Sarah Fulton manages hotel sourcing worldwide, facilitates hotel communications, coordinates site tours, and negotiates contracts to maximize value and secure favorable terms for assistants and their teams.
In this episode of The Leader Assistant Podcast, Sarah shares tips on marketing yourself on LinkedIn, sourcing hotel venues, negotiating contracts, and more.
LEADERSHIP QUOTE
The ending scene from Night at the Museum with Robin Williams –
Robin Williams: “It’s time for your next adventure.”
Ben Stiller: “I have no idea what I’m gonna do tomorrow.”
Robin Williams: “How exciting!”
CONNECT WITH SARAH
ABOUT SARAH
Sarah Fulton is a serial entrepreneur with a passion for supporting others and has a specialized focus in complimentary hotel and venue sourcing, partnering with Gather Global to support and empower Executive Assistants (EAs) and Administrative Assistants (AAs). She manages hotel sourcing worldwide (with a minimum of 10 guest rooms), facilitates hotel communications, coordinates site tours, and negotiates contracts to maximize value and secure favorable terms, including protective clauses and attrition safeguards.
When working with Gather Global, you stay in control—we provide expert guidance and support, but your team makes the final decisions. Our mission is to take tasks off your plate, simplify the process, and have your back every step of the way to ensure the best possible outcomes for your events.
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Sarah Fulton 0:00
Hi. My name is Sarah Fulton, and today’s leadership quote comes from the ending scene of the Night at the Museum where Robin Williams’ character says, it’s time for your next adventure. And Ben Stiller replies, I have no idea what I’m going to do tomorrow, to which Robin says, How exciting.
Podcast Intro 0:22
The Leader Assistant Podcast exists to encourage and challenge assistants to become confident game changing leader assistants.
Jeremy Burrows 0:39
Hey friends, welcome to The Leader Assistant Podcast. It’s episode 333 I’m your host, Jeremy Burrows, and you can check out the show notes for this episode at leaderassistant.com/333, and you’ll find all the links to connect with and learn more about today’s guest, and speaking of today’s guest, welcome Sarah Fulton to the episode. Hey, Sarah, hi. What? What part of the world are you in?
Sarah Fulton 1:11
I am based out of Atlanta, Georgia. So Atlanta, big, big airport down.
Jeremy Burrows 1:16
Yes, I just booked some flights for my executives family through Atlanta to Paris. So that’ll be, that’ll be fun. I’m like, I’m hoping they don’t have a negative Atlanta airport experience, because I know there are some of those. Are you from that area?
Sarah Fulton 1:33
Yeah, I grew up about 40 to an hour minutes outside of Atlanta, and I’m still kind of within that same radius, but with traffic, it ends up always being like an hour and a half commute to this city. But
Jeremy Burrows 1:50
great. And then tell us a little bit about what you like to do when you’re not working,
Sarah Fulton 1:57
when I’m not working. Oh, oh, the many hobbies. So I am quite ambitious, as you know, an entrepreneur, my own business owner, but I am also quite ambitious in my personal life. So usually you’ll find me reading a book. I love reading. I also like writing. I don’t make enough time for that, but I do enjoy that. So I like writing, reading. I have mediocre skills. Well, me not mediocre amateur skills and silk aerial Lyra, that’s really fun. I did gymnastics and cheerleading growing up, so it’s a really good sport for an adult body, which is great. So those and then my other main thing is baking. I love baking. I have a small bakery business that I pursued for a little bit. Now I’m putting it on a little bit more of a hold so I can focus on other avenues and remember to enjoy it and not get burnt down on it. So, yeah, little bit of everything.
Jeremy Burrows 2:58
Love it, love it. And let’s see you are. So we’ll get a little bit into what you’re doing now, but tell us a little bit about where your career started, and then, you know, reverse engineer to today, and tell us what you’re doing today.
Sarah Fulton 3:13
Yeah, no. So I always kind of knew I wanted to do something in marketing, even in high school. I graduated high school and went straight into college, straight into marketing. Degree never changed my mind. Graduated in four years, but I didn’t really look outside of that, and I kind of wish I had, because there’s so many more different avenues and angles I could have taken. But so I started in marketing. I graduated, and I ended up getting my first nine to five role that I didn’t expect to get. I had a deferred study abroad trip to Italy because of COVID, and already paid a deposit. So I was like, whatever we’re going even though I don’t need the class credit, I’m already graduated. And I was like, no one’s gonna hire me for five weeks for me to immediately leave for five more weeks. So I’m very lucky with my first nine to five role, and it was while it was, while it was very, very wonderful as a learning experience, I just didn’t feel like I was growing enough being fresh out of college. And it was very, very small. It was for a golf course. And while my team was wonderful, I was the only one really doing the marketing, and I wanted more of that corporate nine to five experience so I could have a team to lean on. I could get experience with industry standard platforms and all of that. So I got a new role, working for a payment processing company as a communication specialist, and that was not the greatest of experiences. I learned a lot of a lot of things and a lot of the downfalls of the nine to five world. So after that experience and seeing the horrors, I decided I was going to pursue something of working for myself and one Luckily, I’ve been very blessed by a wonderful support system and family and fiance who’s great, and they’re all wonderful to help me do. Not be able to quit my nine to five and start a business for myself. So I pursued a marketing business because I had already had marketing experience, and I had already been doing it on the sides. I was like, why not? Like, I’m gonna go in all in on myself. And over the past two years, I’ve kind of built that up and through that marketing business and working with clients, primarily doing social media marketing and storytelling with to build brand awareness for brands. I found this, which is hotel venue sourcing. And I actually got into this through a previous client of mine. I was doing her social media, and I loved what she was doing. I could just see a win, win, win across the board, and when she decided to pause social media for a little bit, I I said, that’s okay, but do you mind if I kind of work with you, because I just love what you do so much. And she said, Yeah, sure. And now I do hotel venue sourcing, or I get to work with EAS and AAS and event planners and all types of people, and it’s just such a fun experience. It’s a different day every day, and that’s kind of where I am. I’m still doing the marketing, but I’m also doing this. And yeah, like I said, quite ambitious with my career as well.
Jeremy Burrows 6:13
Yeah, what? What would you say in your marketing career journey? What would be maybe one tip for assistants who are working on their personal brand, or maybe wanting to market themselves because they’re looking for jobs, or they just want to, you know, expand their network on LinkedIn. What’s something in all your all your marketing experience that would be helpful for like an assistant, listening?
Sarah Fulton 6:42
Yeah, I think you the most important thing is going to always be being authentic. And I know people will say that all time and time again, but it really is, especially when you’re just kind of building out your own personal brand as an EA or an AA, I would say that the most important thing about your brand is all the little nuances and tiny little things that make you you. So definitely being authentic is super important, because that’s kind of the whole the whole brand, consistently posting is going to always be important, but diversifying your content and definitely stepping outside of your comfort zone, it’s going to feel weird at first. I mean, I still do it, and it’s still weird for me, and it’s it’s a little uncomfy, but just going out of your way to do it anyways is what’s going to make the difference. And even if that means your characters, you know your personality is being more of a shy person, there’s still ways of building a brand and communicating that about yourself in a way that doesn’t feel super intimidating. But no matter what, it’s going to feel a little intimidating, whether you’re posting on social media, whether you’re reaching out directly to people on LinkedIn and forming connections just over communicate and just try and be as authentic as you possibly can. That’s probably my biggest piece of
Jeremy Burrows 8:06
advice. Love it. And is there anything you know you’ve worked with different platforms, I’m assuming, with the different companies and the different organizations? Is there anything specifically that you’ve seen works well on LinkedIn or doesn’t work well on LinkedIn, because I know LinkedIn is kind of a professional I remember when I started my my side hustle, if you will, for training assistance. I was like, Where are the assistants? And there was like, yeah, there’s a few Facebook groups. Nobody’s on Twitter. There’s like, you know, Instagram is kind of, I don’t know, and then it’s like, oh, they’re all on LinkedIn. Like, so I was like, All right, well, I guess I’ll be on LinkedIn. So is there anything that you should avoid or, or that works well on LinkedIn, that you’ve seen?
Sarah Fulton 8:51
Yeah, absolutely, especially with what I do with working primarily with EAS and AAS, yeah, they’re all on LinkedIn. There’s, you know, they’re on Instagram, but they’re kind of in hiding on Instagram. You know, they just don’t market themselves as that on Instagram. So you kind of have to have the luck of the draw to find the right people. But when it comes to LinkedIn, again, that authenticity is important. I think what I’ve seen, or at least in my experience, how I’m seeing LinkedIn, is, while it is a professional platform. Unfortunately, it’s becoming more and more casual and light hearted, like other platforms are, which I say unfortunate because it was there is a benefit of having a space that’s solely professional. But with that being said, the other stuff, the stuff that’s a little little silly, a little goofy, a little light hearted, relatable, that stuff does really well, also because that’s what you’re looking for, especially when you’re growing your audience on LinkedIn. If it’s not for sending out new connection requests and making new connections, it’s through engagement, which means whatever you’re posting to your feed needs to be something that people are going to want to share and repost. Post, and then it kind of keep going across the platform, similar to how Twitter is with retweets. Well, I guess x is what we’re calling it now. So you really want to focus a lot on engagement, whether that means posting something that’s going to get a lot of engagement, and then on top of that, engaging with people in your audience and in the feed, regularly, commenting, liking, sharing, reposting things like that. And then another thing that you, while we’re specifically talking about LinkedIn and different social platforms, I’ve found a community of EAs and AAS on Reddit, and when I and that’s another great option too, because it’s that anonymous thing. Like I said, they’re they’re in hiding on Instagram, and Reddit gets to stay anonymous. So but one of the first things I saw in there, when I found that group was immediately that somebody had made a Reddit post saying how much they hated LinkedIn because it felt so fluffy, felt so oversaturated with people just hyping themselves up and just bragging about themselves and not giving credit where credit should be due. And so a lot of EAs have kind of turned away from LinkedIn because of that. So when posting and sharing about, you know, yourself as an EA or AAA on LinkedIn, kind of keep that in mind, maybe talking about that and how that breaking down that stigma, making sure your posts don’t read that way, because, you know, again, making it more casual, a little bit more relatable. So
Jeremy Burrows 11:21
yeah, that makes sense. It’s funny. I I’m on Reddit as well, but I’m not anonymous on Reddit, and so it’s like, it’s just funny to see how you know, you interact and you engage with people on Reddit, and they’re just like this. I mean, there’s definitely some good stuff on there, but, you know, there’s in an anonymous world, there’s a lot of crazy stuff too. Oh yeah, but I don’t know. I just kind of like the idea of of just being me and not worried about being trying to be anonymous. So it’s kind of funny. I’m one of the rare users where you actually can figure out who I am pretty easily.
Sarah Fulton 12:02
I mean, I kind of am too when I’m on there, because I’m just like, yes, here’s my email, right? I’m happy to help, right? So I’m a little more open with it as well. But then again, I’m also cognizant of what I say, and I’m I don’t treat it as if I am anonymous, because that’s almost irresponsible in today’s technology era, so totally
Jeremy Burrows 12:23
awesome. Well, let’s jump in then to hotel venue sourcing, and, you know, contract negotiations, all those kinds of things. What? What should assistants look for when they’re sourcing hotels and venues? And maybe even I know that assistants listening probably have specific use cases like, Oh, we’ve got this off site that we’re doing, or we’ve got this conference or whatever, but maybe even share some of the more common use cases for your work with EAS and why they need the venue and what, what types of events they’re using the hotel for?
Sarah Fulton 13:07
Yeah, absolutely. So I guess to just kind of give the elevator pitch at the header here, I support EAS AAS event planners, really, anyone planning any type of larger event with hotel venue sourcing to not only find the venue, but also do contract negotiations, coordinate site tours or fam trips, and also handle the communication back and forth with hotels. So that’s just kind of the headliner of what it is I do to answer your question when you might use me, it’s really any event. It’s any type of thing that you might be planning that is going to require the use of a hotel that you would kind of want to negotiate rates for. You’d be looking to book a larger quantity of rooms. So we usually do things for meetings, off sites, conferences, sales, kickoffs, any type of events, retreats. We’ve done bookings for cheerleading competitions that have gone out of town. Other sports industries. We’ve done courtesy blocks for weddings. We’ve even source locations, venues and meeting space for weddings. So it kind of varies so but primarily the people I’m working with are like you guys and other event planners with doing corporate like events, but we can do it in any, any fashion, really. So those are the type of events that we usually do.
Jeremy Burrows 14:29
Okay? And then what? What would be the first thing to do, if you’re, if someone’s listening right now and they’re like, oh, yeah, we’ve got one of those corporate events coming up. What? What’s the first thing I should do?
Sarah Fulton 14:42
Yeah, well, the first thing you do is reach out to me so that I can help and take that off your plate. I think that’s just what’s so amazing about what we get to do is we essentially are an assistant for an assistant. We are a free assistant for an assistant, just somebody for them to offload that task to. So I know a lot of EAs and as often, have many different things on their plate, and they’re also juggling multiple balls in the air. They’re doing way too much than they should be, and that’s just, that’s where it’s great. You just get to hand that off to somebody that’s not only a free resource for you, right, but it’s also somebody that’s an expert in that field and can help you get better contracts and get better rates, get better locations through those connections and experience and clauses and whatnot. So that’s what I mean when I say it’s a win, win, right? It’s free. It’s something you don’t have to do, and it’s going to be better than if you were to try and do it on your own. So the first thing would be to reach out to me, obviously, but primarily when you’re going to reach out to hotels, you want to gather a lot of proposals from other people, and it’s super important to know the worth of your event. And that’s kind of where we come in, and we step in with those contract negotiations right being in the field and knowing kind of what weight a type of event would have gives more leverage in being able to judge that event and what we can, what we can try and get as concessions are really important for making sure your contracts better. And so it’s just really You gotta, gotta have the experience and know when it’s worth pushing for some things and not asking for another thing. But I guess a big piece of advice is always going to be to ask rather than not ask. It never hurts to ask. So, yeah,
Jeremy Burrows 16:25
awesome. So the you know, you go in and like, let’s say I don’t know what city that we want to do our off site at. Do you work with? Like, hey, you know, where is your team located? Like, what, what cities are typically have better options. Do you only work with certain brands of hotels or primarily, like, you know, like, I have an insurance agent. He doesn’t charge me anything. He makes commissions on the other end. But he only has like, five companies or six companies that he’ll be able to like run quotes through. And so there are a few other insurance companies that if I want to get quotes, I have to go separately. Is it kind of, does it kind of work like that? Or can you kind of work with anyone? It’s
Sarah Fulton 17:14
better than that, because we can work with anyone. That’s why it’s so great. We are not loyal to any meet myself or our team, gather global we are not loyal to any one, any hotels, any specific properties of any kind. We’re only loyal to our clients. So that’s where it’s really beneficial. We are going to get paid by the hotels, like you were saying with your insurance agents, by the hotels and industry standard, but because it’s an industry standard, there’s not really any benefit for us to be loyal to any hotels or any specific properties. Our benefit is in the customer service and the quality of work and the relationship we’re able to build with our clients. So that’s where we put our eggs in the basket, right? So that’s where it’s really awesome. We get to fight for the client have their back when it comes to contract negotiations and attrition policies and mitigation all of that. And then on top of that, we get to work worldwide, because we’re not loyal to any specific brands. So any off site anywhere, we can help with planning it and sourcing it. And yeah, we absolutely have that information. As far as what’s peak season, where, if you don’t know your city, that’s okay. We can if you have any rough idea, we can source any rough idea. But then that also depends on what you’re planning and what you’re looking for. If you’re looking for a company retreat and you don’t have any location specific in mind, then we have great options that we’ve used in the past that we’ll recommend, or we’ll ask some more filtering, you know, type of questions, like, are you looking for something hot, something cold? You want something relaxing, something adventurous, things like that. And then we can kind of narrow you into a certain area, or you really are not specific to any location, then we’ll source all over the world for that specific type of space. So that’s where it gets really, really fun, and that’s one of the reasons I love this. It’s like window shopping for clothes, but for travel. So, right,
Jeremy Burrows 18:59
nice. So what would be a couple of the good? What’s like? Maybe your top two cities for events or off sites in the US, and then maybe your your top two outside of the US.
Sarah Fulton 19:15
That’s hard. They’re all great for, like, different person, let’s say
Jeremy Burrows 19:19
less than 50 people.
Sarah Fulton 19:22
So something more intimate, okay, so for in this example, we’ll say, we said company retreat, right?
Jeremy Burrows 19:29
Yeah, like company retreat or company off site? Yeah, yeah. Okay,
Sarah Fulton 19:33
so out of country, I would say probably Mexico. We’ve done quite a few down there. There’s some really, really great resorts, so I’d say Mexico, and then maybe Greece or Italy. Italy is really good for or, like the Amalfi Coast is, but it’s really good for those small, like intimate type of retreats or off sites, because and then there’s also the travel to get there. They’re Bucha. Wonderful and wonderful, but there’s the distance from the airport, but I would say one of those two, so maybe three. I can land on three. And then in country of Miami is a good one. I know we do a lot of work in Scottsdale, Phoenix area, that’s another good one. And then the Bay Area is a big one too in Atlanta. So four, I can’t decide. There’s so many great options.
Jeremy Burrows 20:28
No, Kansas City. Come on. Kansas City is a flyover state, you know. Or Missouri and Kansas are fire over states. We’re right in the middle of the country, though, everyone can fly to us. No,
Sarah Fulton 20:38
just make a pit stop from Atlanta to the Kansas City ones? Yeah.
Jeremy Burrows 20:46
Okay, so then what happens? So let’s say we, we decided on, you know, Scottsdale, and we’re going to do our off site, and you’ve got the you’ve got the number of people we’re going to have, you’ve got, kind of our preferences on, you know, walkable area and dining options and not a stuffy conference room. And then you go through and you find some options. Let’s say you present those options. How much from there, is it like negotiating those contracts with the with the hotels, like, Hey, this is what their proposal was. But how much wiggle room is there for, for the, you know, the EAS and the teams trying to negotiate, like, are there certain parts of the contract that are generally, you know, you mentioned earlier, just ask if
Sarah Fulton 21:46
you’re not using me always,
Jeremy Burrows 21:48
right, right? But like, yeah, exactly. Like, are there you’re a professional asker, right? Yeah. So, like, are there certain areas of the contract that might be or certain line items that you might be able to get more wiggle room than others.
Sarah Fulton 22:10
Yeah, and that, in that specific, specific question of specific line items having more wiggle room than others, comes down to, again, the experience in the industry knowledge with knowing the weight of your program that you’re proposing to bring to the hotel, because that’s where you got to remember when, when you’re booking a large off site, you know you’re or you’re booking a sales conference or anything like that. I mean, even with smaller meetings, but primarily those larger, bigger programs, you got to understand that you’re bringing something to the table for the hotels, right? Like they want your business, and you get to kind of hold on to it until it’s until you find the perfect fit that’s going to work for you, and that’s where that negotiation comes in. So knowing the weight is super important, and those larger programs, you can kind of get more wiggle room for certain things, because what you have is so valuable, right? I feel like a lot of EAs and AAS, they’re doing so much, they have so much going on, that’s kind of a thing that falls to the wayside in the in the brain, that you got something valuable on your hands here. But do you have the time to really invest trying to deal with all of that so but so back to the beginning part of your question. You know, once we hear back from hotels and and we get proposals for them. So the first step with working with me is to share your specs, right? What’s the specs? What specs Do you have? Do you have dates? Do you have a specific city where has this been hosted at in the past? How many attendees do you need? Food and beverage? Do you need meeting space? You know, all that type of stuff. Share those specs with me, and then I’m going to go immediately generate an RFP and send that out to all of the hotels that we think are fitting for your specific program in that area, or, again, in special cases, when it’s not specific to a city or dates, we have a lot more flexibility in what you’re what we’re trying to do. So once we send that out, we expect to hear back from hotels, and we push as fast as possible, within about a two day period to get a report to you, we’ll send out an availability report, and that way, you can kind of take a look at all right, here’s what’s available, just off the jump, just off the first sourcing, and you can make some decisions from there. And this isn’t, of course, the same with every single person. It’s different from program to program, but this is roughly the process once you have the availability report and you kind of look through it, you can either shortlist some hotels on there, and then I will generate a comparative report, which is a much more deeper dive analysis and comparing those proposals. And then it’s just right there, clear as day for you to see all right, this one’s more expensive in this area, this one, we’re missing the food and beverage cost minute, or the food and beverage minimum on this one, etc, you can really get a good breakdown of those few. And then from there, you select a hotel from the shortlist. We then start reaching out to them with the shortlist email, and start beginning that negotiation process with a list of concessions. That’s where I kind of come in with the proposed concessions. Now, of course, like I just had somebody today me that they really wanted their points, and I was like, Absolutely, I’m always going to confess. So you’re always welcome to give me suggestions with your with what concessions you would like, but I’m always going to add in many, many more, just on based on what I know about your program based on what I know about that hotel or their rep or that property, and what I think is fair with what we’re bringing to the table for them, right So, and that’s where that industry knowledge comes in. So we’ll do some back and forth once we get once we’ve sent those concessions, and when we’re ready to request a contract, we’ll request a contract from a specific hotel, and then I will line by line, read the entire contract, go through, make sure that it is correct. It’s fair. It’s not one sided, which is what we see all the time. All the hotel contracts are going to always be one sided to them, and it’s just, you just don’t know to read through it, and you just don’t know what to look for. Then you miss that kind of stuff. That kind of stuff. And oftentimes a lot of people get taken advantage of in those contracts. And so that’s what we’re there to protect. So there’s a lot of different ones.
Jeremy Burrows 26:11
What would be an example of, like, something that is one sided to the hotel? Would it be, like the cancelation policy, or what? Yeah.
Sarah Fulton 26:20
What would be, yeah, yeah. It’s gonna, usually, it’s gonna be, usually, something like that. Another huge one is always gonna be the attrition clause, that one’s always one sided. Another one is usually the payment schedule. Oftentimes they will ask for a much, much larger deposit than they really need for the size of the program, and, like, for the ratio of the program. So, you know, heaven forbid something happened, but that, you know, they just don’t, they don’t need it that much upfront. And so there’s different things like that. And it’s, there’s multiple different areas of the contract where, again, we’ll adjust, but collectively, together, all of those different things, had they not been edited, would have been so one sided to the hotel and not at all in favor of the company. And again, that’s where we tie it all back. You got to remember that you’re bringing something of value to them, right? So, right kind of stand stand strong. By it.
Jeremy Burrows 27:10
Awesome. That’s great. What? Uh, yeah, any other either tips or, you know, let’s say they they are, they’re already in the middle of an agreement, or they’re already, they’ve already moved forward with someone else. Or they, maybe they, they, for whatever reason, aren’t able to reach out to you for help. What’s, what’s? Maybe that your number one thing, like, hey, you know what? I can’t get Sarah’s help, but maybe she can help me, help myself?
Sarah Fulton 27:42
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And we’ve done this for clients in the past where, you know, clients have come to us and like, Hey, my friend did this with this contract. Like, can you just look it over? And we look it over, and we’re like, yeah, this contract’s a mess. Like, this needs to be fixed here and here and here. Because, again, the work we do is completely complimentary. And of course, we don’t go out of our way to do those types of things, because we’re not on we’re not listed on that that friend of a friend’s contract, so we’re not technically getting paid, but we’re really all about relationships with our clients. And so if our client, you know, is asking us for a favor, we’re trying to do whatever we can to build a good, strong, lasting relationship with our client, and that means treating them like our literal friends and being really close with them. So if they’re ever one of my clients, ever in a situation where they feel like they couldn’t have done they didn’t, they couldn’t use my help, or they didn’t need it at the time, I just want them to reach out and ask me. It’s again, like I said, it’s not going to hurt to ask. It’s only you know, if you don’t ask so probably the best tip would always be to, like, like, I said, know the worth of your program, if, for some reason, like, if your company is locked in with another kind of company, or specific event planning service, or has an event planning team, just kind of know that that that there’s always weight into the program, and always, if you have a question, push back. It’s not going to hurt to push back right when you’re when you have that, because you have something of value to give them. You don’t just have to, you know, say yes to them. So that that’s a big one. And then I’ve also had situations where clients do have an internal team, and they do have a established partnership, but they felt that that partnership was not not they felt that that partnership was not as kind and as intentional with planning of smaller programs than it could be when They plan the larger programs. And that client started working with me for those smaller ones, because she was like, it was just so much easier. I didn’t have to worry about when I was going to hear back from you. I heard back from you. You got back to me quick. And just because it was a smaller program versus a larger program doesn’t make any difference in the work ethic that I give my clients. And so she could see that, and that’s kind of how we got started working together. So you. Even though her company has this larger established partnership for the smaller one, she was coming to me just because it was easier for her and it was a better experience for her so and that’s the other thing is I feel like with with your with EAS and AAS, my name does not have to be presented anywhere at all to your boss or your team. That’s what I love. So one of the things I love so much about this is we could, I could work with a client. We could plan the most amazing event, the most amazing retreat, gotten all these concessions, got such a great rate at such a wonderful resort, and they could go to their boss and just be like, Yeah, I did that all by myself. And they could just get all the credit, all the praise. And I don’t have to be in there at all. We sign our name nowhere on the contract. It is just listed under a clause that we worked to you and were acted on your behalf for the negotiation part. Solutions, just one, this, this one small clause, but we don’t sign anything. You’re you could take all of the credit. And that’s kind of what that’s kind of what our goal is, is to not only educate, support, but Empower EAS and AAS
Jeremy Burrows 31:07
nice. Love it. And I think that’s part of the thing too, is EAS, you know, we whether we mentioned how we’ve solved the problem or not. You know, we’re project managing. We’re delegating where needed. I remember when we started our company capacity, we did not have an HR person, we did not have a finance person, and I’m not a people person or a math person, and I had to do both. But I had to, you know, I had to delegate certain things, I had to do certain things, but I was able to ping the experts in those areas and and make sure we were doing things right. And so it was like, you know, a lot of times our executives, like, just figure it out. Yeah, yeah, a lot of assistants. And, you know, some of you listening are probably thinking, Yeah, this is me. I need to stop doing this. But a lot of assistants will have this kind of pride in them, and I’ve done this too where it’s like, well, no, I’m going to figure it out. I’m going to do this on my own. And if I, if I ask for help, that’s a sign of weakness or whatever. And so I think that just as we wrap up, I think it’s just to encourage those listening like, listen like. It’s okay to ask for help, especially when there’s no risk and no cost to your company or to you. And it’s great to have experts guide you along the journey, and there’s no reason not to utilize and like, that’s I’ve always told all my friends and my family, and ever since I started working with my insurance agent friend, just like, there’s literally no risk to have him run a bunch of quotes for you and get some good, good Advice from and he’s been helpful for for me and my wife for years now. So yeah, there’s just like, there’s certain situations where you would be silly to not try and use some expertise in this area. So anyway, so thanks for being on the show. Thanks for sharing some tips. Thanks for helping assistance with this, these crazy project based, venue, hotel sourcing, craziness that they have to deal with. What’s the best place or where’s the best place for people to find you and reach out?
Sarah Fulton 33:38
Yeah, so LinkedIn is probably going to be the best place, because that’s what I know. That’s where you guys are, and that’s where I am on LinkedIn, and I know you’ll probably list my stuff in the show notes, so they’ll be able to get the link to that. But LinkedIn, or just my email, just ping me on email, and that’s that’s an again, like the first step is just to reach out. Be like, Hey, I have, I need your help. And I mean, like, okay, great, we can work together, and I can help you out. I think the only requirement that we have is that it’s a minimum of 10 rooms on peak, which is awfully small. And then, even then, sometimes we can make it work, even if it’s slightly less than 10. So, yeah, our minimum that is, that is the bare, literal bare minimum for us. Otherwise, we can help you with it. We’ve done all types of things. So even if you’re unsure if we can help, reach out and ask. Anyways, so LinkedIn and my email, or you can try Instagram. I kind of run it through my marketing Instagram. So it’s just Sarah Lindsay, marketing Lindsay spelled with a y, so you want to get that directly from the show notes, so you spell it correctly, but I’m on my phone, on my computer, 24/7 I’m going to answer as fast as possible to get to you and support as quick as possible. And yeah, like you’re saying, Jeremy, you know it’s, it sucks to ask for help sometimes, as a business owner, outside of the hotel sourcing, I completely understand and get that. But yeah. Sometimes it’s just, it’s almost counterintuitive not to ask, and the least that you can do is ask, because the worst they can say is no, right? But if you don’t ask, it’s always a no. So totally
Jeremy Burrows 35:10
awesome. Sarah, well, I’ll put all your links in the show notes at leader assistant.com/ 333, thank you for joining us, and thank you to everyone listening. And best of luck to you, Sarah in your career, and best of luck to those listening in their hotel, venue, negotiation, sourcing and all that stuff. Hopefully they’ll reach out to get your help.
Sarah Fulton 35:35
I hope so too. I’m looking forward to helping.
