EMT #56 with David T. Stevens - Wellness as a Performance Driver in Events

In this episode of Event Marketer’s Toolbox, Chris Dunn and Brendon Hamlin sit down with David T. Stevens to explore a topic that is often misunderstood in the events industry: wellness.

But this conversation is not about surface-level perks.

It’s not about adding a massage chair to a lounge, offering goat yoga because it looks good on Instagram, or checking the “wellness” box because it feels trendy.

Instead, David makes the case that wellness is a business strategy—one that directly affects learning, engagement, retention, belonging, and ultimately, performance. From agenda design and nutrition to social connection and sleep, he explains how events can produce better outcomes when they are built around the way people actually function. 

David, who calls himself a “20-year recovering corporate event marketer and planner,” now leads Olympian Meeting, which he describes as the world’s first wellness-first events agency. Their philosophy is simple but powerful: they do not produce “wellness events.” They produce corporate meetings, conferences, sales kickoffs, and incentive programs—while using wellness as the lens that drives stronger business outcomes. 

What makes this episode especially valuable is that David brings science, practicality, and event experience together in a way that feels immediately usable. He breaks down how things like overpacked agendas, poor food choices, lack of recovery time, and weak networking design can work against the very goals event professionals are trying to achieve.

The result is one of the more thought-provoking EMT conversations to date—especially for planners, marketers, and brand leaders who want their events to do more than just look good on paper.

If you’re designing conferences, trade shows, sales meetings, or any kind of live experience, this episode is worth your time.

Listen to the full conversation, share it with your team, and ask yourself one simple question before your next event:

What is the real intention behind this experience — and are we designing it with purpose?

Follow Event Marketer’s Toolbox for more conversations with the people shaping the future of events.

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Transcript

0:00:01

Hey, hello, and welcome, everybody. 

0:00:03

I'm Chris Dunn. 

0:00:04

I'm with Blue Hive Exhibits. You are on the Event Marketers Toolbox. I got a couple of buddies with me today. We're going to chop it up and talk about some very interesting things around wellness and events. I'm joined here by longtime friend, Brendan Hamlin, and of course, David T. Stevens. So, hey, Brendan, I'm going to kick it over to you. 

0:00:23

Why don't you do a quick intro? Moving along. 

0:00:26

Yeah. 

0:00:27

Yeah. Thanks, Chris. Happy to be back. It's been a crazy few weeks since I was last with you. So yeah, I'm Brendan Hamlin. I run Hamlin Creative based out of Asheville, North Carolina. 

0:00:37

We are a production company. We focus on events, capturing conferences or trade shows or activations. We were just in Dallas shooting an IndyCar race, which was amazing. But it's great to be here today and great to introduce our friend David Stevens. 

0:00:54

David, how are you today? I'm great. I was actually just in Asheville like a week ago for a fam. 

0:01:01

It was my first time. 

0:01:02

Welcome. 

0:01:04

I hope you had a great time. Yeah, it was. I really loved the way that the entire town has this fantastic repurposing of everything. The Woolworths downtown, that's now like an art museum slash exhibit, like you can go buy pieces of art and still and the counter is still there. I saw the Foundry Hotel, which it's not necessarily a shout out to them, but they turn this iron foundry into a hotel. Gorgeous. 

0:01:32

Yeah. 

0:01:32

No, it was I really enjoyed my time there. Good, good. 

0:01:35

Well, come on back. 

0:01:36

So I'll buy you a beer the next time you're here. Perfect. You know, I went to visit Brendan back in October, November, I think it was. And and we had like 10 breweries in like a day and a half. And I feel like I was that we were really working very hard in order to do that. 

0:01:51

Yeah. 

0:01:52

Thank God your wife, Sarah, carted us around. 

0:01:54

So we were very safe as well. Just that's right. 

0:01:57

That's right. 

0:01:57

Yeah. And before we get into the meat and potatoes, of it, just super quick, our sponsors, Blue Life. I work for Blue Life. We are a custom exhibit agency. We are located in the Boston area as well as Las Vegas. 

0:02:09

We design, we build, we do all the things, we manage people's properties. We're a good fit for a lot of different types of companies. So if you're looking for creativity and outside the box thinking, that's us. In addition to that, we've got Fist Bump and these guys are a great agency. They're helping us put on the show today. They not only help us kind of with the heavy lift, pieces behind the scenes, they're doing the production and so forth, the marketing, the content creation and curation, and then the advertising of the show. 

0:02:37

So great group of folks. 

0:02:39

One is running the board today. Shout out to them and thanks for the help and the sponsorship to make sure that this show continues to happen. So with that behind us, we are ready to kind of jump into this first line of questioning. Brendan, you're going to start us off with Mr. Stevens. Yeah, David. 

0:02:54

So we kind of we kind of deviated into talking about Asheville. But tell us a little bit about what you do. Today's you know, today's focus is about wellness. And you're sort of the wellness guru when it comes to how it connects to events. So tell us a little bit about about your background and about how that kind of weaves into your event space these days. Yeah, well, I like to remind people that I'm a 20 year recovering corporate event marketer and planner. 

0:03:23

I spent plenty of time within corporate, but I also worked in music and concerts. And I was a tour manager at one point. And I did experiential marketing tours and you name it. So I was even an association planner at once. And I worked at agencies. And so I I think on my LinkedIn profile used to say Variety is the spice of life, and I like to keep it spicy. 

0:03:49

So I've done a lot of different things. And now, as of 2020, the end of 2023, I have joined my business partner to launch the world's first, the world's only wellness first events agency, Olympian Meeting. And we're exactly that. So we're the only events agency in the world that starts with wellness. 

0:04:11

We don't do wellness events. We do corporate sales kickoffs and incentive trips and conferences and meetings. 

0:04:18

But we use wellness as a strategic advantage so that we can drive the impact to that bottom line, because we all know executives aren't going to care if it doesn't impact the bottom line anyways. So we found a way while I was still in corporate world to get better results by taking care of people. David, that's the wellness market, just small, right? Just barely scratching the surface? Only approximately $7 trillion globally. 

0:04:55

There's something there. 

0:04:56

Then if we get into wellness tourism, which directly impacts hospitality. That's approximately a $900 billion. So almost one of those trillions is wellness tourism and where the hospitality market lives. 

0:05:11

Wow. Okay. So, I mean, there's a bottom line here. There's a, there's ROI to be had. This is not a fluffy nice to have. 

0:05:18

No, and one other thing I will also call out, because I have an episode of Return on Wellness coming out in just a few days. 

0:05:26

I had a gentleman on named Mark C. Crowley, and he writes for Fortune, and he's also an author, or no, he writes for Fast Company, sorry, and he's also an author. But we talked about the Oxford study, where they found companies with The top companies, the top 100 companies with the highest well -being scores, their stock prices outpaced everyone in every other market. So employee well -being is actually directly tied to your stock price. 

0:05:56

That's what I'm going to say. It's definitive. But go ahead. 

0:06:01

Keep ignoring it. It's fine. So talk a little bit maybe about how you So your agency is wellness forward. What's that look like when you're building a conference, let's say? How do you structure that around a wellness point of view? Yeah, I think one of the things we love to do is have the conversation about the agenda first and foremost. 

0:06:27

So we have four key pillars, mindfulness, movement, meaning, and meals. And when you hear mindfulness, you usually think meditation or something of that nature. But our thing is, what are we expecting or asking of the participants? Are we being mindful of what we're trying to get them to do or how we're consuming their day? Do they have time to talk to their family? Do they have time to connect with their fellow participants? 

0:06:53

Do they have time to actually absorb the information they're learning? All too often, we're like, oh, let's just crack open the fire hose and blast people with information and we'll deal with it on the other end when we're actually undermining the things or like, oh, we'll add this thing and we don't actually do it with any intention, so then it's not effective. Because you could have, I don't know, massages from, I know Deepak Chopra has a spa, but probably not him, because, well, we know he's on the list. But if there's no time to go get the massage, then what's the point of even offering it? Then you're going to be like, oh, wellness doesn't work. 

0:07:36

No, it's not that it doesn't work. 

0:07:38

It's that your agenda was so over -programmed, no one got to go experience it. So we start with the agenda. 

0:07:45

The next step is registration because you can ask people what wellness means to them. 

0:07:51

So you actually know what's relevant to offer. Right. Because a weird thing happens when you offer people what they want. They show up and then and then you can go from there. Yeah. You know, David, interesting. 

0:08:09

And I got to imagine that if you're designing your, you know, your event, you want to make it You don't want to ROI off the chart, right? We're going to chock full of stuff and so much value to things to choose from. Designing a booth is similar to that. You're like, well, we're going to put all the things in here. Well, you only get 400 square feet. So the theater and the meeting room and the relaxation station and the massage station and the demos, like that doesn't all fit. 

0:08:33

So you have to be mindful about what we're going to leave space for, right? What's that negative space? And it sounds like on the creation of the event and building out that agenda, it's the same type of thing. What are you going to be intentional about? 

0:08:46

What are you going to leave space for so that you have enough space and people can take a breath? 

0:08:54

Yeah. 

0:08:54

And that's the thing is we all too often think more is more when really it's true. I also just interviewed a cognitive neuroscientist. Less is more. Like your brain says so. Yeah. Quality over quantity. 

0:09:14

Yeah. 100%. 

0:09:17

You know, so I'm a person who likes to kind of stay busy. 

0:09:23

I'm an extrovert, and I live with a family of introverts. And I sometimes struggle to understand how, although I've gotten better at it, I'm coming up on 30 years married, so I'm starting to figure shit out. But my wife, reminds me oftentimes, like, you might think like this, but I don't. And many people, many other folks don't. Right. 

0:09:46

When you're kind of more of an introvert, you need that quiet time. 

0:09:50

You need the downtime. I'm happy to go engage and be peopling and be part of this large space. But I'm going to need to retreat somewhere and go to that quiet space and have a reflective moment. And and somebody like me is not necessarily going to think about building that kind of thing into an event programming scenario or even from a geographical standpoint, how do I carve out the real estate that I've got? So it's imperative that people who are embarking on putting on these events are working with somebody like you who comes to the table with the ability to kind of 360, right? I'm going to see, we know a thing or two because we've done a thing or two and we know kind of what to look for. 

0:10:32

So, you know, That's something that somebody like myself will struggle with. 

0:10:38

So we need professional help with people like you. I think it comes down to, you know, why are you gathering to begin with? 

0:10:47

And if we really think about what the intention is behind the event, what we're trying to accomplish, what the outcome is that we want, that's where this comes from. 

0:10:59

And if you alienate people and isolate people, we don't necessarily have to get into the the medical fallout of people experiencing loneliness and isolation, which is approximately 15 cigarettes a day to their all cause mortality. That's the equivalent. You have to think about people and all the people that are attending your event. Otherwise, to speak executive language, you're you're leaving money on the table and or getting people to just walk away from your meeting or event or your birthday. or whatever it is. How do you, we're kind of going a little bit off script, but when you have so many different types of folks and you set out to design something where there's a little something for everyone, is there a bit of a playbook that kind of you guys come to the table with and as you're helping people map out their agendas and how they move forward, leaving space for those different types of diversity? 

0:12:04

you know, people who are introvert, extrovert. Yeah. It's really just about being accommodating and meeting people where they're at. And I think that's where a good reg form really delivers that. Right. 

0:12:20

Ask the questions. 

0:12:22

Get a better understanding of who your participants are. 

0:12:25

Also, I keep referring to them as participants, not attendees. And that's by design. Because do you want people to just show up and listen and leave? or do you want people to be a part of the event? So it's a little bit, there's semantics in there, but it also, there's meaning. 

0:12:42

And if you are approaching this from a meaningful perspective, you'll think about the people, the humans that are participating in your event over, well, I need to tell them this. Well, you could tell them, but you're not gonna make them care unless they feel cared for. My Angela quote comes to mind. True. Is there a difference maybe just going back to the word wellness and just saying wellness and positioning it differently than we're going to do goat yoga or have a quiet room? How do you go into saying wellness should be incorporated into your event? 

0:13:36

And somebody's like, oh, OK, we'll do a 5K run in the morning or whatever. It's deeper than that. Can you talk about that a little bit? Yeah, well, we always remind people that wellness means different things to different people. Our company name is Olympian Meeting. And when you hear the name Olympian, you think, pretty specific thoughts, right? 

0:13:57

Like really dialed in meals, intense training, early mornings, late nights, probably an equally intense recovery protocol, all these things that are like, oh God. And there's only very few of them in the world. Our company nickname is Ohm. And we all know Ohm. And that's a very different thing that you think of. And I jokingly say, I'm very much the Olympian in the company. 

0:14:28

My business partner is very much the Ohm side of things in the company. but where your participants live is in that in -between. They call it a wellness journey, which is, I know it makes a lot of people like throw up in their mouth a little bit when they hear it, because it's so cliche, but it's because you don't wake up one morning and you're like, oh, I'm well, the end, right? You're constantly, and the Merriam -Webster definition is a active pursuit of good health. That's what wellness means in the dictionary because different things will serve you at different times. And it's not about an all or nothing mindset. 

0:15:09

It's about what works in the moment. Like sometimes you go to the gym and you just aren't, you got 20%, 20 % of the tank. But if you give all 20%, you gave 100%. So it's really about this figure of what works for your participants and then meeting them where they are. The other thing is if you're going to offer something, understand why you're offering it. 

0:15:34

So like goat yoga fosters neuroplasticity. 

0:15:38

It primes your brain to learn in sessions. There's a lot of things there that keeps you very present because you don't know if you're going to get peed on or bit. There's a lot of elements to it, but nobody ever talks about it. 

0:15:53

They're just like, oh, goat yoga, Instagram, the end, wellness girly, the end. Nobody's talking about why you offer goat yoga or puppy yoga or whatever it is to benefit the event. And if you're missing that why, then it's just an added cost. And now goat yoga is the equivalent of cake pops. It's a passing trend. It will come, it will go, and your executives aren't going to care. 

0:16:23

Yeah. So you're really looking to create Like if it's one event, you would love for people to go away with a wellness thought in their head. Or even if it's like, hey, I really enjoyed goat yoga, and now I want to do that. I want to open that door now into that world. Well, and then think about that fond memory you just created for them towards your event, right? 

0:16:53

Because they know they picked up that habit at your event. 

0:16:57

And the other thing is there was a little lemon study in 2024, end of 24, it came out at 25. And they surveyed, I don't know, I think it was 16 ,000 people on five continents. And they saw a 21 % increase in belonging when people did a group workout together. So we already talked about neuroplasticity with the goat yoga, right? But now you also increased belonging by 21 % by offering this thing as well. But once again, if nobody cares about goat yoga, why are you offering it? 

0:17:31

Because you might have a group that in registration, they want to do a bootcamp class, or maybe they don't want to do it, they want to do a sound bath instead. So these modalities are all great, and there's no shortage of them to serve people where they are. But you have to understand what people are into that are coming to your event. 

0:17:52

Yeah, it's simple, right? You just ask people, what do you want? 

0:18:01

That's a great jumping off point. 

0:18:03

So we think about this, right? People listening, watching us here are event professionals. 

0:18:09

They've got an answer to their boss. 

0:18:10

They've got an answer to the bottom line and so forth. So I think the title here, right, is Wellness as a Performance Accelerator. Well, what does that actually mean? Can you kind of peel that back? I speak in common man's language. Do you know what this is? 

0:18:27

Is it a whoop? It's a whoop. Do either of you have a ring or some type of smart device? I have a Garmin. Great. That totally applies. 

0:18:40

And I'll use this example. Every morning when you go to a conference, you're waking up with a report card on your phone, and you know if that event is helping you or harming you. Now, you might have to be there, so you don't have a choice. But performance driven individuals, they are the lion's share of owning these devices because we're a bit what we're driven. We're ambitious. We want to know what we're doing. 

0:19:10

We want to be taking care of ourselves. We want to be optimizing and doing the best we can. possibly can and pushing ourselves to succeed and whatnot. These devices are like gas on that fire because you now know how hard you're pushing yourself or whatnot. Taking care of people, empowering them, and making your after parties, listing them as optional on the agenda so that people want to go to bed so they can optimize their sleep. Offering a non -alcoholic beverage that is in the same stemware or is presented in the same experience as the alcoholic beverage for the person who doesn't want to drink, which is 46 % of the adult population in the United States, by the way, only 54%, according to Gallup Poll, still drink alcohol. 

0:20:02

And 86 % of the entire group know that alcohol isn't necessarily good for you. So there's a chunk of like 30 % that still drink anyways. They're probably Gen X. They don't care. Gen X doesn't care about anything. But I'm a fringe. I'm a Xenial. 

0:20:25

So I'm right in between. So I have plenty of don't give up anyways. But by offering these things for the people that are performance driven, they're going to start understanding if your event is helping them or harming them. And these performance driven individuals are no are going to know when they're doing better or when they're doing worse when participating at your events. So by taking care of people and there's there's so much science out there that When you sleep, you convert short -term memory into long -term memory and free up space for short -term memory the next day. So like letting people get eight hours of sleep if they want it, that's not a nice to have. 

0:21:09

That's a, hey, CEO, do you want people to care about what you're talking about on stage and actually remember it or not? Then we can get into attention span and or working memory, which is how long are your sessions? That's another thing. And then you can get into food and beverage. And how are you feeding people? Are they going through blood sugar spikes or not? 

0:21:32

And if they are, their attention span is going to fall off because they're going to be distracted. 

0:21:37

They're going to go through that sugar crash. And if you're not feeding people fiber and things of that nature, you can't maintain even keel blood sugar and maintain. These are all physiological points to help people pay attention and retain information and leave little. And then on top of that, there's the forgetting curve. I don't know if you guys have heard of that before, but if you don't reengage with content within 48 hours, If you don't revisit content within 48 hours, you're likely to forget 80 plus percent of it. But if you went to a CEO and you said, hey, let's do a journaling class at the end of the conference, they would probably be like, what are you talking about? 

0:22:21

We're not doing a stupid journaling class. But if you reposition that and you say, hey, we're going to do a forgetting curve mitigation course. Oh, well, what's that? Yeah. Oh, well, if you don't visit content within 48 hours, you can forget up to 80 % of it. Oh, well, okay. 

0:22:40

So how do we fix it? Okay, we're going to take 20 minutes, and we're going to do a guided session where we have people write down who they met with what their favorite session was, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Or you could even do like even micro sessions in between your other sessions totally changes the game. But if you pitch it as journaling, no, forget it. 

0:23:03

So that's why 

0:23:05

you have to understand how this all works together, why it's a through line. But that's where performance lies, is taking care of people. When people are well -rested, well -fed, well -connected, they learn more. Going back to that stock price, right? The companies with higher well -being scores, their stock price outperformed the companies with lower well -being scores. 

0:23:36

Why? Because people were happy, they were healthy, they were connected to each other. You don't need red light therapy beds and hyperbaric oxygen therapy at your event in order to get more out of it. You just have to have intention. Sorry, that was a bit of a rant. No, we love it. 

0:23:56

We love the rant. We love the rant. It's actually, it's perfect because my next question was like, you know, wellness versus productivity, but it's not an either or, right? They're connected, they live in the same space. 

0:24:10

there is not a correlation, there is a direct causation. 

0:24:14

And I think all too often, especially in the wellness space, and I thoroughly appreciate the irony when I say things about wellness influencers, and here I am talking on a podcast about wellness, but there's causation and correlation are significantly different terms. Correlation can be anything, like you could have a correlation between, I don't know, crackheads and kitten births. OK, those things are on the same trajectory. There's a correlation. 

0:24:47

Great. But they have nothing to do with each other. There's no causation. The causation is where the sweet spot is. And there is a direct causation between wellness and productivity. Because who's woken up? 

0:25:22

Exactly. 

0:25:23

Well, I think I think there's where that like going back to the alcohol thing, you know, if you're going to end your night with a cocktail party, and you have a couple cocktails, you're not going to sleep as well. 

0:25:34

So your next day, you might not get enough sleep, but you're also the sleep won't be as as as substantive as if you didn't. And so then then you're already starting at what 80 % 70%, whatever, you know, depending on how many cocktails you had. 

0:25:53

You're climbing a hill before you even start. 

0:25:57

And then you're also craving food that is not going to stabilize your blood sugar, right? 

0:26:03

So then the rock's just rolling downhill. 

0:26:06

You're not even working uphill positively. You're just sliding further back because you want junk food and grease. And then you want to go back to sleep to get it out of your system. A question for y 'all. Do you know why your sleep is so bad with alcohol? Because I can get five times the pee. 

0:26:30

That's R -E. Yeah, you might want to see a doctor. I thought it was because it limited your REM sleep. Do you know what is happening that limits your REM sleep, I guess? No. So alcohol impedes melatonin production. 

0:26:53

So while it makes you sleep better, because it's a downer, right? It's not actually helping you get sleep. 

0:27:03

It might help you fall asleep, but your melatonin production is all messed up. 

0:27:07

And like, look, I love to day drink. If I'm going to drink, I want to drink during the day and I want to be done. We did New Year's Eve in Texas. My wife had to work the next day at the hospital. So we celebrated New Year's Eve at 5 p . m. 

0:27:22

along with Central Europe. 

0:27:24

And when we told everyone that we were gonna be celebrating New Year's Eve at 5 p . 

0:27:30

m. , they were like, this is the greatest New Year's Eve party I've ever heard. 

0:27:34

I'm in, let's go. 

0:27:36

At 7 p . 

0:27:36

m. , get the hell out of my house, we're done. I said, there's a 6 .30 p . m. 

0:27:45

curfew, you're out. We were able to stay up, have a nice dinner, blah, blah, blah, great night's sleep. So think about your consumption, think about when you consume it. I'm not here to tell anyone how to live your life because you do. But but yeah, if you if you notice, I mean, that's and that's these stupid things, too. Right. 

0:28:05

Like everyone saw their sleep score going down after they drink. And that's kind of helped drive the the change in alcohol consumption. 

0:28:14

Yeah. 

0:28:14

Right. 

0:28:15

And Brandon, like you said, we're all just kind of piling on. But it's a it's a it's a snowball. Right. You do one thing, which begets the next thing, which begets the next thing. 

0:28:25

What crap and then you don't sleep and then you feel like shit I think here's the thing is I did have a conversation with a with a an actual doctor Dr. G and he said look if you're if you're going to meet up with a friend that you haven't seen in a while and you're having a glass of wine Do it because your social health is so important. 

0:28:48

So, you know, it's one thing if you're having a going to 10 breweries over the course of four hours and you're leaving in a very different state, as opposed to having a glass or two of something with an old friend. That social health benefit is so good for your body. That's why I want to make sure that I'm very clear that if you drink, I'm not here to shame you. It's what works at the time. It was over 10 hours, by the way. 

0:29:17

I just want to say, if we didn't jam into it. We did start in the daytime, that's right. The picture at the beginning of that and the picture at the end of that looked very different. We did it safely. 

0:29:35

Hey, Brendan, let's jump into the event experience lens. So we're here, the toolbox, we try to come in about an hour, we're about halfway through, jump into the comments here, ask some questions. And this is being recorded, but we're going to be in the in the chat, chopping it up with you guys. So, Brendan, what's next? Yeah, so I think having said, you know, kind of the first 30 minutes here, I'd love to get what you're seeing on the ground right now. What are your clients saying to you? 

0:30:08

How is it being adopted into the events that you're producing? And then also, I'm sort of interested in, how is it also getting to event professionals? How are you helping in that? And that's maybe more of a Club Ichi question, because I know you're a founding member of that. But those are both important areas. One, we've talked a lot about attendees or participants, as you say. 

0:30:31

But also, what about the folks that are out there putting these events on? How is wellness infused into their lives? Yeah, so there's a lot in that question. I think first and foremost to talk about kind of what's happening in the space and what I'm seeing is it's definitely people are buying in because I think going back to that macro level picture of the Global Wellness Institute's figure of $6 .8, $6 .9 trillion, people are just living their lives. They're starting to live their lives differently. And that's why I pay attention to that number, because it shows that humanity as a whole is going in that direction. 

0:31:18

And it's something that people are investing in. And events are starting to adjust as well. There's plenty of events that have wellness lounges now. And they're trying to do something. But planners are always stretched thin. And I akin this to AV, right? 

0:31:43

Event planners, the smart ones, don't try to run their own AV. They work with somebody. Once you go from a series C -ish, depending on how good the round was, to a series D, you don't do your booths by yourself anymore. There are a lot of things that you need to think about. But I think a lot of the times, what's happening is people are just trying to do wellness, so they throw something at the wall. And they end up with a lounge, but there's not any intention there. 

0:32:17

There's stuff in a room. There's no programming behind it. There's no strategy. It's just, hey, like, go use this quiet room. OK, well, are you even looking out for what's happening in the quiet room? Are people using it as a as a call space as opposed to actually respecting the intention behind it? 

0:32:40

Um, I've seen it at events before we were at an event where we put up our circadian cove and next to us was a quiet room and we would pop in there every once in a while. And there's people taking phone calls. One person was changing. Um, like it's not what it's changing room versus the quiet room, but nobody was maintaining the integrity of that space because the person who needs a quiet dark space, they're now alienated and isolated. So I think that the market is adapting. They're realizing that like we have information, right? 

0:33:17

We have new understanding of how our brains work and what our capacities are and all these things. So the programming is starting to evolve, which is great. And we're leaning into this knowledge we're getting. But the application is still, I don't want to say superficial, but it is But by definition, that means surface level. And it's very much a kind of a surface level offering currently. And I think the missing gap and the opportunity there is understanding, back to the goat yoga, is the why behind the offering so that you understand how it's truly impacting your participant, which then is impacting their perceived value and outcomes of the overall program. 

0:34:08

The thing I love about Klaubici and why I love being a part of it and working with them is they are social health maestros. So if we go back to that Merriam -Webster definition of wellness about the pursuit of good health, there's a thing called the health triangle, and it's physical health, mental health, and social health. And I had a woman on who's the executive director of the World Federation 

0:34:35

Public Health Associations, which is essentially the World Health Organization on steroids, because it is a mixture of state government and academia, all that work on public health. 

0:34:50

And they all come together in this one association. And she said that your social health is the single largest determinant of your physical health. And you think you're doing wellness at events, but what you're actually doing is public health. And that stopped me dead in my tracks because one, I didn't want that level of responsibility. But two, it also made me really think about the way we're programming these things. And if we're programming them to be inclusive, and that's dietary restrictions, that's dietary needs, it's dietary wants, it's movement, it's all these things, but it's also the social things. 

0:35:37

of are people feeling connected? 

0:35:39

Are your networking spaces built intentionally or facilitated? 

0:35:44

I interviewed the woman who wrote the Surgeon General's paper, The Warning on Loneliness and Isolation. 

0:35:52

And she's also a professor. And there's another professor I interviewed. 

0:35:57

They talk about connection before content. And they work with their classes so that people get to know each other prior to going into sessions so that afterwards they have someone to go talk to about that session. Yeah. So then, then you also get into the cognitive benefits of people comparing notes with someone else, because the three of us could sit in the same room, hear the same speaker, and we can all walk away with different perspectives on that talk, right? So if we don't facilitate that, then we're losing that out. 

0:36:32

And the thing I love about Club Ichi is it's so welcoming. Everyone feels like they belong. And they are just as good as it gets at fostering social health amongst people. Think I strung all that together. I think you did, too. You did a good job. 

0:36:50

So let's then shine a light on planners and what could they be doing better? What are some areas that maybe they're not getting right and could do a little bit more to really pull wellness into their events? I would say ask what your why is. Really think about why you're offering something. Don't just offer it. Know if the people want it, and then also understand the physiology behind it and the physiological impact it has and why it benefits your outcome. 

0:37:30

So what's the business value of offering this thing? That is going to be a tremendous North Star for you. 

0:37:37

I think the second thing is you've got to put your oxygen mask on first before you help others. 

0:37:46

And the other thing is if you start prioritizing your own self -care and well -being, that's going to permeate into your programs. don't get too caught up in what you think wellness is and forget that it means different things to different people. I use a blatant stereotype for illustration purposes only. But if the 25 -year -old wellness girly who has become a vegan and now does yoga is like, oh, I need to offer. 

0:38:20

That's your prime demographic, right? 

0:38:22

That's like exactly who listens to this show. I feel like. given the hosts. If that individual is like, I need to add wellness to my event, we're gonna go vegan and we're gonna do yoga every day. And she works for a company that's a bunch of, let's call it 45 to 55 year old construction workers out of Wisconsin. There might be a couple, there might be a few, who knows. 

0:38:54

Like I said, this is all very, very blatant stereotypes, right? So that's why it's important to understand the why behind what's motivating you. 

0:39:04

What's the point? 

0:39:04

What are you really trying to get more out of the meeting? Are you trying to preach your perceived values to everyone else? Because if you truly understand wellness, you truly understand that you can't dictate what your version of wellness is to someone else. You can merely share what works for you. 

0:39:30

That's great. Yeah. Is there just I was in marketing for a long time. All I know how to do is take in sound bites We have to stop on that that was we're going to capture that one for sure. Yeah Um, so i'm going to kind of take this and move it into kind of a tactical conversation as it were. Um, Based on everything that you've learned over many many years. 

0:39:57

Is there is there a playbook of sorts? Um that that people can kind of, you know, choose from, like you said, don't let's not assume that what works for me is going to work for you. But we know, based on science and so forth, there, there's a dozen different personality types or something to that effect, right? People usually fall within a bucket type of a thing. And we can't offer everything in the world. 

0:40:22

So you have to kind of land on things which you feel like are going to fall. This type of personality type is going to really resonate to this type of a wellness event or whatnot. So what does that kind of look like from a tactical standpoint? 

0:40:38

Yeah, there's a little bit of calculus in there. I think there's a few things that you have to accommodate for at a macro level when it comes to human beings in general. You got to think about chronotypes, early birds, night owls, that kind of thing. You got to think about circadian rhythms and if people are traveling and things of that nature. And when you take those two things and you match them with people's preferences and the way your agenda is built, that's when you start seeing magic happen. So, I mean, it's kind of the secret sauce for us and what what we specialize in, um, let alone leveraging things like, you know, who's, how many people are actually using your uplighting to, to do color therapy in your, in your general session room? 

0:41:33

Probably not too many, but you could, you can completely change the vibe and the feel based on the time of day and understanding people's circadian rhythms, like on your back half of the day. Cause some people do sessions, like there'll be people who do sessions after dinner. 

0:41:52

You need to change your lighting, but your lighting in the beginning of the day, Bring the blue light on. It's totally fine. Don't worry about it. But so there's there's all these little nuanced things that you can do to really help people. So I think under working with a trusted partner that understands the way the human body functions at a very basic standpoint. and it has meaningful accreditations in that category, which isn't me, but it is our partners. 

0:42:23

And then leveraging that with your feedback that you're getting in the registration forms really helps you figure out what you need to deliver and when. So from a registration form standpoint, as you're gathering that information, that's got to be a couple of months out from the actual execution date, right? Because you're going to need an opportunity. to take that feedback and build that out? Or are we talking like a post -show, kind of post -mortem? Hey, we just did this event. 

0:42:55

What would you do better next year? It's probably a combination of the two years or the two things, right? Ideally, we're getting that information up front and we're building an agenda or itinerary that is dialed into what this particular group is looking for. Yeah, it's definitely a yes and response. 

0:43:11

And the other thing I'll say is, If you ask this question during registration, it informs all of your operational details as well, because and it provides a real opportunity. 

0:43:24

We like to ask, what does wellness mean to you? And then we create a big, long list, a plethora, but we kind of bucket it based on intensity. So there's like sound bath and mindfulness and that kind of stuff. And then there's yoga, stretching, Pilates, kind of a gentler movement. And then there's your boot camp, run club, blah, blah, blah. And depending on how many responses you get in those, you understand how many instructors you're going to need, if you're going to need a V, if you're going to need a big space, if you need a longer race route. 

0:43:59

We did one where we we said, I'll just do my own thing at the gym. That was one of the options. We had a bunch of people fill it out. And what we realized was most of them were from Europe and we were in Vegas. Do you know what time gyms open in Vegas? 

0:44:18

Like eight. So we went to the hotel in the morning and we said, Hey, can we open the gym like three, four hours early? No. Well, you're gonna have to pay for an attendant for that. 

0:44:31

I'm like, great. How much is it? 

0:44:34

Well, let me find out. It's 250 bucks. Not even plus plus. 

0:44:41

No brainer. 

0:44:42

Do you know how happy those people were when they're up at four o 'clock in the morning? Like, what do I do? Oh, the gym's open. I can go work out. And then I can bang out my email and I can actually show up to this event present instead of crap. I guess I'll just sit here in my dark room that I can't even get coffee in my own room because it's Vegas and work for four hours until I can go downstairs and get coffee. 

0:45:09

No, we met people where they were. 

0:45:12

And so it changed the way people perceived, it changed the way they showed up, right? 

0:45:18

So asking those questions really can help inform your operational details as well. 

0:45:28

No offense, but none of this is brain surgery, right? This is like, this is simple stuff. My favorite thing, I was speaking one time at a planners conference for medical meetings, and I'm like, this isn't rocket science. And someone in the, I hear in the back, But it is neuroscience. I was like, yes, you're absolutely correct. Thank you. 

0:45:51

I just interviewed this this cognitive neuroscientist. And that's the name of the episode. It's not rocket science, but it is. So I was like, I told her that's what I want to name the episode. 

0:46:04

And that's all I had to tell her. Then she was in. She's like, yes, let's have this conversation. Let's absolutely do that. That's awesome. But I think to your point, Chris, is that, you know, yeah, it's not like this. 

0:46:15

It's like a strategy. It's like going going in. 

0:46:18

You wouldn't build a booth without a strategy. I wouldn't create content without a strategy. You wouldn't put a plan for wellness without strategy. Otherwise, it's just you've just you know, you've made a box. I've captured footage and you put in a, you know, a quiet room where everybody's on their laptop. So it's like without without kind of that forward thinking and really putting a plan together, it's, it doesn't fully execute. 

0:46:44

It doesn't fully, it's not fully realized, I guess is my point. So it's, it's superficial and it's an expense and not a revenue driver or a performance enhancer. Yeah. David, I want to touch on, um, uh, an actual case study and I want to use your experience at IMAX. So, so you guys created this circadian cove. Can you, Uh walk everybody through kind of what that really looked like I guess or start from scratch, right? 

0:47:15

Like what was the idea behind it? We built it and then we did the thing. How did that all map out? What were your what are your thoughts and results? Yes, I can't and i'm excited to talk about the results as well. So, um, I was seeing wellness lounges pop up all over the place and They were just stuff in a room and I was like what what why do you think why do people think this is enough? 

0:47:39

like this is such a miss. And I reached out to a friend of mine slash partner. And I said, Hey, we've talked a lot about programming agendas around circadian rhythms. What do you think if we programmed a wellness lounge around circadian rhythm? And she was like, I think 

0:48:00

there's something significant there. 

0:48:02

And I said, okay. I said, so we're going to be owning the wellness lounge at IMAX this year. And can we get on a call and we'll look at all our practitioners that we're friends with and kind of list them all in an Excel spreadsheet. And then we can dial them in and figure out what we should offer when. And she was like, okay, I'm really starting to like this idea now. And so that's what we did. 

0:48:25

We built a spreadsheet with all of our practitioners and partners and whatnot. listed them listed the hours of the conference and when people would be able to attend and we started programming and Her name is dr. Jess Garza and and she she understands circadian rhythm like nobody's business and she understands how Mentally and physically so she's a human performance PhD. So she understands the way the physiological and mental impact of She used to be a gymnast, so she understands the twisties and all that stuff that happened with Simone. So we started programming. OK, day one. And this is where we came in as tenured events people. 

0:49:07

Day one in the morning is a very different energy than day three in the afternoon. Right. Like, who are you seeing on Thursday afternoon? That's like all full of energy and bouncing off the walls at IBEX. Nobody. 0 .0 persons. 

0:49:23

Absolutely nobody. So we started working through. OK, people are going to show up. They're going to be excited. They're going to be they're going to have all this anticipatory energy. So let's capture that energy. 

0:49:33

Let's give them something to do. And so we had like, you know, body weight boot camp and higher intensity offerings on day one in the mornings. And then when appointments were going on, we had some on demand resets, not recoveries, but resets because you still had shit to do. It wasn't about laying down and taking a nap for 20 minutes. what can we do to nervous system? What can different offerings in either classes or these on -demand experiences. 

0:50:09

We had one on -demand experience called NovoBeing, which is a therapeutic VR session, takes approximately eight minutes. It's clinically backed to drop anxiety by 32 % within those eight minutes. I can't think of a more appropriate crowd than meeting planners to drop anxiety levels. We had another thing called ShiftWave, which we had a five or 10 minute thing, but this was a very physical, Then you sit in a zero G chair and it has all these motors that go down your your spine and behind your legs It basically confuses the heck out of your nervous system So it gives it a hard reboot, but then you like you pop up and you're not sleepy You're not tired, but you're baseline right so that you can go back at it. We had a Aromatherapy bar so people could pick a scent that was either invigorating or something for them to go home with, back their hotel room, help them go to sleep, something of that nature. We partnered with a company called Tableau and they did water, but they do purified water off any city source water. 

0:51:17

So hydration is key. I love this line. So I interviewed a dietician and I was like, why is so hydration important to learning? And she goes, well, blood is what brings oxygen to your brain and your body functions off oxygen, right? She goes, so if you're dehydrated, How do you think thick blood gets up to your brain? And I was like, that's the grossest thing I've ever heard. 

0:51:39

And she's like, yeah, but now you'll drink more water, won't you? And I was like, yes, I will. Thank you for that. So we offered hydration to keep everyone from getting thick blood. Plus it's Vegas, so it's inherently dehydrating. 

0:51:50

And then we had an aura photography booth, which if you want to go into the science of aura photography, you're going to have to ask somebody else because there isn't a lot of it. 

0:52:02

But people love it. 

0:52:03

And it's a conversation starter. And here's why I loved it. There was a line. And this is my event marketer hat. There was a line. And I got to talk to everybody in that line because I, unlike all the salespeople that we try to train, to talk to people in the booth. 

0:52:22

I worked the hell out of that line. I talked to everyone. I introduced myself. I told them what we were doing. I asked them how we could help them. I asked what they were looking for, how they were feeling. 

0:52:33

It was a captive audience for hours on end there. And then the other thing we offered was throat coat tea, which I don't know if y 'all are familiar with, but we gave that out as our giveaway because everyone's talking, doing all their appointments. So we gave them a little tea that they could go back to their room. Yeah. Nice. But But this is where it goes back to what we talked about before. 

0:52:55

I know I needed Throat Coat Tea. I remembered everyone else there would need it. So why not provide it for everyone? 

0:53:05

Right. 

0:53:06

Because what's good for the goose is good for the gander or whatever. 

0:53:10

When you start applying these principles to yourself, you start applying them and offering them to others. 

0:53:15

So that was Circadian Cove. It is now a finalist for the PCMA Visionary Awards. which I'm very stoked about. 

0:53:23

I will be going to DC to find out if we won. But yes, thank you. 

0:53:31

Huge shout out. And to go back to Club Ichi, Dr. Jess Garza, I know because of Club Ichi. Tahira Endin from IMAX, I know because of Club Ichi. Liz and Nicole, it's hard not to get emotional when I say this, Liz and Nicole have changed my friggin' life. Because of Club Ichi, I know the people who have given me so much. And that's why I love them, because they are the most selfless people on the planet, and they will always get my money. 

0:54:09

Yeah, we can see the passion in your face, for sure. That's that's wonderful. I mean like you said community is so huge Loneliness we say loneliness is like smoking 15 cigarettes a day like that's an illustration from a guy whose dad died because he smoked like two packs a day like Yeah, I think loneliness has a similar effect to that. Holy shit. That's crazy. That's the increase in all -cause mortality Potential good God. 

0:54:41

Yeah, but hey guys, we've got about five minutes left or so. So so Brendan let's kind of truncate our or kind of look at the future, and then we'll roll that into, what does David kind of want to drop with us? A couple of gold nuggets here to end it off. Yeah, I think just real quickly, David, what's your outlook? What's your forecast for how wellness is going to get incorporated into events in the future? I think hopefully there's going to be more and more intention. 

0:55:11

As we learn more and more about how this can directly the causation of wellness to performance, there's no reason we shouldn't be leveraging it. 

0:55:22

I mean, we're always looking for a way to stand out, right? 

0:55:26

Especially in the marketer world. We're trying to do something different. We're trying to offer that experience. We're trying to do whatever we can to separate ourselves from the noise. And wellness is a very easy thing to use. done with intention, if you understand the why. 

0:55:44

So that the key is to educate, let alone the entire global wellness economy is outpacing global GDP. So that is not slowing down. People are continuing to prioritize. One of the things one of the most recent guests shared with me was we've lost a lot of micro human transactions. 

0:56:04

So remember you said when you ordered a coffee, you used to have to go in and speak to someone to order your coffee. 

0:56:09

Then they'd call out the wrong name or mispronounce it, whatever. 

0:56:14

But those were those were transactions that you had with human beings. 

0:56:19

There was no self -checkout. 

0:56:21

You had to stand there and worry if like you bought, I don't know, a garbage bag and an extension cord and duct tape and a shovel that the cashier was going to judge you based on what you were buying. 

0:56:35

Now with self -checkout, you can do whatever you want and nobody talks to you. Nobody talks. So there's for us between wellness and meetings, like the opportunity to drive belonging and social health is incredible. Event professionals, we are public health aficionados because we're the ones that know how to bring people together better than anyone else on the planet. And with AI making people question everything online, Yeah, am I even real right now? I don't know, I might have just put this script into an avatar generator and dumped it in the in the recording. 

0:57:13

You'll never know. 

0:57:17

With that, and then all this removal of constant human contact. 

0:57:21

There was a new stat that just came out that service based real estate has overtaken retail for the first time ever in history, because people are craving transactions with other people. 

0:57:33

So to me, the future 

0:57:35

is hopefully optimistic and people realizing that we've gotten really fragmented. 

0:57:41

We've gotten really isolated and they're tired of it and they want to start interacting with people regardless of how insufferable they may be at times. 

0:57:51

Yes. 

0:57:52

We love that. 

0:57:54

We love that. 

0:57:54

The future. We love that. 

0:57:56

Hey, David, this has been amazing. 

0:57:59

You've given us an awful lot to think about. And I'll be honest, coming into this, I wasn't sure what to expect. 

0:58:06

But you've really opened my eyes with regards to how important this is and how it needs to be something that we think about when we're creating our spaces, our activations, our events, all of these things. 

0:58:19

Just to put a bookend on this thing, wrap it up, button it up and so forth for for our listeners. 

0:58:29

If you had to either go back to a couple of things that you said or just something that you wanted to say that we haven't gotten to, what would you leave our listeners and our viewers with? You know, it's kind of that gold nugget. Yeah, I think start with your intention, understand your why and execute with purpose. Yeah, fantastic. There you go. That's that's the the mic drop moment right there. 

0:58:58

I'll leave it. I'll leave it at that. Leave it that. 

0:59:01

Simple, simple is better, less is more. 

0:59:06

Well, as I have been known to do, I am two pages of notes on this event marketing toolbox. 

0:59:16

So I'm very proud. You're here to learn. Podcasts are great for that, right? Like, isn't it wild how much you learn doing these things? Yeah, yeah. Oh, by the way, the Cognitive Variability 

0:59:30

I just interviewed, she said no one's ever died from learning too much. 

0:59:35

So I will throw in the next flow because it was so full of stuff. 

0:59:42

No, I'll throw in this one last little nugget that we didn't really get to. 

0:59:46

But David does a one minute gym review, hotel gym review that is on YouTube. 

0:59:53

You've got to check it out. 

0:59:55

It's it's amazing. And there's a whole world of gyms in hotels. And you do a great job of putting that in one minute, one minute evaluation. And I love that. I love that you do that. It's really fun. 

1:00:10

It's it's been super fun and it's it's wild how there's a hotel gym economy starting to show up Yeah, there's there's multiple review sites and and I've had some some people reach out just really out of nowhere because a lot of people will take pictures and film but I try to make sure that I show what the and I do it equipment inventory so you really know what you're getting so you don't get catfished from the the hotel's website where they take a picture into the mirror. So it's like magnified times five. And it's only this big. So, yeah, I appreciate the shout out. It's super fun. I am not letting up anytime soon. 

1:00:50

I just this week, I just released like four of them from Asheville. Oh, sweet. I'll check them out. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I think there might have been a two -star, but that might have been the highlight. There you go. 

1:01:13

This is something new for me. Within the last, I would say, two years, I am paying attention to what does the hotel gym look like, and am I willing to choose if I'm going to be there for a few days. And one of the ways that you and I originally were connected, I was at the Renaissance right next to the Las Vegas Convention Center. And I think I texted you or whatever. I was like, hey, I'm at this gym. It looks pretty good. 

1:01:40

And you had really specific questions for me like, Tell me about the weight count. How many barbells are they? Do they go to the 50? Or do they go to 75? Or do they go to 100? Because those are different levels. 

1:01:52

And I took a video. I walked around. And I kind of showed you all the different stuff that was there. And again, here I am knocking on 60s door in another year. And I'm like, I finally started thinking about stuff that's, how can I keep myself healthy so that I show up for my clients, I do a better job for the setup, and I'm not just leaving my health routine at home and going on the road and saying, well, I'll pick it up when I get home. Yeah, I think the aha moment, I was at a conference that doesn't exist anymore, Tableau Conference in Berlin. 

1:02:31

And the person next to me, I've been on the road for like two weeks and it was like my third trade show in two weeks. And the person next to me goes, oh, I never eat like this. Isn't this great? And I'm looking at the line going, what the hell am I going to eat? And I realized I'm like, if I eat like this on the regular, like I'm going to die. Like this food is going to kill me because I can't eat the way that that's sustainable. 

1:02:55

And even though I was in Europe, like it doesn't matter. 

1:02:59

Unhealthy food is unhealthy food. 

1:03:01

regardless of what the ingredients are. 

1:03:02

Gluten -free doesn't mean calorie -free. 

1:03:05

If it's a gluten -free chocolate cake, it's still a frickin' chocolate cake. But it really shifted my perspective on how to live sustainably as this. And I think one of the other things, and the reason I ask those questions about the weights and what big trend coming out of women's health. And there' of what resistance training does to offset osteoporosis, what it does for joint health, what it does for muscle health, and what muscle health does to longevity. There's all these understandings that it's okay to lift heavy, and you're not going to get bulky. 

1:03:47

Don't worry. 

1:03:48

There's plenty of people who, like Anka, that didn't happen by accident. She doesn't look like she picked up 25 pound dumbbells. 

1:03:57

No, she's picking up 85 pound dumbbells a bunch of times and eating specific food and going to bed like that type of conditioning doesn't just happen. So you can preserve that health span, fit span, longevity, whatever term you want to use, but not making the last decade of your life miserable. just by pushing yourself. So the 50 -pound weights are great, but if you can do more, you should be able to do more. And so that's why I ask those questions, because it really does help prolong people's health and well -being. Awesome. 

1:04:36

We're going to end on that. Excellent. David, this has been awesome. Thank you so much for joining us. What a pleasure. You've dropped a lot of amazing information, and I hope everybody really enjoys this conversation. 

1:04:47

So thanks so much for coming, everybody. Happy eventing and take care. Have a great rest of your week. Cheers. Thank you. Bye everyone.