No More Bad Events

Back in the Air (ft. Erica Spoor, Impact Point Group)

Episode Summary

This week’s guest, Erica Spoor, brings her energy and vitality to a wide-ranging conversation on inventive experiences, what’s next on the horizon in the event space, and how we’ll get people back on airlines while reshaping the status quo and the role of event planners as curators.

Episode Notes

Back in the Air (ft. Erica Spoor, Impact Point Group)

Erica Spoor on the present state and future potential of the event industry

OPENING QUOTE:

“If there's anything I were to coach an event planner on, it's to really refine the ability to manage your stakeholders and facilitate that hard conversation around what success would look like, and how do you…build on it in a way that would work for you.”

-Erica Spoor

GUEST BIO:

Erica Spoor is the founder, president, and chief strategist of Impact Point Marketing, whose mission is to help clients design innovative events that deliver measurable audience and business impact. Impact Point has been trusted by DocuSign, CISCO, and Comcast Business (among many others) to deliver world-class events that defy expectations and get results.

Links:

CORE TOPICS + DETAILS:

[4:57] - “I Got This”

Erica on embracing uncertainty

If uncertainty makes you uncomfortable, then event planning may not be for you. It’s a career in which you’re constantly being engaged by unexpected twists and turns, and having to adjust your expectations (and your plans) to accommodate them. Erica, for her part, isn’t afraid of uncertainty— and embraces its role in everything she does.

[23:05] - What’s Next in Event Planning

Erica Spoor

As in-person events begin to come back, Erica predicts (and hopes) that this won’t bring a reversion to the status quo. As we’ve learned how different formats can serve unique needs, there is an opportunity for reinvention in the live event space. She also predicts a heightened focus on sustainability in the way that large events are run, powered, and executed.

[24:31] - From Organizers to Curators

More than just planning activities

In order to inspire people to come back to in-person events, Erica believes we’ll need to curate experiences that are not just impactful but meaningful to them. Meanwhile, the role of event organizers will be to ensure that they are safe and enjoyable while ensuring that everyone has the experience that makes these events so special.

[25:10] - Relevant Content & Real Connections

The two ingredients for a great event

What makes a perfect event? According to Erica, it’s all about content & connections. The content has to be compelling, provocative, relevant, and creative. The experience should offer something attendees have never seen before. Meanwhile, events should provide an opportunity for real connection— not just the exchanging of emails or business cards, but the opportunity to forge real and powerful relationships.

RESOURCES:

[2:52] About Impact Point Group

Follow Erica Spoor:

Follow Scott Bloom:

ABOUT NO MORE BAD EVENTS:

Brought to you by eSpeakers and hosted by professional emcee, host, and keynote speaker Scott Bloom, No More Bad Events is where you’ll hear from some of the top names in the event and speaking industry about what goes on behind the scenes at the world’s most perfectly executed conferences, meetings, and more. Get ready to learn the secrets and strategies to help anyone in the event industry reach their goal of putting on nothing less than world-class events.

Learn more at: nomorebadevents.com

ABOUT THE HOST:

A veteran comedian and television personality who has built a reputation as the go-to choice for business humor, Scott has hosted hundreds of events over two decades for big and small organizations alike. Scott has also hosted his own weekly VH1 series, and recently co-hosted a national simulcast of the Grammy Awards from the Palace Theater.

As the son of a successful salesman, he was exposed to the principles of building a business at an early age. As a comedian, Scott cut his teeth at renowned improv and comedy clubs. And as a self-taught student of psychology, he’s explored what makes people tick and has written a book (albeit a farce) on how to get through life. He’s uniquely positioned to deliver significant notes on connecting people and making business seriously funny. And who doesn’t like to laugh?

Learn more about Scott: scottbloomconnects.com

ABOUT eSPEAKERS:

When the perfect speaker is in front of the right audience, a kind of magic happens where organizations and individuals improve in substantial, long-term ways. eSpeakers exists to make this happen more often.

eSpeakers is where the speaking industry does business on the web. Speakers, speaker managers, associations, and bureaus use our tools to organize, promote and grow successful businesses. Event organizers think of eSpeakers first when they want to hire speakers for their meetings or events.

The eSpeakers Marketplace technology lets us and our partner directories help meeting professionals all over the world connect directly with speakers for great engagements.

Thousands of successful speakers, trainers, and coaches use eSpeakers to build their businesses and manage their calendars. Thousands of event organizers use our directories every day to find and hire speakers. Our tools are built for speakers, by speakers, to do things that only purpose-built systems can.

Learn more at: eSpeakers.com

Episode Transcription

Erica Spoor:

If there's anything I were to coach an event planner on. It's just really refine the ability to manage your stakeholders and facilitate that hard conversation around what would success look like, and how do you yes, and the stakeholder's idea, not shut it down, but build on it in a way that would work for you.

Scott Bloom:

Welcome to No More Bad Events, the podcast for professional event organizers and anyone who wants to take their events to the next level. Each week, we'll hear from the best in the business and get an inside look at what goes on behind the scenes at the world's most perfectly executed conferences, meetings and more. Together, we'll learn the secrets and strategies to help us reach one big goal. No More Bad Events, our show is brought to you by eSpeakers, and I'm your host, Scott Bloom. Let's get started.

Scott Bloom:

Today's show is sponsored by ImpactEleven, formerly known as 3 Ring Circus, the best and most diverse and inclusive community built for training and developing professional speakers. They're not just elevating an industry we know and love. They work with hundreds of speakers to launch or scale their speaking businesses, earning tens of millions in speaking fees, landing bureau representation, securing book deals and rising to the top of the field. If you're looking to take your speaking career to the next level, they'll help you make a bigger impact, faster. To learn more and schedule a free intro call, visit impacteleven.com, that's Impact E-L-E-V-E-N dot com.

Scott Bloom:

No More Bad Events is produced and presented by eSpeakers, who believes in the magic that happens when the perfect presenter gets in front of your audience and moves them. The eSpeakers marketplace helps you find, connect with and hire from the deepest catalog of experts who speak on the planet. The platform makes it easy to find, contract and pay the expert who will ignite your audience to accomplish your meeting goals and exit to a standing ovation. For more information, visit espeakers.com/nomorebadevents. That's espeakers.com/nomorebadevents.

Scott Bloom:

What would you expect from a chief event strategist other than solid strategies for making good events better? Well, Erica Spoor does not disappoint. In today's podcast. Erica, the founder and CEO of Impact Point Group, brings high level insights and unbounding vitality to our ever evolving world of events. Known for blending the art of inventive experiences and the science of proven strategic planning, Erica shares her vision of what's next on the event horizon that will keep things relevant and valuable. She'll touch on the headwinds and tailwinds ahead, how will get reticent people back on planes, she'll address reshaping the status quo and our roles as curators of gatherings. Finally, she'll talk about why the best events come down to the relevancy of the content and meaningful connections, and why any event that doesn't take advantage of that could have been a better event. It's fascinating stuff. So, without further ado, let's jump right into it.

Scott Bloom:

What drew you to this work and how did it all start? I know you have a background in journalism, you did some communications, you had a career in tech for a while. How did you get to where you are right now?

Erica Spoor:

I just found my way to events within corporate marketing. So, I was brand side and it just attracted me because it's such a great combination of strategy and content, which resonated to me being a journalist and then audience, you have to engage the audience which I felt was really familiar too. But the other thing about events is just the energy. Just the fact that they are... they have so much energy and that's part of my personality. I'm just a pretty high energy person. So, it felt like a very active place to be in corporate marketing, and I've always loved that. Also, I'm a sucker for a deadline. So, I love the fact that events, they have a deadline, they don't move, which is something I think that's a carryover for my journalism career. So, that magic mix is what drew me to events.

Scott Bloom:

Yeah. It seems like you enjoy the pressure.

Erica Spoor:

Yeah.

Scott Bloom:

You sain when we're going through this whole pandemic, you were like, "Yeah, my clients are stressing, but I got this." Is that just who you are or that's what gets you excited?

Erica Spoor:

That's interesting. I think it is a little who I am. I feel uncertainty doesn't really scare me. I always like a challenge and adventure, but I acknowledge that's not fun for everyone, and certainly not everyone on my team is wired that way. Certainly some of my team would like to have a little bit more certainty, but... Yeah, for me, I feel my brain always wants to solve a new challenge and I think that's fundamental to strategy. So, when things changed for us in our industry, it just felt like, "Oh my gosh, a whole new set of problems to wrap my head around." And so for me, that is really energizing. And generally when we're trying to bring in team members into Impact Point Group, we're looking for someone who also thrives in that, in that environment of maybe they're not being a roadmap and needing to be the one that has the confidence to move through that ambiguity and come up with some ideas on the other side.

Scott Bloom:

So, what new challenges are you looking at now? We're coming back to live events. As you mentioned, there's a lot of uncertainty. What are the big challenges now?

Erica Spoor:

Well, we've trained our audiences, that they don't have to go to events, so that's been hard. We know from our survey results that at least 30 to 40% of most of our clients audiences want the option to not be in person. So, that's challenging, when we all want to get back to in person events to know that we have this percentage of the audience that doesn't want to, they want to stay in their jammies.

Scott Bloom:

Isn't that amazing?

Erica Spoor:

Yeah.

Scott Bloom:

Yeah, it's amazing now that people just want to stay home. That's going to create an interesting culture.

Erica Spoor:

Yeah, I agree. I think it's going to be definitely a headwind we'll be dealing with for a while in our industry. I think we almost have to convince people, I think, to get on a plane and remember what it's like. And I think when they get there, they're going to realize, "Oh right, events create meaningful connections. They give me something that no other... that I can't get from a digital website." So, I just think in part there's just a percentage of people that have gotten used to it. I do think that the opportunity there, I think it's just really broken, open accessibility in our industry. So, the one positive part of it is, I think there are a lot of people not attending events because either socially, they don't like a big environment. They weren't comfortable there, they might have had mobility or other disability issues that they didn't feel they could overcome, or maybe they had cost challenges. And I think in some ways, being able to do digital events has made us make events more accessible, which I think is nice. That's a nice part of it.

Scott Bloom:

Yeah. So, I think we have to find a way to get them excited, to get back out there. So, what are you offering your clients? Well, what would you say the status quo now is, and what would you like to see, at least your clients try that's a little different?

Erica Spoor:

I think it's a good question. There is a lot of experimentation happening now. So, I feel like the idea of there being a status quo for in person is being questioned. I do think people are trying a lot of different things. Some companies are going back to big, large in person gatherings, and others aren't. They're starting small or they're going to take the event to their customers or their buyer in region. So, I think we're seeing a lot of experimentation, and I think from the in person perspective, what I'm really encouraging our clients to do, is just to think about the differentiation, the things that you cannot do remotely. Having an active conversation like we're having now in person and having the audio channels to have a two-way dialogue that we don't always have, remotely. I think that's valuable and powerful. I think it's really about creating the experience in the moment that's about meaningful connection and interactivity and just hyper hands on, because those are the things that I think I know I've been missing in this last two years, and I think most of the population has also missed that.

Scott Bloom:

Yeah. We all crave that to actually be in person. I totally get the feeling of, "Hey, I don't want to get on a plane and I can do this remotely," But we all know a lot of times we're not getting the full impact of whatever the event is. You had some thoughts, I read about during the pandemic digital versus in person, where do you see digital being used now? We're almost moving from the term virtual to digital, which it gives it a little bit more flexibility. Virtual is not just a zoom meeting. Digital can take many components. So, how is your team and how is IPG looking at digital differently now?

Erica Spoor:

Yeah, I think digital is to me all about broad reach and just having the ability to really engage, like I said before, audiences that weren't going to get on a plane anyway. And also, I think people who aren't as familiar with your brand, your offering, your services, who want a lower barrier to entry than paying a fee or getting... taking time out of their schedule. I think digital just gives us this whole new tool set to engage audiences that just weren't even participating in the past. So, that's how we see the digital opportunity.

Erica Spoor:

What I don't think is going to happen is a lot of hybrid, what people call hybrid, which to me a true hybrid would blend the audiences. You'd have in person people talking to people who weren't at the event, and I don't think we've seen the use case for that yet. I don't think anyone has seen like, "I want to talk to Scott Bloom in person. I want to see you if you're there." I don't necessarily value going to Las Vegas to a convention and then getting on a web conference with you from there, or even get putting on a virtual reality headset and having some avatar interaction. I don't think we're quite there yet where we're really talking about hybrid events.

Erica Spoor:

When we're working with clients, digital is one tool and channel and it's optimized for remote audience, and then in person, you have to go back to those same principles of what makes a fantastic in person experience and how do you blend that magic mix of content and experiential creativity to make it this really unique, compelling value proposition that gets someone on a plane.

Scott Bloom:

Yeah, I definitely agree. It's funny because as we were navigating through these different modes of delivering content virtual, the word hybrid kept on popping up. As I speak to more and more people, hybrid sort of gone by the wayside, people realize that's not really what people are looking for that. I think that was maybe a transition thing. Tell me a little bit about how either digital keynotes can become more authentic, more real. What do people need to do to be able to communicate as effectively digitally?

Erica Spoor:

There's a couple of things. One is, I think, how it's produced is important. I think that thinking about shorter intention spans and segments of content that people can come in and out of is important. Cadence, pacing, rhythm, those have always been important to us when producing keynotes, but I think they're even more important now. I've seen hit or miss with getting audience engagement in keynotes. I don't know that we've mastered that, but what I think I've seen work has been when it's truly moderated. And then, I think that what we've seen just be really effective is certainly this works well, especially with celebrity keynotes, but just the intimacy of being in their home was so transforming in the last two years. So, we did a panel with Hannah Storm, Billy Jean King and Serena Williams for one of our clients, and it was so heartwarming to just see them in their home offices and they were so authentic and so just really relaxed and informal and that informality, I think, went a long way with creating a lot of a real authentic connection with the audience.

Erica Spoor:

So, I don't know that that's something like an executive at a company could translate into their keynote or... But I do think it's something like a thought leader could leverage as a technique to just really break that barrier down of the pump and circumstance of being in a formal keynote setting. And instead just be very authentic authentically in the moment. So, those are some of my ideas.

Scott Bloom:

Yeah. I think that the whole idea of we were coming into people's homes, made everything more real. It also put everyone on a playing... the same playing field. And yes, we saw it. Even in the late night talk show hosts were going into their homes, who are seeing their kids. Do you think we can bring that authenticity then back into in person events, let's jump back into that world. How do we do that? How do we make it as casual and intimate as we've been able to do it? That was the pro of this one-on-one with the camera, is it was intimate. How do you bring intimacy to a conference?

Erica Spoor:

Great question. We've seen people play with formats in the round that does bring you a little bit in. So, there might be something around formatting for sure, how to make a big space feel small and really leaning in on that. I think it's just maybe in the tone and how we coach our keynote speakers going into this next phase, to just really think about the fact that people are a little fatigued with the barriers that we've had with these video conferencing tools and this digital experience, and maybe it is time to just come out with a little bit more of a demeanor that's a little more authentic and have our stories support that, in our anecdotes, instead of talking all about pro business and industry and all of that. Talking a little bit more about the personal side of what got that person to the stage. Those are things that I think I would certainly appreciate as a viewer or audience member.

Scott Bloom:

Yeah. It must be tough for these executives now that they have to maybe rethink how they are going to position themselves or present themselves to their teams. So, tell me. Let's talk about maybe something from the past. This is called, No More Bad Events. You don't have to say you were involved in it, but maybe it was an event that you were watching, what does a bad event look like? What is the experience like for the person who's attending that event, and then maybe we can talk a little bit about how to never let that happen again. Is there anyone... any event that comes to mind? It was just hysterically bad. It was terrible.

Erica Spoor:

I hate to call out a type of event, but I think the events that I've had probably the most challenging experiences with have usually been association led events. And for the reason being that, and I don't mean to call out all associations, this isn't true, no generalizations here. But I do have one in mind.

Erica Spoor:

I'm a member of a women's leadership organization and I went to the annual conference and I was just completely astounded by the fact that we had thousands of really, really phenomenal, powerful business leaders in the audience and they proceeded to run us through presentation after presentation from board member and sponsor and all of these talking heads that really were all about paying off the association's benefit and nothing about the participant. It was such a myth. We were sitting at round tables, we could have all been having amazing provocative conversation. They could have done very short snippets of thought leadership talks and then have us all connect. And I would've walked away feeling that was worth, it's worth the investment in spades, but instead I walked away thinking, "Oh my gosh, I don't know if I'll ever attend one of those again."

Erica Spoor:

For me, it always comes back down to the relevancy of the content and how meaningful the connections are. And so any event that doesn't take advantage of that to me, feels like could have been a better event. But then there's also the catastrophes that we have just seen happen. I think the hardest thing for me to have watched in the last couple years was just the massive technical failures some companies had in executing their digital events. You couldn't do anything but feel just terribly empathetic because it could have been me in that seat the next week. So, I think that the industry, we saw a series of them, at least in the tech industry really struggle and quickly recover and everyone quickly learned from it, and made sure they had redundancy in all the testing in place that they needed for the next round, but those were hard to watch for sure.

Scott Bloom:

Yeah. Just never seemed to get easier with the tech. It's so funny. There's not a lot going on, but there's plenty of room for error. Tell me about a situation where maybe it was an event of yours or an event that you were participating in somewhat where you came in and saved the day. I assume you probably don't want to get to that point where you're saving the day in that moment, but there must have been something where there was an issue with something and you found that perfect fix.

Erica Spoor:

Gosh. There's a lot of small examples, but again I'm going to come at it from the world we live in. So, most of our focus on onsite at events would be content and agendas and speaker management. That's what we do a lot of at events. So, I would say that maybe one of my save the days was when I had two contrasting speakers presenting, and one of the speakers, these are both external luminaries and one of the speakers completely did not get the memo that she only had 20 minutes. And she had, I think 100 slides, in 20 minutes.

Scott Bloom:

At what point did you realize the 100 slides?

Erica Spoor:

When she got on stage to do her tech check, and she wouldn't come out earlier, she wouldn't rehearse earlier. She literally was coming to plug her machine in, test it, go backstage and then come back on stage in 15 minutes. So, I literally just sat down with her and I helped... We literally plucked out the slides and got it down to the 20-minute run time and she went back on stage, and it went great. That's an example of what is common challenges of just dancing around behind the scenes, pulling something off, changing content, making adjustments and refinements so that the audience doesn't notice it and the speaker looks fantastic.

Scott Bloom:

Right. Right. I'm sure there's been situations where things have gone on during the event, we've all seen the occasional.

Erica Spoor:

Oh yeah.

Scott Bloom:

A little fire started up. We had to put that out. We've had people get a little sick at the events, any of those type of stories that you have?

Erica Spoor:

Oh yeah. We had a strike at one of our events come into our keynote rooms, parade into the actual keynote room during one of our keynotes, that was extremely challenging.

Scott Bloom:

And it was clear it wasn't staged, right? It was clear it wasn't part of the event.

Erica Spoor:

No, it was a hospitality strike. Our client's comp convention got targeted.

Scott Bloom:

Wow.

Erica Spoor:

Which is really unfortunate. So, they did a great job of masquerading as attendees came in and completely almost like flash mobbed, a protest.

Scott Bloom:

If they did it with music, it wouldn't have been that bad.

Erica Spoor:

That wouldn't have been. That would have been so much better.

Scott Bloom:

So let me ask you, in your experience, what do you think most event professionals or event planners get wrong? Where do they miss the mark?

Erica Spoor:

So, here's the thing about event planners. I feel like they're magicians. I almost don't even feel like I am event planner, an event planner. I look at my colleagues who truly are hardcore event planners, and I think they can literally pull a rabbit out of a hat. The things they pull off for their companies and their associations and their agencies with very little time, no money, no people are totally amazing. And yet, I think that what maybe event planners could practice a little bit more is, honestly, the art of saying no. I think event planners have a really hard time going back to executives or leaders or board members or whoever their key stakeholders are, and really saying like, "No, we actually can't do that well in the time that we have," or, "No, that actually isn't what our audience wants," or, "No." Actually, that's not going to have the impact you want. You think it sounds really funny, but it's going to be really bad.

Erica Spoor:

And I think event planners just have a hard time because they're just naturally used to being a magician that solves the problem and comes up with the solution. So, if there's anything I were to coach an event planner on, it's like just really refine the ability to manage your stakeholders and facilitate that hard conversation around what would success look like and how do you yes, and the stakeholder's idea, not shut it down, but build on it in a way that would work for you.

Scott Bloom:

And I'm sure you've gotten really good at it over the years. How do you manage your, your clients? They have either big ideas that you really realize you don't have a budget for, or you have someone who's as you said, trying something. So, how do you carefully maneuver around their expectations?

Erica Spoor:

For us, I think we always find it to be most successful when honestly the client comes to that conclusion on their own. So, we can help facilitate a conversation around event, like what's the strategy for annual conference. We can walk it back to like, "Okay, let's look at the constraints." Always using our facilitation training to bring it back to it being their idea is always better than us coming in and saying, that's a bad idea. Because the one thing that's contrary, I think to a lot of belief is, if you are a consultant or an agency partner, the last thing your clients really want is a lot of advice. Generally, what they'd like to just understand is how you can help them get to their outcome, that includes it being their idea. And I think that's really important to let our clients own that and come to those conclusions on their own.

Scott Bloom:

Well, so step inside the No More Bad Events time machine and trail back to your best or favorite event of all time, walk us through the experience and why was it so great?

Erica Spoor:

Yeah, I think it was probably when I launched a C level event for a client back in early 2000s, and there was so much pressure around it because it was dealing with their executive leadership team and they'd never done it, they weren't sure they would be able to get the audience there. I just remember showing up in the room and we had this beautiful room set up with a very insular high level theater and production aesthetic. And we had done great job prepping the speakers, we had amazing external speakers, we had internal speakers that were really ready to talk about things at a C level, at a CIO level and not sell and pitch. I think I just remember that the host stepping on stage at that moment and just this had goosebumps and I thought we finally... we built it, we conceived of it, we built it, we persuaded our clients all along that it was going to work, and here we are and they look fantastic. Our client came off looking like just an amazing thought leader in their industry, and that felt incredible.

Scott Bloom:

That's what we're all trying to do. We're all trying to be successful together. And so, we talked a little bit about transitioning back from virtual, now there's going to be digital there's in person. Where do you see overall the events industry going in the future? What are some of the headwinds, some of the tailwinds for people to plan for?

Erica Spoor:

Well, let's see. I see us coming back to in person. I do, but as I said, I'm hopeful that there's not going to be a status quo. What I don't want is to see us go back to the easy sit and get formats and really not use this opportunity for reinvention. As I think about our tailwinds, like what we have going for us, it's really this opportunity to rethink the experience. I don't think audiences have preconceived notions anymore, so let's take advantage of that. I think we also have this amazing opportunity as an industry to be more sustainable. I think that's been something we've been talking about at nauseam in the event's industry for a very long time. And to me that's one we have to get right now. So, I think that gives us also a reason to reinvent formats.

Erica Spoor:

It might be a reason to not have these massive events with massive footprints that generate all of this potential waste. So, I think that those are some of our tailwind opportunities for sure. And maybe you could say sustainability is a tailwind too, but I do think we have some work to do with regard to recovering our budgets for in person events. I think that's going to be a short term headwind. We could buy speakers for less, they would come in digitally and we're just seeing the expenses go up from on the expense side and yet the budget recede. So, I think there's some tension there that we're going to have to work through in the next 12 to 18 months, for sure. That's pretty real for most of our clients. So, those are some of the things I think.

Erica Spoor:

And then, like I said before, I'm just aspirational that instead of just coming back as in person events, we can really come back and use our opportunity to help people, remember what it feels like to socialize, to feel comfortable and psychologically safe being back in person, to have a way to start a conversation with someone they don't know because we haven't been doing that for two years. So, I think that we just have this opportunity to really play like the curator of gatherings, that role, and just really make it friendly, safe, and a fun thing to engage in again, as we go forward, because we're going to spend our time in person, I think a lot more wisely than we have in the past. So, I feel we have a responsibility there.

Scott Bloom:

I love that term curator of gatherings. That's what it really is about, and maybe that's what's going to drive the strategy about bringing back people is how do we bring everyone together so that they have an experience that is not just impactful, but is meaningful to them, that they get some benefit out of that. And I think that's something that people definitely will have to keep in mind. I like to ask people we talk to this question. Often people will ask, how do you make an event a 10 out of 10? In your mind, what does an 11 out of 10 look like in the event world? What does an 11 for you look like?

Erica Spoor:

I think an 11 would really have to do some things that we're not able to do now. So, I might need a magic wand for the 11. And what I mean is, I think for me at 10 out of 10 is when you hit that perfect unison of really meeting the attendee goals and objectives and the organization or the business that's hosting its goals and objectives. So, I think just having the content be completely compelling, provocative, relevant, just spot on is like table stakes, you have to do that to get a 10 out of 10. It has to be creative experientially, give me something that I've not seen before, give me voices and perspectives I've not heard from before. So, I think for sure those things are the things we have at our disposal now to do.

Erica Spoor:

I don't think it has to be big. I think smaller doing a 10 out of 10 now and 11 out of 10 is a small event for the right audience done really well. As opposed to spreading your budget across a big audience and trying to do something mediocre for everyone, I think it's more important than ever to do that. And then for me again, if I were to have a magic wand, an 11 would be carbon neutral, we're able to do this in a way that doesn't leave a footprint, right? So, we probably have to change some of the ways we're doing things as an industry for that to happen, but that would be 11 out of 10.

Scott Bloom:

Sounds perfect. 11 out of 10, that sounds perfect. Well, yeah, I've really enjoyed getting a chance to meet you and to speak to you. There are some big changes on the horizon and people are definitely learning how to adapt. We need to all be able to think a little differently and hopefully some great things will come out of it. Some better meetings, people getting more out of them become more memorable and maybe we can continue to create 11 out of 10 meetings, if we do it right. So Erica, thank you so much for joining us here today. It's been my pleasure.

Erica Spoor:

Thank you, Scott.

Scott Bloom:

That's it for now. I've been your host, Scott Bloom, corporate event MC and comedic keynote speaker. And of course, your connoisseur of connections. If you like more information you can find me at scottbloomconnects.com or you can book me directly for your next event on eSpeakers marketplace at espeakers.com/marketplace. And if you like what you heard, subscribe on Apple, Spotify, Google Podcast or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. If you love what you heard drop as a review and don't forget to share with your friends. For show transcripts and show notes with resources to help you get even more out of the show, visit nomorebadevents.com. No More Bad Events is produced and presented by eSpeakers. And we're grateful to our sponsor ImpactEleven for helping us make our show possible. Thanks for listening. Now, go out and make your event a good one.