A Birthday Sequel

My 50th birthday didn’t get to happen. I’m sure you can figure out in which year I turned 50. Yes, it was 2020. It wasn’t just my 50th birthday, my husband also turned 50. His birthday was five days before the world came to a halt. Not only did we miss celebrating our milestone birthdays, we missed a milestone wedding anniversary, 20 years. We were planning a trip abroad which we haven’t done since our honeymoon. Maybe 2021? Nope. Still not.

This year is it (2022 for those reading this later). We finally made it and are “re-doing” our original celebration plans. I am writing from Holland and loving everything about it. In the spirit of revisiting our 50th’s, I have another 50 somethings I’d like to share.

I got an idea from a friend. He wrote a blog, “50 lessons I learned in my first 50 years.” (thank you Keith Ferrin ;). Since I had some time on my hands during Covid and turning 50 makes one nostalgic and brave at the same time, I felt it was a great life exercise everyone should do as a right-of-passage sort of thing. So I did just that.

In the spirit of celebrating my 50th birthday, the sequel, here are 50 lessons I learned in my first 50 years… (fyi, not every one of them is original in case you recognize some, I learned from the best of others too)

50. Everybody has a story.
49. Learn to cook at least one thing really well.
48. You can’t, and shouldn’t, do it all.
47. Sing as loud as you want in the car.
46. Work will always be there tomorrow.
45. Embrace change. It’s going to happen anyway.
44. You can always eat more vegetables.
43. Experience all four seasons.
42. Do not read beauty magazines, they will only make you feel ugly.
41. It’s ok to leave dishes in the sink overnight.
40. Time really does pass very quickly.
39. You are never too old to go to school.
38. Life will occasionally kick you in the teeth. You will survive. You’re probably learning something you will need to use later.
37. Enjoy moments of absolute silence. You need it.
36. Don’t work so hard you miss the time when your kids are growing up.
35. If you have accepted Jesus, you ARE going to heaven.
34. Sometimes the other person has to be right.
33. Learn to love your body.
32. Use your cat as a pillow once in a while.
31. Have a loud and crazy dance party in your kitchen.
30. Don’t let anyone’s opinion of you define you. Only God can do that and He loves you unconditionally.
29. Take as little medication as possible.
28. Travel as often as you can.
27. You can’t out-give God.
26. You never get a 2nd chance to make a 1st impression, however, the 1st impression is superficial. Take time to learn more about someone before making a decision.
25. Occasionally the people we love will disappoint us. It’s ok, they’re human too.
24. Doctors don’t know everything.
23. Prayer is powerful and it works.
22. Life doesn’t have to be that hard.
21. Be the change-maker.
20. Don’t be afraid to be silly.
19. Your kids will turn out to be the person God designed them to be despite any parenting flaws you think you have.
18. We all know we should eat right and exercise, but don’t let it control your life.
17. Feel the fear and do it anyway.
16. Make time to see a friend if they’re traveling anywhere near you.
15. Don’t underestimate the value of knowing a skilled trade.
14. Sit and watch the hummingbirds.
13. Everyone should have therapy at some time in their life.
12. Don’t let your job become your identity. It’s what you do, not who you are.
11. You will be amazed at your capacity to endure hardship.
10. You should be equally, if not more so, amazed at your capacity to show forgiveness.
9. There is nothing so beautiful to a mother as holding your clean, quiet, sleeping baby and smelling the top of her head.
8. Work hard, and at the end of your shift, go home.
7. Don’t ever let anyone abuse you a second time.
6. Be sure to talk about things with those you love , don’t hold it in and let it fester until it becomes a problem.
5. Once you sit in the center of an orchestra, you will never be able to listen to music softly again.
4. God allows us to have all types of experiences. Every one of them is building into who we are.
3. Treat every day like Christmas.
2. Don’t take your family for granted.
1. Be the best you.

Happy birthday to me!

~Tracy Baer, CMP, CFMP
Visit tracybaer.com and check out Tracy’s many resources.

No Crystal Ball? No problem.

If we have learned anything in the last couple of years, we have learned that nothing is predictable. However, the inability to speak with precision and certainty about the future is no excuse for silence and inaction. It is more important to be creative and forge ahead than to be 100% right. Without this ability, the Hospitality and Tourism industry would have shut down completely in 2020.

As event professionals, we can’t afford to not take action, to not change things, to not keep putting one foot in front of the other when others are questioning their next move. I was part of a team planning an event for 2000+ people in-person throughout 2021 for a January 2022 event. During this time Covid-19 protocols were changing on a daily basis. This was affecting room setups, whether or not someone needed to prove their vaccine status or have a negative Covid test, whether or not the staff needed to be checking temperatures of the attendees upon entry, monitoring attendees for mask compliance, changing event schedules to accommodate for disinfectant dwell time on chairs and equipment, and other ever-changing CDC-recommended, headache-inducers which presented a merry-go-round of challenges for event planners.

Without the ability to be creative, flexible, and work with our venue to come up with alternatives during the planning process, we would have been dead in the water multiple times throughout the year. There was no way we were going to get things 100% right. If we set the chairs for 6-foot distancing, the next week the rule changed to three feet. If we reconfigured room diagrams for 3-foot distancing, the need to distance at all was removed entirely. And then, a resurgence…

Inaction, however, would have been an event-killer. It would have been an industry-killer for sure. We needed to continue to press onward, consider the risks, mitigate those risks, and keep our attendee’s safety and security at the forefront while planning amazing content, an outstanding and memorable experience, and monitoring the ever-changing pandemic.

The in-person event in January 2022 was one of our highest attended events in years. People were grateful to be back together again, learning from each other, seeing actual 3D people, touching merchandise, taking notes in a handbook, wearing a lanyard, standing in line, and talking to each other in the elevators.

Waiting around, doing nothing because we couldn’t make a decision without knowing what was ahead, without being able to be 100% secure in our direction, was not an option. Doing this could have led to our demise as an industry, or at the very least, set us back so far we would need a suped-up DeLorean with a flux capacitor to get us back to where we left off in March of 2020…

We must keep on keeping on as the saying goes.

Did you plan an event during the chaos of ever-changing protocols? I’d love to hear
your story. Email me or share with us here.

Like this blog, share it on your social media and with those you know who plan events.

It’s a Balancing Act

How do people do it? Work in the Hospitality and Tourism Industry and still find time to be with their families? Our organization plans a 3-day conference with a tradeshow for 2000+ people just 2-1/2 weeks after Christmas. Can we talk about some of the busiest hours of the event planning timeline and one of the most family-focused holidays of the year colliding at the same time? Nobody’s perfect, but with a little practice, our team has found some things that work.

First, it takes intentionality. You have to make an intentional choice to put boundaries on time for work, time for yourself, and time for family. Work will always be there tomorrow but your kids grow up so fast, family members move away, and elders pass on. Family isn’t as reliable as the constant barrage of work.

Second, you need accountability. Make sure there are others in your life who will call you out when you’re getting off balance. Someone you trust to get your attention and tell you when you are working too many late nights in a row or blowing off family functions.

Third, plan ahead. A healthy event team works with a planning timeline, milestones, and checks in regularly to ensure things are on track. One of the most influential ways the team is capable of staying sane during the Christmas season with an event so close behind is that we have a detailed event planning timeline in place and we prioritize weekly meetings to touch base with each other. The timeline keeps our entire team moving in the same direction and at an appropriate pace. It is also a living document that we revisit at the end of each event to make sure it still serves the team and the event well, and supports a healthy lifestyle.

It takes time and dedication to be able to have both a successful career in hospitality and spend time with your family, but it can be done and it is worth it. Plus, by caring for yourself before serving others at the event, you will be more prepared to work with a full tank of energy rather than head into your event already tired.

What tidbits do you put into practice to maintain a healthy relationship between work and home? Please email me or share them with us here!

I’d love to see more event planners benefit from these tidbits,
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Beware of the Copyright

I occasionally volunteer as a producer for weekend services at my church. Its a pretty large church with an auditorium that seats over 1700 to give you some perspective. The location where I serve is the broadcast campus. The services are live here and they are streamed in real-time to several other locations plus online. We have been doing this for years, way before the world shut down and all the kids started doing it. During the services, there is a person watching the feeds to ensure they are sending the content where it needs to go when it needs to get there.

On this particular weekend we had a special guest, someone who had been the runner-up on a previous season of a popular TV talent show. As with most of our special guests, we play a brief introduction video before they walk out on stage. This gives the audience some context for what they are about to experience and why we have invited this person to speak to them today.

The service started, production is going according to plan, and the speaker is in the wings. Great! Cue the intro video…then, chaos ensues in my headset! The feed monitor is telling me that the Facebook feed is down. Our website feed is down. Nothing is streaming. We’ve been shut down by the TV talent show in seconds. The brief introduction included a 2-minute clip from Youtube of this guest performing on national television during her audition. I don’t understand… we got the video from the internet. Enter, the accidental copyright infringement. No more service for anyone except those in the room.

We all learned an incredible lesson this particular weekend, one that after you’ve experienced it you are extremely careful not to repeat. Just because something is available on the internet does not mean you have the rights to use it. There are copyright laws that govern video, photographs, music, and more. Not only that, the major corporations that own these things are watching! Be sure you research and purchase the appropriate licenses.

As a volunteer I don’t have all of the specifics, but I do know that because there was no malicious intent, we were allowed to continue using the video for the in-person services only. Online and streaming we had to replace the offending portion with a slide that said something to the effect of “this portion of the service contains copyrighted content” so it couldn’t be seen by outside audiences.

Have you run into a copyright issue? Please email me with your story. I’d love to hear what happened so we can avoid these types of issues in the future!

Want to hear more? I was a guest on Joanne Dennison’s podcast “Sit in the Attendee’s Chair” where unpacked this topic a little more, it’s available where you listen to your podcasts. (link to Spotify here)

Visit tracybaer.com and visit her Tracy About Town section for more!

Keep It Simple…..Silly

Recently our organization was exhibiting at a tradeshow. No surprise, we have done this before, however, as we rolled in to set up, I was keenly aware of one difference between us and other groups around us. It reminded me of a lesson I learned years ago that I was surprised hadn’t been imparted to those I was watching.

I used to be more heavily involved in a networking marketing company. I still am, but when I first started, I put a lot of effort into building my personal business and exhibited at several shows to get the word out about the company and my own involvement in it. This meant packing up products, moving them from location to location, setting them up, showing my wares, packing them up, and moving them around again and again.

The lesson that our company’s president instilled into us early on was that if we were going to draw others to participate in the business with us, it not only had to look effortless, it had to be effortless. We had to roll into the exhibit hall, set up our display in a few short minutes, not break a sweat, look great, and enjoy the process at the same time (my words, but you get the point).

I used to travel with a friend who partnered with another network marketing company with heavy, cumbersome products. She was required to carry tons of inventory from show to show which took up her entire SUV cavity to transport and took hours to set up. If she was lucky she’d be set up within the first hour of the show. It was painful to watch and screamed, “I’m exhausted and this is for the birds!” Why would anyone want to join this company if this is what your weekends looked like?

Back to present day. As our team rolled our road cases into the room, registered, located our space, popped up our booth frames, slipped on the fabric displays, set up our custom table, laid out assets, took photos, and were open for business within 30 minutes, I couldn’t be more proud. Around us were others with piles of boxes, cases, bubble wrap, confused looks over instruction manuals, and hot red cheeks. I wanted to say, “It doesn’t have to be this way!”

Keep it simple silly if you want to attract others to you or your organization. People will come and talk to you for a variety of reasons at a tradeshow. It might be that you just conveyed a level of professionalism or competency without saying a word.

Do you exhibit at any tradeshows and have some tidbits to share?
Email me, I’d love to hear about them!

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