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Podcast Summary
In this episode of Eventful Endeavors, host Shawn Grindle interviews Alyssa Gottberg from WOW! Events. Alyssa shares her journey into the events industry, starting from her college days majoring in communications to interning for a nonprofit and eventually joining WOW! Events as an assistant and progressing to a producer. Despite not initially planning to pursue event planning, Alyssa discovered a love for it and finds it fun and different.
One interesting topic discussed in the interview is the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the events industry. Alyssa explains that during this challenging time, WOW! Events had to postpone many of their events, with their busiest season of April and May being greatly affected. However, the team at WOW! Events adapted to the situation and worked closely with clients to reschedule and reimagine events. They also utilized technology to continue engaging with clients and keeping the planning process alive.
Overall, Alyssa highlights the resiliency and flexibility of the events industry during difficult times, as well as the importance of strong relationships with clients and maintaining open communication. She also expresses her excitement for the future of WOW! Events as they continue to provide unique and memorable experiences for their clients.
WOW! Events offers a range of services beyond weddings, setting them apart from other event planning companies. Whether it’s corporate events, galas, or fundraisers, WOW! Events has the expertise and creativity to deliver incredible experiences. With their dedication to personalized service and attention to detail, WOW! Events ensures that every event they work on is one-of-a-kind.
To learn more about WOW! Events and their exceptional event planning services, visit their website [www.wowevents.com]. This interview was provided by Felix and Fingers Dueling Pianos.
Podcast Transcript
Shawn Grindle (00:24)
All right, welcome back to another episode of Eventful Endeavors. We are here today and we have something new, which is exciting, because we are here with Alyssa, who works with WoW Events. And we’ve talked to a lot of wedding planners, we’ve talked to a lot of venues, but we’ve been having a lot of conversations about weddings. And this is going to be fun because you do a lot of other things other than weddings. So first of all, thank you for being here.
Alyssa Gottberg (00:50)
Thanks for having me, Sean. I’m really excited to talk to you more about WOW and what we do.
Shawn Grindle (00:56)
Yeah, it’s gonna be great. So the first thing I always like to ask everybody right off the rip is kind of, what’s your story? How did you get into the events world? Where did you, where did you grow up in California? Were you always here? Like, just tell me your story. Tell me your history.
Alyssa Gottberg (01:08)
Yeah, so I was actually born and raised in more Northern California outside of the Bay Area in a small little town called Tracy. Not many people will know it, but those who do, shout out. And then I went to college in Southern California at Cal State Fullerton and wasn’t totally sure what I wanted to do after college, but I majored in communications.
Shawn Grindle (01:24)
Shout out to Tracy.
Alyssa Gottberg (01:38)
Um, one of my classes, we, it was really cool cause he did kind of an intro to all different types of careers, uh, related to communications. One of those was event planning. And I was like, Oh, event planning. I’ve done that. I, you know, uh, it was in like ASB growing up and stuff like that. I was like, Oh yeah, that’s totally something I can try out. And at the time I was actually, um, working in downtown Disney as a hostess at a restaurant.
And with my communications degree, we were required to do an internship. So I got to intern for a nonprofit, which was really special. Got to help them plan their fundraising gala. So got my toes wet. And then when I graduated, it just happened to be good timing that a position opened at the restaurant for the events office. So then I got to get a little more exposure, got to help plan like luncheons and.
just some different things at the restaurant. And then from there, got to go to WOW events. I was very like fresh and young and started as an assistant. A couple of years in, I got to move up to a producer. And then when the pandemic hit, I actually took a step away before the pandemic to get different experience with catering and weddings actually. And then after the pandemic, I came back to WOW when they were kind of reopening.
their business. And then I’ve been here ever since. So it’s been a really fun kind of journey and getting to learn a lot. And I didn’t plan on doing event planning, but I love it. And I think it’s really fun and different. So.
Shawn Grindle (03:15)
Yeah.
You know, you said something that I kind of want to touch on. We haven’t really talked about it on any of these episodes yet, which is very shocking to me, but you mentioned kind of the pivot during COVID. So what, tell me about what your experience was during all that, because I can’t believe we haven’t really talked about it too much with anybody. Like the events world essentially shut down and everybody pivoted. So what was that? What did that look like? What did you guys, how did you guys do? What do you, what do you, what do you do?
Alyssa Gottberg (03:41)
Yeah, so that was kind of a crazy time. I wasn’t actually with WOW when the pandemic hit, but I was in communication with them because I’ve always kind of kept good relations with the owner Tiffany and the team. And what they did is, you know, in the beginning, pretty much all the events had to be postponed. And to give you a little more insight for WOW, our biggest season is April and May.
And obviously March was when the announcement was made. And so it truly was just like a panic. And so a big part of what WOW had to do was really just be there to reassure everyone that, hey, we’re going to go with the flow and see what happens. A lot of events ended up having to be canceled or postponed. We definitely tried to postpone and save as much as we can. But.
Shawn Grindle (04:09)
Yeah.
Alyssa Gottberg (04:37)
basically during the worst of it, you know, all of it was so unknown. It was like, okay, a couple of weeks, a couple more weeks and a couple more weeks. And eventually, the company did have to downsize. And part of that, we had to get rid of the office space. So we really just kind of came down to I think at the smallest, it was only two people working for the company. And what
Shawn Grindle (04:44)
Yeah.
Alyssa Gottberg (05:03)
we did what the company did to stay afloat is we actually started doing luxury pop -up picnics. So these were like micro events and we’re in Orange County. So there’s some really like beautiful parks and a lot of people were holding like showers or birthday parties in their backyards. So we were able to continue doing small outdoor events via luxury pop -up picnics. So that was really cool. There again was like a lot of
Shawn Grindle (05:09)
Okay.
Alyssa Gottberg (05:33)
baby showers or proposals or very small intimate gatherings. And so that just opened up a whole other small window to keep wow as a company. And then slowly as restrictions kind of loosened up and the world kind of let us have events again, we slowly started to grow again. And at that point, I was able to come back to the company, which was really great.
Shawn Grindle (05:35)
Right.
Alyssa Gottberg (05:58)
And now it’s kind of fun to see how things have changed since the pandemic. So we do a lot of virtual meetings now instead of in person. I now work fully from home aside from when I’m like out at site and at meetings. So my dogs love it. I’m here with them all the time. As I mentioned, I’m currently working in like an office closet in between moving, but it’s been kind of a…
Shawn Grindle (05:58)
Yeah.
Mm -hmm.
Yeah!
Yeah.
Yeah.
Alyssa Gottberg (06:25)
really interesting and fun adventure to adapt with now the post pandemic and kind of how it’s affected events and stuff.
Shawn Grindle (06:34)
Did you feel, cause this is how I felt, did you feel like when it came back, it came back bigger? Like, I feel like it was like all of a sudden really like everybody was like, I want to throw a party. I want to throw a party. I haven’t thrown a party in three years. You know, it’s like, like.
Alyssa Gottberg (06:40)
Oh, yeah.
It absolutely when I first came back to wow after the pandemic, it was like and they told me this, they were like, you need to be ready to hit the ground running. And I was like, all right. And yeah, it was like at a point where because well, because you’re dealing with multiple things, right. Those postponed events now need to happen. And then on top of that, more people got pregnant, engaged. All these things happened. And so there’s so there was like a double up of like the postponed events, new events.
Shawn Grindle (07:05)
Mm -hmm.
Alyssa Gottberg (07:16)
so much was happening all at once. And we’re lucky that we had such great like vendors and venues that were able to work with us on whether it was, I don’t know, just little things, big things, we all just kind of help try to help each other. Like everyone, you know, lost money, had emotional, I feel so bad. We work with a lot of high schools and like a lot of the seniors had to miss out on like their proms or their graduations. But
Shawn Grindle (07:31)
Right.
Yeah.
Alyssa Gottberg (07:41)
In a way, it kind of brought us all closer together too, because we all just kind of had to go through it together.
Shawn Grindle (07:48)
Yeah, exactly. So before we get into kind of my favorite part, which is where we, you know, share stories that we’ve seen at events and whatnot. I do want to know because we haven’t talked to too many like, event coordinators that don’t specialize in wedding. So what do you guys kind of do? Are you there usually from the very beginning? Do people hire you at the at the start of this? And then you plan the whole thing? Or how does that kind of work with your with your guys as company?
Alyssa Gottberg (08:12)
Yeah, so it’s funny. I was chatting with Tiffany, the owner a little bit ago, and she’s like, yeah, it’s almost like we do everything except weddings. And we do it kind of just depends on the event itself, because we do so many different types of events. It really depends on what the scope of the event is and how much we need to be involved. But for the most part, yes, we are there from the very beginning.
We do full A to Z planning and coordinating. So typically someone will call us, say, hey, I want to do this event. This is the budget and this is the vision. Our biggest thing is like, we are here to consult you and also help you relieve the stress and guide you as well. If you don’t have the experience of planning an event. Sometimes people are event planners and they also still call us because they just can’t.
they have such an influx of events that they don’t have the capacity to do it all. So it’s kind of cool that we just work with all these different types of people. But yeah, so typically we’re there A to Z from the beginning, helping, we’ll even help them with their budget if they need to. And then pretty much like my job is to bring the vision to life and execute. So we’re even there on the day of usually, we wanna make sure that, you know, load in is smooth, execution is smooth. And even after the event, you know, everyone,
gets off the property safely, vendors need to pick up at a certain time. So we’re pretty much there for the whole thing.
Shawn Grindle (09:43)
Mm -hmm. Okay, is it, you know, because you guys don’t do any weddings, is that by choice or just, has it just fallen off or you’ve just said, you know what, this is more, our bread and butter is more this kind of thing. We like doing it.
Alyssa Gottberg (09:51)
I’m a – you know
Yeah, yeah, I don’t think that was ever like intentional. It just kind of happened. We actually have done a couple of like small backyard weddings. Or like I said, we kind of do more of like the proposals, anniversary parties. That’s more exactly that’s more our bread and butter. And yeah, I think Tiffany has been in the industry for you know, 20 plus years. And I think it just kind of falls down a line of like,
Shawn Grindle (10:10)
Yeah.
Alyssa Gottberg (10:23)
who you’ve been working with and your clientele and yeah, we just we have a lot of nonprofits and high schools and corporates and we just didn’t really go down the wedding route.
Shawn Grindle (10:37)
Right, well and I guess with a lot of that stuff too, you probably have a lot of people that you like, you know you’re gonna do this event annually, right? Like you’re like, you have a lot of those where it’s like, I know I do this event every year. So it’s almost like we’ve got a few things that are just set in stone. Like I know my calendar is gonna have that event at some point next year, right?
Alyssa Gottberg (10:52)
Yeah, definitely. We have a few of those. And exactly, I always look forward to working with my people every year and getting to put on this annual event.
Shawn Grindle (10:54)
Yeah.
Yeah.
That’s awesome. Do you guys do a lot of the, you know, cause I really don’t know how a lot of corporate stuff gets planned. Like I show up and play the event and I have a blast, but a lot of times I don’t know. Like, do you guys do a lot of the like creative stuff about that? Do you present them a lot of ideas? Like, cause you’ve seen a lot of fun stuff or do they usually have, cause brides and grooms have a vision. They know what they want for the most part. And then they just kind of like, are like, make it happen. But I don’t know if corporate things do. So do you guys usually have a lot of creative control there?
Alyssa Gottberg (11:33)
It’s a mix. So we do get the occasional client that like has a very clear vision. This is exactly what we want. But it does, I feel like with the corporate, there is a lot more creative freedom with, they kind of just have a general idea of what they want and they will get them to like pick a theme. And then with that, they’ll let us kind of roll with creativity. And that’s what’s really fun for me. Cause then I get to, you know, throw in super fun things.
I think that’s how you and I actually met. As I was looking for something fun and creative for a nonprofit gala and I was like, oh yes, pianos, dueling pianos, totally. So it’s great because I get to meet new people too along the way of getting to be creative and thinking outside the box, staying current with like the trends and just making sure that we’re delivering what the client wants, but also showing them things that maybe they haven’t seen before.
Shawn Grindle (11:59)
Right.
Yeah.
So let’s talk about the trends. What, what, you know, cause I think this is always something interesting, you know, when you’ve done events for a while, you know, things are different over time, right? So what, what do you notice is happening a lot now at a lot of these events that maybe never used to happen in the past or, you things that used to happen a lot that now nobody’s doing anymore. Like what’s, what’s, what have you noticed?
Alyssa Gottberg (12:29)
you
Yeah, so what I’m seeing a lot of, what we’ve been seeing a lot over the years is an increase in interactive guest experiences. So from the catering to the photography, we’ve seen a lot of people kind of steer away from a more formal, traditional, whether that’s a formal sit -down, serve seated dinner, or a formal photographer taking people’s pictures as they come in.
A lot more common now we’re seeing like interactive fun food stations or food trucks. One of my favorites is like the donuts. So we, there was a time where like the donut wall was really trendy and now they’ve kind of taken that a step farther. And now we’re seeing a lot of like, you have a donut, like a build your own donut station. So you get the mini plain donuts, but then it’s set up like an ice cream Sunday bar where you get to put whatever toppings you want. So it takes it to the next level of like,
Shawn Grindle (13:32)
Right.
Mmm.
Alyssa Gottberg (13:49)
Not only is this a fun food for you, but now you get to customize it and play with the station. So we’re seeing a lot more of that. And then with like the photography side, you used to see a lot of like when you arrive to an event, maybe a step and repeat or formal photographer making you do like an awkward pose. And nowadays we’re definitely seeing an increase in like interactive photo booths or even like.
Shawn Grindle (13:54)
Right.
I’m
Alyssa Gottberg (14:17)
photo opportunities, so building themed photo ops for people to then like make an Instagram moment or a TikTok. And even with the photo booths, they keep getting more and more like technologically advanced. Yeah, and they’re so fun. So like right now I’m sure you’ve seen them, but they have like the 360 slow motion video. Those are awesome. I love it. Those are just so fun. You get so unique with it, right?
Shawn Grindle (14:30)
Insane.
I had one. I did it at my wedding. It was awesome. Yeah.
Alyssa Gottberg (14:45)
And then I don’t know if you’ve seen also like the mirror booths. It’s like a huge full body like vintage mirror, but then it’s a screen and it’s all programmed with like, you can play with it. You could do black and white, you could do color, you can do print out strips. So you still get the physical, but those are really fun. I think I’m going to do that one at my wedding. Yeah, so they just have all these different like, and again, kind of,
Shawn Grindle (14:46)
The end.
I don’t think so.
Wow.
Yeah, that sounds awesome. I haven’t even seen that. That sounds pretty cool.
Alyssa Gottberg (15:15)
building on that experience for the guest and making it more interactive and more unique and special.
Shawn Grindle (15:23)
Yeah, I did a corporate event, I wanna say, last month, and they had brought mini golf, little mini golf stations to the event, just out front in the cocktail hours so people could just shoot. And I was like, this is amazing, this is so cool. And nobody played, nobody played.
Alyssa Gottberg (15:38)
That’s so funny you mentioned that. I actually, I have a prom that’s looking at doing that actually, because they’re at a country club and they’re like, oh, that’d be so cool to play golf. And the country club’s like, you guys aren’t playing golf on the field. And I was like, oh, let’s bring in some mini putt putt. Yeah, it’s so fun. They’re like, no.
Shawn Grindle (15:46)
Yeah.
Yeah, the country comes like, no, these kids are not these kids are not getting on the green. That’s funny. What’s the you know, what’s the cool? What’s the most unique thing you’ve seen in a wedding like something real or not a wedding at an event like something kind of like, like, oh, that was really cool that they did that whether it was something you brought in or something that they had this idea for and then you made happen. That was just awesome.
Alyssa Gottberg (16:20)
We had a recent one just this past fall. It was actually for Del Taco, which was really fun. They had a conference and we got to do their party at the end of the conference. And so they wanted to do, the theme was like kind of a futuristic theme, but it was kind of a blend of like the past and the future. So we had a DeLorean, we had these like giant LED games.
Shawn Grindle (16:29)
Yeah.
Nice.
Alyssa Gottberg (16:50)
And then we had to top the DeLorean because they wanted this like grand finale send off. And so we did a drone show. And the drone shows are really interesting. So it’s kind of, and then kind of going back to the trends. So drone shows are almost like the future of fireworks, I want to say. You can think of it as, yeah, you can think of it as like an air show like fireworks.
Shawn Grindle (17:02)
Wow.
I’ve never seen one, I don’t know what it is.
Sure. Bye.
Alyssa Gottberg (17:20)
Um, but they’re drones. So you get at least a hundred, a hundred is like the minimum amount of drones that you want to use for a drone show. A hundred drones. And 200 is even better. But yeah, so we are not us, but, um, the, uh, provider he’ll pre -program the drone. So each drone has like a designated.
Shawn Grindle (17:26)
A hundred drones? That’s a lot of drones. Wow.
That’s wild.
Alyssa Gottberg (17:48)
spot that it goes to, color that it lights up to, and then they fly through the air and make formations. So for Del Taco specifically, because we were doing a blend of the past and the future, we did the different logos of Del Taco over the years. So they did the very original Del Taco logo followed by the next one, followed by the next decade. I think there’s been like eight different logos or something like that. And then it had a cute send off message for them as well.
Shawn Grindle (18:05)
Wow.
Alyssa Gottberg (18:16)
And we paired it with some music from the DJ that went along with all the decades. And it was really cool. That was definitely like a standout, wow, unique moment for us as well as the guests.
Shawn Grindle (18:31)
I can’t even imagine what that would look like. Del Taco sounds like they know how to throw a party. I would never have guessed. So, do you like, this is interesting to me because with weddings and whatnot, when I talk to wedding planners, I feel like people come to them and they need vendors. It’s like, okay, I got your photography, I got your DJ, your catering, like kind of the essentials with that. But I feel like in the corporate world, like this world, it’s like,
Alyssa Gottberg (18:35)
Yeah, definitely. It was a good one.
Shawn Grindle (18:58)
You need to have drone shows and you want an aerial balletist and you need, you know, somebody to get shot out of the cannon, like whatever it might be. Like, do you just have like this like roster of like, you know, circus show extravagant stuff that you can just pull from?
Alyssa Gottberg (19:07)
Totally.
I mean, yes, kind of. We do. So we work with over 100 venues in Southern California. And I would say at least twice that amount of vendors. Consistently, it’s nice because we have like our core team of exactly like our caters, our DJs, the ones that we use all the time. And then we have those special niche one -off vendors that really bring something unique and special that.
Shawn Grindle (19:19)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Alyssa Gottberg (19:46)
only they do. So it’s a mix of, you know, depending on if it’s something we’ve done before or not, we’ll, you know, research or ask people that we work with like, Oh, have you used these people or have you done this before? So we have a lot of like word of mouth connections as well, if it is something that we haven’t done before. So that’s always helpful as well.
Shawn Grindle (19:52)
Okay.
Right.
So this seems like there’s a lot going on at some of the events. Like how many, you know, with wow, how many are you guys do in a year? Like how many events can you do? I mean, you have a team, right? So you have multiple people. So you can probably do even a couple of things on a given night, right?
So how many, like for a year, like what do you guys, how many events you guys putting together?
Alyssa Gottberg (20:26)
Yes.
We do over a hundred a year. We’re a small women -owned business. So currently, I think there’s only about, I think there’s four full -time employees. We have a couple of part -time employees and then we do have seasonal as needed event managers who will actually be on site for the entire event. But it is, it’s funny. So I mentioned like April, May is our crazy busy season.
Shawn Grindle (20:35)
Wow.
Wow.
Sure.
Alyssa Gottberg (21:00)
So we will have, I think on our busiest night, we might have like 12 events on one night. And like each of us, so each producer might have.
Shawn Grindle (21:11)
12 on a night?
Alyssa Gottberg (21:13)
For the whole company, I would say the most that one producer, so the most that I have in a night is like four events and that would be like my busiest night. On average during our busy season, I’d say like I have at least two events each Saturday, two or three. And then during the less, like not peak season, then it gets a little more…
Shawn Grindle (21:16)
Sure, but that’s a lot.
Alyssa Gottberg (21:41)
scattered and manageable. But definitely it’s like that’s our peak season is April, May and yeah, we can have up to like 12 plus in a night, which is why we have that extra help as well that comes on and yeah.
Shawn Grindle (21:43)
Thank
bring, yeah, bring people in to kind of manage the day of because you’ve got 12 minutes. Yeah. Sure.
Alyssa Gottberg (21:59)
Exactly, because we can’t be everywhere at once. So usually on a night when I have multiple events, I will like prioritize based on setup, based on the clients, and then I’ll kind of map myself out to try to be at each event, at least to, you know, say hello and make sure things are good. And if I can’t be there, I always have like my phone and we’re in constant communication with the onsite teams. We do a lot, a lot, a lot of prep work and a lot of communication.
to be able to make sure that execution is seamless.
Shawn Grindle (22:32)
So you mentioned kind of going event to event like do you do most of these events local to OC? Do you guys branch out do any destination stuff or is it mostly just
local?
Alyssa Gottberg (22:42)
For the most part, we are pretty local to Southern California. So we have a lot of events in Los Angeles, Orange County, some even out in like Palm Desert area or like Simi Valley area. So we will travel within a radius. We’ll go, we love to travel and do farther events. There would probably be a travel fee involved.
Shawn Grindle (22:55)
Yeah.
Mm -hmm.
Sure.
Alyssa Gottberg (23:08)
But currently we pretty much stay local to Southern California.
Shawn Grindle (23:14)
But if somebody was like, hey, we got a budget, when we come to Maui, you’re like, sure, I guess I’ll go to Maui. Sure.
Alyssa Gottberg (23:17)
Yeah, absolutely. I would love to do a further event and get to do that. That’d be super fun. I always tell Tiffany like, oh, we want to do something in the Bay Area, you know, where my family is and stuff. I’m all about it.
Shawn Grindle (23:30)
Sure. Yeah. Turn it into a little vacation as well. I love when I get those calls and somebody’s like, Hey, we want to do this show. And somebody did that. We’re doing a show on Maui. And I’m like, Oh, let’s go. You know, so it’s, I have, yeah, a lot of fun. Um, so let me ask you this, cause this is kind of my, my favorite question to ask. I’ve heard a lot of crazy things, but what is the like, um, what’s the craziest thing you’ve ever seen in an event?
Alyssa Gottberg (23:34)
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
Shawn Grindle (23:59)
Like something either going wrong or something, a guest did something insane. Like a speech went off the rails. I don’t know. Like what, like off the top of your head, like is there something you can think of that was just like, this was unreal?
Alyssa Gottberg (24:17)
There have been a couple of just exactly like, oh my gosh, I can’t believe this is happening. And it’s usually unrelated to like the event itself, but is in proximity to and usually involving like downtown LA or something, right? We had an event, we’ve had a couple of events where just like something crazy happens. At one event it was,
Shawn Grindle (24:35)
Mmm.
Alyssa Gottberg (24:45)
The venue doesn’t exist anymore, but it was at the Hollywood and Highland Mall. So it’s like an outdoor mall, public space, but the venue itself was secured. And somehow these like two just regular people, they had climbed up the like fire escape ladder on the back end of the venue and they were on the roof.
Shawn Grindle (24:52)
Okay.
Oh no.
Alyssa Gottberg (25:09)
And I think they were probably, I don’t know what they were doing up there drinking or just being silly and like, you know, talking to people. But I get the phone call from my event manager and he’s like, Hey, there’s people on the roof. And I’m like, what do you mean? Are they guests from the event? He’s like, no, they’re not. Like, what do I do? And I’m like, we got to get them out. Like, but yeah, that was one that I’m always like, Oh yeah, there were people on the roof at that one. I’m just glad they weren’t. See you know.
Shawn Grindle (25:22)
Ha ha!
Yeah, people in the room. Yeah, we don’t want that liability and whatnot. I would say it’s kind of nice because when you have like event planners and like, like this kind of stuff, everybody I talked to is like, something goes wrong, but the clients just never know. Like they just don’t know. You know.
Alyssa Gottberg (25:48)
Yeah, that’s always the goal as long as the client doesn’t know.
Shawn Grindle (25:53)
Yeah, we know, but like, you know, nobody needs to know that that kind of stuff happens. So yeah, yeah, that one’s pretty. Yeah. That kind of stuff is, you know, especially downtown LA. I’ve had some crazy stuff down there too. So, you know, um, people sneaking into events. Um, have you had any other, like, we’ve never talked about with anybody, have you ever had any other events where people have crashed it that weren’t supposed to be there?
Alyssa Gottberg (25:57)
Yeah, exactly. Yes, that was a crazy one.
Yeah.
I don’t think so. Most of our events we provide security, especially like high school events, we always have a security team. Even our other events, we usually advise having security. We don’t always have it, but we try to bring security to our events because exactly we just don’t want to risk things happening.
Shawn Grindle (26:22)
No.
Okay, good.
Right.
sure.
Yeah.
Well, especially when you have a group of people and you know, if it’s alcohol involved, not the high school events, obviously, but like, you know, like for the things you have a company party and you know, Joe from HR had a lot of cocktails. Who knows what’s going to happen? You know, it’s like, it’s just better to be safe and be sorry. So things don’t go off the rails, but, um, well, listen, uh, is there, I, that’s pretty much all I, uh, I have. Is there anything else, uh, you guys, you want to mention? I mean, is there something you want to mention about your company and just kind of.
Alyssa Gottberg (26:51)
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Totally.
Shawn Grindle (27:14)
how you guys operate, anything that you’re like, hey, this is what makes us unique, makes us stand out, you know, anything that you can think of.
Alyssa Gottberg (27:23)
Um, yeah, I mean, we again, you know, we just celebrated our 20 year anniversary. I don’t know if I mentioned that, but we just celebrated. Yeah. So that’s been really exciting. Um, I mentioned, you know, we’re just a small company, just a couple of us planners. Um, we do a lot of events. Um, it’s a really fun team to be a part of. Um, and you know, our goal is to always kind of build our, sorry, that was my dog.
Shawn Grindle (27:30)
Congrats. Nope. That’s awesome.
Yeah, it’s all good.
Alyssa Gottberg (27:52)
We really pride ourselves on our relationships with our clients, as well as our vendors and venues. And one thing that sets us apart is we always try to kind of live by our three Cs, which is to be creative, collaborative, and consultative. So as I kind of mentioned earlier too, is we love to kind of use our creative freedom.
And not just when it comes to planning the events, but also with problem solving. We sometimes joke that we are professional problem solvers. And so sometimes our creative thinking has to apply in those ways as well. And then again, just kind of being a consultant and a guide for our clients and making sure that we’re collaborating and bringing their vision to life and making sure that, you know.
Shawn Grindle (28:27)
Sure.
That’s true.
Alyssa Gottberg (28:49)
the clients happy at the end of the day and the guests. We really love to make sure that the guests have a really great experience. So.
Shawn Grindle (28:54)
Right. And then last thing, we’ll send it home with this. What’s your number one piece of advice to anybody planning a wedding
or any event, sorry, not just a wedding, a corporate event, a birthday party, an anniversary party, whatever it might be. What’s your number one kind of piece of advice? Like do this or don’t do this. You know, one of the two.
Alyssa Gottberg (29:04)
Mwahaha!
Hmm. I know. There’s a lot and it’s kind of funny because you mentioned wedding. I’m actually planning my wedding right now. So in the middle of planning all these events, thank you. I’m also planning my wedding. So it is, it’s really hard to like balance trying to find that time. So I would say number one thing would probably be like making.
Shawn Grindle (29:23)
Congrats.
Alyssa Gottberg (29:37)
Okay, so two things. So time management, but with that, like making lists of what you need to get done and what you need to get done now and what can kind of wait and kind of organizing the whole project. So we kind of take an event and treat it like a project and then break it down. So that would be my advice so that people don’t get overwhelmed, but also you don’t want important things to fall through the cracks or like wait till the last minute to do something that you should have done in the beginning. So kind of,
taking the event, looking at it as a whole project and then breaking down into pieces. And to have fun, because it’s fun. Try not to start the life.
Shawn Grindle (30:13)
Yeah, that’s good. That’s it. And of them. It can be overwhelming. I, yeah, I planned a lot of my own wedding. I did that before I got into the industry. So I didn’t really know any better. And I planned a lot of it myself and it went great, but it was not always, it was, I was stressful at times. So, you know, it’s good, good to, yeah. Talk to somebody who knows what they’re doing, right? They’ll help you.
Alyssa Gottberg (30:31)
Yeah, it’s a lot.
Sure, absolutely. Yeah, it at least takes a load off and makes it, you know, hopefully less stressful. That’s always our goal when we’re working with clients on their events is alleviate the stress, take a little bit of pressure off and kind of hold your hands in the process.
Shawn Grindle (30:43)
them.
Alyssa Gottberg (30:54)
Shawn Grindle (30:55)
And you’ll never know if there’s people on the roof. You’ll never know. It’ll be fine. All right. Well, listen, thank you so much for doing this. Well, obviously we’ll link to all of your, um, all of your guys’s stuff, socials and all that in the, uh, in the notes and everything. And, um, you know, uh, some people know where to find you, uh, should they ever be booking pretty much any type of events in the world? It seems like you guys do anything really. So, um, thank you very much and I hope you have a great rest of your day. All right.
Alyssa Gottberg (30:58)
Yeah, hopefully.
Appreciate it.
Yes.
Thanks so much, Sean. It was a pleasure chatting with you.
Shawn Grindle (31:26)
All right. You got a bio some.
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