Hello everyone and welcome to another elite episode of the Get Authentic with Marcus Shell. I'm your host Marcus Ogden on today's episode where you are joined by Miss Christina Feynman. But before we bring up Christina to the stage, I want to thank one of our amazing sponsors, Peak Lodge. Quick question for the leaders listening right now. If your business looks strong on paper but you're showing up with less energy, less focus or less drive, what's that really costing you? Here's the truth. Most high performers think they're fine. They push harder, drink more coffee, grind it out. Not realizing their biggest limitations are effort issues, they're hitting blind spots. You can't fix what you can't see. And no amount of hustle overrides a system that's out of alignment. That's why I parted with Dr. Tracy Gappin and the Peak Lodge team. A physician-led precision performance medicine system built specifically for driven leaders. Peak Lodge combines advanced diagnostics, personalized medical strategy, and high touch support to help you restore your energy, sharpen your focus, and expand your capacity to lead and win. This isn't wellness. This is real precision performance medicine for leaders who refuse to slow down. If you're ready to stop guessing and start optimizing, grab their free high performance guides and schedule a complimentary discovery call today. Head to peaklodge.com/guide and take the first step towards reclaiming your edge. Now here she is, Christine. I do that, Christina. I'm great. How are you? Well, thank you. You're awesome lady. We met through one of our amazing. We both have the same client, Shrewd Cordia. Got chance to work with you. You're a top professional in your space. So excited to dive into that. But first things first, Christina, what does the word authentic/authenticity mean to you? That is a great question. And obviously I've been thinking about that a lot. I know that's how we start these out. And I think for me personally, when I'm the most authentic, it's the crossroads of all my core values, where my vision, my integrity, my values, my faith, my humor, everything that makes me me, really me, when all those things cross and meet up, that's where I'm the most authentic. And if all those things meet up, my faith isn't in there. That's somehow I'm doing something where that can't really cross in. That's okay, right? I can't be walking around with all my flags flying all the time. But I think when all those things cross is when I'm just truly the most authentic me that I can possibly be, when my humor, if I'm working with somebody who probably doesn't really want me to joke around, or humor is a big part of who I am. And that's fine. But at that moment, I'm probably not my most authentic self because I can't correct jokes. That's just how it goes sometimes. I eat. Well, I'll tell you what, Christina, we were finished after the event, which we got amazing feedback when we spoke for Tru Courtia, sitting with you and Leslie and Chelsea in the game. It was probably one of the best times I had with the client that everybody was just aligned to having fun. But everybody at that table is a top-line professional. And that's awesome again. We have top-line professionals that can have fun, can joke, and do humor. It makes the day go by so much faster just in my opinion. So, Christina, please tell us a little more about your journey and the work you do to help serve your client base. Yeah, absolutely. So I am part owner of an event management, corporate event management company called Grand Connection. And we started the company back in 1999. I worked at another company with my business partner. We both were working for another event management company. She left in 1999 to start Grand Connection. She just had kind of had it with the corporate world and the job that we were doing. And then I got a call in 2001 saying, wow, I'm busier than I can handle myself. Do you want in on this project? No guarantees. Have no idea what's going to happen. But I know that I need some help. And I said, absolutely. So, we started. This was the birth of the internet back in the early 2000s. So we started by building websites, building event apps. I mean, we were doing this before really anybody else was. Most of our clients were not interested in a website to register. They still wanted to fill up facts forms, which was a lot of what we did. They wanted to fax in registration forms for events. And we moved them along with us. But we just wanted to do things differently. We just felt like we had a better idea on how to manage events. And we also wanted to work from home. So we were remote before remote was chic. And we actually hid that we were remote. When someone would say, let's come by your office, we'd be like, no, we'll come to your office. That's OK. Because when working remote in the early 2000s, you lacked credibility with a lot of people. We were working with some big players. We worked with some of the big furniture manufacturing companies. We worked with a lot of big organizations. And we wanted to be credible, but we also wanted to be at home. There was no reason for us to pay for bricks and mortar for what we do. We do event people sort of work in silos. We do collaborate, but for the most part, we're doing our own thing. And there was no reason to rent an office. And everybody come in and sit down and did ask and do the work that we were doing. That we could have done at home. So we really invested in technology. We were on the cutting-- we were on the front edge of everything. We were implementing everything early on. And that really served us well because we were just hungry. And that's kind of what it came down to as we-- nobody was going to outhustle us. Nobody was going to work harder than us. And we grew from just a couple of us to where we are now. My partner actually just retired this summer. But we have about 10 employees. And we have quite a few extra staff that we use when we have really big events. And we have staff at airports and things. But that was sort of the birth of grand connection. But we manage large corporate events. We manage board meetings. Everything in the middle. We work with companies across the country. And I'm based in Michigan. So a lot of our clients are based here. But that's kind of how we started it out. Love this. Ladies and gentlemen, what I love is Christina talked about how when she took the lead to join her partner, there wasn't a lot of security. Her partner said, look, I don't know what's going to happen. And sometimes in light, we have a plan. But as one of my favorite quotes from Gerald to White the Eisenhower, the plan was useless. The planning was indispensable. Have to learn how to adjust, pivot, go on the fly. And I also thought Christina said they were innovative. They were disruptor. They were cutting edge. They didn't have an office. They didn't seem to need to spend a lot of money on brick and more trying to look a certain way. They worked from home. They were also disruptors with the internet and websites and apps. And again, ladies and gentlemen, if today you don't have a website or today, you don't have to use an app. You're in trouble. So they were very innovative, which is we all know from my bison acronym, the B is boldness, fortune, favors, the bold. So this is fantastic. Christina, before we get into the work, you do us an event planner with grand connections and how you built your staff and how you serve your clients. I want you to actually walk us through what that looks like, because the people say, oh, I could be the bent. I'm like, why don't we understand what kind of goals involved into this process? It's not just, I'll call a hotel. And I'm good to go. It's a lot more than that. So we'll get to that in a moment. But Christina, here's my next question. How does being authentic and showing authenticity allow you to excel in the work you do for your clients? I think in this industry, it's really easy to prioritize the wrong things. The appearance of an event is making money.
and things like that. And I think that creating something that's very real is important. And I think authenticity leans itself to that. Like, if we look at events, not as just big productions, but as opportunities to serve people, we're all about the human experience. Everything that I do, the baseline is, what is this experience? I must say, I probably say experience, well, at least in my head, a thousand times a day. What is the experience? Whether it's the attendee, whether it's the client, whether it's people like you who are coming and speaking, I wanna make sure that your experience is amazing. All those things. So I think being authentic in that and really caring about the human experience and builds trust with attendees. It builds trust with my clients and honestly, and my job, I think that trust is probably the biggest takeaway for me. Like the biggest one I can get is having my clients trust me and ultimately having the people come to the events, like trust, trust the event, trust their, like my client is usually the, who's putting on the event. We're not generally doing events where we're funding them and trying to get people to sign up to come to it. Like our events are, someone comes to us and says, this is what I wanna do and we help support that vision. So, but building trust is just huge because if a client trusts me, I can do my job better. Like events are high pressure, high profile times for clients. Like and it can get stressful. And if they can trust me to make quick decisions without like checking back on every teeny tiny thing, that's gonna help all of us succeed. And in our clients are really our partners. So, you know, I'm just invested in their success as they are because we don't really do one and done events. Everyone that we work with, we're partners. You know, that's what we look at. You know, how we look at everything is, I wanna be a partner. I don't wanna just come in and do. We get proposals where, you know, maybe there's a huge conference that's just gonna be one time in Grand Rapids and they want some support. But then they're gonna move on and not take us with them. And we turned down a lot of that stuff because all that's gonna do is tap out the staff and it's gonna poorly affect our other clients because we're not gonna be able to be there for them. And that's just not the business that we're looking for. We're looking for kind of that, you know, trusting and loyal relationship. And boy, saying that out loud, like trust and loyalty in the corporate world are just really kind of two things that are a little hard to come by these days. And that's really our goal. - Dina, I'm so excited to dive more into this because you said a few key things. Ladies and gentlemen, Christina said it's about the experience and I tell you all the time, deliver excellent customer experience. Not customer service. Customer experience, which means from the beginning of the sales process to the end, that's customer experience. Customer service is when something is coming back when you complete something, something goes wrong, you need to fix it, which is still important. But customer experience is everything because she is a hundred percent right. These conferences, events are high pressure, high stress they have to move on schedule. You have to keep up with the agenda. You can't let things go too long. And again, it is absolutely pivotal that the audience knows that you are there for them and you're not there for yourself. So this is big. So Christina, I had the pleasure of working with you for Trucordia in Scottsdale at the Furniture Nation. That event was five star. It went off perfectly and it was just amazing to see your team and the Trucordia team operate at such a high level in a very stressful tense environment. Can you please walk us through Christina? How are you and your awesome organization? What did you all do? Like take us from like beginning through the process. And this is used that event as an example because again, I would like to know there's a lot of coordination, collaboration and communication that goes into being a successful event planner and running a successful organization like yours. - Yeah, so that was a great event. Love the Furniture Nation. So was an event like that and was working with Trucordia who just loved working with them so much because we do have that kind of partnership and that trust relationship and it just makes it, it makes it so much easier and I mean joyful to do the work when you're working with someone who you know trusts you and you know that you can do the very best job you possibly can. You're not kind of fighting every step of the way. But an event like that, yeah, you know, they reach out and they say, hey, we want to do this event for these people. This is the audience in this particular one. It was producers and top producers and this is about the time we want to do it and then we start kind of just brainstorming. Where do we want to have this? Does it, what's the most important thing? Like it doesn't need to be easy in and out. Does it need to be, is the most important thing that we find an amazing resort? You know, so we really kind of drill down like what are the most important things in finding a location? You know, once we do that, we then we search for availability. We package all that up and go through the results and contract and then we negotiate the contracts and we get in there and we are trying to get concessions for our clients. We want free rooms, we want discounts, we want upgrades, we want lower rates, we want all these things, we want to be able to give you the list of names as close to the meeting as possible. All the things that will make it easier for us to do our job and make it attractive for the client to come to this property. Once it's decided, then in this event, like we did all the food and beverage. So we're figuring out when the meals are going to be and how many people are going to be there and you've got dietary constraints and so picking menus isn't just like, oh, this is what we want to have. You're thinking through all of those things and we have the production team that comes in and they're coming in early and working with schedules and when the trucks can come into the dock and when the room's going to be set up because everything is on a time frame. So until the room is set up, we can't get linens down, we can't get share setup, we can't put materials out. It's a million little tiny details that you're just constantly thinking through. I don't know if you noticed we have a little box that has all the little meds in it, little aspirants and antioxidants and a little tight stick. Just the things that make everyone's experience better. So not only are we doing the big things like we got to make sure that the schedules work out for the production to load in and build a stage, I want to make sure if you have a headache that we've got some ibuprofen for you. And then all the, we had an offsite event that night. So we found a location and we set up transportation and we want to make sure that the experience is great for the attendees. So we want to pick some place that they're going to have a good time and they're going to have great food offerings. There's budget. We all these things have to be done within a certain budget. So we're constantly crunching numbers. Everything is more expensive now. I mean, I'm just scratching the surface of the details that go into it, but we build an event app. So then all the information, everything that anyone could possibly want to know goes into that event app. And if it has anything to do with the event, it's going to live in that app. And if somebody asks me a question that's not in the app, I'm going to go over and I'm going to open it up and I'm going to add the answer to that question under the FAQs if it's something that we missed. We are just this constant movement of information and details. And then, I mean, and then what's going on in the room? The, you know, what's happening from the stage, we don't really build out the content, but we're working through schedules. When, if I get an agenda and there's not a break time worked in, I'm going to say, like, how do you got to give these people a break? If they're after an hour and a half, you're losing them. There's a few things we've learned in 27 years. Like, I have a pretty good feeling about how people operate and work and where things land with them. they're sitting in a room. Is it too hot? Is it too cold? Do they have something to drink?
I mean, I could go on forever about all that stuff. But yeah, we go through that. We build the registration websites, we get everyone registered, we do the communication, we make sure everyone knows where they're supposed to be, when they're supposed to be there. We, in this one, we didn't do airport transportation, but a lot of times we do, we have shuttles going back and forth, bringing people where they're supposed to go. And then we show up on site and implement the whole thing. Easy. - Yeah, easy, sure. That is sounds easy, easy. Let's jump. This is why Christina is so phenomenal at her job, because she said it best. It's the little details that add up to the big experience. If you want to make people feel valued and important and special, you have to tailor your stuff to them. And at the event we did together at the Phoenician, it felt like everything was customized specifically for Truquania, from the app to the experience, to the stage, to the props, to the table, to the colors, to everything, right? To the photo shoot, to like all the things they had, it was made specifically for Truquania. And ladies and gentlemen, this is what it's all about, because a lot of times people don't understand, you need to go the extra mile, and it gives that goes back to excellent customer experience, which is exactly what Christina and her team do. Christina, I have a question for you. We get a lot of people that listen to this podcast that are speakers. I've had the pleasure of you hearing me, so I know what you look for in speakers, but I'd love to hear from you. You have the wisdom, you have the experience, and you have been in the business for almost three decades. What do you and the state event players in general look for from an excellent keynote speaker to work with at your event? - Yeah, we had a great conversation about this. For me, what I'm generally looking for, I mean, one of the big things is just budget, that usually there is a very firm dollar amount that we can spend. So that might be the starting point, but once you put budget aside, I want a speaker who is going to put the work in before they show up to understand the client, to understand who they're talking to, to understand what the needs are, to understand what we want them to take away. Like, what's the most important? When people walk out of that room, what do we want them to be feeling? Do we want them to be energized? Do we want them to be informed? Do we want them to be excited? Do we want them to be thinking about certain things to have like take away in homework, whatever the sort of feeling that we need. I want to know that a speaker is going to put in the time to learn that in Taylor, they're talking to what we're looking for there. I think people are smart, and they realize very quickly when someone walks on the stage, if they're just giving a speech, that they took off a shelf, they're out of a box, and it's the same speech that they're giving today, and they'll do next week, and they'll do next month. They know that. They really want to feel, and like when you were speaking to us, like it was very obvious that you knew what TrueCortie was all about, knew who your audience was, because you can know what the company does, but there's a million different audiences within the company. So knew what that audience was, and listened to what they said that they really needed to hear from you. And I think that's the number one thing. Someone who is really going to do the work, to get that talk to where it needs to be for the group that's in the room. - Ladies and gentlemen, customized presentations, active listening, someone that is going to craft something that is specifically made by the client, the theme of the event, and speak to the audience in the client's event or the client's room. That's everything. Again, being a great keynote speaker is not about what you want or what you want to say. It's about your clients, the experience, and delivering to them what they need to hear from you to be able to do better and be better in their individual businesses, for the organization, in their work, and in their craft, from whom they are working for. Again, that's why I was so excited. I was so grateful for working with Shukordia and we're doing a lot more work with them. And Christine's in this week's her network that I'm introducing her to my network because the trust factor is there. Christina, phenomenal interview. If our global audience wanted to get in touch with you, find out more information. How would they go about doing that? - You know, you can go to grandconnection.com and fill out our, we've got an intake form there. You can email me
[email protected] and I'm happy to hear from anybody. We only do corporate events. I always say we don't do weddings. If I do your wedding, you're probably going to cry at some point because just not really what we're here for. But we do corporate events of all shapes and sizes and we would love to hear from anyone who is interested about learning more about what we do or that needs support at any level. - Nathan John, man, I can tell you from personal experience, right? Christina is great at her craft. She is very responsive. She is very quick to get back to people and she really knows her stuff. I just introduced her to one of my, as she was my first ever coaching client that works for a very large agriculture company because I believe Christina can bring in this value to him and the work he's doing when he puts on events for his company. So I could see her being a great asset to him. So now the connection was made. So ladies and gentlemen, please go and reach out to her, go to her website, she will email again, she's very responsive and she will get back to you. Again, we want to thank one of our amazing sponsors, peak launch, sponsoring this episode and the authentic tip of this great interview. In light, look to really build collaborations with people. The way Christina and her company have collaborative partner mentality with like Schuńkordia and several other, several other of their amazing clients. Again, collaboration be a collaborative partner, not just a vendor. A vendor you will shop, a collaborative partner, you will work with no matter what, again and again and again. Again, my name is Marcus Othman. I am the host of the Get Authentic with Marcus Show. Thanks for tuning in. Have a fantastic day. (upbeat music) (whooshing) [BLANK_AUDIO]
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