The Experiential Strategist with Jenny Howard-Maxwell
Jul 28, 2026 · 8 min · 9 segments
Five people can watch the same event and walk away with five completely different verdicts, and not one of them is speaking the same language. In this episode, Jenny Howard Maxwell breaks down the…
Jenny Howard MaxwellHostThis week, I want to share the fact that I never set out to build a framework.
You can't throw a rock in this industry without hitting somebody else's proprietary five-step process, usually invented on a Tuesday, trademarked by Thursday.
A couple of years ago, I had just wrapped an event that I had spent six months building.
A full team of genuinely talented people had killed themselves to pull this one off.
And one person, just one, looked at the event and decided it was unsuccessful.
And of course, it was the person that mattered, the one that was paying the bills.
But not because the event didn't work, not because it didn't do what we set out to do, but because they personally were offended that a bartender placed a tip jar on the bar and because the valet took a little too long.
It was more of the fact that I had built absolutely zero defense against it.
My whole reputation, my revenue, my next contract, all of it was resting on things like tedious vendor flaws instead of anything I can actually point to and say, here is what this produced.
I had no language, no proof, nothing but my word against their impression, and I lost that argument every single time.
This week, I want to share the fact that I never set out to build a framework.
You can't throw a rock in this industry without hitting somebody else's proprietary five-step process, usually invented on a Tuesday, trademarked by Thursday.
A couple of years ago, I had just wrapped an event that I had spent six months building.
A full team of genuinely talented people had killed themselves to pull this one off.
And one person, just one, looked at the event and decided it was unsuccessful.
And of course, it was the person that mattered, the one that was paying the bills.
But not because the event didn't work, not because it didn't do what we set out to do, but because they personally were offended that a bartender placed a tip jar on the bar and because the valet took a little too long.
It was more of the fact that I had built absolutely zero defense against it.
My whole reputation, my revenue, my next contract, all of it was resting on things like tedious vendor flaws instead of anything I can actually point to and say, here is what this produced.
I had no language, no proof, nothing but my word against their impression, and I lost that argument every single time.
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