Funktastic Chats
Funktastic Chats
PARTYSLATE Co-Founder and CEO Julie Novack Chats Expanding Your Digital Footprint
Welcome to another episode of Funktastic Chats Podcast! Today, we're diving into how PartySlate can transform your event business with its innovative digital tools and strategies. Whether you're an event professional specializing in luxury corporate events, weddings, galas, etc., this episode is packed with insights just for you.
We explore how PartySlate helps event professionals build a robust digital presence, save time, and manage their portfolios effectively. Julie emphasizes the importance of passion, grit, and a clear mission in overcoming obstacles and achieving entrepreneurial success.
Founded in 2015, PartySlate has quickly become a leading platform for event inspiration and connections, raising up the level of local talent in the community that you're in. It is one of only five female-founded companies in Chicago to raise over $20 million in venture capital funding in the last decade.
Don't miss out on Julie's valuable insights and advice for event professionals looking to make their mark in the industry. She also discusses how PartySlate has tripled its audience over the last two years and continues to innovate with features like PartySlate Pro and AI-driven content management.
Visit www.partyslate.com to create a free profile, showcasing your best work and enhancing your marketing strategy to stand out from the competition.
Follow PartySlate on Instagram and Julie on Instagram for more inspiration and the latest industry scoop. Creating a free profile on PartySlate is an excellent way to grow your partner network and attract new clients. Use PartySlate to maintain an organized, always up-to-date portfolio, making it easier to share your best work and manage your social media content.
Make sure to check out our previous episode from 2020 for more insights on growing your event business. The link is in the show notes.
Remember, today we’re not just working in your business—we’re working on your business. Let’s elevate your event game with PartySlate!
Links
CREATE A FREE PARTYSLATE PROFILE
Follow Partyslate on Instagram
Follow Julie Novack on Instagram
Listen to more Partyslate Episodes
PartySlate offers a beautiful, customized way to build your brand and stand out from competitors.
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Partyslate helps you build your brand and enhance your marketing strategy
Mike: Are you an event professional? Take a minute from working in your business because today we're all about working on your business. Go to www.partyslate.com apply to create a free profile. Partyslate offers a, uh, beautiful, customized way to build your brand, stand out from competitors and enhance your marketing strategy. We are expanding your digital footprint and partyslate is a compliment to your website and especially to your Instagram, which we all know is so time consuming. Use PartySlate as the organized portfolio sharing tool that is always up to date with your best work and save time by getting your credits and your photo downloads for Instagram from PartySlate. Grow your partner network, attract new clients and so much more. Go to www.partyslate.com and create a free profile. PartySlate is a website that inspires people, planning events and connects them with the leading event professionals and venues across the country and the world. Brides, grooms, galas and any corporate event that you could think of uses PartySlate to browse thousands of curated photos to find ideas and trends for their next big event. People can save their favorite photos and discover and contact local event professionals who can bring their party to life. Partyslate raises up the talent of the local community that you're in. The digital platform is meant for people to find new ideas, get inspired, and find local and event professionals and venues connected to the best events in the country. Founded in 2015, Party Slate is one of only five female founded companies in Chicago that has raised more than $20 million in venture capital funding in the last ten years. We're following up on our last episode together from 2020, so make sure you listen to that episode in the link is going to be in the show notes.
Venture capital funding for female founded companies has declined year over year
So we are here with Julie Novack Hey, Julie, how you doing?
Julie Novack: Good, how are you? That was such a nice intro. Thank you.
Mike: Oh my God, of course. Let's just jump right to this last point here. I mean, venture capital funding for female founded companies has declined year over year. And for female founded startups, I think I read that the number is only 2%. And then for check writers, it's under 15%. I mean, if these statistics are correct, which is a very small margin, they must know that party slate is going to take over the world here.
Julie Novack: Well, that's what we believe, and I guess I've had some success in getting them to believe it as well by sharing the success we've had to date and kind of our metrics and our growth of our audience has tripled over the last two years. So we have a lot of, um, positive momentum, which has allowed us to continue to raise institutional dollars from venture capitalists so we can continue to grow.
Why do you think females in particular are underrepresented in venture capital
Mike: Why do you think females in particular, are so underrepresented in this space?
Julie Novack: Yes, well, um, unfortunately, when you go in and present, let's say you have 30 venture capital meetings or appointments, you're going to see about 90% of them are men. And I think the most important thing to change in order to change where the funding goes is to get more female venture capitalists. And I'm excited to share that. I do think more women are getting into venture capital. I think more people are aware of it as a career path or getting into it after founding a company, selling a company. So I think that's the first change that needs to happen. But also, I hope I and others can serve as role models to women who are interested in careers in technology and in, you know, really scaling a business. And I hope to help as many women as I can.
Mike: I would love to maybe just go back for a second. We chatted in December of 2020, a Chicago winter in the middle of COVID for a musician. Doesn't get worse than that. You know, a CEO coming on someone's m one of my first podcast episodes. It was so appreciated and inspired me to keep going. And here we are four years later. So, before we get any further, I just wanted to thank you for that, because I just think it just shows how great of a person, uh, you are to do that.
Julie Novack: Thank you so much. And I really feel that these podcasts are really helpful to the industry, can inspire people to look at their business in different ways, can give them more resources. So I really admire the people that are putting kind of thought leadership out to the market.
Party Slate is a company that helps event planners find local professionals
Mike: How big of a team is party slate today, if you don't mind me asking?
Julie Novack: Yeah, we have 55 people. About 40 of them are based in Chicago. And then we have 15 people kind of located all over. We have sales teams in New York and LA and Dallas and other big metro areas. And then during the pandemic, we hired some incredible product development folks, product managers and tech folks that live in other areas. It is really hard to hire developers. And when we see someone that's great and has a good background in either marketplaces like party Slate, or just in digital technology, we now are open to hiring people anywhere, wherever they may live.
Mike: They say that your first ten employees can make or break a company. Can you elaborate on how you cultivated this awesome community of people who complement each other's strengths and values. I mean, you can't just meet your co founder at a cocktail party, right? There's gotta be.
Julie Novack: No. I always tell people that looking for a tech co founder, I'm more sales and marketing, and my co founder is tech. And product is one of the most challenging things to do. And I think, just like, shopping for a co founder can be a recipe for disaster. I recruited my co founder because we worked together for 20 years before party slate. And so he was one of the first people I shared my vision with. Even when we went, we worked together to mobile SaaS mobile technology company before party slate. And I said to him, you know, hey, come over here. To where we were. It was called Vibes Media. It was a great technology company for mobile marketing. And I said, but one day we're going to start this company together. It's called party Slate. And that was, you know, probably like, 1213 years ago.
Mike: Oh, my God. What was his reaction to it? Were you just on the same wavelength immediately?
Julie Novack: Uh, I'd love to hear more. Let's get a win here first. And I said, yes, absolutely. But I continue to dream out loud about party slate. I was inspired by really using, uh, a website called Houzz, which is kitchen bathroom inspiration and contractors to improve your home. I redesigned a kitchen, and I used it for a year and a half. And I said, this is what I need for the events I'm planning. I was planning large scale corporate events, fundraisers, and I didn't have a place other than Pinterest to get new ideas. And Pinterest and Instagram weren't that helpful at helping you find local venues or event professionals. So Houzz was this model of inspiration plus professionals and wrap community around that. And so it wasn't until I saw that model that I really became obsessive about party slate. It was actually called Soch. I don't tell that many people that. I thought it was going to be like social soc. And, uh, then everyone's like, how do you spell it? What does that mean? No one's going to get this. And so then I started to think about words around party, because it wasn't just wedding. It was corporate events, galas, milestone birthdays. And I also was thinking, hey, for a global platform, you want a word that translates well and party people understand? Not like party. Yeah, like getting drunk party, but party like, hey, we're bringing people together to celebrate, either creating special memories or celebrate launching a new product. And then slate was really meant to be, you can come to party slate, and slate in your ideas and slate in your event professional team. And so that's really how party Slate came to be.
Mike: I've always said that Instagram gives me credits and party slate gives me credibility. I love that party slate, uh, almost as a little bit of a LinkedIn component to it. I feel like where you can see all the vendors that I've worked with on my profile on Instagram. There's a great caption with credits of vendors I've worked with on a wedding that I'm proud of. But then the post is over and over and done down on.
PartySlate lets you easily connect with professionals through your portfolio
So can you talk more about how party slate really takes these ideas to the next level?
Julie Novack: Yes. So when people find party slate, so we call them consumers, people that have budget to spend on an event, let's say they're typing in event planner, Chicago, top event planners, New York, or entertainment for hundreds of thousands of terms. We show up not every term, but more and more every day. So we had about three and a half million people visit party slate over the last twelve months, which, since the last time we spoke, is again, much, much higher. But when you talk about how people search, they typically do search for their venue first. Even if they're going to use a planner, they start to think about, wow, they're only available that one night. I need to find it. It's going to book fast. I've got to get my venue. And so what we did on party slate is once they find their venues, um, they can actually see the professionals that have worked at their venue. And you might say, oh, I could entertain anywhere. I can shoot photos anywhere. But actually, we've done a lot of research in the mind of the person that's hiring. It's reassuring to know that you've worked at their venue. So similar to LinkedIn. I'm so glad you mentioned that. We actually have the social connections or the working connections of the industry. We're the only platform in the world that exposes this network. So when you go to find these venues you're looking for, you can also see, these are the planners that have worked here. These are the entertainment companies that have worked here. These are the photographers that have worked here. And how we do that is simply through your portfolio. So when you upload a, uh, portfolio of photos, soon to be. Actually, we're adding credits to video soon, which is exciting to many of our professionals. But when you upload your photos, you add the caterer, the venue, the photographer, and then in our system, it links automatically to the profile that exists for their business. And so therefore there's this cross referral like you do in the real world with your friend Ors, is that works also in the digital world on Partyslate. So yes, on Instagram you can credit someone and it semi connects them, but on partyslate it actually organizes it into a list saying, you know, here's the venues I've worked with, here's the planners I've worked with, and vice versa. On those pages, it also shows that you've worked at that venue, you've worked with that planner. We found that that's really an important way to build your credibility, to build your brand. You've worked so hard to create these relationships. We want to amplify that in the digital space.
Mike: Amplifying your digital footprint without needless hashtags. But doing so with real events that inspire real people is so revolutionary in the digital space.
Julie Novack: Uh, it's a dynamic of the industry that exists in the real world. And we know word of mouth is 1st, second and third, but once you've been referred to someone, the first thing they do is Google you. And so we really talk about kind of this digital referral system. So yes, they're going to Google you, they're going to find a venue page, they're going to find a planner page, and how do we quickly get you that kind of referral from that page? So they discover you as a company through these other people that have been introduced to them from a friend or a family member.
Mike: I love that you're able to attach these links in emails as well because a lot of the venues that at least that we're a part of in the city of Chicago keep coming up over and over and over again. I'll give you a funny story. We had this bride and groom over the summer and she really wanted these light up wristbands to sync to the music because she loves Taylor Swift and there was no talking her out of it. And she ordered all the equipment and her planner convinced us to give it a try and we did. And so the first dances were to be certain colors. Depending on the dance. They had the guest, you know, make a circle around the couple. And I'm sitting here with a remote hoping to God that this connects to our soundboard and this magic halo of color forms around the couple. And it worked. And it was the coolest thing that we've ever done at a receptionist. Now every time, you know, we get an inquiry for that venue, hey, like, look what we've done here. This is how we stand out. Look at what we've done here at your venue. Look how many pieces we fit on this stage. I just think that's so great to have a platform like that.
Julie Novack: It's so great. And to have the ability to do that storytelling. Yes. Again, like on, um, Instagram, you can do a quick reel, you can do it, then it kind of disappears. But on your portfolio, on party slate, you can post all of these videos and experiences and have a one stop shop place for your inventory. We call it your digital gold, which is your photos and videos. And so I see people in meetings sometimes try to pull up photos on their phone and like, iPhone photos and little homemade videos. And I'm like, wouldn't it be a lot easier if all of these were stored in an archived on your party slate profile? And therefore, all of your best work and everything you need is at your fingertips? And, um, more and more people are saying, yes, party slate helps me grow my business, but it also helps save time, shorten sales cycle. And that's really important to us because we know you're the hardest working industry. You know, give up so much time on the weekend and evenings, and for the time, the limited time you have left, we want to make the most of your time. So if you have a prospect you're on a zoom with and you want to show them something that you've done recently, just imagine the shortcut of showing them, um, a beautiful archive with all the credits of your party slate profile versus trying to dig around in your photos or, you know, or just not have it at all. And so we want, we want to be that one stop shop with your full archive. And I'm really excited to share here that we have a new product coming out called Partyslate Pro. It's a new way to get to your content and that's launching in the next couple of months. You know, we never rest on, oh, we've got this great profile. We want to continue to save time for you and to add more value. So when you log into your partyslate pro page, almost picture it like your personal porter portal. With all your content, you'll be able to actually search your own photos through AI tags. So, for example, if you have a poolside reception or you have glow bracelets or whatever, they'll. The AI tool that we're, that we built, that we're using will actually be able to see what's in that photo through image recognition. And then you can also tag your photos, you know, in addition to that, to make sure that there's something unique. You want to come up when you do a search. So some pros have 10,000, 10,0000, 500,000 are not exaggerating photos. We want it to be super easy for you to be able to search, save and share your photos to shorten your sales cycle, to wow that prospect at the right time, at the right place with the perfect image.
Mike: Oh, that is so cool, because I imagine the more venues that we're a part of, the more albums we have, and that could add up pretty quickly. And so with this AI tool, you're saying, okay, this couple, you know, wants to get married and, uh, big ballroom space, downtown Chicago. I could type in ballroom space and it will give me all of the ballrooms that we've played at in the city of Chicago. Is that true? Wow.
Julie Novack: Exactly. We also have all the credits and who you worked with. So, for example, let's say you wanted to say someone's having an event at the w. You could search for the w hotel, and all your w hotel events will come up. And so we have all the data that you put in when you upload an album. And again, a lot of people take advantage of our white glove service. We'll do the posting and management for you. But if you do it yourself, you know, we have all this data tied to those event albums. And so that's one thing you can automatically search on, and then you add the photo recognition. So let's say, uh, you're doing a rainbow themed event, you want all your rainbow party photos to come up. We will be able to automatically surface those just through image recognition and the tags that you've added manually. So we really think it's, I mean, it's really a digital asset management tool.
PartySlate is a digital asset management tool specifically for the event industry
In our geeky language, it's a dam, a digital asset management tool. But we made it specifically for the event industry. We know you need your credits tied to every event. We know certain elements that are very common in our, you know, the wedding aisle, the chuppah, whatever the things are. We will be able to train this AI, you know, language so that it really is great at identifying elements of the, of events, colors, you know, styles, everything, so that it's at your fingertips.
Mike: I can imagine searching big band with horns, and then all the pictures that have a horn section will come up. Very cool, very cool.
Julie Novack: Uh, time to time, you have an electric violin, whatever it is, that element, we will be able to recognize that and you'll pull it up in seconds. Typically, what happens now is like, I know I did an event like that, was that Julian Doug's wedding? Was that in Dallas? Was that here? And so you're using your memory to do it. And once you get, like, 50,000 photos, that's very tricky and time consuming. And then let's say you hire an intern to help you with social media. How is that intern going to get inside your head to know where these photos are? So we want to provide for yourself, the business owner, and anyone that's helping you with your marketing or your proposals to be able to easily search, share, download those photos to use them when you need them most. The other thing we did is we added Instagram formatted credits. So when you're sharing to Instagram now on your profile page, you can download a photo, a high resolution photo, copy and paste Instagram formatted credits, and post to Instagram in minutes, versus what it used to take me is 30 minutes to do. Like, now it's two minutes. And so the Instagram. I don't know how you do your Instagram format credits, but you have to have venue. And then they're tagged their handle, you know, playing, God forbid, if you miss a tag, you miss a tag, you spell it wrong. You know, you hear it across the country that people are pissed off at you. We want to take the risk away from posting to Instagram by having them formatted and QA checked by our system. So when you copy that photo down from Instagram or from party slate and put it on Instagram, you can copy it to your clipboard or copy it to your phone and paste it right in there with all the Instagram handles.
Mike: And I think that brings up a good point. Like, we're not trying to replace Instagram here. Instagram is fine. This is your offline network here.
Julie Novack: This is how party slate is a compliment to Instagram and your website. So your website is typically costly and time consuming to keep up to date. So let's say every year, every two years, you're updating your website. That is amazing. Your Instagram is incredibly time consuming. So we think you should be posting to Instagram at least, let's say, three times a week, even better, once or twice a day. But you don't have to do that. So if we can make posting to Instagram easier, we all of a sudden become part of the value proposition of Instagram, which we know everyone, including ourselves, is obsessed with. So we have over close to 400,000 followers on Instagram, and we use it as an acquisition tool, a way to raise awareness with consumers, people planning events, and a way to connect with our event professional community. So what we want to do is not say, don't use Instagram. What we want to say is use party slate as the organized portfolio sharing tool that is always up to date with your best work and save time by getting your credits and your photo downloads for Instagram from partyslate, whether you're doing it yourself or you have a social media consultant or intern helping you.
Mike: The last time we chatted, in 2020, almost 1 million photos had been uploaded to party slate, and party slate was in 14 cities. I was just curious what those numbers look like.
Julie Novack: Today we're at three and a half million photos and videos that have been uploaded to party slate, which we're really holy excited about. Yeah, three and a half million. And now we're really in every state. And I would say almost, you know, we're not penetrated in every state, but I would say, um, about 25 cities. We have really built out directories and a lot of SEO traffic. And by the end of the next, let's say, year and a half, um, we will be in 50 cities, 50 metro areas, and all states. We also are getting a lot of traffic in Mexico and Canada, which we're excited, you know, maybe in the next six months to start really in a more organized way, getting those top resorts and planners and venues on, um, party slate.
Party slate was in the first growth phase back in 2020
Mike: You mentioned party slate was in the first growth phase back in 2020. What was that phase? And has that changed since then, as well, now that you're in almost every state?
Julie Novack: Yeah. So, I think really getting those first ten metro areas built out was kind of that first big milestone. So, you know, the big ten, like New York, La, Miami, San Francisco, Dallas, Houston, like the Big ten, so to speak. But now we're really, again, 25, 30. We also have profiles and organic growth all over the world. So we have profiles popping up. Let's say a New York planner does a destination event in Italy, and they upload those photos. We start getting credits from italian event professionals, and then they start wanting a, uh, profile page. And so what we've done is created an easy way to create a free profile page. It's called the kind of a freemium model, just like you can be on LinkedIn for free. But if you're the type of professional that wants more exposure and doesn't have the time to manage your profile page, we have three different levels of membership that, you know, that range from kind of a self service package, more exposure, to a full service package where we'll do unlimited photos and videos posting, and you're also the top in the directory. So the platinum members, the top directory tend to get about 15 to 20 times the traffic of, uh, a basic or free profile.
Mike: And when you say help you with your profile, they are uploading, they are making some pretty captivating and cool title names and selecting the theme of your wedding, of the wedding uploaded. They're doing a lot of the legwork.
Julie Novack: They do a lot of the legwork. And I like to say it's so easy. My mom could do it, but. And she's like 83. But the challenge is you guys just don't have a lot of time. And when you do have time, wouldn't it be better use, like, prospecting or doing a podcast or building your brand versus uploading photos? So what we like to do with our full service clients is we'll do 90%. We'll get the photos up there, we'll do the description, and then if you want to go back in and edit things or rearrange the location of the photos or, you know, do the kind of the last mile m, you guys can go in and easily do that in, you know, 15 minutes a week.
Mike: In 2020, 1st year of the COVID pandemic, when we chatted, there were 1.7 million us weddings, the lowest number recorded since. Since 1963. And in 2022, the marriage rates surpassed 2019 pre pandemic levels, with nearly 2.1 million, uh, married couples in the US in 2022.
How did you navigate this influx of weddings and events?
How did you navigate this influx of weddings and events? Not just weddings, events with party slate, whether it's involving implementing new features or expanding your team through hiring, how did you adapt to meet the demands of this huge surge we had?
Julie Novack: Yeah, I mean, the great thing about a, uh, technology platform versus a service business is that, you know, our technology scales, you know, so we, you know, even though we had an influx of traffic and influx of content, our core processes really didn't need to change. But I will say we did have an increased demand of people that wanted to be in our platform, that wanted our services. And so we did expand our customer success team and our sales team in order to really help with that surge of interest around party slate. I think also because they would search key terms and party slate kept showing up, and so many people as a, uh, as more and more, we had more and more SEO success, you know, there was more inbound interest from event professionals. And I think also they hear about our top networking events that we have. We have now have a member only event in New York. We had 800 people there last year. So they hear about us through those type of events as well. But the biggest thing we needed to scale when we had that boom was getting enough customer success, people, so that we could manage those relationships and not fall behind. And we also leveraged new technology. So we launched a new customer success platform, a third party platform, so that we could have, like, one to many communications, so we could send out your analytics platform automatically or your results versus jumping on a quarterly call. We still jump on quarterly calls, but on those quarterly calls, we want to talk about what can we do to your profile to get more inquiries? What can we do to get more of the type of clients that you're looking for versus some of the more manual things. And so we did scale new technology, and we did scale as far as people and customer success, I think some.
Party Slate helps clients build a strong digital presence
Mike: People don't know this, but you have a, uh, 20 year sales experience.
Julie Novack: Julie, my, uh, career, I started in account management at a digital agency, and really, in the early days of digital, did every job, you know, project management, information architecture, you know, design. You know, you really did everything in the early days. And then I literally had a manager that said, you know what? We're not going to have account management anymore. We're going to have either sales or project management. And he said, I think you should try sales. I knew nothing about it. So I happened to be, uh, successful in sales because I was a good problem solver. I knew how to help clients with their digital presence. And I think the best salespeople are the most helpful people. They can solve problems. They can identify pain points. And so I had a lot of success in sales over many years, moved into sales management, eventually into general management, and then, you know, really focused most of my career on driving large scale sales teams. So that's really where most of my background is. But I really do look at myself more as a consultative seller. Like, I like to look for pain points, and a lot of the pain points that I've been able to find in the industry, um, we've built solutions into party Slate's product. So one of the big pain points I hear about is I don't know how to build a strong digital presence. I don't have $15,000 to hire someone for a brand new website, and I just can't keep up with Instagram. So the partyslate profile page is a really low. Even if you're paying for, you know, $300 to $400 a month, um, is a really great way to build that digital presence. In within weeks, we can maybe even days we can have your portfolio up, your connections, your credits, you know, five beautiful cover photos that kind of show what you do. So that was, you know, the biggest pain point we're trying to address. And then on top of that, we heard a lot of people saying, I can't find the right photos I need. I can't get the Instagram credits. It's wasting so much time. And so we built solutions to save time. And so the biggest value proposition that we can help the industry with is, one, building this beautiful digital presence that helps you grow your business, that's SEO optimized. And number two, saving time, managing your photos and videos, having them all in one place, and really, again, getting those Instagram credits to save time on Instagram, um, one day we might be able to embed your portfolio from party slate on your website to save you even more time. So these are the types of things we see these problems, we see these pain points, and we look for technical solutions in our platform that, you know, really lessen the pain. I'm not saying it's going to go away 100%, but how do we take away some of the pain and save you time?
Do you have any advice for event professionals when it comes to responding to inquiries?
Mike: Do you have any advice for event professionals when it comes to actually responding to the inquiries that they receive? Anything that you would suggest that works really well in their, whether it's their initial response back?
Julie Novack: Yes. So, number one, on your partyslate profile, you can add, and I know this is controversial for some people, but you can add some semblance of pricing information so that you save your time qualifying the people that have $500 to spend. And there's nothing wrong with $500. It's just you can't build a business, hire a team. We want to make sure that you have a way to qualify through party slate to lessen the crap that comes through, because no one has time to follow up with unqualified leads. But when you do get an inbound lead, no matter what the source, I think everyone needs to have a series of questions they can ask, whether it's on the phone, you know, if you think it seems qualified, either on the phone or through email or through a form, I know no one wants to send you to a long, complicated form, but just some simple questions, like number of guests, do you have a set aside budget in mind? What is the date, the date range of your event? All these things can help you triangulate. Do you have a venue? If you're an entertainment company that can tell you a lot about, is this lead qualified for you? So I think it's important that everyone comes up with a series of questions that are not intrusive, that are not, oh, uh, you don't have a big enough budget for me that help you triangulate. Is this going to be the profile of my ideal customer? And if it's not the profile, I feel like you have to find a way to politely decline it or say, hey, that date's taken. Or whatever you do to politely decline an opportunity so that you don't waste your precious time on opportunities that you cannot help. If you write it down, write down your process for qualifying and different scenarios. And again, if you google this person and see this Instagram person has 30,000 followers and blah blah, it might be worth jumping on a call, even if you think they have a small budget. But I think more times than not asking those questions that you know will indicate it may be an ideal customer profile that will help you. The first step is creating a document that talks about your ideal customer profile. What does your ideal customer look like? Because some people know it by gut, but they don't write it down. If you write it down, you're much more likely to hold yourself accountable for qualification in the early stages. If you don't write it down, you're going to take every call, you're going to waste a lot of time and there's going to be a lot of spinning. So I think you owe it to yourself, your colleagues, your family, whoever is impacted by your crazy hours to write down what does your ideal customer look like? What is the profile? And then what are the questions again, that are not intrusive or rude, make you look snobby? That's not what our goal is. To see if you are the right company to help them.
Mike: Yes. And anybody who is trying to find what their ideal client is or messaging on their website. I thought this was a really great idea somebody gave me and I've passed it along. But literally highlighting all of the testimonials you've gotten, paste them into, chat, cheap, et, and literally say, give it a prompt. Like, what are people saying about our company? Give me the top five things people are saying about us. And most often than not, it's actually different than if you would have just assumed.
Julie Novack: I think that like finding out what people, what your differentiators are and what people like about you, I think that's really important. But I think I don't, I don't think chat GPT yet at least can help you identify like, you know, type of event, number of guests, you know, like, if someone comes in with, you know, a ten guest party and you're ideally suited for 100 plus, like, I think you should just be honest that small events are great, but it's going to waste a lot of my time, and this isn't where I shine the most. So identifying the type of types of events, the guest count, the budget, you don't have to say, what is your budget? You can say, do you have a set aside budget for entertainment? Like, there's ways you can say it that is not just tell me your budget. And so I think those are the type of things, like, to identify what does an ideal customer look like? And then what are the questions I have to ask in order to see if they're an ideal customer? And then what are the exceptions to the rule? If Oprah comes to you and only has a ten person event, you're going to do the Oprah event. Uh, we know that there are always exceptions, but you really need to write down, yes, what are your differentiators? So you know how to sell yourself. But really importantly, what is that? If you could buy a list of party hosts that are planning events, what is the criteria you would select? And by the way, there isn't a list like that, so you can't. But by asking yourself that question, if I was buying a list, how big would the event be? What types of event venues would be at, what are the party types? So I'm great at mitzvahs and galas. What are the right types? And then you have to somehow get at budget, uh, somehow, you know, and I know it's not easy to do that.
Mike: I think what inspires a lot of people about your story is that it's never too late to make your dream happen. And if you don't, uh, someone else is going to do it for you, or you'll always be regretting it. How do you stay motivated and focused in this mindset, even in spite of obstacles and uncertainty that may come up along the way?
Julie Novack: Yeah, I love that question because I think it's really important. Some people really glamorize being an entrepreneur of any kind. Having an event company, entertainment company, owning your own business, and there's a lot of great things about it, but there's a lot of incredibly challenging things about owning your own business. And I think the thing that I would advise is you have to have a passion for what you're doing and you have to believe in it. So much so that when a two year pandemic comes your way, you will say, nothing can stop me, even a two year pandemic. So you have to have that grit and that passion around what you're building. And I think that always goes back to your mission and vision. What are you really setting out to do? Whether it's creating family memories, or helping corporations meet their goals through corporate events, or in our case, we want to help people around the world create lifelong memories. And that's a big ambition that we have. The way we do it is not by actually planning the event, but by helping to surface great ideas and to help you find your dream team that can bring your vision to life. So I always say, when hard times hit, always go back to that purpose, that mission, that vision, and make sure you're over communicating that. If you have a team or reinvigorating yourself, uh, about that mission and vision, and that's the way you stay focused. That's where you align your team. And it takes a lot of hard work and pain points. And I'll admit it, there's a lot of tears. You know, I'm not too proud to say that, you know, after getting rejected by 40 venture capitalists, that it's not going to hit you hard. The question is, how are you going to pick yourself back up and step towards that. That vision, that mission that you have and, um, move the ball forward one day at a time?
Mike: And, you know, this is not something that you thought of overnight, obviously. I mean, I think you said you had the domain for about five years of just thinking about it before you even pulled the trigger out of it.
Julie Novack: You know, I dreamt out loud to anyone who would listen. And don't worry about someone stealing your idea, because execution is so incredibly challenging. I always say, you don't need NDAs. You don't need to hide your idea. The more people you tell about your vision, about what you want to build, I believe the more likely you'll have the confidence and the feedback from your trusted advisor, your team, even if it's like friends or family or coworkers, the more likely it is you are to follow that dream, because people are going to be rooting for you.
Julie quit her job to start PartySlate after four years planning
Julie, when are you going to start party slate? Julie, you've been talking about this for a long time. Julie, you've got the skill sets to do it. When are you going to go do this? And that's why I dreamt out loud and created 47 versions of my PowerPoint plan. It wasn't until my husband said, you got to go do this that I quit my job. I didn't need permission. But I needed that vote of confidence that I quit my job and started party slate the next week.
Mike: Wow. That's amazing.
Julie Novack: Four years. Four years. Uh, it wasn't a week. It was four years planning, dreaming, talking, getting advice, talking to friends that were in venture capital, talking to Jamie Breslin at the four seasons, who planned my wedding, and corporate planners I had worked with. That's dreaming out loud. Planning, planning, planning. And then it's not too late to do it. I was in my forties when I started my first business.
Mike: Back to Covid for a second here, just because that is the last time we chatted where I couldn't work at all. A lot of our musicians couldn't work at all if we did very little. Having a podcast in the middle of COVID was definitely very interesting. I had guys from literally cool in the gang come on here and tell me how they were mismanaged. People just wanted a platform to tell their story.
Party slate helped event vendors during the 2009 pandemic
And so when I think of party slate during COVID uh, what was it like for you and party slate to really serve as a voice for vendors around the country saying, you know, in a world filled with, uh, uncertainty, that beauty, joy can still thrive even in such challenging times?
Julie Novack: Yeah, I think that's one thing that I'm really proud of our team, is that the first week of COVID you know, a lot of people were in shock. We were practicing, working from home. We thought it would be like, three weeks. Little did we know. We said, we are going to be the most helpful brand in the event industry. And the form that it came in was a weekly webinar that we did not skip on how to leverage digital from home to do the things you should have been doing, even during your craziest, busiest time. So we finally had a captive audience. We didn't like how we got the captive audience. The pandemic was very, very scary, especially in the early days. But we knew we could help people feel and be productive during the pandemic. And so I remember my first one. It wasn't about party slate. It was how to build your network on LinkedIn, and how LinkedIn is an under leveraged resource. When people google you, your LinkedIn profile is going to come up. So how to build that ideal profile in 30 minutes and to put time in your calendar right now to make sure you spend 30 minutes on your LinkedIn profile. The next one was about organizing your photos. The next one is about how you can do updates to your website. Of course, we always tied it back to party slate. You know, it was, yes, we want to get our brand built as well, but it was kind of that give first mentality of, uh, we are going to add value for free. These webinars were all free. You didn't have to be a member. And how do we add value in order to show the type of company we are? And I think it was the reason why. We did lose 25% of our revenue during the pandemic, but we certainly didn't lose more than 50%. So we put people on pauses, and when the world opened back up again, they did rejoin many of them that were able to. Some went out of business, some became a realtor, you know, some left the industry for good. But the ones that stayed, I do think they appreciated how we were the loudest, most helpful voice of any of the platforms out there during the pandemic. So we weren't about, oh, we're going to keep you in your contract. We were about, let us help you get through this tough time and build a world class digital presence and network through party state, LinkedIn, Instagram, your website, email marketing, how to get published. We, um, did over 52 to, I think it was actually closer to 60, um, webinars week after week.
Mike: You know, I remember tuning into some of those as well, because, and I thought they were just so educational, and it forced me to work on my business instead of in my business. And then when I love that, and when it opened back, you know, when the world opened back up again, I was like, there's gotta be a way where I could continue to work on my business instead of in my business. And that's when hiring and outsourcing comes in and trusting people who have stuck with you. The whole pandemic, you know, and before.
Julie Novack: That, yeah, and I think a lot of great, like, you know, like, as an example, you probably wouldn't have done your podcast had the pandemic not come when it did. And I think there's a lot of great digital content that is being created because people are like, okay, what's another way I can add value? I can be positioned as a thought leader. I can build my own brand. Even the people you're interviewing for your podcast, you're creating new relationships, and who knows where those relationships can turn to. It could be an amazing planner that you've never worked with that you interview. So all of these things came about because of the pandemic, and I think they're continuing. The people that really learn to leverage new technology, like podcasts, like webinars, like more advanced blogging to get your brand out or even, you know, really optimizing their party slate profile. A lot of good came from the downtime, the forced downtime that came to our industry.
Mike: Um, I agree. And I think that it's really, this journey has just been really fun because how cool would it be to just be the audio magazine of an industry? And I just think it's so cool to just keep reaching people. And I mean, I think even now on Spotify, you can listen to podcasts on video, which is crazy on its own, but video is taking a light on its own here.
Partyslate Pro is launching end of June to help you manage your content
But um, what is coming up next for party slate here? Um, I know you talked about the AI feature.
Julie Novack: Um, yes, Partyslate Pro is launching end of June and that is going to be the new way to get to your content, to update your profile, to see your analytics. And there's going to be a lot of really exciting kind of delighter features such as, you know, AI helping you write event descriptions for your album so they are more optimized for SEO and tell a better story. Of course you can edit whatever, you know, just like you use chat GPT, but it will be built into your Partyslate Pro account to add more descriptions and creative titles around your events. So again, another time saver, leveraging newer technology. And then I think within Partyslate Pro, this concept of content hub, a digital asset management platform that allows you to search manage, you can already download photos and do your Instagram credits today, but it will be in a more manageable form. You know, it's called a digital asset management tool. So within PartySlate pro, you'll be able to really manipulate your photos, your videos, your content with all of the attaching attached, you know, credits, you know, where the event was and then those AI descriptors. That's what we're really excited about. And then if you go way out to the future, we're trying to figure out how to really build up our b two b business to business, um, connections, your industry connections in party slate. So today you connect through credits. You connect at our member only events. We have a bunch of those all over the country. But we also want to figure out in party slate pro how we can make it richer for targeting. So for example, what if you could say, I'd like to see a list in partyslate pro of all planners that have ever done a gala in Chicago. Let's say you were trying to build your gala business. You could actually go and start reaching out to those planners if you wanted to get more gala work. That's just an example of how we can build your b two b connections in addition to your business to consumer connections on party slate.
Mike: Party Slate raises up the talent of the local community that you are in. The digital platform is meant for people to find new ideas, get inspired, and find the, uh, local event professionals and venues connected to the best events in the country. Please check the show notes of this episode. We're going to have all the links down there to get started on your party slate profile. Uh, Julie is again the co founder and the CEO of Party Slate. And Julie, thank you so much for coming back on here. Uh, it was so much fun reconnecting with you, and I can't wait for everything party slate has in store for us here.
Julie Novack: Thank you so much. And add to your show notes, our Instagram is just artyslate and my b two B Instagram isuliepartyslate. So if you're interested events and kind of the industry scoop, follow one or both of those Instagram accounts.
Mike: Yeah, you know, really quick before we go, we didn't touch on that at all. And either times I chatted with you, there's a lot of in person events that partyslate does, right?
Julie Novack: Yes, we host about 25 a year, including four member only events that are really incredibly focused on digital education and great panels. And we're really excited to host both regional summits and also national. We believe in the power of live events. We believe in this industry. And just because we're a digital company doesn't mean we aren't going to use events as a tool to strengthen our community and grow our business.
Mike: Ww dot partyslate.com go ahead, get started and uh, again, check the link in the show notes. We'll have all of that great info down there.
PartySlate helps event professionals build a digital presence
Thanks again, Julie. I appreciate it. I love chatting with Julie because she is such a role model to entrepreneurs, especially women who are interested in careers and technology and really scaling a business. It is pretty amazing that party slate has triple the amount of photos posted on its platform only over the course of the last two years or so and continues to innovate with features like party slate pro and AI driven content management. PartySlate offers tools that make it easier for event professionals to build a digital presence, such as the ability to tag photos for Instagram credits and an AI tool for managing large photo libraries. And notice I'm not saying wedding pearl Wedding Pearl wedding Pro over this entire episode. No, this is for event professionals. So whether you service birthday parties or corporate events or farm its fuzz. The digital platform is meant for people to find new ideas, get inspired, and find the local event professionals and venues connected to the best events in the country.
Tell me what you think of this episode and Partyslate platform
Go to www.partyslate.com, create a free profile and I'm gonna make it super easy for you and paste some great links in the show notes to follow party slate. On Instagram you can follow Julie, create a free profile and I'm, um, I wanna know what you think. So write me. Tell me what you think of this episode and the party slate platform. I've been loving it, and I have a feeling you will too. Thanks so much for joining us this week on the Funktastic Chats podcast. Podcast. You are extraordinary and we'll see you next time.