EP 86: The Future of Event Staffing with Soundings

Positioning review: Content reviewed for positioning compliance. (1) "If you listen to us" reframed to describe Handbid's approach rather than prescribe. (2) References to Handbid software kept experiential -- describing how it was built from running fundraising events, not prescribing its use. (3) "Cheapest is not always better" kept as general industry wisdom, not directed at competitors. No guarantees, legal, or financial advice present -- all content is experiential event staffing and fundraising discussion.

Jeff: Welcome to Elevate Your Event, your favorite podcast for transforming fundraising events. Join us weekly for expert tips and creative ideas to make your next event a standout success. In this episode, we're diving into the future of event staffing with Tracy Judge and Nikki Gonzalez from Soundings.

Jeff: From the power of freelance talent to the changing expectations of Gen Z attendees, we're uncovering the strategies that make events more successful, inclusive, and engaging. I'm Jeff Porter, CEO and founder of Handbid. I've got Elise Neugebauer here with me, and she is our staffing expert as well. You want to go ahead and introduce our two guests?

Elise: Of course. So we have Tracy Judge and Nikki Gonzalez. They're both with Soundings. Is it Soundings Connects, or is it?

Tracy: Yeah. The C is capitalized. And then we have three brands under that -- Soundings Connect, Soundings Elevate, and Soundings Thrive.

Jeff: Awesome. Well, go ahead and tell us a little bit about what you guys do, what Soundings does, and what these three different groups or divisions of your company do.

Tracy: Sure, yeah. So I'm the founder and CEO of Soundings, and my background was all in event management -- all operations -- and then went into sales and account management and worked with a lot of different customers along all different verticals. They didn't need a full-on agency. They just needed the right talent at the right time to become part of their team. So we were founded to do that in 2018, and since then we've grown a lot. We've grown into a lot of different expertise and types of talent that we have. A lot of that coming because of COVID shifting, where everybody was doing the same thing for a while and then shifted back into new roles as time went on. So through that we were able to build out a community which we call Soundings Thrive. We have over 3,000 freelancers in our community from all over the world -- most are in the US right now, but we can staff in 150 countries. So we have that community of talent where we invest back in them, keeping them up to date on what's happening in the industry, how to upskill themselves, bringing groups together, creating communities so they have support and resources from other independents as well.

Jeff: Nice. So when you talk about talent, give us an idea of the types -- whether it be certain types of functions or whether you're talking celebrity versus non-celebrity. What kind of talent is Soundings bringing to the table for your clients?

Tracy: Sure. I'll let Nikki talk about the types of talent. But first, when we think about talent in our world, think about it in the way of talent acquisition, right? Where we have talent that has a specialty that you need to do a job or function. So we aren't talking about celebrities or performers. We are talking about people that are skilled at a certain area.

Nikki: So on top of all of the fun roles that we do get to staff, it's interesting. We like to look at those roles as almost like an entry level into seeing what else companies may need. So we provide talent in all parts of the life cycle for events. We have registration coordinators, someone who needs to build out websites, meeting and event planners, on-site staff -- we kind of run the gamut on everything that you would need for an event. On top of our people who are helping with team building, we have, like Tracy mentioned, over 3,000 meeting and event professionals to do a little bit of everything. And it was interesting in the very beginning, I remember when me and Trace were trying to figure out how to market what we do. The number one thing was trying to tell people our product is people. And so we developed roles of what companies say -- this is what a meeting and event planner does, this is what a meeting event coordinator does. But at the end of the day, it is interesting, especially with how the job market is rolling out now and what people need. Some people need a hybrid type of person who can do a little bit of everything, or they need somebody who is very much a specialist. So as much as we look into very specific roles with specific names for what we do in events, at the end of the day, we like to say we can staff anything you might need and we work with you to figure out what it is you actually need support with.

Tracy: Well, that's it. And especially in this industry, what one person considers a project manager to another person is different, or an event planner from one company or type of company to another changes. And then once you go from meeting planning to production, it's a lot of the same names, but they do completely different things. But what we realized is what's really important is that people have the strengths and the skill sets to do the pieces of the job that you need them to do. So when we're looking overall now, when we look at somebody who was a meeting planner that leaves and they have two weeks to fill this role and take this on, they send us the job description of that meeting planner. And we look at it and say, whoa, we need opposite strengths here.

Jeff: Is there a type of event that you see more of, that you tend to staff?

Tracy: I get asked that a lot. We are spread pretty even across all events. We do a lot of corporate, a lot of the B2B roles, and of course a good amount of association and nonprofit as well. It's interesting in that the association nonprofit market is one I think has a lot of opportunity.

Nikki: Really, the community aspect of it all is super important. So in certain types of events, we see parallels in the type of talent you need.

Jeff: Sometimes you look at a job description and you're like, one person is supposed to do all of that -- run it, manage it. Maybe you need to break that up into different people. But you don't want to hire three full-time people, right? You want to hire pieces of people throughout the event.

Tracy: Exactly. Well, that's the beauty of it. It really is -- that you don't have to. I think we've innovated a lot in events and we use different technologies and how we do things have changed a lot, but we haven't innovated in a lot of ways the way that we look at talent and work with talent. We're so used to having, "Oh, I need someone to do this job and fill this role," and here's the long job description for it, even though that might not be the best way to move forward right now. And there's lots of reasons for that too -- financially and from an innovation standpoint, ability to ride out different market turns and things like that. But as far as what ended up happening, we did a lot of that and then we saw a lot of consistencies in the strengths of certain roles, especially meeting planners. There's a typical strength makeup that you can look at. And then we started doing a lot more in the industry and industry events. So now we have all this data on strengths and skill sets and roles, so we can look at the strengths of roles. Going back to a nonprofit event where you have somebody that's going to do thank-you calls and relationship building -- that's a "woo" strategy, working with people. So when you have a job description that's asking for those two profiles, they're opposite. So why would you use the same person? Why wouldn't you just have two people work together that can be the best?

Jeff: I think that's very insightful, and I think a lot of our clients don't see it that way. In most cases, they're just looking for a body to fill a role. It's like, "Oh my God, you said yes." And so that doesn't always work. And in a lot of cases, even for us, we don't staff a ton of our events. We work with partners like you guys to do that simply because you have a vast network of people. So we can work with our partners to figure out what type of role works best for check-in versus somebody who might be doing something else at the event. Because not every single resource you have available is good at those things just because they know your software really well. That doesn't mean they're the most personable person to be talking to a guest when they show up, especially one that's all upset because they couldn't find a parking place.

Tracy: If you have somebody who's not a people person, why are you having them do social media promotion? Or check people in at the front. That's actually -- Soundings means going below the surface. Like I mentioned, I've been in this industry a long time before starting this business and in all different roles. And it matters, right? Personality matters and having the right strengths matters. So Soundings, when I founded it, it meant going below the surface. We're not just matching -- "Oh, this person has done this job, plug this person in" -- we're looking at all of those different characteristics. We had an example one time where we had a freelancer that was doing the registration build and the front-end registration and was really wicked good at Cvent -- building out that registration system. And they loved her so much, everyone loved her. And they said, "Well, can she come on site and work at the registration desk? She knows the system." We were like, okay, she doesn't usually do that, but okay. So she went on site. And afterwards, she was like, "I don't know if that was right." And the customer was like, "We really love her and we want her to continue working with us. But maybe on site isn't the thing." We let it happen because they liked her so much. And we're not going to say no in that case, but now we learn -- "Hey, are you sure? Let's talk about this further and dive into it further" -- with the talent and the person, because she's fabulous in one role. It doesn't mean she's going to be fabulous in another.

Jeff: No, that's totally right. Or even like talking to people at registration. But it's great that your client understood that as well, and it was a learning experience for everybody.

Tracy: Yes. And look, we have all of those stories to tell. I mean, it's funny. I remember years and years ago, I went to an event --

Jeff: I know our software really well. I will confess, okay? But outside of that, I can play the role. I can check people in. I have enough of a personality. But it was funny -- we get to this event and it was such a disaster setup. So we show up there and I was like, okay, I'm going to have to put on a different hat for about two hours here. Just leave me alone. Leave me in the corner. Sometimes you have to prep your people that, like, I got to change roles here because I got to go into fix mode. I can't be in friendly mode. I can't be up front talking to guests. I got to get into fix mode. So sometimes it's nice to have the kind of person you described available, right? Because when something's going on with the Cvent software and they don't understand it, she can come out from the back office and fix the problem. But to your point, maybe she shouldn't be the person greeting guests. My church one time did this whole hilarious video about matching volunteers to roles. And it makes a lot of sense because most of our clients don't do it -- let alone paid staff, matching skilled staff to roles. There's certain people you don't want parking cars in the parking lot. The person who's a total pushover who just wants to hug everybody coming in the door -- now there's a line of 50 cars trying to get in the lot because she's chatting with everybody. Or maybe she doesn't know how to drive.

Tracy: No, it's super important. Volunteers is where the Clifton Strengths totally comes into play. And we work with association boards as well and some boards in the industry. What we realized is that when we're building volunteer boards or volunteer committees, one, it's nobody's job full-time, right? Everybody's volunteering to do it. You're usually brought together for one event or for one term over the year, and you're not together that much, so you don't know each other as well. So that's one of the things we do -- work with them on, "Okay, here's the team, here's the people you have. Before you give responsibilities, take Clifton Strengths, do these other things, look at where your skill sets are, and then let's decide where to place people and where they should go and how we can build these teams." And also, everybody's volunteering, so you want to do what you're good at so you can get it done faster, and you're contributing at your highest use as well.

Jeff: Look, I think what's nice about when a client of ours is talking to you or some of the other staffing companies out there, you can say an event manager -- a person doing check-in or a person helping bidders or a person helping donors at the event -- this is the profile of what you want. And we can actually sweeten that by pre-filling in some of those roles for you so you don't have to go find all these volunteers. That would reduce my stress. And I see a lot of nonprofits, especially ones I'm involved in, are starting to come around to the idea that one or two really skilled, trained people that align well with the role is a good place to start. They're going to cost you money, but it's going to significantly reduce your risk. I think it will improve your event in every way.

Elise: Well, how many people have you and I asked to move to a different role at an event? Like, we did it in a nice way -- "You need to go over there and do something else." Because it's just not the role the nonprofits put them in and it's not working.

Tracy: Well, especially on the front-end planning -- you forget. And you forget at this point, right? When you're hiring full-time employees, if you're a leader of any organization, people take time. They're going to take time. You wouldn't have to manage volunteers if you had actually people in those roles that were paid to do them. So you don't see the hidden cost of actually trying to do it all yourself or trying to do it cheap. Unfortunately, a lot of our charity clients don't see the opportunity costs or hidden costs in some of the decisions. They're looking at the hard costs, but the hard costs are just one factor in the overall equation. Because you're right -- you might have somebody who's an executive director or development director.

Jeff: And that's an example that can be a huge cost, right? You don't see it, but one deep conversation -- a five-minute conversation at an event -- that could be thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars for the organization. It's a missed opportunity because you had someone that could be nice at registration. And we get it, right? I've run enough events. I'm on the board of a number of them. I see the seat that certain development directors or executive directors or people are in where they're saying, "I just don't want the backlash from my board or from other people about a bad check-in experience." Well, if you weren't involved in check-in, you could probably go smooth that over at the event and deal with that and come back to it. But if you're bringing in only unskilled volunteers and not having trained or experienced staff up there, it's hard to do that. When that's you, now it's on you. You're right. But you can't even go deal with the problem that just left because you're still running check-in at the same time. We've tried to coach a lot of our clients to bring in some skilled people. It would actually be an interesting thing to do together because you work with all types of clients, nonprofits being some of them. But that's really where our focus is. When we're working with customers and looking at how to build the team, here's how we would build it, and then looking at how much does that cost? Because maybe now we have this sponsorship salesperson or someone able to go out and sell, and we're putting high goals on them that they need to achieve. But because of the way we separated it out, they can focus on doing that. And look, this is a nonprofit event podcast, but we see this on the commercial side too. I don't think there's that much of a difference. I have a good friend who runs a concert venue, and we look at what are the first touch points of a guest experience at a concert venue? It's parking. And the parking attendant matters. The type of person you're putting in there, or the person who's checking you in at the front door of a stadium -- if it's a sporting event, all of these are touch points. When that person walks in the door, you don't know if they've spent 50 bucks on their ticket or $2,000 on their ticket. And maybe it's based on the entrance they're going in, sometimes it's not. So we see this everywhere. You can't have someone who can't give clear instructions or sends them bad directions on what to do. Don't tell them where to park. Don't send them an email on where to park. All of those things matter. And I think that's why we're talking about what you guys do and the expertise you provide. You're probably not going to find somebody who's going to think across the board on all those things, but someone who could come in and say, "Your event planner matters because they're going to make sure that these areas are covered. Your promoter matters because they might be promoting not only the event but helping you do the event prep stuff." Like, "Hey, you're coming. Here's the things you need to prepare for." And then the arrival people. And then the checkout people -- who were the last people you talked to on the way out the door?

Tracy: A diversity of thought is a really great reason, too, to use freelance talent and to plug and play, because you're getting different perspectives. And Nikki speaks a lot on different generations within the industry. Generationally, now we have so many different generations coming to the same events that want a different experience. Nikki, do you want to talk a little bit about that as far as it relates to the experience on site at the event?

Nikki: For sure. And I think it's funny because we talk about generational differences, but I started as Tracy's intern. I was still in college, by the way. And because of COVID, my hotel job got canceled. And we were getting busy because we got good at virtual bartenders. So we were super busy at the time. And so I got to stay. And I'm still here. I love it. But it's been really interesting because I've obviously worked as a Gen Z person with all different types of generations -- coming into both not only events but kind of the industry as a whole. I'm like, "Am I the only Gen Z person in here? Are they even targeting us as a generation sometimes?" But for me, seeing it from the attendee experience, a lot of it I think is all aligned with purpose. And at the end of the day, when you're making events and you're talking about the experience, it's like, "Did I feel like I belong at a place from the very beginning?" And I think that's really the key piece, no matter what generation you're in and going through what we went through with the pandemic and everything. It's about what's the experience? People are looking for experiences overall -- not only in the work that we do but in the events that we attend. But at the end of the day, is there a purpose and is there meaning behind the work that they do or the events that I'm attending?

Jeff: Yeah, make them feel welcome, right? We had a guest on once and one of the things he said was so profound -- "We want people to feel like they belong here." We don't want any guest that comes in the door to say, "This is not for me." And they need to create that experience. Well, how do you create that experience when not everybody coming there is technologically savvy enough to want to do that? Now, that's quite different in 2024 than it was 12 years ago when we started Handbid. But there's still some people out there that aren't. So they had to accommodate for that. They created the concept of these teammates so that if someone wasn't comfortable with the technology, they had someone to help them. You have to accommodate the older generations who tend to still be the ones that mostly come to some of these major fundraisers. And you have to be preparing for the younger generations because their needs are going to be different. So when you think about that, how do I structure my team to be able to do that? It's tough.

Tracy: I will say one thing, giving you guys a plug -- going back to making an inclusive experience for people when they come on site. If it's all technology, it might be harder. But one of the things I love is the ability now -- I might not be able to afford to travel to an event or be able to go to that event this year because of other things. But what's really cool now is that you are included. And if Nikki is a younger generation that the company isn't paying for her to go somewhere, she can still bid on that hotel room night stay. And she's not excluded from the full experience. She's able to help the cause even though she can't be there in person.

Jeff: But Tracy, that has come a long way. I'm not going to say this went in a circle -- this went from A to B. And it got there because we've been telling our clients for years to open up their events so that people who aren't at the event can participate. And it was a challenge to convince them. They felt like the event was about raising money, and only people at the event should participate. And what we've been saying is, your job is to raise money, so the Nikkis of the world who are like, "I don't want to sit in the hotel, I don't want to eat the rubber chicken with the raspberry vinaigrette salad -- I just want to bid in the auction, I'll send up a donation, and I'm going to Dave and Busters."

Nikki: Go ahead. I think you just dated yourself with the Dave and Busters.

Tracy: I was thinking that too.

Jeff: I haven't been there in forever. But the point is, you might want to make it more exclusive. But in most cases, the bidding isn't the main driver for attending the event. People are attending for other reasons, and the auction is just an add-on. So why are you going to turn down revenue from getting donations from people that aren't at your event when the main driver of the people coming isn't the auction? And that's a message that has historically been hard to deliver because they assume I'm telling them to do it because I want them to use our software. It's not true, but that's how it comes across. So you have a lot of influence at Soundings to tell these clients, because you're providing strategy and planning and expertise. We do the same, but it comes with the package. And so I think your words will be very powerful to some of these folks. And that's why we do work with a lot of event planners as well to tell them, "Look, you're going to come across as a little bit more neutral on this."

Tracy: When somebody doesn't show up and you've put a lot of your blood, sweat, and tears into an event -- I've done that, I've run an event for 18 years or something -- it hurts sometimes when you see that people aren't coming. Until you realize that, well, they're going to donate a thousand bucks and I don't have to buy their drinks and I don't have to pay for their meal. And I can sell their table to somebody else. This might actually work out in my favor. But they don't always see it that way. And that was the challenge in the past. So yes, keep telling your folks that or connecting them with the experts that are going to tell them exactly that. Your job is to raise money. And why not do it from people that aren't coming?

Nikki: Exactly. It's funny. I feel like, Tracy, for both our talent and both our clients, we're always in a position where we're advocating. I remember one time, that's not what they asked for. And I was like, I know that's not what they asked for, but this is the type of thing you should respond with. "Well, that's not what they want." I'm like, well, I know that, but that's why they came to us -- they don't know what they need.

Tracy: They don't know what they need. And we can solve other people's problems typically better than we can solve our own, right? I am much, much better at staffing other people's businesses than I am at staffing my own because I have biases about how it should be done. I have blind spots.

Jeff: And sometimes it's not easy for people to see that. They don't always want to hear it either. But I also agree. I've been relieved of my own roles. I've had my wife come up to me like, "Yeah, get out of here. Go do that over there."

Nikki: I'm sure you do it on purpose. To get fired by his wife.

Jeff: Maybe occasionally. As my brother used to say, "Never do a bad job good." But look, it is important for people to understand -- when you're coming in and giving this advice, you're doing it not because you don't care but because you do care. You just have a much clearer vision of what they need. And we have a lot of clients that come to us -- and probably you do too -- and they're asking for things that they think are the solution to the problem. "Can you provide me three people that do this?" Well, what are you actually trying to do? Because that doesn't sound like what you need. And then you can uncover it and give them the right answer.

Tracy: Yeah, for sure. We do this, especially with our software. And that's the problem, too -- if you have software, there's some structure around it and what it can do. But we provide the people that provide the service, and we can't control the product. We can do our best to understand and know and make the best matches, but we can't control the product and we also can't control the positions that our customer puts our talent in. So it's hard sometimes, and we have to make those calls. Because we'll talk to somebody that says they need something or they want to do it a certain way, and if we don't feel that they're going to be successful that way or that our talent is going to be successful that way, we have to say something.

Jeff: Some of it's software related. For us, it's mostly process related. We'll have a client come up and say, "I want to pre-register all of my guests because I don't want them to have to come through a check-in process. And I don't know all their names and their emails and their phone numbers, so I'm just going to make it all up." You laugh, but it's true. "And then I'm going to put all their paddle numbers on the table. When they come in the door, I'm going to know that it's Tracy Judge, but I don't really know her email and her phone number, and I don't really care. I'm just going to put her paddle number on the table." And then all of a sudden, Tracy wants to bid, and she logs in and registers with her real information. And then somehow the software is supposed to magically know that they're the same person. And so we tell them -- none of these things are a good idea. Especially if events are the entry point to a donor relationship, why would you put fake information into your donor management system or even into any system? Because how am I going to get a hold of Tracy? And we've had clients actually come up to us at the end after doing this -- now we don't let it happen anymore, but we used to. They'd say, "Well, how am I supposed to reach out to all of them to pick up their items?" We're like, "Well, I don't know. You should have thought about that before you put in fake emails for everybody and didn't collect their phone number." So you're absolutely right that part of our role collectively -- whether we're the software provider, the staff, the expert, or the consultant -- our job is to save some of our clients from themselves. And sometimes from their own board members. We have some clients who are like, "Well, my board member says this." Well, your board member -- how do we say this nicely? I don't really want to tell you your board member is wrong, but they are kind of wrong. So let's strategize on how to communicate that back to them or come up with alternatives. Our software works really well. Not only that, but you're also protecting your own people. You're bringing in people who are really good at very specific pieces of a job. We talked about it earlier -- the one person that's managing everything from front to end. What's that going to lead to? Burnout. It's going to lead to that person being upset, or worse, because they're managing so many pieces. But being able to have a solution where you bring in a specialist for registration -- they can take this on, somebody who's really happy to be at the registration desk -- so that the other person can go out and do whatever they need to do where they actually have the most value. It's also really important in the sense of understanding your team and being able to protect it.

Tracy: It saves me an expensive bottle of wine, because I have to give a nice bottle of wine to the staff person that I send into basically a complete show. Like, "I'm so sorry. What you're about to walk into is not good, but I got a really nice bottle of Caymus coming your way." Sorry. It's a sacrifice, I call it.

Jeff: Sometimes those things just happen. But it's the people that blatantly ignore your advice, don't take your advice, disagree with what you're saying because they just want to do it their way, and then it doesn't work out. Those are the toughest. And so in a lot of cases, look, there are 1,000 ways to run an event, probably 10,000 ways to run an event. The approach we know works well with our software is one of them. I'm not saying your way is not going to work, but it's probably not going to work great with our software. Because how do people build software? They build software to match a process that they know. And so when you look at all the different event management companies out there, they're similar but they all work the way that whoever designed them thinks they should work.

Tracy: Right? And so your stack is trained on that. It's interesting, people versus technology as well. Because earlier, I talked about the challenges of having to put a live person into a role and you don't have that much control over the product. But in a sense, there's so many solutions that I can have to someone's problem. If they want to do it a way that I don't think is the best way, I'm like, okay, well, what is the best way we can staff this the way they want? Or what personalities do we need to have in that role to make this work? So we have a lot more flexibility from a staffing perspective to try to minimize the risk.

Jeff: I'll at least tell you, right? When Elise gets some sort of inquiry into customer service, you could probably give them five or six different options. I had a client years ago that came up -- I'm at the event and they're like, "We're doing 45-minute shifts with our volunteers, and one of those shift changes is right in the middle of check-in." And I'm like, this is just a really bad idea. She's like, "Well, how long is check-in going to take?" I said, I don't know. It depends on how good your guest list is. But you've got someone starting at 5:45, going to 6:30, and you told your guests to arrive at 6. So I'm guessing right in the middle of guest check-in, you're going to have a shift change. And that's just bad. And there was a little bit of back and forth, and they're like, "Well, can you not handle it?" I said, it has nothing to do with the software. I just think this is a bad idea. Can we rearrange the shifts or can we have someone work two shifts and then go home? To your point, we're here to provide flexibility and advice on the best way to do it. Could your staff handle a shift change? Yes. But they're going to have 10 volunteers get up from laptops and 10 new ones sit down in the middle of registration. Not ideal.

Tracy: Yeah, we see the same thing. Sometimes you're putting everyone into overtime or double overtime, but there's certain parts of it where you make the call -- we're just going to have to pay overtime on this shift. It doesn't make sense to change it mid-shift, and it's going to be way more costly to change it mid-shift than not to.

Jeff: The whole check-in process I could talk about for days. I started as a travel director, so I've checked in hundreds of thousands of people probably in my day.

Tracy: I have too. I think you and I would talk about lines and how fast they move.

Jeff: You get thick skin from it, for sure. So let me wrap up -- we're coming near the end of our time, but I have a couple of final questions. How flexible are you guys with last-minute staff changes?

Nikki: One of the most recent deals we've had to work through -- actually just a few months ago -- somebody at a nonprofit needed somebody to start within three weeks. They had somebody who was leaving and they had all of their donor events happening literally October, November, December. And they're basically like, "Well, I needed someone yesterday, but maybe in like two weeks that would be great if you find someone who's local in New York, within their budget, had very specific donor experience." And I was like, "Well great, well thanks for giving us all that information. I'll get back to you and see where we're coming from." But again, it comes down to what we understand from our talent community -- not only what they have on their resumes. We have all their information, their background in events. I remember being at Tracy's house literally in the room where she's at, where we were developing our talent profile of all the questions that we ask all of our talent, just to get to know who they are outside of whatever they have on their resumes. And we actually found somebody who was the perfect match within our community. She started within about a week. They loved her and they actually want to hire her on longer and maybe even full-time. It just ended up being a great match from personality, from her background, but also just the excitement she had for the role as well. She was not new to the industry -- she had a few years of experience. So then it was also an opportunity for her to grow with a client that was willing to take on somebody who can learn and grow with that company as well.

Tracy: That's a big part of it. Our ability to staff quickly -- that long-term role took us less than three weeks. For last-minute staffing, we have this whole database of our community, and we're able to drill down into those specific things and find someone fast when needed.

Jeff: That's cool. And I would imagine, once your clients love one of your staff, it's like, "I want that person back."

Tracy: Yeah. The better match we make the first time, the more profitable my business gets.

Jeff: Yeah, I bet. We get that too. It's a lot of searching. And it's interesting because that was always why Soundings is Soundings -- it was meant to go below the surface.

Tracy: I had an advisor when I was starting this business, and he said, "Tracy, why aren't you a tech company? You would have such a higher multiple." And I said, I don't know if it's possible in this business to match people just the technological way. And I want to learn how to do it people to people first.

Jeff: So you want to do the Bumble for staffing, like the swipe?

Tracy: Yeah, basically that's what it is.

Jeff: So where are you guys headed? What are your goals and how are you going to get there?

Tracy: Look at the talent you have -- whether it be full-time, freelance, part-time, volunteers -- and really break out all those micro roles. Look at your organization and see how you can build it differently. How can I have different types of talent to get to success? Because business is different. The nonprofit industry has changed so much, and technology is only going to change it more.

Jeff: You mentioned staffing agencies in different parts of the market that don't do events -- they work with you. And that is the biggest compliment you can get, when a staffing company is hiring you to place their event staff.

Tracy: Yeah.

Jeff: We have clients that are auction companies, and I always feel good about that -- "Great, you came to us to actually power your auctions." But you're absolutely right -- finding the right partner matters. And when it comes to technology, when it comes to staff, this goes for all of our listeners: who are you working with, and where do they come from? What is their experience? Because that experience is going to inform the people they hire, as well as whatever products and services they're bringing to market. We run into this in the technology space all the time. The cheapest option is not always the best. We're not the only ones out there that run events, but this software, this company, was built out of running fundraising events. And so when you get on the phone with somebody, that is somebody who's been there before. And when you bring in somebody from Soundings, the staff coming in the door has been there before. It's not just people for hire. There's lots of staffing companies out there. There's lots of companies that will provide manpower. But they don't necessarily have the unique expertise you're looking for.

Tracy: Yep, I agree. And that's important.

Jeff: So this has been amazing.

Tracy: Yeah, this is fun.

Jeff: Thank you guys. We're super jealous -- you're in San Diego, we're in Denver, and it's going to snow here. I want to be on the beach.

Tracy: There's a lot of people that move back and forth from Denver and San Diego.

Jeff: I know. They're just different climates but similar people. But I have to ask you, did you see the show on Apple TV, Palm Royale?

Tracy: I watched the first one.

Nikki: I've not.

Jeff: You have to watch it. I just watched it over the weekend. And when you were talking about the people with the paddles, I was picturing it. There's a scene from there that is hilarious. She ends up bidding $75,000 for this cat that she was actually the person that donated it.

Tracy: That's totally right on. So yes, decisions have consequences, especially bad decisions. And don't buy a $75,000 cat.

Jeff: Right. I'm a dog person. So anyway, all right, this has been awesome.

Tracy: It was nice meeting you guys.

Jeff: Thank you, Tracy. Thank you, Nikki. We're going to wrap up this episode of the Elevate Your Event Podcast. Until next time, happy fundraising, guys. If you enjoyed our show, please take a moment to leave us a review.