The Revenue Room™ with Denise Medved, CCO, Informa Markets

Heather talks with Denise Medved, Chief Commercial Officer, Informa Markets North America. This episode explores Medved's extensive career in the B2B and B2C events industry, her current role at Informa, and the challenges and opportunities in leveraging data for revenue growth and business transformation in the events sector.

Denise is an executive advisory board member of H2K Labs' new C-suite network, Revenue Room™ Connect. Revenue Room™ Connect helps leaders in media, events, data/information and marketplace businesses fuel enterprise value by leveraging data, digital and AI.

Key points from the discussion:

• Medved's diverse career path led her to her current role at Informa, where she focuses on creating consistency across multiple business units.

• Informa Markets was created through several acquisitions, resulting in complex data environments and multiple instances of Salesforce CRM.

• Medved's primary mission is to focus on sales excellence and enablement, maximizing efficiencies and optimizing revenue growth through data and technology.

• The company standardized opportunity records in Salesforce across all business units, creating consistency in forecasting and reporting.

• Informa is using talent assessment tools combined with performance data to ensure the right people are in the right sales roles.

• The importance of understanding different data sources, definitions, and appetite for change when implementing new data-driven processes.

• Medved emphasizes patience, empathy, and clear communication when driving organizational change and adopting new technologies.

• The growing importance of data in driving business decisions and the excitement around CEOs embracing data-driven approaches.

The discussion highlights the critical role of data in transforming B2B media and events businesses and demonstrates the challenges and opportunities of standardizing data practices across a large, complex organization. It underscores the importance of strategic data management, sales enablement, and change management in driving revenue growth and business value in the modern events industry.

About RevvedUP 2026
RevvedUP 2026 is where CEOs and revenue-critical C-Suite leaders reset their growth playbook for the AI-first economy. Taking place March 23–24, 2026 at The Vinoy Resort in St. Petersburg, FL, this two-day strategy lab helps leaders pressure-test how AI moves from cost center to growth driver and turn data and disruption into competitive advantage.

About Heather Holst-Knudsen
Heather Holst-Knudsen is the founder and CEO of H2K Labs and Revenue Room™ Connect. A seasoned executive and operator across media, marketplaces, events, and technology, she specializes in digital transformation, data-driven growth, and customer-centric value creation. Heather shares her insights on multisided business models through The Revenue Room™.

About Revenue Room™ CXO
Revenue Room™ CXO is a private executive community for CEOs and revenue-critical C-Suite leaders navigating growth in the data and AI economy. Through curated peer discussions and strategy sprints, members tackle real-world challenges in revenue transformation, customer intelligence, and business model innovation.

Learn more or apply for membership at info.h2klabs.com/apply-cxo.

Transcript

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Welcome to the Revenue Room presented by H2K Labs. Here's your host, Heather Holst-Knudsen. Hello, and welcome to the revenue room podcast, where we talk about everything data, digital AI, and revenue. Before I kick off with our great guest, I'm excited to announce a new solution from H2K labs revved up is an in person event for CEOs and their revenue critical C suite teams. And it takes place November 13th and 14th in Sarasota, Florida. We've architected Rev'd Up for executives who are truly serious about data enabled enterprise value creation and business transformation. But why now? There's a seismic shift underway in how CEOs fuel enterprise value creation and sustainable growth. What worked yesterday, no longer works today. They must harness data, digital, and AI. But yet an astounding 86 percent of CEOs, while they believe AI will maintain or grow their company revenues and value, they have no idea where to strategically focus their efforts and investments, and that's from Gartner. This isn't limited to 100 qualified CEOs and C suite revenue critical leaders. Visit h2klabs. com slash revved up with two V's to learn more. All right, so now onto the program. Today I'm delighted to welcome Denise Medved, Chief Commercial Officer in Forma Markets, North America. Denise has a deep background in B2B and B2C events and trade shows and has held executive level leadership roles at Money 2020 USA. Informa in a previous role and Consumer Technology Association, among many other businesses. She also was the founder and CEO of the Metropolitan Cooking and Entertaining Show for eight years. Denise is what I call an advanced data leader. She truly gets it. And she's very serious. She's a trusted advisor and expert when it comes to data fueled revenue and profit acceleration in multi sided business environments. Welcome, Denise. Oh, thank you, Heather. I really appreciate you inviting me. Can you, Anad, you've such a varied career. You've been, you've worked in different, like the B2C side, B2B. Now you're at one of the largest event organizers in the world. Can you tell the audience a bit about your background? Sure. I'm going to start with, if I looked at my resume, number one, I would never hire me. And number two, I would never believe it. So let's just start with that. I, I've not had a job at one place for more than four and a half years with the exception of owning my own company. But I think that's okay. I feel here I am at the end of my career. I have strung together all these different experiences that just got me to where I am, quite honestly. I was a finance major at George Washington University. I worked on the Hill as an intern while I was at GW. Graduated, I went to New York, and I worked on Wall Street for four and a half years. I moved back to Alexandria, Virginia, my hometown, and I just stumbled into the trade show industry. And I started out at natural, National Trade Productions in Alexandria and it's owned by Bob Harar. He had launched a show, a federal IT show for the, for the government and was doing a regional launch. And I had no idea what I wanted to do when I moved back from New York, but I knew that I didn't want to be in finance. Because if I wanted to stay in finance, I would have stayed in New York. It was very simple, the job criteria that I had. And I know that this is crazy, but this is the truth. I didn't want to have to get on a highway to go to work. I was living in my parents house for temporarily, and I didn't want any more than a 10 minute commute. I wanted to be in sales because I wanted to be able to dictate how much money I brought home at the end of every single month. And I went down to the career office at George Washington University, and there was an index card on the cork bulletin board. And it said trade shows, national trade productions, Alexandria, Virginia, and sales and Alexandria, Virginia caught my eye. I said, this is probably something I can do. And that's how I got into the trade show business to be perfectly honest. And from there, I've been in many different, I worked at Read Exhibitions. I worked at, like you said, Consumer Technology Association. I did a stint at IDG World Expo. I'm not even sure if they're around anymore. I launched my own company, a consumer event, the Metropolitan Cooking and Entertaining Show. And I sold that and then I ended up a CES after that. And stayed for four and a half years and thought that I was really at the end of my career. Then I was very content, not working full time. And fast forward, here I am now as a chief commercial officer at, at informal markets. But all along the way in every single one of those jobs, I always had very specific goals in mind of what I wanted to be able to accomplish and what I wanted to be able to learn. I had no idea where things were going to take me after I owned my own company. I always knew that I wanted to own my own company. So prior to owning it, everything I did was purposeful. And so anything in my career beyond owning my own company and after I sold it has just been a bonus for me. Yeah, being an entrepreneur myself, and you sound very much like an entrepreneur. There's all of these words you're saying, and even just the way you started off, I've only been places a year or something, which is actually not quite true, but you're definitely an entrepreneur at heart. And it sounds like a learner. What actually, that's a great point that you brought up about always Wanting to learn something from where you are. What is it that you're learning now at Informa Markets in this role? Oh, wow. I would say probably one of the biggest things that I am learning, and I have the last couple of years, is working with generations that are One, two, maybe generations younger than I am. I'm old enough to be many people's mother. I could probably even be some people's grandmothers. And their work style is very different. The workplace is very different now than it was when I say I was their age. Like the, just like. The gap between when I was their age and people who are my age was maybe this wide and how we work in our philosophies and what have you, whereas now the gap is this wide and I'm not saying that there's nothing wrong with that gap, it's just a fact, things are different. So I learned so much from that younger generation and I would say that's probably the biggest thing that I'm learning. That's a really fascinating point. And I agree that You've got all of these different generations now working together because they're still the boomers. I think the silent generation is either already out or going out and like my dad's age. Then you have the boomer generation, you have Gen X, then you have the Millennials and the Millennials for some reason It's you could be qualified as a like an old or a young one. Now. This is what I'm hearing So they're in this millennial side They're they're considered old and then you have the Gen Z and now I don't know what the new ones called But they're all in the world Gen Z the beginning of Gen Z is in the workforce now. Yeah. Yeah And it's fascinating because I really love, I love learning from them. I love coaching them and mentoring them. And so I would say to me, one of the biggest challenges of this job is how do I park my thoughts, my work habits and everything at the door. Okay. And not force or impose them on the different generations. Well, at the same time, helping to drive the growth of the business, because there's lots of different ways to skin the cat in my way, the way I grew up, the experiences that I have clearly isn't the only way. And so I would say that one of the biggest challenges was like being really patient, learning from them a lot and, and being very open minded. You've got to be very open minded. And I, we should dive into this a little later in the podcast because I'm very curious to know if there is a difference, do you see a difference in these generations in terms of how they want to and demand to use data in order to help them do their jobs better? Well, yeah, that's a really interesting question because there are data analysts now we've got a lot of data analysts or financial analysts in the business, whereas maybe 15 years ago we didn't have quite as many and there certainly wasn't the demand on the sales side of the marketing side for people to have the, the, that skillset. And so there's a lot of that in the workforce now. When it comes down to the revenue producers and people managing revenue producers, there's lots of tools in place. Salesforce happens to be our CRM of choice. And I would say it's 50 50 of what I've experienced here at, at Informa. 50 percent are like really wedded to it and they rely on it. And that the other 50 percent they're getting used to it because that's the way we're doing business now. And once they start seeing the benefits of it, they're, they're on board, but I would say that if you help them understand how to use the data, particularly by building dashboards and telling the story for them. You get a whole lot more and better user adoption. They're not the ones that should be responsible for bringing the data together and massaging it to tell the story. There should be people in the background doing that can create these dashboards and help people understand what the meaning is behind it and how they should use it to do their job and how it will make them just be more efficient, drive more growth, and just be a better all around salesperson. Yeah. So that you, you, There's like a divide in a way and again, we should do a study on this, but it's, there's the ones who are coming in and automatically being trained about how data is going. That's part of their job, right? What am I looking at? What do I need to learn? How to, how do I interpret it and how do I use it in my workflows and how do I measure how I'm using my workflows to help me do my job better versus. And they do it just because it's part of their natural DNA versus the other side, where you're, you have to pitch them and sell them on why it's good for them and what they're going to get out of it in order to convince them to start adopting it. Yeah, I mean, I would say we're very much in a transition period now where we still have people who didn't grow up on data now in the workforce with people who did grow up on data. So it's a co mingling of different types of people. And, and the folks who grew up on the data, it's usually the digital natives because they learned it in school. Like I didn't, we weren't taught Excel. Excel didn't even exist when I was in school, in high school or college. Now they're learning it so early. So we're in this transition period of people who, who didn't have to use it. And now all of a sudden it's, they've got to learn it. And people who came with it, cause that's what they know. So just moving into a more of a macro topic, which is the company you work for Informa Markets, which to me is a really interesting data story in that. It's, and again, time goes by so quickly you forget, but that Informa is essentially built from various acquisitions, right, of different markets, and with that brought to the, brought to the business, all different types of data, how data is managed, stored, used, platforms. Can you talk about how that has impacted, you know, your role as a new role ish, new ish, right? I think you're the first Chief Customer Officer that Informant Markets has. Why they created that, and is that actually a result of the data environment created by this, the quilt of Yeah, I don't know that it's, that it's specifically a result of the data environment. To your point, Informant was created by several acquisitions. And, and there are, under Nan Wall, she's my boss and who I love to death and is the reason that I'm here, quite honestly. So she has eight families that are reporting up into her. We've got the fashion family, the INC family, the natural products family, supply side, etc. So there's eight families. They were all different acquisitions. Typically when an acquisition is brought into Informa or any business, quite honestly, you bring in the tech stack with it. Okay. You bring in the tech stack with it because it's embedded and it has historical data and it's, and their processes are wedded to it. And the tech stack, if you look at it from a sales perspective, yeah, your CRM and they all happen to be on Salesforce. So we actually have five different instances of Salesforce, believe it or not. But then also integrated into that is the floor plan systems. It could be map your show. It could be A to Z. It could be ExpoCAD. And then tethered into that could be another financial system. And then there could be also a media system that is serving the digital platforms. So it comes with a tangled web of integrated technology. And anytime you have systems, you typically have data that's being driven out of those systems, okay? So they're all woven together, they are interconnected. And then, and being able to unlock all of that data so it becomes usable, and like I said, you can tell these stories out of the data. Is a gigantic lift. Okay, being able to get the businesses working consistently across everybody. It's sales working pretty much consistently is a gigantic lift. So one of the reasons that that Nan created this position was. There was really eight different families working independently because when Informa buys something, they, they want to keep it intact and have it operating. They, they're not of the mindset that everything is a cookie cutter and it all must operate like this. There are commercial leads, very seasoned, very talented commercial leads of all of these businesses. And what I, what was important was bring some commonality to the, to the businesses. So when Nan took over as the president of North America, she started creating a relationship Across all of the commercial leads. I don't think that those relationships that established before had been established before. She took that because they were all operating independently. So she established that top relationship at the commercial lead level. Then she created my position, which said, I want some consistency across Howard, across the business on how we are doing sales and sales excellence. And so getting down to that next layer of not just the commercial leads, but those who are respond directly responsible for the sales of the sales VPs and the sales directors and what have you. And, and she wanted somebody who understood a new technology and new data, because at the heart of all of this is Salesforce. And we'd had discussions very early on when I had done, I call it my internship with Informa. I had done like a eight or nine month stints before I went to money 2020. Which I did a one year stint before I came back here in this position. But we would talk frequently about, Denise, why can't I just get a forecast report? Like, why does it take us weeks and weeks to get a forecast report that, you know, that is somewhat meaningful? And oh, by the way, it's dead on arrival because it's about 40 days old. And we've had scores of man hours into this because it's nine families. Or eight families and five different instances of salesforce and I said you got a data problem So anyway, so one of the things that I that has been my mission and really my goal is to focus on How do we create sales excellence and sales enablement so that we can take the investments that we are making in our people and our? technology Use them, maximize the efficiencies out of them, and optimize the growth and the revenue that we're getting out of them. So that is really what my role is. And obviously technology and Salesforce play a big part of this, and the data plays a gigantic part of this. And getting the consistency across the business. Wow. Okay. So. I know that was a mouthful, wasn't it? Yeah, it's a lot. It's, it is. No, it's, and it's a huge, it's a huge job. If you just think about all of the data you're dealing with those seven businesses and. Yeah. I'm assuming you, you encountered some friction trying to normalize things because people were used to doing it their way. I think one of your first things I remember when we first spoke was you were tackling, was it 70 pipeline stages that you were able to get one to seven? Yep. Yep. And so what we did was like, look, the intent is not to make every single thing a cookie cutter and, and you need to understand that every event has some very unique aspects to that event that you can't just make it look like the other event. So. That's just a given. So what I did as I started on this journey of saying, okay, how do we create some consistency in how we are forecasting and knowing that all the instances of Salesforce were a little bit different, I said, let me find the lowest common denominator. And at the end of the day, what is the most important thing to get some good consistent pipelines and forecasting? And it boils down to, for those of you that know Salesforce, it boils down to that opportunity record, when you are opening up an opportunity, you For a customer that may buy something from us. Just creating consistency and getting the account name, putting in a close date on when you think that opportunity is going to close, assign it a stage and assign it a dollar amount. And so we just focused on that. If we can teach all of the families to do that consistently, Then we've got a fantastic starting point and we have consistent data. And quite honestly, anybody running a sales organization should be requiring those four simple pieces of data on any opportunity that's in a pipeline. It's not an unreasonable ask. No, not, not at all. And you wouldn't believe the number of companies I talked to where the CEO and I talk about CRM, like I said, I have 50 percent of our sales people are using it and you're sitting there, but that's not acceptable. Yeah. But why are you investing in the platform? But I digress. I have a question for you with that. Have you measured, are you, with the things that you've been doing and, and normalizing and, and standardizing, have you been able to, for example, tighten the timeframe of the, the forecasting, for example? I think you mentioned 45 days out now, has it, have you been able to improve that? Yeah, now it's on demand. Now you hit a button because what we did was we got everybody, we got everybody using the opportunity object consistently. And so, uh, the data is structured well. So once you do that, you can create an unlimited number of reports. So we standardized the set of reports and a set of dashboards within each one of the systems. So if I wanted to go into any one of our five systems and look at any one of our 70 plus properties, or including media, I could run a pipeline report. So it's there, it's all in demand and it's all in a consistent format across the entire business. Excellent. And are you guys using Salesforce? Uh, I think they used to call it Einstein. I'm not sure too. I don't know if they still do, but the revenue intelligence layer. We are not using that revenue intelligence layer consistently across the business. What I was focused on was let's just use that opportunity, that opportunity object, the same, get that rolled out across the whole, all these families. Create this consistent set of reports and dashboards and give ourselves a solid foundation upon which to grow. So we now have that very solid foundation. We have a set of dashboards. We have an executive level set of dashboards that I could look at or a commercial lead could look at or a head of sales or an ad if she was selling a client could look at and spot really early on. What's a potential risk? Like, what should we look into on a show that might not be performing the way we think it should be performing? So from there, now that we've got the baseline, the foundation set, okay, we went from here to here and now we've got a great foundation and we can start going there and there. So Einstein is definitely on the radar for us to look at. CRMA, which is their CRM analytics, which allows you to make much fancier dashboards. It allows you to bring in data from five instances of Salesforce into one and create reports and dashboards so that we could look at the entire business. instead of having to, to, to log on to five different systems. Yeah, no, and it's, that's really smart and very well, it's disciplined. Capabilities building and you build over and over. So we spoke at, uh, an event you and I both attended, and you brought up a really cool use case, which was how you through this process and looking at the data, you start, you were, and some training and testing you did with the sales teams. You actually were able to use Combining those, you were able to say, this salesperson actually is selling enterprise when they should be doing transactional and by utilizing that and actually changing roles or what they were focused on, you, you saw some really exciting outcome. Can you talk about it? It's, it's, it's all really interesting because it's all based on data and our whole focus and approach is to data driven sales management, data driven sales performance. Okay. And we've got our Salesforce data. And one of the things that. That Nan and I had discussed like back in the fall was we really need to understand the talent that we have a little bit more than we currently do. Because again, my role was a new role. The families may understand their talent, but I don't necessarily understand all of it. And so I, and there was one particular team that I was working on. They needed to do a sales reorganization and I was taking the lead on that. I said, But I don't know, I don't know these people. Okay. I can see their performance numbers. I don't know who's a hunter, who's a farmer, this, that, and the other. So the upshot of all of that is we decided to, to use a talent assessment tool called Talogy and give it to all the salespeople, all the revenue producers, and all of the people who are responsible for managing revenue producers. And what it does is it just. It measures people's instinct behaviors that identifies what's your instinctive behavior like what motivates you instinctively and that's literally all it does. And then you can match it up to, I don't know, I think they have 65 different job profiles and there are several of which are sales. So we took this and then we married people up against these different job profiles. Hunter, Farmer, Strategic Selling, Sales Leadership. And we could see how well, or excuse me, we could see what someone's natural affinity was to a particular job function. Then we took the performance data, okay, how are they performing against their quota. And we said, okay, gosh, this person might not be a natural salesperson, according to this Talengy data. However, they're performing really well. They're hitting their goals all the time, which means it is a learned behavior. They love what they're doing so much they have learned how to do it. I, I, I say that because We now have two different sets of data. We have performance, raw number data, did you make your quote or didn't you, and we have an understanding of what makes them tick instinctively, and we use that information very thoughtfully to say, do we have the right people in the right seats? Do we need more hunters on this show? Do we need more farmers? Do we need more hybrid people? Is there somebody who's got great potential to be a sales leader? And we've got them here and we have an opening for a sales leader. We are using all of this information as we're examining our teams. And in fact, at the SISO Leadership Conference in August, we're going to have a session on this. Oh, wonderful. I wish I, I wish I could go to that. So that's a really wonderful outcome. And then another, I know another point you and I discussed, I don't know if you've been able to solve for this yet, just given everything on your plate, but I think anyone would, any event organizer would be excited to hear any progress is the inventory. And you brought up a number of, we have unsold inventory of, and if we were able to just maximize or improve that by X number of points, you're talking millions of dollars. Yeah. One of the things, one of the things we've done is we've hired somebody, to oversee the sponsorships for all of North America. Kate Granite does, and she's amazing. She, she had been at Reed a while ago, but we just hired her. So she's taking a look at all of the sponsorship inventory across the business and understanding. How are we pricing it? What are our margins? Gosh, of the sponsorship inventory, what's actually selling, what's not selling, and how do we maybe scoop up some of that stuff that's not selling? And if we could just sell 10 percent more of it, how many millions of dollars does that translate into? So that's on the sponsorship side and that's underway right now. We're literally just at the beginning stages of that. With regards to the, uh, the exhibit space inventory, I haven't tackled that yet, but with systems like A to Z ExpoCAD, there's a way to go in and look at the data and see the under, the under, unsold inventory and roughly get some sort of a dollar amount on that. We have not tackled that yet. But what, but what I have focused on is And I've done this, I did it at CES, I did it at my own business, I've just always done it, is keep the inventory moving, okay? Don't let a, a booth sit on hold for weeks on end, months on end, okay? Because if you do that, you don't have a commitment, and keep the inventory moving. And don't let a contract sit out there for weeks and months on end. Like just either get in the show or get out of the show. And if you're not ready to sign the contract now, that's fine. Mr. Customer, we're going to release the exhibit space when you're ready. We'll find some appropriate space for you and, and we'll send a new contract. And that creates a level playing ground. Now, I say that with an asterisk. There are always exceptions. Sometimes there are always exceptions. You have to do that. But that's my focus on keeping the inventory moving. And yeah, so we're just at the beginning stages of that here. So just for other players in the space that are in your role, what are the biggest, Landmines, if someone were coming in, in your type of role, faced with this mammoth amount of data that they're trying to normalize, what are some of the landmines you would, that you'd say, these are the five things you should avoid or watch out for? I would say avoid, avoid drawing conclusions on face value of data. Number one, number two, understand all of the systems and the sources of data because Salesforce, for example, may not always be the source of truth for the data. Understand what other systems could be the source of truth and how are they integrated into Salesforce so that you have a full and complete understanding of that. Understand when financial reports are being run and sent up the line, have a crisp, clear understanding of sort of the buckets of revenue. Okay, what constitutes exhibit space revenue? What constitutes? Sponsorship revenue versus digital revenue, because I have found there are different definitions across the business. So truly understand, listen, understand your systems, understand the data, understand the structure, understand the appetite for the changes that you are going to embark on and then plan accordingly. What are the biggest mistakes or again, landmines in trying, once you, you launch this, you, you getting people on board and changing the way. People are working with what all of the things you've, or you've done, right? There's a tremendous amount of work there and investment. And now you have to see the final, you don't have to see the return. Yeah. This is like the fourth time that I've done one of these transformation kinds of things of introducing, I'm really using the technology and running the business based off of it. And I would say, instead of saying, what are the landmines, I'm going to say, what, what has worked and what's been successful for me and being able to transform these teams. And I would, number one, you have to have a tremendous amount of patience and empathy. You're coming into an organization from the outside. People have been there for a whole lot longer than you have. you're coming in with something that is very intuitive to you and very natural to you. And, and not everybody is going to be on board. So you've got to understand your audience. Know your audience. Who in that audience is going to be receptive to this? So Who's going to be fighting it tooth and nail? How do you make it easy and understand who's going to be an early adopter versus who's going to be take a little bit more time? And it does not happen overnight. So I would say those are the things, if you come in like a bull in a china shop, you are not going to be successful at all. It's going to take a lot longer than you think you need to set out small, bite sized, Milestones of accomplishments. You need to bring the team along with you. You need to provide a lot of training, a lot of resources being there for them. It's not a one hour training session. Say we're done on to the next family. It is months and months and weeks and give the resources, provide resources to that team as a go to people to help them and coach them and get them along. And most importantly, help them understand how it's going to help them make more money. Yeah, no, for sure. That, that last point is really important. Yeah, how is this going to help me be sick? Yeah, it's going to help me. And, and explain to them, explaining why the organization has chosen to do what it is doing, putting it in context. Makes it a whole lot easier instead of coming and saying, this is what we're going to do. And it's because this is what I was told to do is not helpful for anybody. Yes, this is a, this is the journey that we're going to take. Here's why it's important. Here's how it's going to impact you. Here's how it's going to impact your team. And here's how it's going to impact the overall business. Here's the roadmap that I think we're going to be able to take to get there. We may discover some things along the way that. Is a speed bump or is it, uh, a turn in the road that we didn't anticipate? And we'll cross that bridge when we come to it, because we're going to be flexible. Mm hmm. That's really great advice. We're coming to the conclusion of the, of our podcast, but I wanted to talk about a few things. We're delighted that you're joining our executive advisory board for Revenue Room Connect, which is a professional network for CEOs and their revenue critical C suite teams. What excites you about the, about Revenue Connect and what, and what inspired you to join? I think what excites me is that finally businesses on the sales side are taking data. Taking data seriously is the wrong phrase. They are putting data at the forefront and they understand the importance of data and helping them drive and run their business. I have always been a data geek. I've been a technology geek forever. And how can you use technology to make things work more efficiently? So I am so excited that this is finally coming to the forefront of CEOs. And, uh, you know, the CEO of Informa is, this is all, this is what they are wanting. And. And I just happened to be the person it was, it was a coincidence that Patrick Martel got promoted or not promoted. He had already been with Informant and he moved over from another division that was sold and took over as, as president of all of Informa Markets. It was just serendipitous that he took over at the same time Nan was recruiting me, and he is so data driven, so it was just serendipity, and I am so thrilled that we have somebody who is as driven by data as I am in that leadership position. That makes it easy for me to do my job. That's awesome. That's awesome. What, one of the things we're going to be doing with the network as we're hosting our first event in November 12th through 14th in Sarasota, it's called Rev'd Up and we, our theme is a formula one theme because when you use data, digital and AI effectively to accelerate revenue, drive profitability and fuel enterprise value creation. Oh, love it. you really need things like a relentless pursuit of excellence, precision, skill, on consistent skills development. And I learned a lot as we started developing this program about the pit crew, which is, great drivers have fantastic pit crews. They can't do without one another. We're going to be talking a lot about that at the event. And, I'm assuming you will be there. I've got it on my calendar. Excellent. So we can ask more. Now let's run into just a real fun part and then we'll, we'll end. But I'd like to do this little quick rapid fire where I ask you a little question and you answer and I go on to the next one. So what are. You've read lately, I'm sorry, the best book I've read lately. Yeah. What's the best book you've read on a personal level lately? Okay. Does it have to be lately? Cause I'm going to go back to one that I read probably, I don't know, 30 some odd years ago that had that just like stays with me. Yeah, go ahead. Okay. So I was at this point in my life, I think I was in my late twenties and my life wasn't turning out the way I thought it was supposed to be turning out. All my friends were married, they were having kids and what have you, and I'm still here and I think I had just started at national trade productions or whatever. And everybody else was married and they had kids and they weren't working and I was like Well, why isn't my life turning out like this? And so I happen to be at the grocery store one day and you know how they have those little carousels like these tiny little books? There was a book there and it was called You're Late Again, Lord, the Impatient Woman's Guide to God's Timing. Okay. And I'm bringing this up because I have referred it to many people to this book as they're going through a crossroads in their life or they're in what the book describes as a waiting room. You think your life should be. Here, it's not, and if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans, and because it has nothing to do with your plans. And so I read this book and I was like, I'm in a waiting room. There are great things out there for me. And it changed my whole perspective on just life in general. And if anybody had ever told me X number of years ago that I would be the cheap commercial officer for Informa, I never would have believed it. After I read that book, I knew the only thing that I really ever wanted to do was have the experience of owning my own company, and I had accomplished that. And then anything beyond that was just a bonus. So my point in saying that this was just a really impactful book for me is because I remember it 30 some odd years later. I have referred it to multiple people. We can't always be impatient. There's a plan. We can't always be impatient and you never can tell where your career is going to take you. Amen. And I don't mean that as a pun. That's so true. It's True, and I think for women, unless you read the book 30 years ago, like you did. I think you only start understanding that as you get into your late forties and fifties. That's a, I actually have to, I'm going to read that. Yeah. I've seen it's like for any younger people listening to this podcast, like male, female, it doesn't matter. Don't be impatient. Have your plan of, and, and if you're in a situation, make the best of it. What can I learn out of this particular job? I didn't get the promotion, doggone it, I should have deserved this, that, and the other, whatever. Use all of these as learning lessons and saying, what positives can I take out of it? What can I do to better myself? And things are going to take care of themselves. Yeah, no. Great advice. All right, where's the weirdest place you've ever been? You know what? I saw you, you had sent that question. I think any weird places I have been. I've been to some very exciting places and I can tell you like the most exciting thing that I have ever witnessed with my own eyes is the, the terracotta soldiers in Xi'an, China. And this was like a couple of days after I had been to the Great Wall, which was magnificent. So we got to the Terracotta Soldiers in Xi'an, and I was mesmerized. So that's the most like incredible thing I've ever witnessed with my own two eyes. Okay. It's not weird, but it was just fascinating. I can't think of a weird place. No, that's fair. Very fair. I would say my most fascinating in that. Same area ish. It was going to Anger Watt in Cambodia. Very mystical and Thank you so much for joining work today. It's been a pleasure of the divorce. Thank you, Heather. It was great. Yeah, I appreciate you inviting me. Absolutely. You can find us at h2klabs. com. Thank you. Thank you for listening to The Revenue Room by H2K Labs. Subscribe to our channel today.