At 6:10 a.m. on a Thursday in late October, the Dallas suburb of Frisco is still dark. Becky Phelps is by herself in the prefunction space that wraps around the two adjacent ballrooms at Omni PGA Frisco Resort & Spa; the senior event manager is inspecting the buffet-breakfast setups as well as the furnished conversation areas that will soon see business coaches and account executives from Ramsey Solutions interacting with many of the 800 small-business owners who have committed six days to attend Ramsey’s EntreLeadership Master Series program.
For Phelps, these are the last moments of quiet she’ll have until after 8 p.m., when the final-night reception wraps up at the indoor-outdoor Panther Creek Pavilion just steps outside the Omni’s ballrooms.
A few minutes before 7 a.m., hungry attendees begin to stream into the prefunction area, along with the first hint of sunlight through the two-story glass walls. Game on.
A Crisis of Epic Proportions
Actually, because Thursday is day five of the six-day program, Phelps is fairly relaxed. No major glitches have occurred onsite since the event kicked off on Sunday, and she can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Last Saturday, however, Phelps faced a situation that could have derailed the entire event.
Specifically, all 29 business coaches and account executives—the people who spend the most one-on-one time with EntreLeadership attendees—had their late-morning flights from Nashville to Dallas delayed and then canceled due to bad weather between the cities. And come mid-afternoon Saturday, Phelps saw an online post that Nashville International Airport might not have enough air traffic controllers on duty after 7 p.m. to allow any other flights to depart, a result of the federal government’s budget impasse.
Already at Omni PGA Frisco with her production team unloading its equipment truck, Phelps and her leadership team had to think quickly.
“They said, ‘We could ask these guys if they’re willing to drive,’” Phelps recalled. “Our team is really committed to helping our attendees improve their businesses and their lives, so they were willing to do it.”
Next, “we managed to get in touch with our contact at Enterprise, and somehow she was able to pull strings and get us six vans for a one-way trip to Dallas,” Phelps added.
The 680-mile drive took 11 hours, some of it through severe thunderstorms. The 29 team members checked in at 4 a.m. on Sunday and were in the meeting space for the 11 a.m. final walk-through, the opening of registration at 1 p.m. and the 6 p.m. welcome reception.
Keeping Attendees Satisfied
In addition to the quality of the educational programming (most of which is happening in the Omni’s 23,600-square-foot Ryder Cup Ballroom and the adjacent 11,600-square-foot Wanamaker Ballroom) plus the personal interaction with Ramsey’s coaches, account executives and leadership, the event’s food and beverage offerings are critical to satisfying the small and mid-sized business owners in attendance. As a result, Phelps keeps a close eye on each meal’s setup—especially the temperature controls of the buffet stations to ensure items stay hot without becoming dry.
On this day, Southern barbecue is the lunch theme: chopped brisket and Southern sticky chicken along with cobb salad, almond green beans, creamed corn and grits. Yesterday’s lunch featured a build-a-burger bar, with chicken breast as an alternate choice.
“When we came to the Omni for our second site visit, we realized that the hotel team really understood our attendee demographic,” Phelps said.
One clear hint for the Omni staff: The business type that’s most represented at the EntreLeadership Master Series event is construction, followed by manufacturing and small-facility/home-based healthcare.
“We emphasize to hotels that we have a lot of hearty eaters,” Phelps added. “The Omni’s food and beverage team is on top of it. For instance, the morning donuts went very quickly on day one, but they had cookies ready to go as a backup. And they observe things about our group’s preferences each day and make adjustments for the following day.”
Small Glitches Get Solved
The proactive nature of the Omni’s F&B team also helped to head off a potential problem on Thursday: The general session was set to end at noon for lunch but the Q&A segment did not last as long as expected. As a result, attendees begin to move into the prefunction area and toward the buffet stations by 11:47.
Fortunately, the F&B manager who was standing with Phelps at that moment assures her that all the stations are ready for use. And with stormy weather holding off, dozens of attendees choose to eat at the eight-person rounds set up on the 2,500-square-foot patio off the Wanamaker Ballroom, watching golfers pass by on the resort’s West course.
In fact, this midday meal event faced an earlier complication that Phelps had to address quickly: The Panther Creek Pavilion is where Elite-level attendees (one of three attendee tiers for the conference) would have their lunch, but the production team has already moved lighting and other equipment in there for the final-night reception that evening.
A couple hours before lunch, Phelps puts out a call to the team for any available hands to get to the pavilion ASAP and help move the equipment elsewhere.
“A central component of our organization is servant leadership—there’s not a person on our team that I couldn’t look to and know I can depend on them to follow through on making something happen, even if it’s at the last minute,” Phelps said. “Even Joe [Leavitt, vice president of live events] comes to help when he gets the call. No one is too important to do the small tasks onsite.”
The Home Stretch
With Thursday’s educational sessions ending and the final-night reception about to start, Phelps slips into a breakout room to prepare for tomorrow’s sessions and send-off.
“I have another lead event manager who handles most of the evening activities, so I have some time then to make sure the hotel’s team is doing the book drops to attendees’ rooms before the reception ends, to communicate any schedule adjustments to our team and to see that the signage is set properly,” she said.
Then, finally, Phelps walks away from the meeting space and to Panther Creek Pavilion, where she meets Joe Leavitt at a cocktail table on the perimeter of the venue’s outdoor area. As she takes a few bites of an appetizer and sips a water, Phelps looks around at buffet stations and bars to monitor the flow of people and their collective mood, which is festive. All is well.
In fact, it’s better than well. With a net promoter score just above 70 and a 64% return rate for attendees over the past few years, the EntreLeadership Master Series event is on very solid footing. And for the Omni PGA Frisco, this year’s conference is a big win: Nearly all of the hotel’s 500 guest rooms plus its 10 four-bedroom ranch home villas are occupied by event attendees and staff, with a small wedding group and a few golfers being the only other business in house.
As the last attendees file out of the pavilion at about 8:15 p.m., Phelps says goodnight to the Meetings Today reporter who’s followed her around for much of the day. Her last task before bed: Monitoring Friday’s weather forecast to see whether the production team’s truck should leave for Nashville on Friday afternoon or Saturday morning, and whether she and her teammates will be able to fly home Friday evening.
More storms are coming, but Becky Phelps will stay on top of the situation, as usual.
