Stacy Simpson | Patrick Rife | The Pixilated Podcast

hello and welcome to another episode of the Pixilated podcast I am your host Patrick Rife happy to have all of you here today for another excellent interview with an event professional today we have the added bonus of having said event professional also be a I guess at this point a long term Pixilated customer we first met her in the wilds of Covid 19 post pandemic technology event building and and here we are still kind of figuring it out and licking our wounds we're gonna get into a really great conversation and learn more about what she has to accomplish on a day to day basis but before we get ahead of ourselves ladies and gentlemen please join me in welcoming Stacy Simpson to the Pixilated podcast Stacy welcome to the podcast thank you Patrick it's nice to be here appreciate it we are excited to have you I really appreciate you being willing to take some time out of your day to chat with us as I kind of explain to you leading up to this I really love and strive to highlight people in as dynamic arrange as possible in the events world I think that there are so many different nooks and crannies that don't necessarily get the light a day and I think that they're not only really interesting and unique but I think that a lot of other event professionals stand to benefit from kind of hearing more about that whole thing so that being said before we get into some of the organic questions that I have planned why don't you tell us just a little bit about you know who you are and what you do and how you got to where you are sure so I am the associate director of special events at Northwestern University Middhill School and the Middhill School is one of the colleges of the university and we have a journalism program which we have been we've had for over 100 years as pretty well known brand of midill journalism and we also as of the 1990s started a marketing program so we have an undergraduate in the journalism and then we have graduate programs in both marketing and journalism and I came aboard at Mcdill in 20 end of 2016 so now I'm starting to feel more like a veteran than a than a newbie and I came from I have a very bizarre assorted array background which I don't think is uncommon for event directors or event planners anywhere but I started in school I actually went to Syracuse University and went to New House School and got my degree in communications a long long long time ago and went into advertising for a few years after that and decided that really wasn't what I thought it was gonna be like it wasn't the right fit for me and so instead of going right back to school I ended up getting a job I decided I wanted to cook for a living I wanted to try a career in culinary and the advice I was getting was you know you could go back to school but you'll end up the bottom of the kitchen anyway just get in there and see if you like it cook yeah so I did and I became a line cook first and then fast forward I managed to find my way into the the dessert side pastry side of the business and was a pastry chef for a nber of years and love that and realize that what I like to do is I really enjoy the physical element of that work and I was good at it not because I was the best most skilled baker but because I was very organized and if you people know about the restaurant business you're only as good as your food cost if you're throwing all your stuff away cause you're not ordering right you're not gonna make any money so that organizational skill really benefited me and so I went on to do some catering stuff I ran a bakery all the while I was involved in some volunteer organizations and did found myself because I enjoy hospitality it's sort of an innate love of mine I always ended up being the person to run the Gayla run the lunch and you know I was I was event planning even before I knew that I was event planning so while we raised our family I have two grown daughters now my husband is a custom home builder and he started the business when our children even before our children were born and so for many years it was sort of chugging away trying to to grow just like our kids and at one point it was getting large enough that he needed some support so I got to do that I ran a small business family owned business for about 18 years and you know you run a small business you wear every hat and so I Learned things I never knew I'd know about like tax you know corporate taxes and

01 k and you know just incredible weird stuff and it wasn't necessarily my forte but again the organizational skills came in handy and I found myself again doing a lot of event planning and marketing because it was my my love and it came naturally to me so I got us really involved in a lot of community efforts as a small business and then fired myself from that when the kids were grown and got out and started working for a small another small company where I did do a couple of very large events during the year and ultimately wound up at Mcdill as an event director and what I think is my strength is that I've worked on both sides of the house I've been a buyer for events and I've also been on the supplier vendor side and I think that allows me to have an understanding especially with my vendors for what it's like to be trying to you know sell what you're doing the people at the event are the ones who really make the vendors are the ones that make it happen and they're and if and if they're not ready and if you don't set them up to be ready you can't blame anybody else but yourself you know so I think you know being in the trenches and I'm one of those people that I roll my sleeves up I don't just point and tell people what to do like I'm in there with them and I think that also helps me be successful because they know I'll I'm gonna do whatever I have to to make it right and they tend to respond accordingly so that's kind of me and you know the crazy mixed up rese but I got here and it what it gave me was a like I have lots of tricks in my back because I've done so many different things and I've been fortunate to see a lot and experience a lot of different stuff and that all just adds to you know the creativity I can bring to the job and yeah confidence I think that yeah that's that's awesome you know like it's it's funny to hear you say that in our time doing Pixilated we have also at one point in time we ran this community called Startups War a that was all about just bringing entrepreneurs and creatives and small businesses also like not just it had this focus on the idea that so much strategy and skill building is built around like the startup ecosystem and that we forget that small businesses are that it's just you know whether or not you know you've raised capital or however whatever connotates the different connotates the difference between a small business but you know like in in my pursuit of doing that and doing this like I have had the privilege of getting the chance to talk to you know hundreds of of you you know whether it's youth or whether it's high school students or whether it's you know college students that have interned here and the thing time and again that I've always double back to them is you know that the the spark in your career is gonna happen at the nexus between your interests and your talents and you're going to always continue to acquire both of those categories and the more that you can push one against the other even if they seem like they don't make sense like that dynamic you know like I was sharing with you that I was a professional art handler prior to doing this right like it has given me an untold amount of skills that I blended in right I told you I was a I was a musician right so like I can produce these podcasts and I have for our various projects for you know 10 years now because for me we're like how do we get this message out there and I'm like oh let's just record like I can edit this and produce this kind of content in my sleep because I spent you know two decades of my life writing songs in my basement at night and recording it and producing it and publishing it and doing all that stuff so what seems like table stakes to me like that may not be the case right and I'm sure that when the people at Madeill that were responsible with bringing you on board when they decided oh we wanna go Stacy it was a lot of those not obvious things that from an experience perspective it's like okay like if if if you've had to figure out how to get a bunch of construction workers to fill out the necessary forms for their like 4 O 1 k like she can probably manage vendors right you like there are these things where it seems like it should be so obvious but it's not and those are hard skills that you you know certainly you know you know Nick Keenan my business partner Nick grew up his family are electrical contractors and they have owned and sold and run massive electrical contracting firms so he grew up like digging trenches and doing all that stuff and went all the way through so he's got this skill he comes into Pixilated it whatever 26 27 years old with the skill of having managed laborers right like like electrical laborers and that is a different type of person and I remember him always being like no no no no like you're like we're thinking about this wrong like this is what these people need and it's not like it's not a negative connotation it's saying like I've worked with this role and like this is how they're successful but you know you can't read that in a book you learn it from your experience right right yeah and I think to you know being able to anticipate issues you know when you we were talking when we first started about you know putting out fires there there's like there's always stuff that comes up in business or in an event and when you can when you got enough experience to be able to anticipate some of that that's that's more valuable than anything else because you're there to say oh wait we gotta think about this and we gotta think about this and this and this so that that's not gonna happen you know yeah you just set yourself up for success that way so totally and that's what like that's where your your partners your your customers your boss that's where they gain their confidence in you you know like another thing that that Nick says really often right like we can operate 60 events over a weekend have 59 of them go great and have one go wrong for whatever reason and usually it's not on us but like that's not the way that it works but you know like the 59 that went great mean nothing right it's just the one that went wrong that like destroys you completely but Nick's like yeah you know like I love it when people call in and they're just like angry and they're upset and I'm and I'm like I like hi like I hear you like just so you know that this is one of two people that owns this and also answers the phone and we've got like competent answers for them and you know like they're expecting because of the way that our brand looks on the outside that we're like some big like juggernaut company and reality we're just in there like turning the wrenches like doing the thing and you know like and it's hard right like I was saying I was joking like it's hard to be the fireman and it is but it's also if you have to be it might as well have the skills that you need to be able to do it effectively and you know like you were we're talking about you know like training people to fire yourself you know like I spend all of this time with Ryan as a young guy that works for us and we're trying to teach him all the things and and he's great he's young right but he's a sponge and he really wants to do great so you know we go down to end to like empty and a mutual email inbox together and I'm just like pull your computer up pull mine up and like we're gonna do it together and I'm calling all the customers and just showing him it right and I'm just like he's like what you want me to do and like to sit there like all you gotta do is listen because until you're here and you're witnessing this conversation it's not in your mind but after this you're gonna see how I like handled their objections how I like allade their fears and anxieties like how we communicated this question and I said like in two days you're gonna be just flying through these and you're gonna feel super confident cause you're gonna see the way that is best to be able to do it and you're gonna see the person on the other line been like this was great and you know we we will consistently at the end of one of those conversations that starts fraud for whatever reason and that person will come back in with like a 5 star review and be like this is the greatest customer service I've ever received and you know like we've made a mistake once or twice with you and it's not it's like it was never intentional it was like some kind of minor thing and you saw what we do right we like flew in and we fixed it like if we can fix it like you know like I've driven a kiosk three hours one like you know like literally got nothing and been like this got messed up and hit the office and been like luckily it's in Maryland like I'll see you guys and I drive to the beach and like drop a thing off the customers like I can't believe that you drove this here and it's like you know if it's within my power like I can't take an L on your event like that's that's not okay so well I could do with it that's I think that's also the key to my job is that I am everyone in the Medil community is my customer so I'm making sure that our staff and faculty who are hosting events that I am you know basically building and executing for them they're my customer you know I'm partnering with them to make it as awesome is process as it can be and to offload a lot of the logistical piece so they can focus on the content you know if we have a guest speaker coming for instance my one department is gonna be the host of this guest speaker well that they're gonna worry about you know what are the what are they gonna talk about in the interview what's it gonna be like on stage etc and I do all the other stuff to make sure the event runs smoothly and so they don't have to think about that so they are my customer everyone in any one of our audiences for any of our events is also my customer whether they are my staff and faculty they're my student population they are an alni you know I have all these different audiences that our events are are presented to and again it's all customer service and one of the things I Learned in the restaurant business I worked for a company called Lettuce Entertain You in Chicago and it's a very very well known restaurant company they have now hundreds of restaurants around the country but Rich Melman the owner the founder started in 1970s in Chicago and one of the the reason for his success was his management program and I got to go through that management program as one of one of their pastry chefs and with the thing that we were taught was recognition and reassurance and I I will tell you in any job you have if you remember recognition and reassurance your golden because that's the essence of the customer service recognize their need their complaints you know as a server for instance recognize that you're slammed and it's and you run over to the table say listen folks I know you're here I'm slammed I'll be back as quickly as I can but that immediately puts them at ease cause they don't feel ignored right ignored yeah and then so you you just say hey I hear you we're gonna we're gonna fix this we got it and then just reassuring them you know and coming through with the solution I mean that's it's just it sounds simple it's not always so simple but it's really really valuable advice for any job you have cause cause in every job you have customers and your service should be you know you should focus yourself on that serving them yeah yeah okay so let's get into like some some brass tacks just like from a starting point as associate director of special events like what is like what are you responsible for what is you know like how what's the pie chart of how you fill your time and accomplish I as so I am the only event person at Medel they never had an event person prior to my coming in and we have different departments throughout the school so I partner with various people or departments to host different kinds of events so I work with our students services team they're the advisers that advise our students on the coursework and all their majors and that kind of thing that department is in charge of things like orientation when the students first get to to campus and graduation so right from the get go in September we're we're welcoming hundreds of new Medhill students so other undergrad or graduate level so that whole two day kind of event is bringing them on the campus and welcoming and it's you know giving them t shirts and it's making them feel like a part of the Midill family it's very celebratory I'm ordering balloons I got you know we're feeding them lots of great food you know college students like food that's that's a thing I get to do a lot of so yeah it has a party atmosphere but it's also very informative we're getting them into the auditori cause they got it they need to hear from the dean and they need to hear from a couple other folks so it's just this whole kind of package then on the flip side of that graduation we run two graduations a year one in December for IMC graduates and then the large convocation in in June I'm part of the commencement committee for the university because our students will also walk in the larger Northwestern commencement which is you know 15,000 students potentially but our convocation is a midill only ceremony and the whole ceremony sued to nuts worrying about faculty and their regalia and what you know what decorations we might have there and who's got the right recording of the Alma mater are we doing live music every little piece of that is part of what I do and then throughout the school year we host a ton of different events as part of a deal because as I say we are journal we have a journalism program and we have a vast array of amazing alni that come back to campus and they are very wedded to us and they're very excited to come back and meet with students so we host alni throughout the year in with as guest speakers on campus or in panel discussions often mostly moderated by our faculty or who are all either professional marketers or professional journalists first and foremost and we have campuses all over the world we are we are in cutter and then we have a campus in DC and San Francisco Evanston and we're hoping to have one soon in New York so oftentimes we're also doing some satellite programming in those different locations yeah and pretty much every kind of event you I do still doing virtual retirement parties for faculty because so many when they retire so many of their colleagues are no longer at the university cause they've also retired so now we still do a party virtually for those folks so it runs the full game up we're still hosting some virtual events so that we can reach alni all over the world with some of our programming so it's everything and anything yeah so which direction I may like a fork in the road I remember the fork I won't take so I can remember to get back to it so I guess my my first question for you is I you know like with that being said like knowing what what you're tasked with and and you know like I know that this could be like a four hour question and of itself and feel free to to to not talk for 4 hours about this question but you know how has your how is your you know your job and your responsibility your primary tasks how have they evolved since 2018 so like you know like wonderful that you didn't start in 2018 and you start in 2016 so that way there was at least some context before we rolled into into you know like the whole the Covid era but I'd love to kind of hear a little bit from your perspective how it changed right because there is this like total upset right like flipping the blanket and then just an absolutely insane amount of kind of tech development that always like ultimately websites with plugins in them for the most part like there are some things there but like and then and then it was kind of like the same knee jerk like reopening again right like all the sudden it was right we're like we're closed open closed open closed really closed for a long time and it's like oh no we've been open for a week and then like no one looked back except for everyone looked back and it's been like really helter skelter but from from your perspective just in terms of you know you don't need to comment on Covid 19 but I'm interested in the way that it it changed what you have to do and how you have evolved to continue because from our perspective you are great at what you do you know like we like I love watching the galleries come back when we do a model event because like you get it right you understand that it's about creating something bright right it's about taking the brand colors in the logo like the thing that the person is proud of being there about you make that center and you make it easy for them to get in and you can see that glee in every like first up you take a ton of photos right and like that is the No. 1 benchmark for if of a rental is successful with Pixilated like did they take a lot of photos or didn't they so I think that you see a lot of that but that being said I'm gonna stop there and let you kind of go from there sure sure so I would say the general construct of my from from 18 to now it's the the what I do is pretty much the same but how we do it is changed a lot and over that course of years whether we had a pandemic shift or not we've all gotten smart smarter about how we're doing our events and we've Learned from from test driving a nber of things and we found better smarter ways of doing things so I would say you know the the cat the catalogue of events that we do are similar the processes that we've adapted are better you know just from experience now with Covid I am not a tech person I'm not a techie I'm I'm on the higher range of age in my field of higher ed you know I work with a lot of super smart younger people who are much more text I mean than I am thank god but you know the pandemic made us all have to learn things we never thought we'd learn so we went we did pivot in all of our events and we do about 90 events a year so about you know most of those events were able to pivot onto a digital platform and so we were hosting panel discussions online you know the couple of week kind of thing during during the pandemic and we Learned what was great about that is that our reach was phenomenal when we had for our Centennial Midill turned 100 in 2021 and right in the midst of the pandemic was when we were supposed to start our celebrations on campus in person with these big giant tempted array parties and all of a sudden we couldn't do anything like that so we pivoted and on the anniversary of Madeill's founding we had hundreds of alni on a zoom call playing a Madeill trivia game haha and it worked and you know we made it work and it and again it was being creative and you know I worked with you guys for a lot of our admitted student programming which is always you know they've said they wanna come here now we wanna make sure they choose our school over another and so we're really kind of our dog and pony show it's our sales pitch and we really want to engage those students we want them to feel super welcome like they're part of the Midill family already well that's hard to do when you're you got a screen between you so Pixilated became that's where we met and we started using Pixilated to create fun around this somewhat dry screened programming and so the same thing happens with our events now you know we're trying and for my own creativity and interest I'm doing the same event year after year after year after year and I could just cookie cutter it do it exactly the same way as I did last year pull up my notes and literally just kind of cut and paste right rinse and repeat yeah first of all that was just so fun for me like I wanna do something different and new and I wanna keep things feeling fresh I know my students coming in I've never experienced this orientation event before they're not gonna know if I'm rinse and repeat but my staff and faculty around me will and I want them to feel like it's still fun because that's gonna come across to our students whether it is or not so like you're trying to get better too right like absolutely just because it worked last year doesn't mean that we don't like tweak the recipe right like we're always trying to tweak the recipe and you know the reality is our audiences have changed too and I hate being tuned into that is really important the student now the incoming student in college now they're the ones who didn't get to have a high school you know they didn't get to have high school for a couple of years that changed them and that changed how they behave just as it did all of us and so meeting our our audiences are our guests with a different perspective you know and and being sensitive to that because what worked years a couple years ago may not work anymore so I think it's really interesting the way you know and it feels like a like a little bit of oxymoron statement oxymoronic statement whatever to say it out loud but in a way like it took going through the pandemic for all of these event professionals to kind of I think everyone always knew it but it wasn't so easy to like put your finger directly on it that like it's about the experience for the end person like before like 97% of it is all about that and that if you don't get that you might as well forget about the rest of it and I think that it's been really interesting to see the way that that has stuck around you know like that I feel like you know some of the event technology has gotten better some of it you know like is it is what it is like that's open to debate in a in a wide range of conversations but like what's not open to debate is that if people are gonna show up they are showing they want they want a reason to actually be there and that that experience is is Paramount to the success of it so what do you what do you consider a bell weather of of you know someone attending one of your events what what a good experience means for them I think that you know in some ways that depends on my audience nber sure sure certainly like the ones that are coming you're asking to make a decision is they commit right and they right go there but it shifts right right I would say it it it's too it sounds too frivolous to say to have fun in a way but I think I mean ultimately we're trying to make a connection and I think that's the piece that is so much harder to make when we're not in person so the challenge I think becomes first of all it's hard to get people to come to events now it's harder than it used to be because if they can just dial in in their PJs sometimes they prefer that right so for yes speaker how am I gonna motivate them to actually come and sit in an auditori to listen to that person and so I think there's that first hurdle and then I think once we get them there how do we make them feel like it was worthwhile so in a guest speaker situation I again say it comes back to that connection that there's something happens in that room that you can't get when you just dial in from it and I do think some of it is tangible but some of it's not you know yeah but things that are tangible you know just creating a space that is inviting and thinking about things that make people more comfortable and throwing in stuff that sparks some excitement making people things to ponder yes make making things feel lively you know it kind of thinking about all people's different senses you know when we're on a screen we're very singular sense orientation you know there's smells and sounds and flavors that we can impart when we're in person that we just can't do so all of that leaning to them coming away with feeling like they've made a connection had you know felt connected to Meddill to a topic to other hans yeah they've Learned something you know all of those little bits and pieces there's something to reflect on right like so so when and I think that yeah I haven't been to a ton of industry events post covid but I I have been to some I went to a big event technology conference called Event Tech Live back in the spring and one of the things that I that felt I don't know I maybe it was profound because I was recognizing it and what it was was so simple but being in a space you know being in an audience for a talk or something along those lines and hearing people talk and not being tuned into your computer and being able to have browsers open which like it it gives too much credit to this idea like you gotta keep them you gotta like you gotta keep them from open their other tabs and doing all of it and the way that you do that is by being thought provoking and the problem with that is like it's not your fault if they like squirrel off of it even if you are being thought provoking because like all of this ecosystem is designed to to distract you and pull your attention away but one of the things I remember thinking about was kind of sitting in this like you know these rows of chairs with my legs crossed kind of like watching these people talking you know a lot of the stuff that they're saying isn't resonating with me but there are some things that they're saying that are resonating and I'm here in this space and I'm not on my phone and they said this thing that resonates and then maybe the next minute doesn't resonate but then I've got something that was profound that I'm I'm sitting there right and I'm thinking about and maybe that you know evolves to a question I'm gonna ask them and I'm gonna engage with them right and then that like that's valuable maybe it's something that it's gonna bring me to a conclusion about something I've been grappling with on my own and then I'm gonna have a little bit of insight to take back to that problem right maybe it's something I'm gonna you know take away to meeting somebody in the coffee line later and they're gonna say something and serendipity is gonna you know rear its head I'm gonna be like you know I can't believe you just said that I've been thinking about this all morning because I attended that talk and they said like and I tuned out for 94% of it but like I heard this one thing and it really it hit it resonated and you know like I guess what you want is them in bed that night right not having forgot what they did for the day and instead there's something some little earworm that has like resonated yeah yeah and and feeling yes and just feeling yeah you I when I think about going to different kinds of events myself you know you can come away kind of like well I'm not sure you know what I got out of that kind of thing yes or more often than not you you you learn you know there's some nugget of something that's made you think about another topic that isn't always in your per view you know and you get a different perspective on something or you know yeah so it's it's pretty rewarding to be able to provide that yeah those opportunities for people so thank you for that I think that that's a wonderful answer to the to the question a lot of a lot there's a lot there in that and I think that people aren't willing to trust that it can be so simple sometimes it's the same thing with like you know listening to your cut like answering the phone and showing up and being responsible to what they're asking and then comforting them in some capacity after that like it doesn't seem like it should be so simple as that but you know the lion share the time that's the truth and that all the other things that we stick in between that is a way for us to divorce ourselves from taking responsibility in that moment because it's hard right like I mean it sucks to be like I screwed something up and like I know that I let you down but like it's not better to have done all those things and then crawled in the hole and just pretended like it didn't happen you know like builds character well yes and I I think too that we all even you know vent directors we all get distracted by some of the bells and whistles you know there's so many things we can do now and the experiential event is such a big thing and using technology and fun things like Pixilated and I mean there is a million things that we can be pulling into and and I think oftentimes I'll attend an event where there's too much going on yes and you dilute some of the messaging of that event because there's just so much distraction so I think there's there's too little and too much and somewhere we gotta find the like the sweet spot in between where you're you're entertaining you're engaging without overwhelming yeah you gotta edit you got to be willing to edit yeah right yeah but I know myself I get carried away and get excited so this into forget to into the theme you know get a little crazy on theme so isn't that a little is it too much purple do it all right go with the lavender so I know we're starting to run a little long but I have two more questions that I really wanna make sure that we get to and the first one is you you spoke before about about your vendors right and kind of your like your stable of talent and whether that's technology or whether that is the the best Macron you know chef in all of Evanston like I'm wondering if you speak a little bit to that because I think a lot that was like a huge shake up that happened over the last four years right because one probably there a lot of professionals vendor lists weren't and didn't end up being as deep as they thought that they were and that caused issues but also like a ton of people went out of business technology changed and a lot of it was like a shiny thing that didn't end up being quite so practical but then at the same time then the doors get flung back open you have to figure out how to do all the stuff again and things have changed right so what I would love to hear a little bit about is for you like how do you think about that how do you think about your your your core partners and like what you look for them look for in them I'm really fortunate that a lot of my core partners did stay in business some some kind of morphed a little bit and and had because of you know everybody had to shift and and pivot to something else and some had a little harder time getting back to what they used to do for me but we are pretty fortunate to not lose too many and I would say that I work really hard to have positive relationships with all of my vendors and and really work hard to try to perceive it from the relationship from their standpoint and from their perspective I would say the top of the list is reliability for us now again the food sometimes may not be as good as it used to be and that's okay as long as it shows up sure you know what I mean like I can forgive some stuff and everybody's short handed and labor is an issue and we definitely are feeling that ultimately the pizza's gotta get here cause I got 150 college students waiting for free pizza and my most stressful moment is that 15 minutes before the delivery actually gets to me kind of feeling and you can imagine when you see their eyeballs and they're hungry and you're like ah ah so it's when I don't hear from the vendor they don't call me to tell me they're running late yeah or there you know they don't make good on the fact they forgot to show up with the order or you know it's the reliability my my confidence to know that they're gonna do what they said they're gonna do even if they're hiccups they're gonna make it right that's what I that's what I had hang my hat on and if I get burned I'll give everybody a second chance for sure because I know how hard it is out there but if I get burned over and over again by the same vendor I'm I have no other choice but to find a different one you know so yeah I think that's that's just super important and you know I will start my budgets accordingly and and I will go with a higher priced vendor if I know they're more reliable yeah and skimp somewhere else where I can because it's just it's too important you know I can't I can't not have that certain thing happening and so it's a good comfort level well I think to your to your previous statement as well you know you view all of your colleagues as your customers right because you're tasked with coming in and executing a portion of their event steadfastly and with excellence and you know like you have to be stringent because it's not just you that the vendor is letting down right like you like like if if if they don't fix it then you in turn lose the trust of your colleague to be able to deliver on what they've come to expect from you and you know you're right like it's not about what went wrong it's about how you respond to it and you know like things go wrong all the time like that that happens but what do you meet that challenge with and and and how do you persevere past it right to call with a solution with a clear this is what you can expect like Patrick's in the car on his way to Ocean City like be there an hour before you start and he can come and set it up if there's not time because of it yeah and if something does go wrong from my end and my vendor fixes it well that's my cue too is to make sure that the next time we work together I'm communicating better with my vendor so we both work to eliminate the opportunity for something to go wrong again you know like yes I also work with them on that so it's cause yeah it's stuff does happen and whoever's fault it is is sort of irrelevant let's just fix it and get get us where we need to be so I love that yeah okay last question sure so I know you said that within the the Meddill ecosystem that you're the sole planner but obviously Mcdill's part of a much much bigger school ecosystem but you're a professional how are you how are you finding your people professionally now like where where and what are you looking for when it comes to continuing to evolve your skillset continuing to stay abreast of I mean like the great thing is is nobody has to like jp on a zoom call to learn how to use a zoom call anymore so like thbs up for that you know you asked about Pixie Web before I swear to god we spent like 80% of our covid time where we wanted to sell Pixie Web instead you had to like preface every call with being like do you know what a zoom call is maybe like yes do you know what an eye frame is maybe like no you like okay that's where we'll start and then you have to like roll through the whole text stack of how the world works but that being said like where where are you finding community now to to continue you know like like it's wonderful that we are you know we no longer need to acknowledge Covid if we don't want to like we're far enough past it and it's great because for so long a lot of that learning was just in a sense it was very redundant because you either had the people that that saw the paradigm shift Learned what they needed to learn and they were executing or there was this 80% that just stayed in the so the paradigm is shifting like that like perennial kind of like education to maybe I'll jp when all those folks were mostly just trying to tread water so they could go back to their like 2018 playbook but that said yeah where do you go so I have a pretty pretty busy haha on campus on a regular basis so I don't go to a lot of things anymore I attend you know I have a I'm part of e newsletters for a lot of different organizations related to events and I find that really helpful I'm also very visual person so often is just scrolling through event ideas online that will help trigger something that I can employ you know the old days of going to a conference to get ideas is I don't I don't do those anymore not that they're not valuable they just don't seem to work into my lifestyle anymore but really any kind of I do attend conferences as you know we host we have a bunch of conference booths throughout the year and going to other conferences completely outside of the realm of events and just experiencing a conference always makes me better at preparing for something like that and then I'm in a couple of organizations in the Chicago area for planners in Chicago specifically because we have so much right here and we do host a nber of events in the city from time to time so I'll plug into those so I learn more about our current hotels restaurants event venues some of the larger event purveyors florists all those different vendors that I might use locally as I said most of my events are in either Evanston or Chicago proper and then I have a couple of you know I have a phenomenal balloon guy that I work with in Chicago he's become a good friend cause I we just get along really well and anytime I need a balloon person for any city in the country I just ask him he's so connected to all the people who do balloons he knows somebody really good in every city and that's how I find my next one so you know it's that old word of mouth old school networking stuff Rolodex kind of thing that really really works and and I've always had success with that so it's great I need a balloon guy and flag staff stack exactly and I and I will find him and it'll only take a minute it's amazing so yeah yeah and you've seen some of the good stuff I've been able to find cause it's in the photos that you get the Pixilated boot takes so totally yeah and they're great they're they're they're always wonderful yeah Stacy this has been such a fun and great chat you know like we've been working together for a few years and I admire the excellence that you bring to your events I think that you do a great job and it's you know for us it's always inspiring so you know we we've been at this almost 13 years and we started as a full service company that's what we did for a long time and then we started working with some bigger brands and we we we built our software because we knew that the data that we could capture on behalf of customers was really valuable more than anything it was about working with some larger organizations where they would want to plan something in six cities or 12 cities or a tour or whatever the case may be and they would want to do a photo element in every place and it would be wildly different in every single market because the vendors are different the cost is different you know like the quality that the vendors can serve like who's a weekend warrior versus who's a real events company like that whole massive thing was we thought that we could bring value by being able to provide a tool and a service that could be consistent wherever they needed it so that way when they booked it for the State Fair in Iowa and when they booked it for the Cherry Festival in Georgia they knew that they were gonna get the same thing and you know as I I kind of like hinted at it at the at the beginning of of the of the call like like that doesn't always click for people you know like they're you know inherently I think the events people are warriors because it's their job to worry right it's their job to be concerned until the pizza guy is there with the stack in front of him and then you're like okay next worry and then you're onto like the next thing so I understand that but also at the same time you know when you build something and you know that it is reliable and one of the things that's always just thrilling for us is when we see someone with a lot of responsibility that trusts us with their events and then gets it and executes like every single time and and that's what that's what happens when we work with Mcdill every time you execute well and it has to do with your staff on site it has to do with your your planning it has to do with finding the right balloon guy but you know like you seemingly figured out your strategy you got your recipe down and and it really works for you and you you figure those few elements out so you know cheers cheers to that cheers to bringing excellence to your events cause you can see it you know like it's not just the photo looks nice like you can see the joy and the faces I know it sounds like so like ridiculous but but you can really see it like you can see when somebody is and it's not just put on right like it's not just like whatever like you can see that they're actually having a blast and like that's that's wonderful so kudos to you well thank you and thanks for great service and let's keep it up right let's keep it going this is our spot to wrap it up I'm sorry I took way more than the 30 minutes I said but before we go and again you're not necessarily like a service provider so don't feel like you have to have a call to action but should people should all of the things that you said resonate so incredibly that people are just like I just gotta message her how might somebody connect with you I would say give me a shoot me an email that's the easiest most direct way I'm I'm notoriously not good at watching my LinkedIn so it's Stacy no e s t a C y dot Simpson at Northwestern dot e d u awesome awesome will will out will link out in the show notes so so if people want to email you they can do that but Stacy again on behalf of myself Pixilated the universe out there listening to this thank you so much for taking time out of your day sharing such thoughtful responses I know that there are tons of people that are out there that are gonna listen that are gonna benefit a ton from this conversation and I just you know I appreciate it great it was a blast thanks Patrick alright guys that's it another incredible interview with an event professional two things before we go and if you've listened to this before you've heard these spiels but first and foremost you enjoyed what you heard today please leave as a quick 5 star review wherever you listen whether it's on Spotify or on Google Podcast or whatever your reviews help this podcast get suggested to more event professionals our whole goal here is just to share stories and insights and perspectives inside of the events industry to help you be better at what you do and then secondly if you haven't yet hit the subscribe button it will ensure that every time we publish a new episode you are notified so that way you can listen on your drivetime commute or when you're cooking dinner in the evenings or any other random things that you like to fill in with podcasts okay that's enough from me I am Patrick this is the Pixilated podcast until next time peace