Beyond Logistics: The Importance of Strategy in Event Management

Aug 3

Featuring Heather Mason, CEO and Founder of Caspian Agency

Heather Mason founded Caspian in 2006 with the goal of bringing strategy and methodology together in the event industry. Her clients include large foundations like Rockefeller, Ford, Hewlett, Skoll, and others. In addition to her event production, she is an MC, keynote speaker, and instructor in the Masters program at San Diego State University. She also writes a monthly column for Smart Meetings Magazine called The Money Gal.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

Strategy is a vital service the event industry is increasingly offering to its clients, and it’s essential to think fundamentally about building something of value over time, creating a financial plan, and developing creative financial models.
Money management is not scary and only involves addition and subtraction, with the added creativity of playing with different financial levers like ticket prices and sponsorships.
The events industry is a human connection industry that offers opportunities to work with clients who are saving the world, as seen with Heather’s clients such as Rockefeller, Ford, and Hewlett-Skoll.
Caspian Agency has ten essential pillars to guide their work with clients, which include strategy, goals, outcomes, tactics, measurements, audience mix analysis, marketing, content development, roles and responsibilities, timelines, communication, and budget.
AI will become the next separator in the event industry, with those who solely focus on logistics becoming more commoditized, while those who can provide long-term strategic planning and financial modeling will thrive.
Social entrepreneurship offers a more active approach to charity work and inspires women to broaden their aperture that can inspire and encourage others, as seen with Caspian’s client, the Skoll Foundation.
People should remove the scarcity model when talking about money in the event industry and increase dialogue to eliminate fear.

In this episode…

In this episode of the “Solutions Seekers” podcast, host Paige Buck sits down with the remarkable Heather Mason, CEO and Founder of Caspian Agency, for an insightful and inspiring conversation on the importance of strategy in the event management industry. Renowned in the industry for her strategic approach to event management, Heather shares her experiences, expertise, and vision for the future of the events world.

Heather's journey, from quitting her finance job with minimal savings to establishing Caspian Agency and working with prestigious clients, exemplifies the power of passion and determination. During the episode, she delves into the importance of merging strategy with event logistics, challenging the notion that the two can be separated. Heather shares her ten essentials for effective event management, highlighting the significance of strategy, goals, tactics, measurements, and more. Her philosophy revolves around creating experiences that align with clients' overarching objectives, whether it's creating a serious and austere ambiance or cultivating a more lighthearted and lively atmosphere.

Gain invaluable insights into financial planning, creativity with money, and the evolving role of logistics and strategy, and discover how Heather's experience as a social entrepreneur and her dedication to empowering women in the industry is ushering in a new era of event management. This enlightening episode will not only leave you inspired but also equipped with practical advice to enhance your own event-planning endeavors.

DOWNLOAD THE TOP TAKEAWAYS FROM THIS PODCAST EPISODE FOR FREE

Resources Mentioned in this episode

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by Kennedy Events.

Kennedy Events creates stress-free conferences and events, providing expert management and design for all your corporate event needs—from in-person to hybrid and virtual events.

To learn more about our services, visit our website at www.kennedyevents.com and schedule a consultation today to find out how we can guide you in making your event successful.

Transcript

Paige Buck [00:00:02]:

Welcome to the Kennedy Events Podcast. I'm your host, Paige Buck. And recent guests have included Meg Fazey of Events Gig and Phase Forward, Carol Gale of Special D Events, and Elaine Honig of STUDIO 4Forty. And today, I am delighted to be joined by Heather Mason. Heather co-founded Caspian Agency in 2006 with the goal of bringing strategy and methodology together in the event industry. Imagine that. Her clients include large foundations like Rockefeller, Ford, Hewlett, Skoll, and others. In addition to her event production experience, she's also an emcee and keynote speaker, as well as an instructor in the master's program at San Diego State University. She also writes a monthly column for Smart Meetings magazine called, “The Money Gal.”

Before we dive in with Heather, today's episode is brought to you by Kennedy Events. We create stress-free conferences and events, providing expert management and design for all your corporate event needs, from in-person to hybrid and virtual. You can learn more about us at kennedyevents.com.

Heather, delighted to be here with you.

Heather Mason [00:01:07]:

I am too. You're one of my favorite people, I have to say.

Paige Buck [00:01:10]:

You too. And yeah, if I hadn't pressed record and insisted on this, we would have just shot that shit all day.

Heather Mason [00:01:16]:

That's right.

Paige Buck [00:01:17]:

Getting more and more inappropriate.

Heather Mason [00:01:22]:

Let's hope so. Let’s hope so!

Paige Buck [00:01:24]:

Behind the scenes bitch best. Oh, yeah. And we do swear here. Like we’re--

Heather Mason [00:01:27]:

Yeah, we do. Oh, good. I like that. I feel at home already.

Paige Buck [00:01:31]:

Yeah, so tell me all about Caspian, and as it just said in your bio, the strategy and methodology you developed that sort of fueled your agency.

Heather Mason [00:01:43]:

Yeah, well, I started Caspian Agency, I always like to say, based on two pillars. And the first pillar was around strategy and methodology. I had worked in the movie industry. First, I wanted to be a producer of movies, and then I worked in marketing. And so, I had had to give board reports, metrics, numbers, all the ROI you could handle. And then I went into events when the dotcom burst, which is where I had been working in. And when I was there, I really thought, you know, there should be a protocol of how we all engage events that is consistent across the board. Just like the burger companies, there's a way to make burgers. People can make them individually, creative, unique, but there is a way you make burgers. There's a way you make a car. You can make it interesting, but there are some principles. And I thought, where is that in the industry of events? So I took a project management course. Didn't get my PMI or my PMP. I took the PMI course, loved it and thought, this makes sense. And project managers were paid at that time a lot more than people in events. And so I thought, well, geez, I'd like to get more money and I'd like to add strategy. So I created the Caspian Ten Essentials. And really, it's project management principles. Where to start, which is with strategy, goals, outcomes, tactics and measurements, going into audience mix analysis, the marketing angle you need. Then content development, because I think every event human should be doing content development, not logistics only. I think that split is erroneous. And then, going into roles and responsibilities, going into timelines, communication, budget, et cetera. So that was the first principle, was creating Caspian Ten Essentials. And then the second was, I wanted to work with people saving the world. And that's how we ended up with the client list we have.

Paige Buck [00:03:36]:

Wow. And did you already have insight into those foundations and what drives them and what their day to day looks like?

Heather Mason [00:03:45]:

No, not at all.

Paige Buck [00:03:47]:

It’s entirely new. I'm just going to go get them, I'm going to find them, I'm going to meet them.

Heather Mason [00:03:51]:

Yes, that is exactly it. I was kind of like a toddler in traffic. I had no idea. (laughs) I just quit my job, and I had $1400 dollars in the bank, and I just thought, I can't make rich people richer. Which was, I was working at a finance company. And so a friend of mine, oddly, said, “Hey, I work at this place called the Skoll Foundation.” And I said, “Skull? That's a weird name.” She said, “No Skoll. It's a gentleman's last name,” who I happen to think of as a hero today. Which is funny, I didn't know his name. It was Jeff Skoll. And so I said, “Oh.” And she said, “You know what, we need some help on this event we're doing.” And I said, “Well, I just quit my job, I started my company. The name is Caspian.” And she said, “Let me see if I can get you an interview.” And so that was my first client. And Skoll Foundation was pioneering, arguably, the widespread use of the term social entrepreneurship. Ashoka (largest network of social entrepreneurs worldwide) had coined it, there's a gentleman there who coined that. So it wasn't Jeff, he never takes credit for that. But I would say you could argue that the Skoll Foundation was really putting social entrepreneurship as a concept on the map. And so when I heard that term and the definition, I was like, that is what I wanted. I didn't know that's what I wanted. I just knew people saving the world. But I thought that was charity. And social entrepreneurship takes charity and, in my mind I would say makes it a lot more activated. So I was excited to become a part of it. From then, I was like, that's who I wanted to work with.

Paige Buck [00:05:30]:

Oh, that's amazing. That's amazing. So you're like, I just want to take this and duplicate it and duplicate it again and be more immersed in these sort of spaces and where people are coming for this sort of knowledge.

Heather Mason [00:05:43]:

Yeah. And I always like to say at Caspian, we're social change adjacent. We help the movers that are moving and shaking the world and the mountains and shaking up the status quo. We help them do that. And I think because now, after 18 years, we know a lot of the players in the ecosystems, we can actually become even more of a strategic asset to them because we can connect them. We know the different initiatives. We can say, hey, Ford do you know [the] Rockefellers and they know each other. It's not that they don't, but they may not be as immersed in each other's day to day as we might be. So we can start to draw really interesting strategic connections that we wouldn't have been able to if we hadn't focused specifically on this niche.

Paige Buck [00:06:31]:

Was that sort of one of those unexpected value adds that you couldn't have anticipated at the outset?

Heather Mason [00:06:38]:

Yeah, I mean definitely. I always thought that strategy as a service was missing from some, not all, of course, some of the event companies I had worked with when I was in house. They were focused on logistics. Just tell us what you want, we'll do it. And I think that is where a lot of our industry started. And I think more and more people are moving away from that, which I see as a fantastic maturity of our industry. And I think the thing that we all still have to fight is that logistics and strategy can be separated. I fundamentally disavow that statement as erroneous, not even a problem, but actual it's an error in judgment and thinking. Because that's like saying my surgeon cannot both diagnose what surgery I need and operate on it. It's as though I looked at my surgeon, said, no, you can only think of it. And then I'm going to go to Joe's Chop Shop to work on my knee. And it's just as bad if we have people saying, no, you really can be just a Joe Chop Shop. Well, that's not helpful for our industry either. If we don't want to be upstream, we're going to have a really hard time fighting for the type of money, the type of respect, and that phrase that people always say, a seat at the table, if we have no desire to fundamentally break down the idea that logistics and strategy are separate. We are surgeons, we can both think and operate, and that shouldn't be a shocker to anybody.

Paige Buck [00:08:05]:

Yeah, we often describe ourselves as sort of like the conductor of the orchestra. And if I couldn't understand how the component parts come together or, forgive me, I saw Tár on the plane a couple of weeks ago, what the composer had in her heart when they were–(laughs) but yes. I mean, how can I figure out the best use of your dollars if I don't understand the goals behind and the reasons why we're having this event?

Heather Mason [00:08:31]:

Right. And not even just that, but the deep level of the objectives of that organization, not even just that event, but actually knowing this organization, over time, is trying to move these audience groups, whether they're customers, stakeholders, salespeople, external, over time, they're trying to move them here. This event is just one little nodule in the entire campaign that a company is running. When you get people who are thinking at that sophisticated level, the execution of that node is going to be so much better placed. And frankly, event nodes are really, really pricey when compared with some of the other nodes of that campaign. And so that's why I'm still shocked that there's so much unsophisticated thinking that executives go through to think about event nodes. I'm like, actually not only is our node one of your priciest nodes, we're going to be one of your most effective nodes.

Paige Buck [00:09:26]:

And it doesn't stand alone in a vacuum, right? We've certainly had clients where they're like everything. Often, they're coming to us after they've had this experience, but then they really need us to shift them out of it. It's like we put everything we had into doing this thing, right? It almost killed us. And then very next day we just went back to what we were doing before we did this thing.

Heather Mason [00:09:49]:

Yes. Right. We call them cliffhanger events and people go, well, you know those events where everybody comes and they say all this stuff is going to happen and then it doesn’t? And I'm like, oh, that's on you. I do know those events. And you should take your little finger and point it right back at your heart because that was you. That was you not investing in the entire arc of the event. The event is a tent pole, and it's the pre and the post that are still the cost of that. And if you're going to burn out your team, because we get the same way, we get hired after four people quit, after they drag them over the finish line for this event, and then they wonder why they have no follow up components. They have no follow up capacity. Because everybody quit.

Paige Buck [00:10:29]:

The fortune they spent on video production, and it’s sitting on a hard drive on somebody’s desk.

Heather Mason [00:10:34]:

100%, you've been through it, too, where you see all this stuff, and they go, well, we collected all this, but nobody's following up on the emails. Nobody sent any of the survey results. Nobody sliced and diced the production, but we did it. And I'm like, did what? Because it sounds like you just fought a battle and nobody heard it. I could not agree more. And I think that's why strategy in our industry is going to become more and more and more valuable. And I think especially because in COVID we sold more strategy packages than we'd ever sold before. That is what not just kept us afloat, it was a rocket ship. And I'm going to predict that AI is going to be the next separator that makes strategy even more important. That the folks who want to just do logistics are going to separate themselves lower and lower into commodity land. And the folks who can do strategy, not just prevent, but on a long-term horizon of market objectives, being able to do financial models are going to go higher and higher and higher, and we're going to use AI to do that.

Paige Buck [00:11:46]:

Yeah. That's a really keen observation. You're an instructor, you're a trainer, you're a strategist. Tell me. I mean, it seems like a natural extension to me, but I could also just be filling in some blanks with my own biases. How did you move from that into keynote speaking and then now the current thing that's fueling you, emceeing?

Heather Mason [00:12:09]:

Yeah, well, the bad part is, I have been, ever since this woman felt bad for me when I was 15, that I was so shy, I would eat my fingernails down to the nubbin. And she grabbed me in Idaho Falls, Idaho, and said, “You need to learn how to present yourself and speak well.”

And then my debate coach, who I was going to quit on the first day because I couldn't say my name, said, “You're going to be the best speaker I've ever had.” Between those two women. They turned me into the monster you see before you. And so, after they got a hold of me, within two years, you can't take a microphone out of my hand. (laughs) So I like to say, I spend half my time putting people on stages who don't want to be there, and I like to be there. And so to me, it's getting back to what I enjoy, which is speaking, getting people excited, having a room that's full of energy, welcoming people on stage with excitement and enjoyment. Because it always hurts my heart when I see people who don't want to be on stage because I'm like, “WHY? It's the best place in the world.”

Paige Buck [00:13:23]:

Well, it's an amazing superpower because people will always be in awe. I feel like there are few people who would say, I love to be up there, I love having the microphone, I love having the moment. And then what's the Venn diagram of people who say that and actually can leave their ego and be there for the experience and for the audience.

Heather Mason [00:13:45]:

Right. And I think you're right. That's the trick of when I get to keynote speak, of course, then it's my show. When you're an emcee, it is definitively the show of the client, the host, the speakers, the panelists. And I think that is a real important differentiation because it should not be the emcee show, it should be the thread, the thread that guides it. And I think where I get excited there, like I just did one in Atlanta, was being able to thread the narrative. And that comes from my love of film and storytelling and trying to see where we're taking this audience on this emotional ride through the day, which is like a live film and what's coming next and how these things go together. And that to me is the job of it rather than what you're saying, which I agree with, is the spotlight show. To me, this is a narrative.

Paige Buck [00:14:40]:

Back to me.

Heather Mason [00:14:41]:

Go back to me. Hi. Hey!

Paige Buck [00:14:44]:

Do you calibrate, in your experience doing this, do you calibrate a persona to the organization and the vibe of the event?

Heather Mason [00:14:55]:

That's funny you ask that. That is one of my questions I have when I interview a client to be an emcee. I say, look, because we have clients at Caspian who are very, I would say, and I say this without any judgment at all, it's just factually placement in our client roster, who are very austere. I would say they are very serious, and there is a lot of gravitas, and there is not a lot of room for joking. And that would be seen as very distasteful. And then we have clients who want a little bit of rambunctiousness, and then we have clients that there's a fine line. And then we have clients, which I think was important for this particular one, who are very multicultural. And what I have found in multicultural situations is it is very difficult to use humor because the humor I would use comes from an American grown perspective, which is likely not going to land well when you're in a room of 60 different countries being represented. So, I do ask right out of the gate what type of vibe they'd like to cultivate. Friendly, austere, serious, gravitas, fun, light-hearted, charisma, energy, hey, get out of your seats. What is that? Because if I'm a charisma-energy in an austere land, that would land me, I think, in the backstage real quickly. Real, real fast.

Paige Buck [00:16:24]:

Somebody get the hook. What's she doing up there? (laughs) That nasty woman.

Heather Mason [00:16:33]:

That nasty woman. And it also goes to what you wear, too, right?

Paige Buck [00:16:39]:

Absolutely. Every choice.

Heather Mason [00:16:40]:

Right. There's some places where I could wear probably one of my more fun dresses. And then there's some places where I’d better be in a suit. And the hard part is my feet are so bad from playing years of soccer, it's hard to wear high heels anymore. So I'm getting a little stuck on the footwear lately.

Paige Buck [00:16:58]:

That’s tricky. It's also tricky post COVID. I was like, I have to put on anything restrictive in any way shape or form. I put on heels that I used to love to wear, and I'm like, halfway through, I'm like, what’s happening?

Heather Mason [00:17:09]:

What? Anything with a button, for heaven's sakes. I'm like, why is this button here? No!

Paige Buck [00:17:13]:

No, everything should be soft. Like Star Trek clothing.

Heather Mason [00:17:21]:

I just want a uniform. Yeah, that I just have to zip up. That'd be great.

Paige Buck [00:17:25]:

There you go.

Tell me about the column that you're writing, “The Money Gal,” and what inspired you there.

Heather Mason [00:17:32]:

Yeah, so it actually goes back to a little bit about what I'm teaching at San Diego State, which I teach in the master's program. And the course I teach is, “Financials and Economics.” What I learned very quickly is my course is not something people look forward to. (laughs) I know, and I thought, well, that's too bad. I also found it funny because if anyone knows my history, I did not do well in advanced math courses. That is not my strength. What my strength is, is money. Now, that is my strength. But money is very different than high math. It's not calculus. I mean, I'm not going to teach people how to do declining amortizations. I don't even know how to do that. But, what I did want to teach is how do you think fundamentally about building something of value over time? Because I see events as a pop-up business. They have to have a business plan, which is the Ten Essentials, and then they have to have a financial plan attached to that. Not a budget. Not a budget. A financial plan. Just like you go to financial planner, and they don't go, well, here's your budget for the month of how much you get in groceries. No, a financial planner will help you do wealth planning and management over the course of your life or over the course of your next 20 years. Thinking about money that way when it comes to events is very useful and helpful if you want to be at the executive level, if you want that seat at the table. So I thought, Why is this so scary? And I also thought, well, hey, we should be talking about this every day in our industry, and we should be sharing things like pricing models and the way we price and talking about it as much as possible. In any male dominated industry, they love to talk about money. So what is wrong with the scarcity model of a very female-dominated industry not talking about money every four seconds we get? So I thought, well, I like to talk about money. I really like to talk about money a lot. It's fun. And I also don't have any fear that everybody's going to take all $63 billion in the US. away from me. A., I don't have it, but B., even if somebody took 62 billion, I'd still be okay. So I thought, I'm going to write a column and just start spreading the news, putting it out there, getting the conversation started, so that we really start to talk about money.

Paige Buck [00:20:03]:

I think it’s really savvy to look at the thing that people are burying their head in the sand about. For myself, personally, it's like that thing I'm procrastinating, that thing I'm avoiding, is probably the thing that really needs my attention, and that would be a game changer.

Heather Mason [00:20:19]:

Yeah, that's exactly it. And I also think, too, it's not scary when it gets down to, it's just addition and subtraction. That is it. And then it's about creativity. So how do you, once you know the nodes you can play with, you can play with ticket prices, you can play with sponsorship, you can play with purchasing lists, you can play with all sorts of different levers, and then let's put prices on them. And if it's not being used in real life, well, now you can have fun with money. And when we learn how to have fun with money and be creative with money, the fear factor goes away, I find, You can then start to go, what if I did this? What if I did that? Well, what if you start a shell company over here and this company pays this company? Is that legal? Yeah, that's why guys are doing it all the time. We can do things really straight, Barbara, and make it really hard and then wonder why they go golf all the time. Well, they go golf because they're talking about money and they're talking about really interesting models. And if we want to go golf all the time, we need to do that, too, because I'm never going to conflate hard martyrdom with value. I don't like hard martyrdom. I don't like it at all.

Paige Buck [00:21:31]:

Doesn't feel good.

Heather Mason [00:21:32]:

It doesn't feel good. And it doesn't pay very well either.

Paige Buck [00:21:36]:

So you are a resource and information source yourself for trends and best practices. You've just been telling us all about them. Where do you go to seek out information on trends and best practices and the next thing?

Heather Mason [00:21:51]:

Yeah, so that's a really good question, because I'm a Sci-Fi geek, that's why I was really glad that you mentioned Star Trek. I knew we loved each other for a reason. So I think things like, I mean, I definitely read all my newsletters every day: MeetingsNet, [Today Meetings], Smart Meetings, Biz Bash, all of those. So at least I keep current on things like laws and changing economic situations, which I think are important. But where I really like to go are books about future trends and predictions in any industry. So there was a woman, which still is, Faith Popcorn.

Paige Buck [00:22:29]:

Oh, gosh, I haven't heard that name in a while. Yes, I remember. Faith Popcorn.

Heather Mason [00:22:34]:

Roht? Yeah. I loved reading Faith Popcorn. So I still read her. I follow her on Twitter and I still read her. And then I also read Malcolm Gladwell a lot, only because I think the way he thinks. I want to learn how he thinks because he's able to predict things because of the way he thinks. And so I want to be like, okay, how can I get my brain in that mode? And then Adam Grant I love just from an HR perspective and thinking about trends around that, and then I just read a lot of the news. But I always need more futurist books. I think futurist books are much more interesting. And if I were going to program some of these event conferences for event people, I'm like, where are the futurists? Where are the innovators? I don't need to have somebody be like, “You're good enough.” Okay, ban that garbage. Like, whatever. I want to know. I'm sorry. I'm just so bored of it. Let's do a separate conference for that. But if we're going to have a business conference, let's start looking at trends and predictions so that we're getting ahead of the curve. Because I am so biased about our industry in such a horrible way that I think we are in the best industry in the world. I think we are leading the charge. We're getting humans together, and nothing, no AI, no technology is ever going to replace the fact that human beings, water bags to use Star Trek's term, love to get together, Water bags love hugs.

Paige Buck [00:24:05]:

I have no fear about that going away.

Heather Mason [00:24:07]:

Me neither. That's why I love our industry. That's why I'm so bullish on our industry, because I'm like, oh, I'm in the best one. People go, aren't you worried? I’m like, nope.

Paige Buck [00:24:16]:

Come at me.

Heather Mason [00:24:19]:

Come at me, man. I put water bags together in a room. You take that away.

Paige Buck [00:24:25]:

Yes. And when you realize how just like getting up on stage and holding that microphone, people are in awe that you would ever proactively choose that.

Heather Mason [00:24:36]:

Yes.

Paige Buck [00:24:36]:

Doing this is also something people find very challenging. So great. Continue to find it impossible. Those of us who find it easy and really love it will thrive.

Heather Mason [00:24:47]:

So true. I bet you hear as much as I do what people say, “I could never do what you do.” I go. Oh, good. Yay. That says I have a specialty, and that's great.

Paige Buck [00:24:58]:

That is so true. All right, well, I'll just come out with my final question here. This is perfect to what we've been talking about. Someone you admire, someone you look to, whether in our industry or in the broader social entrepreneurship sphere.

Heather Mason [00:25:16]:

Oh, jeez. I'm glad you threw in social entrepreneurship. So my normal go-to 100% of the time is Oprah. I love Oprah more than anything in the world. Probably enough that she should probably be worried. I love her so much.

Paige Buck [00:25:29]:

You're not the only person she probably has to worry about.

Heather Mason [00:25:32]:

Exactly. Everything she does, I think, is so right on and inspires me and invigorates me and just the way she encourages, especially women, to think about their lives. I think she broadens the aperture for all of us, and I am immensely grateful for that. And I just respect her beyond anybody else. I think when you say social entrepreneur, it's really fun to think about because there are so many social entrepreneurs that are doing incredible things. There's one who I just barely met, and I'm trying to think of her last name. First name is Ambiola, and she's an African entrepreneur who is creating a new business model around end-to-end health care, and using women as a way of bridging all those health care roles. And yet, it's for a profit, which I always like it when women are doing for a profit. It's not like we all have to be, again, this hard martyrdom that women think is neat and is going to get us some sort of crown at the end of the road needs to go away. Like, I'm so done with that whole business. She has a business model, and I just barely met her in April, and very inspired and I want to learn more about her. She was speaking on a panel, and I didn't have a chance to dive in at that moment. But wow. An impressive, incredible force of a human being.

Paige Buck [00:26:56]:

Amazing. And probably like you, I'm often in a room for five minutes hearing something beautiful, wishing I could stay and listen to it and then onto the next thing. Yes, whatever it is.

Heather Mason [00:27:07]:

Yes, that's exactly it. I had five minutes where I heard her and I'm like, wow, I want to learn so much more about this woman, what she's doing, how she's thinking. And just, again, her charisma and power in communicating it was awesome. Because I always find– you hear good ideas, but unless you've also got that mouthpiece that is getting everybody on board, it's harder to make those awesome ideas come to the fore. And I feel like she had both, which was really neat.

Paige Buck [00:27:37]:

That strikes me as something that you can do as an emcee, too. You can help that land for somebody when they need to maybe just fill in a little bit here or there.

Heather Mason [00:27:46]:

Yeah, that is true. That is true. Because you're right, you can help people kind of get out of their shells a little more and also get that point to be heard if you think there's a really good nugget that maybe wasn't quite broadcast to the audience enough. Because you don't always get the Ambiolas who are larger than life and incredibly powerful.

Paige Buck [00:28:10]:

Yeah, that's great.

Heather Mason [00:28:11]:

We can't all be Ambiolas.

Paige Buck [00:28:13]:

No, but you're positioning yourself to be able to lift up and create the thread for everybody. That's really beautiful. I love it.

Heather, it's been a joy talking to you and where can people learn more about you? What's the best way to find you and Caspian?

Heather Mason [00:28:33]:

Oh, love it. So our website is Caspianagency.com and then my personal speaking website is Heathermason.com.

Paige Buck [00:28:43]:

Ooh, you got it. Nice job.

Heather Mason [00:28:45]:

I did get Heathermason.com. There was a gal who was an amazing equestrian named Heather Mason, but she let her website lapse because I think she stopped. So I got it. Yay. And then I'm with Conference Emcees. So if you contact Conference Emcees, they are my booking agency and they're amazing.

Paige Buck [00:29:04]:

Fantastic. Thank you so much for your time today.

Heather Mason [00:29:06]:

Thank you. This is a pleasure.

Paige Buck [00:29:09]

It was.

Ready to Learn More About What the Kennedy Events Team Can Bring to Your Event?

The KE team excels at incorporating opportunities to delight at every stage of the event planning process. With a clear roadmap to event success, we champion our knowledge, resources, and connections to ensure your event goes off without a hitch. Whether you’re planning a live, in-person event, something in the virtual realm, or a hybrid with virtual components, our event experts are here to guide you. Schedule a 30-minute consultation with us today.

PAIGE BUCK

Paige Buck is the co-owner of Kennedy Events, a large-scale event management company based in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York City. Our team creates stress-free conferences and events with a positive impact, which allows our clients to resonate with their audience. Kennedy Events specializes in producing flawless product launches, award ceremonies, fundraisers, and multi-day conferences while keeping our eye on retention and engagement goals.

About Kennedy Events

Kennedy Events began with one goal in mind—to produce high-level corporate events with just as much strategy as style. Maggie founded the company in 2000, found her match in Paige, and in 2011 the two became official partners. Since then, these two resourceful and brilliant creatives have pooled their strengths to build one one of the most the most sought after corporate event companies in San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles.