About 8 years ago, I was a vendor at, what was promised to be, ‘the largest event showcase’ in my home city of Philadelphia. At the time, I was working full time for a well-known, high-end catering and event venue and took the entire day out of the office. Between setting up the booth, manning the booth and leaving myself time to network, it was a huge undertaking.

There must have been over 200 vendors that filled the Convention Center floor—everyone from lighting companies to staging, venue representatives and event designers packed the space. We were set up 15 minutes prior to the start of the event as instructed…and we waited.

And waited.

Oh, and waited some more.

Let’s start here: I’ve always been the person who finds more efficient ways to perform tasks. In my corporate past, I’d find ways to streamline communication between managers who worked opposite schedules, or to make meetings more efficient. In the startup world, I found that remote work was the most efficient use of my time, rather than shlepping between work spaces throughout the day. Now, with my clients, the onboarding process typically sees me finding ways to make working together more efficient. After all, many businesses have a handle on internal communication, but bringing in an external and/or remote team can be challenging.

For the past few months, I’ve been working with Chef Christopher Sayegh on the Cooking with CBD event, debuting in Philly this Thursday. Here, he discusses his background and path to becoming one of the top Infusion Chefs in the world and Founder & CEO of The Herbal Chef.

I have the pleasure of working with Carina and the HerHeadquarters team on an activation for summer 2019! Of all the experiential marketing & pop-ups I’ve done, this one is so aligned with my values. I’m delighted to interview her this week on the blog!

On a normal day in 2019, I’ll receive anywhere from 10-15 “Event” invitations. From Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Meetup and networking groups I belong to, I could literally fill my entire month’s calendar in the span of a week. Less, if I took into consideration all of the articles I read concerning local events and happenings, and personal invitations. There is, quite literally, not enough hours in the day. There is, though, enough so-called “events” in the day.

If your website is done well, it should make you feel like you have a salesperson on your team, working her tail off as your own personal hype woman. You don’t even have to have a super fancy, custom-built website to make this happen. In fact, I’m a huge fan of Squarespace and all of its built-in features. But you do have to have well planned content that guides your potential customers through your site and encourages them to take action before they click away.

Schendy Kernizan is one of the founders of Lasserre’s Own Hands, a nonprofit bringing unprecedented education to the small village of Lasserre, Haiti. We’ve known one another since college, and I’ve been following the nonprofit’s journey for years. I’m happy to be helping with their fundraising efforts in 2019.

Anyone who knows me, knows how much I value a collaborative business approach, as well as  an abundance mindset that leaves room for multi-dimensional and mutually-beneficial partnerships. 

When Carina Glover, founder & CEO of HerHeadquarters, reached out to me following a recommendation by Eric Michael, it was as if a dream project had fallen into my lap. HerHeadquarters is an app which encourages women business owners in (5) industries to connect, collaborate and find their ally.