[deanna_nwosu]: On today’s episode I am joined by the lovely Liz Lathan of Haute Companies, and we talk about the business case for emotions in experiences and events and how we can be proactive about creating those moments creating emotional connections with our attendees especially opportunities for serendipity, so I hope you sit back relax and enjoy this conversation with me and Liz Lathan of Haute Companies
[deanna_nwosu]: Welcome back to Experience Junkies I’m happy to have with me here someone that I deem an influencer if you will in the events and event marketing and experiential space, have been a fan for quite some time so, so excited to have here on the show so please welcome the lovely Liz Lathan Liz thank you so much for being here!
[liz_lathan]: oh my gosh so excited to be here thank you thank you thank you for inviting me here!
[deanna_nwosu]: awesome Liz, tell everyone a little bit about who you are and what you do
[liz_lathan]: absolutely, well my name is Liz Lathan, and I am a Co-Founder and Chief Marketing Officer for Haute Companies which is a collection of human centric brands. We have a creative and event agency, and we have a music venue. We have all sorts of incredible stuff but we’re here today to talk more in return on emotion and the agency side of things and the really fun stuff that we’ve got coming out.
[deanna_nwosu]: wonderful, so Haute for those of you who are not familiar as Liz mentioned they do have you know an actual event venue down in Texas, but they do a lot of work for brands like you do a lot of work in the marketing space kind of being that third party agency to help them create these different experiences for their different objectives of trying to meet with their customers, right?
[liz_lathan]: absolutely, we love, love, love helping create– it’s really those experiences that are going to create more human-to-human connection, that’s really what we grew from and that’s what we try to do. It’s not just send something in the mail, it’s very much a cohesive closed loop from beginning to end make it meaningful every step of the way type of thing
[deanna_nwosu]: yeah, I love that, you kind of made sure to mention the human-to-human connection and I think that’s what I love about Haute and your company and your employees something I love that you guys always talk about are Hauties so tell the audience a little bit about what is Haute like what is the
[liz_lathan]: that’s true
[deanna_nwosu]: So, tell the audience, what is the ethos of your brand and what makes a Hautie?
[liz_lathan]: yeah well technically it is haute and it’s a French word that means fashionably elegant or high class but we’re from Texas and it’s way more fun to market things when you call it hot and you can do all sorts of crazy stuff like have be a hot mess, you can you know all the things so that’s really the way we went because we do things in a high class elegant way but very human and we really want to humanize what hot is and that’s what we try to do we believe that business is personal so it’s about creating those connections with your brand with your company with your association your organization just person to person people do business with people not companies
[deanna_nwosu]: I love it that’s wonderful especially I think it’s really plain when you put it that way that it’s a French word so it’s kind of hoity toity but with like a Texas spin right a little Texas twang on it, so you know very yeah very elevated but very human
[liz_lathan]: our southern hospitality, right
[deanna_nwosu]: yeah, very elevated but human centric so I love the way that you explained that wonderful. So, we wanted to bring you here to talk about something that just kind of lit me up, like I said I’ve been a fan of you guys for a while and the work that you do, but you recently kind of mentioned this new study and new initiative that you were launching and it was called Return on Emotion and that just kind of like got my little Spidey senses going because you know there’s tons of talk about like returned on investment you know uh even return on time or return on energy and all these different things but that was the first time I had heard the term return on emotion especially from like an events or an experiential standpoint. So, can we kind of talk about where that came from and what was the inspiration behind it?
[liz_lathan]: yeah well as an event professional yourself you know that we really value experiences, we know that a shared experience is what bonds people so how could we kind of put money to that because you get into a rut of creating events for your keynote, breakout, expo concert etc. and we really wanted to push beyond that and why were the events that we were able to put on so successful at creating connections that drove business and we really didn’t know why we intuitively create these experiences for people but trying to sell it to a client or sell it to our own internal team for the budget is really we needed a lot more meat behind it some more analytics
So we crafted a research study throughout 2020 right at the end of year one of the pandemic when we were still having fun in virtual and we really wanted to pinpoint how could you take a virtual event and evoke an emotion that would create the same connection as an in person event knowing at that point that we were going to be in virtual at least a little bit longer so we wanted to craft these virtual experiences and identify which emotions everyone hears that you know emotions drive brand loyalty and there was a Harvard Business Study that said ninety five percent of decisions are made based on emotion not based on logic no one buys a Ferrari because it’s a smart buy it’s an emotional decision
[deanna_nwosu]: good point, good point
[liz_lathan]: so what was the emotion that we needed to evoke to drive pipeline and revenue not just brand loyalty but to create a business connection so our research study was intended for the full year of 2021 we did it virtual programs and then we tested it with in person programs as well to determine which emotion it truly was and it turns out there are five and these five emotions have to be evoked pretty much evenly across the board there’s not really one that stood out more than the other but if you can create all of these five emotional experiences in your program doesn’t even have to be an event it could be a direct mail program it could be a video even but if you can craft this to make the people that you’re sending it to feel these five things you have created an experience that will drive ROI so we say ROE drives ROI so what are those five emotions we like to say that emotions bring home the bacon so our acronym is HAM with three days so you keep it from the bowl right you keeping that Texas twang in there short it is hopeful, adventurous, active, accepted and motivated and we know that as marketers most of us are pretty good, at the hopeful and the motivated right because that’s what drives persuasion so we’re going to make people have hope for the better future and we’re going to make people motivated to go take action it’s those three at the meat of our ham sandwich in the middle that people tend to forget you need a sense of adventure in your programs you have to make people either step outside their comfort zone or feel like they’re going on a journey with your customer that’s gone through a transformation whatever it is they have to feel this sense of adventure
[deanna_nwosu]: yeah
[liz_lathan]: active doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ve got to be climbing a rock wall or doing anything crazy but being an active participant so even if you’re just doing broadcasts or webcasts or something find a way to create this around and one of the examples I always give is Game of Thrones you know you might not realize this but that was not live that was reproduced prep planned and rolled out and I got really excited that every Sunday night game of thrones was is coming on and even though there was no community necessarily around it but there was activity for me all my friends that were watching it we would text each other what’s going to happen with John Snow and it became this do you like active part of it that I felt connected to you can do that with your content your webinars your events and keep people as a part of it and excited about what’s coming next and then one that you recently wrote about on LinkedIn accepted
that’s the one that especially in virtual programs people forget you turn on your broadcast you hit go and I feel like if I click that little x on the top of my screen you’re not going to notice if I left you don’t know if I was ever there and so making sure that when people join it they feel like they’re in the right place they’re with the right people and they’re accepted as a part of it that sense of belonging is really important for any kind of program so those are the real those are the five quick ones and it’s so easy to use
[deanna_nwosu]: I love that it’s that you put it as H&M as you know the bread essentially and those three A’s are the meat and that’s probably what’s missing in a lot of programs are those three A’s um and you’re right I did just kind of talk about the being accepted at an event so it was totally aligned because we hadn’t um talked about what we were going to talking about the show so that was like oh wow total kids that we came
[liz_lathan]: I know when I read that post I was like you get it you get it
[deanna_nwosu]: together on the we’re on the same page and what really struck me as you’re talking about especially with the virtual programs you know if I hit that little x, you’re not going to notice how do we make people feel that their presence is
[liz_lathan]: yeah
[deanna_nwosu]: missed if they’re not there especially with the virtual program or even in person and I think as we’ve shifted to either virtual events or smaller more intimate events that’s something we can tap into a lot more these mega events that are like city wide and thousands of thousands of people they get up to that scale for
[liz_lathan]: yeah
[deanna_nwosu]: a reason but to build them back up how do we make people feel accepted, feel that their presence is missed you know outside of the whole like COVID safety and mitigation outside of that aspect but hey we want to see you we miss you that
[liz_lathan]: yeah
[deanna_nwosu]: intimacy so thanks for mentioning that as well.
[liz_lathan]: yeah, and I think it’s in the in-person events it’s almost less about the continued will we miss you if you disappear type thing it’s you know we all have Irish goodbye, an event right like
[deanna_nwosu]: made to back right step out quickly
[liz_lathan]: but the initial when you get there even on the webcast that and so many people do this now of drop in where you’re dialing in from and you know just to feel that like oh I’m here, I’m in Canada, I’m in Switzerland and you start having that sense and the conversations really start there and same thing with an event you mentioned micro event, they don’t have to be stand alone, think about your micro events within your 40,000 person event people want to find their tribe so whatever you can do to get those tribes going pre event on the day of the event that those very first few hours of the first day that’s what makes all the difference
[deanna_nwosu]: absolutely as long as there is some type of emotional connection at some
[liz_lathan]: right
[deanna_nwosu]: point then that’s kind of the north star that that attendee will carry throughout the experience
[liz_lathan]: well, I feel like it’s our job to just create stories for people to tell so whatever the experiences that we’re creating if someone’s gonna repeat what just happened to them you won
[deanna_nwosu]: oh, that’s so key Liz because it’s like our memories are the receipts of the experiences that we’re having so if your attendees don’t have any stories to tell after they don’t have any receipts to show
[liz_lathan]: that’s right
[deanna_nwosu]: people then what really was it worth their time do they get any return on emotion
[liz_lathan]: exactly I love that statement what receipts are they showing that’s great
[deanna_nwosu]: so um that’s really so while you guys were kind of doing the research and pulling all this together about return on emotion you are also side by side planning an event called flashpoint so talk about the history of flashpoint and um my Spidey senses and based on kind of following you guys I think this was an event that had multiple iterations before it became what it was so kind of talk about that process and those pandemic challenges that you may have faced
[liz_lathan]: well, no one knows better than this industry how many times we have pivoted turned shifted shape shifted morphed canceled re up all the things for everything out right
[deanna_nwosu]: shape shift is probably my favorite thing use
[liz_lathan]: so pre pandemic we had an event that was called secret family reunion where we grabbed a bunch of event and experiential marketers and business professionals we invited them to meet us at JFK airport, bring a passport, pack for six days and we didn’t tell them anything else they got there and we revealed that we had chartered a plane and we were taking them to Tuscany for a six day experience which was focused on something we call a spontaneous think tank meaning we crowdsources of conversation that people want to have challenges they’re trying to solve solutions they’ve already got that could help someone else with and this experience was going to be all content from around that and then just real true authentic Italian experiences that could happen in small groups so we had about eighty people and we had exactly eighty people go and little groups of six would go do truffle hunting or painting or pasta making so again it was those micro experiences within a larger group that drove that and the emotions that came from that we didn’t know anything about ROE at that point, but we’ve been told from the participants that over ten million dollars in business happened among the participants with each other from just that one
[deanna_nwosu]: wow
[liz_lathan]: trip so we knew that we had done something
[deanna_nwosu]: well eighty people ten million dollars’ worth of business that’s amazing
[liz_lathan]: yes, and then I talked to someone recently who said what I did ten million a loan from the people I met on that trip, and I was like
[deanna_nwosu]: okay, we need to update our post event statistics
[liz_lathan]: exactly so knowing that we did something right and trying to figure out what we did was kind of what sparked the roe thing in the beginning but so that trip was supposed to be we were going to do it every other year because it takes a lot of effort to do a secret trip I don’t know
[deanna_nwosu]: I can imagine
[liz_lathan]: but when the pandemic hit people weren’t quite ready to not know where they were going um so we were trying to bring it back in July of 2021 we had locked in with the Atlantis who their sales manager that we were working with happened to be on the secret trip with us and so he helped us bring us bring it there we didn’t
[deanna_nwosu]: next
[liz_lathan]: normally do these types of experiences in a big hotel especially something that in my head was just Vegas on the beach and so it was kind of like I don’t know how this is gonna go but we
[deanna_nwosu]: it’s a very visual representation yeah, I can see it
[liz_lathan]: I mean I’ve never been before and that was really my impression of it and so when we got down there to see the space it’s humongous so in Vegas fashion it’s big um and it has a casino but that was the end of how close it was to Vegas the people at that resort are everything we embody they’ve been working there for twenty sometimes forty years and they will tell you your
[deanna_nwosu]: well
[liz_lathan]: stories they welcome you in they had everything that we wanted so we were like okay well we found our place no one wants a surprise like place anyway so we’ll just make this we’ll tell people where they’re going and then everything that we do there will be the surprise and that’ll be how we flip it so that was July 2020 and come May 2021 people were like yeah there’s still a pandemic so
[deanna_nwosu]: like look same like the thing
[liz_lathan]: maybe we won’t be traveling internationally yet because nobody could travel internationally so we kind of regrouped again and decided that we would move it to January of 2022 and kind of compel our high water we were gonna make this thing happen because we had
[deanna_nwosu]: right
[liz_lathan]: to show a little bit of leadership in the industry I think and show that we can do things and if we take all the right precautions, we love the idea of picking the Bahamas because the country itself required you to have negative tests to get in and so we
[deanna_nwosu]: I don’t know
[liz_lathan]: didn’t have to put that on us as them professionals we
[deanna_nwosu]: right
[liz_lathan]: were able to leverage the infrastructure of the country and they do a really great job of taking those tests and Atlantis itself also has a rule every forty eight hours you have to get tested and turn in those results so again
[deanna_nwosu]: wow
[liz_lathan]: just in the planning process we thought that that would work out really well for us and then um
[deanna_nwosu]: that’s a good just
[liz_lathan]: yeah
[deanna_nwosu]: quick aside to any players that are listening out there is if you want to be a little stricter in your protocols than either maybe your attendees or stakeholders maybe just selecting the venue that’s going to kind of um fight that fight on your behalf and you’re not going to be the uh security guard you know trying to enforce these policies it’s like hey it’s out of my hands that’s Bahamas policies, that’s the Atlantis policies you know I think that’s kind of an interesting takeaway there
[liz_lathan]: it was great it helped us on the budget and helped us on the rules and the enforcement and knowing that it was we were able to use so many outdoor spaces Atlantis obviously has a ginormous convention center and everything but it’s hundreds of acres of beautiful outdoor space so we were able to do anything everything outdoors and not even has to worry about it at all masks while inside and then spread out while outside it was perfect
[deanna_nwosu]: that’s lovely that that sounds awesome so as you were planning and organizing this conference like you said it had multiple
[liz_lathan]: yep
[deanna_nwosu]: iterations over some time but what was your north star um and it maybe it would have been the same as the experience with you know the secret family
[liz_lathan]: yeah
[deanna_nwosu]: reunion which I will say
[liz_lathan]: physical
[deanna_nwosu]: I was hopeful to go on the next one but obviously things changed but what was the north star of like this experience has to you know our attendees have to walk away with this or they have to have this
[liz_lathan]: yeah
[deanna_nwosu]: emotion or what was the driving force behind all the decisions you made along you know essentially a two-year planning process
[liz_lathan]: yeah well we went a little bit back and forth because we had actually three: different companies in 2020, 2021 we had Haute Domizko which was the initial spontaneous think tank and secret family reunion company the company that did those experiences we had Haute Rock Creative which was our creative agency that did client events and client programs and then we acquired a company called event works out of LA in 2021 and so that was large scale production incredible programs really large experiential type things we brought all three of those together in October of 2021 and renamed rebranded the agency as just hot so that we can take all those capabilities put them under one roof and so as we were switching the event to be from the secret trip to really be not a showcase of us but more of a showcase of how we think that we could share with others because it’s an easy way to think and to bring people together and keep this as an industry community event we didn’t want to take it over we wanted to keep that ethos alive, so we switched it to Flashpoints because that is the moment where ideas ignite right flashpoint is where the fire starts and we rebranded it we kept it in January of 2022 and the idea was we want to put in some conversations around some of these experiences that we have been creating and share what we learned because we’ve been out there doing a lot of stuff and then keep the spontaneous think tank and keep the surprise element so while we told people what they were doing they didn’t quite get it until they were there we said you’re gonna go behind the scenes of the marine mammal center and you’re gonna go underground to the aquarium operations and you’re gonna meet with the bomb dog team and they were like yeah great that sounds fun but the experience itself was all the things so we use return on emotion as a blueprint mapping all of the experiences up against all of those five emotions to make sure we’re hitting all of them in the right fashion, so the idea was day one it’s all about acceptance I met him personally, I met everyone at the airport with pom poms and greeted everyone
[deanna_nwosu]: wow
[liz_lathan]: so, I was there
[deanna_nwosu]: me you met everyone personally at the airport that that does a lot
[liz_lathan]: yep, so that was day one making sure they felt like they were accepted and belonged immediately and while they waited on the event to begin that evening, we had a cabana set up at the pool beach area where our CEOs hung out there and welcomed everybody for a nice afternoon before the evening and then as the evening began we had in the Bahamas they have something called a junk new which is kind of like a carnival type thing so we had a junk and new parade and a
history of junk and the bohemian spirit and so to make them feel accepted in the
Bahamas as well so that was all day one day two was about adventure and active, so the active part was, we crowdsourced we found out what challenges they were trying to overcome what challenges they’ve solved and can help each other with sticky notes all over the windows and try to get them because they’re creating the content so that’s the active part the adventure part was we did those behind-the-scenes things.
So, Atlantis is the home of this incredible Blue Ocean Foundation project they have all the dolphins that are part of the dolphin key which were rescued from hurricane Katrina I believe. They, have the mammal hospital marine mammal hospital where if there is an animal in distress they get brought there to get work done and healed and rehabilitated and so we got to go behind the scenes and see all of that stuff underwater or underground the aquarium we have to see aquarium operations how they acquire the fish how they heal them the fish hospital how they quarantine them and make sure like it was so cool the bomb dog team no one even knew that there was a canine unit for Atlantis but that team has been around for about forty years and they only meet the
[deanna_nwosu]: wow
[liz_lathan]: guest when they’re taking them down, they want to meet us
[deanna_nwosu]: not good note
[liz_lathan]: we get to meet them, and they did a whole demonstration for us, and it was absolutely incredible and watching them video us watching them so now we’re adventure right
[deanna_nwosu]: yeah, it’s gonna metal right like the reflection that never ends
[liz_lathan]: exactly so that was d two to focus on those two and then day three was really on the hope and motivation when all the conversations were around how do we make events better how do we make what we’re doing better how can we really drive more of what people want which is human connection that they’ve been missing for the last three years and then motivated to take all those insights and take action so we distilled all of the notes from all the sessions turned it into a PowerPoint so that when they go back to the office they have something to present to everyone that was there with them and now everyone’s motivated to take roe and implement in their programs so it’s easy to follow as a blueprint it was incredible
[deanna_nwosu]: what I really appreciate that I think Haute does really well is you really as you mentioned you leverage surprise and even if it’s not you know of course there’s this there’s a full spectrum of surprise where the secret family reunion was all he surprises they were clueless and then maybe flashpoint was a little less surprised as they knew where they were going and they had a rough agenda, but they didn’t know all you know nitty
[liz_lathan]: right
[deanna_nwosu]: gritty details how as you are in the planning process do you kind of um that yen and yang between planning out every moment in activity and making sure things are
flawless versus leaving an element of surprise not just for the attendees but for like us organizers because especially with like the spontaneous thing tank you don’t know what the content
[liz_lathan]: yeah
[deanna_nwosu]: will be you don’t know what will come from this so how do you kind of balance that union yang of allowing for like
[liz_lathan]: and
[deanna_nwosu]: serendipity but also making sure that the event is you know according to the vision that you have for it
[liz_lathan]: well, a lot of planning goes into serendipitous moments
[deanna_nwosu]: that’s the ironic part isn’t it
[liz_lathan]: so, it’s orchestrating for that and leaving the space and the time, and I think that’s something that we as an industry are going to really have to work on this next year as we all bring events back whether they’re micro or macro events we have executives that just say we’ve got all this content, and everyone needs to hear it but you have to build in the time and the space to let people have those serendipitous moments and not that you want things to run long but being flexible enough to be able to adjust that was a challenge we had people were so into the tours the behind-the-scenes tours that they did run long and while we had a good three hours of time that we wanted to give people back because we were taken up all their time we wanted them to be able to go work we ate into that time and we heard that feedback which was you know you did tell me I was gonna have this time to work and I had to miss one of those tours because it ran long not that I minded because the tour was so awesome that I got to go and so you I mean it’s a struggle for sure but try to make sure you protect that time to let people meet each other to let people talk to each other and then do have a little bit of go with the flow though be able to adjust it’s definitely an art I think not a science
[deanna_nwosu]: so, we talked earlier about kind of 2021, and it was still largely virtual until later in the year and the roe study that you were doing was mostly virtual events to begin with can you talk about how you really measure it in a virtual setting than versus in an in person setting like how do you really know that someone can make um an elastic emotional connection you know through a computer screen
[liz_lathan]: yeah, it’s using the blueprint no matter what your program is and making sure that you’re going through all those emotions, so you’ve got the webinar coming up and you know that all you’re going to have is chat maybe the ability to do some polls
okay now you have your parameters and know what to think through you know your content is going to be hopeful and motivating because that’s what your content is supposed to do easy peasy, you’ve got that planned now how do you add adventure it could be through video content.
One very simple way as I mentioned earlier taking one of your customers’ transformation journey and bringing that story to life when you see someone let’s say you’re doing events for cloud computing, and you see someone trying to make the shift from on prem to cloud but taking people through that journey and how they went there and how the adventure was and the pushback they got and then finally, success it’s that hero’s journey of a story people are invested in that and it’s helpful we did a lot of virtual adventures where we would use the screen as a portal not a boundary and try to take people take them on a shark dive or we drink whiskey on the top of a mountain in Patagonia or you know kiss the barney stone in Ireland and those are really fun adventurous ways to get people out of their comfort zone but you don’t have to go to that expense or to that extreme it truly can be through storytelling and then the active part poles are great for activity but I love the ones that allow people to get into the chat an actually, share what’s going on in their world so throw a whole question up and then try to get more engagement in the chat so that people are giving you answers use it for insights the reason we love crowdsourcing is because when we’re done with that wall of sticky notes, we have an entire wall full of all the challenges people in our industry are trying to solve so we know exactly what content to go hit we know exactly what type of events to go bring out to life next because we know what they’re trying to do you can use chat for that and people love telling you their problems so take that and use it and then the accepted part for sure when they join make sure they feel welcome say hi if you can say hi on camera and welcome them because you’re seeing it fantastic if it’s a video something like we’re doing now that’s prerecorded making sure that they feel that connection with you that you’re offering something that they can use and that’s what I’m hoping we’re doing right now because this is like cold fusion free for all of you
So, I want to make sure that it’s possible so take that now post event you want to measure it so you know how the nps score you’ve probably heard of that brand
[deanna_nwosu]: yeah
[liz_lathan]: loyalty it’s very simple it’s one question would you recommend my event my product to a colleague it’s great it’s a beautiful score but that means they had to already do business with you in order to have a good nps score where the ROE score comes in is they don’t have ever had to do business with you to have an emotional connection enough to be willing to recommend you or do business with you so it’s simply five questions and it’s taking that scale so it’s think of a ten-point scale like a slider zero to ten how did you feel after this event hopeless to hopeful, uninspired to motivated, rejected to accepted, hesitant to adventurous, rejected to accepted and then what was my last one um active so pass to active so you ask those five questions you want to get a score of eight point six or higher when you average out those scores eight points six was the threshold that our research found that that’s created an environment where people are willing to do business with you or with each other and the research study was through three different cohorts so it was attendee to attendee to sponsor an attendee to host event host and all of those were the same five emotions so it’s nice and easy to ask those same questions and you know you’ve created this environment for business readiness
[deanna_nwosu]: wonderful and I like that you kind of closed it with the measurement because you know when we’re dealing especially in the B2B world everything points back to how can you um demonstrate the value to
[liz_lathan]: absolutely
[deanna_nwosu]: stakeholders and a lot of times they just need hard and fast numbers right
[liz_lathan]: absolutely and we can say with flashpoint we had a nine-point ROE score so with everyone that submitted their surveys now I don’t have a solution for making people complete their surveys that is something we’re still going to have work on as industry
[deanna_nwosu]: that’s an ongoing bone to pick here in this industry but
[liz_lathan]: but once you get that score now you know because the really, it’s the marketing team’s creating these programs, but the sales teams are going to care because no sales guy wants to be given an entire list of leads came from your cold webinar that they have to reach out to hey saw that you joined the webinar, how to go like that’s not what they want what they want are a whole bunch of people when you call them and you say how was it on the shark adventure that you joined and they’re like it was so great they want to have those conversations the sales team wants to reach out to people that are willing to chat with them so sales really care about your ROE score
[deanna_nwosu]: absolutely and one thing you kind of touched on is the whole collaboration piece and crowdsourcing if you will how do event professionals make more of a business case for crowdsourcing I feel like that’s kind of the next step for our industry to have
[liz_lathan]: yeah
[deanna_nwosu]: more of that in our experiences so how do they go to their stakeholders and ask for you know the support and resources to do more of that
[liz_lathan]: I think it’s there are three simple ways you can do crowdsourcing we do it pretty extreme which requires an awful lot of faith and trust from everyone involved because we crowdsource or so to look at the insights and then craft the breakout sessions based on what people want to talk about we do it really fast we’ve been doing it for four or five years now so we’re able to do that and it’s difficult to do internally if you aren’t comfortable with it but a very simple way is on your registration form just ask the question what challenges are you trying to solve right now what challenges do you have that you could share solutions with other people two simple questions and that lets you know who’s coming to your event that you could even call upon to offer some solutions to offer conversation that you can
[deanna_nwosu]: good
[liz_lathan]: call on in your audience at the events and then what they’re trying to solve you’ve got all of those insights right there same thing you would get on a sticky note so they’re putting it in advance I caution you about using those requests to build your content because you’re doing it pre-event depending on how long you’re building the content sometimes people register and don’t show up we see that virtually fifty percent or more attrition so those might not be the people that show up so be careful if you’re doing it that far in advance use it as a guiding light kind of a north star to build your content but don’t realize so heavily and then my other one is just popping up survey questions in your events and using that for the insights and asking to throw up the question have people put it in chat you can at least gather those insights we already do it with Q & A right but thinking about it from a content perspective so if you’ve got an opening session and you know that you’ve got more content in the afternoon ask some questions now so that you can feed those insights to your afternoon speakers, and they’ll know where your audience is coming from and that allows you to shape it a little and again create that sense of belonging that they know that they’re there because you knew that they were gonna be there
[deanna_nwosu]: yeah, essentially, it’s gonna help you keep that common thread throughout the story it’s just adding on another
[liz_lathan]: absolutely
[deanna_nwosu]: chapter and everything is all related um to where you started
[liz_lathan]: yeah
[deanna_nwosu]: on day one
so sounds good awesome well we’ are wrapping up this has been a great conversation so happy to have you
[liz_lathan]: is it already over? Holy Moly.
[deanna_nwosu]: yeah, I know it’s just we’ve been we’ve been talking about everything and we it’s like oh my god our time is almost up but um real quick I ask every guest on the show this question so hope to not put you on the spot but if you had to pick a song to to convey this experience whether it’s you know the experience of hosting Flashpoint, the experience of doing all the surveying and the research to determine what return on emotion was if you had to pick a song to convey that what would it be and why?
[liz_lathan]: ooh, so I actually had a different song in mind for a different type of question but I think I can answer both of those so my original one was going to be around an event career and just being in this industry and that was gonna be Taylor Swift’s shake it off
[deanna_nwosu]: that’s basically from March 2020 on to current day shake it
[liz_lathan]: I is my whole career from when I graduated to now you just got to shake it off and move on but I think from what the angle you’re coming from and the changes and everything I’m gonna go with Journeys “Don’t Stop Believing” because I really do think that there’s the connections people are making and the belief that they need to have in order to move things forward there is a brighter future ahead of us and I have that hope and I’ve loved our past and our future is going to be incredible our best days are ahead of us, and this is incredible
[deanna_nwosu]: well, if nothing else is gonna tell you not don’t stop believing just take a bite out of that ham sandwich it starts with hopeful and it ends with motivated so
[liz_lathan]: that’s right
[deanna_nwosu]: taking us forward Liz tell everyone where they can find you and Haute on the inner webs
[liz_lathan]: absolutely so you can look at roedrivesroi.com to learn more about return on emotion and how you can use it in your programs, and we are available at wearehaute.com and that’s ha ute
[deanna_nwosu]: awesome thank you so much it’s been so nice talking with you today I feel like the podcast has been blessed with your presence so thank you for yeah thank you for coming to telling us all about return and emotion I look forward to seeing more in the future with that
[liz_lathan]: oh, thank you so much, it’s been a blast
[deanna_nwosu]: bye
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