How to Scale Your Business by Letting Go with Joseph Cancilla

·31 min·3 clips

For a Jewish Passover event, he wrote custom music, learned Hebrew, and designed a fire circus show to tell the story of Exodus.

The episode begins with host George Wright III introducing Joseph Cancilla, founder of HANA Events and Experiences, a full-service event design company. Cancilla has 28 years of experience, starting with Polynesian dancing at age three and fire spinning at 12. He explains how he pivoted from performer to business owner by realizing he could scale only by collaborating with others and organizing larger shows. Cancilla describes a key mindset shift: moving from 'look at me' to lifting up other performers, which allowed him to increase show durations and budgets significantly. He highlights the importance of emotional resonance in events, defining high-impact experiences as those that engage all five senses and create human connection. A major example is a week-long Jewish Passover event he managed, involving custom music, Hebrew learning, and a fire circus show to tell the story of Exodus. Cancilla details his preparation process, including using AI for research and consulting clients to ensure cultural accuracy. He discusses his military background in logistics, which helps him manage complex event details. The conversation turns to measuring success, with Cancilla introducing an Event Net Promoter Score (ENPS) to survey attendees and avoid dead air during events. He shares a story of adapting a show mid-performance to honor a community's loss, showcasing his ability to read and respond to audience energy. Cancilla emphasizes storytelling in business, learned from marketing and parenting, where involving the audience makes narratives more impactful. He addresses common misconceptions, like the safety of indoor fire shows, and stresses that events should focus on the end-user experience, not the organizer's ego. The episode concludes with Cancilla sharing his website and social media for further connection, and Wright encouraging listeners to seek epic experiences in life and business.

As heard by us

A grounded business conversation about scaling through cultural understanding, storytelling, and events designed for lasting impact.

Scaling comes through here less as a growth hack than as a way of thinking: know who an event is for, understand what it needs to mean, and build from there.

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Why you'd press play

You want events to carry their meaning, not just fill a room.

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