amanda? I repeat her name nine fricking times. Yeah. I can tell you her name and I find out, I sometimes find out her girlfriend’s name or her boyfriend’s name too.

And all my friends are like, Andy, what is going? But meanwhile, she’ll do anything for us because I remember her name. 

Charles Eide: Yeah. 

Andy King: How important 

Charles Eide: is that? What a superpower. I tell my kids that all the time. I’m like, if you wanna stand out, just remember people’s names. 

Andy King: Yeah. 

Charles Eide: I got a question for you. 

Andy King: Mm-hmm. 

Charles Eide: Your dad.

Andy King: Yeah. 

Charles Eide: Did you ever, did you, did you get to tell your dad how you felt? 

Andy King: Hmm. No. The irony is that I came out as a gay man probably the year after he died. 

Charles Eide: Do you think you were holding it in? 

Andy King: Oh, I’m sure. [00:32:00] And when I look back, I think about, so my great-grandfather came over from Ireland. He started this company, um, passed it down to my grandfather.

Then my grandfather passed it down to my dad. My grandfather was a successful trust lawyer in New York. Um, my dad liked the theater. He was, so there’s a, my father went to Yale, which my grandfather, I think was happy about, but he probably wanted him to go to Harvard. And then dad joined, tried to join the football team, but he made jv, not varsity.

My grandfather was so tough on him, 

News Anchor: always, 

Andy King: like nothing was ever good enough ever. My dad joined the singing group called the Wiffin, poofs. Ever heard of ’em? So the Yale Glee Club. And so they’re very prominent and they travel around the world and there’s a bunch of guys and they sing all these amazing songs and what have you.

And I think that was embarrassing to my, my grandfather. Um, when I think back that my dad probably had some feminine gene in him because he did enjoy the theater and he loved singing and [00:33:00] he blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, um, so he probably saw, and I looked a lot like him, so he probably saw a lot of him in me and a lot of me in him.

Um, but he couldn’t, he wasn’t that generation. Yeah. He couldn’t, you know, he never hugged me. I probably shook my father’s hand four times in my life. I mean, it was crazy. 

Charles Eide: So if he was, if he was here right now, what would you say to him or ask him? 

Andy King: Well, I would say to him that. I could honestly say that I, that I, that I’m proud of him because I know he did his best.

Charles Eide: Mm. Um, ’cause I’m sure it was a weight on his shoulders, um, with his father probably pushing him so hard and dad constantly feeling like he was gonna fail. And I think that’s probably one of the reasons why he left my mom and all nine children, he is like, I can’t do this anymore. I don’t, I just wanna do what I wanna do.

Andy King: I don’t want someone telling me what to do, how to do it, [00:34:00] when to do it, and I don’t want the pressure. Um, I think we all built a lot of resentment towards him because of that, uh, because of the fact that he left. But I think that 

Charles Eide: How old were you when he left? 

Andy King: Um, I was a senior in high 

News Anchor: school. 

Charles Eide: And where do you fall in the nine kids?

Andy King: Number six. There were still three younger. Okay. That were, you know, and my sister the 

Charles Eide: youngest, so he left when there were still kids in school. 

Andy King: Oh yeah. 

Charles Eide: Yeah. 

Andy King: And, um, he just couldn’t handle it anymore. Yeah, it just was something. But I come from that kind of crazy family. Like my mother’s family, my, my mother and her three siblings all got polio at the same time in 

the, 

Andy King: oh geez.

In the 1940s. And my grandfather was a very suave, fancy guy. And, uh, he said to my grandmother, you know what? I can’t handle these sick kids. You make a choice. It’s either me or the kids. 

Charles Eide: You imagine how screwed up that is. 

Andy King: And she chose him over the kids. And so all things, so my mother and her brothers and sisters all went to boarding school when they were like five or six years [00:35:00] old.

And the chauffeur, the maids would try to bring them home some holidays, but some holidays, my grandparents were away. And so the chauffeur and the maid would like go to their schools and bring them some gifts and 

News Anchor: how screwed 

Charles Eide: up they live in the 

Andy King: biggest 

Charles Eide: house in town talking about childhood trauma. 

News Anchor: Oh my 

Charles Eide: word.

So I’m 

like, 

News Anchor: you know what? 

Charles Eide: Okay, so it, there, there’s an interesting theme here with you and that is that people have. They look to you to solve problems and come up with ideas to figure things out. 

Andy King: Yeah. 

Charles Eide: That’s a theme with you. I mean, back to the PepsiCo days where people were like, come up with something.

Here’s a bunch of money, but money is worthless unless you have somebody doing it. So all of a sudden we’re all flipping through our Netflix and there’s this documentary. Mm-hmm. And the world saw a documentary called Fire Fraud, I think it’s what it’s called, or fire. It’s something about fire. Just Fire.

Fire. It’s called Fire. 

Andy King: Mm-hmm. 

Charles Eide: And uh, [00:36:00] 

How Andy Met Billy McFarland [36:00]

Charles Eide: I want to understand before we get into like how are you, what was it like to film with Netflix and all that? I wanna understand like how that all went, but how did you end up connected to that? You’re the go-to guy to come up with ideas and make stuff happen and all of a sudden and see you on Netflix.

Like where did you go from being. Celebrity planner to being involved with Billy McFarland, 

Andy King: young Billy, um, grew up in the town next to my town in New Jersey where I grew up. And, um, it was a New Year’s Eve and I would rarely ever be in Manhattan on New Year’s Eve because I was either gonna, I was either on the, the Caribbean, on my boat.

I was in St. Barts. I was raised somewhere very fancy on the years. That was my gift because as you know, in the event world, often we would host over 75 events in the month of December alone. 

Charles Eide: Oh yeah. 

Andy King: 75 events. And by, I’d say to my [00:37:00] mom coming for Christmas, but on the 26th, I am on a jet somewhere. Don’t take it personally.

I’ll make sure you want anything. You, you got anything you want for Christmas? I’ll make sure you, everything is perfect. But I’m outta here because now I’m gonna take a break. I’m on my boat, but one year I had just hosted the, the release of the world’s largest Ferris wheel. In Las Vegas at Caesars Palace and a friend of mine had married their director of marketing and the company that built it was based in Germany and that’s where the cars were built on, on, on.

So I, I’d done this fancy party for them, which they loved. And so the, uh, the big executive said, Andy, I’m, I’m getting married to your friend. I want to do something really special. We want to get married on New Year’s Eve. Like, oh shit, I don’t wanna work on New Year’s Eve. You’re like, I’m 

Charles Eide: supposed to be on my boat.

Andy King: Right. And he said, and I want to get married on one of the cable cars in Manhattan that [00:38:00] go from Manhattan over to over to Roosevelt Island. They hold like 50 people, loves immediate family in there, and then we’ll land and then we’ll do a big part, whatever. I said, okay, great. So I was in Manhattan on New Year’s Eve hosting this wedding, and the phone rings.

It’s a friend of mine going, he said, Andy, where are you? I said, well, you never live. I’m, I’m not on my boat. I’m in Manhattan. Good. Because there’s this young guy named Billy McFarland and he has started this company called Magnises, which is a black credit card for 20 somethings. And basically you take your, your Bank of America debit card and you swipe it with this one and you get this card that if you drop it, it’ll dent the ground.

Like it’s thick. Like the 

Charles Eide: Amex black card. 

Andy King: Exactly. 

Charles Eide: Like every 20 something wants an Amex black card, but they don’t spend a million bucks or whatever. 

Andy King: Oh no. It was a, a fee of $250 a year, something crazy. So it’s a status 

Charles Eide: thing, 

Andy King: total status. But he was able to negotiate, which I ended up helping a lot with, you know, incredible perks, get into any restaurant, the best [00:39:00] gyms, the, you know, helicopter rides, resorts didn’t matter, you know, and so I’m thinking, he said, um, he’s got a loft in soho and he’s having a New Year’s Eve party.

We’re here, but I think you need to get here because they’re serving like. Hogie sandwiches. You know what a hogie sandwiches like a, A submarine sandwich and then kegs of beer. But he is trying to be like this high end. I’m like, oh, no, no, no, no. I’m on my way. You couldn’t help yourself. Yeah. Shit, are you kidding me?

What this kid thinks he’s gonna start this great company and this is what he is doing. So of course I get down there. 

Charles Eide: So you’re like, I have to save this kid from his own demise. 

Andy King: Absolutely. He’s like, yeah. And he is from far, he’s from Short Hills. I’m like, oh my God, I don’t believe him. So I get there, he’s leaving for like Patagonia the next day.

Fancy, fancy. But I’m like, Billy, we need to get together when you get back. I said, I’d love to talk to you about, you know, ’cause meanwhile, my concierge, so half of magnises was built based on all these concierge services that you would receive through this credit card. 

Charles Eide: So it was only [00:40:00] natural that you could help that work.

Andy King: Absolutely. We went from 400 members to 14,000 in New York City. I helped ’em find a brownstone. I helped them negotiate every contract. What is a 

Charles Eide: brownstone? 

Andy King: A brownstone, A beautiful fancy house. Okay. That’s six stories high. Okay. You know, and that became like the clubhouse. I helped ’em hire the chef, the butler.

I created all these experiences with these kids. Wine tastings, chefs dinners, art openings, everything. 

Charles Eide: Did it all for free. 

Andy King: This is all you. Oh me. Yeah. Yeah. And my business partner at the time was like, Andy, what the shit are you doing? I’m like, well, and I’m like, oh, he is a cute kid. I’m not gonna sleep with him.

But you know, he’s a cute kid and whatever. And I, he whatever me natural to me. Yeah. And so I hosted 44 events for him for free. Whoa. I helped him launch this company and it just started to skyrocket. And he was waiting to be bought out by a major credit card because. 

Charles Eide: 14,000 is no joke. 

Andy King: Right. And credit card companies are dying to get all these kids that just come out of university because they’re now making big money and they haven’t had a credit card before.

No. And [00:41:00] on, so they wanted this list and all of the members were basically recent grads going to work for an investment banking firm, or an ad agency, or a marketing firm. So they were moving 

Charles Eide: real money, 

Andy King: absolutely working day and night and didn’t have time to like meet other people, become part of a community.

I’m like, this is right up my alley. So, fast forward after a couple years, 

The Birth of Fyre Festival [41:21]

Andy King: Billy says to me, I’ve got this idea. And it, it partially, he and I had a meeting because as you know, I was hosting. The, the, all the social activities and events for the America’s Cup in Bermuda a few years ago. And I had 250 super yachts that were coming in with 250 of the most wealthy families in the world.

And I needed to make sure whatever they wanted and when they wanted it, and how they wanted, everything was, everything would be perfect. And um, so I sort of neck deep and like, okay, it’s the concierge stuff, it’s everything else. And I wanted to make sure that they had an experience [00:42:00] in Bermuda because Bermuda is a little island that’s not had the best economy for years because yachts will leave the, the med and then go to the Caribbean and leave the Caribbean, go back to the med.

And they might stop in Bermuda to get gas, but they don’t do anything else there. And my, and I’d been going to Bermuda for years and my parents got married or they had their honeymoon there. And so Bermuda was a special place. And so I said to the gang, we’re gonna, I’m doing an opening party for. All the super yacht people that are coming, and I think I’m gonna get John Legend to perform like Andy.

Really? Yeah. So I call John’s team and they’re like, Andy, sure. 400 grand. I’m like four oh grand. I can put that in the budget. No problem. I get a call back two days later, like Andy, oh Bermuda, that’s international waters. I’m like, yeah, it’s an hour and 25 minute flight from Manhattan. Yeah, it’s not far.

It’s not far. It’s like, sorry. International orders. 800 grand, not 400. Yeah. And by the way, international needs a couple jets too. Now I’m like, what the shit is happening here? [00:43:00] Like, God, this $400,000 now, 2 million bucks to have. I said, forget it. I’m gonna get, you know, Barry Mantle. I don’t know. Poor battery’s dying anyway, but anyways, I’ve got somebody to perform anyway, so I told Billy the story, you know, Billy’s like, oh gosh, you know, I’ve got this app idea where you can.

Get around every manager, you can get around every agent, like, and it’s an acting like you’re saying, 

Charles Eide: bypass them. 

Andy King: You bypass them 

Charles Eide: and go straight to the artist, to the artist manager or whoever. 

Andy King: Bingo. Yeah. And you can avoid a lot of those upcharges, all 

News Anchor: the 

Charles Eide: markups 

Andy King: in between. Yeah. You get Beyonce to come and perform middleman, whatever.

And I’m like, I’ve had Beyonce and Jay-Z perform for me. But so, 

Charles Eide: so the 

Andy King: idea was that was a 

News Anchor: fire app, 

Charles Eide: so it was an app 

Andy King: on your phone. You’re like, oh, I want Beyonce. Go blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you can start the dialogue without going through the agents and the people that will completely take the cost outta control.

Charles Eide: Yeah. 

Andy King: That was the design. So, 

Charles Eide: so he tells you, I’ve got this app idea. 

Andy King: Yeah. And you’re like, oh my god, [00:44:00] geez, I just went through this thing about trying to get John Legend. That would be perfect. You know, I was like, okay, great. He’s like, I’m a new, um, I wanna launch this app, but I wanna do a really fun party and I wanna do it somewhere different and nah, nah, nah, boom.

Bahamas. I’m like, oh, okay, great. So 

Charles Eide: you’re like, hang on. So you’re like. We’ve done all these Magnises events and you wanna launch this app. Sounds like a good idea to throw a party to launch the app. Let’s do it in The Bahamas 

Andy King: and I’ll help you. 

Charles Eide: Yeah. 

Andy King: But he goes off. Typical Billy goes off on his own, whatever disappears, starts 

Charles Eide: working 

Andy King: on, yeah.

Meanwhile, I’m like working on a dinner for Leonardo DiCaprio, which I got paid 250 grand to do, and I raised almost $9 million for his nonprofit. And then I was hosting a mini Coachella three weeks later for 2000 people on the, on the grounds in Palm Springs. 

Charles Eide: You busy doing your 

Andy King: work? I was busy. I’m like, fine.

You know? And then. It was the World Cup Pro Ski Championships and it was in Squaw Valley. You remember it was a year that they had too much snow and we were trying to figure out, we had 140,000 people coming, [00:45:00] but there was nowhere for anybody to park or walk. ’cause it does snow. Yeah. So we’re having snow truck to, you know, it’s the usual event planning world, which is totally crazy At times he calls me, he’s like, I’m in The Bahamas.

I’m doing the party. 

Charles Eide: Billy just calls you out of the blue. 

Andy King: Yeah. And I’m like, oh, okay. Sure. He is like, can you get here? Cut my hands full right now here in California. But um, and it should have been like red light number one. He is like, well, let me know your schedule. I’ll send a jet to pick you up. 

Charles Eide: Well send a jet.

Andy King: Yeah. Send a jet to San Francisco for a 

Charles Eide: first time event. 

Andy King: Oh yeah, A jet, which is, you know, I’m like, okay, 

Charles Eide: that’s like 60 grand. 

Andy King: Oh yeah. Or more. Oh, more from across the country. So I’m like, well, obviously he’s got some good funding. All right. I’d like to hear that. Whatever. 

Charles Eide: Good, good sponsors 

Andy King: or good sponsors.

Oh my gosh. Yeah, he’s got, you know, he’s like, yeah, Casamigos is gonna sponsor the whole thing. I even got Whispering Angel, your favorite Rose, which I love you. So 

Charles Eide: you’re like, you’ve done all this legwork. Clearly there’s a lot going on. You need me to zip out? I can hop on a plane. 

Andy King: It’s no problem. So Chet picks me up, fly in.

Charles Eide: What kind of jet was it? Do [00:46:00] you remember? I’m a aviation dork. 

Andy King: You are? 

Charles Eide: It was a, was it big? Could you stand up in it? 

Andy King: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It should have been. I 

Charles Eide: just, and should been 

Andy King: 12 PI think it’s, it was a G. A G. It 

Charles Eide: was a Gulf Stream. 

Andy King: Yeah, it was a Gulf 

Charles Eide: Stream. Oh, so good. 

Andy King: So 

Charles Eide: definitely more than 60 grand. 

Andy King: Oh yeah.

Mm-hmm. Well, I land in The Bahamas and a group comes, picks me up and we get over to the site and he’s like, okay. I’m gonna tour you around, you’re gonna gimme your honest opinion, right? You’re just, tell me what’s happening. What do you think? 

Charles Eide: How far out is it from like the, the event? 

Andy King: Six weeks. 

Charles Eide: Six weeks.

Six Weeks to Save a Festival [46:37]

Andy King: Six weeks. 

Charles Eide: And, and when you got there, was it like, yeah, we got all this stuff already lined up, like just help us kind of tweak a couple things? 

News Anchor: Pretty much. But, 

Charles Eide: but there was a bucket of crap in there. 

Andy King: Oh my God. It was a total disaster. So I basically said, came back, had our little chat. I sit down, I said, okay guys, here’s my honest opinion.

We can make it happen. 

Charles Eide: Now, by this time, [00:47:00] had they already put out the marketing? 

Andy King: Oh God, yes. Oh my, my God. It’s sold out. 

Charles Eide: It was already sold out. It 

Andy King: was all sold out. These kids are all flying in in six weeks, 6,000 kids to an area that has nowhere to sleep. There’s no plumbing, there’s no electricity, nothing.

So you showed up and you’re like, 

Charles Eide: so where are the people gonna go? 

Andy King: But I knew in my heart, I’m like, okay. 

News Anchor: I said, 

Andy King: we’ll change the messaging. I’d gone to that island with my family probably three or four different times. I knew a lot of locals. I said, change the messaging coming to The Bahamas. Bring your beautiful girlfriend, your boyfriend, like you’ll have some great food on the beach.

Wear your bikini. You know, you might sleep in a tent. We’re gonna have an amazing music. We’ve got Blink 180 2 and Little Yachty and you go down the list. I mean, we got the Kardashians coming. Everybody’s coming. So, hey, just, you’re gonna have three or four days of total fun, but it’s gonna be roughing it a little bit.

But, so you 

Charles Eide: know what, so you said, let’s [00:48:00] change the way we’re explaining this. ’cause you sold it as something that it’s not gonna be, 

Andy King: not gonna be a luxury event. Just can’t be. We don’t have enough time to pull that. Oh, 

Charles Eide: how did he receive that when you were like, let’s just, we need to change the way we explain this.

Andy King: Total narcissistic Billy is like, yeah, yeah. Right. Okay. Yeah. Good. We’ll do it. Yeah, we’ll do it. Can, can you help us? I’m like, yeah. As long as we change the messaging. Yeah, no problem. We’ll change the messaging. The messaging got changed 10 hours before the first guest arrived. And I mean, I worked for six weeks trying every day to, and I was just, it was one nightmare after another one nightmare.

You can’t even imagine talking about like Lord of the Rings or Lord of the Flies or like whatever it was. So 

Charles Eide: you’re down there the whole six weeks now you’re like down there living there trying to work through this, this, this stuff. 

Andy King: Oh yeah. Every day was another disaster. Every day. And what was amazing is that 

News Anchor: there 

Andy King: was a mole.

So every day I would run a meeting for like two or 300 kids. And you’ve never seen a group work hard in your life trying to, and these are the people putting it 

Charles Eide: on. Yeah. It was like two or [00:49:00] 300 people down there working. 

Andy King: Ugh. 

Charles Eide: And you’re running a meeting? 

Andy King: I’m running a meeting with all confidential information.

Like can’t get an insurance policy, like we’re drowning. Like we we’re running low in funding. Again, we gotta get another investor. We’ve gotta, oh my gosh. The, the. We’d have no security. We need at least a hundred to 200 security. And no one wants to take the security. We can’t get the proper fencing installed to keep people from drowning off the cliff.

We can’t, you know, every day was another situation. So I’d have these confidential chats. 

Charles Eide: Yeah. 

Andy King: And all of a sudden up on a website would appear, every conversation I had would go live around the world. Oh yeah. Latest. 

Charles Eide: Was the world watching at this point now, 

Andy King: like, because it had sold out. Yeah. They were waiting with bated breath.

Everybody was waiting. This is the Fyre Festival in The Bahamas. It’s the orange tile. It was promoted better than any other thing. It’s sold out in 15 minutes. Every celebrity in LA and around the world posted at the same time. How did he 

Charles Eide: get it to be so? [00:50:00] Big. 

Andy King: See, that’s 

Charles Eide: Billy. Like, he thinks big. 

Andy King: He does think big, but he’d never done anything big like that before.

And he retained Jerry Media known as Fuck Jerry. Um, and they’re ones that designed this whole marketing campaign, which was incredible. Well, you just, you with no infrastructure in place, you know, it just was set to fail from the beginning. But I kept saying, first of all, we’d run these meetings. It would go live on all these websites.

Every confidential thing I said would go public. People like, oh, so you don’t have any insurance? How do you know we don’t have any insurance? Well, it’s, it’s on a, and I’m like, so one of these kids that’s working for me is a mole? Was reporting to somebody who had a fake fire website. Every day I’d walk in this room going, who do you suppose this person is?

But it couldn’t, I ne to this day, I don’t know who the mole is. That was sending all, all, all the confidential information out. And every day I’d run a meeting and I’d say, people go, [00:51:00] can I ask? Sure. What? Yeah. What Charles? Yeah. Um, when are you gonna pull the plug? Well, we’re gonna keep going. We’ve gotta keep, ’cause Billy’s like, gotta keep going.

Gotta keep going. Like, okay. Um, Andy, well, um, none of the barges can get through now and everything that we need is stuck on the piers in Miami and it can’t even get here. Should we, should we stop now and we’re gonna, we gotta keep going. 

Charles Eide: What made you keep going? Because Billy was like, no, no, no. 

Andy King: Billy was No, no, no, no.

He was in so deep he could not, not try to put it on. 

Charles Eide: Well, so, 

Andy King: so deep. He had, he had raised $29 million. This kid would walk into any investment firm and dazzled them. Wow. He’s basically on the spectrum. I don’t even know how he did it. 

Charles Eide: I don’t know. So $29 million, is that in addition to the ticket sales dollars?

The, the, the money from the tickets? 

Andy King: Yeah. 

Charles Eide: So the, do you know like how much money in tickets was sold? Do you know? 

Andy King: I don’t even know at this 

Charles Eide: point. It had to be a lot of money. 

Andy King: Yes. But the average ticket was 1200 bucks. 

Charles Eide: [00:52:00] Okay. And how many did they sell? 

Andy King: 6,000. 

Charles Eide: Okay. So like six, six, 7 million bucks. 

Andy King: Yeah. 

Charles Eide: So you, you $7 million plus 29 million.

Andy King: Oh, 

Charles Eide: where, where the hell did all the money go? 

Andy King: Oh my God. He was in a private jet every day flying back and forth to New York. He had, he was flying models in from LA to do shoots promoting it. 

Charles Eide: So you’re talking a hundred grand a flight. Oh my 

Andy King: God. And 

Charles Eide: then, so just burning cash, like lighting 

Andy King: burning. When I got there, like over a hundred employees were all staying at the fanciest resort on Exuma.

That was a thousand dollars a night per person. And they’d been there for weeks. Weeks. I’m like, Billy, like this is not sustainable. Like, I know I’m, we’re moving everybody 

Charles Eide: slowly. But what was the idea on the financial model though? I mean, if you raise 29 million, then you have another six or $7 million in tickets.

You’re talking about $35 million. Was was, was he hoping to turn a profit somehow? Like was there a model? 

Andy King: I mean, the model was basically all the, he wanted to upsell, so it was [00:53:00] going to be, 

Charles Eide: but upsell for what 

Andy King: you get there, it’s like, okay, we’ve had a yacht for you, it’s gonna be 10,000 bucks a day or whatever.

Done. Okay, no problem. Oh, we’ve found a villa for you, it’s gonna be another X. So 

Charles Eide: he was banking on upselling the guests when they got there? 

Andy King: Yes. 

News Anchor: And 

Charles Eide: to the tune of 30 million extra bucks. Well, if fire, I been a person 

Andy King: a little bit crazy. If fire had been successful, there would be. A FY Festival in Greece.

There was gonna be one in France and Monica. So it was a pilot 

Charles Eide: program in his mind, 

Andy King: pretty much. And then, and then it would, I think that would’ve been a waiting list because for every festival, because this sold out in 15 minutes, and if that had been successful, he could have been making millions of dollars a year.

Charles Eide: What was the story to the investors like, Hey, give me $4 million and you’ll get what? Like what are the investors investing in a [00:54:00] return? The ticket sales already happened. 

Andy King: It was all what was going to happen when everybody got there? All the amount, amounts of money that they would spend, and then the reservations that would start coming in for the next one.

The next one. The next 

Charles Eide: one. So it was a long-term model? Yes. And it was okay to take a loss on the first one, was his thought. 

Andy King: Exactly. 

Charles Eide: So was he like robbing Peter to pay Paul? 

Andy King: Absolutely. 

Charles Eide: Did, did, but he, which 

Andy King: happens all the time. 

Charles Eide: Did he keep records? 

Andy King: Oh God. I mean, everything’s on his little laptop. He was just, it was, and I wasn’t, I wasn’t near any of the financials.

Charles Eide: Thank God. When did he start? I 

Andy King: couldn’t even, 

Charles Eide: when did he start lying to you? 

Andy King: Oh, I’m sure from the beginning. Um, he, you 

Charles Eide: know, like, do you think the whole thing was lies from the minute you hopped on that plane? 

Andy King: No. He just had a vision that was completely unrealistic and not attainable. 

Charles Eide: And none of the [00:55:00] investors were like, Hey, you’ll pump the brakes here.

Andy King: You know, they all just trusted him. And I was not this a bit of a scary piece is that he used me as a reference for some of his top investors. 

Charles Eide: Yeah. 

Andy King: And so, 

Charles Eide: rightfully so. You have a huge reputation and look at all 

Andy King: this. Yeah, and I, and I’d been working with him for three years and everything we did. So 

Charles Eide: he was really leaning 

Andy King: your 

Charles Eide: reputation for 

Andy King: him?

Very, yeah. And I get a lot of calls. Comcast calls me 18, you know, I mean, I’m not, I don’t wanna say all the corporations that invested, but they did. Um, they’d call and I’d go, you can’t, like, he, he, he never goes wrong. Nothing ever. It doesn’t go wrong. It won’t go wrong, don’t worry. And then when someone on the ground down there, two of my interns were children of top investors and they’re like, well, what should we tell our dad?

I’m like, uh, that’s up to you. I don’t know even tell em what you want, but we got issues here. Like, there’s no tomorrow at the end of the day, as you know. 

Charles Eide: So 

Fyre Festival Day of Disaster [55:57]

Charles Eide: kids started showing up and, I mean, the [00:56:00] documentary was, it showed like there’s tents and there’s water. There was a storm. 

Andy King: Oh my God. The storm blew through.

You were 

Charles Eide: there. 

Andy King: I was there. The storm blew through 36 hours before the first guest got there. So it basically wiped out the village that we were trying to rebuild again, which were all tents. But the tents were like, if you and I got somewhere. Sizeable rug. Cool. Beds. Curtains, beautiful duvets. Like tents were cool.

It was like it wasn’t 

Charles Eide: So the documentary made the tents look crappy, but they were, they were cool. 

Andy King: They were cool. We were creating these little villages, little walkways and signs and 

Charles Eide: so you’re like, this is gonna be great. I mean, it’s not gonna be the luxury thing y’all pitch. No, but it’s gonna be fun.

Andy King: Yeah. We’re not lying on the ground. I kept going back to the fact that two of my brothers went to Woodstock and Woodstock going down in history is like the best music festival in the world. No one talks about the fact talking, talking about running outta water the first 15 minutes, mudslides, it poured rain every day.

It was nowhere for anybody to sleep. Traffic was backed up [00:57:00] 40 miles of the New York State throughway. Like it was a disaster. But people kept performing and everybody really enjoyed it. So I’m like, if 

Charles Eide: that can work. 

Andy King: Yeah. I mean, I’m telling you right now, fire can make it. Obviously if Woodstock 

Charles Eide: Street, that was before social media.

Andy King: That was before social media and this is where it comes. So where the biggest piece hits is that guests are on the ground. We’ve got, some of our top acts are all right on Nassau, a 10 minute flight away. Planes are lined up to fly them in, um, the st $2 million stage. I mean, look absolutely beautiful.

Right on the beach. We built all these wonderful VIP areas with driftwood and cushions. And so to be 

Charles Eide: clear, you’re right on the precipice of the event. You’re like, okay, got the stage. Yeah, it’s looking good. 

Andy King: Well, I mean, it’s a shit show all around us, but I’m like, these kids are gonna arrive. The music’s gonna come.[00:58:00] 

We’ve got great fresh fish. We on one of the most beautiful islands in the world, you can, exhume is known because you can stand on the moon and look down. It’s one of the places you can see on earth because the water’s so clear. Like, so bring your girlfriend, wear a bikini, drink some ca amigos, listen to great music, dance, do your thing, sleep on the tent.

You’ll have a ball for three days. I mean, you know, it’s not, is it some the most luxurious experience you’ve ever had? No. But you’ll have a, you’ll have a great time. And so the guests all arriving, one of the pieces that didn’t, you know, get into the documentary is that a week before we were having some massive problems with trying to have enough places for people to stay and sleep.

Influencers, guests. A lot of the villas we were trying to rent, it was Regatta week, which Billy didn’t realize. So most of the homes on the island had already been rented out a year in advance. Hmm. Um, so we rented a cruise ship out of Fort Lauderdale for a million bucks. To bring it in so that [00:59:00] we could at least house and it slept like 800 people or something like that.

A lot of people, yeah. Could have been close to a thousand people. Great. The cruise ship arrives. There’s nowhere 

News Anchor: for it to dock 

Andy King: because the, all the docks are taken because of this regatta week. So it has to get anchored off shore 

Charles Eide: and, and run 

Andy King: and run 

Charles Eide: boats between. 

Andy King: Then the storm comes in. So now it’s so windy and so stormy that none of the launches could run.

And half of my employees got stuck on the cruise ship. So when all the planes started landing and my concierge team of 40 who’s there to like, oh, hi Charles, you’re here. Um, lemme take your bag and here’s your badge and here’s where you’re gonna go and have a car. No, no one could come greet you. ’cause they’re all stuck on the fucking cruise ship ’cause they can’t get off.

And they’re all calling me going, do you want us to swim? I’m like, well, you could swim but you’re gonna get eaten by sharks halfway through. So great. This is a real win-win. So they’re stuck on the cruise ship. They can’t even come now there’s just three people [01:00:00] greeting a thousand. Well, we had 700 kids arrive, you know, three people trying to 

Charles Eide: loading you onto a 

Andy King: yellow school bus because of course the barges that were supposed to bring, the luxury coaches over couldn’t run ’cause they couldn’t cross the channel ’cause they crossed, they’d close the channels because of the regatta.

Anything that could go wrong went wrong. Anything logistics. I mean, because Billy just didn’t think all that through and anything. I tried to like completely change like that with a six week period of time just wasn’t even plausible. I mean, so kids are arriving and I’m like, you know what? We’re gonna get some of this.

Music’s gonna fly in, they’re gonna sit, pull on their bathing suits and jump in the water and then they’re gonna blah, blah blah. Well, the village wasn’t ready. And so you can remember from the documentary, Maryanne, the woman who cooked for us for weeks amazing. Own this Exuma Point resort around the corner.

So we called her and said, Maryanne, can all the kids go to your resort for the day [01:01:00] while we try to get the tents back up again and air out the, get the water out and you know, whatever, reset things up after the storm. She said, fine, it’s gonna cost you, you know, like 40 grand. I was, it doesn’t matter at this point.

40 grand is fine. She takes, the kids are there for the day. But they all drank and drank in the hot sun all day long. They kept saying, we want to go to the village. We wanna see Fire Village, we want, I’m like, they all loaded to the school buses, they’re coming to the gate and you probably would’ve thought like they’re on a tour through Iraq or wherever.

Like it was a nightmare. Like mattresses are piled up, tents are blown over, you know, but we weren’t gonna have the 6,000 now that we’d thought we’d, we had canceled all planes after a certain point. 600 fine. It was a cute area all set up. Everything’s gonna work fine. Music’s flying in. Two kids come walking up and they’re completely drunk.

And one girl, I’m like, oh my gosh. I said, you need to eat something. I’m like, okay, 

Charles Eide: put something in your stomach. 

Andy King: Yeah, please. I said, there’s an employee tent right over there and one of the [01:02:00] chef’s name is Max. Just saying, Andy said we could come over and ask him for a sandwich. ’cause that’s what they, they’re making all the staff gets their sandwiches for lunch.

No problem. Okay, fine. Another couple’s walking up, I mean, just throwing up. I’m like, oh my God, you guys, you gotta eat something. Like, so go over, follow that couple right over there. Get 

Charles Eide: sandwich. So the main wasn’t ready. 

Andy King: Oh my God. The main tent is huge. I’ve got 18 chefs making rack of lamb and filet mignon, grilled shrimp and crab Louie, and you name it.

All this incredible stuff. 

Charles Eide: And it’s not ready yet. 

Andy King: Not ready yet, because it’s 

Charles Eide: not time. 

Andy King: No, that’s in four hours or whatever. And we were having some issues with the gas, trying to turn all the gas for all the stoves. All the stoves that finally came over in a barge from Miami that, oh my gosh. 

Charles Eide: So 

Andy King: they go over and all of a sudden, one of my employees.

Is in a pickup truck, backs up into a pipe and breaks the main waterline coming into the entire village. So this geyser shooting up in the air about a hundred feet tall with water. And I’m like, we have no water for this village right now. [01:03:00] What are you doing? This can’t be. And the kid speeds away. He was so nervous.

He sped away, he went somewhere and hid the truck and hit, I’m like, oh my word. So we’re trying to deal with like, how do we fix this water problem? ’cause now we have no running water for any of the tents or any, any, I’m like, oh my word. I glanced over like, this thing was cursed. Cursed completely. I glance over there are 600 kids in line for this cheese sandwich.

And I’m like, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. So I start screaming to all my team. I’m like, everybody go over there and tell the kids this isn’t dinner. Dinner’s gonna be served at seven o’clock, this is four o’clock, or whatever. Like if you want a snack, you know, it’s one thing, but this is not, and of course this is what.

Our world is about today. It’s the power of social media. I look over, there’s a girl with her little iPhone. She opens up the thing, it’s the, you know, the styrofoam container, the staff’s lunch with a cheese sandwich. She’s taking a picture of it. You know that 

The Cheese Sandwich That Went Viral [1:03:54]

Andy King: that cheese sandwich went viral, viral around the world in 60 effing seconds.[01:04:00] 

And what do you think happened? Every manager saw it on the internet. Every manager called our main music guy and said, we’re not coming. They were all, I mean, 10 minutes 

Charles Eide: away. 10 minutes away 

Andy King: as quickly as they could, they’re on jets flying back to LA or Nashville or wherever they were going. They were not staying anymore and they weren’t performing.

And it was all the power of the cheese sandwich. And it’s so funny, I can wake up in the middle of the night and have a, a nightmare about that cheese sandwich if that hadn’t gone viral. Some of these top acts arrived, half the kids would go, Hey, shit, this is amazing. Like little yachty’s on stage and blink 180 two’s coming out and, and they’re having a glass of ca amigos and eating a fish sandwich and then their bathing suit.

Like, my gosh, shit, we gotta sleep in this tent. Who cares? You know? It would’ve happened. It would’ve happened. Was it the fire, original, you know, 

Charles Eide: vision? 

Andy King: No, but, but that she san went viral and took it down in 60 seconds there it was gone. 

Charles Eide: [01:05:00] So, so you’re, you’re at what point did you go This thing’s done right now?

Like, we’re calling it right here.

Andy King: I i,

that point. 

Charles Eide: What did you do? 

Escaping the Island & FBI Investigation [1:05:18]

Andy King: I stopped all planes from coming in. I just said Okay. ’cause they were, all the kids were in In Miami? In Miami. They were all waiting to get on. 

Charles Eide: How do you stop planes? 

Andy King: We had a contract with the 

Charles Eide: airline. 

Andy King: Yeah. 

Charles Eide: So you called them and said, stop. 

Andy King: Yeah. No more, no more. We can’t have any more kids get on this island because it’s not safe.

Which is the best thing I could say. Um, safety was, you know, one of my most important values. It’s like, no, no, it’s not safe. And at that point, my lawyer called and said, Andy, it’s like, it’s everywhere. Like, what are you doing down there? You need to get off that island. And I’m like, no, no, no, no, no. I can’t leave yet.

I can, I need to make sure everybody’s safe. It’s like, Andy, it’s a safety [01:06:00] issue for you. Like, you’re not Jesus, you’re not Mother Teresa. Like, you can’t, you have done everything in your power. You need to get off that island as quickly as you can. I’m like, no, no, I don’t. I mean, like, so I, I said, alright, all right.

Alright. Right. I said to my assistant, you gotta get a plane to get me outta here. And somehow we still had a credit card working with one of the jet companies. So they said, Mr. King, problem is, is that we can’t get a jet to you for five hours. And I’m like, five hours. All right, well I need to stay low key.

So I was trying to get out of the village where everybody was. 

Charles Eide: So it did turn into like a riot situation where people just losing their minds getting pissed. 

Andy King: They were losing their minds. Half the kids were stuck at the airport and couldn’t get outside the airport. Half of them were drunk, wandering around drunk.

They were drunk, they were, you know, it was just, it was, and then the island figured out that the festival wasn’t gonna be happening and everybody wanted to be paid. So the, the nice [01:07:00] local who put in the air conditioning system for me for $40,000 four days before for the cook tents came to me and he said, I want to get paid now.

I’m like, oh, okay. Um, well I’m not the guy to like Billy can. And he’s like, no, no. I’m the only gray-haired guy on the island. Boom, 10 minutes later, another guy comes up, I wanna get paid now Billy owes me $90,000. I wanna get paid right now or something’s gonna happen. I’m like, holy shit, 

Charles Eide: you’re not in America.

Andy King: I’m like, so I go over to the safe house. We created a safe house with security all around it. I walk inside the safe house. Billy’s like crying in a corner and pacing. Our entire executive team is completely freaked out. Everybody’s just, we’re fielding calls and doing, it was all, how do you say it, you know, pr damage control, end.

I, I, I’m like, Billy, like, he’s like, I’m doing my best. I’m doing my best. I’m like, okay. I, I said like, these people need to get paid. And they’re like [01:08:00] knocking down the door and I look over at one of the guys that works for me. I said, I can’t believe this is gonna happen. Call Sophia, my assistant. I said, do not bring my Escalade.

Of course, Billy had me driving an Escalade down there like his, I said, you borrow somebody’s, I don’t find the shittiest car you can find and you get in here. You gotta get me outta this village. I’m gonna call the gate. They’re gonna let you in and you’re gonna pull around by the main stage. And there is two porta-potties.

I’m gonna be in one of them and pull the car around. And then I looked at Jr. One of the guys that worked for me, and I said, you’re gonna think I’m crazy. I need to trade close with you. He’s like, what are you talking about? I. I had my Gucci shoes on a Rolex. I had my linen shorts, a linen shirt, and I said, I, you can’t, you, everybody’s looking for me.

Why? They’re not looking for Billy. They were looking for him too, but I was the oldest guy there and they’re like, Andy, we’ll fix this. I put on dirty jeans, smelly sneakers, a t-shirt, a baseball cap, gave all my clothes [01:09:00] away and I just. Went out, I hid behind the porta potty, Sophia pulled up, I jumped in the back seat of the car, laid down on the floor, bags around me, whatever, and I said, go, go.

Just drive slowly out of the village. So we drive outta the village, you get through the gate and we have a fucking flat tire. And I’m like, gotta be kidding me. This isn’t happening. So meanwhile, 

Charles Eide: you can’t make this stuff up, man. 

Andy King: No. And meanwhile, like you get a 

Charles Eide: flat tire, 

Andy King: the mayors look at every government official.

I mean, they’re all looking for me. So I’m like, I, I said to Sophia, I’m getting out. I’m gonna run okay. 

Charles Eide: Like on foot, 

Andy King: on foot. But every time a car started to approach many direction, I jump in the woods. I hide. So I run to the villa where Billy was staying, and I’m like. Um, they’re packing up because he hadn’t even paid for the villa where they were staying and he was supposed to start paying for it that day and it was like the biggest house on the aisle and whatever.

And everybody’s like crying and packing and, [01:10:00] and Billy looks at me and he says, Andy, um, I said, what are you doing? He’s like, I’m leaving. I said, you’re leaving, where are you going? He’s like, I got my jet ski. He’s a jet ski on the dock. He’s like, I’m gonna go over to where we were originally gonna have the festival, which was on Pablo Os Escobar’s private island right next door, which just had the largest landing strip.

He said, I’m gonna have a jet come pick me up and get me outta here. ’cause no one’s ever gonna get paid back or paid if I’m in jail. So it’s the best thing. So I’m gonna take a jet ski. I’m gonna go but will you do me a favor? Can you go over to the big fancy resort next door and apologize to my mom and dad and all the investors for me?

I’m like, wait, what? He’s like, yeah, just tell him, you know, I’m sorry. You know, I can’t bel. I said, all right. I let me, I don’t even know what I said, Billy, like, you can’t leave. You really need to think this through. So he disappears. I’m now running, walking. I’m like, I’m not gonna go. I can’t go talk [01:11:00] to these people.

You kidding me? Look at me. I’m like, what do you, I, I, so I get to my villa, which is like a mile down the road, which I’ve been running in like shoes that don’t fit. No, no, no. And I go down, it’s like a half a mile long dirt driveway. I’m way out on the o way out on the ocean. I get there, pack my bags. I’m like, I’m like, I gotta get outta here.

I know, but I now, I have like four hours left or whatever. So I say to um, Sophia, like, does anybody know where I live? ’cause you know, we all found these villas that, you know, and she’s like, well, the head of tourism with Bombas needed a place to have a meeting last week, and you were in Bermuda for three days at an America’s Cup meeting, and we, we let them have the meeting at your villa.

I’m like, oh, great, great. So I’m like, I’m outta here. Okay. So I walked down the beach. I said, I’ll be back in a few hours, but I’m gonna go. And I literally walked like a half a mile down the beach and I went into a dune and I literally just laid back for a while. I’m like, I don’t even know what to [01:12:00] do.

Came back to the house. I’m like, wow, you’re lucky. You just missed them. Like the, the commissioner, the head of finance, like for The Bahamas. They’re all here. They waited for an hour for you, but they went into town. They’re thinking, you’re at the site. I’m like, okay, well we gotta get outta here. I said, and we’re not taking my car and we’re not taking that one.

So somebody had a pickup truck. I said. Take the pickup truck. You need to get me to the airport. Plane’s not coming for like another two and a half hours or whatever. And so I laid down in the back of the pickup truck and they just cover me with Palm Frons and whatever, and 

Charles Eide: it’s like something out of a movie, man.

Andy King: Oh yeah. Oh, 

Charles Eide: it 

Andy King: wasn’t movie, not 

Charles Eide: just a documentary. 

Andy King: It just became a movie. Yeah. So I am like, oh my word in our yard. So we get to the airport, we park in the woods, so we’re like, like in the woods, whatever. I’m like, you were like really 

Charles Eide: afraid to be caught. 

Andy King: Absolutely. Like, and it was not my fault, like I’m the guy who you’re 

just 

Charles Eide: an employee working for 

Andy King: like you never got paid.

I mean like, but for some reason, jet, we got the call, like Jets landed. I’m like, oh my God. I said, all right, you drive this truck out onto the [01:13:00] tarmac mount quickly. I’m not clearing customs, I’m not doing anything like I am. I get out of the truck, I jump out. Get on the jet, the pilot, you know, comes out. He is like, Hey Andy, I’m Jake and this assistant, blah, blah, blah.

I said, you know, forget the speech. Go like what we need to do, just go. Please talk while you’re going. Shut the door. Shut. Let’s go. The does not shut. You know? And he is, they’re shutting the door. I’m waiting for like the plane to get surrounded by every, and I’m fan. The shit beating out of me and some Bahamian go to some jail, prison.

I’m like, go, you gotta go. You know? Alright. And it wasn’t until like we get off the ground and I’m like, oh my God, Jesus. Like, but I had the head of security with me and two. Um, um, Iranian security guys that were whatever, so they wouldn’t have killed me. But I say to the pilot, where are we going? And they’re like, well, we’re, we’re headed to, um, Miami.

I’m like, oh, no, no, no, no. I can’t land in Miami. That’s where the fucking 6,000 kids are who are gonna kill me [01:14:00] because the festival’s not happening. You gotta take me somewhere else. Yeah. Okeechobee airport, like where the alligators are, where Uber doesn’t even go. We land there. 

Charles Eide: You land in Okeechobee? 

Andy King: Oh yeah.

I’m like, I can’t go anywhere. Meanwhile, they’re like, well, Andy, we only have one room for you. It’s at the Soho House in Miami. We drove an hour and a half to go and I’m like wearing like baseball caps, sunglasses, a hoodie, you know, and so I could sneak in half of the, they were all partying in Miami for a few days and we got out of there the next morning.

I flew out back to New York as quickly as possible, but I mean, I was fending for my life. I mean, 

Charles Eide: like you were scared you were gonna end up in prison and God knows. Totally. In a country that’s not your own. 

Andy King: Not my own. And they were not happy. Like, God, my words. So 

Charles Eide: how It’s crazy to think you went from, you went from, everything’s just fine to Sure.

Billy, I’ll help you to running for your life. Hiding in the woods and getting on a jet to escape. A [01:15:00] mob. 

Andy King: A mob. And then I find that the, that the feds, the FBI’s looking for me. For you. For you, oh, for me, when I land in Manhattan, they just want to talk to me or wanna talk to everybody else. Went up to my farm, stayed there for a couple of days.

Okay. And then I got a call, that’s my business partner. He is like Andy. Um, big project with Bloomberg. I think it’s perfect timing. And Rachel, my lawyer’s like, uh, they, it’s a, a world health organization, uh, big conference in, um, Zurich in Switzerland and you need to leave tomorrow. 

Charles Eide: You’re like, perfect, 

Andy King: perfect.

They’re like, you need to get outta the country ’cause this is not good for you. So I, I leave immerse myself in this project. It was amazing where Bloomberg was giving 20 million bucks to help promote healthy cities around the world. And we selected 20 cities and we’re like. Introducing bike paths and healthy meals at schools and 

Charles Eide: the things, hold on.

So you, you go to Switzerland, but you go knowing that the FBI [01:16:00] wants to talk. 

Andy King: Oh, I, I did have an initial 

Charles Eide: conversation. You did talk to them? 

Andy King: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I did. 

Charles Eide: I 

Andy King: was, 

Charles Eide: but you’re like, I gotta get outta here. 

Andy King: Yeah. I’m like, here’s what I know, this is, you know, 

News Anchor: blah, 

blah, 

Charles Eide: blah. And 

Andy King: so 

Charles Eide: you get back, I’m sure that there’s, I mean, obviously they’re interviewing and talking to you.

Andy King: Oh yeah. And I go meet with Billy. 

Charles Eide: So what is, what happened? Like, you meet with the FB, what’s that like, like that, that’s kind of a scary idea. 

Andy King: Oh my God. They were waiting for me outside of soho house. What, 

Charles Eide: like how many guys and what did it look like? 

Andy King: There’s four guys in a suburban, they’re like, you know, can we talk to you?

Like what, you know, what were you involved with? What do you know? What 

Charles Eide: did you just tell ’em? Everything? 

Andy King: Mm-hmm. 

Charles Eide: The whole story. 

Andy King: Yeah. 

Charles Eide: And what’d they say? 

Andy King: I’m like. I don’t have a signed contract that Billy never even signed my contract. 

Charles Eide: So it became really clear that Billy was, 

Andy King: I was an employee that never got paid just like everybody else.

Yeah. And that I got screwed just like everybody else did. 

Charles Eide: You have to have 

Andy King: [01:17:00] and that 

Charles Eide: legal proceedings? 

Andy King: No. 

Charles Eide: So 

Andy King: you But I didn’t, and I didn’t join the civil lawsuit that everybody else did to sue him to be part of the 29 or 30 million bucks that he owes. Yeah. I didn’t even go there. I was like, I just want to be done with this.

Charles Eide: Yeah, 

Andy King: well go to Switzerland, put my, I worked my ass off to design this amazing event where we’re gonna have, um, mayors from the top 20 cities from around the world come with, and I hire 30 interpreters and I go through the on, on, on. And it’s an event where each one’s gonna be inter interviewed on a terrorist to talk about the initiatives that they’re doing.

And this is all being presented at the World Health Organization, you know, annual conference on. The night before this huge event that I’m running, um, I customarily would take my entire team out for a big dinner. There’s probably 50 people or 60 people. And there were people from Bloomberg and people from the production crew and people from the hotel and people on and [01:18:00] on.

And it was a big celebratory, rah rah, we’ve got this, everything’s gonna be cool and amazing dinner. And then this one girl stands up and says, Andy, will you tell everybody a Fyre Festival story? And people look around like in 

Charles Eide: front of everybody. 

Andy King: Oh yeah. 

Charles Eide: In front of the whole room. 

Andy King: Whole fucking room. And they’re like, you’re, you were involved with that?

Oh. Because at that point nobody knew, you know, the documentary didn’t come out for another year. And I’m like, huh, okay. Um, so I tell a story and they all laugh, you know, and I was trying to be comical, whatever. Next morning at 5:00 AM I arrive at the fanciest big hotel where my event, 700 people are coming.

We’ve designed this whole thing and I, I look over and well, there’s a team over there, and they’re like, rolling up all the carpets and I’m like, what’s going on? I’ve all these red carpets. And they go in this different, it’s a thing. And, and I, they’re like, uh, like 

Charles Eide: striking it 

Andy King: Oh yeah. Striking it before the event.

And I’m like, what’s happening here? And a girl from Bloomberg’s, [01:19:00] like, it’s not our, it’s kinda not our image. I’m like, I got this approved by your bosses a month ago. Like, what is, yeah, no, and then all these stanchions, I’m like, yeah, the stanchions are, you need to guide all the guests out onto a terrace where they’re gonna get interviewed by 10 of the top news stations around the world.

They’ll go around, they meet with all the dignitaries, pictures get taken, and they come into the event and they can go to the bars and they can go to all the food stations now. Break, strike all the stanchions too. Like, oh my gosh. Like, I, like, 

Charles Eide: like anything you touched, 

Andy King: anything I touched, they decided they were gonna change because they, they decided 

Charles Eide: they were gonna disassociate 

Andy King: any King Fyre Festival.

Forget about it. The boss, the Bloomberg boss arrives, loved her big woman on my team, you know, she’s like, what’s going on here? It’s like, in a men’s suit. And like, um, she’s like, what happened to the carpets? I had this whole cool thing designed with her. Like, we didn’t think it was. Oh, [01:20:00] okay. And how about the stanchions?

Um, oh, we’re the 30 interpreters. Um, the girls decided my clients that they looked like hookers and they reassigned them to coat check and greeters. I’m like, you fucking kidding me? Like, this has got a, we planned this now for weeks, like we’ve been working, no, no, no. Dismantled everything. So the boss finally says, well, I want.

All of those people that are in there out here, and you girls can figure that out now. And she looks at me and winks, I’m like, Jesus, next morning I’m on a plane to Bermuda because now I’m hosting the America’s Cup and I need to get there. I’m like, you know, never stops. So I land in Bermuda and my business partner calls and he’s like, Andy.

Um, so you miss the debrief ’cause we always have, you know, I’m sure you do your debrief for the clients. I don’t always like that, but so you gotta face it head on and nine times outta 10, my debriefs are great ’cause they love all my events. [01:21:00] So of course the debrief and he’s like, well apparently. You told a Fyre Festival story, you know I said, yeah, A girl stood up and she said, can you?

I’m like, yeah, I told a story. And he’s like, well, from then on they decided you were incompetent, didn’t trust you, and whatever you had suggested wasn’t gonna go right and to reverse it all. So can we have a, can we have a pack near? And I’m like, yeah. And meanwhile, my lawyer’s on the line and they’re both like, never ever discuss Fyre Festival again with any client.

I’m like, okay, got it. They’re like, no, are you listening? I’m like, yeah, yeah. And they’re like, because it’s just, and I’m like, I got it. I got it. Hang up the phone. I land, I’m stewing. I’m like, and you know what? I called them back like four hours later. I said, I’ll tell you what, I am proud of what I tried to do to save Fyre Festival.

I am proud that I’m the guy that did his best to do everything in his power. I am not gonna put my head in the sand. I am not gonna hide from it. I’m not like, I will walk in a room and own it. It is [01:22:00] now gonna become an elephant, which it did. And so, and when the documentary came out, like there was no hiding from me for, for a couple of years.

Like I couldn’t go anywhere without someone knowing who I was. And so I said, I’m gonna own it and I’m be proud of it. And they’re like, okay, alright. Sorry, sorry. 

Charles Eide: Well, in a way you were a victim of it. 

Andy King: Absolutely. 

Charles Eide: I mean, you, you tried to salvage it. It makes me wonder if Billy had just faced the music and not done all the lying he was doing to investors and such, it would’ve just been a failed festival.

Andy King: That’s it. 

Charles Eide: It would’ve just been another failed event. It wouldn’t have turned into a giant documentary and whatever. 

Owning the Failure & Speaking Out [1:22:36]

Charles Eide: Are you happy that Fyre Festival happened to you? Um, 

Andy King: yes. 

Charles Eide: Are, so you’re, you look back and you’re like, I’m glad that happened. 

Andy King: I’ll tell you, Charles, what it did was that it, so you become famous overnight.

So what do you do with that? And one of the psychological issues for me was that, [01:23:00] and there’s a whole study on like, what happens when you become fa famous, but the money doesn’t follow. 

Charles Eide: Mm-hmm. 

Andy King: And so I made a conscious decision to lose my anonymity. So I would go anywhere and people knew who I was and they talk about me and they whisper about me.

Doesn’t matter. Was it the airport today in Charleston? Two people like met with a guy and Jim. I’m like, really? How many years has it been? That’s the guy, like, that’s what they do. So I’m always like, yeah, hi. I can see you. I’m not, you know, blind for God’s sake, but then I have to be kind who I am. But I made that conscious decision.

Um, to lose my anonymity, to be able to tell the true story and create a platform to try to pay people back as best, as best as I could. 

Charles Eide: And you raised a lot of money. 

Andy King: I raised a lot of money. I raised almost a half a million dollars by doing speaking engagements around the world. 

Charles Eide: Yeah. 

Andy King: And I walk on a stage and I’d like, how would you like to be known as the blow job king after a 35 year successful career as an event planner?

I’m [01:24:00] known for a fail blow job. Really? How would you like to be known as the guy who is like responsible for a failure? Like, you know, and then I say, tell you what? I’m using this platform to spread love, and I’m using this platform to tell people I get on stage and I say, people fail every day. And they do.

But Wall Street doesn’t like to talk about it. And Hollywood certainly doesn’t like to talk about it, but guess what? You learn more, more from your failures than you do your successes and get out there and fail. Get out there. If you don’t like what you do, don’t take a job and you’re sitting in a cubicle for.

30 years hating your life, forget about it. Go out and take a risk. What’s the worst thing that’s gonna happen? You’re gonna fail. Well get up again and start again. Do you know how many of the top business people in the world have failed a a hundred times? And it’s important, like not easy. And yeah, it was a huge thing for me.

I felt like I was, I’ve been able to [01:25:00] really help a lot of people. I mean, Charles, the messages that I still get on social media, thanking me for being who I am, thanking for, you know, thanking me for like coaching people to always get up, pull yourself up again. Um, and then I say to people these days, money isn’t everything.

It certainly helps, 

Charles Eide: right? I mean, I think you’ve used this, this story and this message to teach a lot of people a lot of really good things. I mean, when I first met you, I looked, I didn’t look at you as a part of a failure as much as I did someone who. Tried to do his best to save the day. ’cause he’s a good person.

That’s why I reached out to you. 

Andy King: Yeah. 

Charles Eide: Years ago. ’cause I was blown away that you were so caring for other people and it’s, today, it’s just as true. 

Andy King: It’s important. We talked about the sense of community. I think I took a big hit like, no, Hollywood isn’t calling Andy King to go, we want you to host our next event [01:26:00] immediately.

Like, because I’ve never been able to, that’s the power of Netflix. I mean, the fact that I got streamed into over 500 million homes around the world being affiliated with the biggest failure in pop culture today. Um, you know, put a little cross on my back. 

Charles Eide: But, but what, but, but you’ve learned some things.

So if, if you could distill all of that experience, what, 

Lessons Learned from Fyre [1:26:25]

Charles Eide: what were the biggest lessons you learned? 

Andy King: I mean, I will say to people, I get the call. I mean, once a month, twice a month, we wanna do a festival, we wanna host a huge event. Can you help us? And I’m like, why don’t you send me your deck? That would be Q number one.

When they’re like, oh, well we don’t, I said, we gotta start, like you gotta have a business plan and I can’t be the one. I’m not gonna build that for you for free. And this is something that I can counsel you on a little bit, but you need to have a deck. You, you need to be able to show me what are you projecting?

What’s the concept, blah, [01:27:00] blah, blah. Like, oh, okay, fine. And then I’ll just say, listen, you need to make sure you have the proper infrastructure. I can’t tell you how many people call me and say, wanna do this big festival? We’re thinking about July. I’m like in 20, 28 or nine or 30, not this July. Like, why not?

I’m like, please, did you watch the documentary? I mean, you need nine months at least. I will let you do a festival in nine months, but nine months is the shortest period of time. 

Charles Eide: Yeah. 

Andy King: So you got nine months and I need to know about your funding. And I need to see your business plan, and I just need to see what infrastructure do you have in place.

And a lot of young kids are like, Ooh, I hadn’t thought. I’m like, well, like 

Charles Eide: I ain’t doing this again. 

Andy King: Please. Like, are you kidding me, 

Charles Eide: Mike? So you’ve just been really cautious in the business side of it now. 

Andy King: Yes. 

Charles Eide: What, what about life lessons? Like what did you learn about yourself or like life in general? 

Andy King: Um, I spent a lot of time teaching people these days that [01:28:00] it’s okay to fire a client every once in a while when your brand and your reputation’s at stake and someone’s pushing you.

And it doesn’t have to be, it could be just a regular job, anything. If someone’s pushing you and your gut is saying, this is so wrong, don’t do it. And yeah, fire a client, sit ’em down and say, you know what? Love to do that for you Charles. But gosh, you know what? Not really gonna be in the end. I know it’s not gonna work.

I wish I could say it’s going to work. It’s probably not going to, it’s gonna really, really hurtful for your brand and mine, and I can’t take the risk. So unfortunately, I think we need to part ways now. 

Charles Eide: Yeah. 

Andy King: And I try to empower people in business to say, yeah, you gotta fire your client every once in a while.

And that’s really hard. It’s scary when you’re trying to make payroll and you’re trying to grow and you’re trying to like get your business to a certain point. And this is an amazing client. You’re like, I have to, I have to fire this client. But [01:29:00] trust me, you won’t regret it in the end. 

Charles Eide: Yeah. 

Andy King: And you’ll come back and go, my God, you’ll be 

Charles Eide: hiding in the woods in the back of a pickup truck, please.

Andy King: Absolutely. 

Charles Eide: Okay, so I have three last things. 

Andy King: Mm-hmm. 

Charles Eide: I just, three. We were talking about the events industry and how events, you know, the AI and all the, you know, the, the internet and all that. How events are gonna be so important. 

The Future of Live Events [1:29:22]

Charles Eide: Tell me about your prediction on events, live events, companies bringing people together.

Andy King: You think about, it’s just the, it’s you know, the world of technology today and we, there aren’t a lot of face-to-face touchpoints anymore. Everything’s just done on the internet, right? And so even 

Charles Eide: going grocery shopping, 

Andy King: it’s unbelievable. And I feel like we need to keep pushing that sense of community.

People need to feel like they belong, they need to be able to share ideas, they need to convene. And community is so important. And so with the event world, I [01:30:00] think we we’re really gonna see, you know, a true uptick as long as you. Can deliver a product that you say you’re gonna deliver. I mean, just think right now.

Everybody wants everything. They want it perfectly, and they want it yesterday, and that’s not easy. It’s all about service industry right now. It’s all about the service. So I’m constantly. I’ll say to people, I’ll, I’ll hire you. You need to make me shine. And so a lot of that formula is basically under-promising and over-delivering.

And that’s where I look like a star. And if I’m doing an event, I’ll host a music festival in the fall for Darius Rucker. I’m like, Darius, yeah, I’m gonna handle all artist relations. I’m gonna do X, Y, Z. He’s like, oh, Andy, I love you. Okay, great. But I don’t tell him some of the little things. I’ve got up my sleeve that I know are gonna knock his socks off.

And he arrives and his posse arrives and all the groupies are there and there’s hundreds of people back and they’re all like, [01:31:00] who is that guy? And he is like, oh, that’s Andy King. He’s, you know, meanwhile I’m low key in the corner. Um, but I basically under promise and over deliver. But in the event world, that sense of community is so important.

And I just think more and more every day, you know, and you think about a powerful world of social media and how really. Cutthroat it is, um, you know, to be able to focus on positivity. I know it sounds corny, but people just don’t want to hear people criticizing anymore and putting people down and, you know, it’s just doesn’t, it’s not good and it’s not good for the human mind or human development, you know, so community’s like one of the keys for me, and I think the event world’s really gonna prosper as we continue to get people to focus more on getting people together and creating positive environments.

Charles Eide: I totally agree. [01:32:00] Uh, 

What’s Next for Andy King [1:32:00]

Charles Eide: what is next for Andy King? I know you mentioned a book, but what’s next for you? What’s the future? What’s the great future ahead for you? 

Andy King: Um, so I’m writing a book right now. The working title is called Event Alchemy. So it’s the 15 principles of hosting a successful, memorable and sustainable event at scale.

So I talk about doing an event for 20 people. As well as an event for 20,000 people. And a lot of it, it focuses on community, it focuses on sustainability, it focuses on the story, the narrative. It focuses on technology. There’s so many components that we’ll make for a successful event. Um. I was trying to get a three book deal.

And it was kind of funny because a lot of the top publishers, the first book was called like Through Fire, the True Story of Fyre Festival. The book’s not been written, no one’s written a book about it. No one was there like I was there. Well, a lot of them would, but they won’t talk about it anymore, but I don’t care.

So, um, it was a three book deal. A lot of the top publishers said, Andy, we [01:33:00] would love to write this book, but unfortunately a lot of your fans and followers don’t read. I’m like, shit, they don’t read anymore. They’re just on the internet and they’re on their phones. They’re not reading books, the audio book, the audio book books.

So, um, this book’s coming out and then we’re working on already now working on the second book, which is Through Fire. And then the Fun Big book will be my memoir of like the Crazy World of Andy King and where does he come from and all the previous generations, which is kind of cool. And I think. Well, my partner and I are hoping to, you know, we’ve bought this house in Scotland now.

We bought the house in Charleston. We still have the farm in New York, but we’re gonna hopefully kind of condense down to something that will probably own a little resort with a cute little restaurant and a little bar where you’ll find me, Craig will be entertaining the world too, and it’ll be my way of retirement.

But we are starting a charter business in Charleston right now, which is kind of fun. The boat only takes six guests, so it’s not a, 

Charles Eide: and it’s got a cool name, 

Andy King: Gadsby. [01:34:00] 

Charles Eide: So cool 

Andy King: step back in time with Gatsby or on Gatsby, you know, for the world going by. So you know what, keep going every day and you know, uh, the second you stop, the world will stop.

And so I’m turning 65 this summer. I’m kind of excited that I’m sort of starting a whole new life. Maybe it helps that my partner is 33 years younger than I am, so he’s kind of a driving force right now too. But I probably have more energy than he does at the end of the day. 

Charles Eide: Yeah. 

Andy King: Mm-hmm. 

Charles Eide: I, I have to say, there are so many amazing chapters in your book, and even though Fire was one of the most famous, there’s so much more to you than just that, that moment in time.

And it’s so neat and I think that, like you said, it, it is something that you can use to share with the world. And I, I commend you for not being. Shying away from it. Like it’s inspiring that you lean into the, uh, the, the crappy parts as much as the good parts. I mean, it’s a beautiful thing. 

Andy King: You gotta 

Charles Eide: do that.

I, I’m amazed by it, man. And I’m, [01:35:00] thank you. I’m really proud to have you as a friend. I really am. 

Andy King: Thank you. 

Charles Eide: I want to ask you, like, the last question I like to ask is, what do you want to be remembered for 

Andy King: my legacy? Uh,

it’s funny. A friend of mine recently said to me, I was late to a party. He said, were your ears burning before you got here? And I said, no, I don’t. He said, well, everybody was talking about the fact that, you know, you. Um, you just light up a room and you have more energy than anybody we’ve ever met, and we don’t know how you do it, but you do it every day.

And I think it’s kind of fun to be able to have that legacy where people will say, when Andy King arrived, he always lit up a room and you know, it, it, it’s, it’s so important these days with a crazy world we live in today. 

Charles Eide: Yeah. 

Andy King: And people can walk into a room and be just dismal and spiral outta control, but [01:36:00] it doesn’t matter what’s going on.

You know, I’ll always walk in with a big smile and light up a room and I think that’s not easy for the world to do, but it’s something fun to aspire to. 

Charles Eide: Yeah. Every time I’ve. Been with you, you’ve brightened my day. Thank you. Every single time. You, every, every time we text you brighten my day. So you are a ball of sunshine, man, and I’m grateful for you, 

Andy King: the crazy king.

Thank you. 

Charles Eide: And I’m, I’m, I’m so excited for your future. And thank you for coming on this podcast with me flying all the way up here from Charleston last minute, man. That’s what a real friend does. You know, I’d do it for you too. 

Andy King: Thank you. I loved it. Every minute. Pretty cool. 

Charles Eide: Thanks for being here. If you like this episode of Cleared for Takeoff, make sure you leave a comment, subscribe, turn on notifications, of course, share it with somebody that you think would love it.

And of course, check out my company, EideCom. We do events all over the country, and if you’re looking for the best team in event production, check out [01:37:00] EideCom.com.