Experts of Experience - #48 How To Create Great Experiences at Large-Scale Events

Episode Date: September 18, 2024

On this episode, Shane Beardsley, Vice President of Guest Experiences and Communications at the Jacob K. Javits Center in New York City, discusses the ever-changing landscape of convention centers and the importance of creating a great event experience. He highlights the importance of understanding the needs of different event demographics and being adaptable to meet those needs and emphasizes the value of consistency, listening to clients, and building strong relationships to ensure repeat business.Tune in to learn:Why Aggressive customer service and attention to detail are key in creating a great event experience.Why understanding the needs of different event demographics and being adaptable is crucial.The importance of consistency, listening to clients, and building strong relationships to ensure repeat business.How the Javits Center aims to provide a seamless and enjoyable experience for all attendees. Methods for tracking success of an event.Why leading by example and creating a positive on-the-ground experience are crucial for customer experience leaders.–How can you bring all your disconnected, enterprise data into Salesforce to deliver a 360-degree view of your customer? The answer is Data Cloud. With more than 200 implementations completed globally, the leading Salesforce experts from Professional Services can help you realize value quickly with Data Cloud. To learn more, visit salesforce.com/products/data to learn more. Mission.org is a media studio producing content alongside world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org.

It's something that I think about a lot in my work. It's not just the leader at the top who needs to have a really great conversation with the client. It's every single person who is there who is potentially going to talk to the customer. So how do you guide them to create a great experience? Leading by example is one of the things. I think if you walk around with any of the executives that I monitor to work with every day, picking up trash, we all do it. Finding a customer that has those lost eyes. We wear a button that says, yes, I can help on my name badge. Even for folks who don't have physical trash

to pick up. But for those of us in the SaaS world, for example, or B2B or B2C customer service, what's the trash that the leader can pick up? We should all be showing that we're willing to dive in, we're willing to get dirty, we're willing to do everyone's job and do it well. And I think that that's such a key leadership trait, especially when it comes to leading a team of client-facing people, because you have to set those examples or else it's going to impact your customer relationship. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Experts of Experience. I'm your host, Lauren Wood. Today, we are going to be diving into the event and conference experience space with Shane Beardsley, the Vice President of Communications and Guest Experiences at the Javits Center. For those of you who aren't familiar with the Javits Center, it is the busiest convention center

in the United States, and it hosts the world's leading conventions, trade shows, and special events on Manhattan's West Side. So really excited to dive into all things in-person events, which I know COVID's over and it has been for a while, but there's just, I'm just dying to go to in-person events these days. I don't know if you're hearing that from your customers or the people who are visiting the Javits Center, but I definitely feel it. Agreed. Agreed. Yeah. And we definitely feel it. I think the, you know, there's obviously multiple forms of tourism. Thereed. Yeah, we definitely feel it. I think there's obviously multiple forms of tourism. There's business tourism, travel tourism. And I think the travel is up.

New York City is buzzing again. And I think that the business tourism, everyone's being judicious with their monies and their finances. And you're not seeing these gigantic events on every category, but people want to get together. Really? So Shane, thank you so much for coming on the show. I'm excited to dive into all of this with you. And when I was thinking of what questions do I want to ask Shane, the number one thing I would like to know, and we're just going to kick it off right there, is what creates a great event? I think it's aggressive customer service. I think it's the ability to think about everyone's traverse in and out of your space. If it's your team members, exhibitors, event managers, patrons, invited guests, ticketed guests, it's okay. What could

go wrong being realistic, not pessimistic, and and, and trying to ensure that, that you've touched as many of those pain points as possible as you go through the, the process of getting people in and out of the building. You know, we were talking about it before a little bit that, you know, Javits is known for our anchor tenants, the auto show anime next weekend. Everyone seemingly in New York has been to the car show at one point in time, but it's the new events and it's thinking, okay, this is new for the entire building. It's new for our staff. It's new for our crew. How do we make that just a great experience for people coming in, making sure that we have the right food available for the demographic that's going to be in the space? So I went to an event there last year for Climate Week and I was meeting a client and one, I hadn't been to a conference, I don't think since before COVID. So I was extra excited about it. And it was my first experience at the Javits Center. And I have to say it was a seamless

experience. Just like one, the building is gorgeous. It's like so bright and airy, but also just being able to get around and find things. I found it to be quite seamless. And it's interesting that we're now kind of diving into that, but there's so much that goes into creating that ease for someone who's visiting. And I'd love to understand a little bit about how do you and your team approach

making sure that every little detail is thought of? Because I'm sure there's a lot to go through and a lot of people to collaborate on making that happen. Sure. I think the fundamental change that we've tried to create is that we're no longer an empty shell with loading docks, which is how the building was always operated as. And so we've tried to just simply be more proactive where I give the analogy where if someone comes into Javits, they have to sit on the floor and eat a bad cheeseburger. Nobody knows that there's 300 different decisions that were made. We drop tables.

We don't drop tables. We have a culinary partner in-house. We use a secondary culinary partner. We decided to cut food off. All that the person knows is that they came to Javits, had to sit on the floor and have a bad, bad, bad cheeseburger. And so it's working with the multiple show managers that come in. At any given time, we could have six events here with three or four different show managers, two or three different cleaning companies, two or three different security companies. And so each individual event runs on its own, but then in the same sense, it's my job and our job

to look back, to step back a little bit and think about all those different tentacles of events and how they're going to affect someone's traverse. And we happen to be six blocks long and a block wide. We happen to be in Midtown Manhattan. So we are very good at getting people lost. And so it's just being mindful of what that person's, again, their ingress and egress in and out of the city is. It's a lot of meetings. It's a lot of looking through event memos. It's a lot of early in the morning, late at night, sometimes when the

office is quiet, looking through an event memo and looking again, realistically, not pessimistically for what could go wrong. And okay, you know, the, you know, the, the F&B memo says the doors open at 10, but the event memo says doors open at nine. Okay. So what do we do about that? And, and, and small little things like that, that we're just always, just always checking and double checking. It's so much to organize. And I think that's why going to a place, I mean, if I were to host an event, the venue makes all the difference. Sure. And having a venue that is able to carry all those little details and help me as the producer to think about all those little details.

And especially in a place like the Janet Center, I can't even imagine. It's so big. Like you said, six blocks. That's wild. Six blocks. Millions of square foot of space. And yeah, it's and, you know, even some of the things like where do Uber and Lyft drivers drop off? And it may not correspond with the location where the event is. So you may have, you know, mass transit dropping people off, not necessarily where they're supposed to walk in the door. So you get your steps in for sure. So before we started our conversation, we were chatting briefly about the ever-changing landscape of convention centers and really what the Javits Center wants to be in now and into

the future. And I'd love to hear a little bit about how you're thinking about that. What can we expect in terms of convention centers? What can we expect from the Javits Center? What can we look forward to? Yeah, I think the clients drive a lot of that conversation. You know, when folks reach out and there's a decision to be made about bringing an event to New York, you know, corporate clients are a big part of our business. One-day sessions, one-day seminars for multiple different disciplines of corporate entities that come through. And as we were discussing, you're always going to have your anchor tenants. You're always going to have, you know, we always know when the auto show is.

We always know when anime is. We always know when Comic-Con is, boat show, National Retail Federation. You know, these stalwart events that we just know that are coming here. But it's the, it's the, the short run events. It's the events, the holiday parties of the world where everyone's potentially apprehensive about the election. They're apprehensive about the world environment going into the holiday party season. So we have our stalwart events, but then also we have these events that are coming up a lot faster. We pencil in dates for potential clients and maybe they wait to the end of Q3 to see what their holiday party is going to look like. Maybe

they wait to the end of Q4 to see what their sales kickoff party events are going to be in Q1. So to answer your question, rambling a second, but to answer your question, I think it's that ability to be amenable to what the clients are coming in and asking for, um, and having the spaces that can be pliable to be able to go back and forth to what the event designers, the event managers are actually looking for. Have you ever had any just like crazy requests? Yeah. Yeah. Uh, yeah. I think not, not all that I can say in public forums, but yeah, I mean, I think, you know, some of the times you get requests that maybe even seem crazy, but then when you find out the why, you know, Disney upfronts, for example, where, you know, there's 300 town cars coming into the space and everyone from Ryan Reynolds to the Kardashians are here, you know, there's expectations there. You know, we hosted BravoCon with Andy Cohen a couple of years ago, and it's since gone out to Vegas. You know, you can imagine the housewives of the

multiple different disciplines of housewives of this and housewives of that. I mean, some of the requests in there were a little crazy to a middle-aged guy, but yeah, I think that more often than not, you can kind of, you know, even with my background in concert center events before I came to the convention center world, you're always going to have unique requests depending on who's coming into the building. And I think sometimes if you can decipher the why as to what that request is, it may just be crazy, not outlandish, but you definitely get some crazy requests. I mean, you're actually highlighting something that is so fundamentally important about understanding the underlining need behind a request because we can make a lot of assumptions if someone's like, well, we really have to have, I don't know, coconuts from Aruba in the green room. I don't know what the requests are, but you might be like, okay, that's insane,

but maybe there's a good reason for it. Or maybe there's a, a, a business need behind it. Maybe coconuts isn't the right example, but you get what I mean. Yeah. There was always the analogy and you've heard 19 different bands associated with it, but it was M&Ms with the green M&Ms picked out. And it was, it was ended up being a litmus test to ensure that somebody was reading the concert writer. And again, it may, it may be a wives' tale. It may be actually never happened, but yeah, to your point, you just never know what the actual reasoning is. So. Exactly. And making sure that we ask those questions and help to understand, help our clients to explain what it is that they really need. And sometimes it's also helping them to understand why they're asking for something.

Yes. Which is an important skill in any client experience. Agreed. Agreed. But I can imagine, especially when you are dealing with not a standard set of requests, I would assume. Yeah. Correct. Yeah. And that's the the, that's the exciting, scary, nerve wracking, challenging, get you out of bed in the morning conversation is that every event that comes in often, even with the same event managers has a completely different genre. Um, you know, I think the three weeks that we're in the middle

of right now, I mentioned fanatics last weekend. Anime is this weekend. So you go from a sports centric event to an anime centric event. And then two weeks later, we have one of the world's largest art shows in the same exact spaces. So you're going just to that entire demographic switch from tens of thousands of people over two weekends to thousands of people, but they're looking to purchase artwork that, A, I don't understand, and B, I can't afford. And so I think that that's that kind of, that you definitely, there's very few dull moments in this landscape. How do you go about, and I'm not sure if this is part of your role or not, but really understanding

like the needs of that demographic and making sure that you're creating an experience that tailors to that when it's something that you may not understand yourself at all and it's constantly changing. Sure. Our sales and programming team does a fantastic job of vetting events when they come in and they ask a lot of great questions. We have several turnover meetings from when an event goes from a sales capacity to a booking into a kind of an event operations world. And, you know, we ask a lot of those questions. We ask a lot of, you know, is there anything specific that your event attendees require? Everything from the kosho and halal considerations all the way through ADA components, all the way through just things you would never think of.

You know, a group comes in from a different country and they may have a mindset. You know, we're also a union building. So you have to be mindful of what we're able to fulfill off of those requests, same exact time. So there's, like I mentioned before, there's a lot of meetings in our world, but the meetings always have a point. There's always, you know, we're having this conversation because we want to ensure that, you know, we can fulfill the promises made during the sales cycle. We want to ensure that quite honestly, the event comes back when it's appropriate, if it's an every year event, if it's every four year event to, you know, to make sure that those events are coming back and we can fill up that event calendar. I mean, that's a really important thing to clients to retain,

I can imagine. If they're once a year, it's clients to retain, I can imagine. If they're once a year, it's high stakes to have them come back. And everybody talks. I think that's the other... I think that it's a small world. I think even just in New York, I go to a couple of different events, either sustainability events or just some networking events or different associations. And you see the same faces, but just in different roles and locations. I think it's the same thing with the events

where there's not a dearth of a ton of event managers that could come into a building as big as ours and have events here. So you really have to ensure that you're doing the right thing. And we did it last weekend where one of the event managers had their birthday and we took them cookies, right?

And you can't even figure out how much it costs because it was so inexpensive to do it, but it was just that little, it was that little, that little gift that, um, and I hope he got them because it would have been a waste if we didn't. So. Yeah. What are some of the ways that you, I mean, cookies on a birthday is, is one of them for sure, but I'm curious to know, how do you approach that relationship development? How do you go about building a relationship so that you can have them come back ultimately and understand what it is that really matters to them? It's showing value. I think that's the one thing that we work on a lot, especially with our culinary team is everything in New York is

going to be expensive. I think average hotel room rates are $385 a night right now, which is great if you're in that department. But I think that it's showing value and showing compassion for what their needs are. And it's consistency. That's the biggest thing with me is that the teams that I have the honor of managing is just be consistently good. And admit when errors pop up because they're going to. If you're serving 15,000 sandwiches, one of them is going to be bad, guaranteed.

If you're doing plate service for 1,000 people, someone's going to drop a fork, it's going to happen. I think it's just being consistently good and ensuring that you're listening with both your ears open, but also taking notes and being mindful of, like you mentioned, kind of the hidden objectives and the hidden issues that come up on the front of outside. It happens in the back of outside as well, where you really want to make sure that you're paying attention to what someone's saying, what they're complaining about, what they're talking to you about, because that consistency over time will bring people back. Mm-hmm. And I think that when it comes to value, like sometimes I'm a customer experience consultant. So I work with teams on how do you show value, for example. And I find often people think,

oh, to show value, we should say, we did this for you and we did this for you and we did this for you. But really it's about listening to what it is that your client is saying, what it is that they need, and even the unspoken needs. And like you said, that consistency is something that is kind of just expected. We don't necessarily need to celebrate that because it's expected, but how can we listen to their needs and then deliver on those, maybe without them even asking for it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And taking good notes, right? We live in this day and age where you can do voice notes and voice memos

and notes filled in your cell phone, or you could go old school and carry a notebook in your back pocket, like some people do. Yeah, and so small things from years past. It's, you know, you fixed a problem and you go up and you make sure that that problem is remedied.

Maybe you give a little nod to the person that had the problem a year ago and say, yeah, we got you. You know, I remembered, you know, you got me last time. And yeah. And I think that those are the, cause again, I, for, for those amazing employees that have worked at Javits for decades, we have 35 year employees here. You have to always remind folks that they're coming to Manhattan. So you're flying

into a busy airport. You have to go across a bridge or a tunnel to get here. It's a lot. And so we have to be the place that once they get to us, it calms down. And that's a big part of it. Oh, completely. How do we make it easy for them? How do we guide them through the process, through this crazy process? I mean, if you've ever run an event, I've done it a couple of times in a light, like small events. And even that is insane. Yeah. Yeah. Watch, watch, watch a family member run a kid's birthday party and see how not happy that family's doing right before the party starts. It's, it's, and that once the, you And then once guests show up,

everyone's kissing cheeks and having high fives and enjoying the party. But that 38 seconds before the first guest arrives is never fun. Completely. And then in the case of what you're doing, just add 10,000 people to the party and see what happens. So yeah, I love that. How can we make it easy for our clients? How can we guide them through this process in a way that allows them to actually calm down despite everything that they're dealing with? It's huge. When you're using Salesforce to tackle your company's most important goals, failure is not an option. At Salesforce, they get it. They've made their most highly skilled advisors, Salesforce CTOs, available to help you with expert guidance and implementation support

at every step of your journey. Learn more about Salesforce CTOs at sfdc.co slash professional services. So I was curious, I wanted to talk a little bit about the property itself at the Javits Center because it's a historic building. It's been around for quite some time. When was it built? The original building was built in 1986. There was a couple of versions of renditions after that fact, some renovations after the fact. And then our North Javits space, which you were at during the Nest event, was completed in fall of 2021. Okay, So that was a new part. Okay. I only scratched the surface, apparently, of the Javits Center. Yeah. It's big. But it's also a LEED-certified building.

And it has a green roof. And I'm curious to know, how does that play into what it is that you're doing? Why go the length of actually getting it LEED certified and adding that kind of environmental component to the property? Twofold. I think the events that come in are asking for it. So we are out ahead of that. Many events that came in signed the UN Climate 2050 Pledge with some 2030 initiatives. So in order to be a signator of that, we've had

to get to that point. I think the story for our sustainable initiatives started from a bad place. We were killing thousands of birds a year. And so our CEO went to New York City Audubon, it's now New York City Bird Alliance, and asked for help. And we started putting fretted glass into all of our replacement glass that came in. When we built the addition, we built the expansion, it was 100% with fretted glass. We're down 95% when it comes to bird strikes. The executive team was then standing up

in Hudson Yards across the street, looking down on our roof and looked at an ugly gray roof. And the conversation was to put sedum grass up there. Then those 65 species of birds came after that, that actively used the roof space because we're not killing them by running into our windows anymore. And when the expansion came about, we then designed, built an acre farm. We have the second largest orchard in the country up on the rooftop. We have a greenhouse. And what's great is that, you know, you talk about a couple seconds ago, we talked about stepping back is we now have our culinary team working with our Broken Greens growing team in the creation of our catering menus. So our catering menus are designed October and November.

And at the same exact time, we're also designing and planning what our crop cycles will be so that when our 50 different varieties of produce come off the roof, they're going directly to our catering needs, to our retail needs, to our, you know, we have a staff luncheon all the way down to the 365. Our cafeteria has fresh lettuce coming off of our roof into the cafeteria. So the advantages that we built a new building, a lot of venues are trying to retrofit now, but no, I think the building itself is a huge asset. It's just Javits. So everyone just knows Javits. But I think that once we can get people here and have the tour, walk them through our spaces, look at our sustainable

initiatives, it really just becomes days and times at that point in time and obviously finances, but it's, it's, uh, the building is, is it's, it's pretty amazing. How has that added to your guest experience? Would you say? I think, you know, North specifically, um, you have something to look at the entire time you're in the space, the modern consumer, when they go to a trade show, when they go to an event, they walk in the door thinking about sustainable initiatives. They think consumer, when they go to a trade show, when they go to an event, they walk in the door thinking about sustainable initiatives. They think about healthy eating choices. And the advantage we have is we don't have to say anything when folks are in the space. You walk the space and you're seeing that. You're seeing a farm in the middle of the space. You're

seeing our apple orchard with the tree branches bowing right now because they're so full. It gives an extra event space. It gives the ability to go out on the terrace and and knock on wood i know with wildfires and everything else but knock on wood you get probably the freshest air you have in manhattan up um on the terrace looking out in the hudson river um so it it really adds to that experience because a lot of events are bringing that in as decor we have it here as our know, it's just what we have here. So I can imagine that for some of your customers, that's a massive value add. I mean, like I said, I went for a, I went to a climate week event there and I could, I actually didn't see the orchard. Now I'm like, I have to go back and see this. It's an open invitation. I totally agree.

I think that it's, you know, a lot of when you get the pro formas for events in the RFP phase, they ask for things like diversion rates. They ask for sustainable initiatives and what's your carbon footprint. And to our sustainability team's credit and to our CEO's credit, we're so far ahead of almost any other venue that's out there. We just really have to worry about maintaining and getting better because people are going to catch up. But yeah, I think, I think when it comes to the, the events coming in, they're pushing us as well. A lot of events are coming in and they're very mindful of, you know, uh, this queen and cardboard and what we're doing with, with things that normally wouldn't end up in a landfill. And we have, we have a lot of that established where we, you know, we're bailing this queen, we're bailing cardboard. So again, from a customer service point of view,

no one really wants to know about bailing cardboard and bailing bisque queen, but I think knowing that it's happening and then transcending all the way into the catering menu and knowing that you're getting fresh produce and everyone loves the term, you know, farm fresh and farm to table. When you can see the farm from your table, it adds a higher level to the event in general. First off, I'd love to hear that this is a concern of customers that are coming to host events in your space. I think that events can be very dirty and very unsustainable because you have a lot of plastics and temporary things and all of that. So I think it's wonderful that you've really allowed your customers to push you in that direction as well and listen to their needs. And then as well, something that I just wanted to double click on the food component, because for anyone who's thinking about hosting an event whether it is a team off-site or a convention the food makes such a difference it does it is massive and i'm i i don't know if you have any thoughts on this but i've definitely been to conferences

where i'm like oh my whole i don't know it just sours the experience if you're eating a hot dog versus a farm fresh salad experience. Yeah. Amazing. Yeah. And I think that it can even quash some of the negatives, right? I think that if somebody has that bad experience, but they come in and they get a good cup of coffee when they walk in the door or that they know that they're getting a snack or that, you know, they didn't have to wait in line for 45 minutes to get that free sandwich. You know, those are the things that we're very present with when it comes to the planning stages. And everyone always kind of looks at me in these meetings because ultimately there's security and the catering team are the two teams that usually come and point in contact with folks that are coming into the space. And if somebody has to,

you know, get to me, though, I try to be obvious and evident during events, but if they're getting to me, usually something went wrong. And so I think that I totally agree with you that the food at any event could be just such a big component of the overall experience from service to the quality and level of food. And, you know, yeah. And even just the vessel, you know, we've all been there when you're at a happy hour and whatever is being served is impossible to walk around in your hands, you know? So it's even just thinking about that and, you know, small dish to pass as opposed to handing somebody a cheeseburger, handing them a slider instead of a cheeseburger

when they're in that social function. So we're not, you know, there's not ketchup and mustard on you when you're going through the process of trying to communicate with people. So. Yeah. It's these little things that really impact someone's experience. Yep. Totally agree. And so that actually brings me to one of my other questions, which is how do you track success of an event? Oh, good question. Very good question. We do a lot of postmortems, both internally and externally. Fanatics being here last weekend, we're doing, we're doing it this week early as we get ready for anime this weekend. That's still one of the things

that we struggle with as a building because so much of the customer service platforms go through the events in question. So the event this year, we don't directly handle ticketing. We don't directly handle a lot of the customer service issues that could potentially pop up.

You know, I had a bad experience at a booth. I had a bad experience with a vendor. Our culinary team is a Levy's group. And so they have a lot of CRM programs that are in place that let them communicate directly with the patron. Again, my bad cheeseburger analogy from a couple of minutes ago. We have a small program in our restrooms that's just more of a click through, you know, bathroom in 1A needs some assistance, whatever it might be, assistance within the space. It's something that I'm working on for having a Javits CRM program. They're not cheap. And so that's something that we have to be mindful of as well. But it's really talking to the show managers in our world. It's really, you know, having them elicit the issues, problems, and concerns that came up

during the event. A lot of the times there may be some sort of a portal for surveys at the end of an event and we'll get that. I often will ask for that to show managers. I love the learning experience. No one wants to intentionally get beat up, but I think it's the ability to look at those things and learn from them. If it were not for those asks by our combined teams, it would be very hard to see what someone's experience was. Social media helps with that. Everyone loves to go on and either selfie themselves or have a complaint or get a chain going of somebody who had an issue within one of our event spaces. But it is something that we struggle with as the venue, as the house, because we don't have often that direct correspondence with the end user in the space. I can imagine. I mean, if we're talking about, you know, the slider versus burger example

that, you know, someone might not fully even realize the slider was a really good move, but they had a great time. And how do you measure that? You know, it's, it's one of the things about customer experience in general that I find both the most frustrating as well as the most exciting because these are like the human emotions that just aren't trackable and, and that's okay. But we know that we still want to go in that direction. We know that we still want to inspire people or create experiences that are easier than something else. And so, yeah, it's a tricky one, but I hear you. It's ultimately job security, right?

That's the ability to some really weird way. But I guess you can also track to some extent just in retention or repeat business, right? Yeah. And that's the ultimate measure. Yeah. And those are the conversations that I have a lot where I'll reach out to the event managers. And thankfully, as I mentioned before, it's not a huge swatch of event managers that come in here. So it's not like I'm having a thousand conversations a year.

And I think it's to your point, it's that, it's that ability to just ask the good questions after the fact, Hey, how was it? Was everything good? How can we do better? You know, going into a space and making eye contact with an event manager and saying, are you good? Is everything okay? And they may give you that middle of an event look like, I think so, or, you know, or swimming upstream or whatever the analogy that they offer. But I think that you mentioned earlier, sometimes it's just asking, sometimes it's Or, you know, or swimming upstream or whatever the analogy that they offer. But I think that you mentioned earlier, sometimes it's just asking. Sometimes it's just, you know, hey, we'll be good. How the team's doing? Is everything all right? Here's your cookies for your birthday,

right? It's just kind of some of those cheesy things. But I think those go a long way as well. And it's also communicating with the teams. It's also communicating with the, you know, our cleaning teams, with your service teams on the food and beverage front, with your security directors and managers, just asking them in the middle of an event, how's it going? Because they're the ones that are communicating and they have the touch points directly with those that are in the space. And I can imagine that those touch points between your team and the client, those also go really far, right? And how do you really guide your team to create a great on-the-ground experience and create those great moments? Because it's something that I think about a lot in my work. It's not just the leader at the top who needs to have a really great conversation with the client.

It's every single person who is there who is potentially going to talk to the customer. So how do you guide them to create a great experience? Leading by example is one of the things. I think if you walk around with any of the executives that I am honored to work with every day, picking up trash, we all do it. Finding a customer that has those lost eyes. We wear a button that says, I'm looking, cheating it. It says, yes, I can help on my name badge.

So it's that ability to have that just be known that we're, you know, so I think that leadership quality of having all of our executives on the show floor within the show space is just being very obvious that we're there. There's no, there's not a lot of, you know, golden temples in our space. We do a lot of training. It's such a unique environment with the fantastic trades, for example, that we have working here. Each has their own training platforms. Each has their own components of what their expectations are for their shifts. We also throw some pretty good parties for our employees. So we have a really good holiday party. We have a really good employee recognition luncheon. We do a really great stay at the

center in the spring. So that's just another ability just to make sure that everyone who's here, they feel as if they're part of something bigger than just clocking in and clocking out every day. I really want to underscore what you started off that answer with around leading by example and how everyone picks up trash. I think that's such a great metaphor, even for folks who don't have physical trash to pick up. But, you know, for those of us in the SaaS world, for example, or, you know, B2B customers or B2C customer service, what's the trash that the leader can pick up? Like we should all be showing that we're, we're willing to dive in. We're willing to get dirty. We're willing to do everyone's job and do it well. And I think that that's such a key leadership trait, especially when it comes to leading a

team of client-facing people, because you have to set those examples or else it's going to impact your customer relationship. Totally agree. Yeah. And then one of my favorite stories is that I was in an arena a couple of several years ago and I taught myself I'll drive the Zamboni. And I was, I am the worst Zamboni driver in the history of that building. But I genuinely, A, wanted to learn just for inquisitive reasons, but B, I wanted to see what their issues were, like going through the Zamb door and, you know, what it's like to push the gas too fast because something was on ice and it took too long. They stopped letting me drive because I was going to eventually ruin the ice. But I agree with you. I think that Disney is one of those companies that does this fantastically. They're known for it. And

you see their executives at the park walking around with the clampers and they're picking up garbage. And I think that that shows that nobody's above the issue. It shows that, yes, sometimes I have to wear a suit and tie and I can't necessarily bend over to grab that, but you've seen me do it 15 times before this. So when I'm asking you to help me out with something, there's a knowledge point that it's not, you know, directive on high. It's just somebody who currently can't do that at the moment. So totally. And it, but it brings so much respect too, if we're, if we're willing to join our team where they're at.

Amazing. Well, I have two last questions for you. Hit me. The first is, I'd love to hear about a recent experience that you had with a brand or an event that left you impressed. What was that experience? Left me impressed. That nest event that we do in the fall during climate week was an event that when I first

started here two and a half years ago, it was a concept on paper. We had done it before. It was still coming out of COVID, so it was a little bit of an unfair comparison there. But that event to now going to a three-floor event that's going to be this fall and a huge exhibition space, that event to me is one that impresses me because it's our focal point that we try to do year-long, but you have some of those amazing thinkers within the space that are just so actively involved in the sustainable universe. So I think that that's an event that just has impressed me,

and I'm also a little biased that it's an event that we've done a lot of work on. Almost every event that comes in here, inclusive of anime that's loading in right now, the amount of planning that's loading in right now, the amount of planning that goes into every little thing. And, you know, one of the things that Javits has, as I mentioned, is we have a lot of trades and it's a union shop, but it's, it's that organization that our, that our labor force organizes to bring these events in. There's been individual moments. I think Charlie Puth last year during the Robin Hood dinner, his performance on stage,

acoustic was amazing. That was just more of a fan than that was anything of that logistically wise. In that same event, Jeff Bezos auctioned off two trips to space. So, you know, so you have some of these events, you're like, all right, that just has to be impressive. Yeah. You get the smaller events where there's, you there's two people on a staff and they're bringing 750 people into an event and it runs seamlessly. Those are just as impressive as Mr. Bezos with his auctioning off space trips.

Yeah. That's great. Well, I'm going to be in New York this fall, so I'm definitely coming back to the Nest event. I can't wait. And then my last question for you is, what is one piece of advice that every customer experience leader should hear? I like the aggressive customer service. I'm going to eventually write a book, progressive or aggressive customer service. I think it's that being obnoxiously realistic with what could go wrong without being pessimistic. It's working with your teams and having them understand that being realistic and being mindful of the planning stages and bringing people into the space, it may not be the easiest thing to quantify financially,

but the quantification comes to your point earlier is events will come back. You know, happy fans bring happy events, happy exhibitors bring happy show managers that bring happy events. This job that we have, you're basically professionally getting yelled at. So I think that you also a second caveat may just be don't take it personally. I think that that's something that a lot of folks, you know, if it's an ambassador, if you have a concierge desk in your space, you know, somebody comes up and you're just happen to be wearing a name badge or a vest or a uniform, and you're the, you're the only focal point that they have. And so it's often that ability to try to stay out ahead of those things, but then, um, not taking it personally and putting yourself in that position, that person's space when it comes to what created that customer service issue. So, and that's, that's a big one because a lot of the times you're, you're ambassadors, your concierge, they're part-time employees. They're doing it to subsidize their own income. This isn't their profession. You at best can give them a little bit of advice during the lineup on

an event night. And hopefully you have the ability to do some training before the season starts, but ultimately they're not a full-time employee and they're the first person that gets the, gets the beating. It is really an art to accept those situations. Yeah, it is. And to be able to kind of, I always say it's like putting on your armor, like it's not about you, but you do have to go to, I don't like using the word battle, but with the armor analogy, we'll just go with it. But you know, you have to be ready to go to, I don't like using the word battle, but with the armor analogy, we'll just go with it. It is. But you know, you have to be ready to go to battle, but it's not about you. Yeah. You have to put that iron skin on.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's tough. It's tough. It's tough. It's so tough. But it's one of the things that personally, I think I'm the most grateful to have learned throughout my career of being client facing and dealing with all the fires

because you really, yeah, you really learn how to handle kind of anything. So. Bigger analogy, it helps you in life, right? So because it's, it's, it's, it makes you more mindful of other people's issues and it's not always the most fun position to be in, but it's, you know, and again, that's also at least thankfully in my role, I have the ability to try to get out in front of as many of those as possible. Yeah. And then always trying to learn. Sometimes you have to experience the battles then to know what to get ahead of the next time. Yes, yes, yes.

Like we don't want that to happen again. So we're going to set expectations or make sure that this happens. Yeah, I get that. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. It's been so wonderful to chat with you and dive into the world of events and conventions. It's something I think that many people are really excited to be attending and spending more time with people in person. And I'm just so happy to hear about all the fun stuff that you're doing at Javits and can't wait to come back. Great. We'll see you in the fall. You are a business leader with vision. You've seen the future as an AI enterprise thriving with Salesforce AI and data, and it is bright. Getting there? Eh, it's a little fuzzier.

Don't worry. Salesforce CTOs are here to work side-by-side with your team and turn your AI and data vision into a reality. We're talking expert guidance and implementation support from the best of the best. To learn more, visit sfdc.co slash professional services.