Hey community — this week we're talking about a trap I've watched derail talented event professionals for 30 years. Not burnout. Not bad clients. Not difficult vendors. The easy task. Here's the scenario. You sit down Monday morning with genuine intention. You have a proposal that needs to go out, a significant piece of potential business that could change your quarter. You have a strategic relationship you've been meaning to deepen. You have a service offering you've been building that could open a new revenue stream. And then you open your email. And before you know it, it's 11am. You've responded to fourteen messages, filed three documents, updated a spreadsheet, and confirmed a vendor call. Your inbox looks better. Your to-do list looks shorter. But the proposal is still in draft. The relationship is still uncontacted. The revenue opportunity is still untouched. You were busy all morning. You just weren't productive. This week we're fixing that with a framework, a mindset shift, and the exact AI prompts to make sure your most important work gets done first, every single day. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 1. THE BIG ROCKS CONCEPT AND WHY IT'S MORE URGENT THAN IT SOUNDS You may have heard the big rocks analogy before. A professor fills a jar with large rocks and asks the class if it's full. They say yes. He adds gravel and it fills the gaps. He asks again. They say yes. He adds sand. It fills further. He adds water. The jar was never as full as it appeared. The lesson: if you don't put the big rocks in first, they never fit. Your big rocks are the tasks that directly generate results — revenue, relationships, reputation, and growth. They are the client pitch you've been preparing. The conversation with a potential referral partner. The proposal that represents three months of revenue. The strategic decision that affects your business trajectory for the next year. The gravel is the necessary admin that keeps things running. The sand is the small tasks that feel productive but don't move the needle. The water is the email, the notifications, the five-minute favours that fill every available space if you let them.

Hey community — this week I want to talk about something that happens after almost every corporate event, costs companies real money, and almost nobody addresses. The final hotel invoice. Most planners receive it, compare it loosely to expectations, approve it, and move on. The event is over. Everyone is exhausted. Finance is waiting. The invoice gets paid. And somewhere in that document, often more than one place, there's money that shouldn't be there. This week I'm walking you through exactly what a proper post-event audit looks for, why most companies skip it, and how AI is turning a time-consuming manual process into something you can do systematically on every single event. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 1. WHY THE FINAL INVOICE IS WHERE THE REAL MONEY LIVES Here's something 30 years in this industry has taught me clearly: the hotel negotiation doesn't end when you sign the contract. It ends when you approve the final invoice. Everything you negotiated - the comp rooms, the waived meeting space fees, the F&B per-person caps, the AV inclusions, the rebate structures has to actually show up correctly on that final bill. And frequently, it doesn't. Not always because of bad faith. Hotels are large operations with multiple departments, complex billing systems, and staff turnover. Errors happen. Charges slip through. Comps don't get applied. Rebates don't get triggered. The difference between the planner who catches these and the one who doesn't comes down to one thing: knowing what to look for and taking the time to look. The hotel is not going to call you and say "we billed you too much." That call never comes. But if you audit, methodically, against your contract, the money is almost always there. 2. THE MOST COMMON OVERCHARGES — LINE BY LINE Let me give you the specific categories where errors appear most frequently. These are the line items I look at first on every invoice: ROOM BLOCK & ACCOMMODATION • Attendees who cancelled before the cutoff date still appearing as billed room nights

Hi all - I am looking to start up interactive Zoom sessions again as I think sharing ideas and asking questions is really important. Questions are: Would you participate in these sessions, what would you like to discuss, how often is best to start (bi-weekly, monthly?), day and time options? My goal is to create an interactive community that is your go-to place for ideas, support and discussion. Share your thoughts!