Interview - Emily Murnen

Emily Murnen

“Finding the best keynote speaker who fits the event vision and engages with the audience is key.”  

Emily Murnen is an event planner who’s been on the corporate side and now on the independent side with Associations. She is the founder of Wild Elm Events, a company that helps corporations, entrepreneurs, and small businesses create high-quality and engaging in-person and virtual events. In this interview, Emily shares some great tips for anyone who wants to produce their own events that will help grow the business.

Emily thinks smaller events are on the cutting edge of innovation. Corporate event planners should take ideas from these independently created, flexible events to freshen up and avoid “the same old thing”, that they have always done. Two basic tips that will help spice events up a little bit are:

1. Manage the cadence of the event so it engaging for the audience and not just speaker after speaker after speaker. Move the audience around and create sessions where people are connecting with the other attendees.

2. Have a time where attendees can mix and mingle with the speakers.

Small Event Versus Big Event

Now that she has broken away from corporate, Emily focuses on small businesses virtual and in-person events. Her sweet spot tends to be between 150 to 500 attendees. In her experience that’s where you can get a lot of connections and have more intimate groups. Small group work well because the people are enthusiastic about connecting with other like-minded people.  They want to be inspired and go back with a few things that can change either their business or their lives.

Choosing The Right Event Speaker

For most of Emily’s clients, one of the big things they want from a speaker is actionable takeaways. She generally brings in one motivational speaker who ties into the purpose and the intention of that event, and then balances the lineup with subject matter experts focused on teaching. Having things to take away is essential to business owners. 

Using Virtual and In-Person Events to Increase Reach

Over the past two years, people have become more open to virtual events and Emily believes that it is one of the positive things that the pandemic gives us. For the most part, people are really excited to be meeting in person again, but virtual events have shown that you can increase your reach online by expanding to additional virtual attendees who can’t travel. 

She encourages all of her clients to have a mix of both in person and virtual attendees, like a hybrid event. But, Emily says there are many things to consider when considering a true hybrid event. Virtual events give you the chance to reach a lot more people than in-person events, while in-person events give you the connection everyone is craving, but it takes careful planning to give both audiences a great experience simultaneously.

Some speakers who are great on stage are not great on camera. Emily offered the advice of working with a speaker agent and asking questions to know who’s going to be best for virtual or in-person events. Some people feed off that in-person energy and have trouble conveying that energy on a virtual stage. 

Speakers must make the virtual audience feel like they’re included and play to both the people in front of them as well as talking to the camera.  Including remote viewers is challenging as they can easily get distracted. 

When I asked Emily to share something she’s learned about events that she would have told her beginner self, she said to “make sure that the intention for the event is solidified prior to any sort of planning.”  She added that, “What do you want your audience to walk away with?” is the question to ask when you try to find the right speakers for your event. Emily believes that the speakers should complement each other and must support the planned intentions. If the audience is not leaving with actionable takeaways that are going to help them and their businesses, they’re probably not going to invest in another event with you.

Emily loves working with speaker agents to find speakers, but she works with certain speakers directly as well. Professionalism is the main piece she looks for in a speaker. Energy is another thing to consider when finding the right speakers. She typically asks speakers to provide a copy of a keynote that she can look at to really see how they interact with the audience, present their material, and their energy level from beginning to the end of the presentation. 

Going forward, Emily thinks that there’s going to be a huge return to in-person events because everyone is really hungry to be around other people, especially their colleagues. She also believes that some virtual is here to stay because virtual because it’s easier to consume information without any travel and because many audiences are so scattered throughout the globe.

Emily Murnen’s company, Wild Elm Events, helps create engaging and valuable live and virtual events that will make you and your business stand out in your industry. If you are in corporate, an entrepreneur, or a small business owner who wants to produce events, you may contact Emily Murnen or visit their website www.wildelmevents.com.