In this episode of Associations NOW Presents: Industry Partner Edition, guest host Sharon Pare of HighRoad Solutions welcomes Brandt Krueger, director of industry relations and partnerships at EventMobi, to discuss the evolving world of event sponsorships and association partnerships. Brandt shares why many sponsorship models have remained unchanged for years and offers practical strategies for creating more meaningful, results-driven opportunities. The conversation explores the importance of understanding sponsor goals, moving beyond traditional sponsorship tiers, embracing thoughtful innovation, and designing event experiences that deliver greater value for both associations and their partners.

Check out the video podcast here:

https://youtu.be/NgdE7JR8lOc

Associations NOW Presents is produced by Association Briefings.

Transcript

Sharon Pare: Welcome to this episode of Association NOW Presents: Industry Partners Series, an original podcast series from the American Society of Association Executives. I'm Sharon Pare, partnerships director of High Road, a HubSpot agency, co-host of Rethink Association, and your host of this series throughout the year.

This episode is sponsored by EventMobi.

Today, I'm joined by Brandt Krueger, and before we dig into sponsorships and partnerships, I know it wasn't exactly a straight line getting into associations for you. And what I would like to know first, and how I wanna get started is, I think you started in theater, and I wanna find out how you stumbled into the association space, and then we'll dig into all the other important stuff we wanna talk about today.

Brandt Krueger: We could probably do a whole podcast on just that, but it's 'cause like so many of us, nobody comes in a straight line, right? It's always falling in, falling out. So yeah, came out of college with a theater degree in technical light; so lighting, so technical theater, so lighting, audio, building sets and props, and things like that.

And was working for a theatrical lighting house, and was asked to resign at some point due to things we don't need to get into. But I took one name out of the Rolodex, and he was this kind of crazy, old hippie guy with long hair who did audio for these events. So I guess there's these events that people need audio and video for, and wound up working with him doing small events, and then got hoovered up by one of his major clients, who is one of the largest meeting and event production companies here in Minneapolis.

So I wound up working for them for about 18 years doing lights and sound, and mostly audiovisual and production technology. But a sizable portion of their clients were associations. So already starting to get to know them in that context, in that space. Left them, went out on my own, did about 10 years of event technology consulting for a company I created called Event Technology Consulting, because I'm not very creative.

So that consisted of a lot of trying to get people the right technology for them, a lot of asking questions, "What are you trying to actually do with it?" And then have worked my way around back into production again, working for another production company here. And then now, most recently, have worked my way into being the director of industry relations and partnerships for EventMobi.

EventMobi is on the software side, so we're providing the mobile event app and the event management software that comes around it. But it all links together, right? This association through working with different types, different sizes of organizations, and then culminating in this new position with EventMobi where, when you and I were talking in the pre-show, I was saying I think 40% of our customer base is associations.

And since then, I actually looked it up, and it's al- it's almost 50% of our business is actually with associations. So definitely have been stewing in this association world for quite some time. 

Sharon Pare: You absolutely have, and it sounds like you've worked in production, AV, event technology, your own consulting thing.

Now you're on the partnership side and industry relations, too. So just given your experience and working with a lot of these type of member orgs o- over all this time, what has changed the most since you've started? 

Brandt Krueger: That's the funny thing about this industry, right, is it's a lot of the more things change, the more things stay the same.

And so looking back over that career, obviously it's a very different environment, and we're doing things very differently, but it's always been very incremental. And it's not necessarily a bad thing. It's just the nature of this beast that you only get one shot at it. Other than the very lucky folks who are doing a road show or something like that where they're doing the same program multiple times. There's this it has to be bulletproof mentality that is pervasive across the event industry, whether it's associations or corporate.

That all is pretty much the same. And even special events like weddings and birthdays and things like that. You've got this, you've gotta get it right in one shot. So that makes us slow-moving, especially when it comes to technology. And so that's something that is part of my career as being someone who's enthusiastic about technology.

It's constantly like pulling the rope a little bit. "Okay, guys, come on. We can do this. We can do this." But having to prove it and having to show the value, show the ROI, all of these magic buzzwords that we use, is really, it really is a struggle. And so the more things change, the more things stay the same, and that's part of why I wanted to come on is to talk about some of the things that maybe we haven't changed in a while and might be worth looking at.

Sharon Pare: I was just about to ask, why is it that the event professionals, why do you think it is that they struggle to adopt those new ideas even when they know that change is coming down the pipe? What is it that you think they're struggling with the most? 

Brandt Krueger: There's a couple different reasons, and thinking specifically about the association space, a lot of it is because we've got situations where maybe someone is inheriting the event, or they're new to leadership.

And so things get passed from person to person unless you're in one of the lucky associations where you're able to hire full-time staff. There's a through thread. There's a consistency of staffing and personalities from event to event. But on these, on smaller associations and chapters and things like that where people are constantly moving through, if you're lucky, there's a master doc that you can be handed off from, from president to president almost with a, some kind of ceremony of, "Okay, here's all the things you need to know," if you're lucky that.

And so that contributes to it as well because we're copy and pasting. So that can be a big chunk of it is that we're just, "I'm sliding into the position. Okay, great, what did we do last year? Okay, great, let's do that again." But then also again is that second half is that bulletproof-ness, that we need to make sure that everything we're doing is grounded in reality, is grounded in safety.

That's a big part of it as well, just feeling comfortable and feeling safe around the technologies and around the event design itself. 

Sharon Pare: So that's why a lot of these orgs are running that same playbook year after year is- Yeah ... it feels safe, it feels comfortable, and they're just not trying to step out of the box at all.

Brandt Krueger: But unfortunately, the times they are a-changin', right? And so when we think about, obviously I was focusing on kind of what hasn't changed, but what has-- What hasn't changed is the purpose of associations, which mainly is education, networking, learning from each other, meeting your peers, getting better at your job.

All of these things are core fundamental parts of being a member of an association. But now, if I wanna learn something, the first place I go to is YouTube, or now, like an AI buddy, right? Is, "Hey, how do I fix the toilet again?" So we, we, this is the way that we do things now, so I can get my education online, and especially with online events and things like that.

Networking, we've never been more connected as a society, whether it's LinkedIn or social media or Instagram, all of these things. So how do we stay relevant in those scenarios, and how do we keep our membership up, and how do we keep our sponsorship up? These are real questions that associations are struggling with, and the answer, unfortunately, might mean we need to rethink some of these things.

Sharon Pare: Are you seeing any signals or signs that some of these associations might be operating on, on autopilot? You said a lot of them are. A new president comes in, new executive leadership comes in, and they're just basically copy and pasting some of those prospectus that they're seeing. What are some of those signs that these associations are just, quite frankly, doing the same thing they've been doing?

Brandt Krueger: Sometimes it's literally copy and pasting. I saw that all the time in the audio visual world. Are we forgetting a date here 

Sharon Pare: And there sometimes to change too?

Brandt Krueger: Yeah, exactly. And hey, everybody's guilty of it. I've seen it in my own writing of oh, yeah, I'll just take what I did last year, uh, and then you forget to change a date.

Exactly. That happens all the time because we're just, we're all busy and we're trying to shortcut things. But y- yeah, literally you'll see things copy and pasted from year to year. It's like that equipment doesn't even exist anymore. And so it's only natural that same type of thing would apply to sponsorships, would apply to exhibitors, that I think one of the biggest challenges of being part of an association is, especially when it's this transient site where you're moving in, you're there for a year, and then you move out of leadership or something like that.

One of the biggest challenges is that's not your main job, right? So the f- the folks that are doing it, they're stepping up and being parts of c- of leadership of their organizations. The folks that are doing that, that's not their main job. And so frequently, planning events is not their main job. Again, unless you're lucky enough to have someone full-time on staff, these are people that are frankly amateur, and I don't mean that in as, as, as a negative, it's just the reality of the situation, event planners.

And so that makes it even more, "Oh, here, what's the handbook? Okay, here's the handbook. Okay, great. Okay, great. I'm gonna... Okay, we need, it says we need a gold sponsor, a silver sponsor, a double platinum diamond trilithium sponsor," you know, all of those things that we need. And so it's just k- a little bit of the nature of the beast, right?

Sharon Pare: So I wanna go back to you talking about how these associations wanna be bulletproof about some of the sponsorship levels that they're putting out there year after year. What do you think is the biggest disconnect between what the sponsors want and what the associations think the sponsors want? 

Brandt Krueger: All right.

Now we're getting into the meat, right? So this is the good stuff. We're getting there. This is where I could soapbox for days. And I did first kind of start to notice these things in audiovisual and production world, where you would go to somebody, and I would always be, ask, the first question out of my mouth is, "What is the purpose of this event?"

And they'd say, "It's our annual conference." "Okay, great. So what is, what's the purpose of it?" "It's a conference that we put on annually." Okay. And so you, you'd really, it'd be like pulling teeth to try and actually get to, "What are you trying to do here? What would you say you do here?" And, uh, and get to the meat of the matter.

And so the same thing applies to sponsorship, that the biggest disconnect is not actually knowing what your sponsors want, what they need, what are they trying to get out of it? There may be a benefit to them of just, "Here's 10 grand. Please slap the gold label on me and put the logo on the website and call it good."

That might be what their brand strategy is. But the biggest mistake is not slowing down and really asking that first. So don't start with the pitch deck of, "Okay, so we've got three sponsorship levels, and this is what it includes, and here's the bullet points." Start with the conversation. Start with, "Hey, I just wanna know more about what you do.

I wanna know more about what the services you provide. I wanna know more about you as a person, as a marketer, a potential sponsorship person." And then what are you trying to get out of that? Because sometimes it is just okay with the logo, but sometimes it's, "See, there's this particular subset of your group that I really wanna get in front of."

So great, now the wheels can start spinning. "Okay, how do we find a way to get that sponsor in the room with those people so that they can have a conversation? What do you think about a pre-show dinner with special invite-only VIP standing, and then we'll make sure that those people are in the room?

Would you be interested in throwing $10,000 at something like that?" So that's where you can start to get creative and go past, and this is gonna be the through thread of today, is just blow past the gold, silver, diamond, platinum sponsorship levels and start really working with how do we make this going to be effective for the sponsors so that they get money out of it and wanna come back year after year?

Sharon Pare: No, I think that's amazing because there's nothing more I hate than a vanity sponsorship or a vanity partnership, right? "Okay, great. Here's my logo," but then that's it, right? And I don't think there's true value or impact or ROI from anybody doing anything in that way, and I think we need to get used to doing some of these targeted things like a sidecar to an event, like these pre-show dinners and things like that.

So I'm totally with you on that. But I guess my question is do you think sometimes the reason that these changes aren't happening is because the orgs are too focused on protecting their existing sponsorship revenue to experiment with some of these newer ideas? 

Brandt Krueger: Yeah, I think that's probably it. And the other thing, again, because it's not your day job, it's, you might not even have time to have these conversations. But it's so important that even if you have those existing relationships, right?

There's no harm in settling, having say, "Hey, you've been great. You've been a great sponsor for the last five years. Can we go out to coffee, and go out for coffee and just chat about what are you getting out of it? What do you like? If you're comfortable with, that's great, but is there more that we can be doing together?

Or is there less but more targeted?" Maybe this is, maybe that person is taking up a spot, so that's something that we have to think about as well, is retargeting. That they might be taking up a higher spot that could be absorbed by somebody else. They're not getting what they're needing. This person's at a lower tier level because you've already sold out the gold.

They're not getting what they're getting. Is there a possibility of switching those two or adding tiers and things along those lines? Those are the kinds of things that start to materialize when you have those conversations. 

Sharon Pare: I wanna get into that in just a little bit, but one thing I wanted to ask really quick is if an association keeps running that same playbook year over year, what will typically happen?

Brandt Krueger: Yeah. So at best, I think you maintain. So at best, I think you're just gonna maintain current sponsorship levels, and maybe you get to increase it every now and then, but don't increase it too much. It might not even be enough for inflation, because everybody's costs are going up. So it's like you might not even be increasing your sponsorship levels enough to even cover the costs of what last year's conference again came from.

So at best, you're maintaining, but unfortunately, I really think if you're not having these conversations, the most likely outcome is that people are gonna start putting their money elsewhere. Having joined the marketing team at EventMobi, I'm already seeing those conversations, right? Of, "Oh, that would be great," but that's not our target market.

That's not the ICPs. It's not all the-- Marketing loves their acronyms. We love our acronyms in marketing. And so be- more and more marketers are being asked to really show the numbers. Like, how many leads did we get out of this? Not just, "Hey, good, we got the attendee list," right? It's not just about the attendee list.

It's gotta be targeted. How many of these convert? All of those kinds of things. And so it really is becoming more and more important to have these conversations to make sure that they're getting what they need out of it, because otherwise they're just gonna go find another place to spend the money. And maybe that's gonna mean you lose one of your top tier sponsors.

Sharon Pare: Now that we're getting out of the conversation of doing the same thing that we've b- been doing for a really long time, and maybe suggesting that the association's not continue to sell the same sponsorship inventory all the time, what would you say are some of the other business goals that the sponsors are actually trying to achieve at events now?

Brandt Krueger: Yeah, and I wanna be clear. Some, for some people, the tiered level is fine. That's exactly what they want out of it. They get to put their na- It's name recognition. Like Coca-Cola, they spend their money just to keep their name in front of you. You know who Coca-Cola is. You know what they do. But they just spend that money to keep that mind share, and so that might be enough.

That might be part of the strategy is doing it. But sometimes it's about being, like I said, in the right room with the right people, and being more targeted, and being more conscious of exactly, so these people, they need to walk away with a nice spreadsheet that's not only the here's all of the people that attended, but here's the specific titles of people that are gonna be perfect for them so that they're walking away with what they need to show their bosses to, to get ROI.

So it's getting into those specifics of what you need, and it might n- it might even be one person. We're sponsoring this entire event because I wanna be in a room with that one person who's going to be there. Right. However that happens. And so the rest of it doesn't matter. And so why are you then wasting your sponsorship real estate for someone who 's not even what they're interested in?

So now you've got less room on the mobile app. You've got less room on, on the brochure or on the stage or wherever you're trying to do because you've got this logo that's taking up space, and they don't even care that logo is on there. That's, that is a spot that could've been sold to somebody else. So it's why it's so important to have these conversations.

Sharon Pare: Now for a word from our episode sponsor. EventMobi connects registration, check-in, communication, and attendee engagement in one system. Built for associations, corporate teams, and agencies running complex, high-stakes events. Now with the new Badge On wireless solution, print badges instantly from anywhere in the venue.

And with MobiAI Registration Concierge, AI handles attendee questions in real time so your staff can stay focused on delivering the event. Unlike enterprise platforms that demand big budgets and long timelines, EventMobi delivers professional capabilities with full branding control, flexible pricing, and optional on-site support.

The control your team needs with no enterprise overhead. So we started talking about in the pre-show some of these anti-trends. I thought it was a really interesting topic, and I wanted to spend a little bit more time about this. But you were talking about some of these unique sponsorship opportunities that really nobody's talking about.

And there were a few things that you were talking about that folks are starting to... I think it was the sponsorship of nothing and I wanted you to explain that a little bit before we start to go into some of the sponsorship trends that are starting to come about now. 

Brandt Krueger: Yeah, and so one of the reasons that we've been focusing on this at EventMobi, again, is just to help te- because we wanna m- we want our association customers to be successful, right?

Because if they're successful, we're successful, and all rising tide boats, all of those kinds of good things, right? So we put together a sponsorship template that has a lot of these things of, "Hey, you might not have thought of this, and you might not have thought of this, and you might not have thought of this.

If you wanna go tiered, here's the tiered. If you want a bunch of a la carte stuff, here's a bunch of a la carte stuff that you may not, may or may not have thought of." So we'll put in the show notes a link to this, to the sponsorship template that we've got in there, because it's got things exactly like that.

So one of the ones that I've been shouting from the rooftops for years is this idea of sponsored blank space, that I just l- you know, when you go to these conferences, they just jam-pack them, and I understand why. You know, you need, as the attendee, need to go to your boss and say, "I'm going to this thing, so look at all these education sessions I'm gonna go to.

Look at this big name speaker that's gonna be there." And so you're pitching it, so the y- you kinda have to do that. 

Sharon Pare: Right. 

Brandt Krueger: But what I love, and I've only seen this on a very rare occasion, is this hour of nothing is brought to you by tech. I would remember Shmoshmo Tech because sometimes you just need that hour to step away.

Not a break where there's snacks or anything like that. Maybe, I mean- Mm-hmm ... you can have it there. But to be really clear, this is a time for you to go back to your hotel room, call your spouse, check your emails, hop all of the, just all the things that we don't have time to, or just sit in the sunshine. Go out of the convention center, find a sunny spot, and sit there for a half an hour, and then come back, and then let's do the last session before lunch or something like that.

So I always see that as a tremendously missed opportunity, is that sponsored white space of just this amount of nothing is brought to you by Shmoshmo Tech. 

Sharon Pare: No, that's an incredible idea because I'm sure you've seen some of these TikToks and Instagram shorts, or is that YouTube shorts? You know what I mean, Instagram reels.

Brandt Krueger: Yeah. 

Sharon Pare: And where they're showing that you really only have five seconds to get from one place to the next. They jam-pack everything between that 9:00 to 5:00 time. You have five seconds to go to your hotel room to just decompress, and then boom, you're out again, on your dinner for the rest of the evening.

But doing that sponsorship of nothing, I think that's a really incredible idea just to give you a few minutes, like you said, to go into the sunshine or catch up on a few of those work emails so you can focus on the educational sessions that are actually happening during the conference. So my next question is…what's a sponsorship trend that everyone seems really excited about?

So this is gonna be a hot take from Brandt. But what is one everyone seems excited about that you think is a little bit overrated? 

Brandt Krueger: I'm gonna take that question and I'm gonna twist it a little bit. I'm gonna do my best- Twist it up ... poli- do my best politician impersonation and answer a different question than the one that you asked.

So I think it's, again, not so much a hot trend, but I think it's something that, that's, that it's a missed opportunity that people- Okay ... can and should be doing. That people are doing this for- to be sure, but I think more people need to be doing it as well, and that is when you're looking at the various parts of your technology, again, I came up through technology consultant, one of the things that always drove me nuts was that people would just take whatever was offered for free, and I get it.

And then that counts as a sponsorship, right? So you've got a mobile app, you've got your event registration platform, you've got your audiovisual provider, you've got your speakers, all of these things, a lot of organizations are leaning into, "Oh, they'll do it for free? Okay, great, you're on the agenda. Oh, they'll do it for free?

Okay, great, you're our audiovisual company. Oh, they'll do it for free? You're our catering company now." Like, all of those things. But what I would encourage people to do, and this I think would make a massive improvement in the quality of our events, because we do it in the industry, we do it in association, then we do it in corporate, like this is across the industry, is get the sponsorship to pay for the thing you actually want.

So do the research, find out what you actually need as far as event registration software, as far as badge printing software, as far as your mobile app, as far as your audiovisual company. Get the people, get the s- the suppliers that you want to work with, and then get them sponsored. So it's the same, it winds up being the same amount of sponsorship money, only you get to have a better quality experience for your attendees, you get to have a better quality experience as a planner because you're using the tools that you want to be using, and then that opens up the possibility to have more sponsors.

Believe it or not, many associations struggle with, "I w- I'd love to have more involvement from the sponsors, but I don't have anything to offer them because the gold package is 10, the silver package is like all of those kinds of things." So this gives you an opportunity to bring more people into the fold, and bring even more people that can be headline sponsors, audiovisual sponsors, a mobile app sponsored by, all of these kinds of things.

So that's my little twisted take on what you asked. 

Sharon Pare: No, I love it. So essentially, if an association wants a mimosa bar in the morning at 8:00 AM, get a sponsor for it, right? 

Brandt Krueger: Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yep, exactly. That's-- And i- if-- and the more sponsors, the better in that aspect, right? So maybe you can have a catering sponsor, but then it's also sponsored by somebody else.

Sharon Pare: So getting some of these sponsors are gonna help subsidize really the operating cost of the event at the end of the day too. So we gotta be creative. Yep. What is something that you think associations should stop selling tomorrow? Then tomorrow, what is something that you could suggest that they need to think twice about?

Brandt Krueger: I'll be honest with you. So I, the experts tell me that there's still a place for gold, silver. If you haven't figured it out, I'm not a fan of those kinds of things. It- but I, again, go back to this idea of paying attention to what will actually improve the quality of your event, paying attention to what will improve the quality of the event for you, for your attendees, for your internal stakeholders, for your sponsors, for your exhibitors.

In the pre-show, you and I were talking about my studio setup, and I was like, "This didn't just magically appear," right? It's like, I didn't just go out and go, "Okay, I want this mic, I want these lights, I want this computer." I built it up over years, and I just kept cycling through. Okay, start with audio.

What's the best microphone I can afford right now? And then go to lighting, and then go to camera, and then go to can I make my internet faster so there's less stutters and stops and things like that, especially during pandemic era, like that was huge. Right. And then keep cycling through. So I would say, if you can't afford to have all of these conversations, I get it, like I said, we're busy, we're volunteers, we're passing through, we don't have time.

Maybe try and get one a year. So what can we do to improve our sponsorships this year? 'Cause that's what we're talking about today. What can we do next year to improve the quality for our exhibitors? What can we do the next year to really spice things up, do something different for our attendees that's gonna be consistent, not just this year, but every year- Yep

Can we change? And then just keep cycling through those questions over and over again every year. Never get complacent. Never just, "Here's the playbook," and it's done. It's evolving, it's a living document that gets passed on from person to person. 

Sharon Pare: So really taking a cr- maybe not crawl, walk, run, but a crawl, walk approach to every year, and just adding just a little bit of something that year to pizzazz it up just a little bit and offer something new to the sponsors.

Okay, that's awesome. 

Brandt Krueger: Yeah. Oh, and just a real follow-up on that, like the advantage to doing it that way is then you're not throwing all the spaghetti at the wall at once, right? So you'll be able to measure, did that make a difference? So if you're not doing, blah, scattershot, everything's everywhere, let's change one thing this year on our sponsorship package.

See if it moves the needle. Let's change another thing. Okay. What happens? So just take your time, be incremental, and then you'll be able to see whether or not it's actually moving the needle 

Sharon Pare: No, that's really great advice. Now, I know that you've recently attended IMEX, maybe the past week or two. Were there some themes or conversations that you were hearing in the hallway, eavesdropping in on at the exhibit hall was-- or even in the sessions?

Was there anything that just kept coming up over and over that maybe we need to think about a little bit more? 

Brandt Krueger: First of all, it was a great show. It was so much fun getting to see folks that I hadn't seen in a while, 'cause I did this- Is it in Las 

Sharon Pare: Vegas as well? 

Brandt Krueger: Yeah, it will be in Las Vegas. Oh. This was the Frankfurt show.

Yep. So we were at the Frankfurt show just two weeks ago. It'll be Las Vegas again in the fall. Right. I'm a huge fan of IMEX. I love that program. It's mainly destination-focused, so it's talking about where you are gonna take your annual conference. Mm-hmm. But the tech pavilion has been getting bigger and bigger.

So a couple of interesting trends, and I've been trying to actually follow up to see, okay, was this my imagination or was this real? And, uh, once they got done with the show, like half of IMEX, they take their two-week European holidays and all that kind of fun stuff. Love you guys. And so what I felt like I noticed was more pavilions on the show floor, and so this is something that I think folks can look at.

Okay, wow. It is talking about-- So, like, Italy would have a 40-by-40 booth, but then would have all of these little sub hotels, destinations, cities, things like that all throughout the Italy pavilion. Okay. Now, that in itself is not new, but what seemed new was there was more of them and bigger. So that, that Italy 40 by 40 expanded into two 40-by-40s that, that spanned across an aisle and was just this massive pavilion and with all of these subcontractors, or not contractors, but sub, sub-exhibitors, I guess that's what you'd call them.

And then there was a French event tech pavilion of French event technology providers. Okay. So it seemed like there was more of that, and I think that's, I think that's a very usable steal for association folks is, like, how do we get more people into our trade show at a lower level? So you could sell that 10-by-10, I'm gonna make up some numbers here.

You could sell that 10-by-10 for $10,000, but you could sell it to 10 people for $2,000 each and make more than you were gonna make on that individual- That's right ... 10, and bring more people into the fold at a lower price point. So you might be able to start getting people in at a lower price point at a lower lift for that kind of thing.

Sharon Pare: Yeah, that is very interesting. It almost sounds to me like going to Epcot and getting all the countries just in one spot, but at a just- Yeah ... smaller scale. 

Brandt Krueger: Yep, absolutely. 

Sharon Pare: All right. And I think we're wrapping up here a little bit. Brant, it was really amazing to have you on, to have your expertise, to have your sound effects, too.

We might have to ask you to come back just to do some sound effects- Just some sound effects ... like you mentioned. But is there just one thing that you wanna leave any of our listeners with today? If there is, do you have Brant's final thoughts before we get into the rapid fire? So it's not so final, but pretty final.

Brandt Krueger: It's a semi-final. The semifinal thoughts. Semifinal. Honestly, and this has been throughout my whole career, again, I touched on it as I was talking about consulting, is like, if you wanna get the right suppliers, if you wanna get the right software, the right speakers, the right vendors, it's all about communication, and that goes in all directions, right?

There's just nothing better than actually sitting down with attendees and asking them what they wanna get out of it. So you wanna find out what you can do to improve, don't just send a survey. Take 15 of them out to coffee, and really take the time to have face-to-face, as much as possible, conversations about what it is that they enjoy, what it is that they, they like, what they don't like, that you're just not gonna get from a survey.

Same thing with your exhibitors. Same thing with your sponsors. Same thing with your internal stakeholders. I'll be honest, it's why I love, if anybody's familiar with the event design canvas, it's one of those things that if you do it right, it takes a couple days to do, but even just thinking about it helps you think about what do each of your stakeholders need?

What do the exhibitors want? What do the sponsors want? Just having that mentality, I think, is a fantastic way to go through your event career, is just constantly reevaluating with all of your stakeholders, 'cause it changes. It changes from year to year what's gonna be important, and just having those conversations over and over again, and never letting it just be done, I think is a big part of it.

Always evolving, always changing. 

Sharon Pare: No, thank you so much, and I know that you've spent many years helping folks just navigate this change within the industry, albeit maybe slower than some, but we're getting there, right? And it's baby steps. It's that crawl, walk, run approach, and soon enough our associations and membership organizations are just gonna be doing spectacular events, especially with EventMobi involved.

Before we get to our rapid fire, where can people connect with you and learn more about EventMobi? 

Brandt Krueger: Now, I, for me personally, I always say the best way to connect is on LinkedIn. So just reach out to LinkedIn. I'm the only active Brandt Krueger that's on there. There is another guy whose thing hasn't been active in 15 years, and LinkedIn has a policy of never removing, right, accounts.

They never- So it's okay. That guy isn't, so just do a search for me. I should be the one that pops up. And then of course, EventMobi.com is the easiest way to find us there. 

Sharon Pare: All right, rapid fire. I only have a few. 

Brandt Krueger: Okay. 

Sharon Pare: So my first one, do you pull in or reverse into a parking spot? 

Brandt Krueger: Always front first, yes.

Sharon Pare: Always front first. Yes. 

Sharon Pare: Uber or Lyft? 

Brandt Krueger: Uber or Lyft? 

Uber. Have you Waymo'd? 

Sharon Pare: No, have not had that opportunity. 

Sharon Pare: Hard or soft taco? 

Brandt Krueger: Soft taco, no tomatoes. 

Sharon Pare: And still or sparkling water? 

Brandt Krueger: Ooh, I like both. Depends on my mood. 

Sharon Pare: It depends on the mood. I love it. 

Thank you to everyone for listening to this episode of Associations NOW Presents Industry Partners Series.

Again, Brandt, thank you so much. I think I hear some applause in the background. 

Brandt Krueger: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Thank you. 

Sharon Pare: That came right from Brandt. Just visit him for SoundEffects. Join us each month as we explore key topics relevant to association professionals, discuss the challenges and opportunities in the field today, and highlight the significant impact associations have on the economy, the US, and the world.

Be sure to subscribe to our podcast on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. And for more information on topics impacting the association space, visit Associations Now online at associationsnow.com. Thank you, Brandt.