Fast Forward: The Future of Wellness in the MICE Industry
Fast Forward Season 1, Episode 5
On this episode of Fast Forward, host Logan Pratt interviews David T. Stevens, one of the foremost wellness and fitness experts in the meetings and events industry on what the future of wellness looks like in the industry and how planners should be implementing wellness into their event agendas and how they can stay ahead of wellness trends.
David T. Stevens is a longtime corporate event planner and currently serves as the wellness architect and co-founder of Olympian Meeting, a wellness-first meetings and events agency and consulting firm. David is also a wellness expert himself, hosting his own podcast called “Return on Wellness,” where he talks with guests on how wellness benefits meetings and events. David has also been named the “Fittest Male EventProf” over 6 consecutive times and regularly speaks at industry events on the topic of incorporating wellness into events.
About Fast Forward
Fast Forward is a new Meetings Today podcast hosted by Logan Pratt with a mission to shed light on the future of the meetings and events industry. Each month, Pratt and his guests will discuss and analyze the new technologies, trends and changes that may affect an audience of meeting and event planners, suppliers, speakers, educators, attendees and more. Fast Forward will feature industry experts on the cutting edge of innovation working to help push the industry forward. Tune in to "Fast Forward" to learn what trends and technologies are here to stay and how they will change the industry in the years and decades to come.
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Transcript
Editors note: The following transcription was facilitated by AI program Otter.ai and proofed by our editors. Although it is very accurate, there inevitably will be some mistakes, so please consider that when reading. Thank you.
Logan Pratt
Hello, and welcome to Fast Forward, a Meetings Today podcast that explores the future of the meetings and events industry. I'm your host, Logan Pratt, and this episode I'm joined by David T Stevens, longtime corporate event planner and currently the wellness architect and co-founder of Olympian Meeting, a wellness-first meetings and events agency and consulting firm. David is also a wellness expert himself, having been named the fittest male event prof, over six consecutive times and regularly speaking at industry events on the topic of incorporating wellness into events. Welcome to the show, David.
David Stevens
Thank you so much for having me.
Logan Pratt
Yeah, I want to start off by learning a little bit more about… kind of your journey in the events industry. Because you've, you know, been a planner for over like 20 years now, and you've now started to kind of transition into more of a consulting role now. What made you make that change? And what are the benefits now of like owning your own consulting agency, versus being like a corporate planner?
David Stevens
Yeah, well… I mean, my journey to get to corporate events was a fun and diverse one. Because along the way I worked in sports, I worked in concerts, I worked in media, I worked at associations. I've kind of been all over the place when it comes to the types of events, and then rounding things out with corporate thinking, “Oh, this is probably stable.” No, it's not.
But I had a great run, and what really happened is myself and a friend of mine, who I've… actually was like, probably, I think it was like my third events job… She was the first intern I hired, and we stayed friends ever since. And she was running an events agency, and we were kind of iterating on this idea of, you know, “Why are meetings so brutal on us?” And this was in 2019. So we were talking about it, and I reflected on the time I worked at 24 Hour Fitness corporate, and how our meetings were just different. Like, because we had a brand that we were living. People… eight different workouts were pseudo mandatory. They weren't officially mandatory, but if you didn't go, you heard about it. But these were people that were aspiring or actual professional bodybuilders, or former D1 athletes, or things of that nature, that wanted to work in the gym because health and fitness was so important to them, and they wanted those things when they came to meetings. And that was our brand, so we lived it. And so we thought about templatizing and putting out these things that we're going to call “fit meetings.”
Then the pandemic happened, and I had a bit of a self-awareness around mental health. Much like… I think a lot of people are talking about the Olympics right now and Simone Biles is talking about the “twisties,” which is kind of what she gave the term to her challenge when it came around mental health and how it impacted her ability to perform. And I essentially had my own version of that, in the sense that we were three or four months into the stay-at-home order. I was working out every day, I was eating right, there was no travel meals, there wasn't, like, snacking on the go or late night burgers because the flight got delayed or that kind of stuff. And I was in great shape, but I just was miserable. And my friend talked to me, and she said, “Hey, what are you doing for your mental health?” And I was like, “I don't need your crystals, Ari, like, I'm good.” And she was like, “Okay, like, that's not what I was going to suggest.”
But and we got to we got to talking more, and I started experimenting with meditation and trying it. I usually fell asleep. So I realized that the beauty of meditation was… it's not about if you can actually meditate or what happens, it's about taking the time for yourself over everything else. And fast forward, we came up… we iterated from just food and fitness at meetings, to actually a comprehensive wellness plan all based on research and science. And I introduced that to my corporate events, and I saw our survey results just skyrocket. Literally, year-over-year we had an event go from an 8.2 net promoter score to a 9.4 net promoter score on a scale of 1 to 10. And that included over 80% of the attendees taking the survey. And we were 400 people plus deep at that event.
So the light bulb came on, and we documented it, and we just kind of got to work with the concept. And then when the time presented itself with a… let's call it a reduction in force, I said, “Okay, this is my window. Let's go.” And I had a friend of mine at IMEX last year look me dead in the eyes and say, “What are you doing?” I said, “I don't know. I'm going to find another job. And she goes, “No, what are you doing? You should be chasing this wellness thing you're promoting,” and just a little tough love. And that's all it took to send me off the edge, if you will. And we've been helping companies ever since.
Logan Pratt
Yeah, it's so interesting that you kind of mentioned mental health as, like, you know, one of the other halves of wellness. Because I feel like when people think about wellness, they kind of prime with more of the physical aspects of health and wellness. Which is, like, you know, eating right and exercising. And a lot of times we know what we ought to be doing for physical health. It's a lot easier to kind of know “I ought to be eating right and exercising.” Whether or not you do that is a separate issue. But, you know, a lot of people know the best practices for a lot of physical health stuff, but I think mental health is a lot more less understood by people. So how do you kind of envision, like, the relationship between physical health and mental health in what you guys do?
David Stevens
Yeah, the… I think also mental health was a big taboo for a long time, and a big shout out to the conglomerate of people that pitched in at Event Minds Matter, they've promoted mental health very, very strongly and advocated for it. And I think what they started is fantastic, because it's essentially normalizing us being able to talk about mental health. Because anytime we talked about it before, everyone was like, “Oh, something's wrong with you.” And they just kind of, you know, they put you into this category of being broken or something of that nature. And now we've normalized that we all have different places that we're at.
So what we really try to do is… we see it as… to go back to the Olympics and… or Michael Phelps, he was the same way. He struggled with this, but you need both. They are two sides of the same coin that is wellness… Because your physical health, you can't necessarily meditate your way to low cholesterol or a six pack, but at the same time there's going to be days you aren't going to be able to work out if you aren't in the right place in your head space. Or, to go back to those examples, be an Olympic athlete and compete if you can't handle that level of pressure. And that's why it takes strong mental fortitude to deal with the situations we deal with on a regular basis and/or to have that resolve to make the time to work out, or have that resolve mentally to eat what you're supposed to eat, or things of that nature. Because there's… they feed each other, there's, you know, they talk about people's relationships with food and stress eating, and things of that nature. There's a direct correlation to how we behave and how we take care of ourselves physically, and how we are doing mentally.
Logan Pratt
Yeah, and I think it… they do kind of affect each other, and there's kind of, like, a symbiotic relationship where, you know, if you're depressed and stuff, you're not obviously gonna be able to work out. And sometimes that can often exacerbate depression. And I think also what a lot of people don't realize about mental health is, like, it is a spectrum, much like physical health is. You know, we've kind of… We, we recognize that there are a lot of different types of bodies, and there is no one way to, like, be fit. But there's also, a spectrum of mental health. It's not like you're either mentally ill or you're not, you know, there's different spectrums of that as well.
David Stevens
That's… and that's a big thing. That's why we named our company the way we did. And we see wellness as something that's defined differently by different people. We say there's one person who likes meditation and yoga, there's another person who likes to work out and then have scotch by the fireplace, and then there's someone who likes to meditate and have scotch or do yoga and work out also very intensely. Like a lot of CrossFit gyms will do yoga on Saturdays, because you need stretching, you need mobility in order to do some of these Olympic lifts they have. So yoga is super important in the CrossFit world for stretching and mobility and recovery.
So it's… our name, Olympic meeting. You hear Olympics, you think intensity, you think fierce competition, really disciplined, that kind of hardcore fitness and food. And our nickname is OM, which most people are familiar with, and is also the “sound of the universe,” as they say. So we named it that way intentionally, because you get that spectrum to be able to meet people wherever they are,
Logan Pratt
Yeah, and I guess that's good news for anybody wanting to meditate with a glass of bourbon or whatever. You can do both, you know?
David Stevens
Yes! And that's totally okay, because, if that's your happy place, then who am I to judge?
Logan Pratt
Yeah, I do also want to ask you, we mentioned in the intro that you are the six-time fittest male Event Prof, and it's such a joy to have you on the show talking about wellness. How did that, you know, title come to be and like, do you think being a physically fit person gives you an edge or, like, more authority when speaking on wellness related topics?
David Stevens
Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. So that's a title I made up, essentially. But there is a foundation for it. So every year… CrossFit, I've mentioned it a couple times now, but that's one of the primary things I do. They do a global qualifier for what they have called the CrossFit Games. Which is essentially their Olympics. And they release workouts, and essentially everybody does the same workouts. And you either do it at a gym, or you videotape yourself and submit it, or whatever. And then you submit it, and they have occupational hashtags. So they wanted to be able to say, “Oh, who's the fittest firefighter, who's the fittest cop, who's the fittest doctor?” All of these categories, which is great marketing on their behalf, right? Because then they get all these people to push each other and whatnot.
I put in Event Prof six years ago, and I was the only one on the leaderboard. So I was like, “Great, I'm the fittest event professional in the world.” Gender not relevant. And then, as an event professional, the ladies showed up and put me in my place. And so now I had to relinquish my title to “six-time fittest male event professional,” because that leaderboard is still painfully empty.
I've had a couple people come and go, but this is… it's a lesson in consistency, right? And I've shown up for six years in a row, and not everyone on the leaderboard has shown up six years in a row. So that's why I claim it, that's why I say it. And actually, it's one of the things that triggered this crusade, if you will, on wellness. Because I started thinking about what I was doing to take care of myself. And when I went to that leaderboard, I was just shocked. I was like, “There are millions of people around the world that do CrossFit. None of them are event professionals?”
There's not a single other male event professional that does CrossFit. Because if you do CrossFit, you do the open nine times out of 10. Like there's so much peer pressure and whatnot. Not in a bad way, like people aren't harassing each other, but they're definitely, like, it's a big… It's the opportunity where the gyms, they call them boxes, but where the boxes, celebrate fitness. They do this thing Friday Night Lights, et cetera, et cetera, where everybody comes into the gym and people are cheering people on. And people do the workouts kind of against each other in a friendly, competitive spirit to really just push each other to get better. And I see this community of millions of people around the world, and I thought, “Holy crap, I can't be the only one, but on the leaderboard, I am.”
We have a problem in this industry. Nobody's prioritizing taking care of themselves. And I went back to thinking about how we are just constantly people-pleasing and never prioritizing ourselves. And that's where a lot of this mission started. So I think… I don't know that it necessarily gives me any authority to speak on the subject, but it definitely got me thinking about the subject at large. And it's what motivated me to go out and find the research that when you integrate wellness into events, your events are more effective. And I would say that's what gives me the authority to speak about it, is because we've gone out and done the work to find the studies and to discover the science that shows how wellness impacts people's ability to learn and build relationships and whatnot.
Logan Pratt
Yeah. And I do also kind of want to ask you about that as well. Because I think when it comes to the topic of wellness, I think there are a lot of people who maybe… If they're not initiated into the whole world of health and fitness and wellness, there are a lot of like, bad actors kind of in that space as well. Like, there are people who, you know, don't give out accurate information. And there's a lot of claims made in that space. And we've talked about some of the things that, like, people can look for when seeking out a wellness expert or when trying to give wellness advice to their attendees.
So like, what are some of those things that you kind of look for in a fitness or wellness expert, and what are things that people should kind of watch out for in terms of like scams or bad actors and stuff?
David Stevens
I appreciate that question. And what's interesting is the market has already started to shift. There was a McKinsey report earlier this year that stated the wellness industry has hit a $1.8 trillion market cap. But one of the one of the key findings in their study is that people are done with influencers. Because they aren't accredited or certified or anything else. It’s just somebody with a phone that's willing to go into a grocery store and act like a crazy person and discount things that they don't actually have any detailed knowledge to talk about.
Now, I see the irony in me calling out influencers as my accreditations are… I don't want to say minimal, but there's not a lot of accreditation in wellness at events. The things that exist I have gotten and went out and obtained. But the things I look for whenever I'm trying to figure out if what someone is saying is truthful or authentic or worth listening to is transparency and neutrality. In the way of, if someone's saying, “Oh, you should make sure you eat protein for breakfast because it impacts your neurotransmitters and can help people with ADHD learn more.” That's one statement, right? Whereas someone says, “If you do drink this protein powder, click the link in my bio to go buy it, you're going to learn more. Blah, blah, blah.” That's a different style of claim than protein.
Because they're more focused on selling something over something else. The same thing, if someone's in a store bashing a product line for something, they nine times out of 10 haven't done their science. And I think my favorite things on Instagram and TikTok and whatnot are where certified nutritionists are blowing up these people that are in grocery stores and various stores saying, “Oh, don't drink this protein powder. It's bad for you. There's no protein in it.” And they're like, the first ingredient listed is milk. Milk has protein in it. Like, what? Do you not know anything?
And the other thing is that, like social media is the there's a whole thing called rage bait where people just go film audacious crap to get people to interact with it because the algorithms acknowledge interaction and comments and whatnot. And so people go and film rage bait just to get people to engage with their posts, because they just want the views over anything else.
So I think regardless… and the term I use for all this stuff is… we do a thing on LinkedIn every week called “Wellness Washing Wednesdays.” And just like, I think it was last week, I posted a video of someone setting somebody on fire on a massage table. And… but with all intents and purposes, I also looked up like I was, like, saw this, and then he, like… They set the person on fire, then he's like, banging a drum over him, and then he throws a wet blanket over him to put the fire out. And I was like, “Okay, before I just rage bait this, let's look it up.” And so I went and I did my research, and I found that there is a fire practice in traditional Chinese medicine and whatnot. But then I looked into how it's actually supposed to be done, and sure enough, that practitioner wasn't doing any of the things they were supposed to be doing. So I don't know if it was a rage bait video or what it was, but either way, it was shenanigans. And so that's why we want to call it out. So I think if you’re trying to find people to get guidance from, ensure they're transparent and ensure they're neutral when it comes to product promotion.
Logan Pratt
Yeah, because I think also a lot of, you know, planners and stuff… When it comes to products as well… There's so many kind of wellness products out there. You know, there's a million brands of protein powder. You know, you were, you know, you were, you were telling me the other day, like every fitness influencer has their own protein powder and their own energy drink and whatever. So there's a lot of products out there, and there may not be a distinguishable difference between them… But how would you suggest that planners go out and choose what products to offer, you know if they wanted to have a table full of protein powder or protein snacks or whatever. How would they choose between, you know, there… because there's a lot of them out there.
David Stevens
Yeah, well let’s keep it real and talk about the fact that your hotel is going to probably tell you which one you're going to have.
Logan Pratt
True.
David Stevens
So one of the things we do is we do a disclaimer, or let's call it a concession, in our hotel RFPs, that if their menus don't meet our nutritional needs, that we reserve the right to supplement them. And that's because, if you look at most hotels, food and beverage and banquets menus, their their breaks are heavy, heavy carb. It's different kinds. It's it's breads, it's donuts, it's various it's cookies and fruit and whatnot. There's nothing wrong with carbs, but they're usually devoid of any real protein. So we would bring in like, for example, it happened one time at a at a hotel. People, and they accepted it. And so I just went to GNC and just basically cleaned out like four different kinds of protein bars so that people and jerky, so that people could just pick and choose. I don't care which one they use. I think different ones are going to be are going to appeal to people differently. So I think if a planner is trying to choose. I think variety is going to be on your side. The simplest. If you, if you have a smoothie bar, and you ask, Hey, can we add protein to the smoothies? And the kitchen is like, we don't have it. Okay, I'm going to bring in my own I would, I would go find, probably something that's nice and a fairly clean protein so that it's less likely to interact negatively with any of your attendees, gastrointestinal tract, maybe something that's lactose free, or something of that nature. But yeah, I think it's your hotel nine times out of 10 is going to dictate which what you're able to bring in.
Logan Pratt
That's very true. Yeah, a lot of times you don't get to choose that. I also want to ask you a little bit about technology and stuff as well, and like, kind of how the intersection between technology and wellness and events. What kind of technologies are you guys currently using? Kind of in the wellness space, are there any that you found really effective, and also, are there ones that you think that like are kind of over hyped as well in the industry? Because I think there's a lot of people that are like, Oh, I don't know even know what to use or offer to people.
David Stevens
Yeah, I think one of the things that's special about events is, if you're doing an in person event, leverage the fact that people are in person, you should be using your tech to create more inclusive environments, like the things that do, transcribing and things of that nature, to create inclusive environments, or leveraging tech to create calm and quiet spaces for the 25% of your attendees, approximately that are neuro divergent. They did a study that 25% of the population identifies somewhere on the spectrum as being neuro divergent. So you can do that.
You can create these wellness spaces with VR goggles where people can essentially completely check out of your event, and you can take them to another place for five minutes, 10 minutes, just enough to take a break from the chaos and chill out. IMEX did a really good job of it a couple years ago, I think they, they had a wellness lounge. And one of the things you sat in this zero gravity massage chair and you had a headset on, and it was, it was magical, because you go, you literally five minute walk away, is all the overstimulation of the of the conference floor and just noise and lights and flashes and whatnot. And then you go over to this other area, and it's absolute silence calm. And even some of the exhibitors I saw that last year, they were doing massage chairs, and they had, like a red light therapy face mask and oxygen and so all these different things.
But the other thing you can do is if for some reason, you have people that want to work out. I went to South by earlier this year, South by Southwest, and there was an entire exhibit hall dedicated to VR and AR, virtual reality and augmented reality, and the meta booth where they offer headsets with workouts in them. It being boot camp, boxing, yoga, stretching, etc, they have all these classes. They're just built into the headsets. And then a friend of mine, we were there, and I was like, “Oh my God, that would be great to rent for an event. And, like, especially maybe where you have a little more budget, like an incentive, or maybe just anyone if you, if you have the budget, you can put them in people's rooms and be like, hey, get your sweat on with this. And put some wipes next to it, because somebody's going to probably use them afterwards. But you know, you could do a virtual class in your room where you can be transported to a different place, so that when you go back to the conference the next day, you're in the right mindset, or you come back to your room on your lunch and you put the headset on and you do a 10 minute meditation that you look like you're sitting on top of a mountain in Hawaii watching a sunset like VR and AR can be very powerful.
Logan Pratt
Do you think that that also helps people give more people options when choosing when to do workouts and stuff as well? Because sometimes we talked about this as well the other day, we're like, sometimes people don't want to get up at like, 6am to do a morning workout or a morning yoga routine, but like, you know, offering these VR AR headsets could offer them the opportunity, like you do it whenever you want, like whenever you have a free 10 minutes. Do you think that gives people more control and is, again, one of the benefits of offering those head events?
David Stevens
Yeah. I'll politely say no and say it's the agenda that gives people more control. If you give them an on demand way of executing self care, you have to give them the time to be able to leverage self care, because if they are in sessions all the time, back to back sessions, 45 minute lunch, maybe only an hour lunch, and they want to use that time to talk to people they're they're not going to have any time for themselves. Some people, you know, there's morning people, there's people who like to work out at noon and there, and there's people that their lunch, and there's people that like to work out afternoon, evening. If you have time built in free time built in throughout, or you start a little later, or things of that nature by creating a by using that tech to give people the freedom to work out when they want to work out and or choose the duration of their class. Maybe they're maybe this you could kick start someone's new habit that changes their life, right? Because maybe they they're not ready for a 45 minute class and they only want to do 15 minutes, but that's an option in there. They can go in and choose a 15 minute stretching class or a 15 minute 15 minutes of burpees, which sounds like a nightmare, but it like you never know what kind of thing you can what kind of impact you can have on people just by providing them an option to take care of themselves. But like I said, if the agenda is so ridiculous they don't have any time to do it, then what's the point?
Logan Pratt
Do you find also, like psychologically as well, like when you're building agendas? Is it better to give people just kind of like, an open one hour block where they can spend it how they choose. Or is it better to like title that block? You know wellness time. You know what I mean? Like, are people, will people be primed to prioritize wellness if you just give them an open opportunity? Or do you find that like, kind of priming them a little bit helps to encourage them to participate more in those
David Stevens
I would say people who have a wellness practice will take that time and use it. People who don't, won't. So I would strongly say, if you put a block of time in there that says “wellness/self care,” that tells them that communicates to your attendees that you want them to disconnect. You're not trying to get them to schedule meetings or catch up on email or things of that nature. Whereas, if it just says free time, then you know, you put, you put free time on the calendar from 230 to 330 nobody's going to go work out unless they're that person, which that person is going to be super excited about. But nobody else is going to they're going to be like, “Oh, great. I can get caught up on email. I can have a meeting, I can schedule that call for them, or whatever, which, don't get me wrong, is huge when it comes to people being able to pay attention and be engaged with your sessions. It's still a very important thing, but if you label it as wellness or free time, then it gives people the opportunity, and they might go, oh, they and especially,
I think it kind of depends, sorry, I'm kind of talking in circles here. I think it really kind of depends on if, like, who the attendee is, right? If you're an internal corporate meeting and these are your employees, yes, I would call that wellness. If you are an association or a that this is a user conference of some kind or something of that nature, I'd probably call it wellness slash free time, so that people understand that they can do what they want. But if you, if you're a corporate planner and your company has a corporate wellness program. Call that, call that hour block wellness.
Logan Pratt
Yeah, because it's also, I don't know if people appreciate, you know, being forced to do wellness activities as well. But I think priming them and giving them that opportunity to choose wellness…
David Stevens
That's the beauty is you're not forcing them. Because they have to go to their room and put that headset on. Right? Like, yeah it's up to them, and they can use that time however they want, theoretically, but by promoting it, you're at least telling them that we're trying to look out for you, we know it's a long day. Here you go.
Logan Pratt
Yeah, and I do also want to ask you about AI as well. It feels like every episode of this podcast we talk about AI in some fashion, but I do think it is kind of the future for a lot of people. And I'm curious specifically about how you would utilize it in a wellness setting as well. And like in the work that you guys do at Olympian, how you guys have been utilizing AI, and if you have any tips for planners, especially about how they can and should be utilizing AI in their day-to-day tasks.
David Stevens
So I will say in the in the term of wellness practices, outside of like, Hey, can you create a 10 minute workout for me or something of that nature? That I use our trained chat GPT, that it's literally called Wellness at events. GPT, outside of that we we don't necessarily use it a whole lot for the wellness practice, but we use it to run our business, so that we have more time in our day, so that we can take care of ourselves. And that's the whole point of AI, right? It's supposed to help you.
And so we leverage AI at Olympian to give us time back in our days so that we can have that freedom to do the things we need to do for ourselves, and take the time to be able to get a workout in, or self care or things of that nature. So we use it. One, we'll use it for creating workouts. Two, we'll use it for an agenda head starter. Three, we'll use it for summarizing podcast episodes that we do and creating a transcript. So I don't know if you want me to go into our tech stock around our podcast, but I'm happy to do that if you want. I see you nodding your head, so I'll just jump into it.
Logan Pratt
Feel free.
David Stevens
Okay, so the way we're using this is our this probably our most comprehensive use of AI. We will record a podcast episode much like you and I are doing right now, and then we take that video and put it into discord, which then spits out a transcript. We take that transcript put into chat GPT, the trained one, so that it sounds like quote me, which has all of our transcripts that have been that it's been trained on. And I just asked chat GPT to create a 60-second summary of the episode, identifying key points for that would compel a someone who just started watching an episode to want to watch the full episode. And then it spits out a transcript or a script. I then copy that script, I put it in this other tool called Hey Jen, where I have an avatar that looks frightening like like me, and I call that avatar David V, as in Victor, or virtual Stevens, instead of David T Stevens, and it spits out a video in one take.
So that process, that whole process, takes maybe 15 minutes because, well, maybe not the rendering of the video on the front end, but once I have the Script, Script into chat. GPT summarize this, that's maybe 90 seconds, all right. Copy that, read through it. Key Point, read through it, and then I copy and paste that into Hey Jen with my avatar. It spits out a video that looks and sounds just like me in a matter of minutes, and then I send that video back to our editor, and they just put it on the front end as like an opening bumper for what to expect in this video, like any good TV show.
And then the other tool we use, we use an automated clip generator, where once the episode goes to YouTube, I can just drop in the YouTube link, it will break out. I can choose how long I want the clips to be, up to 30 seconds, 30 to 60 seconds, 60 to 90 seconds, whatever. And in about 20 minutes, it spits out 15 to 20 clips, all formatted, all with captions done, and that I can actually schedule and post directly from that website for a month, and I have to think about videos going out on any social because they're just or YouTube or LinkedIn, whatever, I can just go through, pick the ones I like, schedule them and walk away. And if there's anything that we need in the events world, it's time, and that's what AI has done for us is give us back time, especially when there's, we're a small team and we're still trying to ramp up. So being able to do that is phenomenal,
Logan Pratt
Yeah. And I also love the idea that, like you know, you can utilize AI, you know, with a wellness spin, that it gives you more time to engage in wellness activities as well, with the time that you save, you know, utilizing AI. So
David Stevens
That's why I love AI, because it gives me time to take care of myself.
Logan Pratt
Yeah, definitely. I also want to ask you kind of, kind of to wrap things up here a little bit, you know, since this podcast is called Fast Forward, we like to look to like the future of the industry. And I'm curious about what you think the future of the wellness sector looks like, you know, where, where do we go from where we currently are in that sector? And like, what kind of things do you expect will be in the wellness industry in the next like, 5, 10, 20 years?
David Stevens
What I'm hoping to see is that we start rethinking how we gather and we just start treating people like humans and not like robots, because right now, that seems to be what we do. We promote these “jam packed agendas,” We don't focus on the fact that people have flown all over the world to come get together, to spend time together. Instead, we fly these people all over the world into a destination and then lock them in a dark room and expect them to pay. Tension for hours on end.
We are learning so much about ourselves, physiologically and mentally. And there's so much incredible science coming out that I hope all the people who unfortunately have to say, believe in science. Because some people just, you know, there's Flat Earthers out there, right? So, and come at me, Flat Earthers. I don't care. But for the people that believe in the science like they, if you pay attention to it, they are arming you as a planner with the ability to have way more effective meetings. If you lean into it and start understanding that they're giving you incredible insights to help your events and meetings skyrocket in way of engagement and attendee satisfaction and all those things. Because if people leave happy and energized instead of exhausted, they're going to want to come back. And that's how you build community and super fans and everything else. Because when somebody leaves excited, or they they cry when they leave because they're so sad. It's over like that's when, you know, you crushed it.
So there's so much science, there's so much knowledge, there's so much out there, and it just there's more and more of it every day that it is. It's giving us nothing but opportunities to grow and enhance our meetings and events to be so much more substantial and transformative. So I just really hope people can move on from we've always done it this way, which is that's, that's the biggest killer of all. We've always done it this way. Yeah.
Logan Pratt
And it sounds like if you kind of had a takeaway from this conversation as well, it would just be, like, if you are a planner, to just give people that time for wellness. Because like you were saying, I think a lot of people are so focused on jam-packing their events with speakers and networking opportunities and like, you know, squeezing every last minute of that event into something, “productive.” But wellness is productive, even though it feels like a break, it is still incredibly important, like, give that to your attendee so that they can actually focus and, you know, be 100% at all points throughout the meeting or event.
David Stevens
Yeah, and obviously, I think with time, the attendee profile is going to change. And I think you and I are probably different generations. I'm not going to say when I was born, but I'm pretty sure it was a while before you I'm I've had many conversations with people who are like, Yeah, my kids would never consider going into doing the job I do, or they hate conferences, but they'll go to a three day Music Festival. So what's, what's, what's missing there, right? Like, we have to start thinking about our events differently and understand that there is a whole group of people, like an industry event that that probably wasn't great. So I think we have to be cognizant of that, and start being aware of what the what the incoming crowd is wanting.
Logan Pratt
Yeah, definitely the future is coming for everyone. But yeah, well, thank you so much, David. So kind of this last question, you know, where can people find you as well if they want to, like, learn more? I also saw that I think you're speaking at IMEX this October as well. So I don't know if you want to, you know, plug some of the stuff that you have coming up for a lot of our listeners, but
David Stevens
Yeah, I will be speaking at IMEX in October. I have two sessions, the first ones on Tuesday, the second one is on Thursday, when probably everyone's going to be gone, but it'll still happen with the same excitement and vigor as the one on Tuesday. And then, quite honestly, if you Google me, you will find all kinds of posts and whatnot, but David T. Stevens, T as in tango with the phonetic dictionary, but LinkedIn is where I spend most of my time. It's it this, this industry, has given me a life I could never afford, and I've seen the world because of it, and I'm so grateful for it, and that's really why we're on this mission to help us reshape the way we gather. Because I want to give back, and I want to see the industry continue to thrive and attendees stay excited about going to conferences, instead of feeling like I'm gonna be burnt out afterwards.
Logan Pratt
Yes, and David is an avid poster on LinkedIn. I dropped him a follow, and I do not regret it. So make sure to drop him a follow as well on his LinkedIn page.
David Stevens
But we also have our podcast “Return on Wellness” on YouTube. Which, the entire point of our podcast, and I'm sure you can appreciate this, is the business justification of incorporating wellness into events.
And to give you a teaser, it's not out yet, but I just interviewed someone who did a wellness event, and they have already signed a. Uh, multiple, multi year contracts with attendees who are at the event because of the event. And that's, that's the whole point. That's why it's return on wellness like ROI, so that's going to be coming out. So I'm just waiting for their PR team to review everything and approve it. But
Logan Pratt
Yeah, yeah, we'll go, go, check that out, everyone. That sounds… that sounds great. Well, yeah, thank you so much for being on, David.
David Stevens
Absolutely! Thank you for having me.
Logan Pratt
That was my conversation with David T. Stevens, one of the foremost experts on fitness and wellness in the meetings and events industry. If you liked what you heard, check out more episodes of Fast Forward by going to Meetingstoday.com/podcasts or find us on Spotify. And as always, thank you for listening.
