In this episode of Event Experience by Bizzabo, host Rachel Moore welcomes Bethany Murphy, the Head of Events at 6sense, to discuss her extensive experience in event planning and marketing. They explore current trends in the event industry, including the integration of AI, the importance of non-alcoholic beverage options, and how to infuse fun into brand experiences.
Bethany shares insights on how to manage event budgets effectively, emphasizing the importance of real-time updates, contingency planning, and transparency with finance teams. She also offers advice for event planners working with more conservative brands on how to incorporate trends and creativity while staying true to their brand identity.
Here’s what you’ll hear about in this conversation:
[00:00:09] Welcome to Event Experience by Bizzabo, the podcast where we bring the best and brightest event experience leaders together to share stories, tips, and lessons learned from creating some of the world's biggest events.
[00:00:31] I'm Rachel Moore, your podcast host. We continue to expand on the convo from Bizzabo's Event Trends webinar as we welcome back Bethany Murphy, the Head of Events at 6sense to discuss her extensive experience in event planning and marketing.
[00:00:46] Together, we're about to explore current trends in the event industry, including the integration of AI, the importance of non alcoholic beverage options, and how to infuse fun into brand experiences. Plus, we reveal Bethany's love of all things budgeting and spreadsheets, which we'll acknowledge is always super important for event experience.
[00:01:10] Rachel Moore: Today's guest is the head of events at 6sense, where she leads the development of global event and trade show strategies, working closely with cross functional teams to align initiatives with business goals. Don't we all want to do that?
[00:01:35] With extensive expertise in event planning and marketing, she excels at creating comprehensive event strategies, managing budgets, and optimizing ROI. And all of this to deliver impactful experiences whilst overseeing a team of event marketing professionals.
[00:01:51] I am sitting across microphones from no other than Bethany Murphy from 6sense.
[00:01:55] Bethany, thanks for joining me on the podcast today.
[00:01:58] Bethany Murphy: Thanks, Rachel. Super excited to be here.
[00:02:01] Rachel Moore: I am too. And um, it's, it's cool because we're kind of doing a part two of this because I, I got to sit across microphones from you during a recent Bizzabo webinar.
[00:02:10] So, this is super, this is great, great to follow up.
[00:02:12] Rachel Moore: Well, let us segue into some Get to Know You questions Bethany. Um, one of these will be familiar and for anyone who did see you in the webinar, they, they may know the answer to this question already, but there's more to come.
[00:02:25] What are your go-to on the ground event day shoes, like we're talking the 10 to 14 hour day on the, your all day, on your feet, what are you, what are you wearing?
[00:02:34] Bethany Murphy: I mean, definitely sneakers.
[00:02:36] Rachel Moore: Mm-hmm.
[00:02:38] Bethany Murphy: Definitely cool looking sneakers. I've got my Golden Goose. Those, those I've worn for years and like, they're the most comfortable. There's stupid amount of money, but they're the most comfortable sneakers. And now I've kind of moved to the samba trend. So I've got like sambas in multiple colors and I find them to be super comfortable. But a cool looking kind of trendy sneaker. That's also comfortable.
[00:02:57] Rachel Moore: I love it. Uh, sneakers have been the thing. I, I've been hearing a little bit lately of more heels coming back. So we'll see how that goes.
[00:03:05] Bethany Murphy: Oh man, I'm not I will not be on that trend help me out of that.
[00:03:09] Rachel Moore: Agreed. Uh, yeah, I'm, I'm also going to be sneaker, sneaker fast too. Also that, also that.
[00:03:15] Is there anything that you're listening to watching or reading these days that you can't put down and it does not have to be work or events related?
[00:03:23] Bethany Murphy: I mean, luckily my husband doesn't listen to people me speak on any of these things because he would be mortified, but I've just started binging Dubai Bling on Netflix. It's like what I imagine because I don't watch housewives, but I feel like it's like the Dubai version of housewives.
[00:03:40] It is absolutely insane. The outfits are just. I mean, it is designer to the extreme. It's just so entertaining. I mean, and mindless, which, you know, at the end of a long day, like I love myself some mindless TV. So that's my current fringe, which is kind of embarrassing, but.
[00:03:57] Rachel Moore: No, it's not no. Hey, I mean, everybody's got, you know, whether it's vices or just like, hey.
[00:04:02] I've actually been, uh, watching, I just watched, I hadn't seen the whole thing of Game of Thrones. So, I had that on as mindless in the background. And then, uh, I, I've started watching House, which had eight seasons. I always liked the ones where you find them and they're like, Oh my God, there's eight seasons.
[00:04:16] Bethany Murphy: I know, but then I get into like the, you know, it's just, and I have to finish it. It's like, once I start something, even with a book, like I started, I have to finish it, even if I really don't like it. So.
[00:04:26] Rachel Moore: Exactly. Exactly. Like, even if you're like, the storyline is going south, but I need to see how it ends.
[00:04:31] Bethany Murphy: My daughter just, is 13 and she just started watching Grey's Anatomy and she's on like season three. I'm like, you have 17 seasons to go. Like, good luck with that. Like, I stopped watching after season 10. I don't know.
[00:04:42] Rachel Moore: It's so funny that you bring that up. I was actually watching House yesterday. I was assembling something in my office and my daughter comes in, she goes, are you watching Grey's Anatomy? Like the disdain in her voice. And I was like, "no, it's House," and she goes, "Okay" and I'm like, all right. I just passed a test.
[00:05:00] I don't know what test it was.
[00:05:00] Bethany Murphy: Yeah.
[00:05:01] Rachel Moore: But, didn't know there was a test, but okay. Yeet.
[00:05:06] Bethany Murphy: I can't go down hole. I go down there again. Nope.
[00:05:09] Rachel Moore: You're like, no, you're on your own kid. Report back.
[00:05:14] Is there a particular social post, piece of media, or even a hot take about events that you might've found interesting?
[00:05:20] Bethany Murphy: Well, I just went to CES last week. Um, I was lucky enough to attend, kind of, a back of the house tour. So I got to walk around, um, a couple of the expo halls and it was just mind blowing. I mean, the technology on that show floor, like I have never in my life seen anything like it. And I think like, you know, we are not spending that kind of money on booth.
[00:05:44] Like, I wouldn't even say booths. They're like houses. I mean, some of these are like, I didn't see a 10 by 10 in sight or a 10 by 20, every booth was just gigantic.
[00:05:52] But super cool how these companies are utilizing their own technologies and bringing them to life, on the show floor. And I think there were certain things like that we could probably take at a much smaller scale, and bring to our activations. But, um, I just felt really lucky to kind of be able to attend and see all that.
[00:06:08] It was, it was amazing.
[00:06:10] Rachel Moore: That's, um, I, I'm a little, a little jealous. I always see it from afar, right from the outskirts and I, I see stuff going on, but that sounds really cool.
[00:06:17] Bethany Murphy: And I did not see the Delta keynote at the sphere, which supposedly was like, unbelievable, but I watched a little bit of it online.
[00:06:26] Rachel Moore: That's right. That's right. Well, and you bring up to that, I mean, able to go to that kind of thing too. It's important to go to those events and just see what the possibilities are because then it gives you those ideas for, "Hey, I saw this trend."
[00:06:39] Bethany Murphy: I would advocate for that for anyone to like, try to go to it. Like, if you're just going to your own events, like, you really don't have a sense as to what else is possible, right? And what's out there.
[00:06:49] So, advocate for yourself to get some professional development funds and, and go attend, uh, events. Because you got to get out there and see what others are doing.
[00:06:59] Rachel Moore: Get out there. All right, well. And I do, as I always do on this episode or on these, um, I do, as I always do on these podcasts where I give a super brief, um, briefest of the brief bio about you, but I want to give you an opportunity to introduce yourself, to tell our listeners about yourself.
[00:07:16] So can you tell us about you, about your role at 6sense and expound on that for our listening audience? What do you, what is your world like in 6sense?
[00:07:24] Bethany Murphy: Yeah, so I, um, have almost 25 years of experience in events. And every time I say that, I just feel older and older. Uh, but I love events. Um, I've been at 6sense over two and a half years.
[00:07:39] My team here manages, um, It's all of our large scale events. So, um, that's internal events, if we're to do like a sales kickoff, um, our president's club incentive event, and then all of our customer and prospect facing events.
[00:07:52] So that includes our user conference, and our third party events as well. So any third party events, um, my team does field marketing as well. So yeah, it's a lot.
[00:08:04] Rachel Moore: Sounds, sounds like a busy world. Yes. Um, I'm sure our, our listeners can all relate.
[00:08:09] And as I alluded to, this is not the first time you and I are talking, uh, on a recording on a mic across microphones. Um, you recently were a panelist on, uh, Bizzabo's webinar that tackled trends in the event industry as we barrel toward 2025, which, uh, we are recording this in the first month of 2025. Just for everyone's, so everyone can time it.
[00:08:29] I'm really excited to have this opportunity, uh, with you to be able to expand a bit because, you know, in a webinar, we only have so much time. We know everybody's got busy schedules and they're going to go out about their day after they, they get all the takeaways they can.
[00:08:42] This is our opportunity to, to kind of double click into a more expanded conversation with you. So, I would like to kick off with this question. As your team at 6sense enters a new year of trends, again, kind of coming off that event trends and budgets overall discussion we had in the webinar.
[00:09:00] Can you describe one or two that you're planning to implement and, and how? Cause let's kick off with some ideas. Cause I bet you're going to share some stuff that might make people, their light bulbs start going off over their heads. So what are you up to?
[00:09:11] Bethany Murphy: Yeah. Um, I mean, look, like, I feel like you can't have any conversation about anything lately without talking about AI. Right? It's kind of all over the place.
[00:09:23] So, you know, here at 6sense, we're really lucky to be able to, what we say, like, "drink our own champagne", uh, and utilize our own products. So, we're going to really lean in and go hard on using our conversational email tool, to drive better conversions for booking pre event meetings. And that's like a huge focus for us, is driving those meetings for our team to be on site.
[00:09:44] We had a lot of success with this in 2024 and I think we're going to continue to kind of lean in and do more with that in 2025. So super excited about that.
[00:09:52] We've also used AI, like, there's fun AI tools out there. We talked about on the webinar, we use these AI sketch bots that basically like took a picture of our attendees and sketched a kind of look like, uh, maybe a portrait. and then we gave that away as a takeaway.
[00:10:11] So, I think there's a lot of fun ways. Like, we did just did an AI photo booth also at an event that was super fun, and transform people into like 80s and 90s, um, vibes. And it was really, really didn't really look like anyone. I keep looking at mine. It's on my, um. On my magnetic board over there, and it looks nothing like me, but it's still super fun. Uh, so I think there's a lot of fun things like that out there with AI.
[00:10:33] And then I think 2nd, and we did this in 2024, but I feel like it's become a huge, it's become almost imperative at events to have non alcoholic beverage options, right? And not just, like, soda water, right? Like a fun, like legitimate mocktail.
[00:10:51] And so, we've been really trying to be inclusive and include our mocktails on our like beverage menus and just make sure that that's prominently featured throughout our events. So I think that's, it's become really kind of trendy to not drink, right?
[00:11:06] Uh, and so I think we're trying to incorporate that into our events this year.
[00:11:10] Rachel Moore: Well, and it's super timely too. I mean, we're recording this during January, which I, I'm, I'm participating in dry January as well as my, my significant other.
[00:11:18] Bethany Murphy: I did dry November. I checked it off the list.
[00:11:20] Rachel Moore: See? And, and that's the thing. I see you're, you're, you're, you're expounding on the point right there. You're, you're revealing it right there. Because it's, it doesn't have to be a month. Some, it really is about what is that person's preference or what's best for them.
[00:11:34] And you are so right. We, we actually recently had an interview, I think with, uh, I want to say Sarah Reuter, and I'll make sure that that's correct, but she was talking about, yeah, you know, how it's great to finally see that there are those non, don't, don't always have to be sugary, sweet, gross sometimes, non alcoholic options, that there's actually some appealing ones that, that really just broaden the choice. The buffet, if you will, of, that people can choose. But I think, I love that y'all are, are doing that, and yeah.
[00:12:05] Bethany Murphy: It leans into, like, the health and wellness overall, right?
[00:12:08] Like, we just did a Zen Room at our event in October. And it was like, we had chair massages in there ond day. We had music meditation one day, right?
[00:12:17] So just kind of incorporating wellness into the events. Which I think is a trend that will continue in 2025.
[00:12:23] Rachel Moore: Well, and it's such a social thing too, to tap into, I mean, you know, when, when you do get together with people, like if there's a happy hour, you know, quote unquote.
[00:12:31] There's an automatic assumption, well, I better, you know, go order something, but, you know, even just walking around with a glass of something in your hand can feel very social and you don't feel, you know, Like, ooh, it's weird that I'm not holding anything while I'm walking around.
[00:12:43] So, there's just so many reasons to do it. Not to mention, we're talking about, you know, in person events being, being more prevalent now. And, uh, hey, uh, everybody's stamina is a lot better off when we're maybe not, uh, overindulging in the, uh, And the other options.
[00:12:59] Excellent. I love those. Those are some really great ideas. And I love, you know, as, as people listen to the podcast and watch it, I think that they're going to love kind of thinking about, "Ooh, what can we be doing? And maybe they're doing similar things."
[00:13:11] Let's circle back to, cause again, we're, we're, we're circling up with you after the webinar that we had. During the webinar, you explain, and I have a feeling some of our, some of our listeners might be a little jealous of this, uh, you explain that 6sense is fortunately a very fun brand.
[00:13:26] I guess I want to ask you exactly how fun? Um, I bet our listeners would like some ideas about how they, how can they, they can infuse some fun into their own brand experiences, uh, and on whatever, wherever they lie on the spectrum of a fun brand, but please do share some of your fun stuff coming up.
[00:13:41] Bethany Murphy: Yes, yeah, again, I think I feel very fortunate to work for a brand that kind of lets us take some liberties when it comes to events. And, of course, we're, we're always super aware of how we're bringing the brand to life, right? And we do want to represent the brand in a professional way, but I think sometimes we're, we just like, push the boundaries a little bit and we're allowed to have some fun.
[00:14:02] So, um, a couple examples. We have this ancillary, um, event space that we call Club 6. And we do that at some kind of some of our tier 1 third party events, right? So we build out this ancillary space off the show floor.
[00:14:18] We kind of, we decorate it with amazing florals and we do gifting in there and we always have activations, and we have food and beverage, and it's really like a VIP space. And most importantly, we use the space to host meetings, right? So we have a lot of our subject matter experts there, we have our team there.
[00:14:32] So, we are driving a lot of ROI through this space, but we also want to make it enjoyable, right? A place for people to get away from the chaos of the event itself. And so, you know, from a branding perspective, we kind of push the boundaries inside the space, right?
[00:14:47] We always have our brand colors represented, but we're bringing in kind of fun themes. Like, we were just in Austin last year, and we had kind of a Southwest-y kind of vibe. And we bring in, you know, rentals and all this fun stuff. And then on the exterior of the venue, we always make sure that the exterior is really like corporate branding.
[00:15:09] Right? So when you walk by, you know, this is a 6sense space and you walk inside. And again, you still have our pops of teal and our colors. But it's just a little more kind of fun and different.
[00:15:19] And then within the space, we try to bring really fun activations.
[00:15:23] So, last year we had an oxygen bar. Very interesting. Um, I think people were like, what is happening here? Because he had to kind of stick a little tube up your nose. And, uh, but it was fun. It was just fun and different and unexpected. And I think we're always trying to push the boundaries and do things like that to create memorable experiences.
[00:15:43] So, a couple years ago, we did permanent bracelets, which people love. So, those little gold bracelets we had through the space. We've done like mini manicures. And again, just kind of those surprise and delights. Um, so I can't share what we're going to do this year, but we're, we're working on it. Um, some fun kind of different, different activations.
[00:16:02] But, um, you know, again, I think that's, we're, we market to marketers, and sales and ops, but like marketers has kind of been our core ICP for a long time. So, um, marketing to marketers is fun, right? We get to do those.
[00:16:16] Rachel Moore: We like those fun things. We like those things that kind of like, Ooh, and ah.
[00:16:19] Bethany Murphy: Yes, exactly.
[00:16:20] Rachel Moore: One thing I wanted to say, uh, as someone who lives in Colorado, which is a very arid climate, and we are always like drinking all the water and, uh, it's higher altitude.
[00:16:28] So, uh, I love the oxygen bar idea. I'm sure that, that, and, you know it kind of goes back even to what we were just saying about, you know, having non alcoholic beverages and, you know, making sure people have what they need to stay as healthy as possible in a very, you know, it's a time intensive, stressful time, even if you're just an, just an attendee, you're, there's a lot going on.
[00:16:48] I think too, you know, you talk about a lot of these fun activations, it's not like a more say buttoned up brand or, you know, I'm thinking particularly of brands that like are in the regulatory spaces, you know, highly regulated industries, you know, finance, legal, medical, and things like that. You just gave some ideas that would appeal to any person going by.
[00:17:09] Um, you know, and, and just really kind of fostering some ideas saying, "Hey, these are people with a pulse that are, you're seeing at these events," and whether they work in finance or whether they're a marketing pro, um, they might really like what you're offering.
[00:17:22] So, I really appreciate you giving us those ideas and give our listeners those ideas. Be like, hey, think outside the box and just think what would appeal to that person in that moment. And guess what? Then it's at your, your booth and maybe they'll stick around and learn more about whatever your really buttoned up brand is, you know?
[00:17:37] Bethany Murphy: Right. Exactly. That's the goal.
[00:17:39] Rachel Moore: Yeah, exactly.
[00:17:41] We'll be right back with more event experience after the break.
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[00:18:21] We're back with Bethany Murphy to inspire event planners at brands that are a bit more, shall we say, buttoned up.
[00:18:29] Rachel Moore: Talking about trends, how have popular trends we talked about, you know, mocktails, oxygen bars, mini manicures, um, and things like that, but how have popular trends improved upon the experiences that your team delivers? Cause I think some of our listeners might like kind of look at trends.
[00:18:48] Sometimes it's a leader saying, "Hey, I saw this trend and we should totally implement it maybe a little bit last minute into whatever we're planning." And it's easier for an event planner to kind of go, "Uh huh, sure."
[00:19:02] Bethany Murphy: Right. We'll get it done.
[00:19:03] Rachel Moore: Yeah, but, but those can pay off, you know, even if it is last minute, it might be like, "Oh, I don't know", but, but they can pay off.
[00:19:11] So I'd love to hear how those trends you, you, um, dialing into those trends and incorporating them, how that has improved upon the experiences that your team is, is putting forth?
[00:19:21] Bethany Murphy: Yeah. I mean, I think, look, there's no, like, to do something trendy just because it's trendy is probably not the right way to approach it.
[00:19:29] I think for us, events are all about those moments, right? And a lot of times those trends can help and create those moments.
[00:19:37] So, I think I always say this, like now more than ever, it takes a lot for people to get out of their house and go to an event, right?
[00:19:44] So, I think you have to be continuously pushing the boundaries, creating these amazing experiences. And sometimes trendy things can help you do that, right? Like a mocktail could create, like, maybe it's a smoky mocktail, right? Like maybe it's something super cool and that creates like a photo, um, you know, a social moment.
[00:20:01] So, I think again, doing it for the sake of doing it, maybe not so much. And, and you always want to make sure it makes sense with your brand and your audience, right?
[00:20:08] But, I think it can be fun and it can create those things. And, and, and I do think people, again, like you want people to leave your event with exceptional memories, right?
[00:20:19] You want people to love your brand and want to come back and do more with your, um, with your brand. um, I think events allow us to do that.
[00:20:29] Rachel Moore: Well, and not to, to repeat back to what we said to, this could be a way for there's a couple of ways this can move the needle. One, if you do, if you do have a brand, maybe that's not like, oh my God, we're not astronomically fun as, as, uh, Bethany is describing 6sense. But maybe they can be more fun and a trend could help you test and try pushing that envelope, uh, with your brand.
[00:20:51] So, Bethany, uh, for event planners listening who do have those tighter guardrails, they might be somewhat fun, maybe not as fun as 6sense, maybe they're, again, highly regulated and not, they're just very businessy.
[00:21:05] Do you have any advice for them as far as like saying, yes, you know, it's okay to go adopt these trends or try to do these?
[00:21:11] What's your advice for those, uh, the event planners working at those kind of brands?
[00:21:15] Bethany Murphy: I mean, I think there are always ways to be creative and be trendy and cool while staying true to your brand, right? And, and, and I do think some, obviously every brand is different. But maybe, brainstorm with your in house creative team. If you have one, come up with some creative ways to push the boundaries a little bit. Take it slow, right?
[00:21:35] I think events are a great forum for experimentation. So, I would say, you know, get permission and try what you can and go and go slowly. And then you can always make changes for your next event, but you're never going to know if it's going to be successful if you don't try it, right?
[00:21:49] And so, I would say, start small, right? Like do something kind of small, and maybe not super visible and see what, you know, and see what comes of it. And then maybe you take that and you're able to kind of expand upon it for your next event. But you got to try, right?
[00:22:03] Rachel Moore: Well, and that's a great way too, to do that incrementally, too. I mean, if you think about leadership, you know, and if you're like you having to take this to, you know, one of your C suite people where you're like, "Hey, we want to do this thing" a lot more inclined, if they haven't done it before to say yes to something small. Because you can measure that.
[00:22:21] Just make sure you can measure it, right? But you can go back later and say, "Hey, this was a small investment is a small little thing, but look what it did." And who knows? I mean, we've all seen those, those instances where something small turns into something viral, um, unexpectedly. Nobody can really plan for that. And if we could, we wouldn't need to work for a living.
[00:22:38] But, um. But yeah, I mean, it, it's really good advice to like start small. You don't have to go, you know, be, you know, your goal should not be to be viral at the gate because, well, probably not going to do it.
[00:22:50] Bethany Murphy: Right.
[00:22:50] Rachel Moore: Yeah.
[00:22:51] Bethany Murphy: But there's definitely, like, some, you know, there's a lot of fun activations out there that are low cost, low lift. Um, but that can have an impact. So, I would say try to find something like that and start there. And maybe people are going to be, you know, super excited by it and they'll allow you to expand upon it.
[00:23:10] Rachel Moore: That's right. And they'll share it, share it on social and everybody be like, "my God, bring that back. We want more." And, you know, and you're like, okay, well, we better give them more.
[00:23:17] So I know we talk about trends and things like that, but, um, I would love to dig into, um, something that you like to talk about, which this kind of boggles my mind a little bit, because it has to do with numbers and math and that would.
[00:23:30] Bethany Murphy: I know that's not your favorite thing.
[00:23:31] Rachel Moore: It's not.
[00:23:32] Bethany Murphy: I've you talked about that before on this podcast.
[00:23:34] Rachel Moore: That's right. It's, oh, see, see. So my, my reputation precedes me.
[00:23:38] Bethany Murphy: Yes.
[00:23:39] Rachel Moore: You did your homework. And you know, you know, your audience says you're talking to me. Yeah. Um, I, I, it's funny cause I actually saw, I love memes and I saw one yesterday.
[00:23:48] I think it was on the Marketing Millennials LinkedIn where they were like a marketer, um, having to face down a spreadsheet. Not my favorite, especially if there's numbers involved. Um.
[00:23:58] So, let's talk about budgets in, and I, I'm going to kind of open the flood gate here for you, or when it comes to budgeting, I would like to know like, what's your best approach to event trends and budgets? Like, as far as like, if, if you're. Let's say that you had someone join your team and they are like, I hate budgets. I avoid them like the plague. I try to not look at those numbers.
[00:24:20] But how would you tell, um, that person on your team say, "Hey, embrace the budget. And here's, here's a great way to approach that." Would love to get your advice on that.
[00:24:29] Bethany Murphy: Yeah, I mean, I think, first of all, I probably wouldn't have hired them if they said that to me.
[00:24:34]
[00:24:36] Bethany Murphy: Not the right thing to say to me.
[00:24:38] Um, but I think, um, I think I feel really strongly as an events leader that it's my corporate responsibility to manage to my budget. Um, and that is hard, right?
[00:24:53] Like, it is not, and I say this a lot, like, it's not a set it and forget it, right? It's not a like, "This is our budget. And then we'll go and post event and update it." Like, you are not going to be successful if that is your approach.
[00:25:04] What I always tell my team is like, every time, like you should be in that budget every single day, pretty much. Anytime you get an invoice, anytime you get an estimate from a vendor, you have to be updating in real time, right?
[00:25:17] And that's the only way you're going to be able to successfully manage your budget. So I think that's number one. Number two, um, always have a contingency. And I feel like people talked about this on one of the podcasts, as well, but I think like a 10 percent contingency ideally. Uh, but you never know what's going to happen, right?
[00:25:35] Like you, you just never know. And now the way that costs are increasing across the board, it's become even more important.
[00:25:42] Um, and I think number three, like have transparency with your internal finance teams, right? Like be having those conversations with them. I have a bi weekly with my finance partners and we're going through like pretty much every single budget and making sure that we're all aligned.
[00:25:57] And so I think transparency all around, right? And transparency with the executive team, right? To say, like, you can't, and I say this all the time to, like, you can't run the same event for the same number of people with the same experiences as you did in like 20..20 20..21, 20.. 22, even like last year, right? Like cost of everything continue to increase. And so I think if your budget is flat year over year, you basically, your budget is kind of like 20% decrease, right? There's, there's definitely a decrease because of everything, everything has gone up in cost.
[00:26:29] So, I think being transparent about that, like up to the executive level is super important. Because otherwise you're not gonna be able to deliver to the expectations.
[00:26:37] Rachel Moore: Yeah. Great advice. And I, it's so important you talk about the cost going up. That's such a reality. And I, you definitely would not hire me for your team. I'm just going to say that out loud because yeah, I, I would, that would have to be, you know, how we all have those tasks where we postpone, postpone, put them off, put them off until it's like, Oh my God, okay, I really need to go look at it. That would be me. Um, yeah.
[00:27:00] And, but, but you're right. Being in every day, you have to, and I love that you mentioned padding it, too. Because we just mentioned that earlier in the, in this episode that you might get that, uh, executive or someone on your team who comes to you at the 11th hour of you planning that event saying, "Hey, can we like, let's do this trend," and "Hey, if you planned in that 10%, now you might have a little, well, it actually is, we have that budget, we can go ahead and try to implement for that." And you can make that dream come true for them. So, and maybe for your attendees.
[00:27:32] But, uh, really great advice, uh, all around. And now too, I think we all have a better idea as to what you expect from people applying to join your team. And that's incredibly important, but that does set the stage to everybody, an event planner and marketers, we need to get more friendly with those budgeting spreadsheets and embrace them, not avoid them.
[00:27:52] Bethany Murphy: Embrace, embrace it. I mean, maybe I missed my calling. I should have been in finance.
[00:27:58] Rachel Moore: Hey, uh, it's, it's not a bad skill to have. Well, and you bring that up, too. It's being business minded. I think any executive team is going to appreciate.
[00:28:09] You can have all the wonderful planning, you can want to incorporate all the trends. But knowing that you're grounded in the bottom line, you're like, look! I got my eye on that budget. I want to come in under cost if I can and save this company money while making it money with this event.
[00:28:24] Bethany Murphy: And we're always looking at like our ROI on our events, right? And that goes to budget. How much are we spending and how much are we driving? You know, in pipeline. So, super important.
[00:28:33] Rachel Moore: All right, well, uh, ending on the, uh, final and easiest question of all, where can our listeners find and follow you online, Bethany?
[00:28:40] Bethany Murphy: Uh, LinkedIn. I'm terrible at every other, um, social platform. Um, and I don't really post a lot on LinkedIn, but I'm always on there. I'm always, I'm always checking it out, seeing what's going on. So yeah, connect with me.
[00:28:54] Rachel Moore: For this episode's Skill Up segment, Bethany reminds us why most of us go to events in the first place.
[00:29:10] Bethany Murphy: I think it's leverage your network, right? I think that's super important. This is a relationship industry. And I've spent 25 years building relationships, right? And that's internally at the companies that I'm at, and externally with vendors, with other event professionals, right? Um, and I just think that's super important.
[00:29:30] Just through any, any profession, right? You have to network, you have to build that, build those relationships and it will help you, right? It will help you grow in your career. It will help you potentially get to the next step. It will help you if you're like, I need a last minute vendor in X city, right?
[00:29:47] Like it will help you in many, many ways. And I, I encourage people to get out there and, you know, go to go to events, right? Go to SEMA and PCMA and MPI and, um, learn from other event professionals. Super important.
[00:30:03] Thanks again to Bethany Murphy for joining us on Event Experience, and thank you for listening. If you're enjoying the show, we'd love to hear it. Connect with us on social, and subscribe, rate, and review us wherever you're listening. Also, don't forget to share the show with your colleagues and friends.
[00:30:19] You can find transcripts of each episode and key takeaways on bizzabo.com/podcast.
[00:30:25] On behalf of the team, thank you. We'll gather again soon for a new episode of Event Experience.
