Latest / PCMA Convene Podcast / Series: Wellness Is a Performance Strategy: Designing Events Around Human Energy with David T. Stevens
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- Convene Podcast Transcript Series: Wellness Is a Performance Strategy: Designing Events Around Human Energy with David T. Stevens *Note: the transcript is AI generated, excuse typos and inaccuracies Magdalina Atanassova: Welcome to Season 11 of the Convene Podcast, brought to you by Destination Madison. This season we’re focused on wellness and designing events that don’t exhaust people. Today my guest is David T. Stevens — a 20‑year veteran planner, 6x Fittest Male #EventProf, and a leading voice in wellbeing-centered event design. David has planned meetings, incentives, and large‑scale experiences across media, entertainment, agency, association, and corporate sectors, and he brings a rare blend of athletic discipline, medical‑grade rigor, and creative production experience to the industry. He holds a WITT AP (Wellness in Travel and Tourism Accredited Professional), the Delos Wellness for Meetings and Events Certificate, and Pandemic Meeting Event Design certification, and he’s also a Harvard-certified Lifestyle Medicine & Wellness Coach. He and the Olympian Meeting team — including a medical doctor and nutrition coach — authored a white paper on the increased ROI of integrated wellness, and he hosts the web series Return on Wellness. In this conversation, we explore how to design for human energy, why social connection is a public‑health intervention, and how small agenda shifts can dramatically increase learning, connection, and ROI. We start now. Hi David and welcome to the Convene Podcast. David T. Stevens: Thank you very much for having me. It's exciting to be here, especially as a a PCMA Chapter President. This is exciting to have this conversation. Magdalina Atanassova: Yeah, same for me, especially when I have to start that you're a six time Sweetest male event Prof. And a Harvard Certified Lifestyle Medicine Wellness course. When did wellness stop being just a personal passion and became a non negotiable design principle in the events that you plan? Was there a specific moment or project that really flipped that switch for you? David T. Stevens: Well, so for me wellness was really more of a personal hobby. I did it in my spare time. But in the mid 2000s I did go through an experience where I was working at an events agency and was kind of getting some flack for going to the gym in the middle of the day. So I stopped doing it and I saw my performance at work shift not the right way. It went down. I realized it was taking me longer to get things done. I wasn't as focused, et cetera, et cetera. And I don't know if that was the time constraints of going to the gym and not or the things that I was doing at the gym actually fueling my abilities. But then fast forward a few years I worked for 24 Hour Fitness, which is a large gym chain in the United States, and I ran all their internal meetings and events and incentives and whatnot. And I started to understand that taking care of yourself was more than just a nice to have, it was the core of your ability to perform. So fast forward a couple more years, I I changed the way I started taking care of myself and made it a priority. And then the the big shift came in 2019. The end of 2019, when I had a conversation with my now co founder about how frustrated I was coming back from a conference and feeling terrible and knowing my inbox was a wreck. I felt awful, I felt sleep deprived. I struggled to find the food I wanted. So a lot of times I'd have to leave the event or the conference to go find my own food. I didn't necessarily want to do the minuscule offerings that the conference had when it came to wellness offerings. So I ended up doing my own things by myself. So what it came down to is we started thinking about, well, how do we integrate this into the overall event so that it includes people instead of excludes people who want to take care of themselves? And then we rolled into 2020. Some things happened that gave us time to go do the research on realizing that wellness is a performance enhancer over anything else. And I'm married to a physician, so we made sure that the studies we looked at were legitimate and peer reviewed, double blind kinds of things. And that helped us understand that integrating wellness into events was an opportunity to uplevel the participant outcome, which then directly impacts the ROI of the event. Magdalina Atanassova: And here we're not speaking of those small, performative, nice things people add usually to the agendas, right? The, the fun runs. We're speaking about deeper level of integration. So it's not just an event that offers fun moments, but it's truly designed around wellness. This can be a bit of a shock to some event planners. So can you explain how you think about it and how, how they can actually also do it for their events? David T. Stevens: Yeah, I think if you take a step back and you have to understand that wellness means different things to different people. There's things that exist that might seem counterintuitive when it comes to wellness. There's a. There's a thing called drunk yoga. There's a thing I just heard about recently called punk wellness. It's happening in Shanghai where there's a traditional Chinese medicine doctor at a bar. And when you come in, you see the doctor and he prescribes you a specific cocktail based on what you need. Those both happen to be alcohol focused, if you will. But there's other things. Like there's also Rage Rage yoga, which everyone thinks of yoga being this Zen experience. But sometimes people need to get their frustrations out and, and deal with their challenges in a, in a different way. So when you start expanding your horizons of what wellness means, then you start understanding that you need to find out from your participants what wellness means to them. And I think all too often meeting and event and conference planners think they need to tell their participants what that person thinks wellness is, as opposed to having a conversation through registration on what wellness really means to the participants that are coming. Magdalina Atanassova: Okay, so walk us through how we can make it a bit more inclusive for everybody. What I would appreciate in terms of wellness at the meeting might not be the same thing. You'd appreciate that we have different abilities right in the room. David T. Stevens: Yeah. So a little thing that we like to do is we like to build into registration. What does wellness mean to you? And it's just a question that's in registration. And the beautiful thing is you can offer pretty much anything and everything you want to, but we like to create a few different options for each level of intensity so that we start to understand what kind of crowd we're dealing with. Because if you put sound bath, meditation, et cetera at the beginning, and then in the middle is more like yoga, walk, running, guided stretching, and at the bottom there's boot camp or hit class or that kind of thing. And 80% of the people are filling out the, are choosing those sound bath and meditation. Well, you understand where that, where that audience is and where they're probably living in their nervous system. Whereas if you have a group that you're getting 80% that are choosing boot camp and hit classes and stuff like that, those are, that's a different group of people. So they're going to show up very differently. And if you go to the event and you offer yoga and 80% of the people asked said wellness meant hit to them, then you're going to miss the mark and people are, aren't going to show up and people are going to think, well, wellness doesn't work well. No, you asked people a question and then you didn't listen to them. From a logistics standpoint, what's great about that question is you also understand how big your classes are going to be, how many instructors you're going to need if you need av, how big of a space to provide. Like all those things that we tend to pine over from the logistics and operations outcome, you actually know what to expect from people because you've, you've asked them the question. Magdalina Atanassova: Yeah, but what about those that may not be able to physically participate as others? If you have any physical disability, if you're neurodivergent, can you also integrate those people into those activities? David T. Stevens: Yeah, well, that's, that's one thing that separates the, let's call it the amateurs from the professionals and, or what separates an event professional versus an event planner is we only hire trained, licensed, accredited professionals to run our classes so that anybody who shows up can participate in the class. And that's not anybody. One word. That's two words. Anybody can participate in the class. So there are plenty of people in wheelchairs who do HIIT classes. There's, you know, there's, there's adaptive CrossFit out there. So if you're going to offer those classes and you're going to offer things, you better make sure that you're hiring a trained professional to lead those classes so that they can be inclusive. Because to us, this isn't just an opportunity to support someone maintaining their physical fitness or their mindfulness or whatever. This is an opportunity also to initiate and help someone who may otherwise be resistant to trying one of these things, for it to be an approachable thing that, that might set them up on a new path. Because if you, if you zoom out a little bit and you think about, there's someone who comes to your conference and they've always wanted to try, I don't know, a sound bath, and they're living in a chronic state of stress all the time, every time, and they decide to try it at your event and they learn what the impact is and they experience it. And all of a sudden you were the first step on their journey. That person looks at your conference completely differently for the rest of their lives. That's, that's the level of opportunity that we have to impact people by offering these things. Magdalina Atanassova: I personally know a few stories around IMEX's 5k run walk thing that they've started a few years ago. Oh yeah, they have started running and do marathons and more than that. David T. Stevens: These executions are a potential flashpoint for people to start something new in their lives. But they have to be done in a way that's meaningful and approachable. Magdalina Atanassova: So you and the Olympian meeting team wrote a white paper on the increased ROI from integrating wellness into meetings. So based on that paper, what would you advise an event planner right now who has, let's say, 30 seconds in front of the leadership to justify a wellness centered design? Are there any specific metrics or outcomes they should lead with, you think? David T. Stevens: Yeah, I think when it comes to the business case, if we design for human energy, people stay longer, they absorb more information and they connect with each other better. And that shows up in increased dwell time at sponsors booths, higher information retention from sessions and better sponsor conversion if we, if we have those as well. It also reduces friction for people. So there's fewer complaints, there's fewer drop offs, there's less conference crash afterwards. So if you're doing an internal meeting, people aren't taking time off afterwards. So wellness really isn't a cost, it is a performance strategy. Magdalina Atanassova: I love it. What are some structural changes that you make to the agenda yourself? You know, when you're planning events, let's say in the terms of timing the flow, the formats, the room setups that support cognitive well being, like you, you just said. And not just step counts like we're seeing often. David T. Stevens: Yeah. Which don't get me wrong, I love the step counts. And I, I aggressively participate every single time I get the chance. But really avoid the marathon sits. So get people up, get people moving. Set your general session room in a way that's conducive to people either sitting on like a lower level seat or standing. Have tables at the back of the room so that people know if they're going to stand, there's a place for them, not just, oh, you're stuck leaning up against the wall. I think another thing is protecting the first and last 15 minutes. So the first 15 minutes will set your cognitive tone and the last 15 minutes is an opportunity to lock in retention and connection. And if you miss that, there's this thing called the forgetting curve. Essentially, if you don't re engage with content within 48 hours, you're going to forget approximately 80% of it. So there's a real opportunity there to revisit things so that people leave with a higher perceived value. And then third is designing transitions like they matter. So transitions are where energy can get either killed or brought up. So bringing in a professional emcee or host or even leveraging whoever your executive is. I went to one conference, one time where they would start, they would introduce every speaker with a standing ovation and you could feel the energy in the room just completely change. And it was wild, but it was also awesome. And people happy to do it because you get them up. Magdalina Atanassova: Right. David T. Stevens: And they're clapping and they're moving and the whole vibe of the room completely changes. Magdalina Atanassova: Yeah. It's like when someone smiles at you. Right. You automatically tend to smile yourself. So it's kind of the same vibe. And especially when it's a huge room with a lot of people, that energy just washes over you and love it. David T. Stevens: Yeah. Magdalina Atanassova: When you said protect the last 15 minutes, my mind went to the last 15 minutes of a conference where you have a plane to catch taxi to, you know, transport whatever is waiting for you. So you are in A rush to leave the room. What's your message to those attendees that need to leave the room? How can they protect those 15 minutes for themselves? David T. Stevens: Well, I think if the agenda is built in a way that, that 15 minutes is protected already, they, they might feel differently. We did an interesting thing when we launched Circadian Curve at IMAX last year. And one of the things we offered was, we called it a forgetting curve journaling class on the very last day of the conference. And the whole idea was for people to come by and just take 15 minutes and pause and reflect on the meetings they had, the people they saw, the sessions they attended, et cetera, just 15 minutes. Because what happens is there's a. There's a whole domino effect that happens. One, you're mitigating that forgetting curve, and your perceived value of the conference inherently goes up. Especially because when someone asks you, oh, how was Convening Leaders? You say, oh, it was great. I talked to so and so I, I went to this session, I heard about blah, blah, blah. And because you're doing that, you can actually articulate value instead of saying, oh, it was great. The end. So the next thing is when you're rushing out, there's all kinds of things to do. Everything else, you get home, your children, your furry children, whoever is going to be excited to see you when you get there. And there's nothing but distractions when you get home. And if you have all this stuff in the back of your head, you're going to be short and preoccupied. But if you took that 15 minutes to make all your notes and understand what you need to do and whatnot, you're going to be able to be more present. And the last thing that I have a sneaking suspicion on, that at some point when we have some significant funding I want to do a study, is I want to look at conferences that offer that and promote it versus the ones that don't and how people sleep when they get home. And the reason I bring this up is because our brains hate open loops. That's why they say, keep a notepad by your bed and journal at night. And things that. And journaling has empirically proven to improve sleep because you don't go to bed with open loops. So if you're leaving a conference and you go home and everything's written down and you can be present with your family, I think you're sleeping better. That's my, my suspicion. Magdalina Atanassova: And sleep is so important. And I think in the very near future we will have a whole episode and we'll be Just speaking about sleep and how to protect it during events. David T. Stevens: I got a sleep doctor if you need one, she told me. And this is what changed the way I thought about sleep at conferences, especially when it comes to ROI, is when you're asleep, you convert short term memory into long term memory and free up space for more short term memory the next day. Yet look at our agendas. They're almost intentionally built to deprive people of sleep. So you're directly undermining the opportunity for people to take away information from the event. Magdalina Atanassova: I think many event professionals are trying to normalize the fact that I'm not going to show up to that reception or to that 6am run just because I need to manage my sleep. I think people are starting to be a bit more open in the industry, which is great, but we need definitely more people like yourself talking about it and educating people and planners mostly why we need to protect it. David T. Stevens: Well, and there's different chronotypes, right. There are your night owls and so you don't have to necessarily get rid of the after party, but what you can do is you can call it optional on the agenda. So it gives people consent to opt out. And that's what we're usually missing a lot of times is it just says after party and someone thinks they have to be there because our boss is going to be there and blah blah, blah. But by adding that one word, optional, people understand that it's, it's really their choice as to if they want to go get a good night's sleep or not. Magdalina Atanassova: And also put it in the app and make people opt in or out so you can make your counts and you know how many people show up and this logistics, right? David T. Stevens: Yeah, exactly. AD: Planners are embracing tier two destinations for new attendee experiences—and Madison, Wisconsin delivers. With city lake scenery, green spaces, and a safe walkable downtown, Madison will leave your attendees feeling recharged and reconnected. Enjoy urban amenities, a welcoming vibe, and coffee under forty-eight dollars a gallon. Learn more or submit an RFP at visit madison dot com slash PCMA. Magdalina Atanassova: What are the most common missteps event professionals make when they try to add wellness to their event programs? That they don't actually move the needle for attendees. Like we're just saying now with sleep. David T. Stevens: Yeah, well, doing it for the gram. You know, everyone wants an instagramable moment so they think red light masks and compression boots are the end all be all to a wellness lounge. And there's a really interesting opportunity of are you asking what the efficacy is of it? And I'll give you a quick example. So I went to an event where they had a hyperbaric oxygen chamber and then I was like, oh that's cool. I wonder, I wonder like how much benefit I get from one 15 minute session. Well, I ended up at this place called Brain Dubai that is a giant hyperbaric oxygen therapy clinic. And their chief medical officer explained why they built their program the way they built it, because they did not see any change in people until three weeks of two hours a day, every day for three weeks. And it was at like something like two or three atmospheres, which is, you know, know the pressure level. This event had a spa grade hyperbaric oxygen therapy chamber, which is like 1, 2 or something like that atmospheres. And I was in it for 15 minutes. So in theory, it did nothing because nobody studied that. So I think understanding if you are adding performative wellness or if it's meaningful wellness. The other thing is there's usually a lack of education around how that modality or practice directly benefits people. An example I like to use is when you're offering, let's say, a higher intensity bootcamp, are you telling people about what happens when they get to 80% of their heart rate and they've triggered their sympathetic nervous system? Because there's magic that happens. And your hippocampus turns on, which is the learning center of your brain. Your. You also, your brain gets flooded with this chemical called bdnf, which fosters neuroplasticity and synapses connections. But, okay, that's cool, but why do I care? Well, your hippocampus is the learning center. And what's happening when you're doing that is your brain is trying to figure out if you're in danger. And so it turns on the memory function and the learning function for it to register what's happening, to know next time if this is a dangerous situation or not. So by doing that, those effects linger when you go into sessions. So whenever we do a bootcamp, I share this with people at the beginning of class. And then I'll remind them probably halfway through and ask, hey, are you pushing? Are you in that 80% yet? Because if you are, you're going to be smarter than everyone else in the room who isn't here this morning. Because you're putting in the work, you're priming your brain to learn. There's a real opportunity there. But people, nine times out of 10, the instructors aren't trained on that. So if you get someone who just shows up and does a boot camp class and doesn't educate their people, then it's not going to be as sticky as it could be. I think another thing is when it comes to food and people not thinking through what to serve and when to serve that or following trends over facts. So, like offering a way high saturated fat impossible burger because it's quote, healthy because it's a meat alternative. When. If you just served a regular burger, there's less fat, there's lower calories. Magdalina Atanassova: It's. David T. Stevens: It. It. It's actually better for you than this supposed. Just cause it's vegan doesn't mean it's healthy. Right. So understanding that level of. Of offering and not getting fooled by a hype, I think that's one of the things that really frustrates me a lot of times is when I go to a hotel and I look at the healthy thing and there's like a grilled chicken breast and seasoned vegetables and whatnot that's on the regular menu. But then the healthy menu, there's some, like, grain bowl that's completely devoid of protein and has all these other things in it. I'm like, what the. It's a grilled chicken breast with vegetables. Like, how is that not on a healthy menu? So I think those are a few ways that we get pulled into doing things that we're. We're not necessarily thinking the next step into. And, you know, it's greenwashing all over again, so to speak. Magdalina Atanassova: I recently was at an event that was not even following the trends. They were stuck in the 80s, and they were just sandwiches and sweets. And as a person who started eating gluten, I was like, thank you for excluding me. I am out of here trying to find food. David T. Stevens: Can we. Can we pause and, like, really just help people understand that the. That, like, when your menu isn't inclusive, people leave? Magdalina Atanassova: Exactly. David T. Stevens: That's such a. A massive fail. Like, you're literally chasing people away because you didn't take the time to design a menu that met people's actual nutritional needs. Tell me you don't care about me being there without telling me. Magdalina Atanassova: Yeah, exactly. And as you said, hotels also do it with their menu. So there is a lot of little pieces within our environment that are still not up to date, still need to catch up. They still need to understand that whole level of personalization, if you may, but also how you're including people more than what we're usually talking about. David T. Stevens: Right, right. A hundred percent. Magdalina Atanassova: And speaking of that, I think it also ties to social connection quite nicely. How do you think event professionals can treat social connection itself as a wellness intervention? And how can they plan for it better? David T. Stevens: So I want to start with a quote, because it hit me so hard. Your social health is the single largest determinant of your physical health. And that was said by professor, medical doctor and PhD Patina Borsch, who is the executive director of the World Federation of Public Health Associations. And what I took away from a much longer conversation that I had with her after that was she said, you think you're doing wellness at events, what you're actually doing is public health. And when you pause and you think about the fact that we bring together 15, 50, 500, 5,000 people, what we do can directly impact their health in the sense that if we ensure people feel seen and included and connected through intentional networking breaks, as opposed to just put food and beverage in a room, throw in a band, and it'll work itself out, but actually creating the opportunity to have conversations, having your music at a level that people can still talk to each other, having potential conversation cues on tables or birds of a feather style meals or things of that nature, you can ensure that people leave feeling more connected than when they got there. And if you can do that, you're directly impacting people's health and, and well being. On the flip side, the studies are showing that people experiencing loneliness and isolation, their physical health is impacted in the equivalent of smoking 15 cigarettes a day. And if someone comes to your event and is feeling like an outsider and unwelcome and neglected, you just help them smoke 15 cigarettes a day, every day they were at your event. I know those are a bit dramatic, but I'm doing that to drive the point home, right? Like, we have such an opportunity to help people and instead, nine times out of time, we're, we're harming people. Magdalina Atanassova: See, with that loud music everywhere, right? David T. Stevens: I was at a conference, I sat down at dinner, there was someone that was sitting by themselves and actually I wanted to have a conversation with, oh, this is great. I'll be able to catch up with them. And then the music started and ended up leaving before I could even talk to him. Because we couldn't have a conversation because the music was just too loud. Is it a networking event? Design it for networking. If it's networking, ensure that people are actually able to network. Maybe you have someone who's in charge of sound levels or put that challenge out to your AV person or set a decibel limit or something so that you understand. The worst thing is, I go to a networking event and my watch is going off telling me, you're in, you're in a loud environment, you should probably leave. And that's the thing. These devices are selling out our events left and right. Magdalina Atanassova: I actually have those earplugs that minimize noise levels. And the one time I didn't take them with me, I was in such a Loud environment. I got in a panic state. Just my body got panicked bits because it was so loud and confined and so many people and it was. And there was music on top of everything. Very, very loud band. My body's telling me run, not network and have fun. David T. Stevens: Well, it's because we don't design for people's nervous systems. The Freeman study that came out last year talked about we, we design for loud, not for cognitive load. And that's a big issue because if you're constantly overwhelming people, their attention spans toast. They just want to turn and run. Magdalina Atanassova: Yeah. And we stay just because we need to perform. Our boss will be there. We need to, we need to. It's a, it's the must. Right? David T. Stevens: Yeah. Well and I think some of that's changing as, as we normalize mental health and people get more protective of themselves. I'm seeing more and more people who are like yeah, I didn't go or I went and I left. Which you're trying to bring people together and then you chase them away. It's something we really need to get Magdalina Atanassova: better at and I think we need to attach the dollar sign to it because all this costs us a lot of resources. Not only in time spent on planet and everything, but it costs us money. It's money, money, money. David T. Stevens: You spend six figures on a concert and then you overwhelm people who are like nope, I'm out. But what, why did you spend that money? Magdalina Atanassova: So if you were building a next era, well being centered events playbook for typical event professional, what are the first three changes you'd advise them to make in the next 12 months regardless of budget or event size? David T. Stevens: Yeah. So first I'd rewrite the agenda around attention cycles and circadian rhythm. We know so much about how the body functions, yet we program like people are robots. So shorter blocks, better transitions, mixed formats of information really keep things dynamic. Because our brains love novelty and we also love while we tend to not let change change elements of trans of formats is what keeps our attention. Second thing I do is upgrade the basics when it comes to lighting, acoustics, hydration, ensuring we have protein and fiber forward snacks and meals so that people's blood sugar stays regulated so that they can pay attention and not go through crashes and then obviously places to recharge and or downshift or be prepared to continue the day. Our natural circadian rhythm dip in the afternoon is called the postprandial dip. That's a clinical name for the post lunch craft. That's an opportunity to provide different kinds of content to meet people where they're at energetically. And then the last is really, we've been talking about belonging for a long time, but what does that mean? It's really about designing for it when it comes to facilitation, seating, social architecture, things that give people the opportunity to reduce isolation and increase connectivity with other human beings. And so it's really more design and discipline, not necessarily money as Apple says. They think differently. Magdalina Atanassova: And I think it fits very well this notion of wellness. When you keep your body fit, you need to be disciplined for this to, to be effective. David T. Stevens: Well, and if you're taking care of yourself, you're going to be thinking about would I enjoy this event that I'm planning? And if you're taking care of yourself, you're going to realize when something's gone awry versus when it's not. Because you're like, oh, this sounds, sounds awful. Why are we doing this? Magdalina Atanassova: Yeah, let's encourage event props to just speak up and state because I feel there is sometimes an ocean, but then there's a nagging. We've always done it this way. The clients want it, there's the sponsorship money coming in for that and that's where everything stops. David T. Stevens: Well, all these things are great MPOs. So one, a lot of these wellness activations are, are people are excited to buy them. I mean we saw convene leaders. There was wellness all over the place on the trade show floor. Right. And if, if you can educate your stakeholders on the fact that this is increasing outcomes, then they start to understand that it's not an ad expense. That's a nice to have that it's a, we have to spend the money on this because we're going to get more out of it. There was an Oxford study that showed that companies with higher well being employee scores outperformed other companies when it came to stock prices. So I mean, I don't know how much more black and white can get Magdalina Atanassova: when you look ahead five to 10 years. What's your boldest prediction for where wellbeing centered events are headed? David T. Stevens: Here's one wild idea. I think Las Vegas is going to be a wellbeing mecca. The way things are changing there, the way the hotels are building their gyms, the way people go to Vegas for access in general. And I think it is going to very quickly become they're going to see that people are willing to spend on wellness and crazy spa treatments and things of that nature. And the way wellness tourism is evolving, I think that is going to be a destination where the Hotels really start to lean into wellness in general and it will be two sides of an extreme coin where you can be all in uber healthy, et cetera and, or the opposite. But the idea is that you can go there and, and in the ultimate wellness state you do you for whatever that means and you get to indulge in the best food you've ever had that's actually good for you or the greatest massage you've ever, et cetera, et cetera. I think, I think that's one thing. Second, when it comes to conferences and events, I think wellbeing is going to become part of the procurement expectation, not a bolt on. So I think as people's behaviors are changing in their personal lives and you can see the economic impact people's personal finance choices are having on the wellness economy. It's at $6.9 trillion right now. It's going to be $10 trillion economy by 2029 and live events is at 2.2 trillion. So wellness economy is outpacing us. Events will be judged by people by the measurable impact on human performance and health. And these little things are the reason because every morning when a participant wakes up and they check their phone, they get a score, they get a sleep score, they get a how your day was score, they get a whatever and they're judging your event before you even know they're judging your event. So I think the other thing is leaders will also be measuring outcomes and build systems that will become measurable and there is going to be a fallout when it comes to wellness influencers. Interesting because more and more companies are hiring chief medical officers more and more and, and According to a McKinsey survey, people are looking for that. They're like if I'm going to spend the money, if I'm going to take the time, I want to know this is effective. Now efficacy can range but double blind peer reviewed studies do help understand if something is going to be effective or if somewhere on the Internet is just selling pills. Magdalina Atanassova: It's interesting when you pointed your whoop band a wearable for those who don't know. It's, it's interesting that you mentioned it because I've, I've done it myself. I'm measuring my trips on based on my scores. It's not something that I've necessarily looked in into from that point of view that you just mentioned, but it's. Yeah, I think more and more people are doing that. David T. Stevens: I talked with someone a while back about the fact that events are a team sport. They're very Physical, we're on our feet, we're doing 20,000 steps a day, et cetera, et cetera. There is no reason, except for ourselves, that we are coming home five pounds heavier when we should be coming home five pounds lighter. If we have the right food, if we have the right sleep, if we actually take care of people. And what's interesting about these wearables is when you go do the research on who owns them, it's the top performers. So when you wanted to talk about wellness and incentives, that's a whole nother conversation. Magdalina Atanassova: So if our listeners could just make one concrete commitment, what would you urge them to do differently at their very next event? David T. Stevens: I would say at your next event, change one agenda decision in service of human energy, shorten one block, redesign a transition, build one moment of real connection and then measure what changed. Magdalina Atanassova: Was there anything we didn't mention? We definitely should. Before we wrap up, I think it David T. Stevens: should be known that the wellness industry and wellness tourism and wellness hospitality is evolving very quickly. There are accreditations coming down the pipe. There are certifications coming down the pipe. Wellness has been a bit like sustainability was in the very beginning. Right. Everyone's doing different things and figuring things out. But there are benchmarks being built, designed and put in place. So if this is something of interest to you and you're looking to get educated, you, there are opportunities now to go earn accreditations that you're invested in this. When I, I was still a planner, we were coming back from the pandemic. I went and got my pandemic meeting event design certification. My company paid for it because when I told them why I was getting it, they said, oh, you have to do that. And the reason why I went and got it was because I wanted all the 450 people that were coming in from all over the world in February of 22. And this was, I got it in 21. And we announced that we were having an in person sales kickoff in December of 21. When Omicron was like taking off, our CEO said to our entire company on all hands, Dave went and got his pandemic meeting event design certification. Because we wanted all of you to know that we're looking out for you and we wouldn't be bringing people together if we didn't think it was safe. But based on the data, we're a data company based on the data, here's where we're going to be at that time. It's not mandatory that you attend. We have done everything we can to put all the checks in all the boxes and mitigate risk so that, you know, we're looking out for you. And that was a flashpoint for me because I knew that that accreditation mattered to a lot of people. Sure, it wasn't an MD or anything of that, or an infectious disease certification or anything, but it was a step in the right direction. And now in the wellness space, those are starting to be created. And by taking the step to go get that, you are going to be able to understand what's, what's real versus what isn't, what's genuine versus what isn't, et cetera, et cetera. So I think understand your information, understand your sources, and think through what you're offering and if it's legitimate or if it's someone who's swimming outside their lane offering something that cannot be verified. Magdalina Atanassova: And I'll put links to your website and the white paper that we mentioned and other resources that you're putting out there in terms of information so people can follow, read, reach out to you also for advice. So if they can't do it, you're certified, then you can't do it for them. So with that, I just want to say a huge thank you for your time and being on the convenient podcast. David T. Stevens: Thank you so much for having me. Magdalina Atanassova: Remember to subscribe to the Convene Podcast on your favorite listening platform to stay updated with our latest episodes. We want to thank our sponsor, Destination Madison. Go to visit madison dot com slash PCMA to learn more. For further industry insights from the Convene team, head over to PCMA.org/convene. My name is Maggie. Stay inspired. Keep inspiring. And until next time.