Live Event, Experiential and Brand Experience musings

Over the last few weeks, I've probably spoken to around 40 senior leaders across the events industry. Some have been agency owners, some managing directors, some commercial leaders and some operational leaders. Some have been hiring, some have been trying to hire and...

There’s a version of hiring I see all the time, especially when a business decides it’s time to grow. Revenue needs to increase, pipeline needs to improve, and fairly quickly the conversation lands on the same conclusion: “we need a salesperson.” On the surface, it...

Last week I was asked to speak about something that doesn’t get talked about enough in our industry. Not AI, not growth, not disruption. Just people. But not the obvious ones. Not the loudest voice in the room or the ones constantly visible. The people who quietly...

I spend my time speaking to owners, HR leaders and C-suite decision makers across events, experiential and MICE, so what follows isn’t theory. It’s what’s actually happening on the ground. Q1 2026 has been shaped by the after-effects of last year’s mergers, a spike in...

The fastest way to lose a great candidate? Write “competitive salary” on the job advert.   Because for some reason, plenty of employers still think it’s acceptable to write “competitive salary” or “DOE” (depending on experience) and expect people to jump through...

I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently. as in the conversations I keep having behind the scenes, owners are nervous. Everyone’s talking about AI. About remote working. About efficiency, automation, scale., and they’re right to. None of that is going away, and...