EP124: Focused Bidding for the Win—with Melissa Emler
When Melissa Emler started bidding on RFPs to grow her event management business, she looked through a variety of opportunities and thought, ‘We could definitely do that.’
But after a year of trying to figure it out on her own, Melissa wasn’t winning contracts. And the frustration of losing left her playing small.
Today, Melissa has changed her approach. She has identified the differentiators that set her organization apart and started seeking out best-fit opportunities for her business.
Melissa is Owner of Modern Learners, a company that’s designing the future of learning by building community, content and events.
Prior to Modern Learners, Melissa enjoyed a traditional career in education, serving as a special education teacher, principal and Statewide Systems Coach for Universal Design for Learning.
On this episode of the podcast, Melissa joins me to discuss how her proposal responses have changed since she started working with The RFP Success Company and why she only bids on RFPs in her team’s niche.
Melissa walks us through the process of ‘shredding the RFP,’ explaining how it helped her uncover Modern Learners’ unique value proposition—prioritizing community over course content.
Listen in for Melissa’s insight on using aggregators to identify opportunities and learn how investing in the right support helped Modern Learners leverage focused bidding for the win!
Key Takeaways
How Melissa transitioned from a traditional career in education to entrepreneurship
How prioritizing community over course differentiates Modern Learners from other organizations in the event management space
Melissa’s journey to finding opportunities for Modern Learners through RFPs
How Melissa’s RFP responses have changed since she started working with the RFP Success Company
What it means to ‘shred the RFP’ and how it helped Melissa identify her team’s differentiators
How Melissa is developing a strategy for networking before the RFP drops
Why it’s worth it to invest in support to help you respond to RFPs
Why Melissa only bids on RFPs in her team’s niche that they already have systems to execute
How Melissa’s mindfulness around the capacity of her team impacts which RFPs she bids on
Melissa’s experiences using aggregators to identify opportunities
How the event management space evolved before, during and after COVID (and how that changed Melissa’s approach to finding business)
Melissa’s commitment to the process of bidding on business with RFPs
Connect with Melissa
RFP Success Show EP124 Transcription
(00:00):
You're listening to the RFP Success Show with eight-time author, speaker, and CEO of The RFP Success Company, Lisa Rehurek. Tune in each episode to learn what today's capture and RFP teams are doing to increase their win percentages by up to 20, 30 and even 50%. And meet the industry trailblazers that are getting it right. Let's get started.
Lisa Rehurek (00:24):
Hello, everybody and welcome to the RFP Success Show podcast. I am Lisa Rehurek, founder and CEO of The RFP Success Company and your host for this podcast episode. I'm so excited to introduce you to our guest for today's episode. We're going to be talking all about seeking out your best fit RFP opportunities and a whole bunch of other fun stuff. But please meet Melissa Emler. She's owner and chief learning officer at Modern Learners. Melissa, welcome to the show.
Melissa Emler (00:54):
Thanks. It's so great to be here. And you can call me Missy as we chat. I'm Melissa in written language, but in chatting I'm always Missy for some reason, so I'm excited to chat.
Lisa Rehurek (01:06):
Okay, perfect. I love it. Well, you have a really impressive background. Let me just give our listeners a little bit of an update on that. Missy has served in a variety of roles throughout her career in education. She's been a special education teacher, a principal, statewide systems coach for Universal Design for Learning. And she's the owner of Modern Learners, and as the owner, Missy's found great joy in coaching school leaders along their journey to create a strong culture of learning in their communities. Such important work, Missy. How did you transition into the Modern Learner side of things?
Melissa Emler (01:41):
Yeah, so that is something that happened because I started to feel trapped in the system. And so I moved through my education career wanting to have more impact and to serve more learners. And so in 2016, I worked in a regional service agency and I was serving as a school improvement specialist doing a variety of things in my local region. And I was very connected in the Twitter space and in other education circles that gave me access to people, educators from around the globe. And so a couple of them that I was connected to were launching Modern Learners and they needed help executing on some of the operational sides of things.
(02:33):
And I'm sort of an entrepreneur at my core. I grew up in an entrepreneurial family and I've always had a side gig and I've always just worked too much, probably. So that skillset essentially helped me help them. And then I essentially bought into the business of Modern Learners through sweat equity and building revenue with the founders of Modern Learners. And then they retired, and they retired right before 2020, right before the pandemic.
Lisa Rehurek (03:04):
Oh, of course.
Melissa Emler (03:05):
And so that left me with a business with not a lot of revenue in true form, but a lot of intellectual assets and a lot of good work and a lot of foundation to become something more. And so during the pandemic, lots of things changed and we were... Modern Learners, before, did executive coaching in a cohort-based way, so we were using Zoom in 2016. And I was always coaching people and training people on technologies. And so I happened to be an early adopter of an online event platform called Hopin, and we hosted our first conference of conversations on the Hopin platform.
(03:51):
And all of our people that came to us for those conversations said, can you help me do that for my organization? I want to do what you did for this organization. Because it was a different experience than a Zoom meeting. And that's essentially what started the pivot, is we just started helping them, and put them front and center and helped them look great. And in helping them plan the operational side, we got to inform the depth and complexity of the conversations. We got to encourage them to select certain speakers that would give them a different angle. And so that's how our credibility was gained, because we were just really, really well connected in the field, and then we actually could execute on the service. And so now it's all wrapped up into these interdependent parts and it's amazing. And I think I answered a million questions in that one.
Lisa Rehurek (04:48):
You did, which is awesome. And you also kind of answered the next question that I wanted to ask you, which is what really differentiates you in your space, and it feels like almost everything, because is there even anybody out there that does what you do the way you do it?
Melissa Emler (05:03):
No, not really. So in 2016, we did a cohort-based course. We did not call that that in 2016, although now you'll start to see marketing for cohort-based courses and you're starting to see platforms be developed that host cohort-based courses. It was sort of popularized by Seth Godin's altMBA. And so in 2016, we had Change School, which was very much modeled after the altMBA. And that was sort of the triggering point. But because we had learned all of these different pieces that brought events into the learning work, when we did Change School, we realized that part of the transformational learning work that made everything work was that everybody was in community. And the transformation really happened in the social context of learning together, even though we were learning from home across the globe. So we prioritized community over course and course content from the very beginning.
Lisa Rehurek (06:15):
Brilliant.
Melissa Emler (06:15):
And so that's actually what helped. And what fueled our community was always events. And we were pretty provocative in our content. So when you put the community, the content and the events into this interdependency, you really do end up with something special that everybody else has been trying to do, but we essentially found a way to articulate it. And that has essentially become our sales positioning is that if they call us to do events, we are always asking, what happens after the event? And what happens after the event is community, or community fuels the event.
(06:58):
And then you still need content in there to have a common language and a commonality of whatever you need to discuss; that happens through the content. So it is different. I have suddenly found myself hanging out with event people. I didn't know I was really one of them, but I am. And then I found myself hanging out with community people and I was like, oh, I didn't know I was one of you, but I'm one of you. And then instructional designers, we have a team that does legitimate instructional design, so we kind of fit in all of those circles and bring all of that to the table that really helps the organizations we serve.
Lisa Rehurek (07:41):
I love that. Well, and of course, this is the RFP Success Show, so for all of our listeners that are like, okay, but what does this have to do with RFPs? you all bid on RFPs. So tell us a little bit about that, a little bit about what kind of RFPs you're bidding on and what your journey has been to the beginning and early stages of your RFPs.
Melissa Emler (08:03):
Right. Because I didn't know that I was an event person, I actually didn't know... So when things started to come back in person, we had done small in-person workshops, but we had not done in-person massive events. So when things started to go back in-person, I started to think about, okay, so how do I find my people and my clients? Because my people think they're ready to go back to in-person. And so I started to recognize that people were saying, "Oh, we had to go to RFP for that," and, "Oh, the RFPs were due last month." And I started to hear the language of RFP and I had never, other than when I was a principal and we would send things out to RFP, but I didn't actually make the connection between RFP and events. And then I did, and it made sense, and I was like, okay, well, I'm going to figure this out.
(09:02):
So I essentially, my first step was I purchased an aggregator. I can't remember what it is now, and it may or may not have been good, I have no idea. And I submitted an RFP to the Department of Ed to host their online events. I definitely botched many, many pieces of that, that I learned in their feedback. And I don't know how I knew to ask them for feedback, but somehow I got the feedback. Don't know how that happened. And then I studied the process. And we are based in Wisconsin and there's an amazing organization called the Wisconsin Procurement Institute. And so the WPI people really helped us. We went to a couple of their events, we started to learn a little bit more. But I spent about a year learning and iterating and trying to figure it out on my own, of which I knew I was not getting where I wanted to be.
(09:58):
And then I realized that there were people like you that helped people like me do that. And so I actually found an initial company and was super excited and that turned very bad, very bad. That was one of my business experiences that was a very expensive mistake that you just want to cry about. But I'm over it now because I found you. In the midst of when I was crying about it, I talked to one of my colleagues, we were working on a potential workshop and I was devastated.
(10:33):
And she's like, "I know somebody." And that led me to your team. And I have just learned a ton from your team and I'm so happy that we're there. And I know you asked me what kind of RFPs we're looking for, and that's something that we learned from your team too. So we were first using our aggregator to identify opportunities and they were sort of in our realm, but a lot of times they were out of our market, like the education market. And so we just kept looking. But then your team has a specialization in SLED, which stands for something like state and local something.
Lisa Rehurek (11:14):
State and local education.
Melissa Emler (11:17):
Oh yeah, exactly. Exactly what we do.
Lisa Rehurek (11:19):
[inaudible 00:11:20] education, Missy.
Melissa Emler (11:21):
Yes. And actually I was like, that's exactly what I thought. And when we were starting to look at your company, you had a podcast episode specifically about state and local education. And because I am in education, I understand fully the money and where the money comes from and how it flows. So I'm very well aware of the money that will be coming through RFPs because of the ESSER dollars, which is the COVID funding for the federal government sends it to the states, the states send it to the public schools. And so I'm very well aware of what you need to do in those areas and what's covered and what's not, and our work fits in there. So it all started to make sense and that's how we ended up there. And I'm really excited about that.
Lisa Rehurek (12:14):
Well, we're excited that you found your way. And obviously, full disclosure to our listeners that Missy does work with us, she's a client of ours. And it always breaks my heart to hear stories when people say that they had bad experiences because we never want that. And so I and my whole team, we're so passionate about helping people with RFPs, because they're not fun and they're not easy and there's so many little idiosyncrasies if you're not embedded in that world that you don't know about. So I love that you're embracing it. What has shifted for you in the way of processes in how maybe you used to respond to how you're responding now?
Melissa Emler (12:50):
Well, I'll tell you a funny story. I have this belief that you should slow roll into a new year and sort of just sit with it for a week or two and then start to amp up your work. Well, this year, 2023, started on January 3rd with me seeing an RFP that was due on January 6th. It was released on December 22nd. Of course, nobody in the world probably saw it. Who knows? And I thought it was a perfect RFP for us. And I thought, I cannot not do this. So I sent your team a message and I said, okay, I'm just going to wing this. It's going to be okay. I know we're not where we need to be to submit this, I'm fully aware, but I kind of feel really good about this. I'm just going to throw something together, but I just wanted you to see that I resonate with this RFP.
(13:45):
And I think the team thought I was crazy. I did too. And so Ted called me and we went through the process. And that is the very first thing that I learned. A concept that your team taught me is called shredding the RFP. And I did that with my brain and I knew how I wanted to respond and I could answer those. But when he shredded it and put each what I would call a deliverable in each separate line, it was like, oh my gosh. And at first when I started to respond and he answered those questions, it felt like I was saying the same thing. But in the end, I didn't say the same thing in any of those pieces at all. And it gave me an opportunity to expand on things I never even would've included because I would've been glazing over it.
(14:38):
So that's been a huge lesson. So I did manage to get even more support from your team because they were amazing. But then the next week there was another one that was perfectly suited again. And because I had just taken your people's time, I was like, okay, I'm going to do this with what we learned. And the dollar amount was different, it was less important, and it was... I'm just going to test it out with this. And so we went through the same process, and just that one lesson of shredding the RFP has changed my entire approach to even evaluating them to start with.
Lisa Rehurek (15:19):
I love that. Well, tell our listeners, let's go back to that shredding. Walk through what that looks like because what does that mean? What did we teach you that that meant? What does shredding mean?
Melissa Emler (15:30):
So you get an RFP, and I'm an English teacher and a reading teacher, and I feel like I'm a really good reader. But when I get an RFP, I feel like it's a little bit of a foreign language, and there's all these idiosyncrasies that I don't really know what all that stuff means. And so basically in the shredding piece, you take the scope of work that's typically listed and you break it what felt like sentence by sentence by sentence in the scope of work and put them in a different line on a spreadsheet. And then we asked ourselves, do we do that?
(16:09):
Is that within our scope? Is this whatever? Does that work for us? And so we went down and we could answer yes to all of them. And so then we set up the documents. So the thing that was always confusing to me when I would read an RFP and they would say, "submit your materials to here," I realized that they require certain things to be in certain ways, like to be submitted in a certain way, I understood that. But it would just be like submit and I would be like, what am I answering? [inaudible 00:16:43] supposed to fill out?
Lisa Rehurek (16:43):
Yes, the format compared to the scope of work, they're almost always kind of separate. And it's confusing as all get out, so yeah.
Melissa Emler (16:53):
Yes. And so I suddenly realized that the shredded RFP, line by line by line, those would essentially become the headings of the RFP, and then I could respond to each heading. And that was essentially what I was submitting with the executive summary and the title page and all that beautiful stuff that y'all hooked me up with. Before, I was like, who even knew I needed to do that? But that was super helpful. And as I said, when you first take it apart, I think I glazed over and sort of just generalized. And the shredding helped me get really specific, and that allowed me to identify more differentiators that actually make us different.
Lisa Rehurek (17:37):
I love that. Yeah. That's so important, right? Because we always say, and you've probably heard my team say this, or anybody who's listening to me ever, you hear me say it all the time, is that you can go in and answer the basic requirements. And everybody that's bidding is going to hit on those basic requirements. But where are you going to show up and show your differentiators, Missy, that at the beginning of this podcast you were talking about all of the stuff that you all do so well and different than everybody else. They don't ask you that specific question. You might miss the opportunity to really showcase that. So I love that you recognized that in that shredding exercise.
Melissa Emler (18:14):
And I definitely did not pull our differentiators out and didn't probably even recognize them without somebody helping me see them.
Lisa Rehurek (18:25):
It's hard because it's-
Melissa Emler (18:28):
I didn't even know that it was a differentiator until he said, oh yeah, nobody else does this. I'm like, okay, you're right. You're right. Nobody else does it, and definitely nobody does it like we do, so that felt good.
Lisa Rehurek (18:40):
That's great. The differentiators are really hard because we're so close to them as business owners or whatever we're in. So that's fantastic. So anything else that you can think of that surprised you as you started working with experts outside of your own little company?
Melissa Emler (18:57):
I would say the piece... And we're still figuring this part out, we do not have a good plan yet, but the concept of networking in the space. Because RFPs make you feel like you can't talk to anybody when you get it. But that's once the RFP has been released. But it's all the things that happen before the RFP and after the RFP that create the opportunities to do the networking. And while we don't have a strategy, we do have a plan that we know that that is important to develop and figure out. So our only strategy right now is to make sure we start to be present or we start to pay attention to different activities that come from procurement offices or whatnot. Again, we don't really know the strategy, but I'm surprised that that's a huge recommendation to do the networking side because I always feel like that's breaking the rules, except that it's only breaking the rules if the RFP is out there.
Lisa Rehurek (20:04):
I love that you mentioned that because it's such an important piece. People, I think all of us, I thought this too, when I was in the space before doing this side of it, when I was responding to RFPs. It's the same thing. You wait for an RFP to hit your desk and then you know, code of silence, you can't really talk to anybody. And you just head down and you respond to the RFP. But there's so much that you can do ahead of time to build those relationships to make sure that they know who you are, to get some inside scoop, whether it's just certain things that are going on in the agency or certain challenges that they're having or what their hot buttons are. It just helps you be able to lay the groundwork for those RFPs so much easier now. And so when you're looking at that and thinking about that, does that change the way you decide on what to bid on?
Melissa Emler (20:53):
Yes and no. I love the concept of not bidding on anything cold. And obviously there's a likelihood of getting the RFP if you're warm bidding. I mean, the same is true in sales. So even if I don't get the RFP that sent my team and your team over the edge in that first week of January, I feel like every single penny that I spent on that experience and every single minute of time that I spent on that experience was worth it, because it accelerated the development of those library pieces, which is the phase we're doing now, which is that preparation phase, getting all of our differentiators in line or all of our content that we will help us when the right thing comes move faster. So for me, it was really worth it because I was able to start identifying and writing for those things in the context of a real RFP.
(21:53):
And so it felt real and it felt like I was answering it. And I think it surfaced things that we do faster than if we had just continued to talk about what we do. I really was like, I'm going to showcase this because this is that. And the other thing that happened is I was able to reference clients' specific experiences that we've done. I'm not sure I would've been able to just surface those things without thinking about them in the context of a response. So I can't remember what point I was trying to make was, except that the pressure of cold responding has taught me a lot and I'm heading into it without an expectation, but a starting point. And so that sometimes makes you wonder if you should invest in getting the support.
(22:47):
And I know that I winged it for a year. I spent a year learning about the process, doing everything that I could do. And the reason that I decided it was important to invest in the support was because I started to realize that the contracts that I was getting on my own were state and local education contracts. And that came from my lifelong connections. And so again, I had already done so much of this work, but the contracts that we were getting and that were mattering in the business for growth were coming from there.
(23:23):
And so I thought, okay, we know that's where our money is coming in from. If we can get really skilled at responding and building those relationships, I think that it will make our life so much easier down the road. And so it is worth it to me to invest in that and to take the risk and not have expectations. But again, Modern Learners is all about learning. Everything that we do, we look at through a learning lens. And that's how I saw the cold bidding, as just a learning lens perspective.
Lisa Rehurek (23:56):
Well, and you're investing in different ways. When you spend a ton of time bidding cold, whether it might not feel like you're investing dollars out, you're investing a lot of time and resources and team morale and team motivation, frustration and all of that.
Melissa Emler (24:14):
All of those things. All of those things. That frustration and defeat essentially affects how you look at opportunities too, because you're like, oh, that's out of my league. And so then you play small. And so now I don't think we're going to play small because I sort of see our value. Yeah, I sort of see our value.
Lisa Rehurek (24:40):
I love it. All right, we're going to take a quick break. We're just going to take a quick commercial break. We will be right back with Missy Emler. She's the owner and chief learning officer of Modern Learners.
Intro/Outro (24:48):
That RFP response deadline is coming in hot and you want to win. Don't panic. Call The RFP Success Company for a strategic outside review before you hit submit. Learn more at therfpsuccesscompany.com.
Lisa Rehurek (25:06):
All right, everybody. Well, welcome back. We have been talking to Missy Emler, owner and chief learning officer at Modern Learners. And she's given us a whole bunch of great information about how her company, it's not like this big, huge, large, massive company, is learning how to work through responding to RFPs effectively and efficiently so that they can, as we were just saying right before the break, play bigger, stop undervaluing ourselves, play bigger, and start seeing the value in showcasing those differentiators and really understanding our true worth.
(25:41):
So I love everything that you're saying, Missy. Now, obviously you're working in a very specific niche. What has helped you the most in really telling your story in responding to RFPs. And even in building those relationships, what are you doing differently or uniquely to share that side of your story so that you don't blend in with everybody else?
Melissa Emler (26:03):
I'm not really sure, other than I've started to recognize that I'm thinking about the opportunities in regards to work we've already done and that we can leverage. Because there are so many RFPs coming through my aggregator that before I was really understanding, I would look at them all and sort of dreamily say, "Oh, we can do all of that. We can do this, we could definitely do that." And while it's true, I could probably do a lot of those things, I've found that the work that I've been doing most recently as an educator has been in the area of universal design for learning. When I see specific RFPs for UDL, I always think, oh, I know that work. I have a body of work connected to that. So I feel like it's appropriate because it wouldn't be adding a significant burden on, because our team is in a phase of growth.
(27:07):
And so I know that to execute on a lot of these pieces, I need to bring people into the work. And we will do that, but I need to make sure the revenue is coming in before I expand too much. And so when I'm choosing what to do, I'm choosing really specifically in my niche, in regards to UDL, or in terms of the action of event planning, which is what my team is trained specifically on doing, or community management, which again, we have systems and structures in place so that when we get that big RFP, we do have systems ready to execute, and it's not reinventing and creating the wheel specifically for a new project, but we can sort of leverage those pieces. And so that's been really important to look at when those RFPs come through and they look exciting and big.
Lisa Rehurek (27:59):
Yeah, it is actually a really great point, because it's not just about looking and saying, can we do this? Because there's a ton of them out there that you could say, we can do this. But are we efficiently and effectively set up to do them so that we can deliver the best and the highest value to our clients? So I love that you look at it through that lens. That's beautiful.
Melissa Emler (28:20):
And it's also a capacity thing too, right? So I mean, some of these RFPs are at a dollar amount that unless you... So if you fit into that women-owned small business or any of those special categories, you might not be equipped. And the other thing that I'm learning is that figuring out who is equipped to do those and reaching out and trying to do those in a subcontracted way is really effective too. But I'm really concerned always about the capacity of my team, because not only am I trying to have an impact on the field of education and learning and making learning the focus, I'm also trying to build a business that's a little bit outside of the norm in regards to the employee experience. So we prioritize learning, not just for the people we serve, but for the people... I want Modern Learners to be in service of its employees as much as the employees are in service of the business.
(29:21):
And so capacity is something I'm really working to be mindful of. And I'm also trying to co-create positions with people who want to work at Modern Learners. And I want to create positions that they love to do and are inspired by and are excited by. So being mindful of capacity and not overextending ourselves will help me keep that positive work environment that is where people want to work. So in building that, I'm less worried about can I hire somebody than I think I would be if I was just trying to do a regular hire with regular start and end times and vacation time and all those pieces. I'm trying to create something that's much more flexible for the employees, and so capacity really makes that work or not work.
Lisa Rehurek (30:15):
And it's such a beautiful inspiring thing that you're doing there. Because I think most companies say, oh my gosh, this RFP can bring in 500,000, 2 million, 4 million, whatever the dollar amount is. We get a little starstruck with the dollar amount and we're not thinking about is this the right fit for our team? Are they going to be excited about it, or is it just going to burn them out because we're slightly off the mark or it's not the core services that we should be doing? But the dollar amount's great, so let's chase after it.
(30:47):
So that's really inspiring, Missy. I really, really love that, and I hope our listeners really take heed of that. I want to go back to something that you were talking about about aggregators, because I have found that using an aggregator is not necessarily a magic pill, and there's a learning curve with aggregators. Learning how to get the right keywords in there, how to make sure that you're maximizing that. Do you have any words of wisdom for people that are listening, for our audience to say, how can they best get the most out of their aggregator?
Melissa Emler (31:21):
Well, I started with this one, and I have no idea what it was called, but I think it cost me like $30 a year or something. I actually don't remember. It was terrible. And I had to learn all of that, and then I would click on the button and I couldn't see it anyway, so I was like, I don't really get this. And then I used a different one that again was keywords and searches. And then if you didn't... Because I didn't look for RFPs every day, just sort of on a whim, I would forget... Or I would be excited about, oh, I'm going to search this and there was tons of things and that was really exciting and that's what I wanted to do, but that's not actually what we did. So then I would get excited. So I was looking at coaching ones, I'm like, oh yeah.
(32:05):
And I was thinking, Missy, I love to coach, so that would be a great RFP. Missy, that's not what your team does. So I did not do well with that aggregator. So again, I studied this whole process for a year and then partnered with your team to help me. And in the midst of that time, I learned about this RFP aggregator called RFPSchoolWatch. And I have found that keeps me real focused. I don't do any searching, but if it has to do with schools, like larger districts that tend to go to RFP more or universities or government entities, including state and local education, they tend to come through there.
(32:59):
I spend two minutes looking at the three or four that come in every day and I make quick decisions. And most of that is based on whether it's directly in my niche or whether it's too hard or when it's due or any number of things. But I'm typically deciding really, really quickly. And I have sort of a method to raise it up if I can. The beautiful thing about that, when I decide to elevate it is I have to elevate it and we have to decide fairly quickly because the turnaround time is quick.
(33:36):
But the best thing is that if I can't get a decision made, then I get to just throw it out anyway because it's not possible. So sometimes there's too much going in our day-to-day activity that that can't become a priority. And so right now we have enough work and we're just sort of thinking about going forward and so that impacts everything too. But in terms of selecting one, I know nothing, but I know I could get really lost. And again, it is part of the learning curve. But the biggest thing about doing RFPs is that there's such a learning curve and you spend so much time in that learning curve.
(34:18):
And so I think it's important, but you got to save time where you can and the aggregator is one of them. Well, the no no-go rubric, that's probably what I use. The no-go rubric is once I had that, that helped me make a decision really fast. I don't actually know which one I hone in on, and I don't pull it out every day, but it's ingrained in me to be like, yes, no, got to go. So it helps me go faster.
Lisa Rehurek (34:47):
It is really good. And I also find that it helps take the emotion out of it. You just got to answer these questions, yes, no, yes, no, and you're not just all emotional about it. It's like when we're hiring a staff person, we're hiring a new employee, and we just like them. And so everything else they say to us doesn't matter anymore if we're not really paying attention. It's kind of the same thing with an RFP. We get really excited about the potential, the title sounds good, it's in our home state or whatever that is. And then we throw caution to the wind and forget everything else.
(35:19):
And I like what you said about the aggregators, and I love how you have gotten really niche. You're in a school watch aggregator basically now versus the bigger ones. And they're great, it is great, but you can go down those rabbit holes and you can see all those opportunities that, oh, they could be a fit for Missy, but not for anybody else in the organization. And so that's a really great point as well, so I appreciate that. Tell us a little bit about how your space, the event management space, has changed from before, during and after COVID. I know we talked about that at the beginning of the call, but I'd like to hear more succinctly what's changed, and how has that changed your approach to finding business?
Melissa Emler (36:01):
So during COVID, everything, all of the events were digital. And then I don't know that there's a post-COVID yet, but ever since COVID, everybody's been dying to get back to in-person events. But COVID taught people that you can get benefit from content and be online and not have to invest as much money in travel and time away from families and things like that. And so there's still a desire for that online, although people's level of fatigue is varied in programming and design of the actual event experience really varies greatly. I think no matter in-person or online, I think sessions, like conference sessions are a dying breed. I mean, it's hard to convince people not to do those, but it's kind of a dying breed. But I mean, people think they're going to go to the session, but then they stay in the hallway and talk to the person they just met waiting in line to get into the session, and then they don't go to the session.
(37:11):
So I kind of think there's something up with that. And there was lots of talk during the pandemic about hybrid. And while we definitely have done a lot of hybrid events, hybrid is expensive because it is as much work to do a really high-quality online event as it is in-person event. And then to do a hybrid, the cost that's increased is your media production. You want that quality media production for the people at home, and that's just challenging from a budget perspective.
Lisa Rehurek (37:45):
You're essentially doing two events, you're doing live and-
Melissa Emler (37:49):
It definitely feels like that, especially if you're worried about the production quality. You need AV people to make that happen well. And I think what's interesting is that people don't understand, we are not AV people. I mean, we can do online production because the softwares in the background make that easy. And we don't have to code anything, we don't have to run a camera, and we're not worried about lighting. That's taken care of by the people that we're serving. But we still, when we think about a hybrid event or when we think about doing in-person events, we are thinking about that from a quality perspective. But we also believe in contracting with people who are really good at that to make that the best experience possible. So that is interesting. But there will be a place in events for all three types of events.
(38:43):
And I think the economy is going to drive a lot of things about events. Will people send their teams? How many people on their teams? And I think that small intimate experiences in regards to events will be really important. And that does something for sponsorship too. So the economics of events really does have this huge circle of money flowing around to make it all possible. And it all sort of starts and ends with the attendees and what their expectations are. But from an event planner and designer perspective, the work is to manage the expectations all the way through. And so I did not know any of this before COVID. I have been a teacher and a school leader, and I'm always thinking about designing experiences that help people learn. But those skills that I've learned in the field of education are extremely transferable to events, community and content.
(39:53):
Because essentially I'm always a designer of learning. And so that's what's been so fun to see the evolution of how I'm applying things that I know to a field I didn't know anything about. In full disclosure, we did that, we hosted an event because we could, and suddenly they needed my help and they trusted me because they trusted that I knew something about learning. And then that led into supporting them on the backend. So it's been an interesting journey and I love the new field. It's really exciting to be a learner in this space too.
Lisa Rehurek (40:31):
How fun. I have a background in the hospitality industry very long time ago, but I have a lot of friends still in that world and in that space. And it's been interesting to watch how the event space has changed and the hotel business. And I think over the next three to five years, we're just going to continue to see some changes. And to your point, I don't think it's ever going to go back to the way it was, but it's going to be interesting to see how it all evolves over time for sure.
Melissa Emler (40:59):
Yeah. I think it's going to be a both/and. Because we definitely want those in-person opportunities, big, small and middle-sized, but there's going to be a demand for an online option or opportunity. Doesn't have to be at the same time, same event, but they want an opportunity to learn the same things. It's an access issue. So when you're thinking about design, you always have to think about access to the content or the experience. And so if not everybody can be in person, for a variety of reasons, you still have to think about how can you make what you're offering accessible? So you eliminate the barriers.
Lisa Rehurek (41:47):
Especially because now we know there are no barriers to that, theoretically. The general public now knows it doesn't have to be just live. We now know there's all these other options and so the expectation has changed. Well, Missy, you've been talking, you've given us quite a bit of lessons learned along the way. As we start to wrap this up, what are some other lessons learned or biggest mistakes that you made that you've learned from that we haven't already talked about? Is there anything else that you care to share with our audience?
Melissa Emler (42:16):
Yeah, I think that if I don't talk about the importance of community, I would be really remiss because while a lot of what we do is manage events and design and produce events, we really have grown our business and supported our people through community. And right now there's a lot of talk about everybody should build a community, and community is the new marketing. And I could go on forever about how it is not the same thing. But I would say that community is something to be embraced from the benefits that it does for the business as well as the community members, as well as the people running the community. There's just a whole lot of benefits that are just so intangible, and those relationships are really important.
(43:09):
And because at Modern Learners, we are focused on learning, we really prioritize community. When you build a community, there will always be content to put in front of them, and there will always be events to host, and you'll have this audience of people that are really excited to engage in the work. And you really don't want to lose them after the event. So you just build the community to pull them in and build that belonging all the way around. So then that cycle, that flywheel of the event and the community and the content, it just becomes really interdependent and a huge flywheel for the business. I think community is amazing.
Lisa Rehurek (43:52):
Well, and talk about differentiator. I think when we talk RFP responses and putting yourself out there for differentiator, the other piece is industry credibility. And you can't have industry credibility and a lot of differentiators really without community. You probably can, but I think that community would boost that so much. And there's not a lot of people that are out there doing it well. So look at your competitors and see what you can be doing to build that. I agree with you wholeheartedly.
Melissa Emler (44:21):
And we have evidence that it's important and that it works, because our existing state and local education contracts have come from people who were in our community way before we were doing what we're doing. And they saw what we were doing and they knew that we were doing it, and they reached out for our help. And that's how we ended up learning that we could live in that SLED space. And that's what led us to pursuing those larger contracts, because we have people who recognized our skillset before we even knew it was possible.
Lisa Rehurek (45:00):
Well, and frankly, you came to us because I've built a community of other entrepreneurs and business owners being somebody who referred you to us. So for all the marketing that we do in the world and all of the money that we spend on marketing and lead generation and all of that, referrals still come from community and they're still one of the most powerful ways, I think, that all of us get business.
Melissa Emler (45:22):
Absolutely. Without a doubt.
Lisa Rehurek (45:25):
All right. So you're going to continue to bid on RFPs, right?
Melissa Emler (45:28):
Without a doubt.
Lisa Rehurek (45:31):
[inaudible 00:45:31]. Is there anything that you feel like you're still really learning that you haven't fully embraced yet in the RFP side of things?
Melissa Emler (45:40):
No, I'm just in it to learn it.
Lisa Rehurek (45:43):
I love it.
Melissa Emler (45:43):
I'm sure there's things I don't even know I should know. But I think the most important thing is that we're committed to it. And those are the clients that we want. And so we're committed to that process and we'll be here until we figure it out. And I'm also not entirely sure that we won't always have support with it. I don't know what it will look like in three or four months. And again, I'm always conscious of our team's capacity. So I don't know. If we get a huge RFP, I have no idea when we'll bid on the next one. I don't actually know the ebb and flow of all of that yet. But I think going through the cycle a few times and having support will just make it that much more obvious that this is where we need to be.
Lisa Rehurek (46:28):
And I love that you said commitment. Because I also think that a lot of times we say, well, we could play in this space over here and maybe get some RFPs in bid, but we'll play over here too and over here too. I love the commitment to it. Because the RFP, again, kind of closing in on the RFP discussion here, is that you can get these RFPs that come across your desk, you can bid on them. But if you're not committed, you're missing out on all of those pieces that we've been talking about that really make your RFP response stand out and make you stand out as the winning vendor. So Missy, I loved having you here and I loved having this conversation. We will have all of the information in our show notes about you, but if anybody wants to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that?
Melissa Emler (47:12):
I'm missy@modernlearners.com. I'm always open for an email. And if you're looking for me on social, I really only hang out on LinkedIn, and we are at Modern Learners on LinkedIn as well. Our company page is getting to be a little more active, but we like it.
Lisa Rehurek (47:32):
I love it. I love it. Well, thank you again for being here. Listeners, again, we'll have all this information in the show notes. We appreciate you. If you haven't subscribed, please go out and subscribe, share our podcast with others. Again, you have been listening to the RFP Success Show. On behalf of myself and my wonderful guest, Missy, thank you. Have a great day.
Outro (47:51):
This has been another episode of the RFP Success Show with Lisa Rehurek, eight-time author, speaker, and CEO of The RFP Success Company. Thank you for joining us. If you have feedback on today's episode, email us at podcast@rfpsuccess.com. No matter your business size, industry, if you have an in-house RFP team or need outside support, The RFP Success Company helps increase RFP win ratios by 10, 20 and even 50%. Learn more at therfpsuccesscompany.com.