EMT #52 with Marc LeDuc - How great conferences are built from idea to impact

In this episode of Event Marketer’s Toolbox, hosts Chris Dunn and Brendon Hamlin sit down with Marc LeDuc, a conference innovator with over three decades of experience building large-scale B2B and technical conferences.

Marc brings a rare, behind-the-curtain perspective on how conferences are actually created — from identifying real audience gaps to architecting content that fuels engagement long after the doors close. Rather than treating conferences as one-off events, Marc challenges organizers to think in terms of problem-solving, long-term impact, and community building.

This conversation explores what separates good conferences from unforgettable ones, why content must be integrated earlier in the planning process, and how event teams can survive — and even thrive — when everything goes sideways.

• A conference is born from a problem, not a venue
  Marc explains that the strongest conferences begin by identifying gaps in the market — what audiences aren’t getting elsewhere — and validating those gaps before a single speaker is booked.
• Content is the backbone, not the afterthought
  From session arcs to speaker strategy, Marc breaks down what “content creation” really means in the conference world and why it must align with long-term learning, not just show-day agendas.
• The 365, 24/7 mindset
  Conferences should be one moment in an ongoing engagement cycle. Webcasts, podcasts, articles, and community touchpoints before and after the event are what create lasting value.
• ROI goes beyond spreadsheets
  Marc challenges traditional ROI thinking and introduces the importance of Net Promoter Score, audience advocacy, and long-tail business impact when measuring success.
• Managing chaos when everything changes
  From speaker cancellations to weather disasters, Marc shares real stories about pivoting under pressure — and why experience, preparation, and teamwork matter more than perfect plans.
• Cross-functional collaboration wins
  Conferences succeed when content, sales, marketing, AV, and leadership are aligned — not siloed. Marc emphasizes learning each other’s roles to unlock better outcomes

This episode is a masterclass in thinking differently about conferences. Marc LeDuc reminds us that great events aren’t defined by square footage or production value — they’re defined by clarity of purpose, quality of content, and the ability to create momentum beyond the show floor.

For event marketers, planners, exhibitors, and content teams alike, this conversation is a powerful reminder that conferences don’t end when attendees leave — that’s when the real work begins.

👉🏼 Join us for more insightful discussions like this by tuning into 'Event Marketer's Toolbox,' where industry leaders share the tools, tactics, and trends driving success in the event world.

This Show is sponsored by Blue Hive 

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Transcript

0:00:00

(Speaker 1)

Hey, hello, and welcome to the Event Markers Toolbox. I am Chris Dunn. I'm with Blue Hive Exhibits. I got a couple of buddies I'm hanging out with today. We're going to chop it up and talk all things events. Mark LeDuc is joining us along with longtime co -host Brendan Hamlin. 

0:00:16

(Speaker 1)

Mark kind of has a unique perspective, a little different than a lot of the folks that we've spoken to. So really looking forward to that conversation. I'm going to kick it over to my often co -host here. Season two, episode number two. And Mr. Hanlon is joining us for, I don't know, like 16 or 17th time, but, uh, it's been a great run and it's great to have you back. 

0:00:38

(Speaker 18)

Brendan. 

0:00:39

(Speaker 7)

Hello. 

0:00:39

(Speaker 1)

And how are you, sir? 

0:00:41

(Speaker 2)

Thank you, Chris. I am doing great. Uh, great to be here on the toolbox again. Um, Always a pleasure and looking forward to this conversation. Yeah, I'm Brendan Hamlin. I run Hamlin Creative out of Asheville, North Carolina, and we produce content in and around events. 

0:00:58

(Speaker 2)

And whether that's conferences or trade shows or activations, we do all kinds of stuff in that space. And so we feel like it's a really unique place to create content and There's a lot of, of exciting opportunities. And so we're going to talk a little bit about that today. Uh, and with our, our guest, Mark LaDuke, Mark, it's great to see you. Thanks for being here. 

0:01:21

(Speaker 1)

My pleasure. Thank you, gentlemen, for having me. You got to tell us a little bit about your background and maybe your British bow tie. 

0:01:30

(Speaker 12)

Oh, gosh. 

0:01:31

(Speaker 4)

Yeah. 

0:01:31

(Speaker 1)

Well, that's sort of my signature is the bow tie, which you will see in LinkedIn and other things. So that's another story for a bourbon later. But like most people, I started out my career Uh, with a friend of mine saying, Hey, I'm taking over my dad's business. I've been working in conferences. You interested in getting a few years experience? Cause it was right out of college running an art gallery. 

0:01:57

(Speaker 1)

And 31 years later, I've kind of made it. career out of it. So it wasn't anything intentional, just sort of fell into it. For the last 18 years, I've been working in, or was working with a nonprofit association in transportation conference development. Recently, through some reduction in force, I am now opening my own shutter a little bit here. And so I work with conference event planners on looking at ways to enhance their current portfolio, but also looking at new business development opportunities and new conferences. 

0:02:37

(Speaker 1)

Additionally, on the other side of the coin is working with companies who are attending or exhibiting at events on how to have a better impact. on their event, like looking at their subject matter experts being speakers. How do you look at critical sponsorship engagement, but also the booth engagement? The other side of that is not just the booth development side, which you all do, which is fantastic, but looking at how do you engage that customer more effectively? Because as you know, Uh, just because you build it, they will not come. So part of that is, is looking at working with those folks on how to be more engaging to the customer as they're walking by. 

0:03:17

(Speaker 5)

Awesome. 

0:03:17

(Speaker 1)

Awesome. Well, that's a, that's a great background. And as mentioned, your, your lenses is typically from a different side, although you did share a little bit more about how we're, you know, some of the conversation. conversations that we're also having with our exhibitors, but looking forward to kind of pulling back the curtain and saying, hey, as an event producer, like, what are some of those things that you look for? So, but before we do that, we're going to, we're just going to visit real quickly our sponsorships, because without them, we wouldn't have a show. And that would be a damn shame, because this is a pretty freaking cool show. 

0:03:48

(Speaker 1)

We are building a community of fellow event professionals here, really kind of creating a lot of interesting conversations. This is episode number 52, and we've had so many great conversations with people from all over the, you know, event spectrum. It's been really great for me to learn from. I was actually listening to another podcast this morning by Chris Griffin, who was one of our guests, and it was like he was just dropping all this amazing information, and it dawned on me how important podcasts have become at least for myself, I used to be, you know, a guy who's always had kind of books on tape and listening. But I've really kind of just switched to almost all, you know, podcast listening because it's so current and it's always a new one coming out. 

0:04:32

(Speaker 1)

And there's always this fresh conversation of things that are very much up to date. 

0:04:35

(Speaker 3)

So I'm loving your book on tape. 

0:04:38

(Speaker 1)

Did I? You did. and a BlueHive, I work for BlueHive. BlueHive is a creative agency. We're 21 years old, which means we've got a lot of experience. We've got over 100 people, many with 30 and 40 years experience, which means literally thousands of years of collective experience in the event world. 

0:05:19

(Speaker 1)

So we know some stuff because we've seen some stuff. Where do we fit in the marketplace? We're kind of like a mid -sized, highly creative agency. We have a lot more resources than a boutique group. And yet at the same time, there's a lot of big companies out there that like to deal with giant brands. And if you're not rocking a multimillion dollar program, you're kind of a pisshole in the snow. 

0:05:42

(Speaker 1)

So if you feel like that you're not getting the attention you need with the big guys, but you're outside over some of the smaller groups, we might be a great fit for you. East Coast, West Coast, so I'm in the Boston area. We also have a Vegas location. They store, they build, they do all the things out there, and we're really servicing everything from, I'd say, Denver West from that location. It's a great group, a small but mighty group out there. 

0:06:11

(Speaker 1)

In addition, uh, this show is actually produced and put on and, and, uh, a company called fist bump is an agency that I came across a couple of years ago. Um, this time last year I was, you know, I was kind of running this, this podcast thing and I never would have come to fruition if it hadn't been for the folks from fist bump who stepped in, um, took the heavy lift off my plate and said, you focus on talking and finding a few friends to come on and talk with us. We'll do all the hard stuff. And they've done exactly that. We've never would have hit, you know, any number of shows, if not for fist bump. So if you're, if you're a company out there, and you're looking to strengthen your message, become thought leaders in the industry, and you you want to kind of lean into this live show slash podcast slash capturing content and using that content online, and become super findable because AI search loves this stuff. 

0:07:08

(Speaker 1)

Call the guys with fist bump. Anyways, shout out to Juana who's behind the, who's on the board today behind the scenes making us all look good. So I babbled quite a bit, but we're going to, I got a lot of questions here for Mr. LeDuc. So we're going to jump right in. And for those folks who are out there, this is a live show and we welcome any kind of shout outs from, from all those folks who might be listening live. Let us know if you've got questions that come up along the way and we'll try to work them into the show as well. 

0:07:37

(Speaker 1)

Mark, we talked a couple of weeks ago. We had a great conversation. Uh, and that's kind of what led to you, you know, hopping onto the show here. But tell us a little bit about how kind of a conference is born and how that goes from just like an idea to an actual reality, if you would. Fantastic. Thank you, Chris. 

0:07:56

(Speaker 1)

First of all, I think you guys should look at an I'm Glass manufacturer maybe as a sponsorship. and a Well, this is great. This is a great opportunity between you two gentlemen and myself to really kind of talk about the 360 point of view of how does an event actually happen? Because you guys are at the back end of it. I know, Brendan, you also do content creation, but really the idea is the genesis of depending on what organization you work for is you're solving a problem. A conference in essence is about helping people solve problems. 

0:08:40

(Speaker 1)

That's it. It's in a nutshell. It doesn't have to be any greater than that. Whether it's technology or business development, at the end of the day, that's what the conference is looking to do. A really good conference is about evaluating the gaps out there. 

0:08:55

(Speaker 27)

So looking at what's already in the marketplace, finding what's not in the marketplace, finding out and validating those gaps. 

0:09:05

(Speaker 1)

in the marketplace. It's a great example. I'll just throw out AI, right? Everyone's talking about, yeah, you can't swing a dead cat without hitting somebody doing an AI conference. I was just looking at it this morning. There's over a hundred AI conferences, major ones. 

0:09:20

(Speaker 1)

Then I started to go down in my research and say, well, how many deal with transportation? And that's about 20. Then you really start to look at it, say within that 20, what are they talking about? But more specifically, what are they not talking about? and then try to figure out the gaps in that. And then from that point... 

0:09:40

(Speaker 1)

start to develop all of the dotting I's and T's sort of things, which is looking at the labor of statistics, right? You start to look at, is there an area of growth in careers that is going up and not down that relates to what it is that you're trying to develop so that you know that you're on that hockey stick, right? You're trying to go that arc and the upward direction, because the one thing you don't want to do is create an event that's on the downward side. I've been on that side as well. The newspaper business. I feel like we should have more shows about the newspaper business or maybe, you know, well, let's say that's interesting. 

0:10:18

(Speaker 1)

USA Today just bought both the Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News. So now there's an arc around even that. So, again, to your point is at some point you got to be able to say, I'm sorry, and cut the cord on an event. And that is dramatically difficult for the people who've done it for years. So for me, that's kind of the initial idea of finding within your marketplace where the gaps are and to find within that, then going and find your subject matter experts from that standpoint, and then just asking questions like an onion. You're just pulling layer upon layer to ask Individuals, the questions of these subject matter experts, why are they into it? 

0:11:02

(Speaker 1)

Who are they looking at? Why, where's the arc of technology going? Is it, you know, looking at it as, is it in that path where it's mature or is it in its infancy or is it really, really out there on that cutting edge? So then you start to develop from that, that point of view. That's so interesting. Cause that's, I mean, so on our end, right, we're designers and builders of trade show Exhibits and event three dimensional marketing elements that help people do events right so i'm as a for instance a business. 

0:11:35

(Speaker 1)

show that happens every other year is IMTS, International Manufacturing Tools. It's been around for a long time. I never, I don't even know exactly when it started. It's been around for as long as I've been in the business. And as far as I'm concerned, it will always, probably always be there, although that's not I shouldn't take that for granted, but in my, in my, you know, pea brain head anyways, because what I'm concerned with is let's find people who are going to go to this show who want to talk to the folks that are there and make sure we can help them go and tell their story best way they can. But how, how does a show that has been around for a long time, um, stay, stay current and stay relevant that they're doing what you described right there. 

0:12:19

(Speaker 1)

They're saying, all right, we've already got the, we've already got the, uh, the, the, the infrastructure in place. We've done this 30, 40, 50 times, however many times, and we know we're going to be able to fill, we hope we're going to be able to fill up our exhibit halls with paying customers who will take space, but we've got to put on something that means something to them, that draws in the crowd, that brings in the C -level, C -suite people who are feeling the pain because of X, Y, and Z. So that's kind of what you're talking about, whether it's a new show or an old existing show or an existing legacy show, as it were, right? The challenge points are similar. Yeah, a hundred percent, Chris. Ironically, I did Fabtech at SME for years. So if IMTS, all of a sudden you're talking about like my first baby was Fabtech. 

0:13:09

(Speaker 1)

I did that event for years. So IMTS, yeah, as you were talking about when I started in the business in 91, it had long been going and it took up all of McCormick, right? So if you don't imagine North, South, East, and West, that's huge. It took up the whole Chicago. to the point though is if you look at an event like that they were always looking at what the next next cutting edge. 

0:13:32

(Speaker 1)

I'm going to use cliche terms and I apologize. It's all I know. Right. 

0:13:35

(Speaker 22)

It's next next looking around corners, all of those things. 

0:13:39

(Speaker 1)

And it's really looking at all of a sudden you added a manufacturing. Right. You were looking at. Additive manufacturing in the 90s didn't exist, right? It was just in its arc of infancy So that's what that organization I worked with them and that's what they started to look at and then SME did the same thing We were looking at what's that next next and then it was plastics for additive and now you're looking at metal additive You know and looking at those particular things. So a really good content creator is always Asking around to find out what is I call it really neat shit, right? 

0:14:19

(Speaker 1)

Excuse my language, but it's always that who's doing something in a skunkworks manner. that you can dig up, that you can sit there and say, there's going to be application of that. Maybe not today, not tomorrow, maybe 10 years down the road. And how do you build to arc that into your event? It may start out as a tutorial, it may start out as a session, and then it works its way into mainstream of an event. So there are so many biomimicries, another one of those things, right? 

0:14:51

(Speaker 1)

You look at it and say, how is nature providing design inspiration? And that was many years ago. Nobody knew about biomimicry. And now it's something that people are looking to Kingfisher for the bullet train in Japan. So you look at these sort of things and it's a really good content creators, always their ear to the track, always looking for what's around the corner. But at the same time, understanding that you have a core. 

0:15:19

(Speaker 1)

So you're always like, what's the next next in that core? Like IMTS is always going to be manufacturing materials. removal and that sort of what's the next in that but also inspiring with what's going to be in the future. And then last but not least is are there things that completely don't relate to what that business unit is doing that they can think about and here's an example of that. I was really fortunate I got John Snoddy when he was with Disney. 

0:15:52

(Speaker 26)

And you're like, what the hell does John Stani have to do with transportation? 

0:15:56

(Speaker 1)

Well, he's a car guy, number one, but he's also the A . I. He did all of the Disney A . 

0:16:03

(Speaker 3)

I. 

0:16:03

(Speaker 10)

interface. 

0:16:03

(Speaker 1)

So I just called him up and I said, hey, you're a car guy. You're an A . I. guy. Where do you see the opportunity for A . I. 

0:16:15

(Speaker 2)

to impact the automotive industry? And he gave examples of the work that they're doing on AI interface, where you can have a conversation with a robot and it's completely AI generated, not pre -recorded. And you start to now take that technology, you put it in the car, imagine where that can go. So if you can inspire as a content creator, other people to come into an event to then look at ways that they can do things or see things differently, that's the secret sauce as well, Chris. How does that, how does that go from a vision and an implementation? 

0:16:52

(Speaker 5)

Like who sets the vision for what that conference would be? 

0:16:55

(Speaker 1)

Is it the ground up, the people that want to be in that, in that show? Or is it the organization that's sort of the trade organization for that sector sets the vision and says, okay, this is where our industry's headed. Now, all of you suppliers come in and share what you're doing with that mission? Is that how it works? The answer is yes to all of the above. I'll be honest with you. 

0:17:22

(Speaker 1)

It's no one answer to sit there and say, in my mind, the organization has a mission. The organization has technology pillar that drive. They have certain ROI things that they drive. Then you sit there and start to look at it and say, how do you validate those missions and vision? uh, with industry experts. I, I love committees. 

0:17:45

(Speaker 1)

I love councils. I'm one of those rare people that I love to put 10 people in a room and just say, ready, set, go, and let them tell me where things in their mind are going so that they can help direct the vision. The other is, is if you get a really good content creator, they're the ones that are going to challenge back to the organization. where they're going. I had many, many fights around being too wide, right? 

0:18:11

(Speaker 5)

That was my thing. 

0:18:12

(Speaker 1)

It was like, you're an organization that's trying to do every, I'm sorry, the camera's set. Rather than this, you're trying to do this, right? So that was always my challenge is, is if the organization can't support what you're doing in a conference, don't do it. Right. If you don't have a database, if you don't have a market reach, if you do not have these subject matter experts that are other elements of your organization embedded in there, you're going to fail because you just don't have that background to support it. And great example of that was artificial, not artificial intelligence, augmented virtual reality. 

0:18:49

(Speaker 1)

In the 90s, I heard a presentation from Boeing. Boeing was talking about using ARVR goggles for people to do wiring. There's about a mile and a half of wiring in an airplane, maybe two miles. And they would put the goggles on and it was a virtual mapping of how to put the wiring diagram within the plane's wings and all of those things. So rather than looking at a paper that was virtual. And I thought, 

0:19:14

(Speaker 1)

I was blown away when I saw that, I was like, I'm done. I'm in, we're a hundred percent going. The problem was my organization at that time. And then I, we were too ahead of the, we were not, that was not mainstream. We were too ahead. And then the program failed because we just did not have a market database reach. 

0:19:32

(Speaker 1)

So that's the part of it. 

0:19:34

(Speaker 25)

And I couldn't get the organization to support and see the value of that at that time. 

0:19:41

(Speaker 1)

to put the money into it. 

0:19:42

(Speaker 4)

So that's part of the learning experience, Brendan, is that you're kind of having to push, you know, maybe you do it as a, uh, again, a tutorial or a session. 

0:19:50

(Speaker 2)

That's, that's part of the challenges is that you have to be able to, to argue your point of view and do challenge as a subject matter person where the organization may need to go. 

0:20:03

(Speaker 3)

Very good. 

0:20:04

(Speaker 1)

I heard the word content creation earlier and I saw Brendan's eyes go. Yes. So why don't you, I think content, Creation, maybe you're talking about it from a slightly different perspective than I am, but maybe talk a little bit about what a content creator does in the conference world. Wonderful. Yeah. You and I talk about it's just it's always that thing. 

0:20:29

(Speaker 1)

What's an event manager? What's an event producer? Everybody has kind of different definitions. I use content creation and you and I do it differently. I think you and I are very much lockstep in terms of that, because what my job is, is to look at I'm just going to take a breakdown of vehicle and call braking for an example, right? My job is to look at everything, to create a conference in braking, to look at everything about the brake from a system's perspective, not only from foot pedal feel to automatic emergency braking, that whole thing. 

0:21:01

(Speaker 1)

My job is to create an arc of an event from beginning to end on every element that impacts the brake. And then that includes also looking at things that may be outside like AI and some other things. So my job is to then start to put that together into various sessions and then into tracks. And then next thing you know, you have 150 speakers, you have panel discussions. When I talk about content creation, that's the window for which I look at it. 

0:21:36

(Speaker 2)

You then start to go over to your side if I'm this correct, how do you do webcasts? How do you do virtual? How do you do magazine articles? 

0:21:44

(Speaker 1)

How do you do these other elements with the subject matter experts that I bring in so that I'll say this a lot, 365, 24 seven, which I think we all agree with that a conference in a Venn diagram is the center, but it's also part of an art of learning for anyone, which is it's part of that 365 day learning experience. And that webcasts, virtual magazine articles, podcasts, all of that play into, and a conference is a place where everyone comes together to hear and to solve problems and to do business development. Yeah. I've said for a long time that, you know, just in our slice of it, that there's the before, during and after, and that you have to promote to get them there, you know, get the get people excited to go to the show, get them there and create and share, do all of this stuff you were planning as you're programming at the show. But then there's that whole conversation after the show, that that we talk a lot about on this show, you know, that that that conversation afterwards and how difficult that is because sometimes it's left in the hands of people that are off to the next thing or don't have a strategy or a plan in place and how important that is. and how much content can come out of that show that can be really additive and supportive to that after the show effort. 

0:23:12

(Speaker 1)

So I think we're talking like I'm in the short form kind of content mode, but you're in the, you know, the vision content mode, I guess. So yeah, it dovetails very nicely, because what you're talking about is you have a subject matter expert. We're each trying to solve a problem. 

0:23:30

(Speaker 24)

I do it with one product. 

0:23:32

(Speaker 1)

You do it with a series of products, right? Mine is largely focused on that, getting a person butts in seats and creating a learning experience. And also, to your point, creating an opportunity to network, because one thing COVID taught me, at least, is no matter how much technology you throw at something, there is nothing that will replace the tactical experience of being able to have that one -to -one or one -to -group conversation. Even though virtual is wonderful and podcasts are doing some things like that, at the end of the day, I can't tell you the number of times that I've created either a business opportunity or found a technical expert at the coffee, right? Washing my hands in the restroom, which by the way, I saw the arguably for you, Chris, somebody had actually done a exhibit booth and they sponsored the restroom. I posted that. 

0:24:33

(Speaker 1)

Yeah. Yeah. That whole red flag thing, that red carpet thing. I suggested that idea 10 years ago and almost got laughed out of room, but it's the most brilliant thing, right? Here it is. You're creating a, an experience that no one will forget. 

0:24:46

(Speaker 1)

Anyways, I digress, but getting back to you, Brendan, is that, that you then take that same subject matter expert and then you start to slice and dice into other learning design modules for a 365 day. that ultimately comes back to the conference. 

0:25:03

(Speaker 2)

And then you create communities because ultimately I think if we can create communities, then you're now building business development opportunities for your organization. And then you're now looking at long -term ROI that maybe doesn't show up on that spreadsheet, which I know we'll talk about in a minute on immediate, you know, Well, 25 ROI, 40 % ROI, what are we looking at? What is the value of a conference? And then ultimately, what is, through the organization, what is the conference really objective, right? I think there are other elements to that. If it's just to make money, that's one thing, but if it's got a long tail strategy on some other things, I think that's the other challenge to a content creator. 

0:25:47

(Speaker 1)

is to figure out what the business goal of a conference is. And my feeling in my core is that the content really can help improve that ROI, but it seems to be that it hasn't been fully integrated into the strategy. So, you know, we'll get calls for, Hey, we have a show in two weeks. Uh, can you get a guy with a camera there? And Danny, that's not the same thing as you're building and designing a show and you want to create that three 60 kind of, uh, effort, you know, a result in that. Um, but it, but the, the, the capture and creation is, is thought about way too late. 

0:26:31

(Speaker 1)

I wonder what, from your perspective, how do you, bump that up in the strategy cycle to make sure that it gets integrated early. 100%. And I'll say that a lot. I'm not going to say let's go, Chris. I promise you that's a little trite. I'm a visual guy. 

0:26:52

(Speaker 1)

Again, you can clearly see by my bow tie. I visual. I think of conferences like a boat, and then there's a wake, right? And the wake, if you did it, is all of these other business units. The boat is at the beginning. It sets the tone for things like that. 

0:27:09

(Speaker 1)

And then there's a wake of all of this other elements that come behind it. And to your point, Brendan, is that, yeah, I look at it and go, And this was a challenge, especially in nonprofit for profits the same way. You know, everything is so into the margin, right? If I can't make X number, I'm not going to do it. And I think sometimes that's the challenge of being a little short sighted in that is to say, well, what's the long term impact of that? Like that keynote that I talked about. 

0:27:39

(Speaker 1)

That was in 19. I saw people talking about that keynote. And what's the value of that when it comes to net promoter score, right? That's the other argument that I've never been able to figure out a formula is how do you integrate a formula that puts the net promoter score into ROI? So that if your ROI is 25 % and you got a net promoter score that bumped up 30 points from last year, that ought to be able to increase because you know, the long -term effect of that, right? 

0:28:06

(Speaker 23)

So there's the, the challenge to me is, but to your point, you have to build all of that as part of the program itself. 

0:28:15

(Speaker 1)

Again, that's the 365, 24 seven approach is to say. We're going to do webcasts up front. We're going to do some virtual onsite things, maybe doing a podcast at the event. Then we're going to start to do articles, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. And to that point, honestly, you have to build it into the business model, uh, in order for it to happen. One of the challenges though, in my mind is that every one of those is a different business unit. 

0:28:42

(Speaker 3)

Yeah. 

0:28:42

(Speaker 2)

And everybody starts to look at it as my ROI isn't as great as the other ROI. 

0:28:48

(Speaker 1)

And, and I don't know. 

0:28:50

(Speaker 22)

at it and said, and I've made this argument a lot. 

0:28:53

(Speaker 1)

If I lose money by putting a subject matter expert from another group on stage, I will take that hit because I know that the business unit itself will be able to take that and use that to make money down the road. But we don't ultimately roll that up to an ROI. I think that's the challenge is everybody gets very, what's the siloed? I guess that would be. Yeah, totally. Yep. 

0:29:23

(Speaker 1)

And, and short, you know, short sighted because the ROI needs to happen like yesterday and not like, Hey, in three years, we're going to realize this. Right. And it's kind of like you, Chris, is that you, when you, when someone buys a booth, right. An exhibit, right. They look at it and say, okay, I'm going to do all of these visual things and it's going to be fantastic. And dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. 

0:29:43

(Speaker 1)

And I'm like, well, how are they selling? How are they impact? How are you getting a customer into your booth? How are you looking at that conversation, that dynamic? And most people don't think about that strategy, right? They don't think about how am I, what's the training that I need to put? 

0:30:02

(Speaker 1)

They think, well, I'll just put a salesperson in the booth and they'll make it happen. Three seconds, you know the rule, right? It's three seconds to get your attention. But the other part about it is how do you keep that attention? And I think that that's the same arc of conflict, I guess I'll call it in ROI is you have to spend more money than just the booth to really make an impactful decision. So you have to spend more money in an event to look at it from the long -term perspective of what Brendan does with other bits and bytes of content. 

0:30:36

(Speaker 1)

You know that you use the, uh, the boat analogy, which I love. I hadn't heard that before, but I'm thinking you mentioned community earlier. And then I'm thinking like, community lives in the wake. And the stronger that, the bigger the wake, right? The stronger the community, the more they're talking about things like, oh my God, that was a freaking amazing show that we went to. 

0:30:55

(Speaker 1)

It was great to meet you. Let's grab a coffee. Let's continue this conversation. And pretty soon that becomes like its own little, you know, kind of a fuel for the conference. So the conference itself has nothing to do with what's happening in that community necessarily, other than they provided a really great experience. And then that takes on a life of its own. 

0:31:15

(Speaker 3)

And then to Brendan's point, the content that's created there continues to kind of drip into that community and keep them excited and keep the conversations lively. 

0:31:24

(Speaker 1)

And like looking forward to the next show, looking forward to next year, whatever, you know, whatever it might be, um, which comes a little bit of cheap to keep community. That's the other part about it is, is this the organization's responsibility, although it sounds organic, look at slack, right? You can create what Liz is doing with Ichi. Right at the community, right. Of marketing and professionals. And I've been talking to her about like, you don't have a lot of content creators in your community. 

0:31:51

(Speaker 1)

How do we grow that? Right. The other element Slack is a wonderful, that's the other part of technology. I think we underutilize in creating community is how do you own, uh, the development of that community. But again, to the point when you're talking about is that's not cheap. Right. 

0:32:06

(Speaker 1)

That's the other part about it is that's a dead ROI, right? That's a net expense, not a next growth unless you can find a sponsor for slack. And then no one wants to go to a slack that's being sponsored. So how do you look at that as part of your ROI art, Chris, to your point that in three years from now, we've grown a community that now is organic attendees, organic experts. All of that starts with spending some money. Very true. 

0:32:39

(Speaker 1)

We're 

0:32:39

(Speaker 18)

32 minutes in. 

0:32:41

(Speaker 1)

We're about halfway. We try to kind of do the toolbox at about an hour or so. 

0:32:45

(Speaker 3)

So I'm going to jump into our next topic of conversation, and anybody in events will really relate to this one. 

0:32:54

(Speaker 1)

This has never happened, but how do you manage chaos when shit goes sideways? 

0:32:59

(Speaker 21)

I mean, I, I don't know that anybody here has ever happened, seen that happen. 

0:33:03

(Speaker 1)

Um, so on the, on the podcast I was listening to this morning, Chris Griffin, again, um, kind of really on our side of the business, former, uh, EPA president, but he runs, he runs kind of a white label exhibit service. And he talked about, uh, the, the, the managing the unknowns that you're expecting and then the unknowns that are unknown. Right. So it's like, but how do you, how do you How do you handle that? How do you be ready for things that you know might go wrong, but then things you're not even thinking will go wrong? 

0:33:35

(Speaker 3)

There it is there. 

0:33:35

(Speaker 1)

We could sit here all day and share horror stories about the things. Okay. Part of what it is is that, yeah, it's always finding, keeping, I call it full of back pocket, full of ideas that you can pull out in an instant, right? Maybe there are ideas that you vetted that perhaps just didn't make the final cut, but can come to the forefront. And I'll give you an example of that. The other is honestly experience, right? 

0:34:03

(Speaker 1)

It's really... 10 years ago, here's what we did. A hundred percent. Like, yeah. Hey, look, we learn more from our mistakes than from fail. I won't call them failures, but opportunities to grow. 

0:34:16

(Speaker 20)

I'll give you a great. 

0:34:17

(Speaker 1)

There is nothing more tricky than running a political, I'll say at a government industry event in Washington, D . C. in January. And you guys are shaking your head and I'll give you two reasons why. December, government shutdown. How many times over the last seven years have we had a government shutdown? 

0:34:41

(Speaker 1)

Well, all of a sudden, government agencies can't come present anymore because the government's been shut down. Oh, by the way, how many times has Washington, D . C. gotten a blizzard that they can't account for, and then you have to shut the event down? So those are things that from years of experience, trying to figure those out. And again, experience is the best teacher on that. 

0:35:04

(Speaker 1)

I've had to shut down an event on the last day because we, you know, you couldn't get out of town because there's no snowplows in Washington, DC, uh, government industry. I've had 25. I'm going to say it's a little exaggeration, maybe 20 speakers with a government shutdown last week before an event couldn't speak. So you re entirely reorganized sessions. Right. A lot more panel discussions, a lot more of me becoming doing what you guys are doing, moderators and things like that. 

0:35:34

(Speaker 1)

The interesting I'll just give you an example because you guys will relate. Two years ago, the horrific airplane helicopter crash in Washington, D . C. that happened on the evening. NTSB was supposed to be my keynote. Jennifer was supposed to be my keynote the next morning. 

0:35:59

(Speaker 1)

Plane crashed four o 'clock in the morning. I get a phone call. She's not coming because she's down at the river. So we had created an idea and this was very fortuitous for us is that I like fireside chats rather than just straight keynotes. I like two subject matter experts who can have a conversation. One is directing the conversation, but still can feed back. 

0:36:21

(Speaker 1)

I love fireside chats, way more organic as you guys can imagine. So we had the Alliance for Automotive Innovation. was going to be the lead talker to MTSB. So you have government and automotive together. Four o 'clock in the morning, we get the phone call, right? And now what the hell are you going to do, right? 

0:36:42

(Speaker 1)

So then the idea was, okay, I'm going to talk to John Bozzella's people and say, okay, we're going to now have him be the primary guest and we're going to find somebody else to do the hosting. 

0:36:56

(Speaker 19)

Would he agree to that? 

0:36:58

(Speaker 1)

Answer is yes. Okay. Then the next thing was, how do you develop questions? You had to throw everything out the window. And what are all the new questions? So then you're creating all new questions and 630 in the morning. 

0:37:09

(Speaker 18)

Now, all of a sudden we got questions. 

0:37:11

(Speaker 1)

We got things flowing. 

0:37:12

(Speaker 12)

We got format doors open at eight o 'clock. 

0:37:16

(Speaker 1)

Keynote starts at eight 30 panel discussion happens. Boom. And now John is that, so you have to be able to think like a cat. land on your feet, think of different ideas. Ironically of all of this, since I wrote the questions, everybody pointed at me in the room and said, congratulations, you're now the moderator. So all of a sudden that was not a plan, but it worked out fabulous. 

0:37:44

(Speaker 3)

It was great. 

0:37:44

(Speaker 1)

John's a great guy, but again, that is an example of things of how do you think fast on your feet? Right. Control what you can control and then be flexible with the rest, right? Yeah. 

0:37:56

(Speaker 17)

And then, because we went through a whole series of backup ideas. 

0:37:59

(Speaker 1)

What about this person? What about this and that? And ultimately we're like, John's a great, he's really informative. There's a lot of really cool things we can talk about going on. And from the automotive side of it, from a regulatory perspective, and John has lots to say. So that's the way we went. 

0:38:15

(Speaker 1)

Just a quick question on that. 

0:38:17

(Speaker 3)

very specific instance that you had to work through. 

0:38:20

(Speaker 1)

Obviously, everybody who's showing up and seeing the agenda ahead of time, they knew who the speaker was. 

0:38:25

(Speaker 6)

supposed to be. 

0:38:26

(Speaker 1)

Correct. And then you get up and inform them that that's no longer possible because of the tragedy that's happened and so forth. I've got to think that also people understand, right? And people who are there in attendance know something's gone down. you're going to have to pivot. I still expect it to be good, or I'm hoping it's good, right? 

0:38:44

(Speaker 1)

And you guys deliver, you knock it out of the park with something that maybe was going to look very different. But the circumstances that were presented forced you in a certain direction and you kind of leaned in and went with it. A hundred percent true. It's one of those situations where everybody was really understanding, obviously, because you're in the city for which the accident happened. Right. But then to your point, exactly. 

0:39:07

(Speaker 1)

I got up. No, but we never sent out a notification saying this had changed. People walked in the door at eight thirty and it was like we send our extreme apologies. Then we did our condolences to all those who had lost their lives in this tragic incident. We are going to make lemonade out of lemons here because we have somebody that really is insightful. And we have a lot of things that we can talk about. 

0:39:34

(Speaker 1)

When we got this, when we got the net promoter score back, it was very good. But when we got the survey results back, it was very good. But it also opened our eyes around things of areas where we could go in the future, because people like, you know, I'm really disappointed that you get to talk about this, this and this. 

0:39:53

(Speaker 4)

So then the next year in development, you look at it and say, I'm going to take those ideas And so everything is a learning opportunity, but you're absolutely, it's way different than, hey, a flight got canceled. 

0:40:06

(Speaker 2)

People are less sympathetic to a flight cancellation and a person, their expectation is, I don't care that speaker better be there. I don't care if it's four o 'clock in the morning. Right. 

0:40:17

(Speaker 1)

But this sort of tragedy in this extreme situation or government shutdown, people are a little bit more amenable to the idea. But you're absolutely right. You have no regardless of what happens, people pay money. Their expectations need to be met. It might be slightly different than what they expected. 

0:40:36

(Speaker 1)

But if they can walk away with something that provides solutions to problems that they're having or enhancing their acumen of understanding, then then you've won. So. That's amazing. And hats off to you for pivoting like that, because I think that that's, like you said, like, not only is it, you know, in the you're having to pivot because of this tragedy, but it's right there in the city you're in. So that's certainly a unique situation. And I'll say one other thing before you have to have a team approach. 

0:41:11

(Speaker 1)

There's no one individual that wins this battle. 

0:41:15

(Speaker 10)

Right. 

0:41:15

(Speaker 2)

Like all of a sudden there was a group of us sitting in a room, you know, some of us in pajamas, right? You know, at four in the morning trying to figure this out. So it's a team approach to really bounce things off and try to figure out, you know, but again, that to me, I would, this is no, in no way, shape or form. That was my brilliant idea. But what we really did was to talk about it as to brainstorm and whiteboard these things. So it really, if you can get Sometimes it's up to you. 

0:41:46

(Speaker 2)

I mean, you people, that's a content creators job, right? You are at the front line, but if you can get a team to help bounce ideas off even better, sorry, but I just think it's important. If I'm in there, I'm cross -functional collaboration guy all the way. 

0:42:01

(Speaker 1)

A hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's, it's a testament to, to that thinking and, and kind of what happens behind the scenes that, you know, obviously we don't want to, we don't want to pull the curtain back. We want to create an opportunity for people to be able to get that information and be engaged and go away with, you know, messaging that was intentional and is remembered. 

0:42:27

(Speaker 1)

To that point, we're all challenged by budgets. So maybe you can speak to a little bit about, you know, a snapshot of where does, where does the budget allocations, where do they go? And like, why, you know, why is it that in my area, for instance, you know, the, the content capture is, is a lot of times an add on and not, not integral because the budget's been swallowed up by all of these other things. Maybe you can speak to, and they're important. I'm not saying they're not important. It's just that how, how does the, the life cycle of a conference budget go right now and where a lot of those, um, Where's it allocated to? 

0:43:10

(Speaker 1)

Okay. So you guys tell me if this is the same story that you've ever heard, right? So my job in managing content was to also create the budgets, work with the team approach. So we would come out and we'd sit there and you do all of your market analysis on what you're going to charge and things of that nature. I won't go into those nuances, but so you create a budget. The next thing, you know, you throw in, um, All of that together, you throw it to the management team. 

0:43:42

(Speaker 1)

The management team looks at it and says, number isn't high enough. And then they come up with a number, right? And they say, okay, it's 2 % across the board. Everybody like, now you're figuring it out. That manager then sends it up the food chain. They look at it and say, in total, it's no longer, I'm just throwing out a number, eight and a half million dollars. 

0:44:01

(Speaker 1)

And they say, nope, it's got to be $7 million. So then that's, you know, you know, they talk about what, excuse me, my shit goes downhill, right? So then it goes back and then you do all that and then you get it and everybody approves it. And then all of a sudden, as the event comes, the same management team that looks at it, sits there and says, you have to cut expenses by 15 percent. Right. That's a reality that we all live in. 

0:44:28

(Speaker 1)

Right. And I'm thinking that pretty much. So within that realm as a content creator, my job as the manager of that was I fought myself a lot. Because my job was to create the budget, get the budget approved with the team, our boss approved it, their boss approved it, everybody, then all of a sudden I now as a content creator fight tooth and nail for everything that I can get in that room for content creation, right? Everything about it was I want this type of seating. I want this type of thing. 

0:45:01

(Speaker 1)

I don't want classroom seating. I want this kind of seating. I want relaxed seating. I want two 13 foot screens. I want all of these things. So that the end of the day, then my review came in there like these expenses happen. 

0:45:14

(Speaker 1)

How did these, you're almost fighting with yourself, which is a really unique situation. But to answer your question is ultimately making the argument. is a losing battle. It really is. I can't be any more honest than that. 

0:45:30

(Speaker 3)

You take the wins when you can get them. 

0:45:32

(Speaker 1)

Great example. Chris and I were talking about, how do you create content on an exhibit floor to draw the technical people that are in the meeting rooms to come to the show floor? So we created cubicles of content on the show floor. And I had this grandiose idea that I was going to have a live band. I was going to shoot can T -shirts out of a can and I was going to create this Shakespeare theater in the round thing. We're going to do this fabulous thing. 

0:46:05

(Speaker 1)

" By the time that the budget got to it, I was using prerecorded material from the AV company that they had that they paid for. I was throwing t -shirts out that I had the night before, put rubber bands on, and I'm like, woo -hoo, you know? Hold the cannon. 

0:46:22

(Speaker 3)

Yes. The cannon's gone. 

0:46:24

(Speaker 1)

Mark's not coming in like a mascot. I'm not leaping on this. All of these things. But the band was not a band. The band was. Yeah, I was the only guy who just happened to have, you know, from his list that he paid for, you know, that sort of thing. 

0:46:41

(Speaker 1)

Yeah. Again, but at the end of the day, if you can still create experience, that was it for me for content. What you're talking about is really making the argument and it really, really comes down to what is the long -term and how convincing you are with your management to say, it's going to cost us money now, but we're going to make money later. And if you can create that compelling story, to say, we're going to get four articles out of it. We're going to do this out of it. We're going to do this out of it. 

0:47:13

(Speaker 1)

And here's the thing that was my secret vendors, the people whose business unit it was, get them to become the advocates for the idea because they're looking for content. Right. So if you can sit there and say, I got this guy, he can write you a book. He can do an article for you. 

0:47:30

(Speaker 4)

Maybe you can get him to write, you know, a technical paper. 

0:47:35

(Speaker 1)

Here's the guy really smart. You go out and become the, they become the, you become their advocate initially. 

0:47:41

(Speaker 14)

They then become your advocate because the next year they're like, Oh yeah, we got to put in our budget because we got some great content out of it. 

0:47:48

(Speaker 1)

So that to me is, as I always said, I believe that if I have to take a loss for the longterm gain, that's the argument that I will make versus everyone else. that I'm just trying to make the money in the budget. I'm saying, look, I'll take some skin in the game. 

0:48:05

(Speaker 7)

I'll take 50 % of your cost, da -da -da -da -da. 

0:48:10

(Speaker 1)

You mentioned content creation and using it, and this is an analogy that I'm going to bang the drum on Fist Bump and the podcasts. you know, we don't always have a ton of people who are catching us live because like who has an hour an hour to spare at noontime on a Thursday. Some people do, but some people won't. But, but the real win for us is all the content that's created from the show. So not dissimilar to what you're talking about at all is the, you know, the team over there will kind of cut this up into a bunch of shorts, and we'll create all sorts of, you know, posts, and then we can push it out not only on social, but also through other channels. Um, you know, so, and, and that's the longterm gain, um, that we, you know, that we're able to kind of utilize that going forward. 

0:48:59

(Speaker 1)

So, Oh yeah. Cause I see the three of us right now, I'm sitting there three boys in bird, but I'm right. There's a podcast and that there we go. Right. They sit there and start. Three dudes, six guys, 12 glasses or something like that. 

0:49:13

(Speaker 1)

And then the bourbon. Yes. But again, I look at it and say the three of us could talk about from an expo experience, how do you get ROI and do all of that? Because from my side of it, I would constantly go with my sales team. to visit clients, their clients that they're trying to get sponsorship of to talk about the technical content, which anchors the event. That was good for me. 

0:49:35

(Speaker 1)

It was great for the sales team. It was good for the customer, right? That's the, we don't, we didn't get really too much about it with only a couple of minutes left, but talking about cross functionality. And I think Brendan, you get into that a little bit about sitting in my marketing person's shoes, understanding what it is that they're ultimately going to. My thing is always. 

0:49:55

(Speaker 16)

you know, like what's going on in their side of the world, sitting in their meetings, looking at this overarching because the marketing has a budget and they're going to come back and say, I don't have the money you want to do all the marketing you want. 

0:50:06

(Speaker 1)

Understanding all of those things, right? How do you work in a cross -functional, collaborative approach where everybody, so you understand what's going on at the end. You're not just berating these people for not having the money, right? 

0:50:18

(Speaker 15)

This is what happens. 

0:50:19

(Speaker 1)

in a room, the three of us started arguing about mine. But if I know Brendan's sitting there going, look, the marketing budget is, you know, X million dollars over and the executive level is not how we're going to work that together. How ultimately is that? How do we then switch strategies to say the voice of the customer? 

0:50:37

(Speaker 5)

How do we redo that campaign where those people become our advocates and we incentivize them to bring people in? 

0:50:43

(Speaker 1)

Right. Versus trying to do digital. So I think there's a lot of things that really can go into with a cross -functional team, if you sit in the, I hate it's cliche, right? 

0:50:53

(Speaker 14)

Step in the shoes of your colleague, but really whether it's your vendor, like you, Chris, or Brendan, that's sitting in, what's going on in their world to truly understand rather than just think about it from a siloed approach. 

0:51:07

(Speaker 1)

Yeah, spot on, spot on. And I love how you kind of, you know, work that in, obviously the teamwork message that you referenced earlier, like, and then pulling it in this way. And we've, we've talked about kind of this before. It's like when you, when you're able to, you know, create that cross -functional team and you create content that can work for multiple people, it gives me the ability to kind of go to the advertising budget, to the recruiting budget, to the training budget, um, and pull money from all of those things to produce a better piece of digital content that I can use at the show that benefits everybody along the, along the line. Right. It's all, kind of, it's the same play. 

0:51:44

(Speaker 1)

It's like, how do we build something that has a little bit of something for everyone? We'll pool our resources. and get a better product at the end of the day. Yeah. And I will tell you this, and this is just my little thing. 

0:51:55

(Speaker 3)

Um, I have been under the desk plugging in more cords on site than I can ever go to, to talk about. And the reason I bring that up is it's really important from a clock onsite crossfire. If you. 

0:52:08

(Speaker 1)

hearing something and seeing something quite different, right? I passed out more pieces of, you know, the pads of paper and putting all of that out to show that team collaborative approach that it's not, I'm just going to focus on content and screw the rest of you, right? 

0:52:23

(Speaker 13)

It's really building an entire experience. 

0:52:25

(Speaker 12)

If I can bring coffee to my AV guys, if I can remember the AV guys birthday, right? 

0:52:31

(Speaker 7)

If I can do these sorts of things, That is to the point of growing that event to where people want to work with you. 

0:52:38

(Speaker 1)

And to your point, Brendan, maybe I can push that budget. Maybe I can push that ROI because now I'm not just the jerk in the corner who's always doing this. I'm a guy. I mean, I got photos of me under desk, outside, all over the place. It doesn't really matter to me. Yes, I do. 

0:52:55

(Speaker 1)

Believe it or not under the desk with a bow tie. It's pretty funny in a suit doing these sort of things. A hundred percent. Check, check your ego at the door. Check your title at the door. It doesn't matter. 

0:53:04

(Speaker 1)

Yeah. Title. And I learned that from a mentor that was like, really, that was to me, the thing was I had AV people saying, that's your boss. 

0:53:13

(Speaker 11)

I had no idea that was your boss. 

0:53:16

(Speaker 1)

And I'm like, yeah, right. So that to me, to your point is that's how you grow. And maybe you can get a little, Hey, why don't you give me this? I'll give you a little of this with other business units that maybe ultimately grow your ROI. Nice. Hey, we could, we could, I'm sure talk for a whole nother hour and fill this thing up. 

0:53:38

(Speaker 1)

But we're going to jump to our final question. So on the toolbox, we always like to ask our guests, you know, can you leave our listeners with one or two little, you know, nuggets, but Mark's going to blow that out of the water. He's got way more than that. So we wanted to give you like five, six minutes at the end of this thing to just drop all the gold nuggets, actionable items, or kind of thoughts. What would Mark LaDuke tell the younger, you know, 30, 30 year old, 30 year old Mark LaDuke as he was entering. 

0:54:06

(Speaker 1)

So Mark, share some wisdom with us if you would. All right, then I'll drop the mic and go, well, the two nuggets I have, I just have two for career wise. Okay. Try to experience both. If you're going to get into this industry, experience both the business to business side and the technical nonprofit side. I think both of them make your toolbox so much stronger because when people look for jobs, they go, do you have any business to business conference experience? 

0:54:35

(Speaker 1)

There's this bias that if you do business to business conferences, it's different than nonprofit association, but there are unique, but they're not necessarily, it's still the same architecture, but do that. 

0:54:48

(Speaker 3)

The other one, as I said before, learn as much as you can about everybody else's job. 

0:54:54

(Speaker 5)

Know their job as well as you do your own. 

0:54:56

(Speaker 1)

Ask to be part of their meetings so that you can better understand, because that's just going to make you a better colleague and it's going to make you a better business development specialist. 

0:55:06

(Speaker 10)

That's the true walk away from the quarterback, right? Who can who can tell you where the guard needs to block and where the wide receiver needs to, what his route looks like. 

0:55:16

(Speaker 1)

Oh, I'll tell you this, you know, we're not going to get into Tom Brady, who could always tell Gronk where to go and he could always see Stafford the same way, right? If they can read it, That makes it better walkaways from the what we've talked about today in my mind conferences should not be the end goal to the audience engagement, that's what conferences need to solve the why of an audience attendance to be successful that's to if an audience isn't engaged, the program won't be successful. How do you get them off of the phone? Better utilize data, IAE or IE, AI as a research tool. We don't use it well enough. 

0:55:53

(Speaker 1)

Survey attendees coming to the event before the event to further refine content. Don't do the survey after, do the survey before. Then the last thing is, As I said before, I'll repeat it over and over, the conference is not the end goal in customer engagement. They should just be part of an organization's 365, 24 -7 strategy. Mic drop. There you go. 

0:56:26

(Speaker 1)

It's a little artificial one. Awesome. Awesome. Hey, you mentioned a couple of times, and I tried to just write it down, but I'm not remembering the whole verbiage, there's a score that a show receives from its attendees. What was that called? Net promoter score. 

0:56:42

(Speaker 1)

Okay, net promoter score. That is the advocates, the detractors, and the neutrals. That's how it's worked. So your net promoter score is what is the point difference between those who are supportive and those who hate it. And that's what a score is. All organizations look at net promoter score, Delta Airlines, they all look at net promoter score as do your detractors, subtract those from your advocates. 

0:57:08

(Speaker 1)

Don't worry about the neutrals. And your job is to move neutrals to advocates and negatives to neutrals. And that is to me, the net promoter score is a huge factor in growth strategy. Gotcha. And is that done through a survey situation? 

0:57:32

(Speaker 3)

Yeah, 100%. 

0:57:33

(Speaker 9)

The survey is, what did you like? 

0:57:35

(Speaker 8)

Did you like it? 

0:57:35

(Speaker 7)

Did you not like it? 

0:57:36

(Speaker 1)

And then you start to do, there's a little, researchers have a formula and they create a net promoter's score on that. 

0:57:43

(Speaker 5)

So to me, an event is more than ROI. 

0:57:45

(Speaker 1)

And that's what I talked about. I'm trying to create a formula that says how you equate net promoter score within the ROI formula so that when you go back to your boss and say, look, We made 25 % ROI on this particular, because everything should be ROI, not just the total event. Every aspect of everything that you do, you should be able to come back and say, this is what my ROI on, maybe we did chat with expert. What's that? We did this panel discussion. What is it? 

0:58:18

(Speaker 1)

You should be able to do all of that and roll that up, but then add the net promoter score in. This has been a good one, my friend. This has been a good one. Well, go, Pats, go. That's the only thing I got to say at the rest of this, right? There we go. 

0:58:32

(Speaker 1)

I love it. I love it. Sorry, Brendan, you're quarterback's Ohio State boy. There we go. Mark, how can people reach you? And just a little bit about like a door opens and your your dream opportunity is on the other side of the door. 

0:58:49

(Speaker 5)

We're like, what does this look like? 

0:58:51

(Speaker 1)

What are the conversations that you'd ideally love to have with folks who might be out, you know, listening to this or hearing it in the future? Thank you, Chris. 

0:58:58

(Speaker 2)

Appreciate it. Well, they're going to show up on the screen. I'm on LinkedIn. 

0:59:01

(Speaker 1)

All my details are on LinkedIn. So Mark C. LeDuc on LinkedIn, they'll pop that up. Fantastic. 

0:59:09

(Speaker 6)

I am, you know, although I have, I am that boutique guy, a person of one doing that. 

0:59:15

(Speaker 1)

I would love to get back into the conference development space. Clearly you see a passion for it, whether it's finance, medical technology, To me, it's all about solving problems. That's how my brain works. I love to do that and work with industry to make that happen. So if people have need for a content creator, reach out to me via LinkedIn, and I would love to have that conversation. 

0:59:42

(Speaker 5)

Awesome. 

0:59:43

(Speaker 1)

Fantastic. All right. Well, hey, Brendan, it's been great having you again. Do you have any closing words as well? 

0:59:48

(Speaker 4)

Oh, just, I mean, this has been a pleasure. I love connecting with folks that that, you know, see the that are that are have the same vision as I do about the power of content within events. And so it's been a it's been great to to talk with you today, Mark. I love being able to take the things that we're talking about and learning and then regurgitate it back to my clients. And they think that I'm wicked smart, wicked smart, wicked smart. So it's like everything I know I learned on the in the toolbox. 

1:00:19

That's all right. Well, I am so grateful, Chris and Brennan, for the opportunity to have this conversation with you. I, again, as you and I talked about, most people don't know what it's like on this side. They just usually see ROI and all of the marketing and they never talk about, without content, you have no program. And I think ultimately content, good content has a very long life cycle that lots of other business units can use. And I think that if it's done right, it makes, you can make profitable companies, but you can also make really intelligent people. 

1:00:58

Awesome. All right. We're going to wrap it up on that. So thanks for joining us, everybody. Take care and everybody have a great rest of your week. Cheers and be well. 

1:01:07

Yes. Go Pats.