The Experiential Strategist with Jenny Howard-Maxwell

After twenty years in the industry, Jenny has noticed a pattern: when event professionals aren't sure their event is working, they add more. More décor. More activations. More production value. More spend.
But more is not the answer. Clarity is.
In this episode, Jenny breaks down the one question every event professional needs to answer before they book a single vendor — and how that question changes everything downstream.
In this episode:
Why most planners can't prove event ROI and what's actually causing it
The difference between planning an event and designing one
How to turn a vague event purpose into real, measurable KPIs
Why the most impactful events are almost never the most complicated
The first pillar of Strategic Experience Design in practice
Your takeaway: Before your next event, answer this — "What does this event need to accomplish?" Write it down. Make it specific. Then let it drive every decision that follows.
Learn more about CPES: edgucationinstitute.com

In this episode, Jenny breaks down every major certification in the events industry: the CMP, CSEP, CMM, DES, CEM, and DMCP. What they cover, who they're built for, and where they sit in the landscape.
Then she explains the gap none of them fill — and why that gap is exactly what CPES was built for.
If you're a mid-career event professional who already knows how to run events but can't get a seat at the strategic table, this episode will help you understand what's missing and what to do about it.
In this episode:
What the CMP actually covers and who it's designed for
The difference between CSEP, CMM, DES, and lane-specific credentials
The strategy gap Jenny identified after 20 years in the industry
What CPES teaches and how it sits differently in the landscape
How Atlas supports the CPES methodology in practice
Learn more about CPES: edgucationinstitute.com

There are two types of event professionals in this industry. Planners and strategists. And for too long, there has been no clear path from one to the other.
In this episode, I am talking about the gap that has been holding talented, experienced, brilliant event professionals back. Not because they are not good enough. Not because they do not work hard enough. But because the industry built an entire profession without building the pathway to advance within it.
That ends now.
We are talking about why the Planner Plateau is real and why it is not your fault. Why clients are no longer buying events, they are investing in outcomes. Why the existing certifications in this industry were never designed to take you to the strategic level. And what it actually looks like when you have the framework, the language, and the credential to show up as a strategic partner instead of a vendor.
The Experiential Edge Blueprint, built around five pillars: Purpose, Emotion, Behavior, Activation and Anchoring, and Outcome, is the methodology that connects what you design to what your client needs to prove. This episode is about why that framework exists, why the industry needs it, and why you are the one who gets to carry it forward.
The path is built. Come be part of the standard we are setting together.
Enroll in the CPES Certification: https://edgucationinstitute.com/enrollment
Join me at The Strategists Hour — free monthly live session: https://jennyhm.com/thestrategistshour

I want you to think about the most successful event you have ever planned. Not the biggest. Not the most expensive. The one where you knew, in your bones, that you had done something extraordinary.
Now I want you to think about how it felt when someone else took that moment away from you.
In this episode, I am sharing a story I have never forgotten. A three hour event across three floors of a stunning Denver hotel. A fourteen foot branded Christmas tree. Employees pulling me aside to tell me it was the best company party of their lives. And a Monday morning debrief that opened with a tip jar and burnt sweet potatoes.
That call changed everything I believed about event planning. Because I realized I had handed my client a blank scorecard and let him fill it in himself.
If you have ever walked out of a debrief feeling deflated after doing extraordinary work, this episode is for you. We are talking about the single most important conversation you are probably skipping, why vacuums always get filled by whoever shows up with an opinion, and what changes when you stop hoping your client noticed and start making sure they know.
This is not about difficult clients. This is not about unreasonable expectations. This is about a vacuum. And this episode is about making sure you are the one who fills it first.
In this episode:
The story of the Oxford Hotel holiday party and the debrief that changed how I plan every event. Why your client will always default to what went wrong when there is no framework in place. What the burnt sweet potatoes were really telling me. How defining success before a single vendor is booked changes everything about the debrief, your authority, and how your clients see you. Why this is not just a professional strategy. It is an act of self respect.
Join me at The Strategist's Hour
Once a month I go live for one free hour to teach exactly this framework. How to run the purpose conversation before anything else is decided. How to set KPIs your client will actually use. How to walk into every debrief already knowing you won.
Register here: https://jennyhm.com/thestrategistshour
Get certified:
The Certified Professional Experiential Strategist certification teaches you the full Strategic Experience Design methodology so you can lead every event with purpose, strategy, and proof of impact.
Learn more at edgucationinstitute.com/enrollment

Knowing what your event is for is the beginning. Engineering it to produce that result is the work. And the key to that work lives somewhere most event professionals have never been taught to look.
In this episode of The Experiential Strategist, Jenny Howard-Maxwell introduces the neuroscience behind why experiences move people and why that changes everything about how you design them. Drawing on the research of Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett, Jenny breaks down how emotion actually works in the brain and why that makes intentional experience design one of the most powerful strategic tools available to you.
This is not about making events feel good. It is about making people feel a specific thing, at a specific moment, because you understand exactly what that feeling will do to their decision making.
In this episode: Why emotion is not a reaction but a prediction your brain constructs in advance How the environment you build feeds that prediction engine Why emotion and behavior are one process, not two How to design backward from the feeling you need your audience to have Why every event you have ever run was already influencing behavior without you knowing it.

Your event tech is not lying to you on purpose. It is just answering the wrong question.
In this episode of The Experiential Strategist, Jenny Howard-Maxwell breaks down why your post-event dashboards are full of accurate data that still cannot tell you whether your event worked. From check-in numbers to NPS scores, the platforms we rely on were built to manage logistics at scale. They were never built to prove a business outcome.
Jenny shares what twenty years in the industry and one very expensive lesson at EMS taught her about the gap between event activity and real results, and why 79% of event professionals are making budget decisions based on attendance numbers and intuition.
The shift is not from bad tech to better tech. It is from no purpose to clear purpose.
This episode will change the question you ask before planning begins.
In this episode: What event technology was actually built to do Why accurate data can still be the wrong data The one question to answer before you touch a vendor, book a venue, or open a brief What separates a planner from a strategist and why it matters for your career
Ready to design for outcomes? CPES enrollment is open now. 
https://edgucationinstitute.com/enrollment

Seventy percent of event planners cannot effectively track or describe event ROI. Most post-event reports measure two things: attendance and whatever the planner decided engagement means that week.
That is not a result. That is a recap.
In this episode I am breaking down exactly what your post-event report should be measuring, why most planners are leaving their seat at the table undefended, and the five KPI categories that translate experiential work into language leadership actually understands.
When you can prove event results in terms the boardroom already uses, you never have to defend your budget again.
This is the conversation the events industry has been avoiding. It ends here.
If you are ready to stop recapping and start proving results, the CPES certification is where you start.
Enroll at https://edgucationinstitute.com/enrollment

More activations. More wow moments. More spend. More impact. That is what we were told. That is what I believed.
It took years of research, an over-produced event or two, and a Lady Gaga impersonator to teach me otherwise.
In this episode I am breaking down the Peak End Rule, why the brain is designed to forget most of what happens at your event, and what to do instead. We also get into How Emotions Are Made by Lisa Feldman Barrett and what her research means for every experience you design from this point forward.
Plus I am holding myself fully accountable for the moment I knew exactly what was wrong and said nothing anyway.
If you are still designing events forward from logistics instead of backward from outcomes, this one is for you.
 
If you are ready to stop planning events and start designing experiences that prove results, the CPES certification is where you start.
Enroll at https://edgucationinstitute.com/enrollment

Jenny Howard Maxwell posted something on LinkedIn about the planner plateau and it got over 114,000 impressions in under a week. The comments were not just likes. They were event professionals saying finally. Finally someone named what I have been living for years and could not articulate.
So Jenny went deeper.
In this episode she breaks down why the salary ceiling between $65,000 and $75,000 exists for so many event professionals, where it comes from, and most importantly what to do about it. She shares what she found when she typed a simple question into Google, what the marketing career ladder looks like versus what the events industry has offered, and the specific moment in her own career when everything changed.
This is not a motivational episode. It is a framework episode. The path exists. It just was never drawn until now.
In this episode Jenny covers why talent and hard work alone do not break the planner plateau, what separates the event professionals earning $150,000 and beyond from those stuck at $65,000, the career ladder the events industry has always deserved but never had, and how the CPES certification was built to close that gap permanently.
Ready to stop guessing and start climbing? The CPES certification was built for this exact moment. Enroll at edgucationinstitute.com

If you have ever received a stressed out phone call from an HR director two weeks before a company conference, you already know what this episode is about.
Jenny Howard Maxwell opens with a confession and then makes a case that most companies are actively undermining their most powerful marketing channel by treating events like administrative tasks. In-person events are the most trusted marketing channel in existence, more trusted than social media, more trusted than advertising, and yet companies hand them to whoever has bandwidth and wonder why they cannot prove ROI.
In this episode Jenny covers why the collaborative model between internal staff and external professionals works, what actually changes when events are designed strategically from the first conversation, how one budget conversation took a $15,000 event to over $100,000, and why the disconnect between marketing KPIs and event execution is costing companies in ways they cannot even measure.
This is the conversation the events industry has been avoiding. Jenny is done avoiding it.
https://jennyhm.com/getedgucated