Huong Nguyen, CEO of Shiloh Events, shares insider tips on aligning events with client goals. Learn how she measures qualitative and quantitative ROI to guide clients in making informed, budget-conscious decisions about event formats and activities.
Start by asking the client: Why are they even putting on this event? What are they hoping to achieve? What's the ultimate call-to-action afterwards? Once you've got these goals nailed down, you can then begin to figure out the actual value you're getting out of it.
Huong Nguyen reveals her expert tips on navigating the process of reviewing AV proposals from different companies. Learn how to create a comprehensive presentation document for AV companies, ensuring a clear understanding of your event's needs.
Angela and Huong dive into the importance of measuring ROI for events. Discover how to identify both qualitative and quantitative factors to assess the success of your events. From tracking metrics like sales conversions to measuring product evangelization, learn the secrets to demonstrating the value of your event investments.
Huong Nguyen shares her insights on the power of AI tools in event planning. Discover how utilizing AI, like Chat GPT, can help you analyze attendee data, track revenue, and make informed decisions for event promotion. Remember, AI enhances our lives, it doesn't replace us!
Huong Nguyen, CEO & Founder of Shiloh Events
[00:00:00] Intro: Welcome to Corralling the Chaos podcast, where we talk publicly about the things you're worried about privately. My name is Angela Alea, and I'm your host. This is the event industry podcast for companies and crew, where we're going to go deep and nothing is off limits. Welcome back to corralling the chaos, where today we are going to talk about settling when it comes to your technology tools and why our industry can just no longer afford to do that.
[00:00:22] Angela Alea: Today we have a special guest with us, Huong Nguyen, who is the CEO and founder of Shiloh Events.
[00:00:30] as the head of this full service event agency, Huong spearheads the management and large scale production of corporate events for companies like Zoom, Microsoft, Samsung, Philips, all names we've all heard of, course delivering captivating experiences that leave a lasting impact on brands across the globe.
[00:00:50] Angela Alea: Prior to founding Shiloh, Huong managed communications for NASA and organized community events at ServiceNow. Huong's career has encompassed [00:01:00] event marketing, digital marketing, and community relations, positioning her as a well rounded expert in the industry. So welcome and so glad you join us.
[00:01:11] Huong Nguyen: Thank you so much for having me. I've been looking forward to this episode because budget management is one of those things that's could really break, make or break the entire return on investment of your event. So it's a really great topic to dive into and I have so many insights and lessons learned from my experience that I love to share to help, you know, to help other planners also be effective in their, with their money spend.
[00:01:34] Angela Alea: Yeah. I can't wait to dive into that topic too, because there's always this expectation and then there's reality, right? And. It's, you know, a lot of these companies are like, Hey, I want to do this, you know, crazy thing. And of course, anything's possible if you have the right budget. And I think sometimes people have.
[00:01:51] Unrealistic expectations, so it'll be great for you to kind of walk us through how you handle those things. So today, we are going to be talking [00:02:00] about building events around your client's goals, and how to manage some of those budgeting expectations. But first, before we dive into that, tell us a little bit about Shiloh Events and why, what led you to kind of start the company and how that all happened.
Huong Nguyen: Absolutely. Yeah, so I have such a huge passion for events. When I came to America at the age of eight, I didn't really know any English. I didn't know what the culture was. So one of the ways that I learned English was to watch culture TV and that was MTV, you know, music awards, Grammys. And that's how I got into the passion of events and just watching the entire production.
[00:02:34] And I always ask myself, you know, what would it be like to be in the room that where it all happened, where the decisions were being made and things were. You know, being ideated and so that excitement really got me into, okay, I'm going to go into a career with the vets. So I got my bachelor's in events management and then I got my MBA.
[00:02:54] And then from there I worked, you know, doing trade shows and conferences for NASA and for [00:03:00] ServiceNow. And then I realized I there's a gap in the industry right now because first of all, the industry is very stressful. And the way that I want to do events, I want to deliver peace. I want the people that I work with to experience peace whenever they're doing their logistics or, you know, coordinating the venue and the food.
[00:03:19] Like I want them to feel the sense of calmness in a stressful industry. And so what I picked Shiloh because it's a Hebrew word for peace. So when my clients hire me, they are hiring peace as an extension of their team. And so Shiloh is a full service agency. We do A to Z project management, logistics, execution, but we also help our clients strategize and we consult with them on like basically their entire program and help them develop it.
[00:03:46] So and, personally I've been in the industry for, 15 plus years now, and I love it. I don't plan on stopping. I, you know, if anything, I want to eventually do my own event for, to help elevate other planners into, you know, from a tactical thinking to strategic thinking. That would [00:04:00] be my next. What's
[00:04:01] Angela Alea: your next?
[00:04:02] That's the next thing. You've heard it here first. You heard it here. First of all, I just love the use
[00:04:07] Huong Nguyen: of the
[00:04:07] Angela Alea: word peace. Shiloh meant that, and I think that's so interesting, right? Because especially in today's world forget the, business of events. Life is hard, it's stressful, it's chaotic, and so to introduce the thought of peace is really great.
[00:04:26] Now when you add producing really high end events like you're talking about from Microsoft and Zoom and ServiceNow, that's a totally, that's a different level of stress, right? These are live events, there's no do overs, right? It's, now or never make or break it kind of thing. And so I love that because I think that's what all of these companies are buying, right?
[00:04:47] They're buying the vision. But they want to have a sense of peace in that journey that you're taking them through, right? They want to know
[00:04:55] Huong Nguyen: that they have confidence in you.
[00:04:57] Angela Alea: And that you're going to bring their vision into [00:05:00] reality. And they have a peace about that and a comfort. So I absolutely love
[00:05:03] Huong Nguyen: the use of that word
[00:05:04] Angela Alea: peace.
[00:05:05] I hope more in our industry learn to bring that out in each other and our customers. Because I think it would make it a little less chaotic. But you're obviously through Shiloh creating event experience. Again, for some really big names. Companies that don't invest in their events lightly, it's a really big deal to them, so
[00:05:23] Huong Nguyen: they have to have a healthy ROI.
[00:05:26] Angela Alea: So what are some examples of what ROI looks like for your clients?
[00:05:30] Huong Nguyen: Yeah, so our clients, you know, they vary in different sectors and industries and types of events as well. I mean, there's both big size conferences that have a large budget, and then there's smaller events. Then there's internal events for their employees and externally facing.
[00:05:45] So a healthy ROI for us, like it's not more, it's not, you know, it's more than just the money, right? It's time, it's people, it's relationships, career and conversion from customers, from attendees to customers. And it's all [00:06:00] invested into creating these. Meaningful experience that has one goal, which is to yield return for the company.
[00:06:07] We yield in revenue basically at the end of the day. So, but before we can even look at examples of ROI, like we need to understand our event goals. Like why are you even doing this event in the first, place? What's your objectives? What's. The, ultimate like call to action. And so they always ask me how much is it going to do X, Y, Z.
[00:06:26] And I always take a step back and ask them, what is your goal? What is your event objective? You know, how often do they not have a goal by the time you get to them?
[00:06:35] Angela Alea: How often is it that they haven't thought about that? They just wanted to look and feel this
[00:06:39] Huong Nguyen: way. Who knows yet what they want to come from it.
[00:06:42] Yeah. All the time I get prospects come to me and they say, I want to do a user conference for 500 people. How much is it going to take? And I said to them, okay what are your goals? And they're like we just want people. We just want to get people together and we want to evangelize our product.
[00:06:57] What else? What yeah. So [00:07:00] once we identify the goals, we can then start defining the ROI. And so for me and our agency. There's two types of ROI. There's qualitative and quantitative. And quantitative is where you, it's formulaic, right? Where you take the number of revenues for the conference, you minus the expense, you divide by the expense, you multiply by a hundred and you get a percentage of ROI.
[00:07:22] And most of the time it's negative because. It's hard to break even to be really honest with you when you're doing user conferences, even if you're getting sponsorship revenue. So it's formulaic and then it's, you know, then there's like conversion rates and there's renew contracts. Conversion from attendee to customers, but also expansion of that as well.
[00:07:43] Quantities of social media posts, you know, increase in followership, strong customer feedback. And all of these are. Quantitative, right? However, there are some clients that don't charge for their conferences, like internal events. How do you [00:08:00] quantitatively measure the ROI for that? Yeah. You know, and non profit events.
[00:08:04] So here's an example. We are working with a client that's doing a sales kickoff. And to be really honest with you, they really, you know, there was an internal discussion that they talked to each other. And I listened in and they're like what's the return on investment? And the executive and all the team said, I don't know.
[00:08:20] Like, how do you measure the return on investment for a sales kickoff, especially if it's internal events, right? Sometimes it's
[00:08:28] Angela Alea: easier to measure the loss by not doing it,
[00:08:33] Huong Nguyen: right?
[00:08:34] Angela Alea: Sometimes you can't afford not to do it. And sometimes I think our industry forgets to talk about that aspect of it.
[00:08:40] It's not just what you're going to get by doing it, but can you afford to not do
[00:08:45] Huong Nguyen: it? Exactly. And, you know the, answer to that would be for internal events. I think you cannot afford to not do it, meaning you have to do it, especially if you want to inspire your people to meet your sales quota for the year and you want to [00:09:00] educate them and give them the resources to effectively sell.
[00:09:03] And so the ROI for that quantitatively would be how many people actually downloaded the documents, right? How many sales did the, did that group make? Did they meet their sales quota? That's how you can quantitatively measure ROI. And so, you know, I think there are ways that like for us, the secret formula is first of all, understanding your event, like that's extremely important.
[00:09:28] You got to know what you're going into the event with. And then at the end of the day, what the outcome that you want that to be. So some examples outcome would be. Like I said, increase in sales net new sales, right? Sales from existing customers or increased morale, like low turnover at the end of the program.
[00:09:47] You know, views on demand content increased collaboration networks. You gotta start with that. So, cost for your event and the desired outcome. Yep, that's awesome. Yeah, and then there's [00:10:00] there's qualitative. And the qualitative is also that's something that you cannot measure. That's something like, for an example, if you really you know, you want to, if products evangelize, right?
[00:10:12] How do you measure that really, you know? So you gotta it's not just one thing that happens in time. That is your ROI. It's everything combined. Yeah, that's such,
[00:10:21] Angela Alea: it's such a great point. And it's, you gotta lead the customer on that journey, right? And help them to think about it the same way you are.
[00:10:29] Otherwise they're, viewing it through a totally different lens than, you are. And I think that's, the art of, doing this, right? Because it's not A plus B or one plus two always equals. Three, you know, it's just not always done that way, but talk to me a little bit. I saw a LinkedIn post you did That I think was fantastic around again expectation and Reality, right?
[00:10:52] And so talk to me about strategic budgeting and how you and your team handle those
[00:10:57] Huong Nguyen: tough budget conversations
[00:10:58] Angela Alea: with clients [00:11:00] and To your LinkedIn point post. I think you said something like hey a client comes to you and says Yeah, why is AV gonna cost me a quarter of a million dollars? Like how do you handle that?
[00:11:09] So talk
[00:11:10] Huong Nguyen: to us about that. Yeah, you know before I even do that There's a couple quotes that rings to my mind right now is like there's one quote that says Project plans are fiction because it hasn't happened yet, right? So budget same thing budget is a fiction like it's something that we fantasize and we create and we hope it's gonna happen but oftentimes like we always prep our client that we can meet your budget, we can go under budget, but there are things that are going to happen along the way that you're going to decide to add, or unforeseen circumstances, like increase in attendees, where you have to, you know, fork out more money for food and beverage, or rooms, right?
[00:11:54] So That is so that's what we always tell our clients that change is constant. That's number one How [00:12:00] surprised are they when you say that to them? Are they open to that? Yeah. Yeah, I get
[00:12:03] Angela Alea: it Or is there still a lot of education around getting them to really understand like this is fiction.
[00:12:10] It's a goal It's not reality at this point like how open are they to hearing
[00:12:14] Huong Nguyen: that? Yeah, so there's a lot of times they're stick or shock but I do educate them on this one concept. It's just, so let's say we have buckets in the budget, right? We have venue, AV, food, etc. And I tell them the number at the very top is what I'm committed to.
[00:12:33] However, the numbers in the buckets may change. So let's say you save money on AV and I'll try to negotiate as much as possible for you, as possible for you there. But don't think that money is saved that, you know, I'm, that's gone. Like I'm going to have to reuse that money for increase in food and beverage or increase in rooms or meeting, whatever.
[00:12:53] So I definitely educate them on that. The, thing with, budget is I don't [00:13:00] only give them one number. I give them a low number, a medium and a high. So that the way they understand, you know, there's flex fluctuations, there's flexibility. So yeah, at the lowest, if you want to accomplish these goals, we can do it for this much.
[00:13:16] And medium tier is, we can have this kind of stage elevated a little bit for a little bit more, and then if you really want to go all out and invest in a stage presence or in a really strong attendee experience and having activation stations. And drive that top of the funnel you know, return on investment there, then here's a high budget for you.
[00:13:39] So that way they don't feel locked in, they feel that there's options, and when you give people choices, it flows so much more and there's a lot more freedom in that. Yeah.
[00:13:47] Angela Alea: So. Yeah. So they're still in control of it. That's what they want. Makes sense. That's good. Another LinkedIn post you did was talking about must haves for an AV RFP.
[00:13:59] So walk [00:14:00] us through what some of those non negotiables are and why
[00:14:03] Huong Nguyen: they're so important. Yeah, so AV is definitely one of those big bucket spend. I mean, it's even sometimes bigger than my own agency costs. It's bigger than, you know, food oftentimes because it's the, it's a stage presence. It's the very first thing that they see when they walk into the general session.
[00:14:21] And. From my own lessons learned, there's a lot of back and forth when you're doing AV proposals. And different AV companies will have different ways of showing you their numbers. So you're going to have to take their proposal and do apples to apples comparison. And often times they don't, you know, categorize it the same way as another company does.
[00:14:42] So what I've learned is that, you know, I don't just send out a generic email that says, Hey, I'm doing a user conference. My, it's 200 people, I need it to be dual projection and a middle screen and I need a stage, like I don't do that anymore. I created a higher presentation doc that [00:15:00] has several slides, a program overview slides on who the client is.
[00:15:04] And sometimes if it's NDA, I don't put the client's name, I just put like the gist of the event description. Then you have your location, the dates. Agenda and then any brand assets because I already know by now that these A. V. companies gonna want that up front. Yeah, so I anticipate that because I don't I want to eliminate the back and forth like I don't have time to check that.
[00:15:27] So then I put in the venue specs of like venue capacity because I know they're gonna want that. Ceiling height, venue contact information and then I give them the agenda by day, right? This is how many breakouts we're gonna have, this is how many we're gonna need expo booth, we're going to need and monitors and sound systems for evening reception.
[00:15:47] So I listed all out and, you know, lighting for an example, uplighting, stage lighting, environment lighting. And then I also put recording requirements or sizzle reel [00:16:00] requirements as well as live stream camera crews. All of that is definitely, you know, less having, you can check out my LinkedIn posts if you want to like have a detailed list.
[00:16:10] But the reason why I send an entire deck is because they can digest what it is that I'm really looking for. Yeah, we'll make them work for it. Yeah. Yeah, and then all the proposals that come in would look the same. Because I gave them a format and template of how I want the information. So that I don't even have to do the work of doing apples to apples because I've already given them that template to fill in the information.
[00:16:34] So we have a
[00:16:34] Angela Alea: lot of AV production companies that subscribe to our podcast. So... What are some things they can do to stand out, right? You, give them the requirements. They all come back and should, you know, so you can compare apples to apples. But what, are some tips you can give them? What are you looking for?
[00:16:54] For them
[00:16:55] Huong Nguyen: to stand out. Yeah, great question. I mean for us Yes, budget matters [00:17:00] numbers matters. But what we really are also looking for is a strategic creative partner Okay, give us ideas. So i'm gonna tell you my budget is 250 or 300 I don't want to tell you what stage I don't only want to tell you what stage I'm looking for.
[00:17:14] I want you to tell me what I can afford with that, with those numbers. Yeah. And then think beyond, you know, think outside the box. Don't just, you know, if I give you 200 to 350, don't give me just those options. Say, hey, if you want, here's some options under 250. You know, here's some options beyond 300 to give you an idea of what we could do for you.
[00:17:35] There's that word options again. The options, yes, and the strategic plan. So the strategy behind that is also really important because we're looking for a strategic partner who can help us solve problems once we bring them on board, because sometimes clients may want to add a session and the session is complicated with a ton of like visual effects and then you bring in remote speakers.
[00:17:57] So there's going to be a lot of AV problems that pop [00:18:00] up. And, you know, we want the AV partners to help us solve those problems effectively and call problems out, right? Don't just wait for me to come to you with my problems. Join me in my meetings and say, hey, I was listening and I, overheard this and I think, you know, we're going to have we, might run into these issues and I, let's collaborate and let's kind of,
[00:18:24] I think that would be something that would help the A. V. company stand out. Yeah, no
[00:18:28] Angela Alea: That's, great feedback for all of you out there that are part of an A. V. production company. There you go. Stand out, provide options, be collaborative. Heard that as well. Those are all, great tips. As we were prepping for this episode, we asked you, what is your biggest frustration in the industry?
[00:18:46] And you brought up tech overload. So talk to us about what that means to you. What does tech overload mean to you? And what do we do about
[00:18:55] Huong Nguyen: it? Yeah, so in a recent study from Bizable, you can look it up. It's called the State of [00:19:00] B2B Conferences. What's changed? What didn't change? One thing's that, the one thing that did change lately is that event planners are incorporating event tech into their programs a lot.
[00:19:10] You know, it used to be for budgeting that you have your venue, your AV, and your food and beverage, and your rooms. As your big bucket spend, right? But nowadays they're spending a lot on event tech, like mobile app, which is 10, 000. And then if you want to add networking app, that's another 10, 000. And if you want to add gamification, that's another 5, 000.
[00:19:32] If you want to add live streaming and a virtual component for hybrid aspect, that's another 20, 000. So there's a lot of, there's now a need. For event tech being a priority, right? So one of the things that frustrating for a lot of our clients is there's a lot they don't have the budget for that.
[00:19:50] And so they have to ask for it. They have to make a case with their executives to do so. And so what we do is we help them define what that ROI is, what, you know, if they were [00:20:00] to adopt that event tech. So we, you know, we list out all the benefits of the attendee journey and the experience and how it could really improve networking and really customer retention.
[00:20:11] And so, yeah, I think the frustration is getting executives to approve more money for the event. I really, you know, I hope that event planners can can, have more courage to ask for that money. And number two is the learning curve. With that tech, there's so many out there, right? And it takes time to source.
[00:20:35] There's 800 out there. How do you get from 800 to one, especially if you have so many needs? So one of the things that we, you know, talk about is that you have to really identify what your functionality requirements are based on your goals and then from there do demos. But demos is also frustrating.
[00:20:51] Like I love demos says nobody, nobody says that. Like it takes time to sit on demos and look through these tech. And a lot of people like there's a learning [00:21:00] curve with that. So the tips that we give is when you do a demo, think of it as like a chef, a personal chef who comes to your house and is cooking for you.
[00:21:08] You obviously want to identify the meals that you want to eat and so that the chef can go shopping and get the proper ingredients, right? That's like that with a demo. So you want to tell your tech vendor. This is exactly what I'm looking for. I'm looking for reporting. I'm looking for you know, evaluation of where people are coming from, what the ticket revenues are.
[00:21:29] I'm looking for expo and booth management, speaker management. And I, when I show up for the 30 minute to an hour demo, I want you to show me what that looks like. So that way, the person, the chef can really cook something up that will really speak to your
[00:21:43] Angela Alea: need and that chef really appreciates you coming to the table, understanding what you're looking for and why you're looking for it, right?
[00:21:53] It's same with, you know, when you sit down with a client, you're like tell me what you're trying to accomplish. I don't, I'm not really sure yet. I haven't really thought about that, right? That just, [00:22:00] it puts you at a disadvantage. And so it does, it makes that experience so much better. Before you invest the time and the money in doing all the things.
[00:22:08] Start, you know, begin with the end in mind, right? What is it I want to get out of this? That way you can communicate it to the agency, to that chef, to the demo person, whatever it might be, right? I think that's such an important step. So many people, it's like fire then aim, versus aim then fire. And it just lends itself to so much of the chaos and stress, not the peace you talked about in the beginning.
[00:22:32] So having a methodology and a framework around that is so, so important. You can spend a lot of time with the wrong company and you don't realize it until you get to the end and you're like, Oh my God, they don't even have the most basic thing that I've known
[00:22:42] Huong Nguyen: all along. Exactly. And then all that time is lost.
[00:22:46] So now lessons learned. Now we do it completely different. You know, we start goals, then we identify our functionality requirements, then we identify the cost and we do the demos. So yeah, I hope that those tips can help the listeners reduce the [00:23:00] time that they spend. Yeah,
[00:23:01] Angela Alea: absolutely. To wrap up, we always like to ask our guests one question at the end, and that is, what do you hope for our
[00:23:11] Huong Nguyen: industry?
[00:23:12] Oh man, huh, so exciting, because AI has really revolutionized what we do in the events industry, I think the most in any other industry, because it's making our lives so much Shiloh 10 years ago, the event tech that were out there was. It was C vent and E touches and but even then it wasn't robust. It was the functionalities, which didn't really help me in my job.
[00:23:38] You know, there's still a lot of manual work that I had to do, even up to recently, right? But with AI now it's cut my time in like by 30% because now when I, so here's some example. If I were to create a program I get writer's block because I have to come up with a theme. I have to come up with a messaging and content writing and all that [00:24:00] stuff.
[00:24:00] You get writer's block, right? You're like, Oh my God. And then you go on a walk, you come back and you're still stuck. But with AI, it gives you that initial push to get all those prompts, all those ideas out. And you read and you're like, Oh, that's actually really good. Let me build on that. So, you know, it's all in the prompt as well.
[00:24:14] Like learning how to create prompts that would really yield the accurate result that you want from, that AI tool. And there's more tools out there than just chat GPT. So what I really hope for our industry is that. And I hope that the planners would learn to adopt that more because AI is not going to replace us, it's only going to make it make our lives better, you know what I mean?
[00:24:35] And so and then also, if you are going to adopt it, my hope is that people don't fully rely on it and just copy and paste, because there's still some human element that is missing in those words that are being generated. So you still have to read it, you still have to put your voice to it to make sure that it resonates with your audience and your program.
[00:24:55] Thank you. And then lastly, regarding to AI, this is going to be super [00:25:00] cool once it, you know, it's built on more. Okay, so it's basically data analysis. It used to be, or still is post event or even pre during the planning, you analyze a bunch of attendees data, right? Like where they're coming from, what their profiles are, what you know, how much they pay, your revenue week over week compared to last year.
[00:25:22] If you're trending upward and if you're trending downward. What do you need to do? With chat GPT, there's this functionality called code generator. It's a plugin. You have to upgrade and pay for it, but it's very cheap. 20 a month. I upload the. Excel sheet, and I write a prompt that says analyze this set of data and give me the following results.
[00:25:44] Give me the percentage of where the people are coming from per country, how much they paid for revenue per ticket, you know, where am I trending according to last year? And like within minutes, like seconds, it tells me right away oh shit I, need to bump up my promotion because I'm [00:26:00] Baha'i. Oh, yeah.
[00:26:01] Really good. And I used to do that manually. And it took an hour to two hours to pull the data, line it all up, do a graph chart, and put in a presentation. It's oh my god, I'm already rolling my eyes. But now, there weren't your piece, right? Yeah, within minutes, it's oh my, that's great. So I don't have to do the manual work of crunching the numbers.
[00:26:21] I take the numbers and put a story behind it. Whereas before it's both, right? So I think the AI part is what I'm really hope for, hopeful for,
[00:26:30] Angela Alea: for. Yeah. It's been really fun to kind of watch all the use cases. Just this year, even right and in the rapid speed in which it's evolving it's changing.
[00:26:42] I mean, literally daily hourly. And so it'll be really interesting to see how our industry, how
[00:26:49] Huong Nguyen: quickly those
[00:26:49] Angela Alea: that adopt versus those that are slow. Whether it's tech, whether it's the use of AI and you know, those that are on the cutting edge, we call them pioneers [00:27:00] here at LASSO, those are the ones you're going to win, right?
[00:27:02] Because they're going to get there faster, better, easier, all those sorts of things, all while maintaining their piece without it being so crazy. So I think that's I think we all hope that for the industry for sure. And we should start adopting that more. So I think that's a great point. Yeah. As we wrap up I, have a couple of takeaways from our time together.
[00:27:20] First of all, thank you so much Huong for joining and sharing your expertise and your story of how you started Shiloh 10 years ago. I think that's fantastic. I think you serve such a great voice in that our industry does need to understand how do you sell ROI and you've said it several times throughout the podcast, which is start with the goals.
[00:27:40] If your customer doesn't know the goal, it's a moving target, right? Get them to articulate what do they want to get out of it and why, right? Sometimes they don't know why they want to get something out of it. And so get to the why of what that is. So I think that's a really important part is starting with the goals in mind and then the [00:28:00] importance of ROI, both qualitative and quantitative and being able to serve that up in a right way in the right way that is digestible for them.
[00:28:10] And that kind of ties back to the money they're spending. So again, everyone knows exactly why they're doing this, what they hope to get out of it, measuring it and then certainly providing the options as well. Along the way, people like to buy with options. They don't want to know there's just one way to skin the cat.
[00:28:25] And that's so important, not only options, but you know, We're the experts, make the recommend, these are three options. Here's what I'd recommend and here's why I would recommend it. So I think those are all just great reminders and great lessons. So I'm really grateful for you spending some time with us today, sharing your knowledge.
[00:28:43] Where can our listeners find you?
[00:28:45] Huong Nguyen: Oh, I'm really active on LinkedIn. So it's very easy. It's So MS Huong Nguyen is my handle on LinkedIn. I'm actively posting on there, responding to comments, so feel free to connect with me. If you have any [00:29:00] questions about today's podcast, definitely, it's a free game.
[00:29:03] I'm here to share as much information as possible, for free, nothing, no strings attached. I'm just here to elevate event planners in the industry. That's awesome. Thank
[00:29:12] Angela Alea: you so much, and thanks everybody for listening in today. Don't forget to subscribe, and if you have any questions, comments, or feedback, reach out to us at podcast at lasso.io.
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