Gold Nuggets
- “Sometimes when you’re young and in business, you’re a bit naïve to the whole process of starting up a business and how difficult it is to win customers.”
- “Try to recognize your strengths, and play on your strengths. If you know you don’t do something well, then get someone else to do that, and you focus on what you do well.”
- “Sometimes things don’t go according to the way you plan, so you need to be able to adapt, move, and pivot.”
- “Those entrepreneurs that experience success recognize that you must play the long game. There are times when you do have to change – you do have to survive and pay the bills, but you can never lose sight of playing the long game.”
- “As we’re still going through this terrible Covid period, we just have to remain strong, keep the big vision that we have in our heads, take small steps each day towards that, and don’t get disheartened too quickly because there are some exciting things coming out of Covid. We just have to embrace it and keep trying.”
- “After every winter comes spring.” – Jim Rohn
- “The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.” – John F. Kennedy
Meet Nicole Santer
Our guest is Nicole Santer, Founder of EventBuzz360. Since 1998, she has built up an impressive portfolio, having worked with many large companies such as Amazon and LinkedIn. EventBuzz360 has become known as the world’s most powerful search engine for the events industry and, especially during the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic, Nicole hopes to expand it to serve as a platform to connect businesses and individuals in the industry.
Smart Man, Smarter Woman References
We talk about a lot in each episode; however, we don’t want you to miss a thing! Here are some key items were mentioned if you want to take a closer look.
Website Recommendations:
https://www.eventbuzz360.com
Book Recommendation:
Catch of the Decade, by Gabby and Hezi Leibovich
Stay Connected:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eventbuzz360
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EventBuzz360
Twitter: https://twitter.com/EventBuzz360
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicole-santer-%E2%98%85%E2%98%85-23031b16/
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com.au/eventbuzz360
Learn more about our Cloud Accounting Services here
Transcript
Steve Loates (00:00):
Hi everyone. And welcome to our podcast, Smart Man, Smarter Woman, a podcast for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs. And thank you very much for joining us today. I am Steve Loates.
Juliet Aurora (00:15):
And I am Juliet Aurora.
Steve Loates (00:17):
And we are your co-hosts. Now, before I introduce today’s guest, let’s hear a few words from my wonderful co-host herself, the smarter woman. How are you doing today, Juliet?
Juliet Aurora (00:29):
I am excellent. Thank you. It’s actually going to be kind of an interesting podcast. It may be interesting for our audience as well because our dog is walking around the room and I can hear the footsteps. So who knows whether or not you’ll be able to hear it in the background. He seems to be settling down, but who knows? But I think it’s going to be an interesting conversation with our guest who is actually, I’m very jealous is heading into the summer months as we’re heading into the winter months. So I would much rather be where you are. So I’m not going to give it away. I’m going to let Steve do the introduction, but I’m very jealous of our guest right now.
Steve Loates (01:09):
Okay. So if all of a sudden in the middle of our podcast, you have to jump up and run outside. It’s a dog emergency. Is that what we’re going to go with?
Juliet Aurora (01:19):
Or if you hear barking. You got to go with the flow, right?
Steve Loates (01:23):
So that’s just sound effects, right?
Juliet Aurora (01:25):
Yes. Absolutely. Ambiance.
Steve Loates (01:26):
Okay. That’s great. Anyway, let’s get to the matter at hand. As you all know, our regular listeners, our goal with each episode is to provide you with some entertainment. Most importantly, some value, some insights, gold nugget, or two to help you on your own journey. And today we have a great show for you with our special guest, Nicole Santer. She is the mastermind behind something called EventBuzz360, which we’re going to get into. And she also has 20 years of events and marketing experience working with a number of blue chip companies, which you’ve certainly heard of, companies like LinkedIn and Amazon. And I’m sure this year with what’s going on in the world, that the area of event planning has just been very straightforward. I’m sure there is, you haven’t had to make any changes to the way you normally do things. So let’s bring our guest into the show. Welcome Nicole. And thank you for joining us all the way from Sydney, Australia.
Nicole Santer (02:32):
Thanks, Steve. And thanks Juliet. Thanks so much for having me on your show. I’m delighted to be here. And yes, I’m in Sydney, very close to Bondi Beach, which I think people will know as a landmark place to see. And yes, we’re heading into summer as you quite rightfully said, and you’re heading into winter.
Steve Loates (02:53):
Yes, yes. We don’t like to think about that though, Nicole. We try to block that out completely, but thanks for bringing that out anyway. Really looking forward to our conversation today. Like I say, I’m sure the past few months have been very challenging for those in your field, but maybe before we get into that, and we get into talking about EventBuzz360 a little bit. Could you maybe just take a few minutes and just share a little bit about your own story, your own entrepreneurial journey and what brought you to where you are today?
Nicole Santer (03:26):
So my entrepreneurial journey kind of started as a very newborn baby, to be quite honest. I know that sounds really strange, but my parents and my grandparents were all entrepreneurs and had, they’re in the catering business. So my grandfather was a huge entrepreneur and he would actually, I suppose it must have been in the ’30s or even earlier than that, he would get on a boat and go all the way to America from Australia, which would take six weeks. And he would come up with some cool ideas from what people are doing in America and bring them back to Australia.
Nicole Santer (04:03):
And so he was in the catering and he did weddings and events from a very young age. And he, I think he had cake shop businesses and all sorts of many, many food businesses. And my parents before I was born, kind of went into the catering game with him. And I think when I was born, my mother gave birth and I think I ended up on the kitchen floor in a bassinet, so I was very much around the entrepreneurial journey from a very, very young age.
Steve Loates (04:34):
Absolutely.
Juliet Aurora (04:35):
And picking things up by osmosis, I’m sure.
Nicole Santer (04:37):
Oh, totally. I mean, I remember hearing my father tell stories when he was doing a wedding and my younger brother was born and he said, he put the apple strudels in the oven, then to go off to the hospital to see my mother and my newborn brother. And he didn’t realize at the time, because he was so excited about the fact that he had had a son because I’ve got an older sister. So it was the first son and he was so excited and he’d put the apple strudels in the oven on wooden trays. And so everything burnt. And he’d gone off to the hospital. They had fires in the kitchen and they’re going another speech, another speech, another speech, which kind of lends me to the events industry.
Nicole Santer (05:20):
It’s very much let’s put out the fires and make things happen and make things right. Planning takes a lot of work. It’s the same as being an entrepreneur. It takes a lot of work. It takes a lot of energy and planning. So I didn’t initially go into the events industry out of school. It wasn’t something that I actually had any interest in. I knew that I just didn’t want to be in catering. I knew that I didn’t want to be in food. It wasn’t where I wanted to be, but I knew that I wanted to be an entrepreneur and I knew that I wanted to do something, but I just didn’t know what that was.
Nicole Santer (05:56):
So my mother said to me, you need to go and get some some credentials behind you because I wasn’t planning to go to university. So I went and did a business and secretarial course and went into a completely different area. I went into banking and finance, foreign exchange, which was completely different to being creative and being in the events industry, so different, but I liked it. I thought it was great. I was dressed up and I felt that I was being a professional in the professional industry. And I thought that was where I was kind of going to go. But I always had managers who sort of always recognized the entrepreneurial spirit in me.
Nicole Santer (06:38):
And I went overseas for a year, traveled and visited London, went to Canada. Saw some of the beautiful sites in Toronto and around the areas, which is a beautiful, beautiful country, that’s for sure. And I came back and I thought, you know what? I actually will go into the catering business with my family. It was, I thought I could grow it. I could grow this into a massive business. And I went back into the business to do that. But then my parents and myself, we had completely different visions. They were getting older and I was coming in as the next generation. And we sort of were not kind of at the same place at the same time, which sometimes happens with family businesses.
Nicole Santer (07:25):
So I decided that, I was still in the business and I had my first son, I’ve got two boys and I had my first son and after giving birth to him and I decided to leave my family business. And I thought I would go into events. I heard about doing events. And one of my cousins said, she’s working for a big company and she did an event recently and I thought, Ooh, I could do an event. That’s something I could do. So I think when you’re in business and you’re young and you’re in business, sometimes you’re a little bit kind of naive to the whole process of starting up a business and how difficult it is to win customers. You have this perception in your head that, I’ll just launch it and the customers will come as you do.
Nicole Santer (08:16):
And so I just literally decided that I’m going to start up this events company and I didn’t have any clients. And I thought, okay, well, I’ll just go out and get some clients I’ll pick up the phone and get some clients. And I did do that. I think the hustle of picking up the phone and getting your first customer is the most exciting thing. And when you get that first customer, Oh my God, you are so excited. You just it’s like, Oh my God, it’s the most amazing experience, that first customer, that first win. And it wasn’t long actually, before I actually did win that first customer. I won an event for Women in Business and it was an awards night for 400 people. So it wasn’t a small, I didn’t start out with doing a small event for 50 people where you’d think that would be the place that you’d start. But I think big and I think big from the very beginning, and I find it very hard to think when I think of the business, make it, breaking it down to the small components.
Nicole Santer (09:21):
So anyway, so here I am, I’ve won this amazing entrepreneurs awards night. I’m so excited. And then I’m thinking, okay, now I’ve got to start organizing this event. I’ve got to find suppliers, I’ve got to find, how do I put this whole of it together? And we didn’t have registration platforms like we’ve got now, we didn’t have the technology that we’ve got today. We don’t have resources like we’ve got today. So it was a little bit kind of like the old Yellow Pages kind of how do I find great suppliers and how do I know that they’re going to be good? So there was all these things kind of going through my head. And then I thought, Oh my God, this whole process of organizing an event is not an easy thing to put together.
Nicole Santer (10:06):
So I turned to my husband, who’s a management consultant. I said to him, “How am I going to put this event together?” And he said to me, “Oh, that’s a good question. Let’s develop this events methodology.” So 20 years ago, here I am developing this events methodology, which I have used for 20 years, which is a process that I go through for organizing events. And it has saved me in a really good lot for 20 years. And we’ve now made that into an online course because it’s so complicated. And what people are learning at universities is not necessarily how to actually put an event together. They’re learning a lot of the materials around events, but they’re not learning how to do it. So they still don’t actually know how to do that process.
Nicole Santer (10:52):
So I actually have put that into an online course and it takes you through a process and it’s got all the tools and templates that you actually need because that’s half the battle is developing that project plan. When you develop an event, the amount of things that have to go into a project plan so that you can stay on track is phenomenal. And I didn’t in the beginning, I didn’t really have any creative that I could show people and events that I had done because I hadn’t done any. So I ended up taking my events methodology to clients meetings and they go, Oh, I’ve never heard of project planning before. It was always creative.
Nicole Santer (11:32):
So here I am with project planning tools and templates that I’m taking to my meetings and one work through that. And I think you just have to sometimes kind of play to your strengths. And I think at the time, my strengths was not necessarily the event design, the flower arrangements. I was not the flowers that would come in and do the flower arrangement. It was more the strategic and the planning behind it.
Steve Loates (11:57):
Yeah. I think that’s a great lesson there too, right, for entrepreneurs is to try to recognize your strength and play on your strengths. Not if you know you don’t do something well, then get someone else to do that and you focus on what you do well.
Nicole Santer (12:20):
Yeah, 100%. I mean, some people are really good at the ideas, but they’re not good at the sales. So they need to hire someone to do the sales side of things or whether they’re really, you have to work out what your strengths are in the business and then kind of go from there. So it sort of, sort of started off a bit like that. And it was a bit sort of like, let’s get it out there and see what kind of happens. And we went through one step forward and you’re going great and you’re winning some clients and you go fantastic. But then you’ve got to do the work. So then you stop with the marketing and you’ve got to do the work. And it was a bit like that in the beginning. And then over time you start to build a reputation and which is what we ended up doing.
Nicole Santer (13:05):
And after a 20-year career in events, it was great. We did a lot of amazing events for a lot of clients, but the events industry has a lot of things that do go wrong. We were talking about technology. We had a bit of technology and sound problems before we started in the events industry. And it’s very much the same in business. Things don’t go according to the way you plan. And so you need to be able to adapt and move and pivot. And it’s the same when you’re putting on an event. Sometimes you might find that the audiovisual is not working or the sound’s not working, the mics are not working or whatever might happen, or you might end up with a blackout. You need to be able to change it up and make it great experience for the people as well.
Steve Loates (13:53):
Absolutely. Well, I mean, if you’ve had a 20-year run, you’ve obviously done a lot of things right. Very, very few businesses stay in business for that period of time. But I mean, I have to ask the obvious question. With what is going on in the world right now, I have to think that the event planning industry as much as any industry has certainly taken a hit, has had to pivot, has had to be extremely creative. Can you maybe share a little bit of perhaps some of the things you’ve had to do differently, how you’ve maybe had to think a little differently over these last six months or so because of COVID?
Nicole Santer (14:41):
Yeah, well, absolutely. COVID has certainly disrupted the world as we have known it all over the place, from all the way from Canada all the to Australia and any of everything in between. So, yeah. So just to give you a little bit of perspective of the events industry, in the events industry, we organized 30,000 business and private events a day around the world. So it’s a huge industry. It’s a $1.1 trillion industry, and it’s a creative industry. It’s made up of a lot of small businesses and a lot of small businesses is certainly hurting through this COVID period. It’s probably been one of the biggest disruptors because everything from your birthday party to your engagement, to your wedding, to your celebrated product launch or whatever it might be right through to major conferences and exhibitions have been affected. Tourism, travel, accommodation, a hotel industry, everything has been affected greatly and all over the world.
Nicole Santer (15:47):
And the events industry is made up of a lot of small business owners. Okay. It’s made up of thousands of small business owners. So we have seen huge amount of disruption. We have seen caterers who have initially in the very early stages of COVID, caters who’ve had to quickly pivot and who has decided to quickly, instead of catering for major events, they’ve decided to cater for the workers, the people who are behind the scenes, the hospitals, the doctors, and make sure that they’re being fed, the people on the front line. And so they were quickly pivoting and putting food in boxes and opening up like food stores everywhere so that they could make sure that they were getting fed because all of a sudden, everyone went into a bit of chaos. So some great caterers had kind of really quickly pivoted and done that.
Nicole Santer (16:38):
And we all clap our hands and thank them for that because it was a lot of them did it without funding. They just did it. And we’ve seen a lot of caterers and restaurateurs who quickly have pivoted to, we’re going to deliver to your home. Don’t worry about it. You can’t come out. We’re going to make it, bring it to you. We’ve seen beverage companies who have now packaged up going, we’ll start making a small beverage drinks and we’ll send them to you and you can make cocktails at home. Top chefs who have been cooking, they’re going to say, you know what, I’m going to do a cooking demonstration online into your homes. So we’ve had to rethink the events industry globally, and we’ve gone, everyone’s jumped on Zoom for Zoom meetings to Zoom conferences, and we’ve seen a huge amount of technology has come out of the events industry.
Nicole Santer (17:31):
We’ve seen exhibition halls that are completely in a virtual world. So you create an avatar and you walked through an exhibition hall and you can actually have one-on-one meetings with people. And we’ve seen so many different technologies and companies pivot through this. We’ve seen a lot of AV companies, audiovisual companies build studios so that people can actually come in interview and interview speakers, entertainers, and the likes. So we’ve seen a lot of people pivoting. And I think we’re in for very exciting times. I know that people are hurting and sometimes you have to take a moment to think, you know what, not where the next dollar’s coming from, but what’s the future going to have? How are we all going to come out of this strong?
Nicole Santer (18:25):
I mean, I’m earning no money at the moment and I’m upfront with you. And I know that I’m hurting. There’s no question about it. And I know that there’s a lot of people who are hurting and we’re digging into our savings and we’re relying on whatever we’ve got, but does that mean you should pivot and change careers? Well sometimes, but sometimes it means like, hold on, get lean, and try and look for ways that you can kind of make good out of it. We’ve seen the fashion industry completely pivot and making masks for everyone and making them fashionable. So we’ve all had to do it all over. So what can you do? And how can we change that?
Steve Loates (19:15):
Yeah. And you know, it’s interesting. Sorry, Juliet. I just, this has been the theme I think throughout most episodes of our podcast is that those entrepreneurs that experienced success recognize you must play the long game, right. That you must. And like you say, there are times when you do need to pivot, you do have to change because you do have to survive. You do have to pay the bills, but you can never lose sight of playing the long game and thinking down the road, what are the opportunities going to be? And am I going to be ready for those opportunities when they come? Because they will come.
Nicole Santer (20:01):
Yeah.
Steve Loates (20:01):
Sorry, Juliet.
Juliet Aurora (20:02):
Absolutely. And one of the things I wanted to talk about, which kind of builds on what you’ve said, Nicole, is how event businesses have had to change. So I don’t know if in Australia you have something called escape rooms for corporate events? So those are tactile. You go into a place with a whole bunch of strangers and you’re touching different things that someone else has touched. So today, our team leader arranged for our team. And again, this is a business that is suffering because they can’t do physical escape rooms. And so they built this entire virtual escape room world through Zoom, through breakout rooms. He divided us into teams and then put us in breakout rooms and would bring us back together to have discussions and then send us off to crack the code with our teams.
Juliet Aurora (20:55):
And it was as we were going through this experience and we’ve done the physical brick escape room with our team, we’re saying to ourselves, this is brilliant. Like why, for them to be able to change their entire business model and offer this. And I wonder, and maybe you’re able to answer this relative to your industry, with so many businesses like restaurants and caterers and event planners having to come up with new and different ways of doing things, how many of these new and different ways do you think will stick on the other side? Because they are innovative once you are actually being able to be able to have an event in person, how many people are still going to want to do the virtual and will it still be in offering?
Nicole Santer (21:40):
You know, that’s a very interesting question, Juliet, because I think all of these organizations are coming up with amazing things like that and pivoting like that. And now that you can do this in your home, now that virtual escape room can now do that on a global front. So they don’t have to do it just in Canada. They’ve actually opened the door for themselves to say, you know what, we can do this anywhere. We can actually have people and a lot of corporates have got offices in Sydney, offices in London, offices in America, offices in Canada, offices in China. They can now do this on a global footing, and that’s what’s so exciting.
Nicole Santer (22:20):
And so that’s why we have developed EventBuzz360 as a global platform, not just a local Sydney, Australia-based platform, it’s global. So people can find amazing activities like that on EventBuzz360, where we hope is what that they can find on EventBuzz360. Maybe you can go back to that company and let them know about our platform because that’s an amazing opportunity and it brings unity. It brings, I’m hoping that out of this, that people have come up with these amazing initiatives that they’ve worked on because of a need, but I’m hoping that going forward, we won’t just scrap them and go, you know what? We don’t want to do anything online. I think going forward, and we are really playing at the space of the corporate events more than the private and wedding market.
Nicole Santer (23:09):
And I think that all these amazing initiatives are so exciting to me. Like I get like, it’s like a party box for me. Like I think, Oh my God, that’s amazing. I just want to shout it to the world. And I feel that the world is coming closer because of this COVID. We’re supporting each other. At one point, we’d be going, you know what? You’re in competition with me. I don’t want to know you. To saying, you know what, you’re in competition to make. I’m going to pick up the phone and say hello to you. I’m not going to pretend that you don’t exist. I’m going to say, you know what, we’re all in this together. How can we all each other and embrace this opportunity that we’ve all got instead of saying, Oh my God, Oh my God. We can always look at the downside and look at the, Oh, Oh, Oh, or we can look at the upside going, how can I leverage from this experience? How can I make good with this?
Nicole Santer (24:04):
And through EventBuzz360, that’s why we’ve launched it right in the middle of COVID. Every event company is going, Oh, holy cow. I don’t know what to do. And we decided, you know what, we’ve launched a free platform everyone to get on. We’re not restricting it. We just want to make sure that there are legitimate company. And if they’re a legitimate company, we want them to be on and it’s free and we want to build it as a community. Okay? And we’re also because of COVID is we’re bringing jobs. Thousands upon about tens of thousands of people in the events industry have lost their jobs, whether they’re working for an events company or whether they are working in-house corporate as an event coordinator or events manager, they’ve lost jobs. Waiters, chefs, cook, kitchen hands, AV crew, they’ve all lost their jobs, activation people, so freelancers. We want them to be able to find work quickly.
Nicole Santer (25:02):
So through EventBuzz360, we’re launching a global jobs platform as well, so that people will actually be able to go on and put up their profile and it will instantly match. So if an employer wants to find some work for like a fill a role rather, they can go on there and put in their details what they’re looking for. And it will instantly match with people in the location that they’re looking for that are available at the time that they’re looking. And I think we’ll be able to do that in Canada as well, which will be fantastic. And that should be early next year sometime. So that should be hopefully at a good time for people coming out of COVID hopefully. They’re already coming up with-
Juliet Aurora (25:45):
Yeah. Excellent. And a perfect example of changing.
Nicole Santer (25:49):
Yes.
Juliet Aurora (25:49):
Changing what it is that you focus on and what it is that you have to do, which really is the heart of the entrepreneurial spirit. It certainly is.
Nicole Santer (25:57):
And look that wasn’t on our cards to be quite honest, we weren’t looking to build a jobs platform. We were, but it was very much, probably a few years away, but because of COVID, we’ve decided that it’s important for us to help the industry and support the industry getting back. Because I feel that every business is going to kind of take off like a rocket after COVID. We need the human interaction, we need the face-to-face interaction. And I think that people are going to want to do product launches that they’ve held off on. They’re going to want to be able to come and try it on, whatever it is the product that they’re launching, whether it be cosmetics or whether it be a new car or a new whatever. People want to do face-to-face, people want to go to conferences and they want to be face to face. They want to build community and they want to build relationships.
Nicole Santer (26:49):
And whilst the technology is great to try and build relationships through the internet, and I think that that’s going to continue. So I think we’re going to see a very much a bigger hybrid. So I think… And people like Adobe have done that very well. They’ve actually done conferences in a location and they’ve also opened it up and streamed it through the internet. And they’ve been doing that for years and people who can’t travel, they can still watch it through the internet and stuff like that. And so I think we’re going to see a lot more of that going forward.
Juliet Aurora (27:24):
Excellent.
Steve Loates (27:25):
Yeah. Yeah. I’m actually, next week is Adobe MAX, right? And it’s a three-day virtual and I forget how many sessions they were doing, but it’s crazy. It’s like 300 workshops or it was a crazy number they were doing. And I thought, you’re doing this all virtually and they’re doing it like from 7:00 AM in the morning to 11:00 PM at night to accommodate people in different time zones around the world. And I thought, what a brilliant, brilliant idea that is. Like you say, everyone is being forced to be more creative because we’re dealing with challenges we’ve never had to deal with before. So.
Nicole Santer (28:11):
And that’s not bad for the people-
Juliet Aurora (28:13):
You know, actually… Sorry.
Nicole Santer (28:13):
… So that’s not bad for people in business to think, Oh my God, we’re going through COVID. Oh my God, everything’s… People just launched businesses before COVID came out because people launch businesses every single day of the year. So you’ve just launched a business right before COVID and, or in the middle of COVID or whatever, like me and things aren’t kind of working out, you’ve got to, as an entrepreneur, you’ve got to think quickly. You’ve got to think, okay, what do I need to do to pivot or change or not? And I think that that’s something that as an entrepreneur, you need to be able to always think about. And the successful entrepreneurs do. They think, okay, this is working or not working, or we’re trialing this and seeing how it works. And if it’s not working, you have to quickly pivot and move quickly. And that’s what being an entrepreneur is all about, you know?
Steve Loates (29:04):
Absolutely.
Juliet Aurora (29:04):
Definitely. And so Steve, before you start your questions, just to point out, so you have said that next week is Adobe MAX. By the time our audience hears the podcast, it will actually be Adobe MAX was several weeks back.
Steve Loates (29:19):
Yes.
Nicole Santer (29:19):
But Adobe has been going on for years.
Steve Loates (29:25):
Yeah, that’s a really good point. Yeah. That’s a very good point, Juliet. I sometimes forget that, but thank you. And that I’ll also, we’ll make sure that we have EventBuzz360 the website in the show notes so that make it easy for people find it. But that brings us to our point in the show where we ask each one of our guests, six questions. It’s the same questions we ask every guest. And we enjoy this part of the show. And I also think our guests do too. So if you are ready, Nicole, let’s get started.
Nicole Santer (30:02):
Cool.
Steve Loates (30:03):
First question. What one word best defines an entrepreneur?
Nicole Santer (30:10):
Persistence.
Steve Loates (30:11):
Okay. What profession, other than your own, would you like to attend?
Nicole Santer (30:18):
Probably interior decorating.
Steve Loates (30:19):
Okay. What profession would you like never to attempt?
Nicole Santer (30:28):
Accounting.
Steve Loates (30:33):
What sound or noise do you love?
Nicole Santer (30:40):
Piano?
Steve Loates (30:42):
Okay. Absolutely. What book would you recommend every entrepreneur should read?
Nicole Santer (30:50):
Okay. That’s a good question. In fact, the founders of Catch of the Day, Catch, do you have Catch in Canada? Catch.com.au, Gabby Leibovich?
Juliet Aurora (31:04):
No.
Steve Loates (31:04):
Don’t think so.
Nicole Santer (31:04):
He’s just, well, it’s been a very successful business here in Australia, and he’s just launched a book which is coming out in November, Catch of the Decade. And I would highly recommend every entrepreneur read that. It’s something that I’ve certainly am purchasing. And I haven’t read it myself because it hasn’t come out yet, but Gabby is very much, Gabby and Hezi are very successful entrepreneurs in Australia and I would highly recommend the book.
Steve Loates (31:33):
Perfect.
Juliet Aurora (31:34):
Excellent.
Steve Loates (31:35):
When your own entrepreneurial journey is completed, what do you hope your legacy is?
Nicole Santer (31:42):
I hope to be remembered as somebody that has been able to contribute a lot to the events industry globally. And I hope that there’s a legacy that I’m able to leave behind and pass on good knowledge to the next generation.
Steve Loates (31:58):
Awesome. Awesome. And if people want to connect with you, what is the easiest way for them to do that?
Nicole Santer (32:06):
Through LinkedIn is probably the best. I always answer most people on LinkedIn. I try to answer everybody. So I’d love people to connect with me on LinkedIn.
Steve Loates (32:17):
Okay, perfect. Okay. And then I will get the correct spelling of the name. It is N-I-C-O-L-E. And the last name is S-A-N-T-E-R.
Nicole Santer (32:29):
Yeah.
Steve Loates (32:29):
Okay. Now, before we conclude our episode, do you have any final thoughts you would like to share with our audience of entrepreneurs?
Nicole Santer (32:37):
Look, I think, as we’re still going through this terrible COVID period, I think that we just have to always sort of remain strong, keep the big vision that we have in our heads and just take small steps each day towards that. And don’t get disheartened too quickly because I think that there’s some exciting things coming out of COVID. And I think that we just have to embrace it and just keep trying and just go forward and just keep trying every single day. And I think that if you’ve got a big enough vision and a big enough why you want to do it, I think you’ll get there.
Steve Loates (33:16):
Well, and as most people who know me know I’m a big fan of Jim Rohn. And one of the things Jim Rohn talks about is the four seasons. And after every winter comes spring.
Nicole Santer (33:29):
100%.
Steve Loates (33:29):
And it’s certainly appropriate right now. Anything you’d like to add, Juliet, before we close out?
Juliet Aurora (33:38):
I really enjoyed our conversation. I mean, I didn’t have a lot to say. I was doing a lot of listening, but I thought that you and the attitude that you’ve come forth with and the advice that you’ve given really does demonstrate how resilient of a business owner you are in an industry that is probably one of the most impacted over the last six months. So I just want to commend you for what you’re doing in terms of your industry and what you’re trying to do for everybody in the industry.
Nicole Santer (34:08):
Thanks Juliet. And thanks both of you for having me on your show. I’ve really enjoyed our conversation. I think I’ve done all the talking but…
Steve Loates (34:19):
You’re the guest, you’re supposed to do most of the talking. That’s how it works. And thank you. Yeah, you’ve been a great guest. We really enjoyed it. That brings me to my Smart Man, Smarter Woman words of wisdom. And I was really torn this week. There was two or three quotes that I really liked that I felt would fit. But I think I’m going to go with one from John F. Kennedy, I believe who said, “The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.”
Juliet Aurora (34:50):
Very true.
Nicole Santer (34:50):
That’s beautiful.
Steve Loates (34:53):
I liked that one. So thank you to our guests once again. Thank you, Nicole. Thank you to my awesome co-host. Most importantly, thank you to you, our audience for tuning in and giving us a listen. We sincerely hope you found some value here today. If you did, please subscribe. You can find us in all the normal places, iTunes, Spotify, Google, or you can visit the website, smartmansmarterwoman.com. And thank you again. Until next time, take good care of yourself and those that you love. Bye for now.
Song by Adam Vitovsky / CC BY 3.0
