Most event teams are not badly run. They are badly wired. Three teams doing the same job in three different directions, and the event ROI conversation never actually happens because nobody owns it.
This episode runs a live diagnostic on that wiring. Ten real decisions event teams make every week, sorted in real time into executor thinking or executive thinking, with a guest who has walked into fractured global event organizations and rebuilt them from the inside. One of her calls is going to annoy you. She is also right about it.
In this one:
Run your own week through ten real scenarios and see which side of the executor and executive line you are actually operating on
Stop carrying a contingency line you have not questioned in five years, and know exactly what to interrogate instead
Learn what executives actually want from registration pacing, which is not the registration number and not the segment breakdown
Understand why a lead that sits longer than 24 hours loses roughly a third of its conversion rate, and what that does to the marketing and sales blame cycle
Hear what happens when your production partner walks six weeks before a 2,000-person sales kickoff, and why "vendor" versus "partner" is a budget decision, not a vocabulary preference
If you are walking into budget season with a number you cannot defend, this is the one to start with. The diagnostic takes ten minutes and it will tell you something uncomfortable.
About the guest: Sara Ann Straw has spent nearly two decades building and rebuilding global event organizations at high-growth tech companies, usually by pulling field, partner, webinar, and corporate events under one roof. She learned to speak executive the hard way, in a meeting where she could not answer why her own company was investing in its own event. Her book, The Experienced Executive, is the version of that lesson she wishes someone had handed her at the start.
Find Sara:
Website: www.saraannstraw.com
Book: The Experienced Executive — https://a.co/d/07Rit5wG
Podcast: Solo Travel Woman, on Spotify
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/saras23/
About Your Host
Megan Martin is the founder of M Squared Dynamics, a consulting, facilitation, and content strategy firm helping event leaders, marketers, and sales teams turn live experiences into measurable business growth. She's the host and executive producer of Event About It, and a two-time PCMA Visionary Award nominee (2022 winner). With nearly 20 years in the industry, Megan operates at the intersection of event strategy, marketing alignment, and behavioral intent signals, turning events from line items into pipeline drivers.
Connect with Megan and M Squared Dynamics:
Podcast: EventAboutItPodcast.com
Newsletter (Step and Repeat): msquareddynamics.com/stepandrepeatsignup
Consulting and strategy: msquareddynamics.com
Instagram: @m2dynamics and @eventaboutit
TikTok: @eventaboutit
Keep the Conversation Going
Subscribe to Event About It so the Aftershow lands in your feed the second it drops. That one is the full story of the meeting where a CRO asked why the company was investing in its own event, and the answer was "because I was told to."
Send this episode to the event leader on your team who is excellent at the wrong thing and has not been told yet.