We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Elizabeth Restauri a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Elizabeth, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you tell us about a time where you or your team really helped a customer get an amazing result?

Invest in your employees and your employees will invest in you.

I have a client I’ve worked with for the past five years. The client is a distributor of wine & spirits with a medium-sized sales force.

The client hosts their annual operations & sales achievement awards each year to recognize the outstanding performance of their employees. The clients approached me with the concern that their awards banquet had become a little…”stale”. They weren’t wrong. The event needed to be re-vamped. Long gone are the days of half-bored employees sitting in a banquet room as people walk to the podium to simply accept an award.

I proposed some very radical changes & enhancements to the celebration, including incorporating an annually changing theme, encouraging employee participation by dressing in theme, adding entertainment elements, experiential decor, and interactive experiences to the event. The clients also incorporated the suggestion of adding a “Lifetime Achievement Award” for outstanding long-term employees to recognize achievement that was not necessarily quantitive.

By elevating the event for the attendees, excitement and pride were re-kindled within the organization simply by investing in the celebration of their employee’s achievements. The client was able to motivate the workforce toward better productivity and sales and strengthened employee retention.

The event is now a widely-anticipated and well-deserved opportunity to bring together their team in pursuit of their company goals. The clients have year over year seen the return on investment and continue to raise the bar each year to celebrate their employees.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

To my core, I am a creative and a lover of life. I recognize how finite our trips around the sun are and how precious joy in any of its forms can be. And that is the most important thing to be celebrated.

We spend our days striving toward our goals in cultivating relationships, building families, and pursuing our professional and personal dreams, often the product of hard work and sacrifice. As we reach these accomplishments and realize these milestones, we should take time to commemorate them. That’s where I come in.

I subscribe to a ‘Jerry Maguire’ principle. Less clients. More personal attention. I pour everything I am into every event I produce and the results are consistently magical.

I welcome a wide range of clientele, from corporate to personal and social celebrations, and choose my projects based on the excitement and passion that lives within the concept.

Some people are lucky enough to know what they were made to do. This is what I’m made to do. My goals will always orbit around the philosophy that thoroughly absorbing and appreciating the power of a moment both enriches and defines your existence.

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

YES! The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. A professor of computer science was diagnosed with terminal cancer at the age of 46. He decided to retire from teaching and, as is tradition at Carnegie Mellon University, he is asked to give one “Last Lecture”…

The lessons Randy Pausch teaches in this talk are entertaining, eye-opening, AND life-changing. Watch the video on YouTube, get the book, or better yet – do both!

At many pivotal times in my life, I’ve gone back and rewatched and reread the powerful lessons this professor offered.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

My business coach Debbie Orwat once said, “Being an entrepreneur is the biggest roller coaster of personal growth. It tests every single part of who you are. Like, all the time.”

One of the most important principles of business is to know who you are and where you want to go. That doesn’t always happen from the get-go. That’s ok. Be open to reevaluating and changing your plan.

I’ve owned my business for just over 10 years now. The first three years of that time were spent developing my skills, expanding my knowledge, and gaining experience. Cutting your teeth can be painful, but necessary. For the next four years of my journey, I knew I needed to “be successful” at all costs. At the time, I thought that meant taking every job that came my way. I was overworked, overwhelmed, and overloaded. And not charging what my services were worth.

The pandemic was devastating in so many ways for so many people. For me, it was a necessary, yet terrifying pause on my business allowing me the opportunity to reevaluate.

I fought to keep Total Imagination Events alive at a time when the core of what my services produced – gatherings – were indefinitely halted. Seeking small business grants, taking jobs shipping corporate achievement care packages instead of planning the in-person awards ceremony, and dropping off supplies for families to DIY their at-home celebrations.

And throughout that time, I kept imagining what I wanted this business to become. Like everyone else, I binge-watched about every movie I’ve ever loved. One night, while watching a classic Tom Cruise flick – it hit me. I decided to subscribe to the ‘Jerry Maguire’ principle. Fewer clients. More personal attention.

Instead of quantity, my business would seek quality, allowing me to fully invest my talent in creativity into a smaller number of events and a more satisfying experience for both me and the clients.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.totalimaginationevents.com
• Instagram: @totalimaginationevents.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/totalimaginationevents/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/total-imagination-events/
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/total-imagination-centennial

Image Credits

Kisa Conrad Photography, David Lynn Photography, Greg Muntz of Muntz Studios, Jensen Sutta, Caroline Colvin Photography