Maximizing event experiences and activations through strategic event builds with Matt Kalb

Matthew Kalb [00:00:00]:

What we see a lot in the industry is there's such a disconnect between the sales team and then the event staff and it's more beneficial for everyone if we can all come together. You get your sales team, your events team, and even your general service contractor in that same conversation of what you're trying to accomplish so you can achieve the same goal, and that's a successful event that benefits your attendees and that they look forward to coming back next year.

Alyssa Peltier [00:00:26]:

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.

Rachel Andrews [00:00:38]:

I'm Rachel.

Felicia Asiedu [00:00:39]:

And I'm Felicia.

Alyssa Peltier [00:00:40]:

And you are listening to Great Events, the podcast for all event enthusiasts, creators, and innovators in the world of events and marketing.

Rachel Andrews [00:00:51]:

Hi everyone. What is going on in this wide, wide world of events? My name is Rachel and I am your host for today's episode. I am so excited today on this episode, we have my good friend Matt Kalb, VP of Client Experience at T3 Expo. Hi, Matt.

Matthew Kalb [00:01:07]:

Hey there, Rachel. How's it going?

Rachel Andrews [00:01:09]:

Welcome to the show. I just have to brag about Matt for a second. He is the newly named 2025 MPI Rocky Mountain Chapter President. Matt and I met in Denver a few years ago and Matt was also our general services contractor for Cvent CONNECT, so we got to know each other pretty well during the planning process, but Matt is super involved in the meetings and events industry. He is a highly sought after keynote speaker, moderator, facilitator, and being that passionate person, he is also an international CEM instructor for IAEE.

Rachel Andrews [00:01:42]:

And then of course, he's the VP of Client Experience at T3, which is a general contractor and expo services company like I mentioned. So, let's get into it.

Matthew Kalb [00:01:51]:

Yeah, excited to be here, Rachel. I really appreciate the invite. This industry is really funny of how it works and how it unfolds where you end up, because you never really know how it's going to go because you meet so many amazing people in this industry, it's relationship driven. I started out working in Baltimore for an NFL subcontractor doing crowd control and security, so those ushers that are put into place to help make sure that people are safe in those different sections, and then putting the bodies there. That was a lot of fun, but then the long hours were kind of getting tiresome and I was working at a restaurant at the same time, since I was in college, not making a ton of money. Ended up meeting someone at the restaurant who worked for a company in D.C. 

Matthew Kalb [00:02:33]:

I told them I worked in events and wanted to stay in events and they got me an interview that was with a company, Hargrove, and that was my first real introduction into the live events industry doing trade shows, corporate events, and a whole lot of government events.

From there, it just kind of exploded. I was pretty much told early in my career that if you want to be successful in this career, you need to get involved with the local chapters of industry associations. And the company at the time I worked for was great about that. They allowed me to get involved with PCMA, which was really big in the DC area, MPI, IAEE, go attend their events, the chapter events and their national events, getting involved with committees.

Matthew Kalb [00:03:21]:

And that's really the linchpin of what my career really became about was just staying involved. And 15 plus years later, I'm still really active with every chapter that is in my local area and then even from the global side now teaching with IAEE internationally.

Rachel Andrews [00:03:40]:

That's awesome. And you're now the Denver chapter president of MPI. Congrats on that. That's going to be a fun year.

Matthew Kalb [00:03:47]:

Thank you. Thank you. It's kind of wild, because originally my presidency was supposed to start in this past July, but there was some transitions from global to the chapter level moving from a fiscal year to a calendar year, and that extended all of our positions a full six months. So now, my presidency takes over in January of 2025, so I have a little bit of extra runway to kind of prepare, so it's actually really helpful and exciting and nerve-wracking at the same time.

Rachel Andrews [00:04:18]:

I'm sure you're going to do great. I'm excited to be a part of it and it's a really fun chapter we have out here in Denver and I'm excited to see what you bring to it. So. Well, let's, let's dive into the meat of today. We're talking trends and all things Matt just helped produce. Cvent Connect t three was our general contractor in San Antonio. It got me thinking when we were, you know, talking on site about all the things that general contractors do and some of our learning lessons, we had a general contractor, a good one, can make or break some of your things that you do at an event. Let's level set for the people that don't know what a general contractor or decorator or expo services company.

Rachel Andrews [00:04:55]:

I'm sure you're going to do great. I'm excited to be a part of it and it's a really fun chapter we have out here in Denver and I'm excited to see what you bring to it. So, well let's dive into the meat of today. We are checking trends and all things, Matt just helped produce Cvent CONNECT, T3 was our general contractor in San Antonio. It got me thinking, when we were talking on site about all the things that general contractors do and some of our learning lessons, we had a general contractor, a good one, can make or break some of your things that you do at an event. Let's level set for the people that don't know what a general contractor or decorator or expo services company, what does a company like that do? What does T3 specifically do? And break down what a general contractor does for industry shows or events.

Matthew Kalb [00:05:06]:

Yeah, it's a very big responsibility, being a general service contractor because we do have our hands in a lot of moving pieces within the event, but to over generalize it, just to kind of help people understand what we do, is we would be hired by the association or corporate company to help produce their user's conference or a conference in trade show that has exhibitions portion and we work in tandem as an extension of their team and help coordinate all of the builds, all of the graphics, the registration area, activations that might be on the show floor. We work with the exhibitors that are actually part of the show that create the conference center.

And then we can build their booth and work with them on the logistics. We're delivering freight, so that's all the things that they're shipping to make their booth look good. We'll coordinate with the local unions in every single city, work with the different buildings. We have a creative team, we have strategy teams.

Matthew Kalb [00:06:10]:

 It really can be such a wide range of what we can do, but the ultimate idea of what a general service contractor is is that team member extension of your team that helps produce and execute your event in a way that makes your team more efficient and can focus on other things.

Rachel Andrews [00:06:29]:

For the listeners that don't know, I mean general contractors can do all sorts of things. We use T3 for our expo booths, we use them for our activations, booth build, signage, just being an extension of staffing even sometimes. But I like working with general service contractors because your GSC can really help create some magic at your shows and build things or bring new ideas into a large event or a small event that can help with the attendee experience and whether it's an activation you're bringing to a show that you're attending, if you're going to a show or you're hosting your own show, I feel like there's a lot that can be brought into the show.

So, I know you mentioned activations. 

Rachel Andrews [00:07:11]:

Before we go into trends and challenges, I want to talk about activations because I feel like they're all the rage right now, but one, what is an activation? How would you define an activation? And then, there's just a lot of questions I have. How do you make them successful? How do people do activations without breaking the bank? Any standout examples you have or can you explain a little bit more to our listeners?

Matthew Kalb [00:07:34]:

The way that I look at an activation is ultimately it's a shareable moment, and that activation is something that you can bring your attendees to have an experience, whether that's networking, a learning opportunity, some sort of giveaway, maybe even the experience that we brought to Cvent CONNECT in the human claw that has that ability to people to share it and kind of have a little bit of FOMO. Because what you want to do with these activations is create that curiosity from year to year of, if I attend this event next year, what type of activations are they going to bring? And be excited to see what that is.

And in the past, a lot of events would just do this copy-paste mentality. So their activation might be something super simple, paint by number, which can be fun, but they would just do that every single year and then attendees just get used to it and then when they walk in, they're just like, "Oh, it's the same thing."

Matthew Kalb [00:08:29]:

So you kind of lose that spark of curiosity and that FOMO of, "Oh, if I don't go next year, I already know what I'm missing." So an activation is an opportunity for our partners to create that experience and also potentially an additional ROI for a sponsor that is looking for maybe brand recognition or generating leads, working with them to discover what that is and what they're trying to accomplish is really important.

So, one of the things that I look at when talking about activations is what is the actual purpose of the activation and does it align with your brand's values? Because a lot of times, people will try to just attach their name to an activation that maybe doesn't align with them. For instance, at T3, we don't really like to promote drinking alcohol, so we don't want to sponsor any activations that involve alcohol because then it looks like T3, that is a value of theirs, to be drinking and we try to look at that angle with every single activation and sponsor and company to incorporate that in what we're going to offer.

Rachel Andrews [00:09:40]:

Yeah, that's interesting. I always struggle with activations. It really depends on, so for example, if we're exhibiting at a show, going to an attended event versus a hosted event that we do. We're going to a show, you also have to look at the audience that's going and see, okay, I think I agree with you, you have to align with your brand, but who's actually going to be there and who's going to be enjoying this? We've seen a lot of cool activations. You mentioned we did a human claw at Cvent CONNECT, which was hilarious. If anyone that didn't go to Cvent CONNECT, if you Google human claw machine, we did it and people just had a blast with it,

Rachel Andrews [00:10:16]:

but we activated it in a way where you had to complete something before you were able to do it, right? So you had to go look at five products or something on a checklist before you went and you got to do this activation.

And so, I wouldn't just offer free things, because a lot of times the trade shows, you're going around and you're just picking up free tchotchkes and then they're scanning your badge, but did that really bring you value as an attendee? Did that really bring you value as an exhibitor? Maybe not, but if you can incorporate an activation in a way that they engage with you, I feel like that's where you have the money activations and that's where the attendees are more engaged, if they're gamified or if there's something in it for them and for you that make it more successful. And I saw a couple of people, there's a few activations where you go and you sit with people and you make something together. And then that is a more valuable conversation than just picking up a swag item that you're probably going to throw away in six months.

Matthew Kalb [00:11:15]:

So true. That was the exercise that we did with y'all at Cvent CONNECT was when we introduced the idea of the human claw, we need to think of an activation that was going to draw people to do it, and it wasn't something that just everyone could participate in because that kind of takes away the impact of it. So, the idea of introducing that if you walk in, you see this giant claw and if you want to participate, you have to execute a few different tasks in order to do that. And then once you have one or two people do it and then they're up in the claw, people start talking, they're taking photos and then they're interested. So the idea and the purpose of that was this final kind of step or final activation that you could participate at if you did XYZ.

And that's what we have to do with our audience.

Matthew Kalb [00:12:02]:

It's like, what do we think that they're going to be interested in? Where are they coming from? Thinking even regionally. You look at companies like McDonald's, they don't have the same menu across the world. It's all determined on what region they're in, because you're going to have a different menu in Germany than you are in Baltimore, Maryland. So how can you utilize that information with your audience and your event and not just have the same exact activation in each city because it's going to be a different audience?

Rachel Andrews [00:12:32]:

Yeah. How have you seen your customers or people in the industry measure the impact of these activations? Have you seen any success?

Matthew Kalb [00:12:42]:

That's a great question because success is subjective. How do you measure success? Is it the amount of leads that you're getting in? Is it the amount of shareable moments? That's what we call them where people are posting it online and hashtagging your event or your company that's associated with, is it just having that brand awareness where people are there in the booth and enjoying themselves? So, having that discussion with the partners and then the potential sponsors is, what are they looking for? So that way we can accomplish that goal and success and their definition of it.

Rachel Andrews [00:13:18]:

Yeah, I guess you have to define that beforehand with your stakeholders. What do you want to get out of it? Do you want just to scan a bunch of leads or do you want to have this one-on-one setup afterwards? Do you want to have meaningful conversations? Do you want them to be part of a bigger activation where you're providing an experience, taking them somewhere off site potentially? Because that could be an activation as well, but activations, I think, is just activating a space for your brand. But you're right, you have to define that before you get there. Otherwise, if you just go without a plan and you're just like, "I'm just going to have a fun cowboy walk around and you're like, "But what are they actually doing for you? Are they bringing brand awareness? How do you measure that?" Right?

Matthew Kalb [00:13:58]:

It's so true because it's the first step. If you don't define it, then how can you give a successful activation if you're not sure how you define success for that activation?

Rachel Andrews [00:14:08]:

Yeah. Cool. I want to change subjects a little bit to sponsorship, and which could actually tie into activations as well if you deem that necessary or appropriate for your revenue strategy. But when event designers are looking at crafting an event, they should also be looking at how to craft a sponsorship prospectus if that's part of their overall goal for their program. How have you personally or you seen in the industry people setting up a successful sponsorship program or a sponsorship prospectus?

Matthew Kalb [00:14:42]:

In my experience, it just starts with transparency and working with your general service contractor, partnering with them, and help trying to understand what is the goal of that sponsorship? Is it strictly for getting more exposures for your sponsors so that way you have a long list? Is it a huge revenue generator for you and what ultimately are you trying to get to? Because the more that you can have those conversations as your contractor with the sponsorship, they can help price it out and share with you what the cost is going to be to produce something. So then, if you are trying to make a large revenue off of it, you know where you need to mark it up.

We see a lot of clients in the industry that will come to us and say, "Here's something that we're selling for $20,000. Can you produce something like this?" Absolutely we can, but what type of impact are you looking for with it and is that $20,000 going to give you the value and make you enough money based on what you're trying to accomplish? So, it's really hard when you don't have that transparency with your general service contractor and just be open about what you're trying to do with the sponsorship and areas that you want to make more money, if it's signage, graphic wise or if it is activations.

Rachel Andrews [00:16:03]:

I love when there's more transparency and someone tells me, "Here's what it's going to cost you to build this activation." And then you can turn around and say, "Okay, this is what we could sell it for." That doesn't happen often in the industry. A lot of times, you get the question back where, "Well, what are you trying to accomplish?" It's like, okay, I understand that we need to have that, but what I'm trying to accomplish is putting it on the sponsorship prospectus to sell it. That's one, and two, the other thing is finding the happy medium between creating value for your attendees and keeping a sponsor happy, I think, can be very difficult if you don't have the right things on your sponsorship prospectus. If you're just putting random things that your sponsors don't want to buy and your attendees don't like, then you're doing it wrong.

Matthew Kalb [00:16:50]:

It's so true. We'll even see when some sponsors, the clients and partners are not being flexible. It's like they give this prospectus out and they're like, "This is the hard cost. These are the benefits of it," but maybe some of those benefits aren't what that sponsor's looking for. So the more flexible you are with those benefits, oftentimes it becomes easier to make that sale for the sponsor because they're looking for something specific. It's negotiating, because when you get stuck in that, it's in writing, this is exactly what you're getting.

Matthew Kalb [00:17:22]:

There's no changing around. It can end up stopping a sale and increasing those sponsorships just by two or three small things, and maybe they just don't want any online presence. They want all of it, one site.

Rachel Andrews [00:17:35]:

Yeah, that's fair. I think my number one goal is to benefit the event. And by that, I mean make your event better. So if you're just putting a booth outside of your registration table and those people are hard selling people, it might not be the most beneficial thing for your event, but your sponsor might pay top dollar for it. So you just have to weigh the pros and the cons of what your company wants.

The other flip side of that is if attendees don't like it, then your sponsor is not going to see the return from it. So, you have to keep that in mind when you're putting things on there.

Rachel Andrews [00:18:09]:

It's like, yeah, you might benefit your bottom line, but if your attendees don't engage with it, you might actually hurt your relationship more with that sponsor than help it.

Matthew Kalb [00:18:18]:

It's such a delicate balance of finding that, and what we see a lot in the industry is there's such a disconnect between the sales team and then the event staff. And it's more beneficial for everyone if we can all come together. You get your sales team, your events team, and even your general service contractor in that same conversation of what you're trying to accomplish so you can achieve the same goal, and that's a successful event that benefits your attendees and that they look forward to coming back next year.

Rachel Andrews [00:18:47]:

Yeah, fair. Cool. Okay, moving on to a really easy topic of sustainability that everybody has figured out. Right, everyone? 

Matthew Kalb [00:18:53]:

Everyone. Yep.

Rachel Andrews [00:18:55]:

Okay. I ask this all the time. How do you still have a badass event with all the things that you normally give to attendees while still being sustainable? Do you have the answer for us?

Matthew Kalb [00:19:09]:

No, I don't have the answer, but it comes back to the same kind of curiosity that you have to approach things, it's like, what are you trying to be sustainable with? Everyone has this ultimate goal of, we want to be net zero by 2050. Great, but then what are the steps you're taking? Can you work with partners that can give small increments of that? I think of the old saying with recycling that you think globally, but act locally. What can you do within your small event in different areas? Talking to your general service contractor, your audio visual provider, what are things that they can do to help shift that needle into sustainability? Because if you are truly going into an event and say, "I want to be 100% sustainable," unless you have a lot of money, it's pretty much impossible to do. So how can we just make small changes with that?

Rachel Andrews [00:20:00]:

MPI is doing some things to try to help with their sustainability committee, and I know everybody's talking about it in every association in the meetings and events industry, and I think the hard part is that a lot of global companies, it comes from their corporate policy as well. So it's like the events team is trying. They also have to work with their travel programs, their corporate goals in conjunction with what they're doing. They almost have to fight upwards sometimes to do the things that they want to do because, as duty of care experts, we're the ones that, probably alongside travel and procurement, we're thinking about it probably the most. And so we're all trying to create this change, but I think you're saying of act locally, but also consider the global impact is smart. 

Rachel Andrews [00:20:49]:

And I think you can do small things at your programs.

Where I struggle a lot, and you and I talked about this, is how expensive it is to be sustainable. It's like the dirty secret that nobody's really talking about, but when you get quotes to get sustainable products, it's more expensive.

Matthew Kalb [00:21:05]:

It is. And there's a challenging thing in our industry right now, it's like a green washing up cycle, is we all will say, "We're going to take this leftover graphics and we're going to move it to teachers and the schools and they're going to use it." That's awesome. That's a great reuse. But what happens from that point, when it gets to the teachers, if you're recycling all of these water bottles and you're letting someone else use it, what happens from that point where they get trashed?

So, it's just kind of passing the baton of the responsibility of the sustainability. So unless you have this end goal, it's really hard to see it from that 10,000 foot above. And I think a lot of what I've seen in the industry is the carbon emission offsets where they'll say, "We're going to plant 10,000 trees to offset our emissions from traveling."

Matthew Kalb [00:21:59]:

And on paper, that sounds incredible, but the reality is if you plant trees, it takes 30 years for those trees to actually grow. So, you have to pay all of these people and use resources to grow the trees before they even can offset your one single event. So, it's just this perception of, what are you actually doing with sustainability for your event?

Rachel Andrews [00:22:24]:

Yeah. Well, from the general services side, doing recyclable signage, for example, sometimes that can be more expensive, no?

Matthew Kalb [00:22:33]:

It used to be. It's evening out to enough where it's not a huge difference like it used to when it first started coming out, there's enough products and there's a lot of facilities now that are actually moving towards 100% sustainable materials that when you bring it into the convention center, so that way you can't even use things like foam board that are not recyclable. So a lot of contractors had to find the materials that were more cost effective because we can't pass that on.

And also, when we pass that cost on, it's just a poor reflection on general service contractors. And with what we're doing, the challenge is shipping. You think about the emissions that we are putting and having to truck things around. 

Matthew Kalb [00:23:20]:

So, a lot of general service contractors were looking at it in a different approach of creating materials that can be packed into smaller containers. So, instead of using 10 trailers at an event, maybe we can get away with only using five trailers at an event because we're using more packable materials.

Rachel Andrews [00:23:40]:

eah. I think that that's important on the vendor side for you all to market that, so the planners know that that's something that can happen because that's something that I may not have thought of right away because you guys are the owners of that space. But we ask all the time when we source bids and things like that, how are you sustainable? And I think if we're just talking about it more, it'll help us talk to our leadership and say, here are the things that our vendors are doing that actually impact this event. 

Rachel Andrews [00:24:11]:

That, I think, is just a healthy partnership that we can do a better job at.

Matthew Kalb [00:24:15]:

Yeah, because it's interesting, if you're looking at the sustainability and business models from most vendors, it's the idea that they own the equipment and then they can reuse it from show to show. That is the business model. That can also be reworded as, that's their sustainability practice is that they are reusing the same materials from show to show. So it's just being aware that the same thing, both can be true, not just believe the words that you're saying, but ask the follow-up questions like, what does that actually mean?

Rachel Andrews [00:24:48]:

Okay. I'm going to just go into what are, just open floor, some of the biggest trends or challenges? And some of them might be in the topics we just talked about, but some of the biggest trends or challenges you think that the industry is seeing today.

Matthew Kalb [00:25:03]:

The biggest challenge that I see is when event marketers, event managers don't truly understand their show. They don't know how much freight, how much the exhibitors are shipping in, they don't understand the turnkey process, they don't understand what the general service contractor is providing because without that information, it is a huge disadvantage for those event planners to, when they're looking for additional vendors and partners to work with, because that is their show's information and what allows them to understand how to grow their event. Is their show growing? Are they seeing decline in maybe certain areas?

So, when we're having conversations and I'm meeting people throughout the industry and I'm asking them and they don't really truly understand the event yet, I see it being a huge opportunity for event managers to understand their event completely, not just from how many meeting rooms, how much space that you need, what's your food and beverage and hotels.

Matthew Kalb [00:26:13]:

That's one. And then transparency. It's something that has been a battle since I got into the industry is just, be willing to share your budget with your partners. Yes, it's a business and you need to make money, your vendors need to make money, but if you have a partner that can understand your budget, they can build that experience with the budget restrictions and keeping that in mind to maximize that ROI and that activation feel for the event if you can share that and work with them.

Rachel Andrews [00:26:48]:

Yeah. I'm going to brag on Matt and T3 for a second because they have a very open door policy when it comes to budgeting. They have a live, is it Google spreadsheet? Is it Google?

Matthew Kalb [00:27:00]:

A Google Sheet, yeah.

Rachel Andrews [00:27:02]:

Yeah, a Google Sheet where you can see what everything costs. And so if you want to update an amount or add something, it's a live working document so you can see what it will cost you if you need to add an activation, add a booth, add more carpet, whatever it is, which really helps because then you can see where you might go over if you go cut one thing or go over on another. I think contractors can learn something from that because honestly, it helps make our lives a little bit easier, especially for onsite ads. That's been the biggest challenge for me working with general contractors, or even EV companies is you can plan and plan and plan, but there's always stuff that comes on site that you almost need to factor a buffer in for. And if you can just have that transparency up into the event and you know, okay, if I add 10 more stools, this is what it's going to cost me.

Rachel Andrews [00:27:55]:

Have you seen a lot of success from that? I'm assuming yes.

Matthew Kalb [00:27:59]:

Absolutely. I mean we build a buffer into every event that we're working with, especially that first year where you don't know exactly how it's going to go on site, because oftentimes when you're working with a general service contractor, clients will work with them anywhere between five years to 30 years before they would make a change. And that relationship, things were just done in the past, so they were getting taken care of or moved and then added to the bill last minute. So when we first work with clients, we want to make sure we are prepared for any potential issues, but then at the same time, it's letting you know that, "Hey, we're building this into the budget just in case." But as you saw, we didn't even touch half of that and we took it off of the bill at the end. We build what you actually use.

But it has helped a lot for our clients to be able to breathe a little bit easier than holding their breath at the end of the event of like, what's the bill going to come in at? Because it usually will go down more than go up.

Rachel Andrews [00:29:04]:

You'd be surprised, that's not the norm. Sometimes when I get bills back, you'd be surprised how many vendors will charge upwards of 100K over what the bid was without communicating to you on site. And I feel that when it's that much over without a conversation, it gets into a very gray area of ethics, in my opinion, that should never be the case when you're working with somebody in the industry.

Matthew Kalb [00:29:33]:

Yeah. That ethical part comes into play with that, and I struggled with it in my career, but now working for a company that were very transparent and honest about that. It can be challenging when we're trying to get new business because we're often more expensive at the front because we don't have anything that's going to be billed at the end. So when you're looking at it bottom line, it's more expensive. I mean it's more expensive working with us, but ultimately it ends up being the same or cheaper.

Rachel Andrews [00:30:04]:

Yeah, I think that that's another big beef I have when you're doing bid comparison, right? The non-incumbent bids are always lower than the person that's worked with you before because the person that's worked with you before understands what your show costs, and the folks coming in will oftentimes undercut it to win the business, but then when you award it and they have up sells and hidden costs or things that happen on site, luckily that wasn't our experience with you, but it has happened to us a lot. So, I wish that there was more of a standardized practice within AV companies, general contractors, et cetera, that that helps event planners understand all those things that might hit them.

Matthew Kalb [00:30:48]:

And that's the beautiful thing about that challenge. It's an opportunity because as an event planner, you own all of that information at the event. So when you start working with those vendors, when you're getting close to the end of the show, you ask, "Give me as much information about what you did on site. Where did you add? Where did we change? Where did we shift?" So that way you can keep that history. So if you do go out to bid, you can share that with the other vendors because the more information you have, the better opportunity you do have to compare those apples to apples.

And a very good indicator of not knowing your show well is if you go out to bid, your incumbent gives you one, and then the people bidding on the event are light years more expensive because they don't know what the event really entails and how expensive or how much more revenue it can make from their side. So they're going to have to take a shot in the dark.

Matthew Kalb [00:31:45]:

But if you have all that information that you can share, then they can be more competitive with their pricing.

Rachel Andrews [00:31:50]:

Well, do you have any pieces of advice for our listeners, either working with a general contractor or just in general?

Matthew Kalb [00:31:57]:

In general, get out there and get involved with your industry associations, your local chapters? This industry is filled with so many brilliant people, and I learn from so many different people. I don't know everything at all. I'm constantly learning in every single event I go to and meet new people, I feel like I am gaining another little tidbit of knowledge, of learning what other people are doing. So just get outside of your own little bubble of your own event and see what other people are doing, what other events are doing, have those conversations. If there's one thing I've realized even more about this industry is it is so supportive and it's such a strong community that people are willing to share their knowledge and their failures. 

Matthew Kalb [00:32:48]:

I have no problem sharing when I screw up because it's important to help other people from potentially doing that in the future.

Rachel Andrews [00:32:56]:

Yeah, amen to that. I know we all make mistakes, but that's the best way to learn. And talking to other people, I feel like I'm lucky to have friends like Matt that you can just call and say, hey, is this weird or am I thinking about this the right way? That's why you get involved in organizations like PCMA, MPI, ASAE, IAE. If you're in the expo space like or an exhibit space like I feel like those organizations help share that information more. So I definitely echo that. If you're not involved, definitely get involved. Like my biggest excuse when I first started my career, Washington, I don't have time. I'm doing like 400 events a year.

Rachel Andrews [00:33:36]:

Yeah. Amen to that. I know we all make mistakes, but that's the best way to learn, and talking to other people. I feel like I'm lucky to have friends like Matt that you can just call and say, "Hey, is this weird? Or am I thinking about this the right way?" That's why you get involved in organizations like PCMA, MPI, ASAEE, IAEE if you're in the expo space or in exhibit space. I feel like those organizations help share that information more. So, I definitely echo that. If you're not involved, definitely get involved.

My biggest excuse when I first started my career was, I don't have time. I'm doing 400 events a year. I don't have time to get involved. And you kind of just have to make yourself get involved because it did help having that network of people to lean on because no one in your family, unless they're in the industry, is going to understand the wild, wild world of crazy live events especially, and the hoops we have to go through, the plates we're spinning. No one's going to understand that like someone in the association that you're more closely tied to, but it's great. Amen to that.

Matthew Kalb [00:34:07]:

So just the other thing I would say within this industry is set your boundaries with your vendors and with your own company and stick to them, because we are an industry that thrives on chaos and juggling 7,000 things at once, but we do have a mental health crisis, and I think it's important that we are taking care of ourselves. So set those boundaries and stick to them. I know it's tough, but it'll help you work better and more efficiently when you do that. That's something I've learned the hard way through medical challenges.

Rachel Andrews [00:34:47]:

I mean that's really important, to be able to say yes or no or else you're not going to be able to survive. I used to say back in the day, "I eat stress for breakfast," and now I realize how unhealthy that is. It's like a funny thing to brag about, but it's not funny anymore. It's like, okay, let's not use this as fuel. Let's try to have mental health be at the forefront.

Matthew Kalb [00:35:14]:

Sure I used to be the same way.

Rachel Andrews [00:35:16]:

Oh my goodness. Well, Matt, thank you so much for providing your insights today on our Great Events podcast. Finally, where can our listeners find you? I know you have a lot going on in 2025, so they should definitely follow you, at least on LinkedIn, right?

Matthew Kalb [00:35:30]:

Yeah. LinkedIn is a good place to start. I'm in the process of finalizing my website where you'll be able to reach out to me directly for any keynote or facilitating, and then if you want to get involved with general service contractor side, LinkedIn or T3expo.com to learn a little bit more about what we can do.

Rachel Andrews [00:35:49]:

Cool. We'll provide those links to all of our listeners. And Matt, thanks again, and T3, thanks for a great Cvent CONNECT again. Great to have you. I hope our listeners learned something today. They can always obviously reach out to me or Matt if you have any questions about how to work with a general service contractor. We're here for you. Lean on your community. I know it's always a learning lesson for me, but to our listeners, thanks for joining in and we'll see you next time.

Alyssa Peltier [00:36:18]:

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.

Rachel Andrews [00:36:28]:

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.

Felicia Asiedu [00:36:38]:

Stay connected with us on social media for behind the scenes content, updates, and some extra doses of inspiration.

Rachel Andrews [00:36:45]:

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.

Felicia Asiedu [00:36:54]:

Big thanks to our amazing listeners, our guest speakers, and the incredible team behind the scenes. Remember, every great event begins with great people.

Alyssa Peltier [00:37:04]:

And that's a wrap. Keep creating, keep innovating, and keep joining us as we redefine how to make events great.