We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Gladys Mezrahi. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Gladys below.

Gladys, appreciate you joining us today. Risk taking is something we’re really interested in and we’d love to hear the story of a risk you’ve taken.

After 35 years of planning events, I came to realize that I was losing my passion. That fire that I always had was being extinguished by the clients. The event industry is a very complex profession. It takes many parts to come together and we, as strategists and planners depend on 99% of the plan’s execution on others.

Over the years I learned the value of my team. Not only my everyday team but my vendors, who are the core of my business.
Clients come and go, and events are planned, executed and we move on to the next. Our team is at the frontline, always with the client; when things are running flawlessly, and specially when that oops moment comes along unexpectant that needs to be attended to immediately or otherwise it can create a major problem, even to the point of no event.

To illustrate, I want to share a very common example. The client knows everything about events and wants everything at a fraction of its real cost, with high expectations and a very low budget, because they can always do it themselves and do not need us, and this is pre-pandemic.
Educating the client became a full time job. It would never occur to me to ask a Dr. where he bought the needle or the gloves he used to take my blood or even if he needed 2 or 3 nurses to do his job. Going even further, we never negotiate or not pay their fee. But in our business, this is what we get.

We are supposed to be the “experts” but when it comes to events, everyone thinks they can just put a nice centerpiece, a linen, call a hotel and ask for a menu and done, the event is planned. On many occasions I have been hired to put out fires, even with a couple of days before an event and I did it with the passion that I always had. But after 35 years of clients that just want their peace of mind at ease with their ideas and their budget not knowing that they are missing 80% of what is really needed, I decided to take a risk and as they say “put your money where your mouth is”

I ventured into an event as if I were the client. My ideas, my graphics, the venue, the set up, the look and feel, the content, and so many other pieces that are essential to any event. As I had predicted, based on all my years of experience, it was a success. Not only because it created a new vision, it also created a new experience with all the elements that we need to connect emotionally to the guests in order to get that attention and engagement that we all look for. The icing on the cake, the Wow Factor!

The Disruptive series, for women who dare to think different was not only the catalyst that changed everything, but it also led me to open my own Foundation. The Power of The Heels.
That decision led me to start a whole social movement that is now creating a real impact in young girls and women through the Loving Me More Program with the mission of creating social change by disrupting the poverty cycle for the betterment of the society by educating and empowering women

Gladys, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

With a clear understanding of what companies need in order to promote their products or services, a passion for ideas and a vision of doing events by bringing the emotional connection as part of the event strategy, I did my first event when I was 15. Over 40 years ago, I was trying to explain the power of events to the CEO of a major airline and how the exposure in a live event will help not only their brand but their marketing and sales efforts. And it worked. Since then I have been creating what I call “Marketing through Events” as part of an integrating marketing plan to promote services and products.
Events have evolved and the game plan has changed. Innovation, creativity, and strategic analysis that incorporates social media, technology and experiences have become part of this lucrative industry.
With over 40 years of experience in producing, designing and creating the concept of an event, I have come to realize that experience in this industry is of great value. We now talk about pre-pandemic and post-pandemic and can predict many of the issues that will come with almost any event, that is why I am now teaching the art of doing an event in 7 steps.
With an award winning book, “More Wow and Less Oops” it has all the details on how to do an event not only for those in this industry but for those people that have to do events as part of their job and do not know the trade or for those people that always wanted to start doing events. Today that passion for ideas is directed towards others as well as the consulting on events.
Why consulting? Have you tried to understand a venue contract and the hidden fees? Or choosing the venue that has all the pieces to become the event location?
Creating a concept that can sell your service? Or even educating that difficult client or balancing the pieces to accommodate any kind of budget.
My biggest impact was using the events not only to promote/sell a product or a service by creating an engaging marketing strategy, but by creating events that have been raising funds for many organizations as well as teaching and mentoring. By creating the Power of the Heels Foundation, I was able to bring together the marketing aspect with the philanthropic component to help women advance, change or simply share with other women best practices during their careers as well as teaching young girls to be self-sufficient, secure and independent so they can break the poverty cycle.

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

With nearly 4 decades in the event industry, I never thought I had to unlearn a lesson, but I just did. When I teach others, I try to enforce the importance and the value of our time and our expertise. With any other industry you can send an invoice, get paid and ship the goods and you are done. My favorite example is a visit to the dr. You are asked to pay before they see you (unless covered by the insurance) . There are no refunds or negotiating the price for a doctors visit.
Let’s continue with this example; the doctor asks a series of questions to figure out why you are there. Then he proceeds to send orders for a series of tests and then he schedules a follow up to check all the results and give a diagnosis. The result can be just a prescription, a bigger issue like surgery or even a long treatment. Following your visit, you analyze what you want to do and how much it will cost.

Let’s see it from an event point of view (circumstances in this case is a happy one, no one wants to go to the Doctor); we meet with the client to understand what kind of event they want, then we continue to propose a few options based on what was explained. After all the proposals are in the clients hands we meet again to analyze what are the costs and which way they want to continue.

At this point you have already seen the client twice, and the doctor twice as well. Regardless of how you want to proceed or if you want to look for another opinion, you have paid for his time and expertise. The same happens with an event planner or event strategist, except 90% of the time we are not paid to meet with the client and give out options, we wait to be hired and hope they are not going to someone else.

Moving forward, regardless of the “treatment” or the type of event you are going with, once the event is over, there is no going back. With a doctor. you can always go to another one for a second opinion or another treatment but the first treatment was already paid for with no negotiating professional fees.

Years ago, you would get a deposit and after the event you would be paid the balance with the extra items, if any, and there was no problem. At least for me. As times change, clients became more difficult and after the event they stated that the food was bad, or there was something missing or the service was not as expected, anything to avoid paying the balance. In order to avoid this, I suggest that pictures or videos to be kept until the balance is paid off, having something to hold on in cases like this, if the event was executed as it should be.

Today, hotels, caterers, planners and vendors require that the event be paid in full before the event or they will not deliver. That is the lesson.
From the planners side, we can now get an event insurance to cover legal expenses in case it goes to court for something we’ve missed or went wrong during the event, BUT it will not cover the unpaid balance.

The lesson was crystal clear, until…

As the events started to come back to life, post-pandemic, I was hired by an organization that I knew from many of my past events. The person in charge was very knowledgeable in the event industry, which is always a blessing. A simple contract, very straightforward and here we go. After 2 months of planning, and with the event a couple of weeks out, the vendors told me that deposits had not been paid, including part of mine.
With the promise of tomorrow and tomorrow, some of the production items had already been ordered, but I had to make a choice and send the rest of the items to be produced, like all the printing needs,, staging, banners, etc, giving my word that all costs will be covered.

How could they not, I know the people and the companies involved were not small at all. Some deposits did come through but not all.
Registrations were coming in and very influential and high end people would be attending and based on the printing arts that had been approved I knew the sponsors were not small or even unknown companies. As we had no time left, I decided to call my vendors and ask them to help and move forward, that I would guarantee their payment. First OOPS, and first unlearned lesson.
3 days before the event set up, I had to go beyond the person in charge of the event, only to find out that he had never gotten the budget approved and the board had no clue what was going on. They just knew the event was moving forward and costs had been covered by registrations and sponsors. Very far from the actual truth.

As someone who has always guarded and worked to keep the highest reputation in the industry, I was faced with a very difficult situation. I had no way of knowing prior to that call and 3 days before, that the situation was so dreadful. Not only was their reputation on the line as well but the event sponsors and people that had registered. As a professional we have to face challenges and this one was huge. At that point I knew that the only option was to move forward. I was able to re-negotiate services, change some of the menu items to cut costs and rebalance what I could in order to make it happen, with only 3 days to go.

The event was a huge success and a payment plan was negotiated so that everyone was paid, but…at what cost.
My lesson was very clear, never again will I unlearn that lesson.
The new lesson is that you never take advantage of anyone in your team or your vendors, because they are the biggest asset of any company. That is why after everything that happened, was that everyone got paid first and then me.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

Life is always about pivoting and moving forward, and that is something that the pandemic has taught us at a global scale.

When I started my business I knew I wanted to be in the Corporate side of events and develop a plan to promote the concept of an Integrated Marketing Strategy. In 2008, I was doing approximately 70% corporate events, meetings and seminars and 30% “Marketing through Events” ™ when the recession hit.
We all remember how the corporate field had to eliminate their meetings and events, especially in venues where the word spa or beach was included, which is nearly all the hotels and venues in South Florida. Those that did not have beach, had Spa or Resort.
The part that I remember most, was the silence of the phones. It started trickling down until one day, the phone did not ring, and the same the next day and the next. In my mind recession meant silence.
After bills started piling up, I knew I had to do something. I remember my husband telling me that in business you have to learn how to dance to any tune. If they play jazz, you dance to that tune and they play rock, you learn the moves and adapt. And that is how I ventured into the wedding scene. I figured that companies had to cut their budgets and change how they did their meetings, but people still got married and wanted their dream wedding. I got certified as a wedding planner and welcomed the social scene and the weddings.
What shocked me the most at the beginning, was the difference with the client, and how weddings are very emotional, compared to the seriousness of corporate clients. That was also part of the learning curve that I was willing to go through. A couple of years later, I was proud to say that I actually did pretty good. I had a lot of patience with brides, mothers, fathers and even the in-laws and since I have always been passionate about ideas, I brought many of the corporate things into the wedding scene creating a very good synergy. I even won the Best of the Best by The Knot Magazine.
When the economy started to grow back and corporate began doing meetings and events my percentage was divided between the three. #30 % Corporate, 30% Marketing and 30% social which was a good fit.
However, that 60% did not come easy, since I was so focused on growing the social market, I did not anticipate that my competition was focused on getting ready to take over my corporate clients. That was a huge lesson, so when the economy started growing and I went back to my old clients, there was someone else in my place. I learned the hard way that you never move forward without looking back to see what you left behind and if it’s worth fighting for.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.indigoevents.net
• Instagram: @EventsByIndigo
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EventsByIndigo
• Linkedin: Gladys Mezrahi
• Twitter: @EventsByIndigo
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/GladysMezrahi
• Other: www.thepoweroftheheels.org https://www.instagram.com/poweroftheheels/ https://www.facebook.com/Thepoweroftheheels

Image Credits
Ariel Cuello Juan Manuel Burgos Ernesto Gomez