Rodney Hart: Hello and welcome into another episode of Event Perspectives. I’m excited about this one. Joining me is Maggie Barton Baird, who is the head of events at Jobber. Maggie, how are you doing?
Maggie Barton Baird: Hey, I’m good. My voice is a bit gone because we’ve had the company offsite and I was so excited to see everyone that I was yelling and giving lots of hugs. My team didn’t have to run it, so we got to enjoy it a little bit. Please, I’m not sick, just a little too much yelling.
Rodney Hart: I think if there’s one thing that people in this industry understand, it’s that voice the next day where it’s like, “Hmm, man, I went a little too hard too early, right?” It’s day three, I’ve got one more left. I should have saved a little bit. No, I think we’ll be totally fine with that. And before I get going, so again, every episode we like to do a little bit of career background. What are some of the more interesting things that you’re working on? But before that, even though I know you don’t need it, I’d like to do an icebreaker.
Maggie Barton Baird: Yeah.
Rodney Hart: So for the icebreaker question, what I want to ask is: what’s something that you’ve learned early in your career that you think others learn too late?
Maggie Barton Baird: I think there are two things. One is I think a corporate superpower is being able to articulate exactly what you need. I see often in early and mid-career event professionals who get frustrated about something or don’t know how to tackle a situation. They might be annoyed that somebody’s coming in with a last-minute request, and there’s this inability to articulate exactly what you need or to coach people to articulate exactly what they need. So somebody’s upset with a room as an example. Say what’s wrong with the room. Is it the chairs? Is it the ceiling height? Whatever. So both being able to articulate what you need as an individual, but also helping people articulate what they need. It sounds so simple, but I think everybody listening to this will be at their next event offsite and be like, “Right, I should have done that.”
The other piece that my team has taken on recently that I love is this mantra of choosing peace. I think sometimes as event professionals, we’ve spent so much of our career justifying our jobs and that we’re strategic partners and that we really know what we’re doing. And sometimes, especially earlier career, it can come off a bit defensive. It’s like, “Well, I know,” and nobody respects that I know this stuff. Or there’s this yearning for ownership of certain things. It comes from a really good place, but my team and I every so often will look at a decision, even if we disagree with it, and be like, “Is this a moment we can choose peace? Like, is this really the thing we need to twist ourselves into a pretzel about? Or is this just a moment where we can choose peace?” We have a cute little emoji in Slack and in meetings we’ll be like, “Choose peace.” I would say those are two things I wish I learned earlier. And then I also just see as I’m working with early and mid-career event professionals that this can definitely make work a little more enjoyable and less emotional, because the type of work that we do is so deeply emotional.
Rodney Hart: So a question on that because we will get into some of your early career and how you wound up here. I think that’s a great answer. We have an advice question later, so I don’t know if you’re going to reuse that one, but that’s a great piece of advice. When did you discover that? Because I totally agree with you. There’s this moment of like, “Right, you can hear someone, and something’s not right, but you know what, directionally, how are we addressing this?” Or maybe not pushing back is the wrong thing to say, but it could be seen a little more defensive. But just the idea of, “I’m hearing your advice. I’m now articulating or interpreting what exactly you want to do,” as opposed to, “I’m just going to do what you say, but I’m going to be grumpy about it because you don’t see it correctly.” When did this idea pop in for you? What was the learning where the ability to articulate what you want came from?
Maggie Barton Baird: I think for me it really came to light when I became a people leader. A lot of people can tell you the first time they manage people, they realize so much about themselves as somebody who reports into people, because you start to see the other side of it. I just noticed so consistently that people would come to me with complaints or concerns, and they’re all well intentioned. To be totally honest, it all comes from a good place. It all feels like what I’m told to do is tell my manager. But I would spend all this time trying to coach out of them, like, “What do you actually want from me?” And sometimes the answer is just, “I just need someone to listen because I’m feeling alone right now.” That’s totally fine. But I would find people would come with these big problems or big company changes would happen and people would come to me and they’d be stunned when I’d ask, “Okay, so what can we do about it?”
I sort of started to notice that then. And then I played a little game with myself when I was trying to work through problems or raise concerns with my supervisor. I’d be like, “Okay, let’s go in with exactly what I want.” I just found nine times out of ten, I got what I wanted on the first ask. It didn’t have to turn into this emotional thing that I was pining over. And it really, at the end of the day, provided me with more peace. Which is why I think the “articulating what you want” and the “choosing peace” pieces are connected in a way, because it delays the length of time that conflict can happen.
In terms of coaching other people, like I find at an event, somebody who’s not used to events will get on-site and get really overwhelmed like in the room example. The chairs are in the wrong place or the ceiling’s too low or whatever. But they often won’t actually articulate that. They’ll just be like, “I can’t do this. This isn’t working.” And once you can get down to what it actually is, you’re like, “You just want the layout slightly different. Let me talk to banquets.” So it saves you that emotional toil, I guess.
Rodney Hart: Yeah, and I think there’s something in that too around articulating what you want so that people are open to hearing it. Again, it doesn’t mean you’re going to get exactly what you want, but I think sometimes the idea of not saying anything and thinking that people should just know. Especially once you become a people leader, you’re probably like, “I wish you would have told me that. Like, if I knew that was something important to you, I could have easily done this instead of that. Or maybe I was already trying to think about something and if I knew the preference.” So that’s a great start. We’re already deep into this path here, but let’s pull back a little bit. Tell us a little bit about how you got into events. Like, what was the path that led you there? I feel like it can often be so nonlinear.
Maggie Barton Baird: Yeah, for me, my background is in theater. Growing up in high school, I was always part of different theater groups and productions. When I was in high school, I was part of this really cool group, a theater group for teenagers, where we were fully in charge. There were adults in the room, but if sets needed to be built, we had to build them. If costumes needed to be made, we had to make them. It really instilled a lot of ownership and experience in me. I had an opportunity to learn about what’s called stage management, which is basically the person behind the scenes calling all the cues, making sure everybody knows where they’re supposed to be. It’s very similar to event planning, and some conferences will have stage management roles in them as well. It’s a bit different in theater than in conferences. So I got really into stage management. I went and did a co-op placement at a big theater company just outside Toronto and loved it. I applied to universities to go into stage management, went to university for stage management, loved it.
After that, I explored whether I wanted to do theater. Theater’s a really hard grind. You’re working six-week contract to six-week contract. You don’t make a ton of money. A lot of people want to do it, but there aren’t many jobs. So while I was figuring out what I wanted to do, I got into the catering side of events. We learned at the small catering company I worked for that most of the problems came from poor event planning. So we started filling some of those gaps. I started getting a little bit of experience. Then I got a job at a theater company running their operations, so ticketing, events, concession, all that kind of stuff. People knew that I had been doing some event planning at the catering company, so I was getting these side gigs. People’s weddings, random corporate events, nonprofits, all that kind of stuff.
Basically, through a series of events, I ended up freelancing. I lived somewhere between freelancing and owning an agency. I mostly freelanced, but if I had a project that was really big, I had about 30 subcontractors I could pull on at any moment. So we lived a little in between the two worlds of freelancing and running an agency. Fast forward 10 years, and Jobber was a client of mine, and I was having a moment where I was like, “This is all an accident. Like, me running this agency was not planned. Me, like, this being my life was not planned. I do not want to use QuickBooks. I don’t want to go to all these dinners and do business development. Was I going to do this until retirement? Is this really what my life looks like?” I was working a million hours a week. I was making good money, to be totally honest, but the line between who I am as a person and who the business was, there wasn’t one. I fully identified with the business.
Jobber was going to hire somebody in-house to do the work that I was taking care of, which makes sense. The type of events Jobber was doing, having somebody in-house was a great idea. They said to me, “Would you take it?” I was like, “I think the stars are aligning because I’m really questioning if I even want to do this anymore.” So it took a lot of soul searching and the team at Jobber and I had to make sure that what I was coming in for was actually my skill set and what I was interested in doing. Eventually, I came in-house at Jobber to lead their first sort of formal event marketing team. There had been an excellent event marketer doing great work, but it had been her and then the director of brand sort of doing this dynamic duo thing to try and figure out trade shows and different events. They did great work, truly they did, but there was a new opportunity to really refine the event marketing portfolio, really get clear on measurement and how we were going to grow the program over time in a marketing function.
So yeah, I’ve been there just over five years now, but it’s an interesting career path I think, a little bit because a lot of my colleagues and peers come up through corporate events. I’m head of events and most of my experience is freelance and agency. So I’m constantly asking you and other people, “How are you handling this and stuff?” Because I am, to be totally honest, dealing with some things that it’s just my first time doing it. I can do the strategy and event measurement all day long, but there are some things that are just different from the companies and friends that I have.
Rodney Hart: Yeah, well, and I think it’s actually so interesting. So I’ve got a couple of questions here before we transition. I mean, to your credit, I think there are some things that you’re doing, and it probably comes from having run this agency and thinking about the business that you’re like, “I think, in many ways, these are things that you’re doing.” I’ve seen me and other people go like, “Wait, sorry, how are you doing that automation?” I think some of it probably comes from just the idea of, “Hey, there is a job to get done. Like, we need to move forward.” But you kind of talked about, you know, this. I mean, and you said small agency. I would say 30 subcontractors is probably a decent size. No matter how you look at it, at least from my perspective. The head of events feels like a consuming job one way or the other. How would you describe the difference between kind of business owner running events and now this?
Maggie Barton Baird: Yeah, I would say I think I’m an entrepreneur at heart. I think some of the stuff, Rodney, that you’re like, “How are you doing that?” is that I still see my little pocket of Jobber as like my own business. It’s my job to run it. I think there’s a term called intrapreneur, which is the idea of being inside of a business but running your part as if you’re an entrepreneur. I think that will always exist for me. I’m the queen of being like, “Why not?” Or like, “If I need to solve a problem, I’ll just go find it.” I have this belief, and I always joke about this. My boss and I both believe we could do anything. Like, deep down in our heart of hearts, we’re like, “I could do anything.”
In terms of the headspace of the two, when I was running the agency, there was no identity-wise space between the business and me. I actually had a hard time when I closed the agency and there were certain people I just didn’t talk to as much anymore because I wasn’t doing work, and I was like, “Were we really friends?” I actually had to do some soul searching and be like, “I think we were friends. It just was like we saw each other more because of what we were doing.” So it was all consuming in terms of like I worked from my house. My friends were my colleagues or clients or whatever. I really felt like if I didn’t do it, literally no one would. It was actually honest in many ways.
Head of events is also very consuming. However, the support for me is the reason. I don’t think, I mean, let’s fast forward ten years and maybe we’ll see what happens, but I don’t think I would go back to agency. They’re like, you know, even just like I was talking to our director of accounting yesterday about a couple of things and I’m like, “Man, I’m so glad I can work with you to solve this, but like I’m sort of giving it to the expert and I don’t have to figure out how to work QuickBooks or whatever platform.” So I feel way less alone, which for me is a really important piece. I think the mental game of events is really important. And I think that’s what I needed to be able to create a complete identity of myself that was not the job. I’m able to do that in-house. If something goes wrong or if I get feedback, it doesn’t feel like it’s a reflection of me as a human. I’m still a good person. I still have friends who love me. And in the agency days, I don’t think I could see that. I thought any criticism was like a direct criticism of me as an individual. Being in-house, I still take it just as seriously, but I recognize the space a little bit more.
Rodney Hart: I love your use of the term intrapreneur, because I so think of my cruise. Really I’ve only had two jobs, basically, and for me, even that same feeling, I’ve always felt like leaving one job for the other was very difficult to me because of how much I pour myself into the role. And I’m curious to know from your perspective, no matter where I’ve been, and I feel like I’m hearing it, and I kind of know this already a little bit based on conversations we’ve had, like that to me has to be super valuable to your organization. This idea, and I’m curious even for people listening, like I would argue I think that’s why I love my job. I mean, maybe that’s why I’m too invested in my job. Maybe that’s why some people go, “Yeah, you care maybe too much about this.” But at the same time, that ownership, even within a corporate structure, you have maybe more of that support. It’s not technically yours to sink or swim. But I’m curious, do you feel that way? Do you feel like that type of ownership makes you feel a certain way about even your role in a corporate environment versus, like, “I’m here to do the head of events job from nine to five”?
Maggie Barton Baird: Yeah, I’m definitely, I think similar to what you’re saying, like there, I don’t do anything at like 50%. I think you know that about me from over the years too. And so I still am deeply invested. Like I am so invested in our customers and in our success as a company. And I think it’s probably above average, but not because I’m necessarily like special in any way, more so that I think events demand a level of presence from people to do a really good job that I think it’s hard to hack if you don’t agree or aren’t bought in to the whole thing.
Like, as a very small example, like I will go to trade shows and be the person handing out air fresheners. I’ll be like, “Hey, where are you from? Tell me about your business.” And, you know, our customers, we’re so lucky that they’re so deeply invested in their work. These are businesses they own, and in some cases their families have passed them down. And, you know, they don’t see the difference. Like, they don’t see the difference between themselves and the business. So I have to show up with the same presence that they show up every day. And so I think specifically with my customers, like I can’t do it half. I have to commit to it.
And I think also events, I’m passionate about this. I think there’s too many downsides to being in events to not be the person who loves it. You know, the number of times I’ve had to talk with teams who are traveling with us about how this isn’t nine to five. And you know, it’s an example of choose peace. It’s like I could bend myself in a pretzel getting annoyed that people don’t understand this, but some people’s jobs genuinely are nine to five and they go home to their kids at the end of the night and that’s it and that’s great for them. I would be bored out of my mind.
Rodney Hart: Yeah, yeah, right, yeah, yeah, because it is like, you know, we hear that or think it sometimes and you go like, “Doesn’t that sound nice?” And honestly in the back of my mind I always think like not really. I’m maybe broken, maybe you know, maybe. But I kind of hear that and I’m like, maybe there will be a point in my life where I’m like, “Let me clock in, clock out, maybe.” You know, I have had that conversation like every once in a while. I mean, if I was like truly a retirement gig and I was like, you know, just handing out tickets or something, maybe there would be a point in my life. But for my career, I’m like, I know, maybe I kind of like the crazy.
Maggie Barton Baird: Yeah, maybe.
Rodney Hart: But speaking of your time, so tell us a little bit how long have you been at Jobber now? And I want to use that to kind of transition into some of the challenges and interesting things that you’ve been working on. I know like one of those, you’ve been there for some time, you’ve got a team, you’re growing that team, you’re probably trying to standardize procedures. Tell us a little bit about now how long you’ve been there and kind of what your current role is today.
Maggie Barton Baird: Yeah, so my official anniversary is coming up in a bit here and that’ll be five years. But I was a contractor for about a year before that. So, yeah, six years I always joke. Whenever you start the clock, it’s between five and six years. But yeah, my team, when I started, it was me and one person. Now we’re a team of four, with a freelancer who is basically an employee. So we’re basically a team of five. We went from really small, sort of modest budgets to a pretty mature portfolio at this point and a pretty integrated event system into the whole marketing flow and sales flow. I’m really lucky to have a really great relationship with our sales team. And I know a lot of event professionals, that’s sort of like one of the battles they fight on a regular basis. But we are really well aligned. We’re just really lucky to be very much on the same page. So we’re running a pretty mature events program at this point that I’m really proud of.
And I think, you know, in a world of AI and in a world where we serve customers whose businesses are so deeply connected to them, we’re really well positioned to continue to grow events. So I don’t think we’re slowing down anytime soon. I need a couple vacations before we’ve had a really busy 2026. But yeah, it’s a really exciting time to be at Jobber and to be leading events, especially in the blue-collar space.
Rodney Hart: Let’s talk a little bit about that sale. Maybe give a little intro. I know what Jobber is. Actually, it’s funny because you know, I’ve used Jobber or I’ve been the customer of some of your customers, so it is kind of like you tell us a little bit about that. And really I want it by way of talking about the business, you talked about this relationship between events and sales, which is also something I’m super passionate about and I think understand. I think it can be kind of like a cat and dog, you know, friend situation, especially in, you know, my experience from having been in really large enterprise and, you know, how you do that. But you talked about how that relationship is important. And so I kind of want to unpack that a little bit. So maybe by way of just a quick overview on Jobber, but talk to us a little bit about your relationship with sales and why you think that relationship matters and what drives a great partnership there.
Maggie Barton Baird: Yeah, so Jobber is a business operations platform for blue collar. So plumbers, cleaners, HVAC, painters, handyman. I think you mostly see that around your area.
Rodney Hart: Yeah, handymen, landscapers, plumbers, yeah, all the things I can’t do. So.
Maggie Barton Baird: Exactly, yeah. So it’s an entire business operations platform. So quoting, scheduling, invoicing, getting paid. There’s a marketing piece to the product. There’s an AI receptionist side of the product as well. The idea more or less is that between Jobber and integrations that we have available, you should be able to run your entire business off of Jobber. We’re announcing new and exciting things all the time. We just recently announced Teammate, which is sort of your AI employee. Really excited about this space.
One misconception about Jobber is that we refer to our customers as service pros, so we call them SPs, and then we refer to their customers, so Rodney, you, as service consumers, or SCs. Service consumers interact with Jobber, but only when it’s triggered by the SP. Some people think it’s like Angie’s List or something like that. It’s not. You interact with it to make your payments. You get reminders of when somebody’s coming. You’ve sent me photos of you using client hub where you can keep all of your information together. And so that’s what we do.
In terms of our relationship with sales, we are not an enterprise, we are an SMB. And so the relationship with our customers and the sales cycle is just very different. It’s always interesting hiring event planners for us because they either come from SMB and don’t understand our customers, or they come from enterprise B2B and they understand our customers, but they don’t understand our sales cycle. So it’s always a bit of an education moment. But I like it because I can build a team where they have a different set of understanding. So as a team, we complete like a whole.
But yeah, our sales cycle is a lot shorter. You know, Rodney, you’re probably working with like 18 months plus. I have a new trade show manager and she’s never made a sale on a trade show floor because the product she comes from is like an 18-month sales cycle. We sell on the floor. We have floor targets at trade shows. And so I work in the world of high volume, is the way that I often talk about it. So you’ll hear event planners say, like, “Don’t get too hung up on scans at trade shows. Like, it doesn’t matter.” And I’m like, “No, scans matter to us.”
And so our sales cycle is just different. But I think because it’s different, it allows for a really great relationship with sales because the sales team can see immediate benefit from having events. We have them at, I can’t think of an event we have where we don’t have somebody from sales. And so there’s a clear value there to the whole company, but also to the sales team. So the sales leadership and I are in constant communication. And sometimes even internally it shocks people. I was in a meeting a few weeks ago where somebody was like, “Okay, how are events and sales working together?” And I was like, “We talk like every day. We’re like, what do you mean from us? We’re a little duo.” And so I’m really proud of that relationship.
I think the way that we really built it was by focusing on making sure that we were getting sales what they needed. Going back to like articulating what you need. It was very easy early on to understand what sales needed, and we were able to deliver that to ensure that events were giving them something they needed so that we weren’t sort of like pulling them as a side project. A lot of times when I hear event professionals talking about the relationship with sales and, you know, venting about it or whatever, which is so valid, they usually will say something along the lines of like, “Well, they don’t get it.” And my response is usually like, “Well, make them get it. Like, and how does it benefit them?” Like, every person at your company has targets they’re trying to hit and has, you know, a set of KPIs or whatever you call them internally that they’re trying to hit. And that’s their number one priority. So help them deliver on that and then they will care about what you’re doing. And luckily, we were able to do that pretty early on. And now we have a really symbiotic relationship, if you will.
Rodney Hart: And like I think what I love so much about it, and now it’s like causing me to think about big enterprise tech events, because again, that’s more of the world that I’m very used to. I think we get further and further away from this idea of why events exist in the first place, you know? Or what the core value prop is, yes, those relationships and building those relationships. The longer the sales cycle, the more the touch point. You know, so it becomes maybe slightly more nuanced. But then when you have this example, like the idea of marketing or sales not working together is not a great recipe at the end of the day. You know, we all have kind of our own goals. And again, the maybe the more matrix the organization, the more the bigger you get, the more well, we’re really trying to hit marketing goals that theoretically should be helping to hit sales goals. But, you know, in the world that you’re describing, it’s like, “What do we all here to do? We’re all here to drive business forward. That’s it. You know, that’s the point.” And so I think that should never be lost. You know, it doesn’t mean that marketing or sales doesn’t necessarily know our world in a way of saying like, “Hey, trust us.” You know, like we need a good, trusting relationship back and forth. But I think also the idea of not understanding what sales actually needs, like you might build a phenomenal activation and it’s like great, super fun. Doesn’t translate at all, you know? Everybody loved what we did, and we pat ourselves on the back as marketers, but sales is like, “I didn’t talk to anybody about a thing. Nobody flowed them through us in any way. You didn’t support us in getting our job done.” So I feel like that relationship absolutely matters. And I get that there’s probably always a bit of a push and pull like on it, but that’s super helpful.
What about as you’re building and growing your events, like kind of a playbook or operationalizing it? Like what is that looking like right now for you and the team that you’re working with?
Maggie Barton Baird: Yeah, we’re I don’t know if we’re like officially categorized. I don’t even know if there’s an official categorization for this, but we are a high growth company. I started at Jobber when we were just under 400 people and now we’re over 1,300 people. So every time I think there’s a process for something, there isn’t. And it’s actually been funny as my team’s been growing a lot recently. I’ve been trying to sort of nail down policies and procedures and like, you know, where is this thing written? Like there’s, you know, we have rules about like how many people can be on different flights and very common. And I’m like, “Do we have that written somewhere?” And everybody’s like, “No, I just sort of tell each other.” I’m like, “Okay, great, I’m going to write that down.” And then, you know, I go to rewrite it and it’s like, “That’s changed.” And you know, so I am desperately want to build this structure for my team that is like, “Here is how all these things work. It stays the same. Now you can just do it.” And it’s like I blink and something has changed.
And the benefit I have from having been around for so long at Jobber is that I have an appreciation for why they’re changing. I think when you come in and you’re like, “Why is everything changing?” I’ve seen before, I’ve seen after, and so I see the benefit. And I think as we’re growing, we have to change. You know, we have a saying often internally that like what got us here won’t get us there. And so I have a ton of appreciation for changing things, but it makes it a nightmare to try and standardize things. And so I will admit, like standardizing event stuff for us is not something that we’ve been super strong at recently. But I’m really excited because two new people on our team that just started this month. Both actually have a history of doing programs that are repeatable. One comes from a background of doing 200 plus trade shows a year, the other comes from a background of building up field marketing events and event in a box. So it’s definitely on the 2027 side of project goals. Because the other thing that I’m not sure if this is your experience, but I have talked with a lot of event planners about is building these processes and stuff. I like to joke calling them boring, not to diminish them, but more just to be like, they’re not actually driving business results. And so I can’t take somebody off of a project and be like, “Go build this event in a box so it’s easier to plan these events.” There’s huge benefit to it and I want it to be simpler and easier. And the more events we can get out the door, the more money we do make down the line. But it’s not something that I can pull somebody off something. So these are all side projects, which is why to date, it’s been, you know, at best not great. But I’m really excited for our two new team members that I think really have an opportunity to make a big impact there internally. And we are definitely at a point as a company that we need it because my team doesn’t own these like repeatable events. They support them. But we can’t be, you know, sending people off for every last thing. So it’s on our horizon.
Rodney Hart: Yeah, well, I’m going to use, I like to find the positive in everything, because as someone at RainFocus, like similar, you know, I’ve almost hit five years, but you know, there are some things that in my heart of hearts is like, we should, this should be more operationalized than it is. But then again, sometimes I’m like, but you know, that creative juice really came because I need, so it was there was no set plan. You know, we didn’t exactly know how we were going to show up. And we actually showed up in a pretty cool way, because, you know, a little bit sometimes back against the wall, like gotta pick something soon. So curious, like for inspiration and kind of creativity, because I know one of the pieces that you had kind of talked about was leaning on looking to B2C for inspiration. But just generally speaking, how do you think of creativity and its role in driving business impact, kind of with with events?
Maggie Barton Baird: Yeah, I think my best work comes from really knowing our customers, which is obviously hard when you first start at a company. So, you know, the two folks that I just had start, they have a sense of our customers. And actually, one week three, we were like, “You’re coming to the user conference,” and sort of just threw her into everything and gosh, she did great. And it was a really great learning opportunity for her. But I think my superpower is really knowing our customers and being able to pick up the phone. You know, I have a few allies that I can sort of pick up the phone and be like, “Would they hate this?” You know, and chat it through with them. And I think at the end of the day, that’s the greatest way that I can have creativity and seeing the world through their lens. But I also like to push them. And so, you know, we’ve done some things that are, you know, the cost of them are low, the stakes of them are low, just to see, you know, like, “Is this something that they would like?” And sometimes they surprise us and they hate things and then other times they surprise us and they love things and we’re like, “No way.” And so I think, you know, lots of inspiration from what you do and, you know, all our friends that we chat with regularly. But I think the true inspiration for me comes from feeling really confident that I know our customers.
Rodney Hart: What do you think I’ve been wrestling with my light over here, but I’m just going to give it a go. If it looks a little dark, sorry to our video editor. But you keep describing that relationship and you’re saying things that like make me so happy, which is you’re going and getting what feels like pretty honest feedback. Like is there is there like what’s the art and science to building that type of relationship? Because I’m kind of with you and I’ve been, you know, pretty, you know, sometimes I say like kind of the small events team, you know, the events team. But you know, I look at our extended marketing team and part of what I think one of my strengths is is like, “No, I want this to feel like a safe space. And I’m going to, at the end of the day, it’s my job, you know, like so something’s got to be there. And if it’s not, then then I messed up. But I’m going to pick something, but I’d love feedback, you know, and if you hate it, I want you to tell me. I will not be sent. I will steer differ or I will probe back, you know, and say, “I think this is a good idea, do you? And I really want an honest answer. I don’t want you to tell me that you think it’s a brilliant idea if you think it’s a terrible idea.” But I’m curious, like, what’s your approach in those relationships with your team, with these stakeholders, like kind of the people that you know you’re making a phone call to and going to get an honest answer? Like, is there is there any kind of magic that lets that type of feedback flow?
Maggie Barton Baird: I think back to your earlier question of like what’s something that I think event professionals need to learn. I would say most of the event professionals near and dear to my heart know this, but I think removing your ego from feedback is like a mental game you have to figure out really early on in your career. And so I just in a way sort of like you go through it enough times that you’re like, “Am I going to bend myself into a pretzel because somebody didn’t like this? Like, I don’t know everything. And so yeah, I’m going to get some ideas wrong.” And so I think first step is removing your ego and feeling like it’s a personal affront by any means, which goes back to sort of what I was chatting about before.
The blessing with our customers is they don’t mince words. They’re not going to try to be, you know, overly corporately correct. And I love them for it. You know, I don’t have to try and like weasel words out of people. You know, we had a user conference and just a customer I’ve known for a really long time came up to me and was like, “I have some feedback.” And I was like, “Go for it. Like, I’m in the middle of the event wearing a radio. I’ve slept three hours.” Like, I think the average person would be like, “Now is not the time.” But I was like, “I might not. He might not fill out the survey. So now’s my moment.” You know, I say to our internal team, “Like, leave the feedback for afterwards unless it’s urgent.” But so I think it’s definitely like a mental game. I think in terms of building relationships with customers, the benefit that we have as event professionals that the majority of the rest of the marketing and even whole company doesn’t have is they don’t spend time in the field like we do. I see customers like so much. I now actually have like leadership coming being like, “I want to go to one of your events and work it like an events person so that I can build customer empathy.” And these are people who like, I’m like, “Are you sure? Like you’re not going to do your job. You’re going to hold a sign telling people where to go. Like, are you sure you want to do that?” And they’re like, “Yep, I’ll take a week off and I’ll do it.”
And so I think because we’re so often in the field, we get those moments where we see our customers as complete humans. And I think it’s really easy, both within my company, but other clients I’ve worked with, to see your customers as really two-dimensional. And the nice thing with events is they’re not working at the time. They’re not giving product feedback. They’re like living their lives. They’re at a party, like they have friends there, you know? It’s a really social environment. Like we have one of our biggest trade shows of the year coming up and I always say it’s like summer camp because the same people go every year. So I’ve gotten to the point where I’ll ask people like, “My gosh, your kid must be like ten now, right?” And they’re like, “Yeah, and we got a new dog,” and they’re showing me pictures and stuff.
And so I think, you know, in our case, like I said, that sort of their corporate and their own lives are quite meshed. And so it’s easy to get to know them in that way. I think probably in a more traditional B2B enterprise setting, it might be a little bit harder. But I intentionally spend time at events talking to customers, asking what they’re interested in. We’ll sometimes go in and take off our work shirts, put on new shirts, and just sort of chat with people. But you end up, you know, I think over time you end up making allies. Everyone, you know, my team falls under brand, and I would say almost everyone on the brand team has like probably, you know, five or six people that in a pinch they feel they can call. And the cool thing is we’re also consumers of this. And so, you know, the guy who does my HVAC is a Jobber customer. And so sometimes I’ll ask his technicians when they’re in, like, “You know, what do you like about Jobber? Like, you know, or what are you up to this weekend?” And all of it is just like more like customer empathy at the end of the day.
Rodney Hart: Yeah, and you know, I do think we talk about this. So obviously, RainFocus, you know, as software selling to event marketers, I mean, we’re obviously very bullish on events generally as a business driver. And I think everything we’re kind of talking about is really highlighting what can be so powerful about events, is like seeing and talking and being there directly with your customers and understanding what they like, who they are as people, you know, like what might resonate. Like all of those things lead to building those relationships that are very difficult to do via email, via these other channels, and making those feel real or connected. You know, there’s so much power that comes from having been face to face, even to the point where people are saying, actually, you know, when you get it, you really get it. And I think there is something super cool about supporting this marketing channel, right? And bringing people together.
I think so, let’s hit on the inevitable before before we start to hit closing and I’ve got a little fun section I want to end with. Let’s talk about AI. I’ve heard you talk about some of the processes and things that you’re doing currently. I’m curious from your perspective, what have you seen at this stage become genuinely useful in events versus you know, something that whether it’s a perceived, like something that people perceive AI to be useful that still feels like hype or further away? So like where is AI genuinely useful? Where is it either misunderstood or, you know, not quite there yet for you?
Maggie Barton Baird: Hmm. I met with the head of events of Zapier a number of months ago and sort of was like, “What are you doing? Like, you know, how can I push my team a bit more? Like, what are areas you’re seeing?” Because if you’re on LinkedIn at all following anybody from Zapier, you can see that their company is sort of trying to like figure this out in real time for people to watch. And I was like, “Great, I’m going to talk to the events people because you know they’re under all this pressure to adopt AI as an example of how to use Zapier.” And she gave me a framework that I really appreciate, which is they call it the FAR framework. And you can find this on like Zapier, sort of building in public, so you can find it on all their stuff. But essentially it stands for Frequent, Annoying, and Repeatable. And so I try to look through the lens of what are tasks that I’m doing that are all of those three, maybe one of them, and then building whether it’s an agent or just going in and using whichever LLM you use to try and either automate it or complete that task.
So my favorite agent that I have right now is that I have an agent that basically sweeps everything at the end of every day at 5 p.m. and builds tasks for me based on the meetings. I find when I need to take notes in a meeting and participate in the meeting and review the next steps, it’s just very distracting and hard to be really present. And we were talking about the creativity, like it’s like I’m doing one while being creative. And so I find it really helpful to be able to be present throughout the day and then I know when I, you know, come back the next morning, there’s like my list of to-dos. So it’s so simple, but it’s definitely my most powerful one.
Another agent that I have, which I actually need to clean up now that my I have new team members, but I and I’m sure you feel this way too, Rodney, is like I will talk about the same thing over and over again and be like, “Everybody knows about it. I haven’t stopped talking about this for weeks.” And then somebody will be like, “I didn’t know that. They’re genuine.” They just literally didn’t know it. They didn’t happen to be in the meeting or they weren’t in the Slack channel or insert whatever. And so I also have an agent that sweeps if I haven’t told somebody on my team something that’s important. And that has been a lifesaver because honestly like I’ll get annoyed being like, “Why don’t you know?” And it’s like they weren’t there. They weren’t in the Slack chat. Like they didn’t do anything wrong. But I just in my mind I’m like, “I’ve said this a million times.” Like, you know, you feel like a mom at a certain point where you’ve been asking your kids to clean up a bunch of times. Like so that’s really helped.
But I think really at the end of the day, I think a lot of people in events have this idea that building agents or using AI is this like monumental task and that they need an AI person on their events team or they need IT to do it. And this goes back to that entrepreneurship a little bit. That it’s like you own your whole area, like no one’s going to do it for you. And if you’re going to wait for someone to do it for you, you’re already too far behind. Like imagine when email came out if you were like, “I need somebody else to send my emails.” Like that’s the equivalent from my point of view. And I do have a bit of a harsher point of view than most people. But really, like most of these LLMs, you can say, “Here’s a task I’m struggling with. Here’s something that’s Frequent, Annoying, or Repeatable, and how do I build an agent to do it?” And it will walk you through it. Like you don’t need to be like a coder or software engineer.
Rodney Hart: Right. And even those two examples, and I’ll have you just like unpack at least one of them, but even those two examples, it’s really thinking, “I have this exact same problem, and actually it’s an agent that I keep saying, like I’ve been saying for the last like two weeks that I’m going to build and I haven’t done it yet.” But exactly what you’re saying. I like being on calls most of the day. Like I like calls and sometimes they’re working calls, sometimes they’re not. But like to me, especially in a remote company, bringing people together, disseminate information, like have ideas, be very productive. Like I would say it’s a strength of mine. What’s not a strength of mine is then like wrapping all of that up or documenting it and putting it, you know, putting it in the system. Like I have a pretty good memory. Like I’ll remember this call later, but it’s kind of like, to your point, the vast majority of the organization was not on that call where that decision was made. And so the idea of this information documenting it, what the tools are so fantastic at doing is holding all of that information, pulling what’s important about it, and creating that for you. So when you say sweep, so you’re presumably taking like AI notes in all of your meetings. Those go into your email, maybe to a folder structure, and you’re saying you have an agent that at the end of your day is reading all of those notes and giving you like a to-do list. Is it a to-do? Where is your to-do list? Is that also in the tool?
Maggie Barton Baird: Yeah, so we use a project management platform for all of our events. And then I also just keep sort of like my, you know, head of events style work that I need to do in there as well. And so basically, yeah, it sweeps all my Slack, all my emails, all my meeting transcripts. There’s probably another place, but I don’t know where else. Anyway, any communication platform that we have, it sweeps and then it builds the tasks in the project management platform. And then in the morning I categorize where they go because it is an over-eager agent. And so it’ll hear me talk about something and you know, I’ll say to my team, like, “Okay, in 2027 we should, you know, think about this.” And it’ll have a task for me for like next Friday to think about it. And I’m like, “My God, I don’t know.” So I do still need to do the like human-in-the-loop element where I say, like, “Okay, I’ll keep this task, but let’s push it to January,” or you know, it’ll hear me say in a meeting that I need to do something and I’ll complete it right away and then it’ll have a task for me, so I have to get rid of that.
So there is a bit of human in the loop. I could technically automate some of that away, but I actually, I’m similar to you, that like if I read something or if I hear something in a meeting, my memory is quite good, which side note, I think that is also a superpower of event folks, is you need to have a good memory. But so I I actually, even though it can be a little annoying, I actually appreciate it because it gives me like a bit of a context of like, “Okay, I’ll write that happened. That needs to be on my plate.” There’s so much happening so quickly. And as the team grows, I’m having conversations about like with our C-suite about like you know, really big business moves and and really important stuff that events are rolled into. And then I’m also like, we had a longhorn at our event a couple weeks ago and at the same time like trying to figure out how to get the cow in the building.
Like a longhorn like an animal, like the animal. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes, yeah. So it’s like I’m operating at this like very high stakes level and then also operating at this like very important tactical level. And so just having the tasks for me really is a good reminder to be like, don’t get lost over here where we’re talking about like the future of our product and how we’re talking about it at events and forget that you gotta figure out how to get the cow in the building.
Rodney Hart: Yeah, right. Yeah. No, that’s the beauty of this job. I think that hopefully for anyone who’s listening, I mean, you know, like you said, there are tools. I mean maybe some organizations don’t have them fully synced to be able to do all of those pieces, but I think most of us do have access to some tool. And I think the idea of an agent to do something, I think that framework that you laid out is super useful. Like what do you do that is Frequent and Annoying? Like at at minimum there’s got to be something in your life right now that’s Frequent and Annoying that you’re like, “There’s got to be a better way.” And I bet one of the tools that you have in your organization. So that’s a challenge to anyone listening, think about one of those and go to an agent, maybe even right now, and say, “How would you solve this for me?” Because I think so much of it is is use it and it doesn’t require the skill set that I think sometimes people maybe have overthought or feel somewhat gun shy. I feel like the idea of like go make an automation and see how easy it can be.
Maggie Barton Baird: A hundred percent. Yeah. I think too, the other sort of, at least in the event circles I’m in that I’m not hearing people do a lot with AI that I really love, is spot coaching. So, you know, if you’re having some type of conflict or you know, if you’re navigating something difficult, I do actually find it really nice to like take a moment and just say, “I have an agent that’s like trained on sort of my team, my company. I’ve taught it a lot about context.” And so I’ll say like, “Hey, I need to talk. I’m having this…” or go to this Slack message and read what’s happening. “You know, can you talk through with me how to handle this?” You know, it does provide like a sounding board. And I don’t always agree with it, but I would say probably nine times out of ten, it gives me another thought of like how to think about handling a conversation or coaching somebody else. So that’s also like that’s not an agent technically. You’re not automating that necessarily, but you know, it does provide like a sounding board, and that’s also a really underused tool when it comes to LLMs also.
Rodney Hart: Yeah, yeah, I mean it’s it’s it’s out there. We live in the world now with it. So I feel like you know, there may be some policies that you know, don’t use data you’re not allowed to use. But at the same time I think you know becoming accustomed to these tools being in your workflow. To me, it’s like, you know, could you do your job without the internet? You know, at this stage. You know, that and, you know, like it’s it’s it’s such a valuable resource. And I think thinking of it kind of in this other kind of automation layer or kind of workflow agentic, you know, this idea of having supporters that are going to help you do your job, not because your job will never need to get done, but because I think it opens you up to be able to spend more time doing the creative, thoughtful things that human beings can do that it can’t do. You know, so yeah, I think that that’s anyway, yeah, thank you for the time. I I knew you had great thoughts on it. So the FAR framework and you know, Zapier, that’s a that’s a great example too, because like I remember, you know, that as a tool way back when of like the easy automation. You know, that now I’m sure when they saw these tools come through, it’s probably pretty interesting. It’s probably an interesting thing for them to be leading the charge because in some ways you might think AI is a big threat to some of the things that made Zapier so powerful. But at the same time, you know, kind of being out there and thought leader, I think it’s it’s kind of a great example too of how to take something that could be a threat and make it an opportunity for companies. So yeah, cool. I’ll definitely go check out what they’re doing.
All right, so we’ve got two last things. I’m going to try and wrap it up quick. I’m not I’m not good at doing anything or wrapping any conversation up quickly, but let’s end. So you already you’ve hit us with a lot of great advice, but I’m going to ask you for one more. When we do these interviews, we like to ask, what is something? You know, given this is a stressful job, what is a piece of advice that whether you you’ve received it or that you’d like to give, what’s a piece of advice that you’d have for anybody who is an aspiring event professional, new in the industry, and kind of dealing with this being kind of a crazy job?
Maggie Barton Baird: I think the biggest unlock for me in my career was when I really addressed sort of my mental health and my emotional intelligence. I think that’s really how you go from sort of being this like busy logistics person to really moving into a strategy position. I think when you’re in the busy logistics side, you’re sort of just checking things off and often, and as sort of as we were talking about before, any feedback can feel like an affront to your goodness as a person and your who you are. And I think the greatest work I did in my career was really reduce the perfectionism and really get rid of feeling that everything is a reflection of my being. I still want to do work I’m so proud of, but I can now take feedback and have really hard conversations that don’t feel that they’re a personal affront.
Rodney Hart: Mm-hmm.
Maggie Barton Baird: Anyway. And I think a lot of early career event planners I see sort of struggling with that. You know, you’ll give them feedback on an event and their response will be, you know, but I’ve worked so many hours and stuff. It’s like, that’s not the conversation we’re having. Like, you are working too many hours. Like, let’s talk about that. But that’s not the conversation we’re having right now. And so I’m not perfect at it by any means. I mean, Rodney, you’ve seen me have tough days and stuff, and so I’m not perfect by any means, but I think the mental game is as you grow in your career is like three quarters of it at the end of the day, and taking that feedback and taking the stress of it. You know, I said my boss and I were talking about the user conference we just had done and she was like, “I felt so confident about it because you felt so confident.” And I was like, “I’ll tell you a secret. I didn’t.” But if I wasn’t feeling confident, no one was feeling confident. And I had to be the one in the room to say that this is going to be okay. And so I think you also have to be the calm, confident person. And I mean, don’t do things that you think are going to totally fall apart. But I did have moments where I was like, “My God, what are we doing?” And so I think working on that mental and emotional game and becoming sort of a steady version of yourself benefits you tenfold. And you’re also not bending yourself into a pretzel emotionally every time something changes or something goes wrong. So I definitely think it’s a very much a mental game.
Rodney Hart: Yeah, no, I think that’s phenomenal advice and and there there is a lot of that. I think is like kind of learning to separate yourself from the work. I think sometimes this job requires so much of you that you become the work, but you’re not. You know, you did a great job. You got us here. You know, it was you know, it can be a Herculean effort to get there and then sometimes it’s not perfect. Yeah, like something’s not perfect or the idea wasn’t, you know, it doesn’t end up being great, you know, or people doesn’t resonate. Well, that doesn’t mean that you’re not, you know, that your work was bad or your you know, so like the ability I think, you know, that’s such a healthy way, I think, of communicating that you know, take pride in the work that you’re doing, but you are also not the work, you know, so that if and when something is missed or or, you know, doesn’t totally resonate, be open to that feedback because what makes us better is the feedback. And that’s what I think makes this industry so interesting, is you know, all right, what are we going to do next year? You know, okay, what let’s let’s try and improve that for next year, but not taking that like, my god, I, you know, crushed myself to get here and nobody liked it, and therefore nobody liked me. You know, and I think that you know, I think that that’s such a great thing that you’re communicating to separate those two.
Maggie, thank you so much for the time. I’ve got one final section. I have you heard of this like green red flag, green flag thing. So we are going to try and capture some content for a clip here around this red flag, event red flag, green flags. Do you need any prep on what this means?
Maggie Barton Baird: Yeah. No.
Rodney Hart: Okay. So I’m going to wait for my internet to make sure we’re good here. Can you hear me? Okay, all right. All right, so we’ve got event red flag green flag. I’m going to say something and your job is to react. Is that a red flag or is that a green flag? And if you want to expand you can.
Maggie Barton Baird: Yes, yeah, I’m good.
Rodney Hart: All right. Red flag or green flag. The after party is more memorable than the conference itself.
Maggie Barton Baird: I don’t actually have an answer for this one because it depends on the goals of the event. I actually think there’s a goal where this would be a green flag and a goal where this would be a red flag. So I don’t have an answer on this one.
Rodney Hart: Okay, your conference this year, was it a red flag or a green flag?
Maggie Barton Baird: If the after party is more memorable than the conference itself, probably a red flag, but like everybody comes for a different reason though, you know? Like, networking is really important to our customers. And so if they got a lot out of the party, like power to them.
Rodney Hart: Yeah. Alright, I’ll give you a yellow flag. The event has no official theme.
Maggie Barton Baird: Green flag, it’s fine. I think themes are good and I think there’s good use cases for them and there’s a commun opportunity there and stuff, but I don’t think that a theme is make or break. I actually sometimes think we put too much energy into themes and like building them and anyway, green flag, it’s fine.
Rodney Hart: I’m waiting for a theme to get finalized right now. You’re still finalizing the agenda two weeks out.
Maggie Barton Baird: Yes. Anyone who has been to our user conference knows I did this. Well, maybe not two weeks out, but pretty close. So I mean, sure, it’s supposed to be a red flag, but there’s also a lot that happens that I’m not going to make anyone feel bad if they’re still doing it because I’ve done it, you know, just pretty recently. So technically at a very high level, yes, it’s a red flag, but no judgment for me. I get it.
Rodney Hart: The post-event debrief is already scheduled before the event starts.
Maggie Barton Baird: Green flag. You should be prepared. You should be working on a production schedule that has everything planned out.
Rodney Hart: Like it. A keynote speaker goes off script.
Maggie Barton Baird: Okay, so for in my world, at a product announcement, this would be a red flag. But for like a celebrity speaker or you know, somebody we’re bringing in for more of like a fireside chat, totally green flag. They were probably trying to relate to the audience and like answer things in real time. But for a product keynote, I think my heart would stop.
Rodney Hart: Nothing worse than they start. You know, I’m going to go a little off script. All right. Well, we worked on it, but it’s okay. A panel debate that actually gets a little heated.
Maggie Barton Baird: Green flag. We love this. I have a programming lead on my team named Erica and she actually purposefully tries to program panels so that people disagree.
Rodney Hart: Day two attendance is higher than day one.
Maggie Barton Baird: Neither, but I have a lot of questions. You know, usually day one and then day two, so I’m like, did you mess up schedule something? Or like, was there something really awesome on day two? But like I don’t inherently I don’t think it’s red or green, but I wonder I’m curious why.
Rodney Hart: I think a storm came in. There’s something that happened. There’s that caused travel delays, right? Yeah, that would be it, yeah. But they still got there on day two, so you know, maybe it’s not so bad. Final one, red flag, green flag. A networking dinner has assigned seats.
Maggie Barton Baird: I also don’t really have an answer for this one because I understand why it happens. I think you have to really know the social comfort of your audience though, because Rodney, you know me quite well. I can talk to a wall, so like I’m fine whether I am like assigned beside someone I know or not. But there’s lots of audiences who would not appreciate that. And so I think you gotta know your audience. I know usually it gets done because the goals of the event are to like break people up and sit people in different settings and stuff. I get why it’s done, but I think you gotta be really careful about the social openness of the people in your group for sure.
Rodney Hart: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I totally agree with that. Maggie, that’s it. Thank you so much for the time today. Thank you so much for kind of all of the honest answers that you provided. I’m sure everyone’s going to love this episode. And anybody who’s listening and says, “Hey, I’d like to participate as well,” reach out. We’ve got links on LinkedIn. We’ve got a few different places that you can let me know that you’d like to participate. Maggie, any final words before we go?
Maggie Barton Baird: No, I think this is great. Thanks for having me.
Rodney Hart: Thank you. See ya.
