Building A Resilient Career In The Events Industry

[00:00:00] Angie Smith: I was interviewing for CMO roles at other technology companies, and I thought that wasn't going to be my path, and I realized it. And I really had to get over that psychological barrier of imposter syndrome and say, "You know what? What's the worst that could happen?"

[00:00:15] Alyssa Peltier: Great events create great brands, but pulling off an event that engages, excites, and connects audiences, well, that takes a village, and we're that village. My name is Alyssa.

[00:00:26] Rachel Andrews: I'm Rachel.

[00:00:28] Kelly Cheng: I'm Kelly.

[00:00:28] Felicia Asiedu: And I'm Felicia.

[00:00:30] Alyssa Peltier: And you are listening to Great Events, the podcast for all event enthusiasts, creators, and innovators in the world of events and marketing.

[00:00:38] Rachel Andrews: What is up in the wide, wide world of events? My name is Rachel, and you are listening to Great Events on the Road, a podcast by Cvent.

Very excited to be here. We are on-site at an industry event currently and having the best time, but while we were here, we decided it's CEMA. Let's talk to some awesome power players in the industry about what's going on. And so let's get into it. I have with me, my dear friend, Angie Smith. She is the CEO of Invision, and I'm so happy that you're on the podcast.

Welcome.

[00:01:10] Angie Smith: Thanks for inviting me, Rachel. I'm excited too.

[00:01:13] Rachel Andrews: Yes, me too. So Angie and I have recently become friends and have talked extensively about different things in the industry. But before we do, I love to have our guests that come on talk about who they are and, as a person, how'd you get into the events industry?

Tell us a little about your career journey because I think it's inspiring for some folks to hear your journey with everything that you've done and given back to the industry. So tell me about you.

[00:01:38] Angie Smith: Thank you. I actually started in the industry as a travel agent. I accidentally fell into doing group travel and hotel contracts for events.

Loved that, but I was really curious what happens at the actual event and dabbled in the registration side of events because I was very interested in the data around it and eventually moved into trade shows and then corporate events. And it actually has not been a linear journey at all.

I've spent most of my career on the brand side of tech companies managing large-scale user conferences or trade show portfolios. I've worked on the agency side a couple of times, and I think that my whole intention as a career was just, I was filled with so much goodness from this community and people around me that I wanted to make sure that I was intentional about giving equally as much back.

So to your point, I've been very active in the CEMA community and PCMA communities. And I think from my perspective, as I was building my career, I got way more learning from everyone else than I probably had to offer to everyone else.

[00:02:57] Rachel Andrews: That's the beauty of these things, especially when you're with your peers, people that just get you.

You can ask pretty much any question. Someone in the room has been through it, and you can find your people to bounce things off of.

[00:03:09] Angie Smith: For sure. 

The crazy side of my story, though, too, is in the last 20 years I've lost my job twice. And not because I wanted to lose the job. I got laid off, and my job was eliminated in two instances. And the reality is without this community, I would not be where I am today. It really mattered in times. It's not just about having a bunch of people on LinkedIn that are occasional folks that you see. It's actually developing relationships with those people because I am where I am today because of all of that.

[00:03:44] Rachel Andrews: Definitely. I feel like sometimes our failures are more important than our successes. We learn and move forward.

[00:03:51] Angie Smith: We got to position it as that for sure.

[00:03:52] Rachel Andrews: At least that's what I tell myself.

[00:03:54] Angie Smith: Yeah, very true.

[00:03:56] Rachel Andrews: Cool. Well, so then how did you become CEO of Invision?

[00:03:59] Angie Smith: Well, this is not on my bingo card. For many, many years, Rachel, I carried a bit of a chip on my shoulder, and I think it's important to share this because people who maybe didn't know me very well didn't know this about me, but I sort of came up from a farming community in Nebraska. My brother was an incredible athlete. My family was very successful in their own right, but I wasn't a great student. But I was a hustler, and I always felt like I had so much to prove to everyone who said, "Well, you're probably going to go be a hairdresser or something," because I really was interested in beauty.

But all of that to say, I carried a chip on my shoulder: I had to prove something. But I realized eventually, after a very long time, I didn't need to prove anything to anyone. I just needed to show up and feel confident enough in myself. So I mention that because becoming CEO of Invision was through a friend of a friend of a friend, somebody who I used to work for who said, "Hey, do you know anybody that would be interested in being the CEO of Invision? We're hiring our first-ever CEO." And from my perspective, I gave that person a list of people that I thought would be a great CEO.

[00:05:13] Rachel Andrews: And didn't have your name on it?

[00:05:14] Angie Smith: It didn't have my name on it.

And I was interviewing for CMO roles at other technology companies, and I thought, you know what? I hate technology. No offense, Cvent. I love technology to use it, but I didn't have passion around being the CMO for a SaaS company in the tech space in California.

[00:05:33] Rachel Andrews: It's so sexy to market technology.

[00:05:35] Angie Smith: But you know what? You have a really special product and a really special portfolio. But all of that to say, that wasn't going to be my path, and I realized it. And that same person said, "Why didn't you put your name on the list?" And I really had to get over that psychological barrier of imposter syndrome and say, "You know what?

What's the worst that could happen? I could suck at this, or I could just surround myself with great people and learn something from it." And here I am two and a half years later. I have made a lot of mistakes, but I've equally taken those and learned from them.

[00:06:08] Rachel Andrews: Oh my gosh. I also think that people in the events world are the most closely tied to CEO function because we work with every department. We understand how businesses work, how people work, how budgets work, how legal works. And so our CEO has actually said this before to me. He's like, "You work with just as many people at the company as I do sometimes as you're working with all the departments." It was kind of like, "Wow, okay, maybe I'll be here. I'll take your job one day."

[00:06:36] Angie Smith: Yes.

[00:06:36] Rachel Andrews: I think that that's probably awesome for some people. You're an inspiration to people that may want to follow in the footsteps of that or become their own CEO. I think people need to learn from folks like you that it's okay to fail, it's okay to try, it's okay to say, "All right, this isn't my passion, but maybe this is." How full is your bucket over here versus here?

[00:06:55] Angie Smith: My thing is I did the travel side of it. I did the housing contract side of it. I did the registration and data analytics. I ran content strategy. I started a strategy and digital practice at Invision years ago when I was there and then left and created a full field marketing and event portfolio at Atlassian. I think rolling your sleeves up and doing all of those things is just going to make us more well-rounded. And to your point, in what you are doing and what Cvent is doing, you are in the bowels of all of that happening, and you're right, you're influencing all levers within the company.

[00:07:33] Rachel Andrews: Well, it's also kind of like the strategy of Ritz or Marriott. They start people in every department so that they have empathy for what other people are doing. Probably for you, and I want to ask you about just the agency side of the events industry, because I feel like when you come in maybe as a student or something, you don't really know how many different avenues or ways you could go, and the agency side is definitely one.

But yeah, just going to all the different things and having empathy for what everybody does has probably helped serve you well as a CEO of a major agency in our space. But tell us a little bit, for people that maybe are students, we have a lot of students that listen to this, what that looks like in the industry to work at an agency.

[00:08:12] Angie Smith: For 34 years—well, we're just celebrating 35 years. I got to get that right. 35 years as an agency. I'm the first CEO outside of the founders when they sold the company to the employees four years ago. So now we're an employee-owned agency, and we are 72%, 74% women. We have primarily a female leadership team, but I think the juice of all of that is we built a company in a ballroom doing production work like this amazing setup. But the secret sauce is all of this amazing content that's happening on a stage or in a podcast or behind a screen, is all of the tangential things that happen around it. So we're an experiential marketing agency, but we're a full end-to-end campaign.

So, if we're talking about environmental signage or we're talking about producing the event or we're talking about out-of-home advertising, promoting the event, we're full end-to-end, and that's newer for us, but a beautiful parlay about extending the breadth of what this event business is all about because so much goodness is happening in a ballroom or right here on this couch. And so then what are we doing with this after we're finished? There's a lot to do with it. And so we really focus on the long tail of what happens.

[00:09:34] Rachel Andrews: That's awesome. 

I feel like there's a lot of folks out there that don't have necessarily a big team or something that may want to go the agency route and don't know where to start. Where do they start?

[00:09:45] Angie Smith: I think really getting clear on what you're trying to solve. And at the end of the day, you could hire an agency to do just about everything. It's going to be expensive at face value, but it's also really expensive to hire a full-time employee and keep them busy 12 months a year.

And when you add in a full, all-in salary and the juxtaposition of having somebody that's a utility player that's good at a bunch of things, that's really expensive to have on staff. So I think, as you're thinking about agency partners or just one single job that you need to have done, it's just being super clear on what it is you're trying to solve for. That will be way less expensive if you're super clear.

[00:10:32] Rachel Andrews: Well, if you're not getting backfills for headcount right now, that might be where you put in your programming budget for an agency because it's happening everywhere.

[00:10:40] Angie Smith: The pandemic was such a learning experience for all of us, and I hate the word pivot, but I remember just the veins in my throat being so passionate about to my leadership: "Please don't make me lay anybody off on my team. I promise you, you give me eight months, we will be digital marketers."

And they're like, "Angie, how is that possible? You hired a bunch of event people." I'm like, "I promise you."

[00:11:04] Rachel Andrews: We are hustlers. We'll learn anything.

[00:11:06] Angie Smith: Right? And we did. We learned how to be digital marketers because the only way to communicate with our audience was in this format.

[00:11:14] Rachel Andrews: Right? 

[00:11:14] Angie Smith: And I think at the end of the day, in the work that most event people on the brand side are dealing with now, they don't have the luxury of that time. An agency partner is great. "Hey, I have a need right now. My CEO wants something in three months. Can you help be my arms and legs that I just literally don't have right now?" Do you need another arm and leg?

[00:11:38] Rachel Andrews: Yeah, I need multiple. I need octopuses. Let's talk a little bit more about what's going on in the industry. So we're seeing a lot of global trends and things on AI. What are you all seeing?

[00:11:48] Angie Smith: I hope nobody's irritated by me bringing this up, but this question keeps coming up to me. "Angie, you're the CEO of an agency. Can you show me how AI is saving you money and time, and can you give me a 10% discount off of all of the services that I'm buying from you?" My thing is, AI is not a math equation, and we are starting to treat it like a math equation. And I think what AI has the ability to do is profound and a lot of things that we're not even aware of today, but what it isn't going to do is take 10% off the top of what you're spending and everything.

[00:12:27] Rachel Andrews: Not yet anyway. It's not there.

[00:12:29] Angie Smith: And I think that we're naive to be even asking a question like that. What we should be asking is: How can AI make my work better? How can AI make my programs or my event portfolio more relevant to what my customers and clients need right now? Because what they need right now is not the same as what they needed 8 months ago or 12 months ago. So I think that's what I'm seeing a lot of. How can it save me money? I'm like, "I think we're asking the wrong question."

[00:13:00] Rachel Andrews: How can it make it better?

[00:13:01] Angie Smith: But on the other side, AI, how it is helping us as an agency from a practical perspective, we internally work on Teams, Slack, Box, Asana, email, you get the gist. We've built an agent that scrapes all of that every day, and every morning at 7:00 AM, everybody can open their email and see what they need to focus on.

That might've taken me an hour before, or maybe others only 20 minutes, but now it's a minute or two. And when you add up that kind of productivity savings across 170 employees, it makes a difference.

[00:13:37] Rachel Andrews: That's the math equation to focus on.

[00:13:39] Angie Smith: That is the math equation to focus on. Or I have a client who came with a really interesting theme for their conference a few months ago. They wanted this turn-of-the-century story, and they wanted a cinematic approach to this story, and we had basically 30 days until their show. We could use chat and AI tools between Beautiful.ai and Claude and build this cinematic, amazing story on the 60-foot-wide screen that they didn't have the budget for, but that AI could help us bring to life in a way that wasn't totally bespoke and custom for them, but could make it more beautiful.

[00:14:17] Rachel Andrews: Yeah, I feel like there's so many examples. For me, right now, it's just a lot of work to build all the different systems and agents, and what do we want our org chart to look like to support this? And there's a lot of like, "Management's asking for a lot of data." There are things like attendee support, chat, organizing the takeaways from certain project management meetings, that stuff is awesome, but we're still building the foundational things right now to put into place, and it's taking more time right now to do that. Then I think it's kind of one of those "if you build it, they'll come" situations where what you build will save you time eventually, maybe money, maybe productivity, but we're still dealing with a lot of the trust stuff. People are worried that it's going to take their jobs. I'm like, "Please, God, take parts of my job. I don't like doing some of this stuff." But you got to trust but verify with everything that you're doing. Not everything that I get back from Claude is right.

[00:15:09] Angie Smith: No.

[00:15:10] Rachel Andrews: And so you just need to be a little careful and build your governance. And it's so unsexy to say it like this, but you got to build your operational playbook, how to use it first, and then build your governance in, build your data in, because the data piece of it is the most important component of it. Because if that's wrong, everything else is wrong. It doesn't matter the output, you're doing it wrong.

[00:15:34] Angie Smith: I would love to touch on part of what you said because I think it's an unsung hero of AI that we're not capitalizing on yet. And that is, you made the comment of, "Yes, please take some of these tasks away from me." We have a really sick world that mentally is overwhelmed. We are not getting enough sleep. We are reliant on doing our actual work after 5:00 PM. And if some of that can be put into a normal day because they're administrative tasks and we actually all were able to show up a little more healthy, a little bit more rested, we actually are contributing in a major way to the work that we're doing and creating environments that people actually want to work in. And I don't know how to qualify or quantify what that is, but I've noticed, you just said it, and I heard it a couple of other times in the last few weeks. Wow, I would love my team to not be catching up on work at 10:00 PM.

[00:16:36] Rachel Andrews: I know. My God, that'd be great.

[00:16:38] Angie Smith: Yeah, wouldn't that be great?

[00:16:38] Rachel Andrews: It would be.

[00:16:39] Angie Smith: So let's talk about that a little bit more. It would be healthy for us to lean in and be okay to let go of those replicable tasks. It's not going to take your job away because it'll never have a conscience. It's never going to build trust, and it's never going to have empathy.

[00:16:55] Rachel Andrews: Yeah. Let's talk about advice for your younger self. If you were coming into this industry, what would be a piece of advice for anybody in the industry? If you're a rising leader, what would you say to someone who wants to aspire to that?

[00:17:10] Angie Smith: Yeah, I don't know that there's enough curiosity happening out there right now, and I know I certainly didn't have enough of it early in my career. I was like, "This is my job, and I need to check the things off the list, and here, I did my job." And I think that I really didn't make myself aware. And I think, for new people, whether you're just graduating from college and getting into this industry or you're trying to build a career, you have to have curiosity. And if it doesn't come naturally to you, there are ways to spark that joy. Make sure that you're working in an environment that you feel passionate about and that you feel supported. And I think that natural curiosity is the key word. And at the end of the day, that curiosity, I translate it into grit and determination, and I will hire people who apply for a job every day until Sunday if they have grit and curiosity over experience. Because I don't want the one with 25 years of experience that has seen everything and done anything, who isn't curious anymore. And you can see that—

[00:18:24] Rachel Andrews: Definitely.

[00:18:25] Angie Smith: —and notice that in people.

[00:18:26] Rachel Andrews: Oh, let me just tell you, when I'm interviewing somebody, my number one pet peeve is when they have zero questions. When I come to interviews, I ask a bajillion questions.

[00:18:35] Angie Smith: You want to be interviewing them almost.

[00:18:38] Rachel Andrews: Exactly. It should be the opposite. I should just show up and you start questioning me because this is your new home.

[00:18:43] Angie Smith: I love that you said that.

[00:18:44] Rachel Andrews: It drives me nuts.

[00:18:46] Angie Smith: I actually am so thrilled when someone takes over the conversation interviewing about something. I agree.

[00:18:54] Rachel Andrews: You spend the majority of your time with people that you work with. You have zero questions for me, and you're going to see my face, this mug, on Zoom every fricking day. You have zero questions? What?

[00:19:04] Angie Smith: Yeah, no, I agree. I think that curiosity is the one word, and I would just say your path is going to be different than my path.

[00:19:13] Rachel Andrews: Definitely.

[00:19:13] Angie Smith: And we have to quit, as humans or individuals, comparing ourselves to someone else's path. Because the reality is I left college 12 credits shy of getting my degree.

[00:19:25] Rachel Andrews: Oh, wow.

[00:19:25] Angie Smith: And I started working to help a family business, and I never went back. If I had a dollar for every person that asked me, "Why wouldn't you just go back and get the 12 credits?" I now have 30 years of experience. I don't even have the desire. 

[00:19:39] Rachel Andrews: Yeah, I hate school so much.

[00:19:41] Angie Smith: Right?

[00:19:42] Rachel Andrews: You got your street MBA.

[00:19:43] Angie Smith: I got the streak. I got some sneakers to prove it.

[00:19:48] Rachel Andrews: Yeah, exactly. Any current hot takes on what people should stop doing or start doing?

[00:19:54] Angie Smith: Okay. I don't know how you feel about this, Rachel, but I am super disappointed that everybody assumes that when you use an em dash, it's written by...

Okay, so just hear me out on this.

[00:20:06] Rachel Andrews: I love em dashes and the dot, dot, dot.

[00:20:07] Angie Smith: Right?

[00:20:07] Rachel Andrews: Those are my two punctuation faves.

[00:20:11] Angie Smith: Okay. I thought you were going to say, "Oh no, we got to..." Okay. So, for the very first time, I was working with a copywriter who was helping me build a website for a registration platform, and she loved em dashes. And this was 2007, and I was like, "Wow, I never learned really to use em dashes." So that's my hot take. I don't want to get rid of them. I actually would like to start a campaign about, "It's okay, you can actually tell outside of everything else somebody is saying, if they use an em dash, if it's ChatGPT."

I'm in this group of people that are other agency leaders, and one of them made a comment about an em dash that I used in a response, and he meant it jokingly, and I took it as a joke, like, "Oh, did you have ChatGPT write this response, Angie?" I was like, "Okay, he's trying to get me." And so I responded to him with a bunch of em dashes and three dots, and I also said, "Oh, and by the way, ChatGPT did not write this. You're welcome."

[00:21:19] Rachel Andrews: Yeah, I love that so much.

[00:21:20] Angie Smith: Right?

[00:21:22] Rachel Andrews: Okay. Well, I think we're closing in on our time here, but this conversation is so fun. I feel like we could go on for a while.

[00:21:29] Angie Smith: Next time, let's do it over a cocktail.

[00:21:31] Rachel Andrews: I know, I know. That can be arranged. Let's round it out. So where can people find you if they want to chat more? Or you're a great industry mentor and you have a lot of great advice for folks. Where can people find you and follow you?

[00:21:44] Angie Smith: Oh my goodness. I will always show up for CEMA. I am oftentimes at PCMA, but I spend a lot of time as a voyeur and a contributor on Forbes Business Council. I'm new on the Forbes Business Council this year. I love to blog about things that are important to me. So you can find me on LinkedIn and hopefully wherever you are. Maybe Cvent CONNECT next year.

[00:22:08] Rachel Andrews: Oh my God. Yeah. It's going to be so fun.

[00:22:09] Angie Smith: Good, good.

[00:22:10] Rachel Andrews: I'm very excited for that.

[00:22:11] Angie Smith: Me too.

[00:22:12] Rachel Andrews: Well, thank you so much for joining me on Great Events on the Road. It's been a pleasure to get to know you over the past year, and I hope that listeners will follow and learn from you in the future. So thanks for joining.

[00:22:24] Angie Smith: Thank you.

[00:22:25] Rachel Andrews: And to our listeners, thank you so much for joining Great Events on the Road. We'll see you next time.

[00:22:30] Angie Smith: Bye.

[00:22:35] Alyssa Peltier: Thanks for hanging out with us on Great Events, a podcast by Cvent. If you've been enjoying our podcast, make sure to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode.

[00:22:44] Rachel Andrews: And you can help fellow event professionals and marketers just like you discover Great Events by leaving us a rating on Apple, Spotify, or your preferred podcast platform.

[00:22:54] Felicia Asiedu: Stay connected with us on social media for behind-the-scenes content, updates, and some extra doses of inspiration.

[00:23:01] Rachel Andrews: Got a great story or an event to share? We want to hear from you. Find us on LinkedIn, send us a DM, or drop us a note at greatevents@cvent.com.

[00:23:12] Felicia Asiedu: Big thanks to our amazing listeners, our guest speakers, and the incredible team behind the scenes. Remember, every great event begins with great people.

[00:23:21] Alyssa Peltier: And that's a wrap. Keep creating, keep innovating, and keep joining us as we redefine how to make events great.