From Chaos to Celebration: Mastering the Art of Corporate Event Planning

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Greater Perimeter. It’s time for Greater Perimeter Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here with Rachel Simon. Another episode of Greater Perimeter Business Radio. And this episode is brought to you by Connect the Dots Digital. When you’re ready to leverage LinkedIn to meet your business goals, go to Connect the Dots. Hey Rachel, how are things? Been a minute.

Rachel Simon: Things are good and super busy, so we missed you. I missed you last month because we didn’t have a show in April, sadly. But we’re back in May and I’m super excited to be here. We’ve got a great guest.

Lee Kantor: Timely.

Rachel Simon: It is so timely, you know. And again, on a personal note, with my daughter graduating high school next week a week from Monday it is. I’m in grad party craziness right now, so it’s like event season and our guest is perfect to talk about that. So really thrilled to welcome Bari Holmes who is and I love her title, the Founder and Solution creator for Pivotal Events and Production Management. So welcome, Bari. Great to have you here.

Bari Holmes: Thank you. Thank you for having me. This is exciting.

Rachel Simon: Yeah, it’s going to be a great conversation. So why don’t you tell us a little bit about you and what you do.

Bari Holmes: Okay. Well obviously I from the title I am a solution creator. So for the last 30 years, my professional career has been in hospitality, everything from hotels to operations to event rentals. And so with all of these skills and with the amazing network that I have, we created this company and we basically are creating solutions and events for our clients and it’s people don’t realize sometimes all the different facets and all the different things that might come up when you’re planning an event. And so having the 30 years plus experience and seeing every scenario you could possibly see that allows me to lead my team to be able to foresee anything that could possibly happen with your event, to get ahead of it, because if you plan for it, everything will go smooth and you won’t have to pivot during your event because we’re pivoting before the event to make sure your event is spectacular.

Rachel Simon: Yeah. So are you working primarily on the corporate side? On the personal side for everybody? Like who’s your target market?

Bari Holmes: Ideally, my perfect client is creating a leadership conference working with a company. So ideally my ideal client is an executive assistant, a human resource director of a small to medium company that is looking for an extension to their team to create a leadership seminar or event for their team. Plan the hotel selection, the menus, all of the different speakers, all the different facets that make it special for their leadership team. Customer events. Holiday parties. That is the ideal client. The things that I that give me joy is, um, starting with organizations and creating fundraisers with them. First time events, thinking about the wow factor to draw people in. Like this week specifically, um, I am involved with an organization called the Entertainment Tourism Alliance of Georgia.

Rachel Simon: Oh, that sounds like fun.

Bari Holmes: It is, it is. It is amazing what Georgia has done in my in my past life and my past career. I worked a lot with the movie industry, and I still do work a lot with the movie industry. And previously I worked with location managers doing base camp design.

Rachel Simon: Oh, fun.

Bari Holmes: And creating a little mini world for the movie industry to be able to work off of stage with their hair, makeup and all of that. So because of all the movies that have filmed in Georgia, this organization is creating, um, tourism around what has filmed here in Georgia and locations.

Rachel Simon: Oh, cool. So you can go on like the I know my daughter like years ago did the, um, uh, what was that, like vampire show that filmed.

Bari Holmes: Vampire.

Rachel Simon: Diaries? Vampire diaries.

Bari Holmes: Covington is one of the cities that everyone would like to be, because they have incorporated that so much. Anyway, there’s an organization called ETag, which is promoting tourism in Georgia. First time fundraiser this weekend or this week? It was on Tuesday and basically we’re trying to create something that’s artsy, something that is that. So we found a venue in Doraville, which is a central location for all of the people who were participating. You have to when you think about events, you have to think about location. You have to think about time that the event’s going to be the flow, who your guests are and create the environment for a successful event. You don’t want to have an event at 530, all the way up and coming. When your guests are all coming from Midtown, downtown, and from the perimeter area. So with that, we found a venue. So we do the site selection. We do the budgeting. The first thing is, is that we pull out what is most important to get the message. What is the most important feature of the event. That’s going to be your wow factor.

Rachel Simon: So you’re kind of going from ideation all the way through execution with.

Bari Holmes: Absolutely, absolutely and on site. So you think you brainstorm, you think of the venue you go on, the site visits, you create your budget. You decide what’s most important to you, what is going to make your event the most successful and the most impactful. And then through my experience and through my team, we create a plan, a budget, responsibilities. We delegate. We decide who we’re going to bring in as our trusted vendors, and we go from there. Everything from food to how people walk in to the gift bags at the end. Gift bags. Gift bags are always fun. Swag. Um, then making sure that there’s a VIP experience for any legislation or in this event, obviously, like any of the VIPs that our PR company did, and just making sure that the message is communicated. So we partner with all different kinds of vendors that help that. So we are the the gatekeeper of the budget, the timeline and the event itself, the production of the event.

Lee Kantor: Now, when you’re working with organizations like you mentioned, working with executive assistants or somebody in HR is what really happens is somebody from higher up will go to this executive assistant and go, we should have an event and you’re in charge. And they’re like, well, I have a whole job here. Like it’s not.

Bari Holmes: Exactly.

Lee Kantor: Like I just can’t wave a magic wand and make an event appear. That is exactly how it usually plays out. So these people are like scrambling, I would imagine, because like, you know, they planned maybe their kid’s birthday party. But to plan an event like this is complicated.

Bari Holmes: It’s, you know, the most complicated part is wrapping your head around the budget, and that is the most integral part. And what to spend money on and what not to, to get your bang for your buck. Like if you’re having a silent auction, the most important thing is your auctioneer. Who is that auctioneer going to be? You might not realize how important that.

Lee Kantor: And they might in their head go, oh, my cousin Bob, he can do that. He’s charming, but like a good auctioneer, knows how to get more money. And that’s what they’re doing this for.

Bari Holmes: And, you know, audio visual. You don’t realize how important it is, the pack, the impact. But people might not, might think the food is more important. Right. But when you don’t have solid audio visual, you don’t have the right auctioneer, you don’t have the right venue with parking spots to make it easily accessible to the guests. You don’t have the right valet company. You don’t have the right vendor to work reputably that’s going to lose sleep if your event isn’t successful, right? That is what you are so important to the success of a new event, an existing event, and the impression of someone’s client. Especially if you’re doing a client event. I mean, client events, you invest a lot of money. It’s marketing money. It’s money that you could spend on so many different things. But to make it the most impactful so that people are still talking about it, posting about it, you know, the new thing is, is having postable moments, having, you know, a backdrop for something. It’s all about the picture.

Lee Kantor: And that stuff doesn’t happen accidentally. It’s because you pre-planned this ahead of time so that they’re there when the person needs it, and a person whose inexperience doesn’t know what they don’t know.

Rachel Simon: Exactly. That’s exactly what I was going to say.

Bari Holmes: I don’t know, that’s. I should can I use that? You don’t know what you don’t know. And also, you know, you think about, do I need. I could plan this. I planned my, my daughter’s, you know, graduation or my quinceanera or my sweet 16 or my bat mitzvah, or I did this, but did you maximize your budget? Did you take that amount of money that you had and spend it appropriately with the relationships that we have? We know what to ask for. We know where the savings can come, where we can shade off 10%. Right?

Lee Kantor: And where you can negotiate where you can.

Bari Holmes: Yes, exactly. And so in the end, the rate that you’re paying us to help you actually save that from not ordering something off of some random website as your giveaway and it arriving. And all of a sudden you have this gift that’s not the quality that you’d want to give to your guest, and you have to reorder it and you have to go another direction.

Rachel Simon: Yeah. Or just those in my experience with any event I’ve been involved with, is those hidden fees that you’re just not prepared for. And then you’re like, wait a second. I thought that the food was going to be X amount of money, and then what are all these service fees that I had no idea exist?

Bari Holmes: Yeah, the magical hidden fees. And I even when I got married, you know, it’s that $500 end of the planning process where you just start throwing money at things because you’re reacting. So when you hire a professional planner, a professional production person, they will spell every dime out for you that you’ve even down to the tips for the end. You don’t realize that some of these service industries that you have to tip the DJ at the end or what is appropriate. You hear all these different rumors or expectations, but you might not. You just want a professional to clarify it for you. Explain the benefits, the pros and the cons, and you get to make the decision in the end. The planner isn’t making the decision. The planner is running everything by that executive assistant, like we are just an extension of their team so that they can do their job and have weekly check ins. You know, when you start the process, you start and then you check in every couple of weeks you have target dates for different things. You know that you have to get out of the way.

Lee Kantor: Then you how do you handle the, you know, as you’re giving them the check in. And then somebody in leadership has a great idea that they want to add because you know, one thing is when it’s a blank piece of paper, anything’s possible, right? But when you start kind of doing things, then less things become possible because there’s trade offs at every step, right?

Bari Holmes: Absolutely.

Lee Kantor: So then you make a decision and everybody’s on board, and then all of a sudden, you know, the president’s like, how about instead of pink make it blue. And then you know that could affect ten other things they don’t understand the ramifications of.

Bari Holmes: So it’s the creative dance. It’s the pivot. If you it’s funny when we were creating the name for this company, it’s all about the give the take the.

Lee Kantor: Trade.

Bari Holmes: Offs, the trade offs, the pivot. Right. And being able to pivot. So I have I have danced the executive dance um in events. And what happens is you never come out. You listen, you repeat, you try and accommodate it in a creative way. And some things, if it’s just a color, that’s kind of easy unless, you know, you explain to them.

Lee Kantor: But you printed.

Rachel Simon: I’ve already ordered the pink M&M.

Bari Holmes: That. That’s you. Just. You spell it. And when you’re dealing with executives that deal in dollars and cents, you say, okay, if we do that, we just have to spend X amount. Sure, we can do that.

Lee Kantor: But we’ve already ordered these things, so we’re gonna have to reorder new things and it’s going to cost y instead of x. So are you okay with that?

Bari Holmes: You take the emotions out. Right. It’s your call. Put it a dollar amount. When it comes to corporate it comes to executive. If it’s a rebranding or something like that’s important. Most times once they realize that it has gone down this path, they will not.

Lee Kantor: Exactly.

Bari Holmes: But you never know. So you don’t want to say no? Sure. Because there might be someone who’s that passionate about that color.

Lee Kantor: And then they’re okay with spending the money.

Bari Holmes: Absolutely. And as long as you and sometimes we are creative enough that we could repurpose something that has already been purchased or something for another event, or if it’s not a food or perishable item, we could maybe save that for a next campaign or next something. But, um, it really is about our partners with our vendors, like our decorators and the visionaries that they put, because a lot of the stuff is hand crafted, is customized for corporate. And as you’re planning those things, those are made closer to the time, right? If you’re trying to save on budget, right, and you want to use preexisting decor or things that a decorator already has in their traditional stock, that might not be able to be changed as easily because you’re saving money. So it’s really about education and and.

Lee Kantor: Clarity of communication. Like, you have to be clear and you have to let people know what’s happening step by step so you can make those pivots when they’re necessary as opposed to the day before the event. And then you’re stuck with, you know, pink balloons and you need a blue balloons.

Bari Holmes: Exactly. Um, yeah.

Rachel Simon: So let’s talk a little bit about just where the value of these kinds of events are for, you know, in a corporate audience. Like, you know, obviously in the bad times, we don’t like to talk about those. Right? Five years ago. Right. But like, the whole world shifted now events are back in full force. I would say in my just observation. Kind of stronger than ever. There’s a lot of events happening. Um, why should an organization or a company who’s never done sort of a formal event consider it as a value, add.

Bari Holmes: A some people don’t realize that customer appreciation events that are geared towards an experience that a customer might not purchase for themselves or treat themselves to, You could be a value add of why you want to use this vendor. Okay. There was a company back in my days of hotels, okay, where they would have an appreciation party every year, where they would throw this big party at Piedmont Park, and they would give everyone who was invited two tickets to Music Midtown and all weekend pass, I know. Right? So as a hotelier, as a person who came in contact with meeting planners and with all of that, I would refer people to them with the goal of getting invited to this party because I wanted the music Midtown tickets. They were an amazing company. Also, like, it wasn’t just because they were doing that, but it was a geared towards as an appreciation party, but also as a marketing tool where they were rewarding the people that trust them enough to refer them. Business. Future business. So a company that does appreciate their clients, farms their clients, and gets more clients because they appreciate their clients. So having a customer event is truly brand loyalty, appreciation, giving thanks. That’s not. And you don’t talk about business at a at appreciation party. You thank them. But it’s really about having fun.

Rachel Simon: Yeah. I imagine though for some companies, if they’ve never done this, it can be a little scary to say I’m going to invest, you know, x number of thousands of dollars to put this event on. And will I see the ROI on it? But it sounds like you, you know, if it’s a really well done event. Yeah. And your audience has a great time. Yep. You’ve built a lot of capital right there with them.

Bari Holmes: Exactly.

Lee Kantor: And it’s easier to to get business from an existing client than a new client, and people don’t appreciate the cost of getting a stranger to do business with you is much higher than getting an existing client to do more business with you.

Rachel Simon: Yeah, and these events sometimes can be little mini networking events too, for all the people who are attending. Absolutely.

Bari Holmes: And that is something that pivotal, um, does also. We come into organizations that have say they have a leadership, um, campaign that they’re doing where they have monthly meetings and they need somebody to come in and plan these for them, execute them, be on site. That is another avenue that we can help with, like a convention and visitors bureau or a CVB or that is a convention visitors bureau. Just kidding. Or chamber or any organization that is starting new programs and they don’t know how successful the program is going to be, bringing in a service like ours to run that, to run the budget and to execute. It helps for to know how impactful it is. If you don’t try it, you’re not going to know. So bringing in a company like ours before you hire a full time employee to do this work is also some of the pluses and minuses of bringing in a contractor.

Rachel Simon: Yeah. Do you do some just like high level consulting to like if a company isn’t necessarily ready to hire you full force, but you can come in and give some guidance?

Bari Holmes: Absolutely. Especially with my background, um, from being involved from corporate America to social to venues, I go in and I am doing a couple of those projects right now where I’ve gone into a venue. They need to understand what the market can bear, what the client is willing to to have. There’s a new venue I’m working with where they want to know if they should invest in buying the tables. The chairs to have in the venue. Is that a value add for a client. Is someone going to pick a venue that has Chiavari chairs and round tables already included in the rental and facility fee, versus having to load in and rent from a third party and load into the venue around other events. So yes, absolutely do consulting for people who just want to do an idea.

Rachel Simon: Yeah, no, I’m sure that’s extremely helpful and valuable. Just because, you know, it may there may be organization here that’s just like not ready to dive fully in. Like, can we bear this? Absolutely. Is this a good idea for our target audience and whatnot? So because I mean, again, events can be very intimidating if you’ve never planned one before or you’re tasked by your boss to say, make it happen.

Bari Holmes: Now we call it the Discovery stage. Yeah. Instead of consulting, it’s discovery. Discovery? How much would this party cost us?

Lee Kantor: Is there a sweet spot that you work in that? Look, I only work for if they have budgets of, you know, 100,000 and up or like. Is there a range that you work in that if they can’t afford this, then that? I’m probably not the right fit for them.

Bari Holmes: I’m so that’s a very. No there isn’t because those events that start off with a $10,000 budget. Could turn into $100,000.

Lee Kantor: 10,000 would be the floor though.

Bari Holmes: No no no no no, I’m not saying floor. There’s here’s the reality and I’ll go to your graduation party and. Like that you’re hosting probably next week. Next Sunday. My godson is having a graduation party. Um, Zachary is graduating. Um, and on the 18th, there are these graduation parties. The reality is, and as you talk about. There’s you can’t produce an event for less than a certain amount per person. Like you couldn’t go to Moe’s without spending $5 per person. So there has to be a feasible budget for any event. So I look at all events and assess the hours that it would take to execute it, the amount of help somebody would need. And there is right now there is a package someday, you know, I don’t see it happening, but no event is too small.

Lee Kantor: So you’ll talk to anybody just to have that discovery conversation to see if you are the right fit. Absolutely. So somebody shouldn’t worry, like, oh, we only have $5,000. I shouldn’t call Bari. Like, this is whatever budget they have. It’s a good idea just to talk to you because you might be able to help them no matter what.

Bari Holmes: Sometimes my fault is, is that I might not be the right person I want to be that first call that everyone calls. And that’s like when I worked in the movie industry for ten years, right? The out of the box situations that someone would, um, would call me with that maybe I can help them. Maybe not. They know that if they call me, if they call pivotal, that we are going to listen to their ideas, we are going to assess if we’re the right fit or give them guidance. We’re never going to say your your rent is too cheap for me. We’re going to say, you don’t need my services, right?

Lee Kantor: Do this instead or.

Rachel Simon: Call this person.

Bari Holmes: But when you do, I was like, but give my name to and I’ll explain to them what who the ideal person is that would benefit from our services. So it’s kind of like, yeah, like a friend called about a fundraiser and she needed advice about audio visual, and she really just needed me to reconfirm that the hotel pricing that she had gotten was fair. Fair, right. And of course, I’m going to give her that because she’s a volunteer for this. And but I’m going to be that first person that she thinks of when someone’s creating a new event and wants to bring in a project, so.

Rachel Simon: Or for next year.

Bari Holmes: Yeah. So trusted. My our goal is to be your trusted confidant that, you know, isn’t going to try and sell you on our services.

Lee Kantor: You’re watching their back.

Bari Holmes: We got their back, and we’re never going to put a vendor in. We’re never going to use a vendor that doesn’t have the same values, quality and, um, appreciation for.

Lee Kantor: And being around for so many years. You already know who’s the right person and who might not be the right person.

Bari Holmes: Yeah, exactly.

Rachel Simon: I think there’s a huge value in being able to vet out vendors because there’s just so many options. It’s overwhelming these days, and it’s like, who should I talk to about balloons?

Lee Kantor: There’s you can’t do trust Google. They’re not going to tell you the right person.

Bari Holmes: Trust social media.

Lee Kantor: Right. That’s not the right person.

Bari Holmes: It’s fun to watch.

Lee Kantor: Just because they’re good at social media doesn’t mean they’re really good. Like, those are two different things.

Bari Holmes: It I mean, it’s kind of funny. It’s just social media is such an amazing thing in such a hindering thing. At the same time, because you have these great reels, you can have these great ideas for inspirations. We go to it all the time, right? You know, like what’s trending, what’s this? And staying involved in the organizations like Nace and Wfta and um, MPI, all of the different organizations that support meeting planners, that support social catering executives, all of those organizations are so important. American Renters Association to know what’s available for rentals, being active in those. And you learn about that through social media, LinkedIn, all of that. Um, but how many times has someone referred someone to you and after you talk to that person, knowing that they have used them time and time again, you’ve stopped your search because you’re like, Bari is a good judge of character. She’s not going to just work with anybody. So Bari believes in them. I’m going to believe in them. And then your mind just kind of.

Lee Kantor: It’s one less thing to worry about.

Bari Holmes: One less thing to worry about. And that is.

Lee Kantor: It. Do you do that? We’ve talked a lot about corporate, but do you do like kind of the weddings, bar mitzvahs, that part of your portfolio too, or are you primarily in the business side?

Bari Holmes: I’m primarily primarily in the business side. Um, I am we are not concentrating in bar and bat mitzvahs and weddings right now. It is not.

Lee Kantor: So it’s like nonprofits, galas, those kind of fundraising things.

Rachel Simon: Annual meetings, annual meetings.

Lee Kantor: Right.

Bari Holmes: I know and respect way there is a there’s a large there’s a really great quality planners out there right now, um, that specialize in the bar bat mitzvah and the wedding market that I respect, that I would refer to, and that do really know everything about the wedding industry and the mitzvah industry and the quinceaneras and all of the social aspects of that. I more am a corporate and yes, right.

Lee Kantor: So you want to know, like associations, nonprofits, business groups.

Bari Holmes: Yes, yes.

Lee Kantor: And larger enterprises that do these kind of customer appreciation or these annual retreats or things like that where they bring a big team together?

Bari Holmes: Yes. Um, and mainly that’s because I see a lot of value in leadership training and investing in your employees. Yeah. I, um, I think I was blessed. Um, my previous employer was classic Tents and Events. I spent 14 years there, and in all honesty, they about five years ago invested in communication and leadership And, um, it was such a value add for our team, for me. And I see it, and I see how much time that our team went into the planning of those things. And we did. We had an outside contractor that came in and helped us with our our yearly retreats, did our customer events. And I was the beneficiary of having this person help me with my association, my appreciation party. Every year we had this great party for the location managers, and I saw how Erica was her name, and Erica would come in and she would I had my job to do. She would come in, she would look into different venues that I had heard about or saw on social media. She’d bring back all the facts to me, and I got to make the end decision on what food we ate, what things we did. And she worked with different departments of classic to help us with different things that we did. And I saw the benefit of that and, um, how impactful she could be as an extension of our team. We didn’t need a full time employee to do that, but it helped us really kick off some very professional events. And, um, I’ve just had firsthand experience of being on the other side of this equation and know the value of it. And so you can’t do everything. Yeah. And with quality of life and everything that we are all preaching these days, you shouldn’t have to work another 40 hours after.

Lee Kantor: You do what you do and hire other people to do what they do. Exactly. They’re the experts.

Rachel Simon: And I think, you know, kind of just what you touched on. And we could do a whole other episode about the value and the importance of, uh, things like this for employee advocacy. Right. And, like, building that really good relationships with your team so that they want to stay. They feel appreciated. They become strong advocates for your organization.

Bari Holmes: But having those awesome events that are Annually happen that you know. When your employees know that you’ve spent the time to plan out everything down to the welcome gift that they get in their hotel room when they arrive. And that’s the superpower here. That’s what pivotal brings the tables, the ideas, the experience, the vendors to have those small, impactful, memorable, memorable things that make you feel if you’re a customer of the appreciation party, if you are an employee of the organization, the employees, the customers know that you’ve invested in really every detail. And there’s no way that someone who has a full time job as a executive assistant or supporting someone else.

Lee Kantor: This on.

Bari Holmes: Top of this on top of it.

Rachel Simon: Not in executed as.

Lee Kantor: As.

Rachel Simon: Seamlessly for sure.

Bari Holmes: Absolutely.

Rachel Simon: And have the same impact. So, um, yeah.

Lee Kantor: So Rachel, how if an organization goes through and has a great event, um, what’s the best way to leverage it on LinkedIn? What are some ways to take kind of this experience and then socialize it through the platforms in order to then bring more value to the event, because now you’re getting more eyes on it.

Rachel Simon: Yeah, there’s so many. I mean, I, I have so many ideas in my head, but some of the, you know, sort of first round thoughts would be, again, you’re the organization is going to post tons of photos of it. I think sometimes the behind the scenes kinds of things are really fun of like, how did this event come to take place? Like pulling back the curtain, creating those like custom backdrops and hashtags, and encouraging attendees to post on their personal page to.

Lee Kantor: Make it easy to share.

Rachel Simon: Right? Make it easy to share. Just creating a vibe that people want to be putting out there to show how much fun they had. Um, all of those various things.

Bari Holmes: I have a question, Rachel, for you, since you’re the LinkedIn, um, professional, um, do you think that organizations should do the the ramp up the planning on LinkedIn of like, behind the scenes getting ready for the event.

Rachel Simon: Why not? I mean, people, you know. Company page content is really hard to gain traction and visibility on, but the kinds of posts that always do the best are is content that is featuring people and kind of pulling back the curtain a little bit. So even if it’s like somebody stuffing gift bags and then, you know, the attendees are going to be like.

Bari Holmes: Oh, I get gift bags.

Rachel Simon: What’s gonna be in that bag?

Lee Kantor: And it’s like mysterious. You know, it’s like, oh ho. Wonder what that what’s in there?

Rachel Simon: Or like, you know what the like a picture of the caterer.

Lee Kantor: Or like a silhouette of a cake. So then they don’t know what the cake’s going to be, you know, like you’re just teasing it, right?

Rachel Simon: Yeah. You know, so those little teasers could be really fun. I mean, it’s going to depend on what’s the audience and again, what’s the kind of organization. But I think that the, um, there’s a place for the, the ramp up stuff and maybe that’s on Instagram versus LinkedIn or maybe, you know, it’s a Good Friday post.

Lee Kantor: On LinkedIn.

Rachel Simon: Right? Yeah. But, um, anything that’s just highlighting people. Yeah. And people having fun and faces, I think is always going to play better.

Bari Holmes: Relatable. Yeah.

Rachel Simon: Yeah. Not like download our white paper.

Lee Kantor: Right. Exactly. That’s not the place.

Rachel Simon: Nobody cares.

Lee Kantor: So, Bari, if somebody wants to learn more, have a more substantive conversation with you or somebody on the team, what’s the best way to connect with you? You have a website or socials.

Bari Holmes: We do. We have all the above. We have our website is w-w-w. Um, and we are on LinkedIn. We are on Facebook and we’re on Instagram. Um, pivotal events and production management and a lot of thought came into the name in that process was because all events are something that you participate in and that they are a production. There is a run of show that’s created. There’s a vendor list, there’s contact information. There’s all these different facets that get put into a resume for each event. And there’s a pre-event, a post-event, and so that you can critique everything. But, um, yeah, reach out, get on our website. Um, our socials are very easy to bury. It’s b a r I at Pivotal Comm, but, um, shoot me an email, call me. Um, and we can have a discussion because you don’t know if we can be of service to you unless we talk about it. And I love to talk. That’s why I was so excited about this podcast.

Rachel Simon: I told you it’d be easy.

Bari Holmes: Yeah.

Rachel Simon: And, and and to people listening who might be, you know, like questioning about. Do I need help with my event, remember? Because we coined it here. You don’t know what you don’t know.

Bari Holmes: So you.

Rachel Simon: Should talk to Bari.

Bari Holmes: I love that. Yeah. And I’m going to be honest with you. And, um, it’s you might you’re you’re always going to you’re going to feel safe in making sure that if you want to spend the money on this aspect of it, I’m going to help you spend it wisely and spend it so you get the most bang for your buck. I’m going to put you in contact with the best vendors that will provide you what you are looking for, and I’m not going to force you to do anything you don’t want to do, but I might push you in the direction where you might need to spend a little bit more on audio visual. When you thought that you needed to spend a little bit more on food. And I’m going to explain to you the backstory. Everyone laughs at me about my backstory. There is a reason for the thought process behind certain things, and I’ll help you understand it if you don’t want to understand it. You just want me to do it. I’ll just do it and make it great. But if you want to understand it, I can help you understand it as well, so you can explain it to your boss or your boss’s boss, or your stakeholders in an organization. If you’re a nonprofit, because some people might not see the value in spending that extra money for that professional auctioneer, that might cost it sounds like a lot of money, $10,000, $20,000. But if that auctioneer can get you an extra $40,000 in random people who are just so excited by their rhetoric that they just. I’ll give money. I’ll give money. They get caught up in it. So it’s an investment for the right person.

Lee Kantor: Well, Bari, thank you so much for sharing your story, doing such important work, and we appreciate you.

Bari Holmes: Thank you for having me. This has been so fun.

Rachel Simon: Yay! Thanks. It was a great show.

Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor for Rachel Simon. We’ll see you all next time on Greater Perimeter. Business RadioX.