Navigate the Ever-Changing Landscape of Events and Beyond—One Solution at a Time

Jan 11

FEATURING the solution seekers PODCAST HOST AND CHIEF STRATEGY OFFICER, PAIGE BUCK

Paige Buck is the Partner and Chief Strategy Officer at Kennedy Events, which produces high-level corporate events for leading tech and media companies. She started at Kennedy Events as an event planner, working to build a strategic and talented team before taking on a leadership role. Paige initially worked in the nonprofit and tech space, leading fundraisers for companies such as the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, SF Works, and Craigslist Foundation.

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

How a Fractional CEO can help your business
A solution for digital asset management
Why you should consider enablement
The importance of finding out what your team really needs

In this episode…

As we begin 2024, we take a look back at some highlights from 2023. Paige sits down with some of the best in the business to discuss their insights into the event industry and how we can continue to move forward with excitement and innovation in this ever-changing landscape.

We hope you enjoy, and look we forward to Season 3 starting in two weeks!

Resources Mentioned in this episode

Michelle Allbon - NAVIGATING THE INTERSECTION OF SALES, MARKETING, AND OPERATIONS
Justin Dorfman - FEEDBACK IS POWER: HOW INTERACTIVE SALES MATERIALS TRANSFORM ENTERPRISE SALES PROCESSES
Joshua Steinberger - BUILDING MEANINGFUL RELATIONSHIPS: ACCELERATING AN ORGANIZATION’S MISSION
Gene Hwang - EVENT PHOTOGRAPHY: PROVIDING A VALUABLE SERVICE FOR CLIENTS
Alyssa Glassman - RECOGNIZING IMPACT: THE POWER OF REVENUE ENABLEMENT
Meg Fasy - CREATING A WIN-WIN SITUATION: HOW TO PROVIDE VALUE TO SPONSORS AND ORGANIZATIONS
Cara DeFabio - A NARRATIVE FOR CHANGE: EVENTS THAT SHIFT MINDS AND POLICIES
Tommy Halvorson - CATERING TO YOUR CUSTOMERS AND YOUR CRAFT
Carol Galle - INNOVATION, COLLABORATION, AND INCLUSION IN THE EVENTS INDUSTRY
Johnice Veals - BUILDING COMMUNITY AND CONNECTIONS: JOHNICE VEALS ON FOSTERING EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT AT VERTEX PHARMACEUTICALS

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 [00:19:00]:

Yeah. Okay, so let's talk about that. You've shifted into being a Fractional CRO. How did you get to where you are now, and how did you–I'll pause. How did you get to where you are now? And then we'll pick the next one.

Michelle Allbon [00:19:17]:

Cool. Yeah. So how did I get to where I am now? A whole bunch of different snakes and ladders. So as I mentioned, the beginning of my story was this tech startup that I interned with in college. And then I went and worked for a company that literally was getting college students to go study abroad. Not even close. Not even tech. That was my first job out of college. And then my first job in tech was selling a product that was backed by a Facebook venture that basically was looking at Facebook groups and trying to correlate whether you could get people who were of underrepresented demographics to choose one college over another by their Facebook behavior. So it was a very niche kind of company. But I went in and was helping basically approach the sales process from like, how do we even have a sales process? I was technically in business development, but we were designing the whole entire thing. And when I look at each of the companies that I've been at, that's really been the common theme, is that I have approached companies that are in a place of either operational change or shift, where they're like, we're not really sure where we're going. We need to know what's going on. Like this concept of auditing, which is such a dirty word, but that's what people want. They're like, can you please just look at everything that's going on and tell us what's going on? That is how I have been in every single company that I've ever been in. And that's the reason why even though I've been in sales. I've been responsible for a revenue number. I've been an account executive. I've also run customer success, customer experience centers, and strategies that are around sales. So I haven't looked like any one thing. And so the prerequisite to becoming a Fractional CRO is that, first of all, I didn't even know that all of these bits and bobs that I've done even meant that I was qualified to do anything at all. Like, I had a moment where I was like, am I just a generalist? Because I just get thrown into problems and I just fix people's problems? Is that what I'm good at? And when I moved to New Zealand, I had a conversation with a CEO of a company who said, hey, here's all the things that are going wrong with my company. As usual, people just kind of spill the beans. And I'm like, right, let me help you. And he was like, okay, well, we have a Fractional CFO and a Fractional CMO. I'm not sure, we'll just call you a consultant. And I was like, wait a minute, hold on. What is fractional? Like, you're using this word, and I hadn't even heard of it. I mean, lots will have it.

Paige Buck [00:22:10]:

I'd say most people, because they're not in a hiring position for that, have never heard of it. And then many of us who are, are still blown away to discover, like, oh, the entrepreneurs I know are like, I can't afford a CFO hire. What the f am I supposed to do? And then someone's like, you know what? There's this thing.

Michelle Allbon [00:22:32]:

You just have them. And part-time sounds weird because you're like, why would anyone ever work part-time in a leadership role? And I thought that I'm like, you literally cannot be a part-time sales leader. That's not possible. You're responsible for too much. Like, how is this possible? And so this concept of fractional, what really unlocked it to me is I was like, and by the way, that first job I got, I was not called the Fractional CRO. I was just called the consultant because I was like, I don't know what I am. I'm just going to solve your problems for you. And then when I went in and I looked at what the Fractional CFO and the Fractional CMO were doing, they were doing strategy-level work that requires that you have managed teams beneath you before, that you have the track record of being comfortable speaking to and reporting into a board level. And so you're actually at that senior executive level, but you don't actually have to do the tactical weeds of the work because the company is not in a place yet where they need tons of tactical work. So it's like all the strategy with none of the tactics. And so you're showing up for all the important meetings. You are the accountable party, but you're not necessarily sitting in there running a bunch of email cadences. or being on every customer call, or managing all the one-on-ones, or all this stuff that you think about that is 80% of somebody's day job when they're in a management role that has tactical responsibilities you're free from. So what you're really doing is you're really just doing the most important strategy work that the senior people need without any of the overhead, which sounds really sexy because you're like, well, then why does not everybody work this way? And the answer is because it's hard. You actually have to be really skilled to be able to draw your own lines and being like, these are the outcomes you need me to drive. And it does not make sense for me to be in this tactical work. However, I will make sure the tactical work is happening because I have leadership skills. Right? So it's a funny one because everyone would love to be a fractional leader. Like, who doesn't want to work two days a week? Right? But it's actually a skill set that you have to have developed in your career to be able to be good at it.

Justin Dorfman:

Paige Buck [00:22:19]:

And you've done a lot of listening.

Justin Dorfman [00:22:21]:

Yeah, we did a lot of listening. So we had yeah, we spoke to over 130 people, and we continued to listen. Right. So in that process of customer discovery, we started by just asking questions. No product, nothing to show. Again, we knew that we wanted to sort of play in the marketing and tech space. We did know a little bit that there was a problem around, as I mentioned, that I had experience around asset creation and stuff, but we didn't know what the solution was. So we asked who's creating assets? What are the biggest challenges? And things like that. We started to hear this sort of friction a little bit between the two practices and some of the other things that I mentioned as well, the lack of interactability and engagement with assets, the challenges from a product marketer to create assets. All these things started to pop up. So then we built a very minimal prototype that we started to demo in these conversations. And again, we started the conversations not showing the product but asking those questions and then leading into showing this prototype. And as we had those conversations, people would say, oh, this looks awesome, but it would be really great if it did this, or have you thought about how you're going to approach this problem? Which started to give us ideas on putting sort of layers to that prototype which got us, I think, to what people would call an MVP. And then now we're actually–

Paige Buck [00:23:45]:

Unpack that. What is that?

Justin Dorfman [00:23:46]:

So the MVP is basically the minimal viable product, right? And it's a key principle in the Lean Startup methodology of building, where we've built something that is at its minimum level in terms of features and capabilities, but can deliver on the sort of promised value, right? It doesn't have all the bells and whistles. It's sort of got the minimum level of functionality that can deliver on that value or at least paint the picture.

Paige Buck [00:24:16]:

You gotta hook somebody on that, or you start like, well, because we've all seen products that over promise and then can't do half the things or can't do them well.

Justin Dorfman [00:24:26]:

Yeah. And in this case, I think what you're trying to do is not over invest on the engineering before you really know that that's what the needed product is, right? So you sort of build the minimum version of it. And what we've done is we've essentially identified ten or so people from those conversations that we had that really had the need, were really excited about the solution, and we brought them on as what we're calling design partners. And what that means is that they're actually using the product day in and day out, and they're telling us what are the reasons why they can't use it for a certain use case. What's missing? What's sort of the barrier to usage, as well as what are the areas that really are solving a need and are differentiated out of the market that we can lean further into. And we're working with them over the next couple of months to again, sort of add these layers to the product to get us to a V-one, right, where we can launch this more publicly. And the idea through all of this is again, not to believe in that we know best and that we lock ourselves in a room and spend six months a year building this product and putting out in market hoping that it solves a problem, but sort of building it iteratively based on customer feedback, so that the end thing is something that people value and want to use and will use.

Joshua Steinberger

Paige Buck [00:08:36]:

How do you either dust off all of those skills you're getting called on to use, and which of them are you enjoying the most?

Joshua Steinberger [00:08:48]:

That's a great question. I'll tell a short story from today. This is recency bias. So this happened today. So Goodwill opened up a new store in Hayward today. Plug for their Hayward store on Mission Boulevard. And I got to help them put together their program, the ribbon cutting program, and the part of all of this, and I think you and I probably share this feeling about the work, is you're trying to help people feel something, right? Sometimes that's sadness, sometimes it's joy, sometimes it's whatever, might be guilt or love or awe, but to feel inspired and from that to take action and to do something with it. And I got to work with, very briefly, with this guy named Kenneth who's in the donation center at Goodwill. And he offered to tell his story about how he found Goodwill and how much it meant to him. When you get to be in that position of supporting someone and telling their story or helping them tell their story in a way that they're looking for the opportunity to do it, it's empowering. And it's something that they feel like is opportunity for them to give back in that way, to give the shout outs to the folks that helped make this possible for them, but also kind of own their own power in it. And so this guy Kenneth, who's in his sixties, was recently released from prison, really was having a hard time finding a job and told the story of how Goodwill gave him a second chance. And he stood up today in front of the cameras and in front of these VIPs and told it and was just, he crushed it. He was so proud. And that's my favorite part of the work. When you kind of get to support someone else in telling their own story in a way that you know, they feel really good and helps the organization forward.

Gene Hwang

Paige Buck [00:20:48]:

Yeah, it doesn't have to be perfect. Yeah, that's a really good note. What have you seen? I know you have some new, some things you've tried over times, you've expanded your offerings. Before we started recording, you were telling me about Digital Asset Management. What does that look like, and what problem are you solving for folks?

Gene Hwang [00:21:07]:

Yeah, so we've been doing a lot of bigger, bigger events and also working with some clients on a long-term, repeat basis that they've kind of been, I think we were talking about sometimes the issues, like finding stuff. And sometimes you know that you have something somewhere. I know we got a shot of something from here. And now both the software and, well, the software itself is getting better, that you can manage this stuff. There used to only be these certain options for companies that were really high-end or really small, and now there's a lot more. And since we're doing a lot of work with clients on a repeat basis, we can keyword things. But now there's AI that is smart and can recognize you a lot better, too. We did something recently for a big company, where, I think it was just their general main conference for all their internal teams, and they were saying, let's try this out because they kind of wanted to see how it works. So we identified, you can identify key people where it just was looking at their faces. And so the CEO is speaking to open the conference. So we had some nice shots of him, put it into there, and then you can just say, hey, this is a key person. Just show me all the photos with this person. And then the software is pretty impressive now that it can find people. There was a reception and it's dark in the back, and he's like back there talking to somebody in the corner, and it would show that photo. And so the software and the AI within it for facial recognition is so good that it really helps, but then you just need more data in there. So we kind of backfilled from some other events we did, and you're showing that if you keep keywords associated with images and people, you can really find things, so that you can say, oh, when we were in Vegas for that conference that one year. You can just put Vegas and see all the shots if you don't remember which year it was. Because I don't know about you, but for me, a lot of this stuff blends together.

Paige Buck [00:23:01]:

Running together now, yep. It’s smart enough to layer in if you're like, I'm looking for casual shots, or I'm looking for more formal shots, or if you were to keyword those.

Gene Hwang [00:23:12]:

Yeah, and we've been doing this for a while on certain level jobs where we can have a data manager who's going to add in the keywords because if you don't have the keywords, they could still do stuff based on looking for things, visually. But now that the data asset management programs are just way more user-friendly, that's where we've been able to set it up. Because we use it for ourselves as well. For the clients, it's become very useful because they need to find people or speakers from a certain thing, or they need to find– especially like you were saying, the keywords is the key. As long as you have that integrated within the photos, then suddenly you can find all kinds of stuff, and you can identify and pull assets much quicker.

Alyssa Glassman

Paige Buck [00:01:24]:

Thanks. So you're going to have to back up and give us straight from the beginning, what the heck is revenue enablement? What is enablement for folks who've never heard of that framework before?

Alyssa Glassman [00:01:34]:

Yes, absolutely happy to dive in there. You may have heard of sales enablement if not revenue enablement, but today we look at how our customer-facing teams get the content, tools, and training that they need. And that typically takes the form of three really core buckets. So we have role-based training, product and market training, and tools and process training that we deliver on and then make sure that our go-to-market facing teams, our sellers, our account managers, and our partner managers have the right content to deliver that message.

Paige Buck [00:02:10]:

How? In like a mid-sized fast-growth company if they don't already have someone like you and the framework for this in place, who needs to be persuaded that enablement is a smart investment and that this is the direction to go.

Alyssa Glassman [00:02:25]:

This is like the million-dollar question. It gets asked a lot. I would say. In my opinion, I think that if you have a product-market fit, that is the right time to bring in enablement. We are a scaling function. We help you to scale your impact. We are a low headcount and a high impact. And so once you found that product market fit, that tends to be the right time to bring in someone to handle enablement for you and help to make sure that you have consistency as you grow in your tools and process, as you grow in your messaging, as you potentially create multiple products. And that would be my best piece of advice. But the best enablement orgs definitely have strong support from the leadership teams, typically the revenue leadership teams. And so that's a really important relationship.

Paige Buck [00:03:17]:

To get down how do you sit within the organization? Do you report to the head of the Chief Revenue Officer directly?

Alyssa Glassman [00:03:25]:

Yes, so I report to our VP of Revenue, and within revenue we have sales account management partnerships, and then my team reports and so we sit alongside those teams.

Paige Buck [00:03:38]:

Wow. And then how do you think the best enablement teams work among and alongside the other teams?

Alyssa Glassman [00:03:51]:

I think that it's really critical to dial in what are the high-priority initiatives, especially when it comes to role-based training. We want to be more strategic there. So how do we partner with the leaders of those teams, our sales leaders, our account management leaders, and our partnerships leaders, to figure out what is a high-priority OKR that you're focused on? For example, with our partnerships team, we've been really working on how do you co-sell an account map. With our partners, especially in the D to C, direct to consumer, we're seeing that budgets are tightening up, and our partners are receiving less business or smaller budgets. And so how do we partner with them to target some of the leading B to C brands for the right type of work and make sure that that ladders up? That being said, product and market, we would love to have a comprehensive strategy around that but it really just depends on where you're at. I'm very familiar with working in Series B to Series C companies. Sometimes that product vision extends a year out, sometimes it's a lot more short-term. So I think in a lot of cases that can be more tactical, that it can be strategic, but it really just depends on sort of what stage your business is at.

Meg Fasy

Paige Buck 15:43

You were talking before about, you know, this economic moment where companies are being more choosy than once they were, what else do you have you seen change? And what trends do you see might be coming down the pike?

Meg Fasy

You know, it's interesting, because during the pandemic, it was such a roller coaster, you know, with what was trending and what was happening in sponsorship, I mean, everybody was immediately they were buying happy hours, and everybody get online at happy hour. And then a couple months later, couldn't sell a happy hour. And then the happy hours came back when we thought the pandemic wasn't going away. And then they went away again. And you know, there's all kinds of craziness now. I'm seeing what I'm seeing is trending. And what I'm seeing as such a need right now, really kind of three things. Sponsors want engagement, thought leadership, and data, and data probably being new, not new, but the up-and-coming most important aspect. Organizers really need to kind of loosen that fold they have on the attendee list. And I'm not saying name and contact, but I am saying company and title, a lot of organizations don't even want to give that out. And the challenge is, is that organs, you know, the sponsors are spent spending a lot of money and they're saying I can't market to anybody. And so that is a big hot button right now and getting the data I work with an organization. I actually work with two organizations, one on the front end that helps bring attendees in and sponsors and utilizing their sponsor. And then on the back end, I work with an organization that provides sponsorship data that can include everything from as simple as session scans for that sponsor, and who went in their booth to as advanced as Mary Jo is, is sponsor A's client, and sponsor a has been trying to sell widget a to Mary Jo, and I can now I can see every session that Mary Jo went to and none of them had to do with widget an I need to change my sales tactic and now sell her which if they because that's what I know, she's interested based on her behavior at the conference. We have all that data potential. Yes. And yeah, and it's, it's amazing. And so I think that organization, so there's so much competition right now, because the dollars for sponsorship is you know, not it is flat, it's at best, mostly they've lost a lot of money. So they have to really the sponsors really have to pick what organization they go to, and, and what their spend is, they're going to go to the ones that give them the attendee information. And again, I just mean company and title and the data of you know, who's been there and, and, and who's been in their booth, and who's gone to their session and all that information. I think those are organizations that are going to win at the end.

Cara DeFabio

Paige Buck 09:30

So when you're talking about shifting the Zeitgeist and the long game, that is narrative change, what sort of pressures do you face to justify like to justify the event to justify the spend when somebody you know, in your organization or outside is saying like, Okay, what's the ROI on that?

Cara DeFabio 09:52

That's a great question, Paige. It's always really difficult, and it's specifically I would say, difficult to show How have you changed someone's mind? You know, we do a lot of public opinion polling. That's one thing we do, to see how people are thinking about and talking about our specific issues. But I think in a larger sense, how you measure or something like narrative change, I still think is highly debatable, and how much you can kind of put numbers to those kinds of returns on the investment. But there are other really very tangible ways that I think once you start doing these, specifically, these events, that are really organizing people around an idea, you'll start to see the return pretty quickly afterward. And that the way that that has worked for us, is that, you know, you can do all the numbers, you can know how many people were in the doors, like, how much did you spend per head? You know, how many, how much press pickup? Did you get all of these things? But you can also mention it, you could also measure it a little bit more like how many new things were said on stage? How much did we move forward in terms of how we're thinking about or talking about the idea, or afterward and sometimes, frustratingly, a lot of this isn't visible until after the event? Yes. However, for us, a lot of times, it'll be that we've invited a funder to an event, and through the event, they understand what the issue is, and they understand who's working on the issue. And they're much more able to fund because they're like, I get it now, like, and so we'll see, we'll see grants come in the door. Another thing is, there'll be people and we've had this at maybe most of the events, the big events that we've thrown in the five years that I've been at economic security project, who will meet at an event and they'll find a collaborator, and they'll start working and pushing the field forward that way. And so the way that we talked about events, often for our work is building the field, and what does that look like. And so a lot of times you're looking to make those introductions and those cross-pollinating kinds of spaces so that because you don't know, you don't know what these two people are going to produce a research paper on. And that could really like change the field. And so those are kind of the moments that we try to, you know, a little bit manufacture in our events, because that's where we see the greatest return.

Paige Buck 12:42

I think there's a big potential takeaway here for people who produce traditional events too. And that it sounds like your ROI, as it were, or the change that you're looking for, is sometimes, but maybe perhaps rarely linear, where the funder comes understands is now better able to make a case and fund the work. That's a pretty linear return. But collaborations and papers and, you know, opinions being changed over time, both harder to measure and harder to, as they come in sideways. Yeah, it's an indirect but very meaningful result of the work.

Cara DeFabio 13:27

Yeah, absolutely. And I think there are other things that we started doing a little bit more where we've like, recognize that like, maybe some of the messaging that were that we're putting out around our specific issues, starts to get picked up. You know, there's like a messaging campaign that we started last year. That was just more than a check that this idea that a guaranteed income, so that's like, you know, regular cash to people with no strings attached, is more than a check. It's all of these other things. It's the time you get to spend with your family, it's the freedom to make choices on your own. It's the...

Paige Buck 14:06

Dignity

Cara DeFabio 14:07

The dignity of being able to make those choices on your own. So I think we started talking about it this way. And we really kind of infused that into a lot of our events and how we talked about the issue. And, then went back and did a little bit of an earn media analysis around how much that phrase had gotten picked up as well. So I think that there's yeah, there are ways to see there are ways not always numbers, but to see how your, your messaging is kind of catching on

Tommy Halvorson

Paige Buck 17:53

been talking I've been reminded of a feeling I've long held about caterers that it's like, logistically, you have the skills to make something happen to like, build something, execute, problem solve for it, in a way I would only trust like a like a SEAL team or some like military execution is. And then at the same time, as you were describing your, how you were building your business, I was thinking there must be something about a chef that is like a musician where you also have that mathematicians mind of like, how, like how to make the numbers work to bring something together, even if you have to adjust and adapt over time. But you and I were talking before we were rolling about wishing that folks perceived caterers and food and beverage the way they do other trusted service providers. And what it would mean to be and what like what some of your clients, it might mean to be a trusted resource. And so like, tell me a little bit about your, like, your dream for these brands and what how you want your clients to come to think of Foxtail and the other brand the broader fire society.

Tommy Halvorson 19:15

I mean, um, yeah, I mean, it's so challenging because like, you, at the end of the day, we're contractors, right? Like, that's what we are, we have resources, you hire us to do a job, we do the job, and then that's the end of job. And when you start to grow a catering company like it's really hard to predict how much business you're going to be doing. You're, you don't know if you're going to be doing none or if you're going to have too much come in and you're going to try to overreach and you're going to mess up, you know, like it's it's really hard to kind of like balance that. And so what we've tried to do is build consistency, which is the thing that I've been focused like singularly focused on like from literally the beginning because you can't To invest in infrastructure, you can't invest in people you can't invest in training, you can't you, it's really hard to do if you don't know how much business you're going to do. And so we you know, what my ideal would be to would be for the people that hire as the company's Iris look at us and look at the the, the depth of resources that we bring to the table. And not just an also do, but like a fully fleshed out program that we have, we've got the fully fleshed out events program with Foxtail, that super high level, we have the fully fleshed out corporate cafeteria management program with radish, we have the fully fleshed out beverage program. And then we also have Green Heart, which is a really cool retail brand. But it's all of these resources that we have, that are all executed at a really high level. And it's like, look at what we can do. Now if we can just get to a place where we don't have to, like, bid on every single little thing that you've got coming on. And we can just establish like a partnership, where we trust each other. And that can help us predict more about what kind of business we're going to be doing over the next year. Like if we know that this company has like six events that we're going to do with them over the course of the next year, then we can put a pin in it, put the resources there, know that it's there, you know, be able to know that that revenue is happening, you know, know what kind of resources we're going to need and allocate them to that specific thing. And it's, it would be so much more proactive than like the reactive nature of this industry of like we're doing an event it used to be in three months. Now it's in three weeks, can you pull this together? You know, and it's like, yeah, but man, wouldn't it be great if we could have just, you know, if we knew this, if this was on a calendar, and we it was predicted, you know, I mean, we're, we're trying to establish these relationships with places who have like an 18-month calendar, so at least we know, like something is happening and not, not maybe specifically what, on the event side of things. So that it's like, you can stop chewing your nails and wondering what's going to happen. You know, it used to be the case that will pre pandemic, we were like we knew, like next quarter kind of what was going to happen. And even in early 2020, our December for 2020 was booked Now granted, all that went away. But that was the same. Yeah, that was pretty exciting to be like, we're 10 months out from December and like it's locked down, you know, that was awesome. Or like 80%, you know, um, so if we could just have relationships that were more proactive and less like, we need we need, you know, you to bid on this against three other people to make sure pricing stays aligned with Can we just, can we just trust that this is just what it is? And yes, we're going to make money. It's going to happen because we're business have to, but we're but it's going to be fair. It's all explainable. That'd be awesome. You know, I mean, one of the ways that we've combated that is with our, you know, the kind of go back to when the other questions you'd ask, which is, you know, your most exciting moments in our raddish brand, like, this is the way that we have helped build a platform underneath the events program, because that that's a consistent, those are contract based those it's consistent work.

Paige Buck 23:21

It's for current revenue coming in every month at a consistent rate. Yeah,

Carol Galle

Carol Galle 11:53

If you haven't heard the phrase, Detroit hustles, harder, that is something all the time here to try out.

And I think that going back to collaborative, I think the Detroit area is, we value connections, and we lean on each other. So, I think that the collaborative spirit of Detroit certainly informs the way that we do work with our clients.

Paige Buck 12:16

I love that, you know, what I might think of as second cities or underappreciated, cities are having, I feel like, at least in my heart anyway, they're having a moment. I'm like, excited to bring a project to Milwaukee next year. And I'm like, let's do all of… I want to go to Baltimore and Detroit and Milwaukee and Nashville, and, you know, places that I feel like, the people who come from them hold incredibly dear, and have a real like strong sense of place. I think it's because I live in a more transient, youthful, Bay Area people come and go from.

Carol Galle 12:54

Yeah, well, I think you know, you think a lot of times you think events, you think of resort cities, right, and Milwaukee and Detroit and things are not resort cities. But I think also that the trend is really to, you know, when you take an event to a city, to get out of that hotel ballroom as much as possible. It started with finding unique venues. And maybe now it's more unique tours that aren't just looking at the more traditional things. It's looking at the history of the city and why it is the way it is. So there's sort of the cities with good stories that you don't always hear. That's why I think people are excited to come to Detroit, and Detroit's got some amazing stories and, and has had some amazing growth also for the last, you know, 10-15 years.

Paige Buck 13:33

Yeah, you were talking about sort of attendee-focused design, too. And I think it's something we crave at this moment as a sense of, like, a bigger sense of connection. So, when you can create that sense, of connection to place and people. Yep, that's really powerful, too. Hard to do in Vegas?

Carol Galle: 13:50

Yes, it is. It's a different animal out there.

Paige Buck 13:52

Right, what to do in Vegas? I made the mistake of trying to walk between two properties in Vegas, and I was it was regrettable. Right? Yeah. So you are you're an industry leader, Carol, and you are making lists, and you're sharing your expertise? What do you most enjoy sharing and teaching with others in our space?

Carol Galle: 14:16

I think bringing people together around a common goal. I know that sounds kind of generic. But the whole concept behind the Detroit Events Council was that let's create a group of people who are really interested in moving the Detroit events industry forward. At the end of the day, whether we're a caterer or an event planner, or a production company, we all want people to leave the city with a great impression of us and what we can offer. So, let's talk about that as an industry. And so, we've done that. But there are a couple of examples recently the things that I'm kind of trying to cook up where I just, I'm a big fan of collaboration overall, right? We there's enough business for all of us that I'd rather just learn from each other and take this opportunity. So I love any opportunity to bring those people together in a room that might not normally be together.

Johnice Veals

Johnice Veals [00:14:01]:

But really, what do you need? Sometimes you just have to ask the question. And we realized we hadn't actually asked the question of the people who are experiencing it. So we're going to ask them, and we're going to figure it out. And I think it's going to be a continuous process for us and also for those people who are remote. And I think we are in partnership with them on that. It's not just us, because my team's hybrid, so I don't know what it's like outside of COVID to be fully remote in this world. So, yeah, I think it's more for us right now. It's about that conversation, having that dialogue with them.

Johnice Veals [00:14:36]:

And asking, what do you need? Do you just want to Zoom?

Paige Buck [00:14:40]:

Are you actually content?

Johnice Veals [00:14:42]:

Yeah. Are you content? Is this okay? Is this going to be too much for you? It's another Zoom activity that you absolutely don't want to do. How do we foster connection within. If there's four remote people in your city, would you want to get together for coffee with them just to have a further connection with them? Is this something that you want to do or not? Or do you just want to sit in your office, do your job, and that's okay too!

Paige Buck [00:15:09]:

I'm thinking back to my last full-time, larger office job, and there were definitely people who were like, just leave me alone and let me do my work.

Johnice Veals [00:15:18]:

Exactly.

Paige Buck [00:15:19]:

I'll sign the birthday card.

Johnice Veals [00:15:22]:

I will not eat the birthday cake, but I will sign the birthday card.

Paige Buck [00:15:26]:

Yes. Or like, I'll come get a slice in the break room, but I'm not going to hang out for the whole chitchat. To each their own, but what a novelty. I wonder what it took to arrive at, let's just ask them. Because in all of this conversation about back to work and we need to drive people back into the office at least this much, we need to foster this. I don't hear a lot of let's ask them what they want and need.

Johnice Veals [00:15:54]:

Yeah, I think it was a lot of conversation about like, okay, well, how are they feeling? Are they okay? Internally, just like everybody else does, because we have flex work, we do all the pulse surveys and all of that, and you can only hear so much from a multiple-choice answer with a comment after. And somebody in our team was just like, let's just try it, see what it looks like. Start with a small group of people, and we'll benchmark it. Do it now, then do it later, and maybe at the end of 2024 and see if we've changed anything or if anything has changed. And we're growing rapidly. We're hiring thousands of people a year right now, and so it's going to change at the end of the year because there's going to be different and more people in the organization.

Paige Buck [00:16:39]:

Is it challenging, too, that you have thousands of folks in the greater Boston area and Providence, and then you have offices in other places. I was just, it's funny, I was just stage managing a ballroom for a conference about the very nature of this within an organization. So I can't betray things that I heard in that room, but they were interviewing two women who had expanded companies like yours globally and were talking about the challenges of even just, I mean, hey, time zones, you can't get around them. They're real. And if you have, like, an America-centric, you just gotta show up to this meeting. It's 10:00 p.m. your time in Paris. Too bad for you.

Paige Buck [00:17:26]:

That can have some cultural effects as well. I'm wondering how, what I loved about what these two women said, and they were very impressive, was we're just figuring it out, too, we're going to get it wrong. We get it right sometimes, then we'll try to listen and adapt. But I'm wondering if you are dealing with similar challenges and what you've seen.

Johnice Veals [00:17:49]:

We are definitely dealing with a time zone challenge. We try to do global events, that's my main job. And we found this sweet spot that is not great for everyone and so everybody has to give a little, and I think. it's still not great. We're still trying to figure it out. Do we do just North American things? Do we do just things with our UK and European and Australian offices? We've sort of found this sweet spot of eleven to twelve because our international headquarters is in London, we have an office in San Diego. It's a little early for the people and we understand that, but we give them grace and it's like if it's not important to you or you don't want to come, you're not going to be in trouble for that. And when we can, we do things that are at a 2:30 time frame, things that are like very US specific topics for example, then we will do them later in the day, and the international team, we record everything. So whether it's a speaker or anything like that, we clearly get permission from folks, we put it on our intranet and they can watch it at a later time. If it is a topic you're kind of interested in, pull it up, watch it in the background, watch it if you want to.

Johnice Veals [00:19:05]:

But that time zone, it's hard. Our Australia office, we just, I feel so terrible for them. Yeah, it's just know we're going to put this out and you can just watch it together, which they do sometimes. But it is definitely a challenge, and we haven't cracked the code on it either. I will take anybody's advice on it. We'll try anything once if it makes sense for us, but right now it's like that 11 to 12, that's what we're sticking with. But rightly, so we get complaints at 05:00 in London. Some people don't want to stay in the office that late and watching a town hall.

Paige Buck [00:19:52]:

Right? I heard them sharing that they've tried monthly all-hands or town halls where, say one out of three will be recorded in a time zone where the bulk of the USHQ folks have to show up early, or they're the ones watching it recorded. But then the trade-off is the bulk of the people or the folks who most need the message aren't necessarily getting it in as deep a way. So just trade-offs to every type of way you can try to solve for this.

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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.