This week I'm joined by Liz Lathan, co-founder of Club Ichi, a social club for B2B event professionals with nearly 800 paid members in under two years. Liz spent 20 years in corporate event marketing at Dell and IBM before leaving to build Club Ichi with her co-founder Nicole, and she's here to break down ROE, Return on Emotion, and the five emotions her team found actually predict future business.

We talk about the origin story behind Club Ichi (yes, an unconference in a children's museum is involved), why she makes it her mission to teach every planner on her team the language of sales and marketing, and why "party planner" might be the most underrated title in the room. We also get into why event teams get stuck as order-takers instead of strategic partners, and how to speak differently to a CFO than a CMO when you're trying to prove what you built actually worked.

In this episode:

How Liz went from corporate events at Dell and IBM to co-founding Club Ichi The real story behind Club Ichi's name (and the unconference that started it all) Why Liz teaches her team the language of sales and marketing on purpose The five emotions that actually predict future business (Liz's HAM framework) How to pitch ROE differently to a CFO vs. a CMO Why NPS predicts past business, not future business A real example of ROE translating into RFPs, job offers, and partnerships

Connect with Liz Lathan & Club Ichi: Liz Lathan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lizlathan

Club Ichi: https://www.weareichi.com

The Community Factory: https://www.thecommunityfactory.com

Five people can watch the same event and walk away with five completely different verdicts, and not one of them is speaking the same language. In this episode, Jenny Howard Maxwell breaks down the moment that changed how she builds events for good: the six month project that got reduced to a tip jar and a slow valet, and the framework she built afterward so her work would never again rest on one person's mood. This is the story behind the Experiential Edge Blueprint, why proof beats applause, and how to finally get the CEO, the CFO, the CMO, the planner, and the sales team all reading from the same page.

Jenny has designed activations for Bentley, launched brand experiences most people never get invited to see, and worked with some of the biggest names in the industry. On paper, she had made it. But more times than she wants to admit, she would watch a room full of people feel something real, and still have the whole event judged as a failure because one person walked in with a bad mood and nothing had been agreed on in advance about what success actually meant. In this episode, Jenny gets honest about the beach trip, the closed startup, and the ten books that led her to build the framework that changed everything, not just her events, but her entire career.