1. Remember that cookies & milk left for Santa are a good thing, but Santa really prefers vodka and rum cake.

2. Elves make terrible house guests and Reindeer do not make good pets.

3. Small cats under 2 years of age will strip your Christmas tree of all ornaments and then play soccer with them until 2:00a.m.

4. When in doubt, wear the really ugly Christmas sweater and then pretend it’s ironic.

5. Women do not want appliances as gifts (this includes vacuum cleaners but the exception to the rule are Dysons).  Men do not want anything that doesn’t run on 110 volts.

6. There is only 1 fruitcake in the world.  Your job is to rewrap it and regift it.

7. Eggnog is enhanced by the addition of more rum.

8. Christmas cookies are best served with rum-laced eggnog.

9. The best things in life are not things.

10. Enjoy your family and friends and celebrate your New Year’s Eve in a safe and friendly environment so that I can see you again in 2012.

Listen Up – A Networking Tip for Beginners (or self absorbed, bad listeners) – By Lisa Hansen

To have a good conversation, one must listen, connect and engage. When meeting someone new at a networking function, I try to find connections and I listen. What makes a great listener? You don’t just hear, you ask good questions prompting conversation back and forth. For example:

• What are your company’s core services and specialty?
• What’s your role?
• What types of businesses are your clients?
• How many people work there?
• How long have you worked there?
• Where are you based?
• What do you like about your job?

Unfortunately, all too often, I encounter a one-way street. I ask a question and it’s not reciprocated. I recently met a young man who works for a printing corporation. Now, I’ve been doing marketing and graphic design work long enough to know the services most printers offer. However, this guy didn’t see the word “marketing” on my name badge. For the next 20 (yes TWENTY) minutes, I politely listened to a big long ramble about services, projects, clients, paper type, web presses, QR Codes, publications and more. Honestly, it sounded like a run-on sentence.

At one point, I interjected with a question/comment about a mutually known magazine (they printed it and I placed ads in it), thinking it would prompt a question or two back to me. You know, like, “what do you do now?” No luck. He jumped back to his run-on list. He completely missed that his ramble didn’t entice me to want to do business with him. In fact, it turned me off completely. Seriously, 20 minutes!

When networking, keep your commentary succinct, ask questions and really listen. You’ll engage, connect and maybe make a sale.

1. Remember that excessive tryptophan consumption and driving do not mix.  If you must eat turkey, please have a designated driver with access to Red Bull.

2. Remember that aerosol whipped cream is for the responsible adults in the household only.

3. Butter is healthier for you than margarine.

4. If you are having a fabulous Pinot Noir or a Pinotage with dinner, remember to invite me.

5. If you are serving white wine, remember “ABC”, anything but Chardonnay.

6. If you are deep-frying your turkey this year, please see the William Shatner PSA video first on this subject.

7. Exposure to distant relatives IS at your own risk.  Prolonged exposure may be hazardous to your health.

8. Pumpkin products have been known to mimic the effects of sweet potatoes.

9. Just because you CAN have lasagna, doesn’t mean you SHOULD.

10. Have a safe & wonderful holiday with your friends and family!

1. If you send me an email advising me to buy your product – tell me the name of the product!   Seriously.  My mind was blown a week ago when I received an email extolling the virtues of a waterfront hotel and telling me that I should book my next meeting there.  It’s a “waterfront hotel” surrounded by “some the area’s finest waterfront restaurants” and that I could have “a magical waterfront experience for my next event”.  It even listed the Director of Sales name and phone number…..just not the NAME of the property anywhere in the email.   No photo either (extra points deducted for that too – that could have been what I call a clue) How do you get to be a Director of Sales without your company/hotel name in your auto-signature?  This is really Sales 101 folks.  Do I really need to get on my soapbox and yell “Name the product!”?  Apparently I do.
2. Have a complete auto-signature on your emails.  Because if you forget to tell me where you’re from and what you’re selling, this is a clue for me.
3. Never start a conversation by insulting the client.  Is this a new misguided sales technique?  Because if it is, you must stop immediately.  Recently, I received an email from a vendor (that means someone trying to SELL me something), which started out by saying how they had been trying to reach me repeatedly by email and phone to no avail.  I interpreted this to mean that they were calling ME unresponsive.  That means war in my book.  (because I return all phone calls and emails within 24 hours or faster)  The last email that she had sent me prior to this was 4 months ago – really?!
4. Never insult the client’s name.  I had a client and we were meeting with our caterer for an event.  My client was a man named “Stacy”.  The caterer started the conversation by saying “Stacy? I bet you got made fun of a lot in elementary school, didn’t you?”   Can you say awkward moment?
5. Understand that whenever possible, clients like to source products from their local geographic region.  Which is why vendors in India need to stop calling me about letting them handle my database management.  Get a globe.   (it also helps keep shipping costs down)
6. If you take a client’s order and then cancel it, you really NEED to tell the client.  Recently we needed to order some big heavy wooden things.  Needless to say we’re also always working on deadlines.  When the big heavy things didn’t show up and then didn’t show up…..we called the vendor who told us “oh, we cancelled that order, it’s not available”.   This is an example of how not to get repeat buyers.   If availability is even a slight factor, make sure all parties concerned are aware of this.  That’s what a good salesperson would do.

21. The word “JUST” will cost you $1000.00  – For example, “I JUST need a couple centerpieces delivered by this afternoon”….or “Can I JUST get a proposal by this evening?”….or “Can you JUST do a simple ceiling treatment?”….or anything else that starts with “Can you JUST…..”  Just is a four-letter word.
22. Free costs money - Beware of the free venue, free entertainment, free whatever.  It costs you money.  For example, we recently had a client that wanted to put on an event and thought he was doing great because he had a free venue lined up.  Well, the free venue was a large gymnasium, more or less, and in order to turn it into a symposium theater, he needed to rent 700 chairs, a stage, stage lighting, sound production, video production and numerous other things that added up fast and went far beyond his budget capabilities to outfit his free venue.   A week before the event date, the venue was changed to an actual theater that had enough seating built in, along with the permanent stage and audio visual.  Turns out that two thousand in venue rental is better than twelve thousand to outfit a free space.   And beware the band that volunteers to play your charity event for free!  If the entertainment is awful, consider this – your guests will leave before they pull out their checkbooks and make that big donation to the cause. (see next rule)
23. In order to make money, you have to spend money – See Rule #22.  Yes, you need to book real entertainment that costs money.  It will keep the guests happy and they will stay longer.  Long enough to write that check, bid on that item, and have a good enough time to come back next year, with more friends in tow.   And NO – getting all the food and beverage donated is not a good idea.  You’ll run out of whatever it is early because there’s never enough and the guests will be upset.  And upset guests don’t write checks.
24. The goal is NOT the process – Meaning that in order to have a glamorous event, really hard work is required.  Blood, sweat and tears kind of work.  So if your daughter wants to be an event planner because she thinks it’s all fun and glamour games, she’s wrong.  And by the way, how many hours straight can she stay awake onsite?  That’s a skill we can use.   Oh, we didn’t tell you the day doesn’t end at 5:00pm?
25. Showing up is NOT winning – In a society where everyone gets a trophy for participating, guess what?  Not in event world.  We don’t care how cute you are, what can you DO? Event planning is not soccer, it’s dodgeball.  If you can’t catch, you get nailed in the head.
26. Have a backup plan, as a matter of fact, have two – This means that if you are planning an outdoor event, you need a rain plan.  As in either tents or an alternative indoor location.  If you’re really good, you’ll have a backup indoor location and tents on hold.  This also applies to vendors and subcontractors of all types. Don’t have just one of any category.  If you put all your eggs in one basket, you’re going to trip.

I hope these new rules have been helpful. Please feel free to submit any from the field that you may want to share with the class.

11. Know who the attendees are. – This is also the first rule of marketing “know who the audience is”.   Early in my career, there was a young female meeting planner, planning a conference for middle-aged large burly men.  She thought it would be great to have chicken salad served in pineapple boats for lunch.  What resulted was something akin to the French Revolution with big guys yelling “where’s lunch?”, “that was lunch?!”  “where’s the MEAT and potatoes?!”   Chicken salad is great for a size 2, 20-something females, not for cowboys.   Remember that.
12. With regard to medical meetings – The more vital the organ, the more assistance required by the doctors that specialize in it. – For example, podiatrists can manage to get to the hotel from the airport and find the meeting room.  Cardiologists…..well, not so much.
13. The conference will be considered a great success if the food is tasty and plentiful – When you run out of food in 20 minutes, it’s all the attendees will talk about and remember.  You can book the greatest speaker in the world at the most beautiful location, but what would the guests remember?  The cheesecake, and the fact that they didn’t get any.
14. People hate to wait in line at bars – The typical catering rule is 1 bartender per 100 guests, don’t chance it.  Add a couple more.  Better safe than to have miniature umbrellas thrown at you.
15. No swag is better than cheap swag – In the business, S.W.A.G. is short for “stuff we all get”.  You’ve seen them, pens with your favorite local bail bondsman’s name on them, key chains with rental car logos, and waxy logoed chocolates.  If you can’t afford something memorable or useful, do not hand out perfume-counter-sized gift bags with a plastic pen and 3 brochures in it.  It’s a waste and a hot cup of coffee in a to-go cup would have been more thoughtful to give the guests on their way out.
16. If you don’t have the budget for atmospheric lighting, get one  – Anyone and anything looks better with good lighting.  You be surprised what a colored uplight can do.
17. People like things that are bright and shiny and that GLOW. – We call this the “magpie axiom”.  Put a light inside a bar, a table, or a plastic margarita glass and you know what I’m talking about.
18. Committees are not democracies, not everyone’s vote can count.  Someone has to be the dictator – When you find yourself in the unfortunate position of being assigned to the annual holiday party committee, see if you can’t take the Chairperson role – otherwise you’re doomed to have Santa Claus bobble heads and a bad polka band.
19. It can never be too dark or too tight. Okay, this rule is from our SocialFeats Division.  (and shame on you if you’re blushing right now)   Let me explain.  A good social event is crowded, so that people think it’s the place to be and they’re one of the cool kids – and the lighting is dark and moody.  Back to the rule about the colored uplights.
20. The devil IS in the details – just one keystroke and you sent the limo driver that was supposed to be at the CEO’s house at 5:00pm to his house at 5:00am, and now his wife is NOT happy.

Recently I was asked to be a judge in the Hard Rock Baltimore’s Battle of the Bands. This was fabulous. During my time there, I managed to take the little tiny elevator. If you’ve been there, you know what I mean. It’s also quite slow. Maybe not as slow as the elevator in the Belvedere, but suffice to say, slow. This is the sign that is in the elevator. Really. You can’t make this up. Which leads one to question – has this been a problem?

So, I took a trip to Austin, Texas. Apparently tornados are an issue there. While at the airport, I noticed that the Ladies Room near baggage claim is multi-purpose. The thought of taking shelter in the Ladies Room struck me as funny.

Back in Baltimore, I went to a function at the Holiday Inn Inner Harbor, where I have some really good friends. In their parking lot, I noticed this sign, which made me giggle, because it made me think that the pedestrians jump out and attack the cars. Beware!! Not “watch out for” or “try not to hit/run over”.

On a trip to Englewood, Florida (great beaches there!), I saw this sign – which just made me really happy. Happy hour starts at 11am, my kind of place!

Recently in New York City, I passed a food cart with this sign. There is so much value to proof reading. Pay for it if you have to – some people are obviously not qualified to make signs on their own, and neither are their printers.

And finally, knowing my penchant for signs – my co-worker Danielle Nekimken thought that I might appreciate this one. Sometimes people need practical advice.

Rule #35 Don’t Gossip — actually I just taught a class on networking.  Networking used to be called gossiping, especially when done by women.  Look at this way, knowledge is power.  The more you know, the more you know.  Let’s just not be malicious about it.

Rule #48  Never Lie – well if your boss tells you that, then you are not in the hotel sales business.  How many pieces of business have been closed because a sales person said “I have another client looking at that date?”.

Rule #53 Date with Caution – this book talks about being cautious when dating a co-worker.  I’m going to tell you NOT to do it.  It never turns out well.   Also there is the case of one local salesperson that I know, let’s say that he was in the limo business, and he dated every one of his corporate clients (female).  He forgot that everyone “networks”, and he very quickly was deleted from the preferred vendor lists.

Rule #55  Assume That Everyone Else is Playing by Different Rules – okay, this is just too darn complicated.  How about we all play by the same rules and you assume that everyone you deal with has the best intentions for the best outcome?

Rule #59  Speak the Language – so the book says that in your office if everyone uses geeky terms, then you must also.  This is well and good until it becomes a habit and the moment you go to speak with anyone outside of your office, let’s call them customers, they are turned off because you’ve lost all sense of reality, and they don’t know why RevPAR is a good thing.

Rule #67 Never Disapprove of Others – this is a good rule – unless it’s the intern that filed everything under “T”, explaining “there are so many things that start with the”.

Rule #84  Never Lose Your Temper – this sounds like a good rule, but it’s not always effective.  Or realistic.

Rule #97  Know the Favorites and Cultivate Them – this rule says that bosses have favorites and that you should chum up to them.  I’ve always thought this was called brown-nosing.  I’ve always tried to figure out who had the most interesting opinions and view points and tried to understand them.  It makes the workplace so much more diverse that way.  And ours is an office of misfits.  Misfits are the original thinkers.

Rule #4 Carve out a Niche for Yourself – this rule mainly addresses making yourself useful by spotting something in which you can become the office expert. I take this in a different direction. I think you should carve out a physical niche in the office, and fill it full of stuff – the heavier the better, so that management is dissuaded from moving your office 3 times in the last 4 months. Not that I would know anything about that.

Rule #6 Learn to Ask Why – now…I’m all for this, particularly in the case of interns…but do too much of this and you just become annoying.

Rule #7 Be 100 Percent Committed – this is a good rule, unless we’re talking about mental institutions. In the case of my profession, which is event planning, I don’t agree with this. I always say “Have a plan, just don’t get too attached to it”. Anyone in this business knows that you have to be able to roll with changes (many, many changes) in the course of planning and executing an event. Things sometimes turn out much better than you had planned.

Rule #13 Never Let Anyone Know How Hard You Work – I think this rule is absolutely ridiculous. It goes on in the book to say “never ask for help, never admit you are out of your depth”! This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. We need our interns to ask for help; quite frankly we need our co-workers to ask for help. There are times in our business, high season being one of them, when the typical work load becomes atypical and the last thing we need is to lose personnel due to illness from stress, heart attacks or burnout. This book WAS obviously written by a man. I’m sure he doesn’t ask for directions either. Also – how else will anyone really know that you need a vacation?

Rule #14 Keep your Home Life at Home – okay, so I think this rule might make sense. No, I really don’t care that your 5-year old named his crayon Twinkie. But, if our Event Stylist never brought in touches from home into our office, things would be ever so less fabulous.

Rule #15 Cultivate A Smile – really? This needs to be a rule? Just smile, and mean it. Otherwise everyone will just think you’re a shark. With big teeth.

Rule #16 No Limp Fish – Develop the Perfect Handshake. Okay, this one I agree with. Just don’t make it one of those bone crushing ones so that everyone will think you’re more of a man than you really are. Women hate that. And never shake hands with people’s fingertips. Ick.

Rule #18 Develop a Style That Gets You Noticed – this rule is completely dependent on office culture. We like to think that we are stylish but there’s a fine line before you cross over into the ludicrous. Just know where that line is for your industry. Often being well groomed and neat is enough. In this age of “business casual”, I’m often left wondering when someone said it was okay to wear flip flops to the office. If I can tell you anything, “wear shoes” would be one of them.

Rule #21 Be Cool – this makes my eye twitch. This rule describes how aloof you should be. In our industry, we’d rather see passion. And energy. And engagement.

1. Anything that can be found, can be found in Glen Burnie!  - this applies to exotic limousines, water tank trucks and guys that fix things, all manner of things.  Anytime that anyone in the office is looking for something and is having trouble finding it, I ask “have you looked in Glen Burnie?”  That’s usually where it, no matter what it is, is.
2. The higher the level of education on the attendees’ part, the more and the LARGER the signage required. -  Seriously, plan a meeting for rocket scientists and you have to have giant directional signage for them to find their meeting room.  Plan a meeting for truckers, and you can reduce your signage budget by half.
3. The number of attendees is indirectly proportionate to the amount of trouble that they cause – I believe that hotel companies need to learn this.  Often they have a “meetings express” department that handles “room blocks of 25 or less”.   NO! NO! NO!  That group of 25 is usually the most important group in the company/association/world.  Think Boards of Directors and Owners of things.  They usually are all VIPs and they are all “special”.  Planning a meeting for 500 is so much easier.
4. Have a plan – just don’t get too attached to it – things will happen on event day that you could not have anticipated, learn to roll with it.  Having four backup plans for everything also helps immensely, as well as having everyone you know on speed dial.  
5. The longer the planning process, the more changes there will be to the end product – I’m a big fan of doing things quickly, less time to get 400 opinions.
6. The longer the planning process, the better the chance to end up where we started  – Sometimes the first ideas are the best ideas.  Don’t overthink it.
7. Never underestimate the value of good stage management. – believe me, you need it.
8. The phase of the moon affects how weird the inquiry calls you receive are – In the hotel business, we actually marked the full moon on the inquiry schedule so the person on  duty was forewarned and ready.
9. Anyone using the term VIP more than 2 times in the first 5 minutes is immediately disqualified. This is called a “red flag”.
10. Cheap things are not good, and good things are not cheap – Winston Churchill said this and it’s still true.  Design on a dime is a fairy tale.