00:00
If you're not loving what you do and being fulfilled in what you do and working with people that
you care about, you just can't grow from there. Be open, transparent in your conversations. Be
clear with your expectations. Don't assume anything. It's wasted time when covid hit your
entire industry was threatened. Regardless of how fast everything is going, how digital is taking
over the world. We are people, and people need to connect with people.
00:38
Welcome back to CEO behind the scenes. I'm Lara Nercessian, and today I'm joined by Eugenia
Lister zahachuk, president of El productions from premium live experiences to large scale
broadcast and virtual productions. Eugenia has built a company that doesn't just produce
events, it produces what she calls greatness through disruption, global pivots and rapid growth,
she has led with calm, confidence and connection, transforming high stakes environments and
growing her team from six to 40 people in Just a few years. Today, we'll explore purpose driven
leadership, building culture that converts values into profit and what it takes to scale without
losing your soul. Eugenia, welcome to the show. Thank you, Laura, very nice to meet you. You
have described yourself as an executive whisperer. Now that is not a typical business title that
we hear of very often. Where did that title and that identity emerge? It's a good question. It's
one that when I hear it, I giggle sometimes, because there's a few clients through the years
have donned me with that name, and it's typically it's come about because my favorite place to
be is coaching executives on a stage, and so it's typically not where they hang out most days,
most days they're trying to run their big businesses, and standing on a stage, connecting with
1000s of people and an audience is not something they're usually very comfortable with, and
so I have this ability to be able to create a sense of calm when they're on stage, help them Find
their power, their confidence in the place that they're standing or sitting, and most importantly,
figure out a way in how they can connect with their audience, because that's why they're there.
They're there to share a story, to impart some knowledge, to have the audience walk away
learning something. And so for me it's it's finding where's that place where they can be their
greatness, standing in their power, and be able to understand what they want to communicate
to the to the people on the other side, whether that's on a stage, behind a camera on a zoom,
call whatever it is. So I coach them through that. And any time that I'm doing that, it seems to
bring a lot of confidence and and so I just tend to have this success with a lot of executives,
they feel much more calm and collected and and easy after having a couple of minutes with me
on stage, you believe that we're all here to be in service. How did getting clear on your purpose
help shape the trajectory of El productions and the work that you're doing now that really came
to me early on in my career, was about 15 years into the business, and I had found out that I
was pregnant with my first child, and here I was running a business. Just found out I was
pregnant, I traveled. I went to New York, and I was in a conference, and there was a speaker
who was speaking to the group of us. It was a fashion conference, and he was talking about
how you can win back your life in 90 days. This His name is Serrano Kelly, fabulous, fabulous
speaker. And so he was offering a course that you could take. And here I was panicking,
because I had a busy, very successful business.
04:50
I'm going to be a mother. How do I do that and run a business at the same time? And my
business is growing, so, Serrano, you're going to have to help me, because I.
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Have to figure out how I'm going to get and I've got 90 days exactly before I'm about to have
this baby. And so through the summer, I took this course. And what surprised me in this course
was that it wasn't about figuring out your goals and how you're you know, and what are all your
outcome, strategic outcomes, for your business, and how it actually ended up being at the end,
a situation where we had to actually come up with, what is our purpose here in life? How do you
want to be remembered? And there was an exercise that we did at the very end, which was
actually writing our own eulogy. And it got us all thinking about, why are we here? How do we
want to be remembered? And that was the beginning of my journey of thinking about here. I
was not intending to take a course like this, and I'm about to have a child, and I go through this
life altering experience of what's your purpose. And so up until this point in my career, I was
working with a lot of students. I was teaching and also running a business, and I had a lot of
students and interns that were coming into the business to help me, and I was helping them
and and so I realized that my purpose was really to be this bridge to help people with their
careers, whether that's to to start a career, to transition through their career, to help a
presenter on stage feel confident, from going from being very nervous to being confident, there
was all these different connections I was making about this bridge, helping people on the other
side. And that became kind of my motto as I was growing my business and realizing I'm right
there. I'm about to have a baby. I'm about to transition into my own new role and bring
somebody into this life, and keep my business and all my chicks in the business, keep them all
employed. And so it just helped me, first of all, calm myself down
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in the situation that I was in, but also realized by doing that I was also helping others stay calm,
stay connected. And so that has transitioned into what you just asked me about being an
executive whisperer. I've noticed that that seems to be the place I keep coming back to is
understanding, why are you here? How can you be in service of it? Face it, I really believe that
we're all here to in service of something. Even if we're making a widget, we're in service of
making that with widget for somebody who's going to consume it. So you know, if we can just
figure out what that purpose is, I think you know it'll it will be
08:10
fulfilling for everybody. Yes, and when you talk about crossing the bridge, what does that look
like in practice, particularly for executives who are carrying an immense amount of pressure.
08:27
Most importantly, I think you really have to be present
08:32
with where you are. And I think we get so caught up, especially now, with things in in our
purview, that everything is changing so quickly. I feel that if you can really just try to be
present with what is happening now, not tomorrow, not yesterday, but just what is in front of
you in this moment, and then think about strategically where you want to go. Think about all
the different paths that you can take. What is that plan to get to where you want to go, while
also realizing that that path is going to change many, many, many times it's going to change
tomorrow. You think you have a path today, tomorrow, it's going to change. So just build
whatever that plan is. Think about that strategic plan. Just be present and think it through, and
then take few steps to get yourself over to the other side. I think we worry so much about what
tomorrow is going to be that we're not present on how to get over those first few steps that are
right here. And so I just think for executives, it's, I would just say, just, you know, try to be in
your present. Try to be in your now. Build your plan for where you want to be. And have you
know.
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Clear idea of where you want to go, but be ready to divert at any point in time. Yes, and
something that you touched on, which I think is so important, is the difficulty in sometimes
being in the present moment and not to always being future focused, which can be very
difficult and challenging, especially for those who are steering a ship and in leadership
positions. What are some of the practical ways that you've been able to cultivate and perhaps
some of the tools that you've then passed on to executives to help them cultivate the practice
of presence. You know, I think having a ritual is probably, I mean, I heard it my whole career.
I've I've heard it from other executives that having a routine, something that you can get
yourself into so that you can allow space for yourself to be creative. There's a fantastic financial
guru that I have come to
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rely on. He's my business coach, and I became aware of him during covid. He introduced me to
this concept of thinking time,
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and giving yourself the gift of 40 minutes,
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two or three times a week, where you can ask yourself a question and sit down and just think
about that question, and giving yourself the time to really
11:43
consider all the options. What are you What? What is the problem that you're trying to solve
for? And it's amazing what something like that, just 40 minutes of just pure thinking time,
sitting down with a pen and a piece of paper, just letting yourself go, how that can really give
you space to be creative, to be innovative. That has really been, for me, what has given me
ritual and and just the space to to think through, you know, some of the obstacles that we face.
Think the other thing that's that's been a real life changer for me is, again, you know, a little bit
stemmed through covid, but it's really putting your people first and building a culture within
your organization. Because really, without your people and without a really good culture. That's
really the foundation of being profitable, because if you're not loving what you do and being
fulfilled in what you do, and working with people that you care about and working with clients
that you care about,
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you just can't grow from there. And so I think those two things are, are like the most important
thing? Yeah, and we hear the importance of spaciousness so much as well. You know, even Bill
Gates having his think weeks that he's become famous for. And you know, Warren Buffett, I
think, is known for taking out time to just think and read and contemplate. So I love that you've
actually built this in as part of your routines and rituals. I want to talk about something because
in doing my homework for this episode, I saw that there's a Maya Angelou quote that is deeply
personal to you. Being not afraid of greatness. Can you share the pivotal moment with your
father that shaped the way you lead today? Oh, my goodness, you're asking me this on the day
of my dad's passing.
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So anyway, I'm going to try to hold it together.
14:12
Our team is big on being transparent and being very open and authentic. And I grew up in a
entrepreneurial household. My father had, you know, a photography business, then he became
a he owned a micro brewery, and my mom worked with him the whole time through. And I have
older brothers and sisters. They're all professionals, owning their own careers, very
entrepreneurial family, and being the youngest, I was always somebody who let
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others speak, and I stayed quiet. And that was our family dynamic, growing growing up
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and so.
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And I decided to get into the event business, which was I just fell into it, and decided to open
up my own shop and start my own thing. Everything that I did, I kept very close to my chest.
And my heritage is Italian. So we would get together every Sunday, the whole family, very loud
family dinners, whatever, and everybody else would talk, and I stayed pretty quiet. It wouldn't
share a lot about my business and how it was going. And
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many, many years later. So in covid, my father was his health was waning, and there was a
moment where he was upstairs, and my mom said, Could you go spend some time with dad?
And he was struggling to breathe, and he was sitting on his bed and some Italian, crazy show
on TV, and I was like, What do I do here? I am trying, you know, he's trying, struggling to
breathe, and he's very concerned about his breath. And I haven't, like said anything. I don't
really hadn't to that point in time on my whole life, I hadn't shared with my father anything
about my accomplishments, about our wins, our successes. He knew what I did, but, you know,
like any father, they never know, understand, what does my child do?
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He knew I I had my own business and and he knew I did advance, and he was very proud of all
of his children, but in this moment, I said, I need to tell him everything, because I felt like I had
to distract him from this moment where he was really struggling between life and death like he
was, he was on his last legs, and so I just said, I just blurted out everything I told him my whole
career in a matter of 10 minutes. And in that moment, he just sat up, he
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looked at me. And my dad was always one of these people. I mean, he was 91 when he died,
but he worked right up until the day he died, and he was the type of person that he always had
one more thing, one more thing that he had to do, whether it was connecting two buildings or
buying a new property, or whatever the there was always one more thing. And he had just
finished talking about, you know, I was really wanted to do this one last thing. And he as he's
breathing and and so when I made this decision to just say, just talk. Eugenia, just talk, tell him
everything. So I just told him everything, all about the jobs we were working on, the successes,
the pitches we had won, the things we had lost, and and I finished, and I noticed that he was
now not struggling for his breath anymore. He just sitting up looking at me, and he said, Now I
know I don't have to worry about that one more thing. And I was like, Oh my goodness. And,
and there was some peace that that he experienced and, and I thought, wow, that was because
I opened up. Like I opened up, I had kept everything so close to my chest up until that point,
and this was just a year into covid that I just said, From now on, I am being transparent. I am
going to share. I'm going to open up and try to encourage my team to do the same thing. Be
open, transparent in your conversations, be clear with your expectations. Don't assume
anything. It's wasted time. Wasted time. I want to ask you about the 3c because you have
codified 3c into your culture, calm, confidence and connection. Why those three? I think it
really, you know, comes back to that, the how we started the conversation around this, this title
that some of my clients have dawned on me, and being an executive whisper is helping, being
that bridge for people you know our our culture well, those three C's, don't some of them, like
calm is one of our Our values in our culture communication is another one. But why we
communicate and spend so much time focusing on communication is because we're in the
business of connecting people and making that connection and as event producers.
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Is our job is to make sure that the audience is walking away learning something, and walking
away with value, and so if we're not creating that connection with the audience, it's our job to
do that, to actually connect the presenter to the audience, the brand to the audience, the
consumer, with the product, whatever it is, we're that vehicle to do that. So finding the
connection there is incredibly important, and the way that we're going to do that is through our
words and through how we communicate with each other, how we treat each other, the calm is
just, you know, that is just everything about all of us. We just have to stay calm because we're
in one of the most stressful industries around and that is, you know, you just you got to be
ready for anything. And so your clients are relying on you to ensure that their people are safe
and good and happy and fed, and, you know, excited and whatever, motivated. And so you
need to be super calm to be able to be in that kind of environment, and then you can't do it
unless you have a sense of confidence. I talked about, you know, owning your power and being
really centered in what you're in, what you're doing, and really understand what you need to
do. And I really, you know people say, but I'm not very confident. Well, you just have to
understand who you are and and where you are now and where you need to be, and just own
your choice. Your choice will give you the confidence you're making a choice. Make a choice
that and be confident in the choice that you make. Yes, for me personally, those are my three
C's. That's what those are, my personal values, which have weaved their way into our company
values and calm is something that has consistently come through throughout this conversation,
you've said that you lower shoulders in a room. Now that is quite a visual description. What
does that look like when it's working? It's a physical
22:39
thing, like literally something that you'll you'll either see it in a an exhale. Their cameras turn
on, because we're always having virtual calls in preparation. If I'm sitting in a room with a
whole bunch of clients, you know you'll see it with I might like nod or say something, and then
they'll be the first to say, Eugenia, I see that you're nodding so that you're, you know, and and
that makes us feel really good, because it's not just me. I think it's our the whole team, when,
when we're in that like in that groove really brings that, that sense of shoulders dropping, like
they just feel it's the same, it's the same. Effect, when I'm on stage, working with a presenter or
coaching a presenter, it's the same, oh, they're, they're, they're there, we are. Thank you so
very much, because you're always helping me look better or sound better, or, you know,
connect better. And so that's, that's it literally looks like you can see the shoulders dropping.
Another thing that you've touched on a few times throughout this conversation is covid. I want
to ask you about this, because when covid hit, your entire industry was threatened. Walk us
back to that moment. What was your first instinct? Well, the very first instinct was that we
needed to gather our team together. That was the first instinct. We all obviously, like
everybody else, we all went home, and immediately, you know, sort of turned on our
computers and said, we have to connect like we have to stay connected. And so that was for
me, you know, our people are everything, like my team is everything. There was no way I was
going to let them go. And we didn't know how long this was going to last. Nobody did. I mean,
we thought that it was all going to come back in a couple of weeks. But because we're, you.
25:00
Were a team that we think about risk all the time in our in our business, we had to think about
the worst possible scenario. And that worst possible scenario was that this industry was not
coming back. If that was the case, what are we going to do? Well, luckily, 10 years earlier, we
had been asked by a client, a couple of different clients, to
25:28
help them with a situation where there were executives who didn't want to travel, and how
might I hit six or seven different regions or
25:40
across the go across the country or across the continent like and deliver to 1000s and 1000s of
my employees. One was a launch of a brand. Another was just a instead of a road show. How
might we travel? And so, not unlike what we're doing here today in in sort of a broadcast
situation, we created a broadcast, an event broadcast, like almost event television, and did that
10 years prior, and then didn't do it after that. But when covid hit, we said, why don't we
consider bringing that back? That worked. It was fantastic. There were a lot of different event
companies going to creating avatar rooms and different situations and and we said, You know
what, we've got to We've got to lean in on
26:40
creating event television, and we're going to, it's going to be new, it's going to be different, and
it's going to be forever. And so we started to, we just pulled, pulled all that stuff out of the
closet, came back and said, How do we do it? And we started to build a structure and a process
around it. Then we started teaching the industry, our industry in Canada, we started teaching a
lot of our AV suppliers. We were teaching our competitors, our clients. We just became subject
matter experts in this world, and we wanted to teach because we were afraid that we were not
coming back. And so if we were creating a new way of gathering people together in this new
event world, then we all kind of needed to follow the same kind of system and structure,
because the clients were nervous. They were just waiting for one mistake, and if something
went sideways, they were like, Nope, we're gonna, we're gonna wait it out. And so we said, it
has to be good, and it has to be impactful, and it has to work. There was just no other choice.
Like we were just, we just said, this is what we have to do. And so that's the horse we sort of
backed. And it we went from five to, you know, triple that in, you know, in a matter of two
years, and then, and then live came back. But it still hasn't come back to the way it was pre
covid. Now it's hybrid, and it's, you know, we're actually finding that there's a movement to go
back and that live is great, but people like to be back home with their families and not be away
for too long and all that good stuff, save the save the time away with our vacations, with our
families, as opposed to being out there on the On the work front. So it that that is really what
happened during covid. We just buckled down. Realized that we had to come together as a
unit. Our values and our culture was everything. We stayed we stayed connected, but our
business just like flu during that time, and mainly because we had to survive. And you've
spoken about cash flow mastery throughout covid. It's not glamorous, but it is powerful. What
discipline had you built before the crisis that gave you these kinds of options. I had a executive
business coach, pre covid, who came into our organization at a time where, you know, I talked
about being a bridge, helping people, you know, over the bridge. And there was a point in in
our history where people would come over, I would teach them, train them, and then they
would go off to some other career. This business coach came in and said, Eugen, you've got to
build a culture. If you want to keep these A players, you need to build a place that they want to
stay and.
30:00
And so we worked on building this culture. And while I was working with him on that and
starting people started to come to us, he had introduced me to this idea of keeping your eye on
your cash flow. And when covid hit, he said, Eugenia, you've got to if you want to keep your
people cash is king. You got to keep your eye on your cash flow every day, because where you
move your money and that money in, money out. You got to manage it every every single day I
had my cash flow open, 24/7, every day that and my resourcing document on where my people
are, what projects we put them on, what about our freelancers? How do we save them? How do
we keep them working like just constantly, every single day, and that was
30:55
the biggest save during covid, is just keeping track of your money in, your money out, and even
to this very day, I'm looking at my cash flow every day, my, you know, balance sheet income
statements you look at, but you've got to, you've got to have an eye on where your cash is.
And growing from six to 40 employees with revenues doubling yearly since 2020. Is
extraordinary. At what point did you start to realize that this wasn't just about survival, it was
about transformation. Survival was right up until probably a year or two after we all went back
from covid, I think that I started to get a little tired.
31:49
And there was a book that I had picked up that on the cover, it said, operators get tired. And I
said, oh my goodness, I think I'm operating my business. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not, you know,
acting like a really good owner, CEO. I'm I'm really working in the business and and I think I
realized at that point in time, why am I so tired? And I looked around honestly. You know,
32:23
every time we would have our Christmas parties, I'd be like, what, we just hired 12 people this
year, and then the next year, we hired 15 people this year, like, what is going on?
32:37
Maybe a year or two ago, where I started to say, Okay, we you know, we can pull back on
having to push on the gas to survive. Now we need to figure out how we're going to be
consistent and really build a company that will be sustainable, because it shifted from rowing to
33:03
being consistent and executing consistently and being sustainable. So how, how do we last
now? So it's still, there's still a little bit of desperation in there, because you're still, you're
always worried that, where's the where, where's the ball gonna drop? And so when is this, when
is this all gonna, you know, shift. So we're always just a little bit worried that the ground is
gonna come out from underneath us. And maybe that was covid that did it, you know, because
we don't really, you know, every day it's like, do we trust today, or is Is this real? Let's pretend
like it's not real. And let's just, you know, move forward and be and think about all the risk and
what could go wrong. And, you know, I think that's, that's, that's also just the times that we're
in, like the fact that everything is changing every single day, rapidly. You can't count on what
you thought you were going to do yesterday. Doesn't work today, and it's definitely not going
to work tomorrow. So be ready to be just be agile and move. So I don't know. I think I'm still still
a little bit surviving. Think I'm still in a bit of
34:22
what's going to happen tomorrow. I think we have to, we have to buckle down and survive. And
you've said something that I love, which is that values on the wall become profit in the bank
when lived daily. Yes, unpack that for us. I just came from a seminar this weekend, actually, in
the States. And there were, there was a big conversation about values on a wall and, and a
little bit of a poo poo on the values of the wall. Like, you know, all these people say that they
live with these values and, and I think where people kind of get sidetracked about values, it's
not.
35:00
Not. It's not about
35:02
five words on a wall. For us, it's seven words. It's not, although we have seven words on a wall,
it's not about the words, it's about the behaviors that are behind the words. And so when we
started building a culture the way that we did it is we gathered the six people at it at the time,
and we sat around a boardroom space, and we just threw up all these papers up on the wall
and just said, Write down. Everybody's got a paper. Write down what matters to you. And we
were like, what matters to you, like, what matters to us personally, yes, what matters to you
personally, and what matters to you at work, what matters to you and your family, like, what is
what matters. And so we all started writing. We had a short period of time to do it. We all just
started writing on and 22 by 24 full SCAP papers, like we're just writing writing. And then we
stepped back, looked at the wall and realized that we had some common things, common
statements, that we were making, although they were written a little differently, they were all
saying the same thing. And so Warren, our coach at the time, took all those statements and
and bundled them into thematic groups and those and then took them away and and found
that they each three or four statements, which became our behavior statements. And they
became, there's like 55 I think in total, when you think about the seven the seven values,
across those seven values, there's a total of 55 behavior statements. And so those are really
the values. That's what we live by every single day, every Monday morning, we have Mindset
Mondays, we huddle for 30 minutes and we talk about one value a month,
37:11
and then we when we talk about that value, we don't just talk about the value, but we talk
about the behavior. And how does that how does that behavior show up every day? So for
example, like, one of our values is fun, but one of the behaviors is, I don't have to do what I'm
doing. I get to do what I'm doing. And so we'll just take a statement like that into a Monday call
and say, How's that showing up for you? Has, how has it shown up for you this week or last
week? Do you have an example of where that might have had an impact on a client or on you
or on the team? And so we have a conversation like, literally pull our coffee cups up and we just
sit around on a virtual call and talk about a behavior, and that behavior of that week that lines
up to the value of that month. And so we do that, not just on Mondays, on Wednesdays, we
have wins and wobbles calls to start the day, and we talk about things that that we were really
successful in, or things that really went sideways, and how did that impact ourselves, our
teammates or clients, and what values showed up or what didn't show up? Most of the time, it's
it's about what was sort of icky that happened between you and somebody else and and and
what value was being stepped on when that happened. And so we constantly are having we're
we're talking about our values and our behaviors all the time. They're in our performance
reviews. They're in our feedback sessions with each other. We're always using it as part of our
language, in it. It really makes a huge difference. I want to ask you about some industry shifts,
because you operate in an industry that's really built on human connection, but we're living in a
digital first world. How do leaders balance deep relationship building with remote culture.
39:27
All I can say is that our team is proof of that. And you know when, when you said what
happened during covid? I mean the very first, my very first reaction was, get on a zoom call
and let's stay connected.
39:42
And you know, if there's one thing that we've learned in creating event television and just
seeing how fast everything is moving now, people's attention span is shorter, you know, you've
got it. You've got to be changing things.
40:00
Like five to eight seconds, there's got to be a shift. There's got to be, you know, your your
posture has to change. Slides have to change, lighting has to change, music has to change. You
know what? What I find is that in this digital age where everything is even with AI coming in
and everybody, what is AI? How is that impacting our business? There's one thing that doesn't
shift, and that is
40:29
who we are as a core, as a human being, that have, we have strategic thinking, we have minds
that are constantly problem solving, but that strategic thinking of where we need to go is also
powered by our heart and how we feel and how we make an impact and and how that changes
somebody's Life. And so I think that what we need to going back to, what we need to do is stay
centered and core to the core of who we are, think about how you impact people, how you
serve people, how you care for people, how you can take care of people. And if you keep that
at the core of what you do. You know, regardless of how fast everything is going, how digital is
taking over the world, we are people, and people need to connect with people, and even if
you're even if you're playing, I even talked to my, you know, my son, who's always in the
basement, playing video games all the time.
41:43
You know, yes, he doesn't have to connect with his friends on a daily basis and play outside in
the backyard, but he is connecting with his friends,
41:54
playing video games and socializing and having conversations as they're playing they're still
connecting, and they're still staying true to who they are. It's it, you know, I think both things
can be true, and what mistakes do companies make when they're trying to capture attention in
immersive environments? Because something that you mentioned is that audience attention
spans are shrinking. So what are the common mistakes that you see? I think the biggest
mistake is that now that events are coming back to live and there's a lot more live events than
there is virtual how we were able to shift the conversation in broadcast was to make the
conversation shorter. It was all about abbreviating The content, but getting really crisp on the
content, very clear in the content, trying to to to distill down what you need to say in short
spurts. And that was tough for a lot of people who are used to getting up and speaking for 40
minutes to an hour.
43:15
And we were like, now you have to speak in like five minutes. Take 40 minutes into five
minutes. And so it was almost an exercise like going back to when you were in school, figuring
out how to write an essay, how to get to build your outline. What's your point? What's your
proof point? One proof point. That's all you need. Hit, hit it and that that's fine. That's all people
need. That's all they're going to listen to. And so I think as we came back into live, it was, there
was a strange, let's go back to the way we used to communicate, pre covid. And we thought,
no, don't do it, because what's going to happen is people have shifted. Their attention spans
are short, and so it's a really hard slog for us to move that needle. It's so funny how people can
become so ritual in doing things, and how easy it has been for a lot of presenters to go back to
the way they used to be, but what's happening is they're finding that their audience is
44:30
their heads are down, they're falling asleep. They're getting up and walking out in the middle of
a meeting like you would never do that before, but they're doing it because they have to,
because they need to. They need to stay awake, and they, you know, so they they need to get
up and move. So it's, I think, I think the the trick is to, you know, there is a bit of work that still
needs to be done. And I think.
45:00
You know, trying to find a way to be more succinct, to be more clear, to really think about, you
know, for us, it's really turned more into experiences. What is the experience? How are you
changing people's lives? You know, if I'm going to take a day out of my my personal life to
come be with you, then it's got to make a difference. It's got to matter. And so teach me
something. I don't just invite me to something and give me great food that I can get that from a
restaurant, teach me something, make me better than I was five minutes ago. And if we could
do that, man, that's that, that's going to be remarkable. But I think it's doing that shift right I
think it's that's where we find we're in right now is in kind of a bit of a limbo between what was,
46:06
what became, and what is now. And so it's, it's, it's challenging thinking to the future. When
you think about the next phase of El productions, what excites you the most as of today, what
excites me the most is a little bit of what's missing our industry is one that is an aging industry.
There's a lot of people that unfortunately, after covid, it knocked a lot of them off, off their
balance a little bit. And there's a lot of people that are retiring or moving into different careers
that just can't, you know, the it's it's a lot of work, it's a lot of stress, it's a lot, it's a lot. And so
for me personally, I feel like the industry needs, needs help and needs support, and there's a
whole group of people coming into careers that aren't able to have a career because maybe AI
is taking their jobs. And yet, we're in an industry of people, but there's no education that is
actually teaching them how to do what we do. So I'm I'm inspired in teaching and sort of
helping the industry, helping people who want to learn how to connect, how to make a
difference in people's lives. That's what I'm really stoked about, is like creating a company that
is based on knowledge, and that is one of our values, is, is teaching, sharing, experiencing,
making a difference. Those are the things that I'm I'm really stoked about, is that if we can
continue to be just in service of others, and do that and really help bring some of the next
generation into the fold. And really, you know, save the industry and and keep it, keep it
flourishing, so that, you know, people have a reason to connect and meet Yes, absolutely. Now
you don't promote aggressively, but you've said that if someone is looking to produce
greatness, you want to be their partner. What does producing greatness mean in 2026
48:38
for us, produce greatness isn't what we do
48:42
produce greatness. Is what we can do for others in terms of how they can produce greatness.
Find what matters. Find what's important to your employees, your attendees, your consumer,
your customer, figure out what matters to them and make them feel great. We're just a cog in
the wheel, and in my team, we call ourselves event producers because we're like conductors in
an orchestra. Every piece of instrument that is in our orchestra has a role to play, and we need
to pull it all together and make sure that we're producing a beautiful piece of music. Greatness
is just, it's better than best, because it's, it's being the ultimate for yourself and for those that
you're working with making people feel fantastic when we say we're producing greatness.
We're producing greatness for our clients so they can produce greatness for their employees,
for their attendees, for their customers. It's all about passing the baton, feeling great, feeling
good, feeling fantastic, and.
50:00
So it's less about us producing greatness. It's it's so that you can produce greatness in this
podcast.
50:07
Now, Eugenia here at CEO behind the scenes, we always close with the same two questions. So
the first question I wanted to ask you is, what is one thing that you've changed your mind
about recently, and why this year and last year, I had this theme about we have to be clear
with everything that we do.
50:32
And I thought clarity was just being articulate with your words. And as I said, you know, being
clear on your expectations, but I think clarity for me has been, be truth,
50:53
be
50:55
transparent, open your heart and really let others in. Let yourself open up so that you you're
ready for anything. And so for me, clarity has shifted in my mind. It's, it's still be clear with your
words, but be open with your heart. And second question is, what is one thing that you've not
changed your mind about a belief that you'd want to share to help others lead or live better,
51:33
always build a path and a plan and give yourself checkpoints or toll gates along the road so
that you can see progress and that you can maintain being pro active
51:54
to see that progress, whatever it is in your life, Whether it's building a business, whether it's
building a team, whether it's working on a project, what, whatever it is, build a path, because
an idea is just an idea, but without the the road to get there, it's just doesn't mean anything.
You have to have a path, and you have to have checkpoints along the way so that you can see
progress. Eugenia, it has been such a joy and pleasure to have you on the show today, and I've
so loved hearing your story about purpose, resilience and what it truly means to produce
greatness under pressure. So thank you so much for joining me for this conversation. Thank
you very much. I really enjoyed having this time with you. Laura likewise and to our audience, if
you enjoyed this conversation and found value through eugenia's insights, then don't forget to
subscribe, rate and review the show and share this episode with someone who you know would
really benefit from hearing all the insights and wisdom that were shared today. Thank you so
much for joining us, and we'll see you next time on CEO: Behind the scenes.