Planners on Purpose Podcast

In this episode, we delve into the dynamic world of event marketing strategies with the accomplished Ashley Stanford, a seasoned Digital Marketing Consultant and Freelancing Expert. With over 15 years of expertise in the digital marketing realm, Ashley brings a wealth of knowledge and practical insights that are sure to resonate with professionals in the Events & Entertainment sector.

About Ashley Stanford
Our guest, Ashley Stanford, is not just a digital marketing maven but also the EVP of Client Strategy at TicketSocket and the Vice President and Co-Founder of Ice Cream Social. Her extensive experience spans across various industries, including Events & Entertainment, Medical Device/Healthcare, and Finance Technology sectors. Ashley's passion lies in crafting strategic marketing plans and optimizing tactics to drive tangible results for her clients.

Episode Highlights
In this engaging discussion, Ashley sheds light on the intricacies of effective event marketing strategies. She shares her journey of conceptualizing TicketSocket—a unique solution born out of the need to revolutionize traditional marketing channels in the ticketing industry. Ashley emphasizes the importance of word-of-mouth marketing in today's digital landscape and unveils how Ice Cream Social's innovative referral widget gamifies the online referral process, driving substantial results for businesses.

Ashley advocates for a holistic approach to marketing, where word-of-mouth initiatives complement existing channels such as SMS, email, and social media ads. She underscores the significance of incentivizing partners and understanding demographic nuances to maximize the impact of word-of-mouth campaigns.

Furthermore, Ashley offers invaluable insights into effective communication strategies, emphasizing the need for transparency and proactive engagement, especially during challenging situations such as event cancellations or setbacks.

Delving into a personal anecdote, Ashley candidly shares her experiences of overcoming burnout, highlighting the importance of self-care and resilience in navigating professional challenges.

Links and Resources

The Desire Map by Danielle Laporte
Ice Cream Social and TicketSocket
Ashley Stanford on LinkedIn

Thank you so much for listening, come back soon, and stay on purpose!

Support the show

Share today's episode and tag me @plannersonpurpose

Snag Free Gifts and Learn More at https://www.plannersonpurpose.com

Overwhelmed and Struggling with how to move forward? Get clarity by downloading my FREE Master Your Burnout Guide.

Want to work together, friend? Well, I'm here to help you start to get clarity, confidence, and zap out the chronic stress you experience in your event planning process. 

1. Get Clarity and Confidence in Your Purpose by scheduling a Purpose Call.
2. Advance your Career by Adding Ease To Getting Your CMP.

This episode will showcase how to be an effective advocate in the event industry. Advocacy in the meeting and event planning industry plays a very important role, one that everyone can actively participate in. 

Showing public support for your industry to family, friends, and your community can garner support in times when the industry needs it most. 

This episode shows that you can be an advocate in several different ways. Here are some of the areas that are explained:

• Aligning with partner organizations
• Get involved in advocacy, educate, and share
• Teach or speak in a meeting and event management or hospitality program 
• Recruit for the industry, provide direction to connections and education
• Guide others to the appropriate certification within the industry
• Get involved politically
• Participate in Global Meetings Industry Day

 It doesn't take a big effort to be an advocate in the meetings industry. All it takes is for each of us to do our parts so that we can see our industry continue to grow by leaps and bounds.

Links and Resources   
Global Meetings Industry Day Event Registration
Global Meetings Industry Day Toolkit

Support the show

Share today's episode and tag me @plannersonpurpose

Snag Free Gifts and Learn More at https://www.plannersonpurpose.com

Overwhelmed and Struggling with how to move forward? Get clarity by downloading my FREE Master Your Burnout Guide.

Want to work together, friend? Well, I'm here to help you start to get clarity, confidence, and zap out the chronic stress you experience in your event planning process. 

1. Get Clarity and Confidence in Your Purpose by scheduling a Purpose Call.
2. Advance your Career by Adding Ease To Getting Your CMP.

In this episode, let's dive into the highlights from CMP Advance 2024, the go-to conference for Certified Meeting Professionals (CMPs).

Conference Rundown: CMP Advance, hosted by the Event Industry Council in Toronto, offers a packed agenda spanning two to three days, tailored to align with CMP domains. It's a prime opportunity for CMPs to level up their skills and connect with peers.

Key Insights:

• AI Integration: Sean Kanungo's keynote urges CMPs to embrace AI's role in the industry and prepare future professionals for its impact.
• Global Certification Impact: Panels emphasize CMP's global reach, setting industry standards and fostering connections worldwide.
• Focus on Mental Health: Discussions spotlight holistic wellness for both planners and attendees, recognizing the importance of self-care.
• Strategic Planning vs. Project Management: Breakout sessions provide practical guidance on maximizing productivity and effective delegation.
• Human Connection in Events: Sessions highlight the significance of building genuine connections and memorable experiences for attendees.
• Networking and Community: CMP Advance offers a professional yet relaxed environment for CMPs to network, exchange insights, and build lasting relationships within the industry.
• Continuing Education: Naomi encourages CMPs to consider CMP Advance as a valuable resource for ongoing professional development and staying ahead in the ever-evolving world of event planning.

As you navigate your journey in event planning, remember to keep CMP Advance on your radar for invaluable learning opportunities and industry connections. Stay tuned for more episodes, and until next time, keep planning with purpose!

Links and Resources
Wellness Wheel – Simple Tool for Well-Being
Planners on Purpose CMP Study Group

Support the show

Share today's episode and tag me @plannersonpurpose

Snag Free Gifts and Learn More at https://www.plannersonpurpose.com

Overwhelmed and Struggling with how to move forward? Get clarity by downloading my FREE Master Your Burnout Guide.

Want to work together, friend? Well, I'm here to help you start to get clarity, confidence, and zap out the chronic stress you experience in your event planning process. 

1. Get Clarity and Confidence in Your Purpose by scheduling a Purpose Call.
2. Advance your Career by Adding Ease To Getting Your CMP.

Goal setting can be stressful. This episode aims to take the stress out of the goal setting that you have to make. As we move into the second quarter of the year, it's important that we look at how we develop our goals without causing ourselves much stress, here are some tips that are mentioned in the episode:

• Set your goals and direction
• Get moving
• Put in place your habits
• Stay about the line 
• Review often
• Reward yourself

Many times we fail to start because of fear or because we lack direction. This episode will help you understand how important it is for you to develop a direction and start to get moving so that your goal can be obtained.

You'll also learn some insights on practicing great habits, and why habits are important. Also, your mindset and how you think about your success is very important. When you think debilitating thoughts then you limit yourself and by limiting yourself you can miss the mark in getting to your goal. So it's all about staying above the line, being positive and uplifting to yourself and your team about your goal.

Finally making sure that you review your goals often and reward yourself when you complete your goals are pretty important. And we also talk about tracking your goal too and how that can be increasingly helpful as you look to finish your goals. 

Links and Resources
Putting Emotional Intelligence to Work
Atomic Habits
12 Week Year

Support the show

Share today's episode and tag me @plannersonpurpose

Snag Free Gifts and Learn More at https://www.plannersonpurpose.com

Overwhelmed and Struggling with how to move forward? Get clarity by downloading my FREE Master Your Burnout Guide.

Want to work together, friend? Well, I'm here to help you start to get clarity, confidence, and zap out the chronic stress you experience in your event planning process. 

1. Get Clarity and Confidence in Your Purpose by scheduling a Purpose Call.
2. Advance your Career by Adding Ease To Getting Your CMP.

As event leaders, we know how to balance our lives perhaps a bit better than that of our teams, but do we model work-life balance? Do we share how we are managing our lives so that those who are coming up behind us have an idea of how to move forward in a high-pressured environment like the event industry?

This episode is going to provide some areas where event leaders can model work-life balance to their event teams. Work-life balance is a word that really just represents how well we balance the ebb and flow of our lives and focus on what really matters at any given time. It can be an art form and many people can struggle with having a sense of balance in their lives.  

There are four areas in that we cover in this episode and go into great detail on how event leaders can model work-life balance. Those areas are:

1. Communication
2. Boundaries
3. Being a Wellness Advocate
4. Standing Up for Your Team

Modeling is important because your team needs to see how work-life balance is managed, especially in an environment where there are so many moving pieces and client demands.

After listening to this podcast you'll have some great ways to model work-life balance, to support them, and be a wellness advocate in your organization.

Links and Resources
Banish Burnout Challenge

Thank you so much for listening, stay on purpose.

Support the show

Share today's episode and tag me @plannersonpurpose

Snag Free Gifts and Learn More at https://www.plannersonpurpose.com

Overwhelmed and Struggling with how to move forward? Get clarity by downloading my FREE Master Your Burnout Guide.

Want to work together, friend? Well, I'm here to help you start to get clarity, confidence, and zap out the chronic stress you experience in your event planning process. 

1. Get Clarity and Confidence in Your Purpose by scheduling a Purpose Call.
2. Advance your Career by Adding Ease To Getting Your CMP.

Kele Belton joins as a guest on this episode of the podcast to talk about how we can communicate to lead. She also provides some great insight for women in leadership.

About Kele Belton
Kele Belton is a Leadership and Communication expert and the founder of The Tailored Approach. She is a former corporate trainer and coach, where she collaborated with notable companies like Bank of America, BioMarin, Facebook, and Netflix, contributing to their leadership and communication growth. Kele now empowers leaders and their intact teams to communicate confidently, navigate feedback, and have difficult conversations. She’s a published author, keynote speaker, and host of the Communicate to Lead podcast. Kele specializes in leadership development, communication skills, conflict management, navigating feedback, Everything DiSC assessments and coaching, personal branding, and more.

Episode Summary
When you communicate, it's important to understand who you are speaking to, and what your message is. Is your message communicating to that person in a way that they need to receive it?  Kele speaks about this and how important it is for messaging and your audience to align.

In addition, Kele discusses how women struggle in leadership in many areas. One is having the right amount of flexibility at work which allows them to take care of any home matters. Also, Kele touches on how women can display more confidence in leadership. 

Kele shares her proprietary BOLD framework which stands for:

• Breaking Through Barriers
• Owning the Leadership Narrative
• Leading with Authenticity
• Driving Continuous Change

Kele also shares more about the DISC method and how it is an assessment that measures your personality in the following areas: dominance, influence, steadiness and conscientiousness. She also helps the listeners to understand how this method intersects with her BOLD framework and can help you lead stronger.

Finally, in this episode, Kele shares a bit about introversion and how introverts can focus on using their strengths, to listen. When as an introvert, you listen, you can then lean into the relationships because you've built the relationship up front.

Links and Resources
Tailored Approach
Own Your Worth, Free Guide

Thank you so much for listening, stay on purpose!   

Support the show

Share today's episode and tag me @plannersonpurpose

Snag Free Gifts and Learn More at https://www.plannersonpurpose.com

Overwhelmed and Struggling with how to move forward? Get clarity by downloading my FREE Master Your Burnout Guide.

Want to work together, friend? Well, I'm here to help you start to get clarity, confidence, and zap out the chronic stress you experience in your event planning process. 

1. Get Clarity and Confidence in Your Purpose by scheduling a Purpose Call.
2. Advance your Career by Adding Ease To Getting Your CMP.

In this episode, I explore the neuroscience of kindness with special guest, Janet Sperstad, CMP-Fellow and Faculty Emeritus for Madison College.

Janet Sperstad’s professional history reflects her lifelong vocation: driving excellence in meeting and event management execution and education. She has dedicated her career to defining the competencies and career pathways that articulate meeting planning as a design discipline requiring skills in the social sciences, executive leadership, and the cognitive sciences. Her contributions are global in scope and rooted in over 25 years as a meeting professional and executive leader in the corporate and non-profit sectors.

This is part two in a series where we unlock some more areas of neuroscience and how it can apply to our lives as event professionals. If you missed Part 1, where we discuss the neuroscience of stress and resilience, you can check it out here.

The fine print of this episode comes down to: kindness matters when we are planning events. As we lead our events, it's important to understand how kindness plays a big role in helping you solve problems, deal with stressful situations, and even become more creative on the spot. 

In this episode, Janet shares how 90% of the conversations that we have are social in nature. She shares how our brain is a very social organ in which its natural set point is to commune with others. Additionally, kindness is a neurochemical and a culture. It can ignite the reward center in our brain and it is pro-social in nature craving community with other human beings. Thus, our brain cultivates commonalities, it wants to look for belonging and collaboration and is wired to look out for differences.

Furthermore, Janet teaches us that there is a language of kindness, and how every word we use to portray kindness can cascade across people. As event professionals when we get into a period of frustration or stress or just solving a problem, responding in kindness can help to minimize the stress and frustration that is being emitted in the moment.

Lastly, we unpack that great ideas come to us best when we are relaxed. So when we are solving problems onsite ensuring that we are responding in kind ways that will produce more ideas for creative problem-solving can be helpful.

Stay until the end to hear some personal fun tidbits about Janet and her sharing the time when she was shown kindness that shook her to her core.  

If you enjoyed the first episode, you'll love this one too.

Links and Resources
Janet Sperstad Linkedin
The Neuroscience of Stress and Resilience - Part 1

Thank you so much for listening, stay on purpose!

Support the show

Share today's episode and tag me @plannersonpurpose

Snag Free Gifts and Learn More at https://www.plannersonpurpose.com

Overwhelmed and Struggling with how to move forward? Get clarity by downloading my FREE Master Your Burnout Guide.

Want to work together, friend? Well, I'm here to help you start to get clarity, confidence, and zap out the chronic stress you experience in your event planning process. 

1. Get Clarity and Confidence in Your Purpose by scheduling a Purpose Call.
2. Advance your Career by Adding Ease To Getting Your CMP.

In this episode, I explore the neuroscience of stress and resilience with special guest, Janet Sperstad, CMP-Fellow and Faculty Emeritus for Madison College. 

Janet Sperstad’s professional history reflects her lifelong vocation: driving excellence in meeting and event management execution and education. She has dedicated her career to defining the competencies and career pathways that articulate meeting planning as a design discipline requiring skills in the social sciences, executive leadership, and the cognitive sciences. Her contributions are global in scope and rooted in over 25 years as a meeting professional and executive leader in the corporate and non-profit sectors. 

As you listen to this episode, you'll learn that Janet grew up with the philosophy of "a rising tide rises all boats.", and that has been how she has lived a life of helping others and in turn, it helps her in some way.  

Through curiosity, Janet started finding out clear connections in what we do in our events around education and saw the connection in social science. On this personal journey, Janet was able to go deep and see things about how we work as event professionals.

Two of the main things Janet has learned in all of her studies that she wanted to share in this episode are this:

1. With threat, we run from danger. We look for threat and we respond to threat.
2. We love happiness. We feel good and love laughter and relaxation.

The brain goes towards threat, and it wants to keep you safe. So, enter the conversation on how stress can have an impact on your brain and how you can lessen the impacts and become more resilient.

Because in essence, we run from threat, and we walk toward reward. 

If you're feeling stressed out as an event planner. It doesn't have to control you. Let it go. As soon as you let it go, it loses power.

"We can't handle the externalities that come for us, we can only handle how we react to them." - Janet Sperstad

Janet gives us a brief solution on how you can relieve stress in the moment, whether you are at your desk frustrated at an email or onsite having to deal with a high-stress situation

Wash your hands with warm water, take three big breaths…pull your shoulders back and walk away.

It's as simple as that. This episode is full of lots of hidden gems for you to use to help you not only understand how your brain works, but give you tangible tips on how to combat stress, and tough times in this industry so that you can stay in the game.

Links and Resources
Janet Sperstad LinkedIn

Thank you so much for listening, until next time, stay on purpose!

Support the show

Share today's episode and tag me @plannersonpurpose

Snag Free Gifts and Learn More at https://www.plannersonpurpose.com

Overwhelmed and Struggling with how to move forward? Get clarity by downloading my FREE Master Your Burnout Guide.

Want to work together, friend? Well, I'm here to help you start to get clarity, confidence, and zap out the chronic stress you experience in your event planning process. 

1. Get Clarity and Confidence in Your Purpose by scheduling a Purpose Call.
2. Advance your Career by Adding Ease To Getting Your CMP.

When you can reduce attendee stress at an event, you can decrease the stress you have too. If an attendee feels comfortable, taken care of, and relaxed, they can be at their best for learning and are happier, which in turn means you can feel a little bit more at ease as you are planning. 

This episode covers 6 different areas to reduce attendee stress at your event. As you listen to this episode, it's important that you understand that implementing all of these ideas isn't necessary. However, these ideas may make you aware of some small tweaks you want to make at your event in the direction of stress relief and wellness.

The six areas that we unpack in this podcast episode are:

• Building longer breaks
• Encourage networking
• Create convenience
• Provide rest opportunities
• Give space for physical movement
• Create healthy opportunities

There is a wealth of ideas in each of these areas, and several of them are mentioned in this podcast episode. When we think about our attendees' well-being it can be meaningful to know that you have a unique opportunity to bring wellness to them while they are experiencing your event.  It's an honor that we shouldn't take lightly.

However, as much planning as you do for your attendees, make sure to also take care of yourself. Make sure that while you're onsite,  you're making healthy choices for yourself and that uplifts your well-being too.  

Thank you so much for listening, stay on purpose! 

Support the show

Share today's episode and tag me @plannersonpurpose

Snag Free Gifts and Learn More at https://www.plannersonpurpose.com

Overwhelmed and Struggling with how to move forward? Get clarity by downloading my FREE Master Your Burnout Guide.

Want to work together, friend? Well, I'm here to help you start to get clarity, confidence, and zap out the chronic stress you experience in your event planning process. 

1. Get Clarity and Confidence in Your Purpose by scheduling a Purpose Call.
2. Advance your Career by Adding Ease To Getting Your CMP.

This is an invitation to attend the Banish Burnout Challenge. This challenge will be held at the end of the month and it will focus on tips and tools for you to prevent burnout.

Burnout is costly. Costing over 190 billion in healthcare costs, with the event profession is one of the top industries that suffer from burnout. Paying attention to prevention strategies that you can leverage to reduce burnout's impacts is crucial.

In this episode, Naomi gives you more information about the Banish Burnout Challenge, what it will cover, and how you can join.

Links and Resources
Banish Burnout Challenge

Thank you for listening, stay on purpose!

Support the show

Share today's episode and tag me @plannersonpurpose

Snag Free Gifts and Learn More at https://www.plannersonpurpose.com

Overwhelmed and Struggling with how to move forward? Get clarity by downloading my FREE Master Your Burnout Guide.

Want to work together, friend? Well, I'm here to help you start to get clarity, confidence, and zap out the chronic stress you experience in your event planning process. 

1. Get Clarity and Confidence in Your Purpose by scheduling a Purpose Call.
2. Advance your Career by Adding Ease To Getting Your CMP.