Jolynn Ledgerwood:
Hello. Play for Performance. Thanks for joining us today. I’m so excited to have our guest. Liz Lathan is the CEO of Club Ichi, with over twenty five years of experience in marketing, PR, and event management. Liz is like global event teams at industry leaders like Dell and IBM. In 2011, she achieved a significant milestone by creating Dell’s annual technology conference, Dell World. As a founding member of the experiential agency, HALT, and cofounder of Club Ichi in 2023, Liz has consistently demonstrated her ability to drive engagement and foster strong communities.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
Beyond her professional achievements, Liz balances her career with being a dedicated mom to two wonderful children. Today, we’ll explore topics such as the power of community, driving engagement and events, and how event professionals can create inclusive spaces. Please join me in welcoming Liz. We’re so excited to have you.

Liz Lathan:
Aw. Thank you for having me here this weekend.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
Absolutely. I love your posts. Wouldn’t it be fun if? Because we’ve all at least I and my time have been to those events where the people are just sitting at the table, don’t seem engaged, don’t seem to be having fun, and you just you kinda have to make the rounds because that’s why you’re there is to meet the vendors and do the thing. But nobody really yeah. So tell me about your story. How did you mean, obviously, I’ve read it, but I would love for you to tell our guests today about your story and how you got to Clavicci.

Liz Lathan:
I think it’s mostly just growing up in events. So I always had an interest in events, never really knowing that that was a career or anything like that. My mom, for a brief time, repped for a merchandise kind of like a gifting company. And so when I was a kid, I would go with her to set up the trade show booth and they would sell these Christmas ornaments to gift shops at the Atlanta Merchandise Mart. And so I was kind of around this trade show thing and around these events and I didn’t recognize it. My dad meanwhile would travel the world for his business and he, we would get to go in the summertime to visit his coworkers in other countries and this feeling of hospitality that we got because back then there was no such thing as Airbnb, you’re either at a hotel or at a friend’s house and mostly we were at a friend’s house. And so that was kind of where I got this idea of hospitality and belonging no matter where you are. And it was kind of instilled in me juxtaposed with being an only child where I never fit anywhere.

Liz Lathan:
Right? I think the kids are talking about stupid stuff. The adults were talking about stuff I didn’t understand. So it’s always kind of in between. So when I just moved into, I went with journalism because what I really loved was the storytelling and the digging into things. I wanted to be an engineer, but I didn’t quite have the calculus to do that. But it was just that mind of liking to see how things work. And so journalism was really my creative outlet to understand the same thing engineers did, which was figure out how it works and retell that story. And so I love that and that got me into PR media relations.

Liz Lathan:
But as a part of that are these events and who knew that that was a whole thing. So I had been doing them as part of marketing and PR without understanding it was a profession. So then finally getting into that in the association and corporate world, I really started to understand that it’s a vehicle for marketing, for driving pipeline, for driving revenue. But how do you create those connections to drive pipeline and revenue if it’s just three dudes standing in a booth hoping to scan your badge? That’s not a way to engage people. Or if you’re creating conferences that are just formulaic keynote, breakout, expo, why would people come back? And so for me, over the course of twenty plus years, it was really how do you craft an experience that makes the people feel like they belong, that has a sense of hospitality and that keeps them basically that’s more interesting than their cell phone because that’s the challenge we live with today. So after, after that whole career in corporate and then agency, it was really again, my need for belonging and going, who could I have turned to in those times? There just wasn’t really a community for that. There’s associations that teach you things. You can get certifications.

Liz Lathan:
But just a place to go to be like, I have a question, who can I ask? It didn’t exist. And so Club EQ was really born out of that necessity of bringing people like me together to help each other and just solve problems and answer questions and commiserate and vent and do the things that you wanna do.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
That’s amazing and so exciting. I did a stint as a customer. I think my title is probably customer marketing manager when I was with a voice over IP company. And my role kind of was I was in charge of the referral partner program, and it kind of evolved to where I got to go do shows. And I was like, this is amazing.

Liz Lathan:
Like Right.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
I love the energy. Well, your events would have been way better. But to be there and to be talking to people, I am with you. Like, I feel the energy and the want to be part of a group and to have that hospitality that everybody’s I just I love that. That’s amazing. Yeah. So I’m so glad you didn’t like calculus because we probably wouldn’t be talking today. So I’m very grateful.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
Yeah. You know, calculus. So you started your event planning things, and you led like, Dell World is not a small deal. Like, Dell World is a fun one.

Liz Lathan:
Yeah. It was, what was one of those things where at the end of times, like around 2010 or whatever, like Dreamforce was really growing really big and, you know, everybody had their own kind of world experience. And for us at Dell at the time, we didn’t. I mean, we had people that bought computers, but all of these other ones had user conferences. There was a reason for people to come together because they were learning and growing and all these things. And so we had struggled a little bit to figure out, like, what’s the reason. And then through some acquisitions and bringing out some other companies that the time was finally right for us to have a world, a place where people could come and see our entire breadth and depth of offerings. And so it’s just, you know, how executive questions and churns and this is gonna happen or whatever happens. When we finally got the green light, it was eighty six days from the moment we were told it’s a go to the moment the date had been available at the Convention Center.

Liz Lathan:
And so we created an entire event from complete scratch in eighty six days. So it was definitely a testament to my leadership, meaning the people that I reported to who supported all of us in knowing, like, we gotta figure this out. Very few of us had ever done a large scale event like that before. We had, you know, been part of them and participated. We’ve done our own internal sales conferences that were that big, but for a customer conference, it was kind of a new muscle that we had to build. It was really fun. And If we imagine we all are nostalgic to that experience, you know, trauma bonding.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
I love it. Yeah. Well, trauma bonding. Right? And I can imagine there being so much more pressure on you being that it was a customer event versus just internal because those are the people that are paying our salaries, and they’re the people that are buying our product and telling other people about the product. And that’s huge. That’s congratulations.

Liz Lathan:
Well, and then the sticker shock of the budget of something like that because we traditionally had not actually worked with big mega agencies to produce an event. And so for us to put something like this on that had to be kind of pixel perfect and really have that knowledge that an agency could bring in and seeing what agencies cost was kind of a new thing for us. And so it was definitely a whole learning exercise. It was the most amazing time of my life.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
That is so awesome. And so what motivated you then to cofound Clavicci with Nicole, and what do people do at in with Clavicci? What does that look like?

Liz Lathan:
Yeah. So that experience, you know, that was when I was at Dell for ten or so years. Then, it was really having that moment when we’ve got to create an event. We have eighty six days. I only have the people around me to figure this out. I didn’t know who to reach out to for help and advice and guidance. And basically the agency was the only one to lean on and I’m paying them for their support, but having a friend to commiserate with that, it just didn’t exist. And so I did have through my industry associations and network of people that I could text and ask questions to and all that, but it was a very different experience.

Liz Lathan:
And so, when I left corporate back in 2018 and we had created the experiential agency with a group of friends, kind of built that out, we had this event that my current cofounder and I had created that was an experience more than an event. It was kind of like a coffee break. It was this unconference style of instead of putting people in a dark room and forcing them to listen to expertise from the stage, let’s bring people together and ask what challenges are you trying to solve and then who in the room has solved those before? And so we crafted this experience around that and it became just a series of events that we did and we’d even do them for clients. They’d invite us to come in and run these. They’re now called spontaneous think tanks. We would run those for them. And so when we left the agency, all of the people who had come to those kept pushing us to like, where did the community go? And we kind of said, what community? What are you talking about? They’re like, all those events you did. They were just events.

Liz Lathan:
It wasn’t a community. And they’re like, no. That was a community. I bought

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
the shirt. I was like, oh, okay.

Liz Lathan:
So, they encouraged us to create and codify, like, the actual community. And we were trying to figure out the name, what this could be called. And I had come across this Japanese phrase, ichigo ichi e, which means one moment, one time. And that’s what we try to create with these events. Right? It’s that one uncapturable moment that people will talk about and recapturable that they’ll talk about forever and ever. And so Ichi, meaning one, was the name we chose, and we stuck a club in front of it so that it was kinda grounding. Right? It’s because otherwise, if you Google it, you’ll find a million Japanese restaurants. So it’s Club Ichi, and it is the place where we can all come together because rising tides lift all ships, and we are here to be one to help each other.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
I love that. Rising tides lift all ships. I’m gonna have to save that for future reference. I spoke to someone the other day that it was a new connection for me, and we were talking. And, his product is something that would go great with you and what you guys do and what I’ve seen you do on LinkedIn. And so I told him I, you know, I wanna introduce you to Liz. She’s awesome. He’s like, I know Liz.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
Like, we go way back, and I’ve been to her conference, and it’s amazing. And it just was boasting about how wonderful it is. So I’ll have to, definitely sign up for your next one because that sounds awesome.

Liz Lathan:
Yes. Yes. Well, coming up, I don’t know when this is airing, but in June in Nashville, June Ninth And Tenth is our next in person. But we’re gonna do another one in December that he can eye out.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
X. I absolutely will. So primary goals for ClubHI in the next five years. What are y’all what are y’all looking forward to doing?

Liz Lathan:
You know, it’s not one of those things where it’s like grow, grow, grow. We gotta be as big as we possibly can and get a billion dollar evaluation. It’s really a planned growth. If we’re at about 425, insiders right now. And we’ve got a series of strategic partners that kind of help us basically pay the bills and keep the lights on and then support these members that are a part of it. So I think by the end of this year, we would love to see us with a thousand paid members. But I don’t know how much larger we really need to get with that inner circle. I think it’s really more about what we can bring to other people and then engaging that inner circle in the ways that they want to engage.

Liz Lathan:
So we’ve got some plans for these spontaneous think tanks that we do to turn quarterly and start doing those across the country, you know, once a quarter. We do this big crazy trip that’s coming up in April, May of next year called the secret family reunion. Because when people leave our events, they always say, just feel like I have this new family that I never knew I needed or existed in the world. So secret family reunion is this event that feels like a family reunion, but it’s a secret because we don’t tell you where you’re going to get to the airport. So you buy a ticket, we will tell you how to pack and then we will get all the details that we need from you. And then when you show up with the group, we do a big giant reveal party and whisk you away. So the last time we did it was back in 2019 before COVID, since then people needed to know what country they were going to, whatever. But we bought that one, we invited 80 experiential marketers to meet us at JFK in New York, bring a passport and pack for six days.

Liz Lathan:
And then we revealed that we had chartered a plane and took them to Tuscany for the six day spontaneous think tank truffle hunting pasta making extravaganza.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
That’s amazing. Like Yeah. How fun.

Liz Lathan:
So It is fun.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
Yeah. And I mean, just I’m the type of person that does the LEGO bricks by the book. I’m a book person. So, like, that whole spontaneous thing, I’m like, I don’t know if I could do that. But it definitely takes

Liz Lathan:
a certain kind of person to be willing to get out of their comfort zone, which is why we have different levels of engagement through Clubici because we know, especially in our event world, they’re type a. Like, we’ve gotta need everything planned. And to ask me to not know where I’m going and to not know how to pack, that’s a hard thing for a lot of people to do. So we do these other events. They’re called barefoot business retreats where we do tell you where they are. But when we do those are, again, at all price levels. Right? When we started out, we rented a ranch in Waco, Texas. That was our very first one.

Liz Lathan:
And then but last year, we chartered a yacht in Croatia and all of our conference sessions were held on giant inflatable unicorns. So, you know, but allowing each year, you know, people to kinda get in at a different price point. And, again, it’s not intended to be exclusive. It’s very much intended to be inclusive. All membership fees are the same. We don’t charge suppliers four times what they charge brands like the other places do. So

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
Well and it’s you’ve you’ve earned trust from your cohorts so that they do trust you to show up at JFK with a passport, and they know that they’re gonna be on an adventure, and it’s gonna be fun. And that sounds great. I just Yeah. Yeah. I would love that would be amazing. I’d love it.

Liz Lathan:
I think the best part about it though is truly providing business value and intellectual value from those because the the people that went on that trip, we had a WhatsApp group going that was really just to say, hey. The bus is coming to your villa, you know, but it still goes. Like, they’re still wishing each other happy birthday and visiting each other at the hospital when they have a surgery and putting RFPs in there. Like, I’m gonna RFP this project just so anyone can go on it. And since then, we’ve heard over $45,000,000 in business has been done among the people on that plane. That’s just amazing. Unbelievable.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
So talk about your dream of wanting to create a community and a safe place for people to go and be welcomed and loved, and that’s that’s amazing.

Liz Lathan:
Yeah.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
So you mentioned COVID. Obviously, with COVID being what it was, and we think we’re recovering from that, and then we have other turmoil in the world right now that is what it is. How do you see Clubici changing, or evolving? Are there any new innovations coming up? Anything different that can address you know, maybe we’re gonna be stuck working from home again. What and what does that look like?

Liz Lathan:
Yeah. You know, we have these conversations all the time there. So we have a Slack channel that’s always on the event hotline. People are asking those questions. Once a month, we do something called a sounding board where a member can submit a question, and we all hop on a Zoom and either bring in an expert to talk about it or we just group therapy together. And so these are some of the things we’re talking about. Is virtual gonna come back because of tariffs and fears of travel and all of these things? And it’s interesting because the Internet and the news is telling us that that’s the case. But our event agencies are saying with the exception of, like, federal events that have pulled back because people can’t travel, their clients are saying things are great.

Liz Lathan:
They’re not pulling back on anything. People are still coming to events. They maybe are adjusting some of their audience acquisition goals, but now they’re maybe switching a little bit more to a hybrid experience like they did early on in COVID. But they’re finding that that’s not what people are necessarily caring about. They wanna get with each other in person. People still crave that connection more than ever. And, of course, in an age of AI, when you can’t tell what digital content is fake and what’s real, the only thing you know is real is when you’re there in person. So the appetite for it isn’t necessarily going away.

Liz Lathan:
I think the biggest challenge that we’re seeing is the supply of choices is so high. So many people have started new events. So it feels like fewer people are going out when in fact they’re just peanut butter spread across so many that are happening, like, within the same month. At some point, people have to work. You know?

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
Yeah. That makes sense. Speaking of work, do you find that leaders are more welcoming or maybe a little bit more hesitant to have fun at work, not necessarily events, but maybe at work. Do you see a difference there?

Liz Lathan:
Oh, yeah. That’s a hard one. And this is the fun part about Clubichi because, yes, I grew up in a corporation. I know the brand boundaries. I know the guidelines. I know that, oh my god, my people could never do that, that we always experienced. And so with Cloveeci, we can be those people that do the most ridiculous things and hold our conference sessions on inflatable unicorns knowing full well that nobody else would be like, oh, well, let’s do that part of it. But it may make them think a little differently.

Liz Lathan:
Like, well, maybe we don’t actually have to do that session indoors. Maybe there’s a garden and it could be a conversation and we could bring people out. So if we can kind of live in 2035, even if they still have to live in 2025, then we could pull them a little bit further and be a place for experimentation. Some of the stuff we do, this is gonna fail, and that’s fine. We’re playing with new technologies that are beta that are not working perfectly, and that’s okay. Like, you have to get customers somehow and to see behind the scenes. Like, we love how the sausage is made behind the scenes and the ridiculous stuff that’s just fun to watch. Like, my ultimate bucket list item right now that I will make come true at some point is to go into the laundry facility of a giant hotel and run a sheet, do the giant sheet ironer and see if I can do it without wrinkles.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
That sounds fun. That’s amazing. Surely, somebody listening has contacts in the hotel industry, like, for sure. But I’m curious. How did that come about? Like, how did you?

Liz Lathan:
I just saw it happen once, and I was like, that looks fun. And then I was on a virgin voyage, and I got to. I paid $200 to do the behind the scenes tour of how the boat works. And they took us to the laundry facility, and there were two guys doing it. And I was like, can I do it? And I’m like, no. You have to be certified. What? So now it’s just the thing because it’s just right there. It’s tantalizing, you know?

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
Certified to run an iron. You’re not qualified. Sorry.

Liz Lathan:
I mean, it did look quite dangerous. Very hot. What if your finger got caught in there? So I get it. But at the same time

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
We don’t want you on one of those, oh my gosh. Look what happened to her reels. That would be awful.

Liz Lathan:
But that’s the thing that we really love is, you know, I think my journalism engineering idea of seeing how things work, I think as a vet professionals, we do that quite often too because we are seeing it from the idea to the spreadsheet to the execution. And so to see how someone else is taking it through those concepts is really fun. We did an event a year or two ago in partnership with MGM where we took a group of people out to Las Vegas, which every event professional is like you can’t show me anything new in Las Vegas. I live there. We’re like, challenge accepted. So we worked with them to create this whole behind the scenes experience where we got to go to their prop and decor warehouse and see where all the stuff for every hotel and all the shows lives and how they craft these things. And they put us on a kind of a brain scavenger hunt that we had to use while it was there and make a pitch to the designers. We got to go eat in the Aria employee cafeteria and then see the uniform control center, how they get 9,000 uniforms pressed and ready every day for staff.

Liz Lathan:
And then to the Bellagio Pump Room and meet with the divers that fix the pumps who were, like, who were ex Navy Seal. Like, it was just the coolest thing. It was like, okay. You win. You showed me something I had never seen in Las Vegas before.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
Seen before. Check. I can check that off my list now. I love that. And I can imagine that people just want to come to your events because it’s fun, because it’s engaging, because it’s playful, it’s exciting, and it’s different, and it’s new. Why isn’t everybody calling you yet? Like, I don’t get it.

Liz Lathan:
They’re starting to. I think it’s just a brand awareness thing. We’re new. We just launched this thing in March of twenty three, and we already have 11,000 people that are following us on the mailing lists and, you know, starting to join. And we really just turned on that insider membership last year. I guess it’s been a year and a half now. And to have 425 people saying, shut up and take my money has been pretty exciting. Right? So now it’s just what can we do to make sure that we are providing the value they’re seeking? And then also keeping the conversations balanced and helpful and not salesy.

Liz Lathan:
Although we know that it’s a place where sales happen because business is personal and, you know, relationships can transcend business, but it is all about everybody doing business together. But it’s also not a marketplace. You can’t just be like, here’s my membership. Where are my leads? That’s not how this works. This is definitely a given first type of experience, and our members are really protective of that, which is super cool.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
I’ll speak globally. Like, I don’t think that concept works anymore anywhere. Like, it’s all relationships based just from my experience and from what I’ve seen that the people that you know are willing to share your information out and help you grow more organically, I guess, is the right word.

Liz Lathan:
Yeah. I think the role goal is who can you meet who’s willing to say your name when you’re not in the room? And that’s the environment we wanna create. And a lot of the conferences that, you know, even the ones that I go to, it’s still keynote breakout expo. The coffee break is an afterthought. They give you fifteen minutes to not only go to the bathroom, but check your email and grab that cup of coffee or water and then get back into the room. And so where do you network? Oh, at the party where the music is too loud and the cheese cubes are in the corner and you can’t actually talk to each other and then you’re doing more transactional networking than you are. Oh, what problems do you have and who can I connect you with? There just isn’t that space for that. We’re finally after years of shouting that from the rooftops, we’re finally starting to see the conferences embrace the idea of roundtables and think tanks and facilitated conversations.

Liz Lathan:
And it’s hard because those don’t scale. They are small intimate moments that you can put in an event, but still just trying. It changes everything.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
It’s something. And I think or I can imagine the associates that are attending the event really appreciate that because they’re being given that time where they’re not rushing from point a to point b. They’re not out of the bathroom, you know, washing their hands, trying to talk to people. I think it’s important that we have those interactions. And like you said, that feeling connected.

Liz Lathan:
Yeah. And more than ever, just anchoring back on the human part because, you know, we’ve been doing these spontaneous think tanks. The way they work is we use these big old sticky notes and we ask people, what challenge are you trying to solve? And we fill what we call the wall of woes with everybody’s problems.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
Mhmm.

Liz Lathan:
And then we ask people, look at that wall of woes. And if you’ve solved one of those, write your name on it. It. And then we’ll craft the sessions by saying, hey, Bob solved this. Bob, would you lead a conversation on how you did that? And so the whole thing gets built organically on-site. And over the years, hundreds of people have said, you should do this with technology. Why don’t you ask this on the Ridge forum? We could do an AI and matchmaking app for you. I’m like, no.

Liz Lathan:
No. No. No. No. This is like, people just wanna organically connect and be like, oh my gosh. I have that same problem. What are you doing about it? Oh, let’s talk about that and bring it to life.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
Yeah. Just being seen and heard is really important to most people. I’d say almost everybody at the end of the day. So what core values are most important in shaping Club Bici?

Liz Lathan:
For me, personally, it’s curiosity. Like, I’m always just interested in people’s stories or how it’s made or what could be done with that or what the next opportunity is or who I can connect somebody with with somebody else. And I think that that drives most of it. I think the other really big one is fun. If it’s not fun, why are we doing it? Nicole, my cofounder, it’s our favorite game to play as, you know, it’d be really fun. And just like on top of that, like if resources were no object, what will we do? Oh my gosh. Well, we would, you know, put a giant ball of, like, a ball pit on what they call the salt flats in Argentina, and there’s, like, see that drone shot. Like, that like, that would be amazing.

Liz Lathan:
You know? So

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
Yeah. I love that. No no budget. Just out of the box thinking because who’s to say that at some point that may not be out of the budget anymore? That may be something that you can do.

Liz Lathan:
And absolutely. Or it just at least, again, it’s the thought of living in 2035, and we have to be stuck here. And we have these parameters, and you’re told not so much. How can you think out here for a minute just to pull you a little bit outside of those boundaries and make people think crazy? I did an event for one of the companies I worked at where the brand guidelines were extremely brutal. You had to sit within this box and you could not do this, that and the other. And so I was like, okay, well here’s a crazy question.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
What if we did

Liz Lathan:
the whole event and never put our brand on it? Then I’m not confined by the brand guidelines and people are gonna know where they are because it’s in the middle of that company’s actual conference. We’re just taking over a restaurant and doing our thing. And it was amazing. Blew everybody away. We had the best time ever and, you know, got a slap on the wrist maybe, but it was so fun.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
Well and when the employees or associates again come back to the people that plan for you guys to organize it and give you rave reviews, they’re gonna wonder why were we trying to restrict all that anyway? Why was that absolutely not? And, yes, the brain is important, but, ugh. Yeah.

Liz Lathan:
%. Agree with all of those things. You when you’re using it and you follow over and get those. But what? Sometimes

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
I think that’s amazing. Yeah. You’re like, we don’t need to use the brand. People know where they are. People know where they are. Exactly. I love that. So when you face challenges at work similar to that, how do you approach problem solving? Like, it sounds like you and Nicole just kind of discussed back and forth, tossing ideas.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
Is there a difference?

Liz Lathan:
We have a big giant whiteboard that we got from seven for $75 off of a retired teacher. So like it’s freaking huge and that is where our brain goes. So I like to say that people are either waffle brained or spaghetti brained. And if you’re waffle brained, you have the syrup in one square at a time. And if you’re spaghetti brained, you got the sauce on every noodle. And so during those brainstorming sessions, we got the sauce on every wall. And it’s just throwing it out there. And so, yeah, I mean, I think that it’s understanding the parameters, knowing the parameters.

Liz Lathan:
I’m the pragmatic one. So I’m always like, you know, when an idea gets too big. But it’s like, okay. You gotta let that go for a few minutes and then see how we can work it back. That’s Nicole’s favorite term. Let’s work it backwards. If we need this, then that’s what I know.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
But I think,

Liz Lathan:
You know, when you’re in a corporate environment and you’re trying to ideate and you’re trying to get approval for things, there’s definitely a much more structured way to do it. It probably took me twenty years of my career to attempt forgiveness, not permission. It was very permission driven. And so to even finally get to the place where I felt like I had enough respect, trust, and authority to be like, just try it. Let’s see. I mean, people get mad, but they’ll get mad at me. You guys are all safe. And I can kinda lead with that.

Liz Lathan:
Like, if I get fired, I get fired. But if we don’t try it, we’ll never know.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
Very courageous.

Liz Lathan:
Yeah. That’s a hard thing to do.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
And rewarding. Right?

Liz Lathan:
And you’ve got a reward. Yeah.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
You’ve got the results. I love that. I mean, just so many people are stuck in this. We have to work. It can’t be fun. We have to stay in these boxes and these walls, and I’m just like, no. We don’t. Like, there’s been so much science that has said if we play at work, we’re gonna be more engaged.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
We’re gonna be more productive. We’re gonna stick around longer.

Liz Lathan:
Yes. It’s crazy. So I love And I think, you know, we talk about play and it comes right into engagement. We’ve done a lot of work around engagements, and there’s the cognitive behavioral and emotional engagements. And so cognitive getting people to learn something, behavioral getting people to do something, but emotional, getting people to actually feel something and that’s what’s gonna connect them with what you’re doing. So if you can add that element of play into the content that you’re trying to do or into the experience so that people let their guard down and don’t feel like they have to be super prim and proper. I mean, you know, it’s that moment in church when somebody lets the, you know, fart go. Like, can you get to the moments that you remember that you asked so much about? It’s crazy.

Liz Lathan:
Right?

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
We’ve all been there. We get it. Right? So, team collaboration. You said that you and Nicole work really well together. Do you have other people on your team that attend the events and help you plan, or do you just kind of

Liz Lathan:
We do. We do. Yeah. So we’ve got our head of events now, David t Stevens. We’ve got community manager, Stephanie Taylor. So we’ve added these right people to the team, and it’s taken some trial and error, you know, to get here. And then the community is just so giving that when we need something, we can post it in the Slack channel. And, like, I have something coming up next week, and, one of the folks that we’re working with said I need 20 volunteers to do this thing.

Liz Lathan:
And so I dropped in the slack channel and I got 27 immediately. So people just want to help and want to share and we put together this little advisory council every quarter where we just create a locked slack channel and put 15 to 20 people in there. So when we have ideas, we can throw it out and be like, oh, I don’t like that. I don’t love it, we did that last quarter with just trying to settle on official wording for mission and vision and values and they were real clear. They’re like, that doesn’t sound like you. That’s oh, that sounds really boring, and that doesn’t represent the way that you come to life. And so it’s helpful to have that sounding board.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
Yeah. That’s amazing. It probably sometimes also reinforces decisions and choices that you wanna make. Having their buy-in and their backing of you is just kind of like, okay. We’re on the right track. If I get that.

Liz Lathan:
It’s a fine line, though, because what’s that old Henry Ford thing? Like, if I ask my customers what they want, they’d say faster horses. So you definitely have to kind of be like, okay. Well, here’s what they want, but here’s what they need. And be intuitive enough and see what’s going on in the world to know how far you can push people to do really fun things.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
I mean, obviously, Dell world was huge. I’ve accomplished. But outside of that, have there been any events that you’re like, that was amazing. I’m so glad we did that. Or maybe an activity during one of the events that you were just like, yes. That nailed it. Like, are there any

Liz Lathan:
I think Secret Sam is the biggest one that stands out. I mean, how do you charter a plane and not tell anybody that you’re doing this? Or, like, from the moment we visited the location to the secret we had to keep for an entire year. And that secret, like, at least we could tell people we were chartering a plane, but we couldn’t tell them anything else. And it was a very small circle of people who knew about it. And to see that I mean, there are multiple times we almost canceled the thing. We had, I think it was maybe three days before we were supposed to get on the plane to get there when the venue called us and said, where’s our money? I think we wired $45,000 to you. And they’re like, nope. You didn’t, and we’re gonna cancel everything unless you wire it to us right now.

Liz Lathan:
Turns out wire fraud. Somebody had gotten into the emails, said, oh, we’re changing the bank account. Our accounting person changed it and sent it. It’s gone. $45,000, poof, into thin air.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
Like, that makes me want to pass out. I’m like, oh. And I used to work in cybersecurity, so I’m just like, no. Like, oh, I’m so yeah.

Liz Lathan:
I mean, and it was like even the FBI was like, this was a really sophisticated way for them to go about it. So, like, I mean, there were signs we should have known, but you don’t know. You’re in the midst of all this. So, anyway yeah. So thanks to that moment that we’re able to reveal, though, we had this rolled out banner that was like, and the whole crowd is like, where are we going? Like, do Duscany. Like, those are the moments. It’s funny. Nicole always says that was actually the moment that made her have a heart attack because the moment we dropped that banner and we you know, the expectation of people being like, didn’t happen because people were standing there and they’re looking at it and they’re just trying to take in what just happened and where they’re going and who they need to call and tell and how they’re gonna tell their spouse and like all these things.

Liz Lathan:
And so it was just like this frozen moment. And then finally, it kinda, like, sunk in everybody’s head.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
Like, yay. Exactly. And you’re like, wait. Great. Guys, process quicker, please. I need to know. Yeah. That’s amazing

Liz Lathan:
So we’re trying to we’re stealing ourselves for when that happens again this next time.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
Well, at some point, I’m imagining your Club Ichi team reversing the roles and doing that to you and Nicole, and then it’d be like, yeah. That’s amazing.

Liz Lathan:
Yes. And wouldn’t that be fun if we actually got to be surprised on our very own trip? That would

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
be easy. I don’t know how. Yeah. I’ll think on that one. Okay. Fun for your team. I mean, it sounds like y’all have fun every day, so there’s not any extra things that you bring in. But, you know, maybe when workload is high and people are getting stressed, how do you invite fun into the workplace?

Liz Lathan:
You know, it’s funny. I just saw this meme the other day that is so right where it’s the little four up cartoon, and it’s like, I just turned my hobby into my job. That’s amazing. What do you do for fun?

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
Nothing. Right? Eyes going back and forth. Yeah.

Liz Lathan:
We’re still a little bit on that where it’s like it’s hard because the families don’t really understand why we work all the time. Are you working all the time? Like, what does it feel like work? Like, it’s still other than there’s that Mark Cuban saying that entrepreneurs work 80 a week so they don’t have to work forty. So it’s a little bit of that, but it’s also when it stops being fun, then we have a problem. Absolutely. It was about this time last year that I had reached out to my dad for some business advice as we’re trying to figure this thing out. He’s like, there’s only two rules in business. Make money, have fun. And I was like, well, we’re having fun.

Liz Lathan:
He goes, then you have a hobby. Add the money part, and then you’ll have a business.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
That’s accurate. I respect that.

Liz Lathan:
Well, we really started this business to write off alcohol and fly business class. So, you know, we’re on our way. We’re writing off alcohol, so we gotta work on the next part.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
Sign me up. Sign me up. I love that. I told my husband my rich life is traveling in business or first class, and he looked at me like, I’m like, that’s just what I want. Like, that’s fine. If you wanna go sit and coach, it’s cool. I’m fine sitting up, but I want to earn the privilege to sit up there. I feel that that’s important to me.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
I want the extra legs.

Liz Lathan:
It’s funny because my 17 year old son came home the other day and he was just talking about, like, getting rich and I wanna be a billionaire. And I’m like, okay. But why? What would that change for you that you don’t have right now? What is the billionaire dream for you? Because, you know, we all, we all think that when we’re young and then you start to look around, you’re like, okay, I have an amazing house. I have an amazing family. My car still works. Like all, I have all the things. So if I had just this much more, what would I do? Oh, I’d add those patio lights in the backyard and make it feel like a whatever. I would restretch the carpet upstairs because I’ve been putting that off for four years.

Liz Lathan:
I’d like there’s these little things. And so he was like, well, I think it’s just the ability to say yes to anything without ever having to think about it. I’m like, okay. So now let’s talk about just the freedom of choice you’d have when you have such money. Is it really a billion dollars you need to feel that way? Or what do we need? So it’s kinda fun to have those conversations.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
That’s awesome. Good for you for kind of bringing it in and saying, let’s talk about this a little bit more. What does this look like to you?

Liz Lathan:
And I mean, I’m thrilled for him to be a billionaire. I’m not trying to knock it. I’m just trying to, you know, make sure that he has a path toward it and doesn’t just think he can be a YouTuber.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
Yeah. Well, that too. What that reminded me of was a small sidetrack, but still, when my kids were younger and they came home with, like, a 75, they were I said, are you okay with this? Well, yeah. I guess. And I was like, well, k. But just so you know, a grade of 75 average does not lead to this lifestyle that we have right now. We can’t go out to eat. You know, we wouldn’t be able to go out to eat all the time.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
We couldn’t do summer camps, and it was kind of a level set of, you know, what are you wanting? If 75 is really okay, like, you’re leaving and that was at the time I don’t know what I live in Frisco, Texas, just North of Dallas. And the Texas schools, they were allowing the kids to retake tests to get up to a score of a hundred. And I’m like, plus, you’re never gonna have that ability the rest of your life, so use it now, please. Right. Get those hundreds. Right? It’s crazy. Yeah. Back on track.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
Back on track. Back on track. Work. I’m sorry. Okay. Focus. But exactly. But it’s fun, so I’ll take it.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
Can kinda put you on the spot a little bit, but maybe share a story of an unexpected challenge and how you guys overcame that other than the $45,000 just missing. And that was obviously we’ll send it right now. Sorry about that.

Liz Lathan:
Sorry. We’ll just be out an extra 45 k. Totally cool. Not cool. I think, you know, I have a million unexpected challenges. I mean, one of our Dell world ones, I think it is twenty thirteen ish or so. We had Bill Clinton as our keynote speaker and we had been warned that he’s traditionally not on time for his keynotes. And so, when that no one believes it, like, yeah, but we paid him.

Liz Lathan:
Like, he’s totally gonna be on time, but no, he was an hour and when you have, you know, 6,000 people at your conference and your keynote’s an hour late, and then, he’s just if you’ve ever met him, he’s like this amazing character. He’s just, like, got this aura about him. And so, you know, when he comes in and we’re like, we’re just gonna have him do the keynote and then we’ll do his meet and greet afterwards. Like, nope. That’s not how he works. He gets his energy from the people. So, yes, you’re gonna delay everything, but he’s gonna do that first and then he’ll work on stage. And I mean, then it was freaking magical and absolutely unbelievable conversation and all that.

Liz Lathan:
But, yeah, that’s a little kind of expected but unexpected because the expected part, because we had been warned, we had set up a plan for, instead of normally you do the keynote and then into the breakout sessions and then, you know, expo launch, whatever we had put it so that in the event that that was later, we had things we could move around. So it was right into the Expo Hall so that we could kind of switch things around. We had the team armed, with, you know, the walkie talkies to know what to do. We had the signs that were ready. All we needed to do was get them printed with exactly the new time that was gonna happen and have everybody disperse and do it. So we just had to kind of call that into action and make it happen. But, so kind of boy scout preparedness, but still still unexpected. Still just like, really?

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
So you and I, we haven’t talked about this at all, but I am a certified strengths CliftonStrengths coach. Have you ever taken the assessment?

Liz Lathan:
Yes. K.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
So I’m imagining you are probably really high woo and probably high a ranger. Am I right? Similar maybe? Yeah. Having the ability to take a hit to the schedule and go, that’s okay. We can do this and flip, flip, flip, flip, and be like, okay. Done. Not everybody can do that. So to have that ability is props to you.

Liz Lathan:
Yeah. But I think that, you know, the people that take on leadership positions, especially in events, you have to have that. If you’re hair on fire running around like a crazy person all the time, then you are not gonna succeed. You’re just gonna cause yourself huge burnout.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
Right. Yeah. Or a heart attack. One of the two.

Liz Lathan:
Exactly. But then but then there’s, again, a fine line for that because I have been told, you don’t actually look like you have a sense of urgency around this problem. I’m like, okay. That’s fair. Because I actually do, but I also have to instill a sense of calm in everyone around me. But I can see your point. I maybe need to yell a little louder.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
Gotcha. Okay. So what’s a little fact about Liz that maybe many people don’t know that you’d be willing to share?

Liz Lathan:
Oh, I think probably a lot of people know this, but I always go back to space camp. I was a space camper from fourth grade all the way through high school, and then I went back to college to be a camp counselor there. My kids have now gone to space camp. My daughter’s going again next week. And I think that, as weird and kind of left of center that sounds, that I think that it really shaped my experiential brain of how I like to do events because the way they do space camp is this fully immersive experience where you’re training like an astronaut. You’re, you’re sitting in lectures and classes, especially if you get into the high school age and you’re learning from former astronauts and you’re learning from people. And it’s like, my, my daughter’s like, I don’t know if I want to go back. There’s a lot of school like, okay, but, but think about this.

Liz Lathan:
When you are interested in this and you’re just eating it up, right? You’re listening to these incredible people and then you get to go apply it in the simulation. And like, that’s how I think of events. How can you take the learning part, make it interesting to people, and then give them an opportunity to go use their hands and go put something together? And so I kinda carry that with me when I think about designing things.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
I love it. Speaking of using your hands to create things, when was the last time you played with Legos?

Liz Lathan:
Oh, well, let’s see. It has probably been two weeks.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
Barely recent.

Liz Lathan:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. No. We have probably thousands of dollars of Legos in our house. I love it. I was

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
I’ll be happy to send you a kit that I use when I’m introducing the LEGO series to fellow people because it’s a different kit. It drives people with OCD crazy because there’s not an equal number of all the pieces. Oh. Random pieces. But it’s fun. I’ll send it to you.

Liz Lathan:
Have you ever there’s a game, I think it’s called creationary or something like that. That is it’s all based on Legos and it’s kind of like telestrations or or pictionary, but it’s with Legos. And so you draw a card and only you know what the card is, and you have to create it with all these random Lego pieces, and other people have to guess what they think it is. I’ve never had such a fun game.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
I’ve never liked it, is it in stores or online? 

Liz Lathan:
I give up on Amazon or something, but, yes, so freaking fun.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
I love Legos. It’s fun.

Liz Lathan:
I mean, it’s just like laying at the pool and looking at the clouds and trying to determine what that shape is. Is that a dragon? Is it a, you know, whatever? So that’s how we are with the Legos.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
I love it. I think it’s great. And one last question. Mhmm. You have a whole toolbox of things that you’ve accumulated over your years of working with people, four people, etcetera. If you were to give our guests one tip, one idea, one thing to take away from today, what would that be?

Liz Lathan:
I think it’s that focus on engagement because that’s the number one question we get is how do I make my event more engaging? Like, well, first of all, you need to define what you mean by engagement because if you mean people not looking at their cell phones, that’s very different than people sharing something on social media, which is very different from what I call ROE, return on ego, which is when the executive says people look happy. So define what you’re trying to accomplish and then take that framework of cognitive, behavioral or emotional and figure out how are you trying to engage and then how are you measuring that so that you can tie it to it. Because if it is true, we just want people to talk about it all over social media and go crazy viral. That’s a very different thing that you’re building on-site than having your sales team learn a new product so that they can sell it better. So I think that’s my key is to just not just willy nilly say drive engagement. I’m thinking about it a little bit more. Be a little more strategic about it.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
Right. Nail down exactly what that looks like to you because it’s gonna be different for everybody.

Liz Lathan:
Absolutely. Thank you.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
Liz, this has been such a pleasure. Liz Lathan, tell us how our guests can find you and Club Ichi.

Liz Lathan:
Sure. Well, I kinda live and breathe on LinkedIn, so definitely find me there. It’s Liz Lathan. And then Club Ichi we are Ichi.com. You can come hang out with us, and we do stuff online multiple, multiple, multiple times a month, and we’re in person almost once a month, somewhere close to that. We have the Slack channel that’s always on. We have ridiculous trips. We have ridiculous fun, and just come hang with us.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
I love it. Thank you so much. It’s been such a pleasure. Thanks everybody for joining us for Play for Performance and having Liz Lathan with us today. Have a great one. See you soon.

Liz Lathan:
The pleasure was mine.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
Thank you. Yay.