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

Alright, DeShawn thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard.

Technological advancements are a wonderful thing. We have all enjoyed the convenience of doing things with the click of a button. However, in many ways that convenience has come at a cost. I sometimes feel that customer service is a lost art. Our systems of click the button, check the box, download the app, has replaced the human connection part of customer service. The focus has turned to being faster. However, fast is not always what the customer needs. A critical element of customer service is the ability to understand and empathize with the customer’s needs. And that can not always be ascertained with the check of a box. I started my company in 2010 because I no longer wanted to do one size fits all events. I wanted to run a business where I truly got to know my clients, understood the why behind their events, and worked with them to create the change they were seeking. I am in a relationship business. Successful relationships require empathy. And that can only be obtained when a person makes a concerted effort to understand another’s point of view. I approach event planning with a desire to understand my client’s why. And I also counsel client’s on how to identify and acknowledge their attendee needs.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I started my first business when I was in the 3rd grade. We had fruit trees on our property. My favorite was a kumquat tree. It was not a common fruit, and most of the kids at my school had never had them. I thought it would be great to introduce it to them, but of course not for free. So I took a box of sandwich bags and filled them up with the tiny fruit to sell to my classmates. My dad saw what I was doing, and brought out a scale that he had in the garage. He showed me how to place each baggie on the scale to make sure that they all weighed the same amount. He wanted me to make sure that everyone was getting the same amount for the price that I was charging. It was very recently that I came to the realization that I was an entrepreneur before I even knew the word. It was something that came natural to me, selling items to my friends and neighbors, was like play time to me.

While at Pepperdine I got a job working in the wedding chapel at school. It was my first real introduction to the hospitality industry. As a kid, I thought that planning weddings would be fun. Even as a kid, I would toy around with my last name and how I could use Wynn in the name of my wedding planning company. After two years of working in the wedding chapel, I realized that the emotional drama that comes along with weddings were not my cup of tea.

So then I started to consider hotel management. I did an internship at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel in Downtown LA, in the catering services department. My roommates thought that I was crazy, because I did not have a car and had to take the bus from Malibu, California to Downtown LA. I gladly got up before sunrise to go and stand on Pacific Coast Highway and wait for the bus. The idea of working for a large hotel was pretty exciting. And the gentlemen who I did the internship with, was great. I remember him taking me on trips into Chinatown to purchase décor for the ballrooms. I learned a lot during that semester. But I think the most important lesson I learned was that the aspects of the events that I loved the most came after the contract was signed. And had very little to do with the jobs of the catering and banquet staff. I loved the planning of events, not so much the selling of the property and the space.

Outside of wedding planning and working in a hotel, I did not have any notion of any other careers in hospitality. So my attention turned from career to getting a job to pay the bills so that I did not have to move back in with my parents.

My professor’s wife was the Executive Director for a small non-profit called California Campus Compact. UCLA was its fiscal partner, and we were housed in one of their office buildings on Wilshire Blvd. It was there that I learned about grant writing, and how to put together small educational events. I was only there for a year before the organization moved to San Francisco. What I now realize is that this was the beginning of a series of jobs that would introduce me to careers in the MICE Industry. I still did not have a career focus. My only concern was to pay the bills. I was so focused on the short term, that I did not realize that the foundation for my career was being laid. It did not register that I was gaining valuable industry skills that would help me build my current business. None of the jobs I held had the tile “event planner.” But the scope of work definitely encompassed the need to gather, people

After working for a couple of non-profits, including the American Heart Association, I was getting restless. I found myself questioning the strategy and methods that went into the work I was doing. The “event in a box” concept did not sit well with me. Take the same event and make it generic enough that it can be done multiple times, in multiple places. The only problem is that people are not generic, we are all different. And our differences require some thought into the best way to meet attendee needs.

I asked my college roommate to help me with my resume. As my career objective she wrote, “I would like to utilize my 16 years of meeting & planning experience…” A lightbulb went off, and I began to evaluate the work that I had been doing since college. Even though I never held the title of a meeting planner, every job I had held since college required me to plan some type of event. Whether it was a fundraiser, community festival, educational seminar, or client training. I now fully understood that I could make a career as an event planner outside of planning weddings or working for a hotel.

I now had a career goal of finding a career as a corporate meeting & event planner. Unfortunately, this revelation came in the middle of an economic downturn. Most companies were eliminating their planning staff, not hiring. After almost a year of trying to find work, I decided to take a leap of faith and formed Wynning Touch Event Design. But if I am really honest, and reflect on my path to this point, I was always destined to be an entrepreneur. It is who I am. The little girl selling kumquats to her classmates knew that was training ground for future endeavors.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I have to do it all – Our industry was drastically shaken up by the pandemic. Since events were moving online people were scrambling to figure out how to be a digital event planner. It did not take me long to figure out that I hated everything about digital events. It was a level of stress that I did not enjoy. What I learned in 2020 is that it is ok not to be a superhero. I did not have to specialize in every aspect of the meetings industry. It was ok to say “I don’t plan digital events and have not desire to.” And the best lesson that I learned from this was a lesson about collaboration. I don’t like planning digital events, but I know someone who loves it. And together we make an awesome team. So no, I don’t have to do it all. But I surround myself with people who fill in the gaps.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://wynningtouch.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wynning_touch/
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/deshawnwynn