Dave Gerhardt [00:00:00]:
1234. Exit. Flower. Exit.
Kera Wright [00:00:12]:
Exit.
Dave Gerhardt [00:00:15]:
All right. So, Kara, I want to do an event this year. What do you think about that?
Kera Wright [00:00:21]:
I think it's always a good time to do an event, but there's a lot of questions. There's a lot of questions that need to be answered, and I'm always curious about what people want to get out of events.
Dave Gerhardt [00:00:32]:
All right, let me tell you my hypothesis and why I want to do an event and goals for doing it. So I run this business called Exit Five. And Exit Five is a membership site for B2B marketers. So it's a place where people join to connect with their peers, to share feedback, get advice. Majority of the audience is B2B marketers. And the response has been amazing. This podcast has become popular. We have a newsletter with 15,000 subscribers.
Dave Gerhardt [00:01:01]:
We have 3000 paying members in our community. And it's been a couple of years of this. The response is there. It's very clear that we have something. We have product market fit. So many people have said, when are you going to do an event? When are you going to do an event? You should do an event. This is the perfect. There's been events.
Dave Gerhardt [00:01:18]:
Marketers love going to events. But then there's also. It's a community based business. People want to connect with their peers, right? Or talk to each other. They hang out online. They want to hang out in person. I finally have mustered the courage to say, let's do an event. I have been putting it off because in my past life, as a CMO and a VP of marketing, I worked at a couple of companies and we would do big events.
Dave Gerhardt [00:01:41]:
And it was always like, it's the reason I have no hair anymore. It's very stressful trying to get hundreds of people there, trying to make sure you make sales team happy sponsors, happy content speakers. This is your world. It's chaos. But I decided that this would be the year to do it. So I've decided we want to do it. Where would you start? I'm so early in this process now. I know roughly when we want to do it.
Dave Gerhardt [00:02:06]:
We want to do it in September. I also know where we want to do it in Vermont. So I moved out of Boston. I live up in Vermont. It's not where everybody is, but I think that that's what makes it cool for a reason. And there's a story that connects it to exit five, which is the story about exit five as a business is related to exit five off of the highway going up to Vermont. I want to do like 100 to 200 people in Vermont in September. That's all I know.
Dave Gerhardt [00:02:32]:
I'm literally going to visit a venue this Friday, but we want to make this happen. What's your initial reaction?
Kera Wright [00:02:39]:
Well, that's exciting. It's always exciting when you have your audience asking you for an event. So that's a good start. My first question is, what do you want to get out of this event? Like, what are your business goals here? Is it just purely to fulfill a demand because people are asking you for it? Does it feel like the natural next step in terms of building more community? Is it a brand builder? Are you trying to make money?
Dave Gerhardt [00:03:07]:
Good questions. I would say there's some part of all of them there, I think. I don't want to do an event to lose money, but I would say that the real reason is I feel this response online. You know this, but being at an event in person, whether it's meeting up with your friends you haven't seen in a while, an industry event or going to a concert, there's just something different when people connect in person. And so even if I just break even on the event, I want to make that investment because I feel like it will boost the brand in some ways. It'll create deeper connections. I want people taking pictures and posting them all on LinkedIn. I want it to fuel months of excitement and interest in the community.
Dave Gerhardt [00:03:52]:
Like, I want people on LinkedIn to see a picture of 200 people having a great time at an event, be like, wow, exit five. Like they did an in person event. I want to make those in person connections. I think personally, it's great to have this online community, but even if I just go and meet 50 to 100 people who are customers, as I say, our kids like to say, like, what filled your bucket? It's going to fill my bucket. I think it'll fill my bucket. I think in addition to that, there could be other relationships and networking opportunities that come in, but really, I see it as a brand investment. It's more of a way to connect people in person. We've already had that experience online.
Dave Gerhardt [00:04:31]:
I want to give away a ton of value. So I want to be, like, a really tactical and informative day for people. I don't just want it to be like, hang out and schmooze and have lunch. I want someone to be like, I met Kira at this event, and now we're super tight and we're doing this project together, or I got unstuck on this idea and I got a new. This is going to help me for the next six months at work. I want the value to come in that sense. I don't really see it as like, oh, I need to close different than like a B, two B SaaS company. I don't need to get ten customers from this event.
Dave Gerhardt [00:05:01]:
I do think we have lots of digital sponsors already, and so I think it would be pretty easy to have a couple of sponsors do things like pay for lunch or sponsor some type of interesting experience for people. But I say it's a long winded way of saying it would be mostly a brand type of event.
Kera Wright [00:05:19]:
Okay. Brand community building. Okay. My initial reaction is like, you want to do an event? People are asking you for an event. Like, yes, do an event, but does it have to be go big or go home? Because you're going really big. You're doing it in Vermont, which is like, out of the way for most people. You probably don't have a huge concentration of listeners in Vermont. So now we're asking people to travel for your first event ever.
Kera Wright [00:05:46]:
You're talking hundreds of people for the first event ever without ever doing. I'm assuming you've never done like a test event. So my first flag that I would raise is, does it have to be so go big or go home? And maybe the answer is yes. But also maybe you could consider starting off with smaller, more intimate events, test out a couple of different cities, sort of really get a feel for the people in person, and then decide what does going big look like? Or what should it look like? That's my initial gut reaction.
Dave Gerhardt [00:06:22]:
Yeah, I think that's fair. I think there's definitely the risk that nobody comes up here. I don't think that will happen, but it's definitely a risk. I think on the smaller side, let's say I want 100 people. What would be a smaller version of that to you?
Kera Wright [00:06:40]:
Okay. And when you talk about, like, you want people to walk away with value, you're saying that, do you plan on there being programming for the event, or you just want people to have valuable connections?
Dave Gerhardt [00:06:50]:
No, I want to have, like, if we're going to do this, it's going to be, there's an agenda, there are speakers, there's a reason to come and buy a ticket. I believe that one of the biggest mistakes people make with events is the programming. In that speakers matter, the content matters, like what you're going to invest and show up. And so if I'm asking somebody to take a day or two off of work to somehow find their way to Vermont, I need to sell them on something bigger than just networking. And so this would be like a one or two day master class education, five or six different sessions. We'd bring in speakers, we'd have speakers, we'd have breakouts, we'd have lunch, small roundtables. It would need to be fully programmed out. I don't want to do this just to have a 20 person meetup.
Dave Gerhardt [00:07:40]:
We could definitely do that. And we could just be like, hey, I'm going to host a dinner on this day and open it up to ten or 20 people. I kind of want to make it like we've had such a good response to our content that another reason for doing this event is that it's a great way to get content for a couple of months or for the rest of the year. And so all the videos and recordings from those sessions can be content that is available for people in the community. We could run them as podcast episodes. I see it as a day of getting valuable content at the same time. So the programming would be a big piece of this.
Kera Wright [00:08:12]:
Okay, that makes sense. And what was your question like? What would a smaller version of that be? If you're committed to doing it in Vermont and you're committed to having it be multiple sessions and at least 100 people, a smaller version of that, I think is not necessarily compatible with the things that are hard.
Dave Gerhardt [00:08:38]:
Maybe it's kind of like this is happening, so maybe it's a different flip on the question which is happening with those. Garo, I want this to happen. How? What do you think I can do to best increase the chances of making this successful? Then we know all the risks. We know all the kind of the red flags. Like, will people come? Is this too many? Yes. Checkbox. I've signed the consent form, like, risk accepted. Risk accepted.
Dave Gerhardt [00:09:10]:
What can I do to stack the deck based on your experience with events, what can I do to stack the deck in my favor to make sure that this event is successful?
Kera Wright [00:09:17]:
I think even if. Okay, and I'm sorry, I'm going back to this. I think even if your first official event is going to be this big event, getting small groups of people together in person could still really help you inform that event. Or even if it's not in person, just like, talking to people. Like, really talking to people and getting a sense of what they would want in an event. And people don't always express exactly what they would want, but I don't know. I think just, like being really in touch with your audience. If you can meet with them in person, if you can have smaller, intimate conversations, then that would be a great way to inform because you can just think like, yes, this is it, this is going to be that.
Kera Wright [00:10:02]:
But until you start talking to people and getting real feedback, you don't really know. So that's what I would say, just like getting a sense of what people really want from this event, what type of programming they would like, if they really do want more programming than networking opportunities, because content is content, and if you're sitting there watching someone speak for an hour in person versus listening to a podcast, how different is that experience if it's just a one way conversation? So just getting feedback from people on the type of interactions they would hope to get from an event like that.
Dave Gerhardt [00:10:38]:
That'S one of the stressors too, is if you've done an event and you're looking as somebody's on stage presenting, you're looking around the audience and you're like, are people into this or are they looking at their phones or tapping their leg or something like that? I have a strong feeling about which content would work. So I think the right indicators are there. Talk about you've been in this event marketing role and you're going to start your own business doing event marketing on the freelance basis. How do you describe what the role of an event marketer is and does and should do? And there's a lot of overlap between like, let me phrase this differently, it can be hard to be, to me, there's a difference between like a marketer and an event planner, and the event marketer has to be like a hybrid of both of those things because you could be great at the event planning part. But as you and I were talking before we started recording, there's a whole element of collaborating with the business, working with sales, understanding how to drive demand at this event. So tell me about your backstory and just your experience in events.
Kera Wright [00:11:42]:
Yeah, it's funny, I first got started in events just as like a side job in college. So I would go and hand out flyers and hand out samples and it was just like side money, but I thought it was pretty fun and I was already studying marketing, so once I graduated, I kind of just worked towards that. Like, I think I want to work in events and that just kind of set it off. So I've worked for a catering startup. I've planned events for local politicians. I've been the event marketer at an architectural and engineering company. I've worked in SaaS, did a brief stint in the advertising industry, as well as had some freelance clients. So it's been all over the place, but consistently across all the roles, the qualities that I think one needs to have as an event marketer, you need to be a master communicator.
Kera Wright [00:12:33]:
People do not read your emails. You really have to be able to get information through people's heads and be able to do it in multiple ways so that one of those Ways reaches them. So communication is biG. You're a project manager because you yourself are not doing most of the things that bring an event to life. So you're like bringing in those resources and making sure they deliver on the Things that you need. And you're a marketeR. Like an event marketer is a marketer. You're usually writing copy.
Kera Wright [00:13:04]:
Like you said earlier, there's business goals that one has to answer to. So you're making sure that all this coordination, all this communication, Funnels into the goals that you're trying to get for the business. So those are the really important Things.
Dave Gerhardt [00:13:19]:
You worked at air call and you spent a bunch of time working on events there. Take me into some of your experience working with the marketing and sales teams there.
Kera Wright [00:13:31]:
YEah, AiR CALL, I would SaY, is the experience where I blossomed the most in terms of really getting the system down on how to work with sales, how to communicate with them, how to.
Dave Gerhardt [00:13:43]:
Get trade shows done, and is that of the events? Can you just first explain what types of events were you doing? What were the goals for the company and where did events kind of fit in the marketing strategy?
Kera Wright [00:13:56]:
Yeah, basically for events specifically, my golden number was qualified pipeline. So, like, opportunities that came in and that were indicated by the sales team to be worth working. So qualified pipe and mostly like the pipeline, not even so much the number of opportunities, but qualified pipe is like my golden metric. Of course you want to track it down funnel to see what actually closes, but that's kind of where I passed.
Dave Gerhardt [00:14:25]:
The baton, of course. Wait, so this is great. People are going to love this. Let's keep going on that thread. So the goal of doing an event is to generate qualified pipeline. How did you and the team work from there to figure out which types of events should you do to generate qualified pipeline? Because you could just have a lunch or have buy free tacos for everybody and you're not just going to magically get the right people to show up for that. So how do you use events as a way to actually drive qualified pipeline?
Kera Wright [00:14:54]:
Yeah. And let me say that's like the golden revenue metric, but there is a brand component, there is an overall marketing component where you want to get the company name out there, but that's just like the main number. But in terms of how to sort of pick, if I'm understanding the question correctly, how did we determine what the event mix should look like in order to meet that goal?
Dave Gerhardt [00:15:15]:
Yeah, I think people like the most, that's the most actionable advice. Like let's do an event to generate qualified pipeline. Okay, shoot. Tell me how you did that. That's the stuff that people like to get.
Kera Wright [00:15:29]:
Yeah, I think for air call, but for most companies, where you should kind of start is where are your customers already coming from? At air call, there was a big, like our partnerships was a big deal. So basically a lot of the customers that were there were using certain technologies, technologies that integrated with Aircall and the biggest customers and the best customers were integrating with certain partners. So we know that if a company already uses Salesforce, if a company uses HubSpot, then they could potentially be. Companies that use these technologies will probably find a higher concentration of good fit air call customers. So like going to Dreamforce, going to the salesforce trade shows, going to inbound, that was kind of our event skeleton. Like, we're getting a lot of customers, we're getting a lot of referrals from these partners. Where can we meet more potential referrals at these partners events.
Dave Gerhardt [00:16:33]:
Got it.
Kera Wright [00:16:33]:
So that's the first step, I would say.
Dave Gerhardt [00:16:35]:
Got it. So as opposed to being like, we need to create and host our own event, part of the strategy is like which events should we select that we should go to and do something there?
Kera Wright [00:16:46]:
Yeah, and I'm not saying it's an either or thing, but as you're building out an event calendar, that's a good place to start. Where are they coming from? Where can you meet more people like this? Is there an existing concentration of people? Are there events that already exist that we can sort of tag along to? So that's a good starting point. But then you start looking at sort of your customer avatar, like what are our customers like? And based on that you can create experiences that would attract them. So we were selling into a lot of customer support teams. What does a customer support leader look like? That's like an ideal air call customer. They are at an ecommerce company. They are like a senior level support director. They are based in certain major cities.
Kera Wright [00:17:35]:
Their personality type, they tend to be like introverted, very empathetic. What do they care about in terms of content? And then you build an experience around that to attract those people to your event. If you're doing a hosted event, I like that.
Dave Gerhardt [00:17:50]:
I'm digging through something that you have posted on LinkedIn, and you created this series at air call that was burgers, beer and B. Two B sales, three city roadshow, 900 registrants, 30K in sponsorships. I love ideas like that. Right? It's like, okay, yes, we know we should go do something at Dreamforce. We know we should do something at inbound, but what can we do on our own? And to your we and even to what we were talking about with the exit, five events to me are content, right? It's like, what's the reason? Why is someone going to show up? And so how can you program that event? I think the number one thing that matters in marketing is the offer. And in an event, the offer is, why should I come hang out with you on Tuesday from five to seven? Or why am I going to go all the way up to Vermont to spend a day up there? I think a lot of people don't think about the actual programming and the offer and the value of attending that event. It's typically like, yep, we got a booth, we're going to scan your badge. We're going to give you some branded swag.
Dave Gerhardt [00:18:52]:
And that's our event strategy. We're going to move on. But when you truly take this offer, this content and offer first approach, you can do events that build meaningful relationships. And so I love this idea of coming up with these mini roadshows. When I was at this company, Drift, we did like once a quarter and it was very low budget. We just picked a couple of cities where we had a high base of customers and we found two or three companies that we could partner with in that city where we didn't have to spend all the money. But air call was in this city. They had a space, hey, let's do this joint event together and we'll do it as co marketing.
Dave Gerhardt [00:19:30]:
And that was like a really low friction, low cost way to test into doing roadshows as opposed to renting some huge venue, trying to get hundreds of people there. I love the idea of doing events through partners, too.
Kera Wright [00:19:41]:
Yeah, using partners is a huge. And that was something I basically, especially at air call for every event, tried to find a partner. Because when you're doing your own hosted event, the benefit of a trade show is that the audience is there, so you don't have to worry about finding the people. You just need to worry about your presence and how you're going to get them to engage with you. When you're doing your own event. It's like the presence, the experience is going to be cool, but you need to get people there. And yeah, working with partners is an amazing way to just share that responsibility and expand the reach of the event. That's actually how I know Shantel.
Kera Wright [00:20:17]:
Yeah, we worked together on an event and it was a lot of fun.
Dave Gerhardt [00:20:20]:
What event did you did?
Kera Wright [00:20:22]:
So back when she was at Maestro QA, who also would target customer support professionals, we did an event that was all about live customer interactions and how to empower your team. Because being live is a lot different from being on an email or just something where you can respond asynchronously. It's a little bit higher pressure. And the event was Broadway themed. Just to play into that live aspect, we hosted it at a theater, we gave away Hamilton tickets. We had a lot of fun and it was a great event. Shantel did a great job bringing in really high quality guests. She hosted the panel, and then I did all the behind the scenes, like logistics.
Kera Wright [00:21:04]:
It was a good team effort.
Dave Gerhardt [00:21:06]:
Love that. She's awesome. I do think a lot of the small details matter at events, too. Like, we've all been to events that maybe the content is great but the food is bad, or the food is great but the content is bad, or there's only one bathroom, or there's no aC. There's always some issue. And a mentor of mine once told me, when you think of an event, it's easy to get caught up in all of the details from the event as having to be flawless. But really, how do you get people to tell me if you agree with this, but how do you get people to have one or two moments where they're like, yeah, that event was great. It's going to be one speaker that gives you that big takeaway.
Dave Gerhardt [00:21:51]:
It's going to be one relationship that you made. It doesn't need to be from top to bottom. This blew you away. Everything is the most insane experience, but it's about finding one or two key moments, and that's what people are going to remember from that event and from that day.
Kera Wright [00:22:06]:
Yeah, I agree with that. And I think that as you're planning an event, you need to make a conscious decision about what those moments are going to be and what they're not going to be. Because you can't be 100% in every single aspect of the event. Like, you'll drive yourself crazy. Especially if you're planning multiple events and you have a full calendar. Sometimes you go into an event like, okay, this is not going to be the most sexy, but my sales team is going to be prepared to have the conversations they need to have, or this event is all about the guest experience. So all the logistics, everything is going to be on point. The panel discussion, maybe it's not the most important part, because I know these people are here to mostly network and they want to have one on one conversations with the panelists.
Kera Wright [00:22:49]:
So we're going to keep it short and sweet on the panel discussion and have more time for Q and A. You need to be very conscious about what those moments are so that you can focus on that and not worry so much about the things that aren't going to be 100% perfect.
Dave Gerhardt [00:23:05]:
What do you think? The different. There's almost like different flavors of events, and you kind of have to have that goal coming in, right? Like, you might do an event for customers, and the goal of that event is literally to just get ten or 20 customers in the room, connect them with each other, get them to be more successful with your product. You might have do an event specifically for pipeline. The goal of this event is we need new qualified pipeline. Then the third bucket is maybe brand. Do you typically do those things separately? Can an event be all in one? If you do all in one, is it harder to drive one of those metrics? I've struggled with this in the past of like, the event was amazing, the brand response was amazing, but social media was buzzing. But we didn't generate a ton of qualified pipeline from that. Do you have any experience doing both, or would you separate them out?
Kera Wright [00:23:58]:
Yeah, I think most events are multifaceted in the goals, but I think where a lot of people sort of neglect to get clear is on kind of like weighting the goals. So if you have an event and you're setting goals, of course have a number. Like, okay, we want to generate x amount in qualified pipeline. We want the brand response. Have a number. If you can attach to it and sort of go into it telling your team what is the most important goal and what is the secondary goal or the tertiary goal. So if you're going into the event and you have a pipeline goal, you have a brand goal, you have this goal. Are you communicating and are you conscious about our number one goal is pipeline? I'm waiting that at like 75%.
Kera Wright [00:24:47]:
So yes, we want a brand response, but that's a 15% goal. So I would say kind of wait.
Dave Gerhardt [00:24:54]:
It if that was the goal. If you wanted to do an event specifically to drive pipeline, what would be different about that than doing, say, a brand event in your execution?
Kera Wright [00:25:04]:
I think generally hosted events are not the best avenue for pipeline driving. I think that your own hosted events are mostly valuable for pipeline acceleration, brand building, and like, top of funnel metrics. So I think the best events for pipeline tend to be there are some companies where if they invite prospects, they're signing deals. I find for the most part, that's not the case. So if you want to generate pipeline.
Dave Gerhardt [00:25:32]:
That would be a nice dream for everybody. Let's just do an event and have our customers come out ready to sign. Right?
Kera Wright [00:25:37]:
Right. If that's you, please message me. I want to know your secrets. But most of the time, I think pipeline driven events tend to be like trade shows. And I think trade shows get a lot of slack. Like, yes, they're expensive, yes, they suck sometimes, but people kind of, when they're walking a trade show floor, they're kind of expecting more transactional interactions. Not saying to treat people like they're not people, but they're going around to learn about products. So it's a more natural transition to have those conversations as opposed to like, let me invite you to a dinner, and then I'm selling you, or like, I'm selling you.
Dave Gerhardt [00:26:15]:
I get that. That's part of the job if you're in sales. But the first startup that I ever worked at, we were selling into restaurants, and it was a very small team. And so we all went to this big event. I think it was like the NRF national restaurant, f whatever f stands for. And we had a booth, and it was like this humongous expense for the company. It was like a big risk. Like, we're going to spend 50 grand or whatever.
Dave Gerhardt [00:26:40]:
We don't have that kind of money, but we're going to spend it on this booth and we better go make pipeline. And the whole company was like six people. We were all at this event, and it was straight up, like, there's someone, there's a human walking by, like, go talk to her. And that was awful. And I was like, man, I never want to do that. Some people live for that. I know some people in sales, they love that type of stuff. That was not for me, my friend.
Kera Wright [00:27:04]:
Yeah, no, that sounds stressful. I wouldn't particularly recommend that. Be chill. But, yeah, take advantage of the people walking by.
Dave Gerhardt [00:27:14]:
I like the frame of how you said hosted events, right. And so if you're going to host your own event, typically that's going to be more of a brand thing. Like, hey, we have a product launch. We want to invite some customers. We want to do this rah rah thing. For our, like, that's going to be more of a brand event. But if it's qualified pipeline that you're after going to set up shop at the place where all your customers already are, like, Dreamforce is a great idea. And I guess I've never thought about splitting those two things out as part of the strategy for the year.
Dave Gerhardt [00:27:45]:
Right?
Kera Wright [00:27:45]:
Yeah. And even when you go, if you're going to where a large concentration of people are, you don't have to have a booth. You could kind of hybrid it and do a hosted event. But tagging on to the trade show, also, if you're doing your own hosted event, it's not saying that you can't get pipeline out of it, but I just think you're not typically going to see that from a cold contact. Maybe you can move people down funnel like you've been in touch with them, then you invite them to the dinner. Okay. But as a first touch, I don't think hosted events are going to be like a primary pipeline driver.
Dave Gerhardt [00:28:22]:
So tell me about what's next for you. You don't want to go back in house, even though I'm sure there's people listening that would want to hire you. You don't want to go do that dance again. You're going to start your own business, build out an event marketing consulting business. Do you have an idea of which type of companies you're after and what you want to go help them do?
Kera Wright [00:28:41]:
Yeah. So the company, I have a name, it's called Planner Pal. I didn't tell you that before, but it's called planner Pal and how it all came along.
Dave Gerhardt [00:28:50]:
Okay, planner pal. Planner Pal is pretty good.
Kera Wright [00:28:53]:
Yeah. So basically, I just remember when I was a full time event marketer, typically just a team of one responsible for all the events, responsible for all the things that go into events. Most event marketers are so overwhelmed. There's just so much work that has to be done and a lot of times there's no plans to add on headcount. So you just kind of have to power through, keep begging for like, hey, can we hire someone or eventually burn yourself out. So the whole concept behind planner pal is just on demand event marketing help. It's all task based. So it's not a situation where you would just hand me over your program.
Kera Wright [00:29:37]:
The way that I will work with clients is you assign tasks to me and then how you pay for that is you just buy a package of hours so you don't have to worry about commitments or long term. I find that working with agencies can typically be like a hassle where you have these long term commitments, but it's basically like you pay for what you need, you assign the task that you either don't want to do or don't have the capacity to do, and it's from someone you trust who's been in your shoes. So that's what planner pal is all about.
Dave Gerhardt [00:30:07]:
I love someone. If you're listening and you need a planner pal like Kara in your life, I hope you go to her LinkedIn and send her a message. Do you have a preferred stack of tech stuff for an event? Like, I'm going into this, going to figure it out as I go. Maybe I'll have to hire you as my planner pal for this. But do you have tools that you prefer to work?
Kera Wright [00:30:32]:
I mean, I think everyone should have some sort of project management tool. I love Monday, I'm a Monday girl. But Asana is great. You can use ClickUp, you can use whatever. But I think one place where all the tasks live and you can easily assign those tasks and know who's doing what when everything's due. I think that's like a must. I also think in terms of spreadsheets, I feel like event managers are notorious for their spreadsheets but have some sort of central document where information about the event lives. So there's like a live document that's like where you're collaborating and then there's like an information document.
Kera Wright [00:31:14]:
I call it the key info doc. I got that shout out to my old manager, ericall Carly. She introduced this concept to me and I've kept it ever since. So you have a key information doc where people know this is the source of truth about the event. I typically put it in like a Google sheet, but really it could be anything. And then what else? I mean, you have slack. I like slack for instant communication. Email serves a purpose.
Kera Wright [00:31:38]:
I know I said earlier, no one reads your emails, but it does serve a purpose. So whatever your email client is. But in terms of tech, I think really just like having a project management tool is like my main, like, yes, you need that. It's worth it.
Dave Gerhardt [00:31:53]:
Yeah, I feel like after that, as you get closer to the event, it becomes, well, depending on the content, like if it's an event programmed with speakers and breakouts and all that stuff, the other doc that becomes so key is that run of show doc, like, okay, this time, nine to 9898 to 920, the breaks, all that stuff becomes so essential for the timing of the day.
Kera Wright [00:32:17]:
Yeah, for sure. And I would even say you could fit that into the key info doc, so the more you can congest it, the better. And then in terms of registration, I love splash, but that's typically for, I would say not necessarily events with multiple sessions or multiple tracks, then maybe like visible would be a good fit there. They're a great team, but yes, visible in terms of registration and signing people in, those are great.
Dave Gerhardt [00:32:42]:
Are you happy to be back doing in person events again? I'm sure it was challenging to have in person events be such a part of the job. Then for a couple of years, every event marketer is forced to pivot to managing virtual events and webinars. And now you get to go back and do what you love.
Kera Wright [00:33:01]:
Yeah, there is nothing like in person and it is very validating to see how the rest of the world gets it. Now. Events are important. It's important that we get together. Just because it could have been an email doesn't mean there's no value in us sitting down face to face. Yeah, virtual. It was a doozy for a while. At first it was kind of exciting, and then it just got old.
Kera Wright [00:33:24]:
It got old really quick. I think there's still a place for it. But yes, I'm very excited that events are back in full force and that the rest of the world is as excited about it as I am.
Dave Gerhardt [00:33:36]:
Yeah, it's a great appetite for it now. And I think your point is exactly it, which is like, it's maybe the content on stage and everything, if you have presenters, but I think it's the breakouts, it's the networking. A friend of mine, Pep, he runs this company called Winter and they did a great event last. He's doing another one now, I think it's in Austin in April, called Spring. He did one a year or two ago. Yeah, it was last fall and it was awesome. He had five or six speakers. I was a speaker, but my talk was like 20 minutes max.
Dave Gerhardt [00:34:09]:
He's like, it's got to be 20 minutes max. But then what they did is in between every talk, they had ten to twelve people at like a roundtable, and there was maybe 20 tables in this venue, and they paired everybody up by topic, and so they said, okay, this is Kira. Kira is interested in events, product marketing and career mentorship. Right? And then you go to the 1115. There's nobody on stage. Everyone goes to that table. And so you sit around a table with ten to twelve of your peers, all like, talking about a specific topic or. Everybody's struggling with one challenge in the business and I feel like people got so much value.
Dave Gerhardt [00:34:50]:
The speakers were great, but so much value came from those little breakouts. And that's something that I really want to do with this exit five event is like, oh, all these people are, let's say, solo marketers. Let's pair them up and do a breakout session where there's no speaker for that. But if we can get these twelve people just sitting around having lunch together, that's where the huge value in the event is going to be. And I think that that's such a cool thing that he unlocked with that. And I want to make sure that we do something like that. All these people, hey, let's say we got twelve event marketers. I want to pair them all up together and you all go break out and have a session because you meet two people that you can connect with for the rest of the year from that session alone.
Dave Gerhardt [00:35:34]:
You're going to associate our brand with that. That alone is worth coming up to Vermont for the event, right?
Kera Wright [00:35:39]:
Yeah, absolutely. And I love the idea of lightning sessions. I've seen that a couple of times. There's a couple of people that are doing that consistently. People's attention spans are just not long. I think 20 minutes is great.
Dave Gerhardt [00:35:53]:
Oh, I like that. I like that. Lightning sessions. Okay, so you're onto something, because what people like about this podcast and some of the exit five stuff is the very tactical stuff. Like what if we had speakers? But the speaker was like, I'm going to give you one lesson. It's not going to be a whole thing. It's going to be like, I'm going to tell you how to do, how I did this one specific thing. That could be cool.
Kera Wright [00:36:14]:
Yeah. And it's all about, I think, what made that event successful and what's going to make your event successful is, again, just being intentional. Being very intentional. That organizer knew, okay, what I really want my audience to walk away with is having made connections or having had meaningful conversations about the content, that the content just doesn't get presented and then disappear. Like, I want meaningful discussions to happen around the content. And then you can get as creative as possible. You can do whatever to make that happen. But just knowing what your intentions are and the goals that you have for your audience and for the experience, that is so key because that is the basis of which you engineer everything and make all the decisions around your event.
Dave Gerhardt [00:37:01]:
By the way, people think that I'm crazy, including you. I saw that look of people are going to come up to Vermont for this event, maybe. But one of the cool things about doing an event in an off market location is the cost. I can get an amazing. I'm looking at this place on Friday. It's like an amazing venue for a day, and it's like $1,500 or something.
Kera Wright [00:37:26]:
Oh, wow.
Dave Gerhardt [00:37:27]:
Something silly, right? Although people, on the last episode, people were giving me a hard time because I said how I didn't want to do an event for something about the cost. And my math was like, way wrong. I said, do you know how much it is to buy 100 people lunch? That's like, at least 30 grand. And, like, ten people DM me. It was like, buddy, your math is way off there. But I don't know.
Kera Wright [00:37:48]:
Sometimes these places are really ridiculous.
Dave Gerhardt [00:37:50]:
Well, yeah, if you're dealing with a place that has, like, a minimum, if you have to do everything, that can be the hard part. You have to do everything through this venue. And there's a minimum, then, yeah, you're buying lunch for everybody and it's $30 for some half ass box lunch.
Kera Wright [00:38:07]:
Yeah. Hotels tend to be, like, major violators in terms of your wallet, but, yeah, there's a lot of benefits to trying it out. And then I don't know what. I've never been to Vermont, but are there cool things about Vermont, like the location or something unique to Vermont that is Ben and Jerry's? I don't know, but something like.
Dave Gerhardt [00:38:31]:
Exactly. So we want to do something like that. So Ben and Jerry's is right down the street. And so either go there or have that be like, instead of alcohol or something, we'll have Ben and Jerry's. That's a nice thing. Also. It's going to be in the fall. It's going to be lovely.
Dave Gerhardt [00:38:47]:
I like to be outside and do things outdoors. And one of the things that I don't like about going events to events is when you feel like you're sitting in that hotel conference center for 12 hours, and you walk out of there and you're like, you need some fresh air. So I want to bake in. It can be optional. But imagine like, a run or a walk or a hike or some outdoor activity, like that morning or that afternoon. I want to bake something like that into it also.
Kera Wright [00:39:12]:
Yeah, that would be cool. Sometimes I feel like events can be like, have you ever been in a casino for a long time? They have no windows, no natural light. You're like, what time is it?
Dave Gerhardt [00:39:23]:
Yeah.
Kera Wright [00:39:24]:
Another thing I would say to think about is fall is there's a reason you want to do your event in the fall because it's a great time for events. But it's also when everyone does their events. So keep that in mind, too. There will be competition. It tends to be a busy season. I know. As an event manager, Q three was always a marathon. It was back to back trade shows.
Kera Wright [00:39:47]:
Everything. Everyone is doing everything.
Dave Gerhardt [00:39:51]:
I hear you, and you're right. It's also in my risk bucket. But how do you manage that? Like, if I do it during a slow time, oh, let's do it in July. But then people don't want to come for a work event because it's the summer. They got summer plans. Isn't it kind of just the game of events? Like, it's never going to be. Tell me if I'm wrong. This is my perspective isn't just going to be like, there's never a perfect time.
Dave Gerhardt [00:40:13]:
And so I kind of just got to pick a date and just go and hope that people plant my flag and hope people come. Or is there like a LinkedIn? Like, the best time to post is Tuesday at 08:00 a.m.
Kera Wright [00:40:24]:
The event calendar algorithm. Yeah. What does the event calendar algorithm say for your location? Because it has to be Vermont. So I feel like that kind of, you may be already ruling out extreme weather times and then the summer may not make sense. It's just a consideration. If it's a risk that you're willing to accept, then cool. But maybe, let's say if I was going to do an event and I was looking into maybe like warm weather destinations, like, oh, I want to do an event in Puerto Rico, then I could potentially make that a q. One thing, people are back from the holidays.
Kera Wright [00:40:59]:
People are energized. Maybe they're interested in doing stuff. Things aren't as intense as they would be in the fall. So it's just a consideration. It's not like, yeah, there's going to be risks no matter when you choose, but it's just like, just know the risk when you decide the date for your event.
Dave Gerhardt [00:41:18]:
Yeah, that's what's hard about this. I mean, this kind of anything in business and marketing, but there are a lot of variables that you can't control, and they're never going to be perfect. And so it's kind of why I just said like, yes, let's do it this year. Let's do it in the fall. Let's do it in Vermont. Just to kind of be like, look, we just have to go forward at some point. Otherwise I'd be like, well, what should I do it this time. This time, it's never going to be perfect, right?
Kera Wright [00:41:42]:
Yeah.
Dave Gerhardt [00:41:43]:
Do it.
Kera Wright [00:41:44]:
Decision fatigue. And that's a life thing. You learn the most from getting stuff done and just taking notes from that and iterating. So the fact that you're doing it, I think it's a good first step. You'll learn the most. Like, you can speculate as much as you want, but the most learnings will come after the fact once you see what happened in real life and how to fix things moving forward.
Dave Gerhardt [00:42:10]:
Yeah. And the buz of that morning when people start showing up is tough to beat. It's way better than hi. Who just joined my webinar.
Kera Wright [00:42:19]:
It's nothing like it. Oh, gosh. Event great.
Dave Gerhardt [00:42:22]:
I have to get some respectable clothing. I haven't left the house in a while. Have to get some presentable, maybe wear a suit or something like that. But anyway, Kira, maybe we'll have to get you up. We'll have to get you to be a part of this somehow. But thanks for hanging out with us on the Exit Five podcast. People can find you on LinkedIn. We'll put your link in the show notes to all this stuff.
Dave Gerhardt [00:42:41]:
And so maybe if somebody is thinking about doing an event this year and they need. What did you call again? Planner Pal.
Kera Wright [00:42:48]:
Planner Pal.
Dave Gerhardt [00:42:49]:
Planner Pal. And they need a planner pal for an event, they can hit you up and get some of your event marketing help and expertise. I've had a nice little afternoon talking to you. I appreciate you coming on the exit five podcast, and I'll see you around.
Kera Wright [00:43:00]:
Thank you. Thanks so much for having me.
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