Recorded live and topics totally unplanned — Marisa grabs Brandon Montgomery of Technical Elements for a hallway-style chinwag about what business relationships actually look like in the events industry. Brandon's whole philosophy: solutions, not sales. He's the guy who tells prospects, "If you have a trusted partner, keep using them — but if they ever let you down, call me." (One planner told him no one had ever said that to her before.)

They get into why trust is the real currency of AV — including the time a client handed over a top-secret rebrand and Brandon's team caught the new font spelling "AL" instead of "AI" across the deck. Plus: why event people can't stop auditing digital signage and airport boarding lines, Brandon's family trip through the front gates of FIFA Fanfest, a Dave Chappelle cell phone store cameo, and the eternal question of the perfect walk-up song.

Solutions selling, breadcrumbing your way into a client relationship, and why switching vendors is basically dating — it's all here.

marisa went to her first cvent connect. gabby stayed home and saved up all her questions. this is the debrief.

5,000 people, zero sessions attended (no regrets), and a keynote that ended with a full company rebrand flipped live while everyone was in the room — signage, socials, balloon arches, everything. marisa recaps her week as a content creator in nashville: the podcast room that turned chinwag into an on-location show by accident, the pod cart that should be on every show floor, mocktail-forward menus, the clubhouse effect that makes 5,000 people feel like your people, and why 12.7 billion attendee interactions means events have to help us be more present, not less.

plus the take that's going to ruffle feathers: every chinwag episode is a webinar — and webinar is not a dirty word.

soft skills, hard truths. new episodes weekly at chinwag.live

Day zero at Cvent CONNECT, episode two on location. Marisa pops the podcast cherry of one of her besties — Sarah Stewart of MC Squared and Club Ichi — to talk intention-setting: mapping sessions before you land, showing up where your ICP is instead of leading with the pitch, and why the best "so what do you actually do?" conversations happen after the relationship starts. Plus a recap of the Club Ichi Clubhouse and the bat phone that makes a 5,000-person conference feel small.

Chinwag on location, for the first time. Marisa grabs fellow first-timer Pete Wilhelm (hosted creator team, resort side) on day zero of Cvent CONNECT in Nashville to compare notes: the 90-day pre-event runway, navigating a 5,000-person conference app, and why virtual attendees aren't getting a version of the event — they're getting a different event entirely.

Recording on a whim from a DC hotel room, Marisa and Gabby stumble into the follow-up Episode 13 was begging for. Marisa's fresh off six connection calls in one day — some energizing, one so transactional it sparked the whole conversation. Then Gabby drops the question she's been fighting with her Claude about: when is it actually okay to send someone your one sheet? What follows is part real-time coaching session, part reckoning with every Instagram coach who's ever yelled "post the thing, send the thing." They get into why the revenue side is easy to talk about while the offer you actually care about stays stuck in your head, how a forwarded speaker call turned into a two-hour Nashville workshop, and the card pull that hands Gabby her own positioning statement mid-episode. The takeaway? If it feels icky to you, it'll feel icky to them. Be patient. Don't force it.

We're talking follow-up, friends. Marisa ran her emails and meeting notes through AI to see who fell through the cracks over the last few months — and it cracked something open for both of us: those "random" conversations that don't turn into anything right away? They're not wasted. They're compounding.

We get into Rob's 10K-friends project (one hour-long, no-agenda conversation landed him on three speaking stages years later), why chasing the "ask" makes networking feel gross, and the shift from "can this turn into work" to just... showing up as yourself. Plus: a Mark Morrison rabbit hole nobody asked for, and an 11:11 tarot card that closed the episode better than we ever could've planned.

The real goal isn't the follow-up email. It's being the name someone says in a room you're not even in.

Who's a name you want said in rooms you're not in? Tell us — we might just say it. 🤍

We just went official, y'all — chinwag.live is LIVE. 🎉 In this one we're pulling back the curtain on how Marisa built our entire website in about a half hour (yes, with AI help, no, it doesn't look like it), what a brand kit actually is and why you might need one even if you're "just" a podcast, and the real behind-the-scenes of turning two years of building in public into an actual website with a real domain.

But the bigger conversation? We get real about the trap of creating content for the sake of creating content — the one-sheets, the reels, the behind-the-scenes clips that just sit in the ether if you're not intentionally getting them in front of the right decision-makers. Gabby gets a much-needed gut check, we talk sponsorships that aren't just about a check (hosted gigs count too), and we start mapping out what it actually takes to bring Chinwag to events IRL.

Go check out the site, leave us a comment if you want to be our next testimonial, and let us know — are you guilty of creating content that just... sits there?

You landed the client — congrats! Now what? Marisa and Gabby get into the part nobody warns you about: managing the relationship once money's actually involved. They get into imposter syndrome, why "hard" and "uncomfortable" are not the same thing, and why checking in with clients (even when you're terrified of the answer) will save your nervous system. Plus Gabby confesses a corporate onboarding fail that'll make every freelancer feel weirdly seen. Bring your mantra and unclench that jaw.

Have you ever given a friend advice so good they looked at you and said, "how much do you charge for this?" In this episode, Marisa and Gabby get real about something a lot of people in the helping professions quietly wrestle with ... the gap between the value you give away for free and what you actually put on a rate sheet.

They dig into what it really means to "help the person" (hint: it's not a Canva tutorial), why traditional coaching models feel off for both of them, and what a different kind of offer might actually look like. Plus: Marisa shares details on her upcoming women's retreat, Gabby counts her rejection tally, and a hawk almost flies into the window and somehow becomes the most spiritually on-point moment of the episode.

If you've been giving away your best thinking and wondering when it's okay to call that a business, this one's for you.

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One hundred downloads in, and Marisa and Gabby are getting real about the thing nobody wants to admit: comparison doesn't disappear when you get more successful — it just changes shape. In this episode, they dig into what it actually feels like to watch a peer win while you're still in the building phase, why your brain spirals into a full business pivot every time someone else gets engagement, and how to catch yourself before you do. They also get into the practical stuff — Marisa's challenge to finally get her offerings out of her head and onto paper, and Gabby's plan to stop talking about her superpower and start showing it. Pull up a card, filter the noise, and post it anyway.