0:00  
For many people, this might be a familiar sound. But for Ryan Pounal the owner of Palooza Beer Pong Festival, this sound gave him the idea to turn a backyard party into a Guinness world record breaking event. How is the event created? How did you come up with the idea to make this such a big thing?

0:18  
I was in Toronto for a month and it was my birthday, two days after I got back back in 2013. And I wanted to have a really big party and people always bail on day parties. So I said, how can I make them come without bailing? If they prepaid enter a beer pong tournament, then they have to come. Then it was a really big beer pong event called it Pounal Palooza after my last name. And until everyone dressed up in costumes, I'm giving away prizes, got DJs catering companies, you name it. Like we had bottle service one year in my parents backyard like it was it just started getting crazy. So 150 people then it was 250 people, then it was like 300 something people then my parents are like, get the hell out of here. So I rented an Airbnb downtown. Airbnb heard of it, they blocked it and banned my account. And I was like, Oh my god, what I do for my birthday next year. And then I just said, you know what, I had a dream actually of it just been a festival because I've always want to own a festival. And I said, why don't I just make my birthday party festival? As egotistic that is that sounds and then I just rented out the biggest venue in Ottawa, and I said, Palooza Beer Pong Festival. Let's see what happens and that year, we broke the Guinness World Record.

1:20  
So you're pretty young to be owning your own business or being the CEO of an event of this size. What keeps you motivated to keep expanding it every year?

1:29  
I open my own nightclub actually, me and Ronnie, my boy, Ronnie, we opened a club when we were 21. And it went pretty good. We didn't make any money off it to be honest, but it went well. It was a great experience. Then I opened another club on my own and then the festival then to other clubs on my own. I've always just like doing things on my own is I'd rather work 100 hours for myself, then 20 hours for someone else. You know what I mean? So that drives me to wake up every day and do stuff. So it's a lot and it's scary. But I every year what I do, I put it into an Excel sheet and then I just copy paste it while coming up with more ideas every year. So I make sure that I always do everything marketing that I did the year before.

2:08  
Ryan pownall, his friend and business partner Ronnie Ray has been attending Palooza Beer Pong Festival ever since the beginning. How long have you known Ryan for? And how did you guys start working together?

2:18  
I've known Ryan for the better part of about 12 years, we started working together at this bar that was called the bolt. I think we're like 16 or 17. We started bartending this club. And he was in one college and I was in the other. And we got the job based off of what how many people we can bring and, and and our guest list and so on and so we met there. And then from there, we started working together at that bar than other bars. Then we met this guy named JR and then we started working for a travel company and hosting Spring Break together and so on so forth.

2:44  
Have you ever attended Palooza before? And what's the atmosphere like when you're there?

2:49  
I was there at year one. I was there at the first one in his backyard and every year since.  Then, when he launched it as a festival. I was there too. I know it's an amazing atmosphere. It's a very big party vibe. Everyone's they're just very happy to be there, very happy to be around one another. It's a big shift it's about from noon until 9pm and everyone loves it. They love having a good time playing the beer pong and they love partying with each other.

3:11  
So you mentioned before that you had broken the Guinness World Record for the event of this type. What was your initial reaction to that?

3:16  
Yeah, when we found out that we got to get the show record what we actually have to Guinness World Records. It's a world's largest beer pong tournament. And most people playing beer pong at the same time, same kind of thing. But yeah, it was like amazing, they reached out to us. And they're like, Hey, we heard you broke the world record. So they didn't give it to us officially, until year two because they have to be there and you have to fly them in and apply and all this stuff. So we unofficially broke it. And then year two, we were like, let's just go crazy and then they were there and they gave us like the ribbon. And we're not actually in the book, but like we're on their website so.

3:48  
Finding sponsors for an event of this type can be tricky because of its 19 plus atmosphere and a certain stigma can come along with it.

3:55  
You know what people hate drinking games, corporate people, you know what I mean? Like, you can't get TD Bank to sponsor this festival, whereas they would do Veld or Blues fest or whatever. It's hard to get sponsors and it's hard to work with people. It does shock everyone like everyone's like, Oh my god, it's just like a drinking degenerate frat party. It's not it's live bands. You know, we have food and activities. We have photo booths and different types of games and, you know, we really try to make it a festival by adding a bunch of stuff. And it's actually not even beer in the cups. It's water on the cups. It's not, you don't have to drink. It's a recreational sport.

4:33  
What made you decide that you wanted to donate a portion of the proceeds towards charity? Is it always been something in the back of your mind? Or is that something that came in later,

4:41  
Bob Gosh my good friend, he started working at CHEO. And it was his idea to be honest, he said, like hey, why don't we tie in CHEO somehow? He wants it more for the awareness because he knows that I can promote things and really get word out. So he wants to raise raise awareness of raising money for CHEO to my crowd which is 19 to 24 year olds or 19 to 30 year olds, but now that like they're on the artwork. They're everywhere, the CHEO bear, which is their iconic mascot, he comes and plays beer pong. Now what we're doing though, which is great is CHEO tells us a story of what they need. So they were sending kids to another hospital, I think in Toronto, they needed this type of X ray machine in in CHEO. So what we did this year was we bought it for them. And now there's this kid, Jonathan, who has terrible rare type of cancer, and we're raising money for his family and for awareness for that type of specific cancer because there's not a lot of research going into that type. So we're doing it all for Jonathan this year.

5:41  
Reporting for rsj radio. This has been Jaden McLeod