Our guest this week, Sharon McCullough, President and CEO of Expert Events. Sharon talks with us about how she pivoted her event business during the pandemic. She took that time to help clients re-evaluate their event planning. She talks about how events are shifting from in-person, to virtual, and to hybrid. Even though an unknown time Sharon continues to assist clients in making the best choice for their events.
Guest Co-host: Kris Parsons: kris@parsons-pr.com
Kris' Website: https://parsons-pr.com/
Podcast Guest: Sharon McCullough
Sharon's Website: http://www.expertevents.com/
Transcription:
Kris Parsons00:03
Welcome to changing the rules, a weekly podcast about people who are living their best life and how you can figure out how to do it too. Join us with your lively host Ray Loewe, better known as the luckiest guy in the world.
Ray Loewe00:17
Good morning, everybody. And today we have Kristine Parsons and myself in the studio. Yay in wildfire podcast, Emporium I think it is in scenic Woodbury, New Jersey, and we're going to bring in our special guest Sharon McCullough in a little bit. But let's, we're talking about changing the rules. So, you know, one of the things that we found out, especially during this COVID thing is we've had even more rules thrust upon us. And we've seen, you know, what happens when people throw rules at people? I mean, you get rebellions, you get people, uprising on airplanes, and all kinds of other things. You know, and I think this brings to a point to bear that rules for the sake of rules, can cause all kinds of issues that maybe we don't want them to have. But we do all need rules. And we have choices here. We can pick those rules that give us the guidance to design our lives the way we want to design them, and the luckiest people in the world here do that. And we have another one of those luckiest people in the world. We're bringing your back, Sharon McCullough, we interviewed her a couple months ago. Yeah, but let me introduce Kris Parsons. Kris is on Parsons, PR and she pushes around our PR system the whole like she's supposed to. I brand you, I brand you. Yeah. And talk a little bit about our guest Kris and where we are going today.
Kris Parsons01:51
I will. Well Sharon, welcome back. We're happy to see you again. Oh, Sharon is a good friend of mine and also a business partner. She and I do a lot of events together. We have some wonderful stories of big fundraisers, we've done in places we've gone. So both of us kind of had a you know, put the brakes on our heels when everything got canceled for COVID. So, but Sharon is the president and CEO of expert events. I like to say that Sharon is an expert in eliminating boredom because she leaves people who attend her events feeling like they had the most fun evening and that the evening didn't last a lifetime. She is often her events have reflected in higher donations, repeat attendance, and a program that accurately and effectively speaks to what the organization's mission is. So Sharon is the real deal. She found that expert events and what is it 1992 Sharon. And that was after years at the University of Pennsylvania where she spearheaded their key fundraising events such as their 25th 250th-anniversary campaign and alumni homecoming. So she focuses specifically on academic and nonprofit institutions because of her unique experience understanding them, combining the mission and messaging to best engage constituents. In addition, though, and this has been very prevalent during this pandemic time, she provides her clients with the strategic evaluations of existing in house operations to help them streamline efforts with staffing, budgeting, logistical recommendations, because you know, now when you can't do any events is the best time to really re-evaluate and decide if you're doing the right thing. So Sharon, how about you start talking, and tell us a little bit about what you do and how you as a luckiest person in the world because you are one have pivoted, and you're doing things a little differently. Now, since we've had to kind of cut back on a lot of the events.
Sharon McCullough 03:51
Well, it was a very, very sharp halt. In 2020. The previous fall, I had had eight major events over the course of two months in five different states. So I was running as fast as I could and then all of a sudden there was nothing except getting through the cancellation of and re-booking of contracts for everything that was canceling for the spring of 2020. And then we went through that again, for the folks that had rescheduled for 2021. We still couldn't do it. So we were evaluated and there was another addendum of the contracts. So that was what I was supplying my current clients with was the expertise of looking at those documents and trying to make sure that clauses for future health related issues. There's something called the force majeure clause in a contract that you know if there's a hurricane or a labor strike or Terrorism got added after 911. But there really wasn't anything that related to something like COVID, to make sure those addendums was those were written in so that if we came up against it again, we could have, once again, get out of it, or finally get our money back from the deposits that had been that have been made, instead of just continuing to let the sites hold the money for another year. Because the organizations could certainly make good use of that in some other way or for their virtual events. So we did do a few events that, you know, some of the clients that were forward-thinking enough to kind of get a grasp on how to move into a more virtual realm for their events. And, you know, we've saw across the board, a lot of difference in how people approach that and trying to get work with clients to understand that, you know, the event was not going to necessarily be a whole lot less expensive, you would just allocate the budget lines a little differently, that, you know, you may not have a catering line, but your AV and tech support would probably be higher than an in-person event. So we did a lot of consultation, a lot of talking with our clients. But what I finally pivoted to do was to take a look at and I took a couple stabs at this because it was hard to tell when it was best to market it. I've done it twice for other organizations where we just jump in and interview everybody that moves in the organization or has done anything event-related, or even people who had rented space at a client for their own events and how they got through the system of being able to do that specifically University-related that was something that I have done for Pace University, where we just completely re-evaluated how their events program was instituted. And we did the same thing for the Inova health system in Northern Virginia. And it's particularly useful for, you know, well, two or two types of organizations, one large organizations like that, that have multiple locations, and Nova had five hospitals and pace had four different campuses, and how they were managing their events, in addition to how they were focused on, you know, what was important for getting those done. So in looking at coming back from COVID, what I have been working with, I just went back through my list of you know, all my former clients and said, Hey, you know, you're coming back to be able to do this. And basically, the worst thing people could do would just be to say, Well, hey, we've always done it this way. So we're just gonna jump right back in and do it again. So we're trying to help organizations really evaluate. And in many instances, I mean, it sounds counterproductive to running an event business. But in many instances, my first advice is, you're doing way too many events. Just you're getting into the same pockets for their money and even more important, their time. You're asking them to participate in too many things, and maybe a combination of events, a total retooling? Did you budget correctly, you know, all of those kind of analyses that lots of people make the mistake of once the events over, the follow up doesn't get done all that well. And they never really evaluate how successful they really were.
Ray Loewe08:55
You know, can we back up a little bit here, because I so much has changed here. And let's talk a little bit about your normal group that you service first, which are nonprofits and educational events. Right. So what are the kinds of boards and staff that you're dealing with here? These are boards are voluntary in a lot of cases. Right. Right. Well, almost and not particularly experienced and not particularly thinking about these things, other than the fact that this is the way we've always done it. Right?
Kris Parsons09:34
Which is counterproductive to changing the rules, right?
Ray Loewe09:36
Yeah. Okay. And, so now, not only have you had this, stop, put on things, but we've already started, we started but we started differently. So this whole concept of technology has come into play. That wasn't there before. That again, the people that you're working with, don't know necessarily have a lot of background in. Okay. And yet, this is a wonderful tool, I would think in those events where you actually brought in technology, how would you describe the way the events came?
Sharon McCullough 10:15
Well, the biggest thing that we did with that was for an organization out of South Carolina, and it was what was dubbed in, you know, I'm not sure hybrid event is totally correct, because as we move forward, that term will be used more to indicate an audience and a live event, supplemented with a stream of, uh, you know, streaming that out what we did in South Carolina, there wasn't an audience with the live event, but we set up two shooting studios, we had some live things going on. And it was a three-day conference. And there are now dozens, probably, of what are called platforms for doing a virtual event. And one was chosen by our client before we got on board. And it was a lot of ramp up because every one of them's a little different to all the pieces that we as the planners had to do. For the setup, there had to be, you know, all the speakers got put into one thing, and then that went up on an agenda. And everybody got to launch in and literally create their own conference agenda for themselves. And walk through that and everything that was live in their offices, we made it like walking into the ballroom for the keynotes. Because you literally went back to that segment, every time there were going to be MC announcements. So we had a live segment. And then the platform supported panels, and individual keynotes, some of which were pre-recorded and sent to us. And we could control those. Everything else went through a platform. And we had a speaker from Germany, we had a speaker from Switzerland we had, and people just tapped in the audience tapped in. We had probably seven or 800 people virtually, and generally, the conference live had about 250 people prior to that.
Ray Loewe12:28
So you can do all of these things virtually. And I would think that from the standpoint of an attendee Wow, my cost just went way down.
Sharon McCullough 12:41
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, that's gonna be the biggest challenge of relaunching, especially I think, for conferences, sure, you know, the local nonprofit that it's their gala fundraiser, Yeah could you join virtually and not have to get all dressed up. Yeah. And people will still do that. But I think that format for a gala, got a little tired over the course of 18 months. So you know,
Kris Parsons13:12
People still like to be in person.
Sharon McCullough 13:16
Ray's is good one that if I'm going to travel to Texas for a conference, I'm not only paying the conference fee, I'm paying an airline ticket, I'm paying for a hotel. And if I only get by within a conference fee, I can stay right at home. I think that those are going to be the hardest things to reboot up to live events.
Ray Loewe13:38
Especially if you can create an aura with good technology, right? But that makes it tolerable, okay? Because now you've got some real savings so I kind of see where you're going right now. So what's happening from your perspective is you got all of these potential clients, all these past clients who haven't been able to do what they wanted to do their way. Okay, and the first job is smacking them across the face of a couple times and saying, get over this, because we have something new here.
Kris Parsons14:13
That's better, that's actually better.
Ray Loewe14:14
That's often better. And, it can integrate, you know, in-person and virtual events, and you have the ability to do things that you never had a chance to do before. But you got to plan differently. Right.
Sharon McCullough 14:30
You do. And then the other benefit is, is it really does allow organizations to get a bigger reach on their geographic range, because people you know, even a local event, you know if you're out in the burbs in Philly, you may not want to drive downtown at night Park, do all that stuff to go to the event. I mean, they could increase their audience by you know, pretty decent percentage. And that's the Difference Between now and say, I don't know, eight or 10 years ago, because people would videotape their events and then make that available. people watched it, maybe they did, maybe they didn't. But now, you know, with live streaming at those events, the people in the room have the same experience that they've ever had. But if you attend virtually, you're doing it in real-time. And I think that also makes a difference.
Ray Loewe15:29
So here we are, we're at what we thought the end of COVID. Right. And now we have no clue as to what the end of this thing is, right? And people have to plan events. I mean, one of the things that are nonprofit has to do is they can't stop doing this stuff, right? They need the fundraising. Yeah, cuz they've got you got to support the staff, you got to do all of these things. So now the thinking is different. And what you're bringing to the table, I think, is this wealth of experience in the ability to help people analyze, where they should go, am I correct? And maybe how they should go there? And should we be doing more virtual things? Shall we? You know, hold back, I noticed you said earlier, maybe we do less events and we do them differently. So all this thinking comes into play. So how does an organization with limited staff and a nonprofit board of volunteers do this?
Kris Parsons16:34
They hire Sharon.
Ray Loewe16:37
We set you up on that one Sharon
Sharon McCullough 16:40
that, you know, people are starting to think a little more strategically. And that is, it's going to make a difference. And the scary part is for me, I have a conversation with the client this afternoon. Because their event is supposed to be in October. And, you know, when the how much further do we watch what's happening? And I think, you know, some, but we've got to be able to know when to pivot, again, using that word, since they were going to live stream the event and have a live audience as well. When do we pivot to totally, totally virtual, if things go downhill again when we hit the fall. So that's a conversation that I also have to have with a few people, I had a conference that's been postponed twice, that's going to be an international conference up in Rhode Island. And they've just resurfaced to start talking about doing what we plan to do in 2020 and 2022. And we're gonna, you know, approach it, like we're going to do it, but also have some and that they will hit a point. And I think people really do need to think about this, that if they have just postponed and postponed again, and not taken up that virtual baton, that they're going to have to do it because they're totally losing connection to us.
Kris Parsons18:18
The longer you are not connecting. And that's another thing I think you and I talked about Sharon, how people even though this, everything came to a complete standstill, you don't stop communicating, you have to keep communicating, you have to keep, you know, keeping your constituents abreast of what's going on. And you're still going and we you and I actually experienced that where some of our clients just stop talking. And we're like, you got to go back and talk to them. Tell them that this is what our plans are, we're doing this and we're doing that, and still keep talking about the mission. So I mean, I think honestly, in a time like this, the communication is more, not less. So. And that's why we were so happy that you participated a lot in our, our virtual things that we had, we had the virtual coffee hour and cocktail hour, because that was how you and I networked and got out and connected with people.
Ray Loewe19:07
You know, the thing is, still has to happen. And I think you brought this up this, this concept of a podcast, which is one way, okay. You know, we're sitting here, we're deciding what information we're distributing and the people that are listening, it can't communicate back, okay. And there's this element that has to be there. We do it with coffee and cocktail hours, where we have small groups of people that can sit down and we actually can have a conversation because you can't get rid of the conversation today. Right. So let me we're getting near the end of our time, unfortunately. And I want to kind of summarize a couple things. So we met first at the beginning of this COVID thing when all of a sudden you guys canceled. I don't know how many live events within like a couple of weeks of this thing. Right? And then all of a sudden everybody kind of drew in their horns, you know, and they sat there and said, Okay, what do we do and nobody did much of anything for a while. And then we came up with this whole concept of the virtual conference, the virtual ability to communicate. And now we find that's being overdone. And if you don't do it right, it's boring and you don't get the results that you want to get. And now we're coming up with maybe a hybrid conference in the future, and maybe we don't know when. So the importance of a coach or consultant here, I think is critical to this kind of a business. And I think what they really have to do is have the plan with the right clauses and the contingency plan. At least that's what I got out of this conversation. So am I on the right track?
Kris Parsons20:51
Well, what's interesting, I didn't even know some, you know, I didn't even know some of these clauses are important. I mean, Sharon, Sharon is very good at making sure people don't lose lots of money. You know, because when you sign a contract, you're signing a lot of money away. Oh, yeah. And knowing these clauses, I mean, these are some of the little sneaky details that like you said, Sharon, some of the people on the board Don't even think about don't know, don't have any idea. And yes, more than ever, I think you need an X, you need an expert events. You need someone who understands that so you get rid of some of the headaches.
Ray Loewe21:21
So how do we find you, Sharon? You got a website? I do expertevents.com. Okay. And we'll make sure we put that with our podcasting notes. And one of the things that we ought to do is we ought to schedule you for one of our cocktail hours so that people who listen to this thing can actually have a conversation with you, you know, and it's always good to see you anyway. Yeah. Well, okay, so we're
21:50
Burn wood and make an old fashion to do it.
Kris Parsons21:56
Sure. Yeah, Sharon came to one of our cocktails where we actually made a cocktail. And then Sharon, didn't you and your husband ended up making it at home? You had a great time?
Ray Loewe22:07
We did. So we're done. We're at the end of our time. So, any last-minute questions or comments from you?
Kris Parsons22:14
Know, just that, glad to have you on Sharon. And it's fascinating to see how you're, you're kind of its events, post-pandemic, and we appreciate you coming to our coffee and cocktail hours. So we can all keep the conversations going. Yeah, you
Ray Loewe22:27
know, and you and you prove a point to our listeners. And the point is that you know, people that have that focus on what they want to do find a way to get it done. And it's never easy, is it? never easy. And there's always, always a COVID of some kind out there. Some kind of pandemic and what you got to do is you got to understand that pivoting is part of the nature of the game, and that the luckiest people in the world do design their own lives, but that life changes periodically, and it changes because life changes. So you know, thank you so much for being with us again. You're always a joy to be with and to spend time with and you're always motivating. Yes. So I really enjoyed being with you. Great. So everybody. Have a great day. A great weekend. We'll see you all next week with some new exciting guests.
Kris Parsons23:24
Thank you for listening to changing the rules, a weekly podcast about people who are living their best life and how you can figure out how to do that too. Join us with your lively host of Ray Loewe, better known as the luckiest guy in the world.