The AV Advantage, Part 4- From Contract to Show Day

This episode of The Event Pro Show features host Seth Macchi, CEO of LEMG, an event production company based in Charlotte, North Carolina. He continues in part four of our ongoing series on getting the most from your AV in corporate events. Now that you’ve secured your AV partner and signed the contract, what comes next? Seth breaks down the crucial steps: from understanding your initial deposit invoice to meeting your AV project manager, covering kickoff calls, and unpacking the project management that keeps everything on track.
He shares key questions planners often overlook, tips for ideal planning timelines, and highlights common mistakes that can derail even the strongest strategies. You’ll gain practical takeaways for navigating the post-contract AV process and strengthening your partnership with your AV team.
Ready to elevate your AV collaboration? Tune in to learn what happens after the contract is signed. And how proactive communication and thoughtful planning lead to show day success.
The Event Pro Show is a production of LEMG.
LEMG is a leading event production company known for delivering exceptional experiences. From site planning and event design to technical production, staging, lighting, sound, and more—we do it all. As a second-generation company, we’re proud of our rich history and commitment to innovation. Whether it’s a corporate meeting, conference, convention, or live event, we’re the team our clients trust to execute their vision flawlessly.
https://lemg.live/
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So you went under contract with your AV provider, you found the right one. You're
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excited about it. Now what? Well, let's get
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into it. Welcome to the Event Pro show, your
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ultimate guide to the world of corporate events. Whether you're a corporate event
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planner, experiential marketing pro, producer, technician, or
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anyone involved in creating exceptional events, this podcast is your go to
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resource for valuable insights, expert tips and inspiring stories from the
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industry's leading professionals. Foreign.
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Thank you for joining us on the Event Pro Show. I am your host, Seth
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Macchi. I am the CEO of lemg. We're an event production
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company based out of Charlotte, North Carolina. We travel all
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over the country producing events for, you guessed it, event
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planners. So we put together a five part series
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to help event planners open hopefully work better, more
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seamlessly with their AV production providers.
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You're joining us right now on part four. So if you missed the
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first three episodes, go to the Eventbro show and you can catch up.
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I'll do a little overview here, but essentially just
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trying to give you tips and tricks on how to work better with your
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AV provider. In episode one we talked about design
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how that can help you design a smarter event,
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use AV in a, in a, in a smarter way, more efficient way.
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Episode 2 We talked about budget, how how
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using time to your advantage and save money in the
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AV portion of your event. Episode 3
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we talked about how to write better RFPs. I do
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believe that if you find good AV partners, maybe one or two
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partners, that you could eventually move away from actually having
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to go out to RFP every time and you could bring them in
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and help design what your event needs are.
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But we've got to start somewhere. You've got to find AV providers in the first
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place. So that episode was about how to, how to write better RFPs,
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how to get apples to apples quotes, and how to save you time in that
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process. Because I know that's an incredibly time
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consuming process. So that brings us to
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episode four. Episode four is going to center around the fact
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that, okay, you wrote a great rfp, you're into this thing,
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you've selected an AV partner, you just signed the contract.
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Now what? So I want to talk about what to expect
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after you've signed your agreement with an AV partner. You know what happens after
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you sign this contract? Well, let's start with the obvious.
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After you sign the contract, you can expect an initial invoice, usually some
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form of reservation or deposit
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inventory invoice will be sent your way. This is completely normal
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and it reserves your spot on their calendar. And
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typically payment terms can be due upon
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receipt or, you know, 10 days, 30 days, something like that.
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Keep in mind that you're almost always dealing with a small business.
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Even if you are at a Fortune 1000 company
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and you have certain procurement guidelines
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that typically apply when your company's buying, like, I don't know,
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bags of nails or some commodity. Keep in
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mind that these are small businesses. And so having
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extensive terms, like I've seen 90 plus
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type terms, even 60 days, it's really pushing it.
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And essentially you're asking a small company to
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be a line of credit for your company if you go too far out in
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your payment terms. So just expect that, that it'll be more
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in line with when you book venues and hotels when they want
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upfront payments. That's not uncommon from AV
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providers. After that you signed your contract,
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you've got your invoice sent off to your AP department.
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You're probably going to have an introduction to your lead from
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the AV company at lemg. That's a project manager, some
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companies call it production director or
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all sorts of various names. But essentially your lead
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at the AV company will be introduced to you and that's your direct connection to
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the AV team. That's important because
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like anything else, you know, you might be working with a salesperson, but you really
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are getting to the operations person that are going to take what has
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been promised to you through that contract and they're going to
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deliver that service to you. And so that's your conduit to the
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company. From there, kickoff calls are
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usually set up if you're in different cities. Occasionally it could
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be in person or even maybe they want to meet at the, at the venue,
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maybe that'd be useful. But the PM typically works to set up
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kickoff calls to begin the planning in earnest.
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This is the start of our project
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management component of our company and, and
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from the project. I'll get that into that in just a little bit of what
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that looks like. But project management starts taking
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over. They start looking at what was sold, they
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start looking at all the components. So you're looking at
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all the equipment that's going to be provided. You're looking at all the talent
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that might be required for that event. You're looking at the
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venue itself, what are the things that are going to be needed at the
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venue. You're looking at any additional
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interesting items. Did you get a screen surround that needs to be custom printed or
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whatever, those type of things, managing that kind of planning, that.
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So that's what your project manager is starting to think about. As we get
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closer to the event, there's a gear prep component going on.
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So you have a warehouse and logistics team, depending on what your
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AV provider calls it. There are people that are working
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with prepping your equipment, making sure everything is clean
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and working and good to go. They're pulling that equipment into
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a, a, a pile ready to prep, and then they're loading
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it into some sort of vehicle, truck, van, truck, semi
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to be delivered to your location. And then it's going
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to be installed and that same team is responsible for removing
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it and then QC it and then putting it away. All this
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leads, this good cadence with leads to a successful AV
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operation that's all happening behind the scenes.
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And so I want to talk about the planning
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process, the project management process in a
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second. But I want to stop for a minute and talk
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about at this point what are some
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questions that planners rarely ask that lead
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to smoother show days? I just wanted to give you some examples of some great
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questions that maybe you could think of asking. And there's many,
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but let me give you some examples. Don't be afraid to ask questions like this,
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but what do you need from me or the venue to set you up
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for success, like floor plan schedules, access times?
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Now this is something a project manager can also do, but if you've already done
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that exploratory work, you've already done site surveys, go ahead
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and ask what they need. Another question
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you could ask is, can you walk me through your load in and setup
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timeline? How long will it take? It's funny
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how often there's a disconnect there on the event
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planner side, not truly understanding how long it's
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going to actually take to physically get all of that
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equipment and those people in that space and set up and ready
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for rehearsal. And speaking of rehearsal, another question you might ask
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is do you provide rehearsal time with full AV support
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and what's included in that rehearsal? So this is a discussion
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that's important to have sometimes on really tight load
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inside. An AV company might be able
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to do two things at once. So they might be able to get the
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stage ready and the components like downstage monitors
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and your presentation computers ready to go for your
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executives to do a rehearsal. And then the AV team is finishing on the
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other side of the room with other things. But all of this, these are questions
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that help smooth out the process on
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site. And these are great questions that you can ask
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leading up to events. One thing I'm seeing
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lately is really short timelines from the
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time that we're contacted to win an event
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is going to happen. And there's a lot of factors to that and we're all
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dealing with them, grappling with them. There's the economy and
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the way that companies are feeling about investing in events right now.
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Maybe they're a little reluctant until much sooner to the actual
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date. No, that's fine. But what is the perfect
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timeline to give your AV team? It's just a
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question I'm presenting. I, I think three to nine months
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is usually an adequate timeline for most events.
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There are some large events that need more time than that and that's
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fine. But usually that three to nine months
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time to plan an event and get ready and prep for it. That's
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the sweet spot because you're able to give your AV partner enough time to plan
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and also secure labor and talent that's
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needed for your event. And you get the best. So the
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farther, the more time you can give pre event to your AV
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partner, the better the scenario. I've talked about that in some previous episodes,
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but just giving kind of a rule of thumb
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and as far as a pre event checklist, I'll walk you
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through what ours is. I did do an episode a few months ago
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about our project manager and a project manager being a
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secret weapon on site. I really, I walked extensively through
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our planning checklist. But I'll give you the bullet points
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as like a this is our favorite pre event checklist
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or planning cadence. So this is what's going on with the project
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manager after your contract is signed, just so you have
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some insight into that. And they have, you know your contract is signed, you've done
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the initial meeting with them. But they do initial preparation.
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That's step one. And then they jump into venue coordination.
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And you might have already selected your venue. You
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probably have, but we're going to jump in and get a little deeper with
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them as far as asking all of the the right questions
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from what are your specific requirements in that
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venue? What is the fire marshal requesting? What type of insurance
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documents will you require from us? And there's there's a myriad of questions
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that they can ask but they'll work through venue coord and your
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venue lead on site. There's also vendor management
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and so a lot of times I've explained
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before, there's often cross rentals going on
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or different types of vendors coming in and managing
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all of these things. For example, if you want a
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presidential teleprompter, sometimes it's not an
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internal staff person. It's going to be a contractor or a vendor that
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provides presidential teleprompter. They come in with those devices and
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they also operate the teleprompter. So that's something that needs to be
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coordinated with our project manager. And that would be an example of
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vendor management, labor and crew management.
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And so we, we distinguish between the two. Crew
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are the technicians that are on site, the actual operators of
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equipment. Those need to be scheduled whether they're internal staff
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or whether they're freelance labor. And then load
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in and load out. Labor tends to be local resources to that
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venue. So if you're in Arizona, we're going to reach out to our
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resources there and schedule your load in and load out labor so
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that there's enough people to unload the trucks, help set up, and then
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tear everything down at the end, put it back on the truck. That's an important
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component. Pre event logistics. There's all sorts of
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logistics around getting ready for an event. These are things that
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our project managers are thinking about. And then they move
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into on site setup. So load in day, they're on site,
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managing the on site setup and what the crew's doing
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and how, how they're using their time, making sure
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that the crew is being efficient with the amount of time that we've allotted
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for every component and then actual event management
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on site. So once the event's kicking off, they're working to make sure
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that the production schedule is being followed, making sure that
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you as the client feel comfortable and things are working. Any
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changes on site, they're managing that. And then they're
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managing strike and post event tasks so that we can get the
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event closed out, invoiced and done and closed up.
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So that's kind of a rule of thumb, our pre event checklist and
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planning cadence of our project managers. But
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I wanted to end with a few things. I guess you could
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call it a moment of truth. What planners can stop
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doing that's slowing down the process. So these are just some
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observations of what event planners could do
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that they might, they might think that they're doing the right thing by
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doing these things, but it's actually slowing down the process. So the first one
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is obviously it's waiting too long to involve av. I would
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say if you know, you have a date and an idea,
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that's probably time to start bringing in an AV provider or at least getting some
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RFPs out if you can, or some initial
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taps on the shoulder of some people you're thinking about to do this.
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Another thing that's slowing down the process is not sharing your budget,
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Sharing your budget is. It saves so much time and
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helps in the design process. I've mentioned before. But a great
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AV company will not try to just upsell you and push you
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on budget. They want to know your budget so they can design the right solution
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within your budget, your reasonable budget parameters.
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And so that's very important. Not sharing details like agendas
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or run of shows or etc. Those types of documents until the very last
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minute. Go ahead and get those out. You can send updates, but that's very
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helpful. As I shared, you know our, our project managers
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planning cadence. That's an important, those are important pieces
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of information for what they're trying to put together and communicate to
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the crew and everybody on site.
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Sending present presentation decks on the day of
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now, that's fine, last minute things happen. But if that's your mo, if that's
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what you're, you're always doing, you're not really setting
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your, your, your graphics tech, your video text up for success. If
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you're just giving them things very last minute, go ahead and push
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your deadlines for the people that you're serving
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that are creating presentations with a realistic timeline for your
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AV company to get in the system and load it onto the
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computers. Those types of things, making changes
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without communicating them. Now I realize as an event
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planner there are so many decisions you have on a day to
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day basis, but there are some decisions that you make that really do affect
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your AV provider. So for example, you're in a ballroom, but
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the ballroom can be split up into three smaller ballrooms with air
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walls. Well, if you're not sharing that during the course of
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the day, you decided halfway through your planning process that you're going to
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pull those airwalls out and turn them into breakout rooms.
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And you didn't share that with your AV team, then
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there's no way that people are going to be able to hear in some of
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those other breakout rooms that were created from that
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larger ballroom. And the way that
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cables and the production equipment was set up for the large
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room setup, they might have things in the way of the air
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walls. It might create a big, a big mess. And that, that's an example
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that most of you have probably dealt with already. So it's just kind of an
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obvious example. But there's many things like that where you make a
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decision. It has a cascading effect down on your vendor. So make
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sure that you're communicating changes as they happen.
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Another mistake is overloading the AV team or project manager with too
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many decision makers now the reason why
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we give our clients one project manager for the AV team
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is we want them to have a single point of contact and reduce
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confusion. We want one decision maker on site, one person
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that you can talk to. The same thing in return
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speeds things up. So if there are a few people making decisions on
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your team, go ahead and pick a spokesperson that works with the project
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manager and that will help smooth things up. Another
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mistake is treating the AV team as an order taker and not as a vendor
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partner. I think that can be a mistake. If you're thinking of
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them as just kind of a one off type of relationship, treat them as a
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partner. If you have a big decision, come up on site, bring them into the
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circle. Let's solve this problem together. You don't have to take
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treat them as like an order taker type of relationship. They want to,
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they want to see you succeed. It's in their best interest to see you succeed
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and so bring them in. You know, build that partnership up.
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Well, I hope these were good tips and helpful to you. If you want
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to hear the last episode, keep following along Episode five
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where we're going to talk a little bit about how great events run
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behind the scenes, like who's involved, what are all the technical positions,
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what do they do, and some other tips and tricks. Thank you for following
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along. If you need an AV provider, you can go to LEMG
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Live and check us out. We travel all over the country. We'd love to work
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with you. You can find me seth Macchi on LinkedIn,
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you can direct message me there and you can always find out more.
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Follow Follow more episodes of the Event Pro show@the
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eventproshow.com or wherever you listen to podcasts. But
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I appreciate you taking time to hang out with us today and we
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will see you on the next one.
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The Event Pro show is a production of LEMG video by
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Nick Barrett, Audio and post production by Prince
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Thompson. You can learn more about us at LEMG
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Live.