Opportunities I See Now With Events (After Leading These For Amazon, Google & Others) - Gianna Gaudini

Josiah: How do you stand out and create something meaningful in a world saturated with technology, content of all types, and crazy schedules? If you're listening to this show, I'm sure you'll agree hospitality plays a big role in that. But a specific form of hospitality, events, presents a huge opportunity for all of us. Today, we're joined by Gianna Gaudini, one of the best event producers and strategists in the business, and we're going to hear what she's learned in her journey in the events industry, the opportunities that events offer, and how hospitality professionals can engage effectively with events and event organizers. 

Gianna: I think I, like many people in this industry, did not plan on going into event planning. I kind of fell into it. I found my way there, you know, through trial and error. I went to school actually to be a doctor, which is quite the opposite of being an event planner. And then kind of realized as I was going through classes and I took a class on, you know, different paths you could take in the medical profession that Maybe this wasn't what I wanted to do. I did realize that during my time at UC San Diego, the things that I was most passionate about were bringing people together and hospitality. A couple of examples of that were I'm very much a growth mindset. If I don't know how to do something, I want to figure it out. I don't like feeling incapable of doing things. I was always a cook, but I tended to cook breakfasts and desserts. And I realized, hey, I'm going to be graduating from college and have a family someday. I need to learn how to cook dinner. You know, I grew up in an Italian family with wonderful chefs for parents. So I thought the best way to learn how is to just kind of force myself. to cook for an audience. So I started hosting these Wednesday night dinners at my house, an apartment that I shared with some other gals at UC San Diego. And as I built up my confidence, things got more and more elaborate. People started inviting more and more friends. They became these big things. Then they started having themes and soundtracks, and it became a whole thing. And it was awesome. I loved it. People loved it. They loved meeting new people. They loved having a good meal. It brought me a lot of joy to create the hospitality. And so I remember at the time I was also like interning at a law firm thinking maybe that's what I want to do. Then I interned in PR. None of those were really like resonating with me. And I finally decided, you know what? I love amazing hospitality. I'm going to just walk in to the highest end restaurant in La Jolla and ask them if I can be a hostess. and like talk about ballsy. I mean, I had zero experience and I think they saw like I shared why I was so passionate about it and how hard I would work and they hired me and I loved it. I loved working in that environment so much and then I went on to work in a couple other really high-end restaurants in San Diego and then moved back home with my parents in Los Gatos, did the same thing and kind of realized I want to be an event planner. This is something that brings me so much joy, but I want to, I want to move to the city and like really make a career out of it. And so I had a 10 year plan that at the end of 10 years, I was going to run my own business. So I was really going to build it into a career from the beginning. That was always the goal was this is not a job. It's a career path. And I had my trajectory kind of set out for me. Now I had a couple of detours along the way. I was getting ready to launch my own business, but I was a little, you know, I was strategic about it. I thought I need a niche. And there's a lot of event saturation in San Francisco, but there is a dearth of event professionals in Napa. And Napa is, fun fact, second most visited place in California, second to Disneyland. There's a fit, right? You got to find the product market fit. And so I thought, but I need to build my cred. Why is anyone going to think I am the Napa planner, right? I need some credentials. So, okay, what am I going to do? I'm going to start a blog and I'm going to be up there every weekend meeting with new vintners, new venues, blogging about them, getting to know what's good. You know, every place I visited recommended another place, so it was a very fun journey. And then I thought I'll get my sommelier certification just to be able to speak the language to these folks and further, you know, build up my credentials. And that led to all kinds of wine opportunities, you know, creating wine lists for restaurants because of word of mouth, blogging for magazines and publications. It was a really fun side passion. And my goal was five years into this, I'll have my cred and then I'll launch my business. But then I was hired by Google and then I fell in love with Google. So then I took a nine-year detour and, you know, did some of the best events of my life at Google. It was magical. Published my book, The Art of Event Planning, and really decided I really love being on the brand side. I love being able to do these big moonshot ideas. I love really honing the strategy, not just the logistics, and getting able to do so many different types of events. That was the beauty of working at Google is there's so many different products at Google. It was like being able to reinvent myself over and over again at one company. So that was really, really unique and fortunate that I got to do all different types of events there from the highest end VIP events, movie premieres, executive summits for Google executives and luminaries, movie stars. all the way to building and running Google's biggest event, Google Cloud Next, for 30,000 people, doing stuff at the White House, and pulling together Google's first ever 20,000-person internal conference in Vegas, and buying out Disneyland. Really, really unique thing. So it was a really beautiful time. After I left Google, I was recruited away by some former Googlers to SoftBank Vision Fund. And it was seriously probably the hardest decision of my life to leave something that was comfortable and where I was happy into the unknown. It was a big leap of faith. But like I said, I've always wanted to challenge myself and I thought I can stay here comfortable or I can go and grow new muscles. And I'm really glad I did. So you know, in the six years since I've left Google. I've gone on to lead event teams at different organizations as the head of events, SoftBank Vision Fund, AWS training and certification team, most recently Airtable. And it was wonderful. I loved taking event teams from zero to one, as they say in product speak, really building event teams that are successful and cohesive from scratch, helping craft, you know, inaugural event strategies, and optimizing current event strategies. and really get to work with different types of organizations from startup companies to massive big tech companies to VCs managing billions and billions of dollars and working with founders. And then I most recently turned 40, unfortunately, but for me, I thought, you know what? I'm going to use this opportunity to kind of catapult the next stage in my career. I've been doing this for 20 years. I've always wanted to launch my own business and this seems like the quintessential time to do that. And so now I am running my own business and I'm working with brands. I'm working with all different stage companies, mostly later stage companies that, you know, can do bigger events or, at that point, with their product-market fit and their go-to-market strategy to be able to be doing events and putting stuff out there. What I'm finding is my niche, my sweet spot that I'm really enjoying is these really high touch sometimes white glove events for executives, for VIPs, for founders, people that really need a curated and thoughtful approach, not just, you know, your everyday trade show or user conference, but really that what is going to really be unique for people that they cannot buy with money. And I love that. I love working with that audience. I think they're very discerning. And to me, that's a great challenge to have to find the thing that is topical for them at any given moment. It changes frequently to find the experiences, the venues that cannot be Googled or purchased. So that's been really fun for me right now. And again, like, you know, I think a lot of your audience's venues and hotels are finding those really, really unique, amazing partners for the events that they're attending because they have very rarefied tastes.

Josiah: Yeah, and it creates an interesting opportunity. I mean, I appreciate you walking through your career story. What a cool journey going from Wednesday evening dinners to the work that you are doing today. What I'm hearing out in the market, it's not only you that are enjoying producing these events, but it seems there's more and more demand for these sort of very thoughtful, customized experiences, these sort of events. And I'm curious on your thoughts on why this is. What's happening in the world that makes events so important right now?

Gianna: Yes. Oh my gosh. Where do I start? So these are just my own hypotheses. I think nobody can prove exactly why, but I could definitely hypothesize. And I do think some of it is the tech saturation and content overload. I've been saying for a few years now that technology has just been accelerating our always-on environment for years now. And I think we're going to hit a stage, hopefully soon, where it starts to decelerate because people are finding this is not good for our health. This is not good for our productivity. This is not actually solving problems. It's creating distraction. It's kind of like how the slow movement came and interrupted fast food. I kind of see that happening with events is, you know, there's so much content being thrown at people. AI is helping content be produced even quicker. So people are throwing even more at you. I mean, inbox overload and all the different, you know, between How many different things are you getting pinged by in a given day? It's really hard to quiet the noise or for anyone to be able to break through the noise. And so in-person events, especially these really high touch ones, especially in environments that are in an environment with nature or a little bit removed from, you know, people's normal everyday environments, big cities and such, are really helping people slow down, get space. People are craving space and connection. They want to be able to quiet, focus, think bigger picture, make real authentic connections that break through all this noise. And I've been talking to so many people lately where they're saying, oh, my biggest breakthrough came when I was on vacation. And I have the same thing. It's like, I often cannot think big until I'm away from my screen, away from the day-to-day stressors. And that's why these high-end retreats are so popular right now. People want to retreat from it. It's so good for business. It's an investment, yes. You're taking people out of the workforce. You're investing from a resource perspective to plan and obviously from a budget perspective. But you have to be, you know, there's the same pennywise pound foolish. You have to think bigger picture. And those big ideas are going to come from those retreats, from that space, from the everyday grind.

Josiah: I wonder if you could break down some of the components, and you touched on this a little bit, but our listeners, our community are by and large hospitality providers, and I think they're going to be interested in what you're saying from two levels. organizing these for their own teams, whether that's leaders or others in their organization, because as any organization, they need to be effective, they need to be inspired. So I think there's leaders listening to this that will be curious about what could this look like for our company, but also as hosts of other events. There may be some listening that say, hey, we have this property, you know, people can come and visit if they want. But what I'm almost hearing from you is an opportunity to be more thoughtful. And there's sort of this experiential element, there's this design element. But is that fair to say, I guess, like, what do you see as the important drivers or components of these thoughtful retreats?

Gianna: Yeah, well, I think there's a lot there. I mean, first, I want to start with a phrase that I've been repeating to myself lately, because I tend to be a very high energy person, like I mentioned, with lots of big ideas. I want to do it all now. And there's this phrase I've been repeating to myself, which is slow down to speed up. And I think sometimes we think like getting more done, getting more done, getting more done is going to make us better, better, better, more and more productive. But it's not always because sometimes when you're just getting stuff done, you're being reactive, you are not taking the time to think of creative ideas. I often find now that if I rather than respond to something, I say, I'm going to give it like a night and then think about it in the morning. The next morning I have this like totally out of the box idea and I'm like, oh God, I'm so glad I did not respond to that the way I was going to. Sometimes we need that space, that time to let our minds marinate and not be so, you know, we're all so used to the dopamine-responsive emails and pings and respond and blah, blah, blah. So I think that's part of it is like, take the time to get out of the everyday routines, convene. Think bigger picture. Connect with each other, because guess what? When your teams are not working well together, you cannot be productive or successful. And team bonding is going to help you move faster in the long run, but you have to pause and take the time to build that foundation. It's like trying to build a house without a foundation. Yeah, you might get it up faster than building the foundation first, but it's probably going to fall down. So it's probably better to just take the time and build the foundation. And then similarly, I think people are really craving the grounding of being in environments that are outside of the norm. So whether that's people working from home and needing to get outside the house. My husband is at the Battery, which is a private club we belong to today because he's like, I need to get out of this work from home every day. And I've been doing that a couple days a week myself. I love my home office and my pink. But when you get outside of your normal day-to-day, you meet different people, which leads to spontaneous connections, which leads to bigger ideas. There was, I forget which company did it. I want to say Nike, but I might be misquoting that. They planned their bathroom so that they were all communal because they found that most connections are made when people bump into each other in the bathrooms, which is so funny. But everyone has to go to the bathroom multiple times a day, right? You know, so I think how this relates to hotels and venues is being really creative in how you're planning space, how you're marketing space, how you're thinking outside the box with, you know, how your space can be used. Are there outside spaces that you can use? Because people really want to be in environments that are going to help their brains slow down, make new neural connections, think in different ways, you know, spontaneously connect with others.

Josiah: I'm curious for our listeners, how can they be good hosts of these sort of events? You touched on elements of kind of what people are looking for, but I think specifically as it relates to working with you or someone like you, I imagine you've seen good hotels and not so great hotels as collaborators in producing these events. What makes a great collaborator from a host perspective?

Gianna: You know, I understand how busy hotels are right now with business and how easy it is to just say no to clients, but that's going to be a terrible customer experience. And it's probably going to hurt them in the long run because they're probably going to share that experience with their peers. They probably will not return. So I love win-wins. And so I love hotels taking the approach of let's come up with a collaborative solution. And sometimes it's not just responding yes or no to a client's request. It's asking like, well, what are you trying to achieve with this request, right? So it's thinking outside the box. As a hotelier, you know your property inside and out. And so, you know, by taking the step back and asking the why, why are you making this request? What is the goal with this request? Oh, you know, maybe we can't do exactly what you're asking, but we could achieve that in this different way. And then that's a win-win. And then you are being strategic as a partner. You're being collaborative. They're getting what they want. You're able to say, you know, no, but in a positive way because you're finding another solution for them. So I love being solution focused. And if you absolutely have to say no to a client, say, you know, what can I help you with? Or like, how can we figure out a different way to achieve your goals? And then get outside the box. Like, I once had a hotel where I negotiated no food and beverage. I mean, no meeting rental, but higher food and beverage. And I always do that because, you know, it helps them hit their target revenue that they need, but you're getting something that you can give to your attendees. So that's, again, a win-win. Hotel gets what they want. Your attendees get more. They feel happier. They feel more nourished. So I like coming up with solutions like that that make everybody happy. Well, what happened with this program was we ended up with like half the number of attendees that we were hoping for. It was an inaugural event, so a little challenging to get the numbers we were hoping for. These were VIPs. And the hotel was so amazing. They said, look, we really want to help you. And I wanted to create these like micro snack kitchens so people could have access to these fun snack kitchens that were kind of like You know, they're hot with like tech companies. And I was trying to create that home away from home environment for them. So that we will let you use your food and beverage minimum towards Amazon purchases of all, whatever you need for the micro kitchens. And also for the dim sum carts that you want. And they let me use my F&B for all of that. And yet I was still short something crazy like $50,000. And they were so kind. They said, we will let you put this toward a future program with us, the food and beverage. Well, guess what? I ended up planning another event there because of that, that gave them way more revenue than that food and beverage minimum. And it was so smart of them because they were able to book another business of mine that I would have taken elsewhere probably, but because we had that credit, we ended up spending a lot more. So that was them finding a way to be a wonderful collaborative partner. We wanted to return to them and spend more money with them because we knew how great it was to work with them. They could have very easily just said, sorry, we're just going to charge you. And then I wouldn't have come back, you know? So, but now I'm going to be sharing this story over and over and over and over again. So I think sometimes hotels need to think about, take a step back and think about what do I want in the long-term, not just the short-term? And how is the impact of what I'm saying to the client and delivering to the client going to impact my business for the long-term, not just for this one program?

Josiah: We'll be back after a quick break. Are you enjoying this conversation? If so, I invite you to text this episode to a friend or colleague as well. Not only will you let them know that you're thinking about them, but you'll help them as well. One more thing. I'm having a lot of fun right now sharing videos and photos from the stories on the show. So if you'd like to see those or watch along, open up Instagram and YouTube now and follow Hospitality Daily so we can stay in touch. All right, let's get back to the conversation. I love that story. I love the advice to be solution-focused. And it seems to me there's this really strong parallel between being an effective person running and planning these events and being a great hospitality provider in the sense of agility and thinking on your feet and thinking quickly. And I'm curious for you, what have you found to be the, I guess, the personal traits or skills that helps you become better at that? Because I'd love for our listeners to move in this direction of being solution-oriented. But I'm curious, I think you alluded to, you touched on your book actually a little bit about this. You need to get enough sleep. You know, you need to take care of yourself. So I imagine there's that foundational level of to operate this way, you need to take care of yourself.

Gianna: But is there anything else that you… I think this is very thematic with what we were talking about earlier, which is, you know, when you are not investing in long-term health because you think that that's actually going to help your program by doing more work, by pulling an all-nighter, it's actually probably not going to help you as much because guess what? When you're thrown that curveball the next day, you might fall apart. I saw this happen last year to a colleague and it was so hard to watch. I was able to step in because I prioritize making sure I sleep. Even when I'm on site, I have shifts for my team. I will say, OK, I'm handing decisions over to you now. I'm going to go sleep. I will be here at 6 a.m. And then I know that if something crazy is thrown at me, which it was, I have the wherewithal, the calm, the focus to handle the situation eloquently and, you know, using solution mindset as opposed to that fight or flight panic. And you see this so often is if people do not get the right amount of rest, If they do not have the right mindset, if they do not know how to self-regulate the cortisol that comes inherently with doing things like planning big events, you can fail when you're put to the test. And unfortunately, almost every event has curveballs and I think it is a growth. It's maturing as a professional to accept that and know that there will be things without your control and just embrace them. and almost be a curious observer when they happen and say, oh, there's that thing I knew was going to happen and I am going to deal with it because I have the tools in my toolkit to make informed decisions. And so what I do, you know, I sleep very well at night before events now. I don't stress. I know I take the steps that are part of my method leading up to the event. You know, I do a very deep dive attendee journey walkthrough where I poke holes at all my clients' programs. which helps us find little things we might not have thought of. I, you know, do the same thing with the hotel vendors that they know exactly what they're doing. I think through contingencies and pain points, and I do everything that I can to ensure that the event is going to go as well as possible. And then I just accept that, hey, maybe something will come up, but guess what? I've left space in my mind to be able to deal with that. So people just also kind of need to embrace the unexpected. I think parenting, to be honest, also helps because you wake up every day and you don't know what's going to happen with your kid. That's definitely helped me mature, I think, as a planner. But also just really, I now spend as much time cultivating my inner mindset and strength as opposed to just pushing through with sheer adrenaline. It's just a different kind of energy now.

Josiah: What are you thinking about, excited about now?

Gianna: So much, I think properties are really stepping up their game, which is exciting. I love helping them kind of evaluate their offerings. I don't know if you've heard of this. They use it a lot in product development, but I love doing this with hotels when I work with them and also clients. It helps with prioritization of features that they're considering. And you basically do this $100 bill exercise and you have $100 and maybe you have 10 features or 10 things that you want to do, but you only have so much budget and time and you don't know when to roll it all out. So you basically say, okay, you only have five, you can only pick five things and you have to allocate a certain amount of the budget from $100 to each thing. It helps you really figure out what each item is worth and how they stack rank and how much more weight one thing has to the other. And then you kind of apply that to how you roll them out. So, because I think that's one of the things that's really tough across the board is focusing. And there's just so much distraction. And I think venues that don't try to do it all, but really focus on a couple of really key selling points and do them super well can really win the business. rather than trying to be all the things but not really good at anything, that's not memorable. You know, when you think about going to a fine dining restaurant versus like an Applebee's, no offense to Applebee's, like Applebee's has like a million things, which seems great. Like, oh my gosh, I can get whatever I want. There's a million things, but then it's so hard to pick. Like, which one do you pick? And then you get it and it's like, maybe so-so. Do you really remember that meal? Probably not. Whereas you go to fine dining, they're almost always prefix. It's like, a few things, and they nail them, and they're so amazing, and they're so unique, and you always remember that. So I try to help organizations and clients apply that same kind of prioritization to the experiences that they're curating, even for hotels to the selling points. It's not like listing out every single thing. It's like taking the time up front during the RFP to ask what's most important to the client, and then curating their response with like, oh, these are your top goals for the event. This is why our space is going to deliver. Is it food and beverage? Well, we have a Michelin-star chef. Is food and beverage not important to the client? Maybe you don't need to highlight that. That's just a distraction to them. You know, maybe it is co-working space and you don't have that marketed on your website. So in your response, you want to show examples of how you've done this in the past for other clients. Like those tiny, it just takes a couple of minutes to ask questions, but it can totally seal the deal because then you can curate your response and the kind of service that you provide to the client.

Josiah: You have to listen and then you have to listen so that you can provide something that's relevant. But I'm curious because you write a lot about the power of moments. And I guess if you think about the typical guest experience at a hotel, all the touch points that hotel typically offers, are there some in general that you have found come up again and again is really important as it relates to events where like, let's say if there's some capital, a hotel owner could invest, they should think about X, Y, and Z. I'm curious if anything comes to mind to that extent.

Gianna: Totally. I think, okay, there's macro and micro. I think investing in your people as much as in your product is so important. And I think this is so overlooked is that, you know, when you think about your experience with hotels, you think about a couple of things. One, like all the amenities and, you know, what the actual property is like. And then two, it's like, what was the service like? And those are the two things that people remember. But you want to think of both, not just one or the other. Because if you have a beautiful property and terrible service, then all that work you put into the beautiful property is going to be for naught because that person is going to not be a net promoter anymore. To give you an example, The Four Seasons, you probably know this. When you arrive, every single staff member will call you by your name. And it's like magic. It's like a magic trick. You're like, how does this person know my name? This is so amazing. And it's just part of their brand. And it's amazing. And they invest in the training rather than in a thing. And so that's an example. Another thing is with VIPs, taking the time to personalize the experience for them based on who they are. So like, I've had hotels where I'm staying with them and I've booked a lot of business. They've come up with incredible amenities for me that kind of set the tone for how they're going to be as partners. And I know all hotels do this. When you're site visiting, they're winding and dining you. Like, do the research on your clients. Like, it will really help if you personalize the experience to them. So to give a couple good examples, one time, I was sitting at the Mandarin Oriental and they were hosting me and there was a knock on the door and I opened it and it was the sommelier from their Michelin star restaurant, like on a Friday night during business, which was insane in and of itself that he showed up at my door. He had a bottle of wine that I had blogged about on my blog. He said, I read your blog and I saw you really love this wine and I had it in my cellar and I wanted to just come pour you a little taste as you're getting ready for dinner. I was like, oh my God, that's so high touch and so lovely. It was the thought and the fact that he spent the time to come make that welcome for me I have never forgotten that and it didn't cost them much at all. It just took thoughtfulness and time. Similarly, another really good one was I was staying at the W Hotel in San Francisco for a big event and they impressed me in so many ways there. The first night that I was there before a big program, they sent up to my room an amenity and they knew that I had recently passed my sommelier exam. They created, they went online and printed out the blind tasting component of the sommelier exam, printed that out. They picked out a bottle of wine and covered it, you know, so that I couldn't see what it was. And then they had beautiful accoutrement, of course, snacks and stuff. And they had me do a blind taste test. It was like a moment that's usually so fraught with stress and nerves. I was like, this is such a lovely, playful moment. It like forced me to pause and like, reset and do this fun, playful thing with them. And it really sets such a lovely tone for me. I have told that story about a million times now. And so that's what I mean for brands to just go that extra mile to be thoughtful, to personalize, to think about what do these people need from me now or to listen. Maybe they hear a client on site at an event, mention something and they can deliver it. That client will never forget that or that attendee will never forget that. And word of mouth is so powerful in this industry. It's so powerful because you can also have the negative viral effect if you provide an absolute terrible experience. And people in our industry talk because we want to protect each other. So that's just a couple of examples.

Josiah: That's great. Word of mouth is incredibly powerful. And I think it's worked for you because I think the events that you have created and delivered have spoken for themselves and it has put you in these positions to serve so many tens of thousands of people through really engaging events. So Jenna, thanks for sharing that. And I would love for our listeners to follow you, learn more about your work. I'll include some links in the show notes, but where would you point our listeners to learn more about you and the work that you do.

Gianna: You can find everything about me at giannagaudini.com. There's more about my business and there's all kinds of little gems for you, my top partners, other podcasts and such, so all kinds of goodness. You can also reach out to me via the contact page there.