IAM240- Event Planner Helps Create a Great Client Experience with a Touch of Hospitality

Dee is the founder of MDM Associates who is committed to providing a complete themed event service, from the preparation to the execution of the themed event plan.

• CEO Hack: Recur post for social media scheduling
• CEO Defined: Creative, plans executor in an organized way

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Transcription:

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Intro 0:02

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 0:27

Hello, hello, hello, this is Gresh from the I am CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Dee McCoy of MDM Associates. Dee, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Dee McCoy 0:35

Thanks so much for having me.

Gresham Harkless 0:37

No problem. Super excited to have you on. Could you tell us a little bit more about like what brought you to the conference, what you are hoping to get out?

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Dee McCoy 0:42

So it's twofold. I worked with Akia on the design and decor and decoration and pageantry for the event to make the event aesthetically pleasing to all of the participants. So they have something nice to look at, it's kind of a gloomy day outside. So they have something to hold their attention pops of color in the room making a nice seating area outside of the ballroom space in case they needed to take a moment to make a phone call or just step out so they'd have something comfortable.

I wanted to pour back into my business. My business is a lot of external, so it's a lot of me pouring out of myself into what my client's visions are for their events. This is my time to pour back into myself so that I constantly have a full picture. I guess it's threefold, because I also brought my daughter who is a young entrepreneur, and I wanted her to learn the basics of the business. That starts with Christ and having a Christ-centered foundation.

Gresham Harkless 1:39

Absolutely. Well, you're doing an absolutely phenomenal job. Especially I've been to events and sometimes I know my gift is not an event planning. So I don't take for granted any of this stuff I see because you assume that everything just happens. You just walk in there and it happens but there's definitely people behind the scenes of you, creating the strategy and executing on that strategy. That's what sounds like what you do.

Dee McCoy 1:41

Absolutely.

Gresham Harkless 1:50

Awesome, awesome, awesome. Could you tell me a little bit about how you got started? Can you tell me what I call your CEO story?

Dee McCoy 2:04

So for me, I kind of started in hotels, so all of the tables and chairs and meetings with clients to get them to book into a hotel. I started as the hotel's point of contact, what I learned in that is that a lot of clients don't understand hotel speak, they don't understand the hotel's vision for your event, which is very different than the client's vision.

So what prompted me to kind of start my own business is to take the knowledge that I have as a hospitality professional, and use that to help my clients get their vision to kind of align or work in tandem with the hotel's vision so that everybody's on the same page to make the event a success from the hotel, hitting their numbers and getting all of their eyes dotted and T's crossed, and then the client's vision to having their event be as successful and as legendary as they'd like it to be.

Gresham Harkless 2:57

That makes perfect sense and it's funny, and again, I haven't been a lot of, event marketing or event planning but sometimes I forget, I didn't even think about it until you just said it about the hotel or whatever the venue having their own goals that they're trying to hit as well, too. So to be able to kind of dial into that and make sure that that is understood and executed on every level. It's huge. Did you just decide that you wanted to get started, like one day? Or was it something that took a little bit of time?

Dee McCoy 3:22

So it was a kind of a marriage of two things? I had a lot of clients who would ask me, so what does this mean in a contract? How fluid is that? What can I do? Then from the hotel side, there are times when you're like, I don't understand why they don't get it. Why don't they know what I mean? When I say certain things, my clients would ask me kind of off the record, so what can I do? what can I do? And Why did they say this? What does that mean? I would talk to them outside of business or sometimes after hours, sometimes on the phone at home.

One day my husband was like, why don't you do that for yourself? They clearly know that you're the expert, they call you. They don't call your boss, they don't call somebody else. You haven't worked with them in three years. They're in another city, but they're asking you to help them like why don't you do that on your own? And then I was like, Well, I'm not really sure. Then I kind of gave myself a goal like by this date I want to do and then my husband was always like So you ready to do it? This isn't the time that I said, I'm never ready. Finally, he was like you're really ready, either start as a consultant and get them to pay you for the knowledge that they know you have.

Then so I started that way and then I had a lot of clients that were consulting that it was like, Okay, now I need to do this for real because it is meant for me to take this to the next step. So I started to pull back a little from my hospitality job and pour more into a different avenue of hospitality because it's still hospitality. It's just kind of making the difference between one person saying one thing and one person saying the other thing when they're really saying the same thing. They're just using different terms.

Gresham Harkless 4:58

It's kind of like a translator or something. Interesting, interesting. It's definitely huge because you don't know, what the other being the hotel venue actually wants and he kind of wants to understand exactly what the client wants to be able to have that a win-win situation. So it kind of sounds like that's exactly what you've done.

Dee McCoy 5:14

Absolutely and because I have the hospitality lingo because I worked in hotels, I am able to take the client's vision and put that into Okay Hotelier. This is what they're asking, this is what they want. I know this covers this, this, and this. Once I used their language, then they know that I know what I'm talking about and the conversation changes because they now see me as a partner, because they know they can talk to me on their terms. I can relate that back to the client in their terms, and everybody's happy,

Gresham Harkless 5:43

Absolutely a win-win situation. So I love that. And I know, you touched on it a little bit, was there any more you can add to it? How do you work with clients? And what do you do to kind of get them started? How do they find you? What do they do every day?

Dee McCoy 5:53

So I'm on social media, a lot of my marketing and imagery is geared towards more social events in terms of weddings, and parties, and things like that. But I do corporate events, summits, and workshops, such as the one we're attending, clients can find me online events by MDM Associates, you'll find me and what I always start with, I have a questionnaire, it's about seven pages, but it's a lot of if you don't need it, you don't have to, fill this part out. What it does is builds the foundation.

From there, after I look through everything and compile everything that I need for the next step, then we schedule a discovery call that lasts about 15 minutes, I have five key questions that I need to know in order to know first, if we're the right fit, to make sure that I am the planner for you, and that you're the client for me because we need that synergy that has to be there first.

So after we, go there, then we start into building what the next steps look like to go from their pricing, comes into what contracting terms look like what exactly it is. Then sometimes we hit a place and that's all we need. And then there are some times when we started on a path of I just need this. And then the direction changed because now you see additional areas in which I can offer assistance. Because while yes, I do staging and table decor and things like that, if you need me to call the hotel and negotiate your entire contract, I can do that too.

If you don't like the adage of champagne tastes and then kind of Boxed Wine budget but if you are a more budget-conscious person, I'm going to make sure that it looks like a champagne budget, because everyone deserves to have that special moment. Whether it's a conference, whether it's your wedding, your event is your event, and I am the difference between an average event and an exceptional event.

Gresham Harkless 7:49

Absolutely, absolutely. I love that. And I love especially, making sure that you do a lot of the work, it sounds like in the very beginning, if I have a question or you understand if they're on the same page, if you're on the same page, as far as we are able to execute exactly what you want and I love that as far as like the execution as well, too. So now I wanted to ask you for what I call your secret sauce and this could be your unique selling proposition, what do you feel kind of distinguishes you or makes you unique?

Dee McCoy 8:11

So when I started my business and knew what we were going to call it because it is me, I am the D in my business. My name is Deseret and that's what the D is. My husband, however, was the driving force behind me actually taking the step. He is the first M in my business. The last M is our last name, McCoy because together, this is what we do. This is who we are, if I need a wall built, he is going to build it. If I want to make that phone call today, I have a really difficult client, he is the one that's like taking time away from everything else, find your space, find your time, do it. You know what it is you need to do, go ahead and handle it.

So that was easy but was not as easy as defining my business. I knew what it was we do. I knew why we do it but it was kind of what set us apart. One of my girlfriends was like it's you. You're the difference. You are so detailed and so on top of you have already thought of three more questions after you ask your first question and from there, that's where our tagline came. “The difference is in the details”. I am the difference but the details, the attention to detail that I pay is what makes sure that every event that I am a part of whether I'm in charge of it, whether I'm behind the scenes, whether I'm an attendee, I am going to make sure that if I see something that isn't flowing right,

I may overstep and say you guys know you should be doing this as opposed to this, why don't you do and then I will go back and say, no, I'm not running your event but let me explain to you what I saw, and what I did and why I did it. Because I want you to know, I'm not trying to step on your toes but I want your event to be flawless because when you're running an event, you don't see all of the things that happen all the time. If I see it, I'm gonna say it.

Gresham Harkless 9:59

Right, I absolutely love that and I love that because it's the details but it's also the experience with the details because I think you can be very detail-oriented, I have never run an event in life, and you don't really see all those details. So I really love that experience because I was just talking with somebody earlier and I was saying that I saw something on Instagram that said that somebody paid a contractor to come and fix whatever it is that they need to get fixed. They came, and it took literally 10 minutes for them to turn a screw and figure out exactly what the issue was, but you didn't pay them for the 10 minutes, you pay them for that 10 years of experience, learning how to turn that screw. So kind of sounds like the same.

Dee McCoy 10:32

Absolutely.

Gresham Harkless 10:32

Awesome, awesome, awesome. So what I wanted to do was switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack and this might be an app or book or habit that you have but it's something that makes you more effective and efficient.

Dee McCoy 10:42

So for me time is one of the most important factors in my personal life, my professional life and so my clients as well. In order to keep up with industry trends and things like that you have to be on social media and have a social media presence. Social media can take up a lot of your time. For a business person, it has to be strategic, it has to be well thought out but it takes up a lot of your time. That's your greatest commodity.

So for me, it's an app that's called RECUR POST, you can post to up to three social media platforms for free, you can schedule your posts out, and you can go as far out as the app will let you. I have it scheduled to post on various different days at various different times based on you know, the different algorithms of what time of day, get the most hits, and things like that But the app also prompts you or what it says are the best times. Sometimes these apps kind of talk to each other, so what I'd do occasionally is if it's telling me that that's the best time to post, I'd pick that time to see what happens and if that doesn't work, then I go back to what has shown is beneficial to my business on the different platforms.

What that also does is it allows me to, say on posting to Instagram, and then the other two platforms that I use are Twitter and Google, it allows me to take that content, and it reminds me to do it. So I know that it's happening at that time. It'll remind me to go to Instagram, it'll make sure that I'm not on my personal Instagram, I'm on my professional Instagram because I like to mix them when I want to I don't want all of my posts about my business to come from my personal page, I like to talk about my personal stuff on my personal page.

Gresham Harkless 12:23

That makes perfect sense. It's kind of like your business can be open 24/7 You don't have to be up 24/7. Now I want to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping to have different “CEOs” on the show. So I want to ask you what does being a CEO means to you.

Dee McCoy 12:38

So for me, you know, my business is events, that is my area of expertise. So the traditional definition of CEO is different for me because it kind of mirrors all of my passions. The C is for creative, because when you think of an event, a workshop, the room that we're in the flowers, make it different, and that brought in new creative. You're still here for a workshop, but it kind of brightens the room, it puts something different in it. This isn't just your average Summit. So it shouldn't look like your average meeting room.

You don't necessarily feel like you're in a meeting. When we were setting up yesterday, the banquet staff saw all the florals and all the vases and we're like, I thought this was like a workshop, it looks like a party. So that let me know that what my vision was, was spot on the E is for experience and events, I create epic experiences. My passion is events. So regardless of whether it's a workshop with summit or training, it is still an experience. It is an event, you came here for something transformative to happen. So I bring that in.

Then the O is the organizer. That is what I do. You came in for a creative event that was organized, and everything went according to plan, we deviated a little bit, and things changed around a little, but you still got everything that you came for and that is where my definition of CEO differs from the traditional definition but it is still in alignment with what a CEO is.

Gresham Harkless 14:05

Absolutely, absolutely. Because you need all those skills in order to execute and do everything that you need to do to be successful. So I absolutely love that definition. And I appreciate your time. I want to pass you the mic just to see if there was anything additional to let our readers and our listeners know and then how best they could find you.

Dee McCoy 14:19

I think the first thing that I'll say is to constantly be learning, learn your craft, hone your craft become the expert. The person that people know when they think of whatever it is that you do, they think of you, they don't think of what you do, they think of you and know that you're going to take that to the next level for them. And then always with that learning, learn something that pours back into you. This summit is not necessarily speaking to my event planning my event management, but it's speaking to me about what I do with my events I give everything I have to my events.

It is a representation of me but after I have poured all of that, into that event, I need something to come back into me this event and events like it pour back into me. They fill me back up so that my cup is now running over so the next event isn't taking everything out of me because I have poured it back into myself. You have to constantly fill both of your houses, you have to fill the house that pours out within you have to constantly pour back into yourself because you can't give to somebody what you don't have yourself.

Gresham Harkless 15:29

Absolutely, absolutely love that as a great reminder, keep your cup full and keep your oxygen mask on. So people that want to get a hotel with you, what's the best way for them to do that?

Dee McCoy 15:36

The best way to find me on social media platforms, whether it's Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, I'm on Snapchat because my Millennials tell me I have to be. You can find me there. It's events by MDM Associates. If you search for that, you'll find me on all of those platforms. You can also reach me via telephone at 240-390-6361. You can text that number, you can call that number, whichever way you need to reach me in either of those methods. I'm there for you.

Gresham Harkless 16:09

Awesome, awesome, awesome. We'll have those links and information in the show notes as well so that anybody can just scroll down and find you and hear about all the awesome things that you're doing and hopefully book you as well too. So I appreciate you for all the awesome things you're doing. Have a great rest of the day.

Dee McCoy 16:21

Thanks, you too.

Outro 16:23

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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