EP008 - How to upgrade your event experience with Carolene Méli of Carolene Meli Consulting
About the episode
This episode focuses on event experiences. Now that the pandemic allowed most of us to work from home, moving out from home to an event is totally different. But how can we upgrade our event experience? I invited Carolene Méli, founder of Leveraged Events Lab who previously served 10-years as en event experience manager for Cirque du Soleil, to discuss the topic.
About the guest
Carolene hails from 15 years in the global events industry, 10 of which were spent on tour with Cirque du Soleil where she led VIP guest experiences in 17 different countries for 5 different shows. Now as an Experience Strategist, she works with business owners and entrepreneurs to harness the power of an in-person event to drive engagement and revenue in their companies. Through her programme, Leveraged Events Lab, she helps them take their dream event from idea to launch. Carolene also hosts her podcast Elevated Experiences where she explores the curious, forward-thinking and wonderful world of experience design.
About the host
My name is Peter Benei, founder of Anywhere Consulting. My mission is to help and inspire a community of remote leaders who can bring more autonomy, transparency, and leverage to their businesses, ultimately empowering their colleagues to be happier, more independent, and more self-conscious.
Connect with me on LinkedIn.
Want to become a guest on the show? Contact me here.
Quotes from the show
The pandemic changed not just how we work but also how we attend events. People want more than just a boring corporate show. They need event experiences.
The element of surprise can be a great guide for event designers. People want to experience out-of-the-box surprising events. Don’t just replicate the classic old school principles of event design.
One area which can be super useful to upgrade an event experience is the entertainment industry. Mixing events and entertainment together can lead to splendid event experiences for everyone.
-
Peter: Welcome everyone. Another day, another chance to talk about how remote work profoundly changes our lives. Today, I wanted to focus on how to build meaningful events. I have Carolene Méli, founder of Leveraged Events to discuss this topic. Caroline, this is a pleasure to have you here.
Carolene: Hi. Thank you so much for having me. I love, anytime someone asks me to talk about in-person experiences and events, I'm all for it. So happy to be here.
Peter: Pleasure. So can you tell a bit more about how Leveraged Events started and what's your actual remote journey? Because from the initial conversation, we spoke about it, you lived in so many countries experienced so many cultures, you have a mix of everything and what's your remote journey?
Carolene: Well, I have a very interesting start to, I guess like my travels and my living everywhere in the world because I actually ran away with the circus. I joined Cirque du Soleil when I was very young. I got my first Cirque du Soleil gig when I was 18. I was a local employee that worked behind the bar serving popcorn and coke to the guests that were coming to the show in my city that I grew up in, which was Brisbane, Australia. And, you know, Cirque du Soleil is a traveling circus for the most part. So I had that small introduction to the world of Cirque du Soleil, the wonderful world of Cirque du Soleil. Fast forward a few years later, they came back to Australia with a new show. And you know, the stars aligned. I started working with them and then I actually became a permanent employee on tour and that began a 10 year journey with Cirque du Soleil where I lived and worked in 17 different countries and actually living there for anywhere from six weeks to up to three or four months. So it was a, an incredible opportunity to live in a place and feel that I actually was there living a daily life, not just being a tourist. So I did that for many, many, many, many years. I also ran the entertainment department on a cruise ship that was in the Mediterranean and the Caribbean. So I kind of lived, and it, what what's ironic about that is it's was actually the longest period of time that I lived in the one place. Which was a moving cruise ship. So I thought that was, that was quite ironic. After that, after that experience and now fast forward, you know, 10, 15 years in the events and entertainment industry, I now find myself in Cyprus. And I have just recently moved here and I am now setting up my business and my life here in Cyprus. And that is as a solopreneur. Experience strategist. So I've taken everything that I've learned over the last 15 years in those two industries that I mentioned. And now I work with companies globally who want to either create in-person experiences and events or improve the ones that they already have. The leverage event side of things, that is the leverage event lab, and that's actually the coaching side of things. So instead of one-on-one clients and consulting with these bigger companies. I created a way to reach individuals who potentially want to create something really small for maybe 10 people, a hundred people, maybe a business owner who wants to start creating events for their community now that in-person events are back, you know, and it is on the top of everyone's mind. How do we bring people together? So leverage event lab is, that's what that's all about. So I kind of have those two elements of the business. With the umbrella really of being, let's create some pretty epic in-person experiences and events.
Peter: I have so many questions, because that was, that was a really cool intro. Thank you for sharing. I think we should start with Cirque du Soleil because you know, circus life is super fascinating, I guess, for everyone. What did you do during a huge, it's a huge career in 10 years within that one company traveling around the world setting up events, I guess everything was branded right by but still had to be organized every time you landed in a new environment or a new country or whatever. So can you tell a little bit more about that part of your life? Yes. That's super interesting.
Carolene: A little bit of context around how the world of Cirque du Soleil works in terms of touring, touring shows that are in a big, that traditional circus tent that I'm sure you can picture is we would travel and then they still do. Obviously I'm not working on tour anymore, but it obviously it's still going very strong. Every six to eight weeks typically we would move to a new city. So obviously we'd typically stay in the one country for maybe, depending on the country size, obviously, but it might be a year or two. If you're talking about somewhere like America and Canada, like North America, south America, Europe in general would be two to three years. And obviously you're talking about smaller countries, so you might do one or two cities within that one country, but you're constantly moving. And then what we would actually do is physically set up the infrastructure. So there was a team of tent crew who had set up the tent, who had actually set up the site. And then once that was all done, myself and my colleagues, we were the guest experience team, we would actually come and set up almost like the interior. So, Inside of the v i p, inside of the bars, inside of the boutique. And then we hired local staff to work for us for that, for that whole entire time. And that was a crucial element of the experience because the people serving the guests, the people doing the transactions, helping you buy something, they, it's important, was important obviously, that they spoke the same language as the guests. Obviously we speak a lot of languages amongst the whole team, but not every language obviously, that we went to. So it was really important from a language point of view and even a cultural point of view that the main staff that our guests were interacting with were locals, or at least could speak that language. And so us as a guest experience team, we're a 10 people and we manage that entire operation. That what you would call the front of house. So everything that happens around the show itself. That involves a guest. So me personally, over that 10 years, I did all the positions, but where I really specialized in and where I really love was the v i p experience. So every night we would welcome up to 250 guests into a dedicated area beautiful wether it was a tent or a salon, and obviously it changed over the years and they would enjoy a whole evening all inclusive on us. And so yeah, we traveled. We lived in a beautiful, I mean, it's so funny because a lot of people that don't know a lot about the way Cirque du Soleil works would often say to me, oh, do you guys live in trailers? Like at the back? Where are the carers live? Yes. And I would always say, if I had to do that, I would not be here. Let me tell you, I'm definitely not the camping type, the van life type, that is not me at all. And we lived in beautiful hotels, you know, like in very, very nice hotels and longstay apartments. Like we lived a very good life. They're on tour. So that was always so funny when someone would ask that. But yeah, that's a bit of a, I guess like an insight into how that world works and what made it so exciting is we did almost the same thing, but in different places. So the minute you almost got a little bit comfortable, bam, you're changing. And maybe you have great staff in one city and then terrible staff, the next city or maybe one city it's like the middle of winter and there's snow everywhere and everything's freezing. And then six months later you're in a heat wave and there's sandstorms and like. It's the craziest of environments that I think that's what makes it exciting. Even though you're showing up and on paper doing the same thing every day. Your world is changing just on a daily basis.
Peter: I think this is what you said was really crucial because when you have the same event all the time or like, sorry, same type of event, at least , almost like the same agenda. Right? How do you still, of course when new people are coming in to the show, because you're like literally switching cities. So you probably have new people all the time. How do you keep the events still engaging, still exceptional, even if you don't change the whole agenda, the whole experience that much. How do you have as a organizer or the manager of the event that much of a commitment or I dunno, insight to deliver an event that is still engaging for all the new people that are coming in.
Carolene: I mean, it was all those things that I just mentioned. Having staff change so quickly every six weeks was one of the biggest determinants of, you know, a, whether I would like a city or not. B, whether I would be exhausted by the end because I was managing staff in a completely different way. Or maybe the city would go really well. And so as the leader of that experience, that's actually where I would get energy from. Mm-hmm or even that's where, what would drain me or what would challenge me, you know? So, It was really interesting to be in an environment where workers are motivated by very different things depending on what part of the world that you're in, what country, even what city. It would change quite dramatically. And then obviously now I've just gone back recently and did a small contract with them to launch a new v I P experience for one of their new shows that just launched after the pandemic and actually leading a team of local staff post pandemic was again, a whole different experience to what it was like before. New challenges, new realizations, new conversations, new like what the hell moments as well. So the staff was the key to that change. But then also the guests, you know, in cities where I couldn't communicate, you know, I was in, for example, Russia for three months. I don't speak any Russians, so I couldn't communicate with the guests at all. I could barely even communicate with my staff. I had a translator with me almost the whole time, and so as you can imagine, Standing in that environment every single day is a lot different to in a country where I can speak that language and I can actually communicate, engage, chat with the guests, learn about their experience, take some things and change them. It's really different. But the one really cool thing about events in general, and I think in our case, because we were replicating that same experience, but for different guests, you know, it's rare that a guest will come back to the same show in the same city, in the same two month block. Right? Unless you're like, sure a super fan or maybe you came, you loved it, you wanted to bring your parents back or your kids back, or whatever. Sure. We didn't have that repetition of, oh, we have the regulars like you do in other industries. So I could experiment a lot. You know, I would change something, try it, and then, oh, it was terrible. Okay, tomorrow night I'm not gonna do that. You know? Or, Hey, this worked really well, let's stick with it. And some things that worked in one city completely bomb me neck. So you are like, In this it, for me, it was a playground, a playground of guest experience, a playground of leading teams. Just this playground of all these micro experiences put together, and that's what kept it engaging for 10 years.
Peter: That's what I wanted to add. This is part of a leadership exercise. So if you have an event for only for six weeks or a couple of weeks, you have usually the same people who are doing it, right. But the staff that you mentioned the helpers or, or, or the externals, they're constantly changing. And I guess you had a very limited time to onboard these people to what to do. How did you solve that? That's, that's a huge, huge challenge. At least it sounds a huge challenge to me.
Carolene: Yeah, I mean the great thing was that, listen, it wasn't rocket science. What we were doing in terms of what we needed our staff to do, right? We needed them to make popcorn, serve popcorn. It was all about, you know, maybe they were bartenders, maybe they were hosts, so they had specific roles. So, but, It happened really, really quickly. So we would spend about a week setting up the infrastructure, making it beautiful, making it ready for our guests. We had one afternoon of training about four or five hours where our team, where our local staff would come, we would meet them for the first time. We would go, these are all things you need to know. And then usually they would start work that night. And the funny thing was, is the most important night of the whole city was the first night or the second night if there was a dress rehearsal. But the premiere of the show, the most important night where you have celebrities, press, whatever happens on that night, will kind of dictate the success of the rest of the city. And that was the first night for the workers. So it was, that's a huge pressure. It's a huge pressure, but I think as a leader, You know, I became very used to that, right? I became used to that pressure. I knew how to train the staff in a way that, okay, I am telling you, I'm training you on all the things I need you to get right tonight. All the other nuances, the details, the extra things will come in the following weeks. But tonight this is what we're gonna focus on. And of course, the opportunity to work for Cirque du Soleil, even if you're just like a local staff working for six weeks, it's still quite, very prestigious, right? And it's something you wanna put on your CV and it's something that you become proud of. So, yes. Typically, the staff are very, very motivated. They wanna be there. They're excited to be part of Cirque du Soleil in their city at that time, so that makes it a little bit easier. But honestly, my leadership skills today, the reason that I think that I have the leadership skills that I have is because of that environment, that constantly changing environment. I don't know what kind of leader I would be if I had not have had that experience. And it's a very, very unique experience to have, you know, 17 countries. I tried to count the cities once and but I estimated 50, 60, 70 cities all around the world. So, yeah, it, it's a lot of different places.
Peter: Yes. It's insane. And how did you end up in Cyprus?
Carolene: Well and I'm sure you , I'm sure many of your guests, and you especially can relate to this, but there comes a point where for some of us, we're lucky enough to be able to choose where we want to live. Yes. So for me, I am, you know, European French passport. So I have the luxury of being able to live in a lot of different places. Actually, I have four passports and that's a story for another day. To answer this question. Yeah. The Mediterranean is I often joke and say that my soul is from the Mediterranean originally and I knew I wanted to live in this area. It is my favorite area in the entire world. The Mediterranean Sea is just magic and anyone that's jumped in the water's knows for sure. And I was trying to figure out, okay, what is the smartest place for my business. For all the legalities tax, like ease of actually functioning especially as a first time business owner, right? Where is there really good systems put in place? And then also like, where do I actually wanna live? And I spend a lot of time in Greece on the Greek Islands. And then it's funny because I'd watched a YouTube video about Cyprus, where a guy from here an entrepreneur from here interviewed a business owner from here that helped solopreneurs and entrepreneurs and all sorts moved to Cyprus and after 40 minutes of that interview I was like, I need to go to Cyprus. So at the beginning of 2020, well last year, 2022. I came here for four months before I went back with Cirque du Soleil and I fell in love. The minute I landed, I was like, I know I'm gonna love it here. And so now we are January 2023, and I've been here just a couple of months and starting the whole process of yeah, moving to Cyprus officially, you know, from a business point of view. From a personal point of view as well. So it's very exciting. It's an incredible place.
Peter: I love Cyprus too. And I know that the country is itself is very business friendly and tax friendly. Yeah. Let's address the duality of, of remote work and, and in-person work because as far as I understood, you work mainly remotely but you consult on creating non remote events. Yes. So it's, well, how does that work?
Carolene: So I mean, I fell in love with the idea of creating events from Cirque du Soleil, honestly that's where that love and that passion of creating extraordinary experiences came from, not only as a guest watching the show, but as someone who worked for them for so long and I got to be a part of that, that whole entire ecosystem. And it was funny when the pandemic happens, I knew, obviously nobody knew what was happening, right? We were just all in a hot mess of a situation. But sure, the focus on virtual at the time was necessary, right? But it got to a point where I was like, you know what? I'm gonna double down on in-person experiences because there's gonna be a time where this will become relevant again. And I want to be at the forefront of that because we can't just be doing virtual for our whole lives. Right. We and I think everyone can agree after the pandemic, we realize that importance of actual connection. Face-to-face physical connection, sitting across from someone, hugging someone, kissing someone, like looking into their eyes and just having those moments that you absolutely cannot do virtually. And so, Now I consult on events and experiences. So that could be anything from, you know, there's an event team, they're creating an event, but they need some extra additional expertise or some insights around maybe the event design or the operations, or the leadership of the event teams. So I do a lot of that work. I also do a lot of, okay, there is already an existing event. and we wanna create a v I P experience for that event. Mm-hmm. . And something that's very interesting here in Cyprus is there's a lot of real estate and spaces and venues. And so one thing that I'm really excited about here is actually what can we do with a empty space? Leverage it so that we can actually make money off this space, make it profitable, but by using events. And so that's kind of the three pillars that I work under. And sometimes I work a hundred percent remote if it's really more advisory. Other times I go to the event themselves and help them run it. I just recently came back from Wales in the UK where I had been working with a team there and we basically put on conference for the National Health Service there. So I actually went and almost took on that event manager role for that experience. So obviously I love flying when people wanna fly me and actually have me run an event that does something to me because that's my, that's the last 15 years have been like. So I love actually getting there. Speaking with guests and making things happen and having shit hit the fan and going, ah, I don't know what to do. So I really love that. I, I guess I love that kind of adrenaline. And so anytime I have the opportunity to actually go to the place another client that I'm working with now, they're really focused on augmented reality. They're based in the states, a startup, Uhhuh . They are headed to a conference in Barcelona soon. So I will be going to help them create their experience there. So, It's very exciting. Lots of different applications. And, you know, we would, we're talking about remote work here, so that's definitely a hot topic, top of mind right now for companies around how do we bring people together now that we have the opportunity and we can see that remote work is, is the way forward. Or at least that's what I think. How do we actually, it's still so important to bring them together face to face. How on earth do we actually do that? So that's where I sit in the remote world, I guess you could say.
Peter: Sure, sure, sure. I had a conversation with with Matt Young a while back. And we both know him and from Nomatic6 and what he mentioned was pretty unique or interesting. People who are creating in-person events now they have to be more proactive in terms of design planning, and, and they have to figure out why they are doing it. So pre pandemic what most companies did in general is that, yeah, we have a team retreat and that's it. And there was no kind of like too much planning falling into that. No one really thought about the goals. Why do we doing this? What do we want to get out from the event? After the event? Just, you know, bring the team together and see what happens. That was the approach. Now when people are working remotely most of the time when they are having an in-person event they need to prepare a little bit more. They need to be a little bit more proactive. So I think that's when your advisory service or, or your, your approach can be super useful.
Carolene: Yes. And it is funny because we just realized this before we started recording today, but Matt is one of my clients. I'm working with Nomadic6. Yes. Anyone's listening and they're looking for, A way to bring their teams together, nomadic6 is doing some incredible work. Obviously I'm biased because I'm part of that and Matt, and that's fine. Together are, we're both avid experience creators and the stuff that we're bringing, we're really implementing for the clients of Nomadic6 is pretty awesome and we can't wait to roll out experiences for this year. One thing that I will say is yes, a hundred percent agree with you. You can't just slap something together anymore. You can't just throw a bunch of money at an event and just hope for the best because. We people, as attendees, as guests, as employees, understand. I mean, I think it takes a lot more to get people to go anywhere now, right? Like you can't just be like, oh, let's do this fun thing. We're so used to sitting at home and being able to access everything on our laptop, so it's like, well, what's in it for me? Like, why would I go to this? and I think the conversation was a lot easier before the pandemic. Now it's a lot harder. So when I'm working with my clients and even in the leverage event lab, which is a cohort-based program, the very first workshop, whether it is in leverage event lab or when I work one-on-one with clients, the very, very first exercise activity that we do is we create our guest impact curve. And the way that works is, Okay we have two points, A and B, right? A is where are your guests currently? Right now? That could be mindset, that could be challenges, that could be stressors. That could be what is their current reality and how do they feel about it? Right? Two point b. Where do you want to get them to as a result of your event? Right. And I kind of just coined the term guest impact curve. Mm-hmm, because that is the impact that I wanna create in my event. I wanna take them from wherever they are right now to this new reality, this new world that we've created for them as a result of this event. That exercise is very powerful in itself, and it is something that I'll start with that before anything because something that happens often in event design with people that aren't, I guess, experienced designers themselves. People that are just used to kind of creating events maybe for fun, maybe birthday parties, what, you know, stuff like that is the first tendency is to go to logistics. Right? Okay. I want a hundred people. Yeah, I want it in April because like of the weather, okay, I want to be a cocktail bar. I want there to be the like, that's what we do naturally. Of course the issue is that is like you, it just ends up this hot mess, this mishmash of like, what is this event even about? Like, yeah, maybe it's gonna be fun, but like this has no journey. The guests that are kind of going on this meandering through this weird and wonderful world, which for some particular events is the goal, right? When you think of more events that are based around entertainment, let's say. But when you're talking about bringing employees together, that is not what you want to happen because the ROI is really not there. You are gonna throw a bunch of money at this. Your, you know, leadership team, the C-suite, expect you to actually create some impact out of this. How are you're gonna do that? It's not by starting with logistics. I always say people over logistics whenever you're starting. So how, start with that impact curve. Maybe your team is like unsure, unmotivated a bit anxious maybe like a little bit I don't know what the expectations are for me. I don't really, there's way too much communication in all these forms. Things are blurring, stuff like that. That's some common problems faced by remote teams, right? Where do you wanna get them to a result more clarity around boundaries. For example, I want them to be more connected with their team so they feel like they can maybe reach out for when they have a challenge or they have a problem and they need an ear. So that is a very important place to start when you are creating something that you actually wanna create some real impact from. Right? That there needs to be that measurable metric at the end of it. How I start anyway, and that's how I get those results for, for my clients when we're talking about creating events.
Peter: Yes. And it's a similar approach that usually remote leaders take with their teams. So there is I call it symptom, but there is a symptom in leadership when there is a resource fetish. So they want to solve every problem with the resource issue. So if, for example, if our project is failing, throw more money on it or hire more people to do the job if the marketing is failing or the revenue is declining throw more money in the marketing machine and you know that problem will be solved instead of the resource mindset, resource solution, mindset. They should focus more on the people. They should focus more on the operations over everything else. I think it's true for events then as well.
Carolene: Yeah. I mean, the whole industry on the pan during the pandemic got completely flipped upside down, right? Yeah. Like we can't do anything that we used to do now. And then even now it's like, well, we don't wanna revert back to that old way of doing things. I went to a conference recently just as like an just more to like suss it out, check it out, and I was like, oh, this is the worst. This is so boring. Like they need to hire me for starters to actually make this in something because they just basically, What we all know what a boring conference is, right? And I thought, damn, this is such a missed opportunity and this probably costs so much money because there was not that thought process that went behind. Experience design. I mean, there is experts in experience design. I would hopefully consider myself one of those, and this is a whole industry, you know, that has actually been in existence for quite a long period of time. But I think the pandemic really showed us. Okay. There is this industry that was untapped, that was a bit underground, that was just kind of happening around us. But now we need these people, we need these experts to come in and actually help us create some epic experiences. Hence why I am doing what I'm doing.
Peter: You should share some tips Caroline. So what considers a boring event and how to avoid that, that's super important.
Carolene: Yeah. Oof. I mean, ugh, I think it's an event where you have already anticipated everything and there's nothing surprising, right? So you walk into a conference, Uhhuh, you get your lanyard, you get the pen, you know you get your swag. Yeah, yeah. You get your swag, which you don't even care about. They've spent a whole bunch of money on that, but you're not even gonna use any of that stuff. You're gonna probably throw it out or gift it or whatever, and the stage is kind of like old school. The mc is not very good. You know, they're, they're doing these like weird jokes cuz they're nervous and then the transitions between speakers it's like non-existent. There's name everyone with like, name tags, like I'm sure as I'm saying this, everybody can picture an event they've been to that is exactly this.
Peter: You literally explained 99% of the conferences that I've been to, by the way.
Carolene: Yes. No, but like, think of the coffee station. It's like some, like, you know, like a tea pour thing of like black coffee with the little, there's nothing exci and it's like on a table with a tablecloth like, Just the thought. Yeah. Even as I'm picturing all of that, I'm like, oh gosh...
Peter: This is pretty much every, every conference that I've been to.
Carolene: Yeah. But, but I mean, that's exactly what I talk about. When, when I talk about a boring event, do I walk away from it going, oof. I literally, that was everything I expected and there was nothing great about it. And it was very bland and very boring in beige. And you know, I am, I got this free ticket cuz my company sent me there, but I would not pay for this, you know? So I think that is what I, what constitutes a boring experience for me, for sure. It's around those expectations.
Peter: I had the same idea in my mind when you were talking about this I would never, ever, ever, ever, ever had pay any kind of sense to those conferences at all. Ever if my company or the company that I worked for haven't paid for that anyway.
Carolene: And you know what? One of my favorite things to do is whenever I'm in a hotel, whether whenever I'm just in there, because I, I'm at the bar, I love ho old hotel bars. It's one of my favorite things to do in a new city is go to really nice hotels and go to the beautiful bars with the oak. Yeah. Yeah. So, I love walking around the hotel and like peeking it into all the rooms and every hotel has that boring conference room. You know, like you can picture it ugly, ugly carpet, huge whiteboard, a table for like 20 people or so. On the table there's like a notepad in a pen, and then like a glass of water. We can all picture that. And when we are thinking about how do we bring our teams together? That's the last thing that you want to even come close to. Right. But it's the default. It's like, oh, I don't know what to do. How do we bring people together? Oh, let's do a day at like this hotel. And, and you know, because they have the facilities, they have the whiteboard. You know, I can plug my laptop in and put a presentation up, but nobody wants that. Like, nobody except the hotel because they get your money.
Peter: And the finger food tables are wobbling.
Carolene: But it's so funny because we sit here and talk about this, and it's so common for us. Like we're like, yeah, oh my gosh. I'm picturing exact. But the problem is that companies are still doing that because the alternative is not really there in their minds, and that's why Nomadic6, Matt Young's company exists to really rupture that thought process. That's why my work as an experienced strategist exists and why I work with clients globally because it's like, how can we take this issue, this problem, or this specific occasion or event and transform that into something that our employees are just not expecting, and that they will actually take a lot from into the rest of their work into their lives for many years to come. When you think of a Cirque du Soleil show, You may not even remember the show. You know, when people say, I've gone to a show and I say, which one? And they, most people don't remember. But the one thing that you remember typically is how you feel. You know the fact that you're like, oh yeah, I went to a show because...
Peter: It was always glamorous. I have no idea what I saw but it was all the time glamouros. Yeah.
Carolene: Cause it imprinted on you. It left that impact on you because it showed you a world that you didn't know that wasn't part of your every day. So, okay how do you take that concept and now put that into your event for your team? That is what I'm working on. That's what we're working on to really help remote teams create something pretty special for their employees, you know.
Peter: If I have a let's say this is an industry conference of whatever industry, but let's pick a boring one. Let's say it's a tech industry in a SaaS business most of the 99% of the products is running on the cloud. So it's really hard to like visualize what you are doing in a in-person event, except what having just screens on the booths that you have. And it's also a little bit, not just a conference, but also an expo. So usually people mix this together. And it's a huge space. It's a big hotel or conference center. What kind of small tips or improvement they can do.
Carolene: Well, the first thing that comes to mind, obviously, as I mentioned before, I do all of that work ahead of time to be really clear, like what are we actually trying to achieve here for our guests? One very easy, simple, you, it's not rocket science kind of tip is how can you combine the world of entertainment and whatever you're doing, right? Yes. To give you an example this conference that I went to recently in Wales that I helped. The couple of additions that I bought to the table was, I want a live musician. I want a live musician at the entrance when people walk in and have to get their lanyard. Cuz that's like a boring process. But you know, for some things it's necessary, right? We need to kind of have some way of identification or of like giving access when we're talking about security and stuff like this. So a lot of times that first, that that entry point, it, it just has to be done. Can we have, and we had an acoustic guitarist that just basically sat at the door playing music. It was awesome. Like awesome, awesome, awesome. The vibe in that space was great. Then in the lunch break that's when people were kind of looking at the different expo elements of that conference. We had a musician on the center stage, and she was a local musician, and she sung in Welsh and she sung her own songs mixed with songs that the, I didn't know but the, the audience, the guest, they knew and she was incredible. And so that is very easy to execute on, right? If you get the musicians, but, and it's not crazy expensive. And if you're talking about a venue, they have all the tech. It's not like you're adding, you're asking anything out of the ordinary. And so that addition of the musicians was huge. It was huge. It made such impact on the vibe, on how people connected with each other on that ease, like, let's kind of unveil ourselves a little bit. We might feel like we're in an afternoon suaree, or even at the pub after work, like we bought elements of experiences that people already love into this experie to elevate it. So that's one very easy thing that basically everyone can do. And who doesn't love that? Like, you know, you're not gonna walk in and go, oh God, shush, you know, ah, like, that doesn't happen. It adds so much value.
Peter: And this is so simple and, sorry I have to rant on my own show, but on the last time when I was in a conference it was in Amsterdam. It was a blockchain conference, whatever. And we had to register for our, you know, our little name tag and whatever. Mm-hmm. For half an hour queuing in a. It was in a old stock exchange of Amsterdam, whatever. And we had to go underground because that's where, that's where the registration happened, and there was a huge queue mm-hmm. , obviously it was, it was kinda like a covid scenario, so people had to like check to get the, the name tag. The checking for the covid, it also made the whole queuing a little bit even more longer. Mm-hmm. Everything was digital, so obviously it was flawless on the tech side, but it would have been super, a little bit more easier, at least to consume that queuing if we had a musician there. I dunno or something.
Carolene: Yeah, something extra. Yeah. Yeah. Even, you know, at Cirque du Soleil for the v i p, there was a process. You had to have your ticket scan. We need to make sure that you're actually bought a V I P ticket. Sure. The lanyard, et cetera. There was a coat check in the colder, in the colder climates, but same thing. Sometimes waiting and lines. It's unavoidable. It's part of that process. But what can we do? So for us, that's fine. We would take champagne out to our guests who were waiting in the line. Obviously you ran the risk of somebody not being in v i p and then, well, they got a free champagne. But you know, most of the time people in the line were coming into their that space. In your case, you know, if it's cold, could that be espresso bringing around little cups of espresso. You know, could you have, if you wanna do something crazy, have like a magician there, like messing with the crowd. I'm a big proponent for bringing the world of entertainment into the world, into any other event world because we all know. How great entertainment can be. And obviously I'm very biased because Cirque du Soleil is my reference. But it's so easy to actually create some very special moments for our guests by using those strategies.
Peter: Love it. People might not know but it's January the 10th so it's early in the year, and I asked the same question from all the guests on this show and early in the year, in January. How do you see the future? What do you think will be the main trend for events, remote work and also for your business? How do you see 2023 unfolding for you?
Carolene: I am very excited to experience 2023 in the world of events and experiences because I think there's gonna be a lot of different ways that we're going to do things. You know, even looking. Even something I was thinking about recently is that idea of a popup, right? We all know popups in the worlds of retail and hospitality, right? They're very tried and true methods. Mm-hmm. of a thousand things for a business. But could we start creating popup events for employees like in different locations around one country? So I think like there is going to be a lot of elements that come from different industries. Obviously I speak a lot about entertainment, but when you look at things like hospitality, luxury, hospitality, right? There's gonna be a bleed I think of, of these different industries and I think that's going to make experience design and and creating experiences really exciting. I think also, People that are in that position of I want to create event, or I have a budget and I wanna make this happen for my employees, my community, my listeners, my attendees, whatever. Mm-hmm. I think there is going to be a little bit of a deeper thought pattern about how do I go about this? And of course that's what I hope because that's the industry that I'm in and I want to work with all different clients around the world in that sense. But I feel like people are conning on that. It's, you just can't, you just can't do these same things anymore and we need to create some exciting events for whoever other people that you serve. And so, yeah, I'm excited. I think it's going to be year of like exploration and trying to create impact and people creating, impacting a lot smaller events. events for 20 people, events for 30 people, not just the kind of the big a 2000 kind of event sizes. So yeah, I think it's a, a year of exploration and a year that events and in-person experiences are really gonna take off. You know, one thing I was gonna say was if you Google events for remote teams, I did this yesterday as a test. The first four pages of Google only refer to virtual solutions, right? Because that's all we've been talking about for two years. So now it's like, how can we create physical in-person events for this group of people when they're so used to virtual. So yeah, I'm very excited for 2023 for all of those reasons.
Peter: One of our clients we talk a lot about how to motivate employees who are in different countries. But, and one of the ideas that I shared was to you have employees, for example, five people or 10 people within one vicinity of a city. So instead of pulling all the team who is scattered across the globe, whatever pulling all the team together in one virtual event, which you can do of course, which is amazing still. Why not having micro events just for those people who are within that hub of vicinity of that city. And one thing that for sure these leveraged events with mixed with entertainment into that I think that could be super helpful for these people. And it's, again, as you said and as you shared I know it's like, like getting a musician for an event, for example. It's not that hard. It's most of the solutions to bring entertainment into any kind of team events it's kind of, well, I'm not, I wouldn't say easy. It just needs some creativity to work with and yeah. And I think there's a money issue.
Carolene: Well, we're both in Europe and bringing people together is it's different countries, but for example, I bought a flight from here to London and it costs me like 25 euros. It's very, very cheap to bring people together, and we're actually geographically quite close. So even if you have Yes, team all around Europe, actually bringing them together, even if it's just for two days or just an overnight. Probably a lot cheaper than one would think, I would say, just in, in the current climate that we're in. So that's always an exciting way to bring people together when you're coming from different clusters of the world geographically.
Peter: And it gives so much, by the way, for the team productivity, not just for the productivity, but also how people feel at the workplace. It's, it's almost unimaginable because they finally meet with each other. We only seeing each other's through screens and whatever, and project management software and chat and email. But now we are laughing together and doing stuff together, drinking together. I dunno. Having fun. And it's super easy and almost inconvenient. Yeah, absolutely. Cool. Love it. Thank you. Anything that you wanted to share on this show that we forgot to talk about?
Carolene: No, not at all. I mean, I think it's been a great conversation. I would say that if anyone is interested in creating an experience for themselves, for the people that they're working with leveraged event.com takes you to basically my hub of where you can go about that. And it's a cohort-based workshop series that that happens every few months. And it's an incredible process because not only are you building out your with me and with the group in real time, but you also are learning the skills that you need to then go and do that again for your next event. And the next one and the next one after that. So leveraged event.com. And you can find out all the info there.
Peter: Caroline, it was amazing to talk to you. Thank you.
Carolene: Thank you so much.
