London Inc. May-June 2023 - 22

10 Minutes With
ENGAGING BUSINESS
Brian Spencer, owner of Streaming Inc.,
chats about controlling your own destiny,
the revenue chart heartbeat and the art
and science of storm chasing
BRIAN SPENCER IS celebrating 20 years
owning and operating Streaming Inc., which
specializes in producing and streaming
live events of all kinds. He has three
employees.
Spencer grew up in London
and went to Sir Wilfrid Laurier
Secondary School. He has two
sons, Justin, 26, and Jeremy,
23. He plays guitar and loves
the outdoors. That love is
manifested, in part, by a
fascination with tornadoes
and other major storms.
He began chasing them
in 2007 and has worked
as a guide for other
storm chasers.
The concept of streaming is now commonplace,
unlike 20 years ago when you created
Streaming Inc. What inspired you back then? I
have always been into music, and then later, streaming
media. In 2000, I was posting Pearl Jam audio and
video on the Internet. The band sued me, but I won and
kept running the website until 2020.
In 2003, I was working at 3M and was invited to a
quarterly report event, where the president was giving
a talk about the Enron scandal turmoil, which resulted
in 3M laying off 25 per cent of their workforce. This
included my boss at the time, who was just a year and a
half shy of an early retirement. That's when I decided
no company would have that much control over my life.
I quit 3M and launched Streaming Inc.
22|londonincmagazine.ca|MAY / JUNE 2023
How has your original vision changed, or not,
over two decades? I don't believe the original vision
has changed much, but the increase of tools and digital
platforms has exploded these last few years, including
hybrid events incorporating Zoom or Microsoft Teams.
How did the pandemic affect your business, for
better or worse? Like all other small businesses,
the pandemic affected us greatly. At the onset we
lost all our booked 2020 events. The losses remained
huge until the fall months when we constructed a
couple of local green screen studios and switched over
operations to virtual, and then eventually to hybrid
formats. We will reach our pre-pandemic revenues in
2023.
London Inc. May-June 2023

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