Putting Wellness First with David T Stevens - Not The Same As Last Year

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Putting Wellness First with David T Stevens

Episode 22 • 12th September 2024 • Not The Same As Last Year • Clare Forestier

welcome back to not the same as last

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year and I think it's time now to look at Wellness in events and of course I couldn't do an episode on this without

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speaking to possibly the fittest man in events David T Stevens has been working

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in corporate events for around 20 years and he was always a keen athlete Sportsman and indeed he won the CrossFit

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Fitness event Prof six times and as the co-founder of Olympia meeting and host

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of the return on Wellness podcast David has really made a name for himself in the last four years by integrating

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Wellness into B2B events he's so passionate about it it is now his full-time job so I started by asking him

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how his hobby came to merge with his career in events I've put all my eggs in

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the wellness basket at this point because I've seen how it impacts people so when I was still in corporate we were

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talking about this idea and uh we came back from the pandemic and we did our company kickoff and we didn't start

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until 9:30 or 10 every day we had workouts a variety of workouts run clubs

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gym opened early yoga mindfulness we had bright colorful healthy foods we had

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lots of breaks we had short sessions I think our latest night was 10 every

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night um we had 90 minute lunches 90minut breakfasts we did this and our

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net promoter score went from an 8.2 to a 99.4 h huge impact people just ate it up

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and that's when the light bulb came on I was like there's something to this because we got to treat people like

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humans again instead of this robotic up early get no sleep show up hung over

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feed people crap and and people are just different now I don't see this as a trend I see

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this as an evolution in the industry because I think attendees they aren't so anxious to go somewhere anymore they are

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calculating if going somewhere is worth the time away from their Comforts at home and I think that's very interesting

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that you saw this after covid what was the impetus to do that differ so I've

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always been a fan of like Fitness at meetings good food like I would always work out before an event and I would try

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to I I worked for a large gym conglomerate here in the states a while

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ago and that was just part of our culture like every meeting started with a workout in the morning you know there

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was semi-professional athlete bodybuilding people that worked for us things of that nature that I had to

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accommodate the menu for because they were living our brand so I had always been a fan of that I didn't really know

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the science behind it or why it was actually setting people up to learn more

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at the meetings but then when the pandemic happened I had my own

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experience with mental health and it just it brought a new level of awareness to me at that meeting we had some okay

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food it wasn't the best and we had some workouts so it was okay like we started

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it and I just did it I didn't really ask anyone I just said hey we're going to have workouts in the morning and they're

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like oh okay that's cool like who's going to say no are we still on budget yeah we're still on budget okay great um

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and that's all we did I don't want to say it was unintentional because obviously it take some intention to set

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that stuff up but it was because I wanted to do it and I knew that it was

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there were people that were going to enjoy it we need one person really pushing it I guess you need at least an

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event planner who cares about the attendee experience the thing is most event planners are going to say I care about the attendee experience of course

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they are but you get caught up in everything else that's happening and it ends up being the last thing you know

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I've mentioned you know sometimes where food appears in the agenda it can be much later than possibly we want but

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that's because a speaker can't speak till this time and so on and these decisions are made for budgetary reasons

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or fitting around speakers the last person who's been considered there is the attendee whereas if we are literally

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intentionally planning on their experience in everything we do from day one which is what I would want everybody

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to do then you can put all those lovely things in but a lot of what we're talking about here which to us feels

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like a no-brainer put it in there do it it's an add-on for other people isn't it

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that oh my God we've done nothing for wellness okay we've got um a mental health talk and we've got a yoga session

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tick done like everything else it becomes this tick book that that makes me wonder like what's the planning

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process like like are you even going through what your objective is for the event are you thinking about that at all

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is your objective to make your CEO happy or is your objective to train your team

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because if your objective is to train your team you need to build an event that supports their ability to learn and

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their ability to remember things and their ability to pay attention then you can build that

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framework that supports that objective instead of the other way around and just letting the executives dictate what they

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want to do and and the truth of the matter is I this probably isn't going to make me any friends or get me any more

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LinkedIn followers that's an EA that's an admin that is not an event professional an

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event professional is there to put the guard rails up and to protect the objectiv

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not just do whatever the executives want them to do I did a whole podcast on the objective because that's the point and

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it actually doesn't even matter what your objective is because your objective could be anything but ultimately your objective is that your attendee has a

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blem an amazing time and then they'll do whatever your objective was whatever you wanted them to do because they will feel

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good when they leave and they will I mean I came home from an event last week and I literally just walked in the door

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and lay on the floor for about 3 hours I was completely unable to speak I was so exhausted and I had not been a anything

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to do with the organization of that event I was just wiped out by the noise and the traveling and everything that

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and every night you were going out and then it was loud in the restaurants because there's millions of people from this event going out and it was so much

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and I'm an extrovert but I literally could not cope and I just thought wow if you were an introvert you'd have

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probably had to be hospitalized after that experience it was so much and that's kind of normal for those kind of

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events which is like a big large industry event how is that sustainable as a human being you just think never

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again but somehow like child birth you forget it and you go next year but you know that's that's the big thing is

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leaving attendees energized instead of exhausted um we talk about sustainability all the time that's

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another thing that Freeman says planners don't care about uh this whole Wellness thing is just people sustainability

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sustainability is people Planet profit the 3ps wellness is just the people portion of sustainability and I mean

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we're in the hospitality business we are supposed to be caring for people yet we run them into the ground with these

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agenders I know and we're really proud when we say it's jam-packed it's funny isn't it that's become like a a kind of badge of honor so you mentioned the

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Freeman thing what do you mean by that so Freeman put out a report and they basically said uh planners don't care

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about sustainability or Wellness when they're planning their events

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which it's not entirely untrue because yeah they probably don't because they're

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not thinking about it they're just running a million miles an hour and trying to keep up and especially with the way the market is right now I can I

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can see that perspective but the difference is the attendees do and I can't speak to anything that is

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contradicted the planet sustainability portion of it but I can tell you from

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another study from McKenzie and all the travel the the the tourism industry is

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talking about ecotourism and that people are trying to travel more sustainably but the wellness Market has put hit a

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1.8 trillion doll market cap that's massive so sure planners may not care

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but guess what your attendees do and if you want survey results that are in your favor if you want to be able to raise

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ticket prices to drive revenue and that's I mean that's why I call my podcast return on Wellness nobody gives

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a crap about Wellness if it doesn't impact the bottom line but if your attendees want it which clearly based on

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the open free market they do then if you're not giving it to them you're going to see it in your survey results

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if we took away the term they don't care because of course maybe they do care but they just it's has to go low down their list because they've got all this other

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terrifying stuff hitting them it's still the same meaning it's not happening for the attendee and it I mean I guess it

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could be proven if you show in your agenda for example we're going to start every day at 9:30 and we're going to

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have all these o Unity for you to do physical exercise beforehand or your time or you know like for example I'm

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I'm one going to one in London next week which we are near the water so it'll be we've put on an opportunity for you to

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do some Open Water swimming or we've done this or you've done that if you see that in the agenda when you're deciding

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whether this is the event you're going to go to as well as all the content and the great speakers and bl everything

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else you'll be like whoa I'm going to hit my my whatever goals that week I'm actually going to be able to do this

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this is actually going to not make take me out of most people who are on a healthy eating plan or or schedule will

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be like oh that week's going to be you know that's going to be the eat of that's my drop week I'm going to have to

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go back and fight it back when I get back in there again at home you kind of want to feel no I can live sustainably

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and well for myself and see all the stuff I need to do so it's a win-win

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definitely going to that event yeah I and I think one of the things that's missing that we're really trying to

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focus on is is the why behind all of this stuff like like when it comes to the workout in the morning there's a

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reason that I prefer to do a high-intensity workout in the morning because I have understood and learned

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what it actually does for my brains it's kind of like monkey brain level stuff in the sense of this is instinctual

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behavior of our of our bodies so we have our sympathetic and parasympathetic

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nervous systems our sympathetic nervous system is the fight ORF flight parasympathetic is our Baseline when you

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trigger your fight ORF flight mode or your sympathetic nervous system with a high-intensity

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workout your body and your brain is under stress and literally calculating

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am I going to die definely my workouts yeah once your heart rate gets to a certain point your body your sympathetic

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nervous system takes over what physiologically is happening is your

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hippocampus is fully lit up this brain derived neurotropic factor is dumping into your brain all these hormones

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because your body is saying what's going on am I in danger I need to learn from

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this experience so that I know if I'm going to die or not so I know how to deal with this when I come across it

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again right very simple stuff so when you do that before you go into

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sessions all that stuff all those all that those hormones and brain chemicals

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and everything else and that part of the brain that was lit up it lingers it doesn't just go away immediately it's

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there so when you go do this high-intensity workout before you do

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this really critical task that you're going to learn from you're primed to learn this study came out of this school

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in Indiana where they had kids work out uh work out with heart rate monitors and they worked out in certain target heart

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rate zones to engage that sympathetic nervous system their test scores went through the roof because they were

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benefiting from that residual after effect of all those hormones just getting dumped into their brains this is

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as planners we are stacking the deck for people to fill out incredible surveys by

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doing this for them so that's why I talk about a wellness first approach to

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events because when we take care of people inevitably they're going to learn more I find it so interesting like you

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know that the speakers turn up and go oh God I haven't got the this slot have I because they absolutely know that that's

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the slot when everybody's going to have had a long boring day sitting down very few breaks and then they're going to be

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the one before lunch and everybody's going to be like feed me now you're like we even know all this and yet we still

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don't apply it we just put some poor sod there and say go good luck with that we've put you there because you're the most energetic and it's like but we

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didn't need to do that we could have made them have a break beforehand and given them an outdoor space and even if we couldn't give them exercise at the

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beginning of the day we could do all these other little incremental things couldn't we yeah or actually that time

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of day is great for Corporate social responsibility or some type of community giveback so that day has a term it's

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called a post prand deal dip and it's a natural part of our circadian rhythm like an hour to two hours after lunch we

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you're good at tasks you're not great at receiving information so we would do like okrs or team building or stuff like

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that after lunch to fight off that dip and then go back into sessions there's all this science why are we doing things

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the same way we used to always do them why aren't we learning why aren't we getting this professional education when

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we're responsible for teaching people yet we're not teaching ourselves well

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you know this podcast is called not the same as last year so that's exactly it why AR we doing it the same as last year

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okay so I would like to do like a best case scenario if we had endless budget and time and we could really get this

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right what should we be doing if we were a planner who should we be talking to employing or where where could we start

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the best way for people's Wellness okay you don't need endless budget this is if you had endless budget then

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you can just uplevel things you could have like Olympic athletes come in and lead your workouts or whatever like some

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organizations do that's that's where you can spend your money if you really want but none of this stuff is expensive if

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you know how to do it um and we're doing everything we can to try to help teach people how to do it but so I have four

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things I talk about mindfulness movement meals and meaning start with meals meet with your Chef say I have this much

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money I don't want people to fall sleep after lunch um I want a high protein breakfast what can we make happen and

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just have the conversation chefs love new things they love the opportunity to

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be creative and if you give them the freedom they're usually happy about it um but I will say don't project your

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idea of Wellness onto the entire crowd you have to give people agency like if somebody wants a brownie or a cookie or

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um a biscuit they should be able to have that so offer agency off offer kind of yes and options whole fruit and Cake

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right um that's food make sure breakfast is high protein it's really shown to help with brain science in the morning

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uh and the other thing if you're going to if you're going to pick certain food items that are brain foods like blueberries or walnuts or salmon or that

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kind of thing um label the hell out of those things like explain why it's good

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for them because as people are going down the line and are making choices when you say oh walnuts have

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omega-3 fatty acids which support brain health they're like you'll see that you'll see when

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people have the education around it they take advantage of it well there's nothing more annoying than giving them the brain food and then go well they

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didn't eat the brain food they just went for the M&M because they didn't know it was brain food because you didn't tell them but if you're going to and that's

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where the intentionality comes right gender design is actually what I count as mindfulness sure you can have

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meditation but mindfulness is really thinking about the attendees experience read through your agenda and go would I

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want to go to this am I going to get enough sleep how long are the sessions when do they start how long are your

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breaks when does your party end can people actually even get eight hours of sleep if they go to everything you do

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think about your objective as to why you're going and build an agenda that supports your objective that's what I

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mean when it comes to mindfulness none of that costs anything there is zero dollars related to that that is just the

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time movement can get expensive if you let it there's little things you can do there's

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always people standing at the back of the room we know this we all know it put some St put some High boys back there by

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High boys I'm just thinking in a UK T you mean like high tables and the high stool yeah um I didn't even have stools

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I just had tables so that people could stand and lean on them or or put their L whatever but some people have low back

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pain and they can't sit for a long time so when they get up and they go to the back of the room

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they feel seen because there is a place for them you want to call me I can tell you how to do it um but like we had

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three classes a day and a run Club each day and we opened the gym early in Vegas

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and it cost us like $1,500 total body weight boot camp a yoga class a run Club

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our cro ran the Run Club um cuz he wanted to do the run club and come to the boot camp cuz he's

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him and like 1,500 bucks that was $500 a day

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if you can't find $500 a day like uh to to impact survey scores that's that's a

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no-brainer um the last one meaning uh we spent a good chunk of money on this we

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built prosthetic hands for third world countries and people who had um lived in countries they just didn't have access

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to them um but the entire cost was a write-off here in the States because it

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was tax deductible because we were donating essentially to a charity and we spent 2 hours right after lunch during

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people's post prand deal dip and we did a team building where people got together and they built these hands and

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they heard a story about where they were going and who they were going to impact and all these things and it gave

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everybody the feels and it helped people connect to something bigger than themselves giving people that sense of

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Pride that their time was well spent away from their family because they made an impact on someone else the survey

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results from that were through the roof and that can be in simple things I'm just thinking like a charity eye

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volunteer for at Christmas time or Easter time or in a particular festivy

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time you might make little bags or something and it's just time consuming but you could just say like we're going

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to little put an Easter eggs in this bag around this time and and you're telling them who they're doing it for who's

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going to see it at the other end but you can feeling I'm doing something valuable I stopped I'm doing something with my

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hands as opposed to just staring at a screen or at a person and you are getting this I've done something good

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for somebody today which you don't normally do in your average day-to-day like that and there's a whole thing called a helpers high like it's a real

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thing this is all driving that attendee experience so they feel like their time

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was well spent at the event and if you're going to do these kinds of things in your classes tell people this is an

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opportunity to educate people and that's that's a big thing that's missing that's a really interesting point you what everybody does want to come and be

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healthy and so if you just just made it obsessed with with Fitness and everybody's going to eat Walnuts and

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then people who turn up and want their bowl of Cheerios it's going to be very cross and as you say they're going to

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feel disenfranchised and you've taken away their freedoms we shouldn't be making one group of people work like one

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group of people and be like one group of people just because that's the norm it you've got to give everybody the opportunity I mean I find it interesting

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what you were saying about the gym because obviously you can't always affect that you can't let legislate for hotels to open their gyms early but it

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makes a huge difference when they do if you can talk to your your partners and your other suppliers and say can you do

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this I went to an event recently in Spain and the gym and hotels don't open till 9:00 a.m. which was crazy to me

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because that's when you're on site in the best one in the world you don't go to the gym at the end of the day after a

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big event day you're just too exhausted youve probably got half an hour in your room before you have to go to another

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event or an evening event so I was frustrated by that they're in the hospital hospitality industry they should be looking after their their

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guests better we we we need to make Hospitality events hospitable yeah we we

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were in Vegas and the gym wasn't scheduled to open until 8:00 a.m. and I knew we had a large European contingency

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coming to the West Coast they were going to be up at 4 probably cuz jet lag right I'm like what's it going to cost to open

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the gym 3 hours early and they're like we just need an attendant there for 3 extra hours and it was like 50 bucks an

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hour that's it and then those people then had access to the gym just it's one more thing that's

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a easy lift just by having that conversation it makes people feel seen it makes them feel included and it's all

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part of that you are trying to make everybody have a good time at your event not just push everybody in One Direction

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and that's the way you've got to go and that's the way we've always done it we now need to start looking at people as individuals as human beings who have

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their own agenda and agency in life and we shouldn't be making them when they come to our event well this is the way

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it's going to be kind of like school so many events feel like you're still in school that you're being lectured at

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you're fitting to this timetable you got to do it our way on on tough luck and I just feel that's so oldfashioned as you

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say we know so much more about the science about the way brains work about what makes people feel good it just

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seems nuts that we're not doing it in events to a much greater degree especially adult Learners are not as

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effective Learners as kids so why aren't we stacking the deck in our favor yeah

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and at the end of the day if our objective is to get better scores and people to come back to our events next year it makes no sense if you're getting

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some kind of push back from senior Executives within the organization who maybe traditionally have liked this idea

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of a busy agender and everybody lets loose in the evening in the bar and they feel that you are maybe going a little

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bit too I don't know modern and woke with your attempts to to bring in some

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welfare some some opportunities to work out some opportunities to be healthy how do you

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push back I'll share this which I shared with with my Executives that help them understand because Executives always

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think what they have to say is the most important thing on the planet regardless of if it is or not and they're like I

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need an hour I need 90 minutes I need whatever people still binge watch shows on Netflix and and streaming and whatnot

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but TV shows are structured in a certain way to hold the attention span very intentionally so if somebody says they

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need this much time relate them to that and say okay if you really need 60 minutes let's break that up let's figure

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out where we take those breaks and what things are going to happen in those 20

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minutes to keep people's attention because human attention spans have

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changed the Transportation safety agency uh the TSA the PE the airport screeners

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they've done all kinds of studies on how long someone can focus on a task that's why they rotate every few minutes and

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that window is between 15 and 30 minutes ideally every 15 minutes so people stay

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sharp at the longest 30 minutes but no longer than 30 minutes so if you equate

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those two examples to your Executives and say this is the psychology behind

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this this is Real Deal billions of dollars have been spent on these studies

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so if you really need 60 minutes let's figure out how to break it up so that we can ensure that content lands with

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people and they don't forget 60% of what you're talking about I do feel what we've done though

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is in a way is we've thrown the baby out of the bath water with that in the sense that people now go okay I get it all my

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sessions have to be short yeah we got it but then they don't have to be it's how you do the session you can have an hour

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as you said with your fabulous speaker but you just can't have it with him downloading a lecture at everybody and a

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gazillion slide and actually I feel like sometimes I talk to speakers and they're like a little bit annoyed they're like

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like well I I'm an amazing speaker and I've been given 20 minutes it's a hell of a long way to fly for 20 minutes and

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so you feel like that seems to be the one thing that everyone has taken away from this brain friendly event

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conversations that we've been having for the last sort of two years shorter sessions tick done I'm I'm modern and

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it's like no you can still be long you've just got to do your sessions in a way that helps people learn and enjoy

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for the entire session not just the first 20 minutes yeah then content is a

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whole another discussion how people learn the four main ways people learn etc etc etc and checking all those boxes

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and yes if you're paying 25,000 for a keynote speaker I would just flat out I'd use chat GPT ask it

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what are the four primary PE ways that people learn and then I would say okay you're you're booked for an hour We're

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we'll let you have an hour but please tell me how you present across all four of these things so that they then are

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prepared to ensure that your audience is fully engaged for the duration of that

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hour if if you're going to go that route like there's nothing wrong with it people can pay attention for an hour

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like look at movies movies are still 90 minutes 2 hours they're getting longer

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but they break things up and their timing is there and there's different scenes and there's cutaways and all

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these different things that engage different parts of the mind so I'm not saying that you have to present that way

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but if it's a lecture keep it short sure and then Workshop or whatever

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else it is that does it the other thing is so another example I'll use is our

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number one sales rep at the previous company he came to me because this event happened to be in Vegas that I've

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referred to a few times he came to me and said hey what's what's the deal with the 10 a.m. start time and I'm like what

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do you mean he's like we're not starting at 8 he goes I'll just usually just I don't have to go to the Keynotes because

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I'll sleep through it and I was like yeah you have you have to come to the Keynotes and he goes oh so I guess I can

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party and come to the Keynotes and I was like I mean I'm not going to agree with

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you but theoretically yes and this the second day he came to me he's like this

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is great he goes I was out till midnight 1:00 a.m. I still got a full night's sleep I had breakfast I even got some of

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my emails done not everyone wants to work out I get that but what you're doing is giving people the opportunities

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to make their own choices and to experience that event the way they want to experience it so sure there might be

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an executive who's like well we' always done it this way we should do it this way blah blah blah and you can bring the science to them um but it's really just

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about choices when you put optional on the agenda you give people permission

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expressed permission to not go I mean in The Grand scheme of things the whole

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thing is optional especially if you buy a ticket but when it's an internal meeting and you put optional on

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something the people who aren't into that the introvert whose battery is low the extrovert whose battery is low

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anybody who just is like I'm not in the mood to deal with that they can go home with peace in their heart because they

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know it's optional it's the whole fomo is great to get them there but you don't want them to be

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feeling fomo and anxious and overe exhausted all the way through give them

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Jomo it's the joy of missing out and will I do that more and more the older I get everybody was sharing pictures

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weren't they of seeing the northern lights bizarrely in in in my hometown you could see and I was like oh yeah I

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know but then I when I went to bed on the Saturday night knowing that they were probably going to appear again I was like I don't care I'm really glad

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I'm going to bed that's Joo isn't it absolutely and when you give people that

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permission they love it it makes them happy it makes them feel seen a huge thanks to David for talking to us so

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openly and sharing so much I love his passion for wellness and how he's all

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about putting the attendees health and well-being first at events and of course being able to show how great it is for

29:44

business it's just the ideal icing on the cake to learn more from David and what he talks about I highly suggest you

29:50

check out his podcast return on wellness and also connect with him at LinkedIn at

29:56

davidt Stevens thank you