How To Create Memorable Events With Lasting Impact With Phil Mershon

Crafting unforgettable events isn’t just about logistics—it’s about creating an experience that leaves an impact. In this episode, I sit down with Phil Mershon, a seasoned event strategist who has designed hundreds of customized events and is passionate about creating memorable moments that resonate. Phil shares his leadership journey, starting as a reluctant speaker to becoming an influential event strategist and author of “Unforgettable.” Together, we dive into the art and science of event design, using Phil’s unique analogy of bread-making to explain the essential ingredients for event success.

Phil offers invaluable insights into building the right event team, managing crises with composure, and fostering meaningful connections that make events truly memorable. Discover Phil’s strategies for purposeful networking, handling unexpected challenges with the “duck principle,” and why event success depends not just on content but on the connections attendees build. If you’re ready to create events that leave lasting impressions, this episode is a must-listen. Phil also shares his personal growth practices and top leadership books that fuel his journey.


Connect with Phil Mershon:

Phil Mershon’s expertise in creating unforgettable events is truly invaluable. Connect with him on LinkedIn or visit his website to explore insights and resources that can help you transform your next event into a memorable experience.

Books Mentioned:

• Who Not How by Benjamin Hardy and Dan Sullivan 

Join the New Catalytic Leadership Community

Check out our new online membership site, with new resources by Dr. William Attaway and his team added weekly: https://checkout.catalyticleadership.net/

Chapters

• 0:01 Phil Mershon’s Leadership Journey
• 5:59 Inspiration Behind “Unforgettable
• 9:45 Art and Science of Events
• 13:17 Core Ingredients of Great Events
• 20:03 Managing Event Challenges
• 27:26 The Power of Meaningful Connection
• 29:58 Leadership Growth and Resources

Transcript

Dr. William Attaway: 0:00

I am thrilled today to have Phil Morshan on the podcast. Phil is the founder and CEO of Unforgettable Experiences and the Director of Experience for Social Media Examiner. As an event strategist and experience designer, he led the team in creating social media marketing world, as well as hundreds of customized events. Phil's goal is to create memorable experiences that lead to increased revenue retention and transformation. In addition, phil's a jazz saxophonist, a pickleball enthusiast and the author of Unforgettable the art and science of creating memorable experiences. Phil, I'm so glad you're here, man. I've been looking forward to this conversation. Thanks for being on the show.

Phil Mershon: 0:46

I am so thrilled you're here, man. I've been looking forward to this conversation. Thanks for being on the show.

Dr. William Attaway: 0:51

I am so thrilled to be with you and can't wait for the questions that you're going to ask. Well, here's the first one. You ready, here we go.

Intro/Outro: 0:56

Welcome to Catalytic Leadership, the podcast designed to help leaders intentionally grow and thrive. Here is your host author and leadership and executive coach, dr William Attaway.

Dr. William Attaway: 1:13

I would love for you to start by sharing a little bit of your story with our listeners, particularly around your journey and your development as a leader.

Phil Mershon: 1:22

So actually it's a very interesting start. I was on a church retreat it was the year after I graduated from college and I specifically remember the pastor was giving a sermon series on the life of Peter. It was a four-part series. He called it Rocky 1, 2, 3, and 4. I don't remember which Rocky he was out, but it was during his Rocky 3 message that he said I think God is calling someone in this room to step up, get off the bench and be a leader. You've been poured into for a long time and now it's time for you to step up and lead. And I felt like there was a spotlight shining on me. So I went to the pastor later that night or the next day and said I think that's at least me. There may be someone else you were talking to, but I know it's me. And so what do I do? So he and I began meeting together. He had me read a book.

Phil Mershon: 2:24

I didn't think I could be a speaker. When I was in college, I took public speaking and I wanted to fail. I didn't fail, but I did fail the persuasive speech that you're supposed to give, and I was like there's no way I'm ever putting myself in that position again. Well, he started to encourage me that I had gifts for speaking and gave me a chance with the safety net. He was. The safety net said hey, if it, if it doesn't go well, I'm here for you and we can try something else. And it.

Phil Mershon: 2:54

So that's where it began, and just through course of career, I kept getting placed in positions of leadership and not always raising my hand. Sometimes I raise my hand, other times people knock me or tap me on the shoulder, whatever. So I've had a diverse career done. A lot of different things worked for. I don't know. I think I counted 10 churches that I've worked for, either part-time or full-time, mostly part-time, while doing something else. I worked in corporate America for three years doing corporate training. I've got a couple of master's degrees which obviously is also leadership training in a different kind of way. One's in counseling, the other was in divinity, and then I've been working with social media examiner for the last 14 years. So I'm on the executive team there for most of that time. So that's a bit of my leadership journey. I'll let you ask questions if you want to clarify more. We've talked about it for a long time.

Dr. William Attaway: 3:55

That's quite the journey. I mean there's so many variety of experiences there. I mean there's so much variety and I have to wonder, if we were to talk to phil, you know, 25, 30 years ago, if you would have seen that trajectory and that path.

Phil Mershon: 4:09

and my guess is no yeah, the only thing that I could say that I would have foreseen is the variety would be number one, um, number two the leaning into my creative, innovative skills. So you know, I wouldn't have necessarily called myself an entrepreneur back then, but I had. You know, I was feeling like I was at my best when I was doing creative kinds of things, and that's one of those things that Pastor noticed. And so he actually challenged me to spend time brainstorming every day, like set aside time on your calendar to brainstorm. He literally challenged me to do that, and when I do that, I'm like at my best, and that's something that he saw in me. That continues to be true today.

Dr. William Attaway: 4:56

I love the intentionality of that. I'm saying I'm going to block Tom for something that matters, even though it's not maybe the most urgent right, it's not the thing that's on fire, but I'm going to block time to make this happen because it's important. I think that there's so much brilliance there. You and I met gosh four or five months ago now at a conference and when I saw that you had a new book, I said, oh man, I want to get a copy. And you signed a copy and I was able to get one from you. And this book Unforgettable really, man.

Dr. William Attaway: 5:29

I dove into it and I like to read this one was not a heavy lift. This one was enjoyable, and I can't say that about all the books that I read. This one I really enjoyed because I could feel so much heart and passion behind it. You talk about this being the culmination of 30,000 hours of your experiences leading, running events, the insights that so many other people have shared with you about events and some of the things you've learned from other people through their writing, through their speaking. What was the catalyst that inspired you to write all this down, to write this book and share this with folks like me?

Phil Mershon: 6:13

So it started with, you know, like I said, that I didn't want to speak. I also would have never dreamt that I would write a book. But when I was in grad school, one of my professors predicted that I would write multiple books one day. And I was like, yeah, right. So this is in 2000 to 2002, somewhere in that timeframe. I don't remember exactly when he predicted that, but it was still in the back of my mind that he had said that and he believed in me to do that. So it was probably seven, eight years ago that I started saying, you know, I would enjoy writing a book. At that point I had been blogging for several years, written by then probably 100,000 words through blogs, and I was like, okay, I guess I can write, and I wonder if I could write a book, Maybe I can blog my way to a book. And so that's what started the question of, well, what would I write about?

Phil Mershon: 7:14

And I'd had this other experience. Experiences spark a lot of things for us as leaders, I think. And I was sitting at a conference and they, let's see, it was a culmination of. I was at this conference, but in my Bible study I had read the verse in Joshua, where Joshua cries out and says God, can you help us beat these five armies at once? How great it would be if you would just cause the sun to stand still so we could do this. And it says that the sun stood still for 24 hours. And I said, man, if we could make time stand still. At events, that sense that you're elongating time, you're making it feel like you've got more than enough time to deal with the things that really matter. You're quieting the things that are normally causing us to race through life, and we experienced that in Cancun when we were together. I think great events do that. So I said that's what I want to write a book about. I want to figure out the magic of how that happens.

Phil Mershon: 8:17

Now, unfortunately, over the course of writing for the next year or two after that, I discovered that that was not something that you can actually put in a box and figure out. It's something that you can set conditions for. So I realized that's just a small part of the book, as you experienced when you read it. It's in there, but it's not the main thing. That's an outcome. If you do all these things, then that can happen for people. It may or may not be likely to happen, but you can create conditions for that to happen, and so that's.

Phil Mershon: 8:50

But that's where it started and, as I wrote, I figured out what I was doing. That's a lot of what I was trying to do was. Okay. I've been training staff for years and people are saying these are the best events they've ever been to. What am I doing that others aren't doing? That's part of what I was trying to do is let's distill that down so I can make it easier to teach our staff, but also teach others how to do this. I think someone told me that when you write a book, you're codifying what's already innate in you so that you can make it obvious to others. Oh, I love that.

Dr. William Attaway: 9:26

You know, the subtitle of the book grabbed me when you first handed it to me the Art and Science of Creating Memorable Experiences. You had me at the subtitle because I was like, okay, I get the art, I think about crafting experiences, crafting environments. I think about that as an art. But you talk about it as both an art and a science and the analogy that you use is that of bread, of baking bread. What sparked that analogy, mark?

Phil Mershon: 10:02

that analogy. I don't remember how I came upon it, but I realized that was something that was going to work because the reason I picked it it's something that's easy to teach someone to do at a young age. So you can teach a 12-year-old to bake a loaf of bread with a good recipe and it's going to be edible if they follow the recipe. But it's not going to be a great loaf of bread. It's not something you're going to go put in the store. That takes your 10 000 hours of learning the crafts of how to get things to rise just the right way and knowing what oven and what ingredients and all those things. And so in the craft of bakery there is an art to knowing how to make it look beautiful and how to put the right glaze on it and all those kinds of things. But there's a science If you don't do it at the right temperature or if you don't adjust your recipe when you go to higher elevations and add more water or all those kinds of things. There's a science to know it should be 375 or 325. There's a there's a science to know it should be three, 75 or three, 25, or you know, and this kind of you know dough is going to perform better than this one, right? So there's science, but then there's art in the way you're putting it together and the art is hey, I want this for this application, like this customer. So that's exactly what's going on with events is someone could say you could go say, William, I want to go start an event and I think you've told me you want to do an event. You could go buy a book. You could read my book and say, okay, I'm going to go start an event. And people do this all the time and many of them fail, or many of them fail to achieve what they could because they don't have that experience, and so it's learned on the job what they could because they don't have that experience, and so it's learned on the job. But I wanted to make it faster for you so that you miss a lot of the mistakes that people normally make when they are starting their event. So it's a roundabout way of saying why did I pick that analogy?

Phil Mershon: 11:58

But what I did with it is I went and interviewed a bunch of bakers and people who teach bakers to understand their craft, because I'm not a baker my grandmother was, my mom was. I threw stuff in the bread maker. I probably helped them, but I never have baked a loaf of bread on my own in my life, so it was it's learning from guys like Josh Allen in St Louis, a companion bakery, who is a master. He has his master's degree from Stanford but he's running a bakery and so he understands the art and science. And then I talked to this other lady I think her name was Baker Betty or something like that and she trains people to be bakers and so they both understand how you get from being that beginner to the advanced. And that's really what happens with event producers as well is we have to learn the basics. The basics really don't change. It's the way that you do the basics that makes a great event.

Dr. William Attaway: 12:57

Oh, that's so good when I think about it like a recipe. You know, when I think about an event, like planning an event, I think about there's, there's ingredients, there are certain things that every event needs to have, and as somebody I mean, you know, I'm thinking about this next event for Catalytic I'm thinking about what this could look like. What are the ingredients that you have to have, what are the pieces that every event needs?

Phil Mershon: 15:03

So let's assume right now we're talking about an educational event, because there's different kinds of events out there.

Phil Mershon: 15:09

We're not talking about concerts, we're not talking about an educational event, because there's different kinds of events out there. We're not talking about concerts, we're not talking about festivals and for the moment, let's don't talk about expos, because an expo is a different style event. So it's some kind of training, education based event. So ingredient number one is you got to have content. What are people there to learn? You also need to have a venue, you know. So I call that the oven, but you've got to have a venue. Where are you going to have it? Like? You've got to pick your city. You've got to pick your venue. What's that going to look like? You've got to have some form of audio visual. Now, if it's a small event, you might not need it, but you've got to think about those kinds of things. Your crew, your staff I call it the crew because I have all these C's that I use in my illustration in the book but what does your staff team look like? You know, what are they there for? There's got to be some form of commercialization, some form of ways that people are transacting with you. It could be the event itself. It could be that you're selling something on the backend, but what does that look like? And that could include the role of sponsors. Do you have sponsors there who are underwriting it, are selling something at the event? You've got to consider that. You don't have to have that, but you've got to consider it because that is a ingredient at many of the events.

Phil Mershon: 16:31

So, and then communication. So you know, I think about bread. There's the, there is the, the dough or the, there's the flour, there's the yeast, there's the water and then there is the dough and then there's salt. Ok, those are the four main ingredients with bread At an event, your dough is your content, that's your flour. Water is communication. So if you have an event and you're not doing a good job of communicating what's going on, people are going to be confused, they're not going to know what's going on, they're not going to be aware of it, and that's something that a lot of events don't put enough effort into. They think, okay, we've got an app that's going to be good enough, we'll just tell people, go to the app, and the app may be confusing and the app may not have answers to all the questions that they're asking. So having good communication is important.

Phil Mershon: 17:27

The yeast at events is connections community. How do you get people to know each other, to connect with each other? If someone's going to travel to an event, we could talk about virtual events, but for now let's talk about a physical event. Then you want people connecting with one another. I'm not going to travel 2000 miles to go to Cancun and sit there by myself and never meet somebody. You know, william, we got to know each other because we were there together and we were placed at a table, I think at one point, where that started the conversation. But we kept on having conversations because it began there, and here we are a few minutes later having another conversation. So the event rises as people connect to each other.

Phil Mershon: 18:12

Salt with a loaf of bread at an event that's the things that make it spicy. That's things like the music. It's essential to think about music. There's a role that music plays that can either make it great or can draw away from it. Karen accidentally invited me to bring my saxophone down and it ended up becoming a critical part of the event. It wasn't something that she planned. She didn't know and I didn't know when I showed up, but it was something that was done and we leaned into it because it made the event better. So music is one of those things that many events don't think about carefully.

Phil Mershon: 18:49

I would not put that on the list of critical ingredients, but it is part of the overall experience. The experience includes things like lights, colors, music, smells. You want it to be multisensory right For an event to be sticky in terms of the brain, you want to access as many of the senses as you can so that when people go home and they smell something like oh, I remember Cancun. Or they hear saxophone, you're going to think about oh, when I was in Cancun. You want those kind of triggers to happen because it's going to reinforce it more deeply. So hopefully that's enough there that you can either interact or go on to your next question.

Dr. William Attaway: 19:30

Yeah, absolutely. I think there's so much there and I mean, just talk about the crew for just a second, because I think that's a piece that all the people listening can really resonate. And, like you think about assembling a team, you're talking about finding the right people. That is a challenge. I don't care what you do, you know dealing with an event for sure, dealing with a team at work, you still got to find the right team. You got to find the right people to be on that team. What are some of the practices that you use when you're talking about events? Finding the right event team, the right vendors, the right volunteers, all of these things that you've got to think about. What are some of the practices you use to find those people? How do you recruit and hire them?

Phil Mershon: 20:15

Yeah, it's a great question and sometimes, like I was on a call this morning with a company that's putting on an event that I'm supporting and their pool is limited to their staff oh, so they. They chose among the staff those that they thought would serve the event the best. Some of them is based, defined by their role, like they have to be there because they're in charge of this right. Others is because they have the right disposition. They, you know, and then they even from there, it's like you can use a lot of people just to get them in the right role. So there's some things that many people can do with light training. I like to make it as simple as possible for the frontline people to remember what to do. If you can smile, you can greet people and you can remember enough things that you can help them or get them to the right resources, many people can be valuable right, so they've got to have that general disposition. So, as far as how we find them, we have a screening process. We have an application that people go through. We actually have them send us a video answering a very simple question why would you like to volunteer at the event? And I can tell in 30 seconds if this person's going to be a good fit. I can tell if they've got a motivation that they want to be there because they want to be in William's session and they're really hoping to get to see him. It's like now this person's got an ulterior motive, or man, this person's super friendly and they told me I love hospitality and I live in San Diego, which is where our conference is, and I would love to be able to help people know how to enjoy the city. Then all of a sudden I'm like oh well, you would be a fantastic greeter on our hospitality team letting people in, and so we get a sense from someone very quickly, or someone's you know, like very much more shy and reserved, but you can tell that they're really good.

Phil Mershon: 22:11

They're with details and numbers, like, hey, let's put them on the registration team or on the can do team, where, where they're more behind the scenes, they're not so front facing. So there's room for lots of people if you understand what the roles are. So it's back to that principle from Tom Peters get the right people in the right roles. You know, on the bus, right. So that's, that's kind of the principle that I like to follow, but there are ways to to use a lot of different people if they've got the right motivation. So that's where you got to detect through your screening Do they have the right motivation If they're on staff with your company? Hopefully they have that. You've already figured that out. You've got a good sense of who they are. Or else they shouldn't be on the bus in the first place. I have found that just because someone's good at their day job doesn't mean they're going to be good at a conference.

Phil Mershon: 23:08

So, putting on an event is a whole different skill set and it's stressful. It's one of the five most stressful jobs on the planet and so, in terms of, like you know, not necessarily one event, but those who put on events all year long, that's one of the most stressful jobs there is. But putting on an event can be very stressful because things happen all of a sudden. It's a living organism. It's not like you just have this recipe and you follow the steps and it's going to turn out. There's inevitably something that's going to not go according to plan and how you respond to that is going to be what affects the attendees' experience and the speakers' experience and the vendors' experience everybody.

Dr. William Attaway: 23:47

So let's dive into that for a second, because I think dealing with the unexpected is part of every leader's life. When you are in charge of an event or when you're training people who are in charge of events, how do you talk about that? How do you deal with the unexpected?

Phil Mershon: 24:04

The principle I give is act like a duck. So you know, we know that ducks are paddling furiously under the surface, but on above the surface they are just gliding along and they look very graceful. So that's one thing is be aware of how you're showing up to others while you're dealing with it. But I think having having plans is super important. So think through your contingency plans. If this doesn't go right, what are we going to do?

Phil Mershon: 24:36

Unfortunately, some things happen that you've never thought about and you learn from your mistakes. We've had those things happen. It's like oh, I guess there are guys out there who are going to harass women. You need to have a plan of what we're going to do and I'll confess, I didn't respond well the first time that happened. That's hard, yeah. So you know, you think everybody just loves each other, especially after your first couple events where everyone's just getting along. It's like man, this is amazing, this is great. And then, all of a sudden, things start happening, because humans are humans and things that happen in broader society end up happening in our microcosms that we create.

Phil Mershon: 25:20

Unfortunately, I come from the church world and it happens in the church too, so I think part of it is yeah. So some of it is just having practicing with each other. I need to do this more. I don't do this as well as I could, but practicing what are we going to do if this happens? And let's just role play it. Let's think through it like that Having contingency plans, because there's going to inevitably be something we haven't thought about, and so how are we going to respond then? The duck analogy is perfect.

Phil Mershon: 25:54

But then also, do we have people on the team who are good at responding quickly to crisis, and do we know who those people are? I know I'm not one. I'm not the person you want leading that charge when something happens in crisis. My CEO is. He's very good at quickly being able to listen and ascertain. I jump to conclusions and act on my gut, and when you're dealing with stuff like that, you need to figure out well, what's the real problem? Are we being presented the problem as it really is, or is that just one side of the problem? And let's get the data and figure out what it is, and then how do we solve it? And sometimes you don't have more than 30 seconds to figure that out, and sometimes you've got, you know, some time, but it still has to be addressed. So find those people on your team who have those skills and know who they are, so that you can tap them when it happens. And even ideally, you've identified. Here's who to go to when this takes place.

Dr. William Attaway: 26:55

Sage advice, Phil, that's so good. You know a lot of a lot of people listening either have been part of event planning and organizing or have an aspiration to do that. And if, if one of them were to come to you and say, okay, I've got this thing, where we're far into the process, I think I can add one more thing. I think I can do one thing from this book. If they were to come to you and say, hey, what should that one thing be Like? If you were to tell me one thing to do with my next event, I'm too far into it to do 10 things, just one. What's the one thing?

Phil Mershon: 27:36

I'm going to say that depends, because I'd need to know what your plan already includes before I could answer that. But I will tell you that the majority of events that I'm aware of, the one thing that they need to improve is a plan for helping people connect. So I think most events, so many events I've got a client right now. This is exactly what they told me. They said we think we've got great content and that's exactly what our NPS scores net promoter scores tell us. As we've got good content, we think we're really good and efficient at our operations. Our NPS scores tell us the same. Where we drop the ball and our customers are telling us is in connections, and I would say they're smart enough to admit it.

Phil Mershon: 28:26

Many events don't know that they have a problem with that. They, you know they'll have something that they call a networking party, but and I've done this, I've done this it's not just them, it's me too, you know. Oh, let's call it a networking party and people will network. Well, that doesn't necessarily happen that way. I literally got that feedback this week that hey, you guys could do a better job of helping us network at the networking party. You're the guy that's known for networking. It's like, okay, you're right, we could do a better job of that. We kind of assumed you would just get there and want to have fun, not do it.

Phil Mershon: 29:02

Right. I would guess that if I had to tell you one thing to do about your event is have a plan, have someone that's good at that. Find the people who are connectors and empower them to work the event and help people know who they need to meet and meet one another. Have intentional plans of how you're going to get people in the right room or at the right table who need to meet one another. This can happen at small events. This can happen at huge events. You just have to have a plan and someone who thinks this way.

Phil Mershon: 29:37

That would be the one thing that I would say most events need to prioritize. We're going to have content. That's what gets people to show up at the event. That's what we market. The reason people come back is because of the experience they had, and if they feel like they made a few great friends, they got a few great ideas and they felt like you did a good job of organizing it and this is a community you want to be part of, then you're going to say I want to come back and I'm going to bring some friends.

Dr. William Attaway: 30:06

That's so good. Phil, I want to talk about you for a minute. Your business, your team, they need you to lead at a higher level today than they did a year ago, five years ago, 10 years ago and a year, three years, five years from now, they're going to need you to lead at a higher level still. Your business is going to need you to lead at a higher level. How do you stay on top of your game? How do you level up with the new leadership skills that your business, your team, your clients are going to need you to have?

Phil Mershon: 30:46

For me. There's a couple of things that I do, but one thing that I do every day, or almost every day, is I read, and you know, I've heard Bill Gates and other people like that at that level say that's what separates them from the rest. I used to work for Charles Koch with Koch Industries, and he reads for hours a day. I don't. I don't read that long. I try to read for 15 to 30 minutes a day, but I try to deliberately work my way through books. But I do one more thing than just read is I then take 15 minutes and journal about what I just read and say how does that apply to something I'm working on right now? And that thought process, I think, makes me better. The other thing I try to do and this is one that I do, you know, kind of more intermittently is listen to podcasts, cause I think podcasts help me hear how others are thinking and I always get something out of a podcast.

Phil Mershon: 31:44

I always get something out of a podcast. I always get something when I read. You know, if I skip reading for a while, I start to, you know, to stagnate, but then I'll read something. It's like wow, and I'm I'm the kind of person who evangelizes things that I read. Nice, that's right. I don't have to read more than 10 or 15 pages and I'll get an idea and I'll start talking about it, and that's. I don't think we have to read a full book to make ourselves better leaders. I think we most of us don't need more information. Most of us need more inspiration and the right thoughts that are going to lead us to action, and that's what I'm finding.

Dr. William Attaway: 32:23

Right. Yes, it's the application of the information. That's what yields transformation.

Phil Mershon: 32:30

It's not the information itself.

Dr. William Attaway: 32:36

That's so true. Speaking of books, is there a book that has made a really big difference in your journey that you would recommend that the leaders who are listening? Hey, if you haven't read this, you got to check it out.

Phil Mershon: 32:48

I've got three books that I've read this year. I'm going to grab them and just show them to you. Yeah, the first one is this one who, not how? By Benjamin Hardy. It says it's by Dan Sullivan, but he's just the figurehead on the book. Benjamin did all the reading and I think what I loved about that book was the thought process of thinking about when you've got a problem, most of us go to how am I going to solve the problem? And he's saying that shouldn't be the first question we ask. It should be who's the best person? They may not be someone that's in your organization right now. It might be another company, it might be someone you need to partner with, it might be somebody that you need to hire, and so that was revolutionary in terms of that.

Phil Mershon: 33:34

These other two books are really related to what I'm known for, but they've pushed me. So this one called Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Godara. He was the chef, or actually no, he was a co-owner of a restaurant in New York City that went on to become the number one restaurant in the world for a couple of years, and now he teaches people about uncommon hospitality or unreasonable hospitality, and that's what he built into his organization and I think that concept for event owners, but even anyone in customer experience, customer service, having that mindset of what can you do that is like above and beyond that people would never expect you to do and it doesn't even seem reasonable that you should do it, but you do it because you want to create an experience that is like no other. And then the other one that I'm reading right now is this one the art of gathering I'm only about halfway through it by Priya Parker, and she has worked with United nations and, like all these major organizations in the world, she's a facilitator, a conflict facilitator, but she's really talking about how do we design events on purpose, and it's a it's a compliment to what I've written about and she's very thoughtful in the way she's written the book and it's really intriguing and I really only need to read 10 pages out of that and I've usually got a couple of ideas that I need to think about.

Phil Mershon: 35:00

It's not as bad as reading philosophical works, but it's like there's some dense stuff there that is worth thinking about.

Dr. William Attaway: 35:06

So there's, those are three for me, I love that, Just you know, I was not familiar with Will Goddard up until about two months ago. I heard him speak at a conference that I was at and I was blown away and I immediately had to pick up his book because I was like this is phenomenal, the concepts of what he was sharing.

Phil Mershon: 35:24

Yeah, it really is and it's. You know it's very easy read because it's storytelling. You know he has principles baked into his, baked in, baked into his Well done.

Dr. William Attaway: 35:36

I see what you did there. That's well done it was my purpose.

Phil Mershon: 35:40

We'll take it back.

Dr. William Attaway: 35:43

Oh, so good, Phil, I could talk to you for another hour about this, because I think you have shared so much wisdom, not only today in this conversation, but through your book, and I really want to encourage our listeners. If you have not picked up Unforgettable, this is worth your time. This is one that's going to make you think, and it's going to make you think hard about the events that you are a part of as an attendee, and as you begin to plan and lead.

Phil Mershon: 36:12

So, william, one of the gifts I like to give to podcasts when I go on is I like to play a creative response to the conversation that we've had. So what I would like to ask you is if you could give me three words that describe this conversation, some things that you're going to think about, and at least one of them needs to be an emotional word, something that you're feeling as a result of this conversation. So what comes to mind for you?

Dr. William Attaway: 36:39

Wow, you know, I think the first word I would use is intentional. I think the first word I would use is intentional. So much of what you've described has been the intentionality behind the planning, not just around the details of the event, but around what you want people to experience and feel. So intentional is the first word. The second word would be generous. So much of event planning, the way you're describing it, is about thinking about the people who are going to be experiencing it, and that reflects a generosity of spirit that I think is fantastic for leaders to lead with. It's a way to lead with an open hand. So generosity would be the second word. The third word I would say exciting, because if I were experiencing an event the way you write about in your book, if I were experiencing one that had been thought through and really planned with this level of intentionality and generosity, and that'd be exciting.

Phil Mershon: 37:37

And I wish I had my tenor. Hearing your rich voice makes me want to play a lower sound, but I don't. So we're going to go with my soprano, because that's what I'm playing these days Intentional, generous. I don't, so we're going to go with my soprano because that's what I'm playing these days Intentional, generous and exciting so good.

Dr. William Attaway: 38:30

I know people are going to want to stay connected to you and continue to learn from you. What's the best way for them to do that?

Phil Mershon: 38:38

Go to my website, philmarshoncom. All my social links are going to be at the top. Follow me on LinkedIn is probably the best. I spend the most time on. Linkedin is probably the best I spend the most time on LinkedIn and Facebook. You're free to reach out on Facebook. Eventually I'll reach the 5,000 person max. So LinkedIn doesn't have that restraint. So that's what I would say, and I'd love to talk to anyone in your audience who has events that you're doing. If there's a way that I can serve you or just answer questions, I would be honored.

Dr. William Attaway: 39:08

We will have those links in the show notes, along with the link to the book, which I highly encourage you to pick up. Phil, thank you for your generosity today. Thank you for the kindness that you have shown in sharing so much of what you've learned so far about this. It's been my pleasure have a great day to discover this podcast. Second, if you don't have a copy of my newest book, Catalytic Leadership, I'd love to put a copy in your hands. If you go to catalyticleadershipbookcom, you can get a copy for free. Just pay the shipping so I can get it to you and we'll get one right out.

Dr. William Attaway: 40:00

My goal is to put this into the hands of as many leaders as possible. This book captures principles that I've learned in 20 plus years of coaching leaders in the entrepreneurial space, in business, government, nonprofits, education and the local church. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn to keep up with what I'm currently learning and thinking about. And if you're ready to take a next step with a coach to help you intentionally grow and thrive as a leader, I'd be honored to help you. Just go to catalyticleadershipnet to book a call with me. Stay tuned for our next episode next week. Until then, as always, leaders choose to be catalytic.

Intro/Outro: 40:44

Thanks for listening to Catalytic Leadership with Dr William Attaway. Be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts so you don't miss the next episode. Want more? Go to catalyticleadershipnet.