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Life Conversations with a Twist
Join me once a week for a new interview with a local, badass woman who has an amazing story to tell. Join me in conversation so you too can gain inspiration and empowerment from these stories! If you love hearing about leadership, relationships, families, motherhood and navigating hard times, then tune into my podcast and share with others. If you love what you hear, share and tag me on Instagram at @heathernelson.life. You can also visit my website at heathernelson.life.
Life Conversations with a Twist
Elevate Your Events: Secrets the Pros Use to Wow Guests with Melanie Zelnick
“There's going to be peak times where it's really busy, and then we're going to have down times where it's slow. And understanding what those cycles are and being comfortable with them makes it possible for anyone to stay in the industry, knowing that chaos is not always chaos.” —Melanie Zelnick
It's a whole new ballgame out there!
The events world is going through some wild changes these days, and event planners are having to get super creative and innovative to keep up with what clients and guests want.
Melanie Zelnick is the owner of Glow Events, a boutique agency known for their custom, design-focused events. Melanie has been in the industry for over a decade, and she's seen it all. From weddings to corporate bashes, she knows how to throw the party of your dreams.
This week, Heather sits with Melanie to get the scoop on her journey from event planner to business owner, how she builds an amazing team culture, her secrets to killer vendor partnerships, and the genius creative process behind Glow's jaw-dropping event designs.
Connect with Heather:
Episode Highlights:
01:44 Journey to Business Ownership
04:04 Challenges and Growth During the Pandemic
13:57 Building a Strong Team Culture
19:37 Vendor Partnerships and Collaboration
30:45 What’s Next for Glow?
Connect with Melanie:
Melanie Zelnick is the owner and CEO of Glow Events, a women-owned & women-run boutique event agency with a focus on strategic design. Over the past 15+ years, Glow has produced hundreds of events in the U.S. and internationally for a wide range of clients from Fortune 500 companies to intimate social soirees, each with its own unique design. Prior to Glow, Melanie was with Access, a premier DMC, and also worked in events for a variety of start-ups and non-profits. Melanie’s work has been featured in international magazines, podcasts, and blogs, making Glow Events a sought-after planning agency. She holds a bachelor’s degree from the Marriott School of Business at Brigham Young University.
Heather Nelson: Hello everyone. Welcome to this week's Life Conversations With a Twist. I have my friend Melanie here. I haven't seen her in years. We were just saying, I see you from afar. I'm like your little fan club on social media.
Melanie Zelnick: Hi, excited to be here today.
Heather Nelson: So Melanie and I met way back in my encore days. She was an employee of Glow Event designer. She was part of the planning team, and now she's the owner. I'm just so inspired by her journey. Actually, I got a chance to interview her at a previous job. I just love your story, what you're doing and what you're doing in the industry, and so I'm just thankful for you to come on my podcast.
Melanie Zelnick: Oh, well, thank you for having me. I think when we met, I was a senior wedding planner. I think that was my job title back then.
Heather Nelson: And here you are, little miss badass owner. How you even got here, maybe a little bit about what you did before this, and then kind of lead into your journey of being an owner.
Melanie Zelnick: I think to start, for anyone that doesn't know Glow is, maybe that's a good place to start. So glow, we're a boutique event agency based here in the Bay Area, and we have had a really strong focus on design from the time we started. We were founded in 2010, so we actually are hitting our 15th birthday this year, which is so exciting. We started as a wedding planning company. We're now pretty much almost all corporate. I would say 95% corporate is our business. And we have carved out this little niche, I would say, in the industry where we approach these events in a really bespoke way. I am the owner of Glow, and I'm running this company, and that's how I got here. For about a decade, I had been an event producer. I had worked at various event agencies, corporate and then I joined Glow as that senior wedding planner. We were doing weddings. I did weddings for a couple of years, and I thought that was exactly what I wanted to do. And I realized I actually liked the corporate that I was doing in my previous jobs, but I also loved the company. I loved our values and what we were doing, and where we were in the industry. I had some conversations with our founder at the time, and I was like, I feel like we could really do more with the corporate, and we can approach it in the same design way that we've been taking weddings, and so we started doing corporate. We started really small, I would say. For everyone trying to get into corporate, just start small, start with something, and then I think it was just based on reputation. We have referrals and repeat clients. We grew that piece of business.
And still today, that's kind of how our business is. We do know marketing, we do know outbound sales. Every piece of business that comes into Glow is repeat clients. I think that's about 60 to 70% of our business, which is a huge testament to the work that we do. And then the remaining 30% that comes in each year, that's referrals from existing clients. Sometimes they joke around, they're like, I don't really want to refer to you because I'm afraid that you're not going to have the capacity to do all of my events. Or for vendor partners, that's also something that I have a lot of pride in is just the reputation we have amongst all of the vendors that we work with. So just being kind, good, organized, nice event planners. That's kind of where we are now.
Heather Nelson: How did you buy your previous owner, I don't want to say her name.
Melanie Zelnick: I just had coffee with her last week. She's such a dear close mentor to me. She is an incredible human being. You can say her name as much as you want.
Heather Nelson: She's doing a lot of cool things. She's actually been on my ass. I think she was on it maybe like last season. It's been a minute, but I love what she's doing.
Melanie Zelnick: Such a badass woman, and I tell her that every single time. I'm like, you are inspiring. She's just been a role model to me since the beginning of time. I moved to San Francisco and immediately started working with her. Before that, I was in Dallas, and she's just always been a role model to me. I just follow her in life. I joke around with that. She's four or five years ahead of me. And I'm like, okay, so what are we doing now? What advice can you give me now? What should I be doing now? We're at coffee and I'm like, okay, what's our next phase of life? Where are we going?
Heather Nelson: I'm right behind you. I have a best friend that's the same way. I feel like I'm following her journey. She's very inspiring to me. She was special as a best friend, and I think it's so good to have a mentor that can help lead you in the path that you want to go. So I love that you guys are still connected. I had no doubt that that was even a thing. How did that even get to a point where here you are as the owner now?
Melanie Zelnick: Christina is an incredible entrepreneur. I would say she is a builder, and she is probably going to build something else. That is what she does. She's the entrepreneur, she's the builder, and she built this really great company that I was able to be a part of. We got to the pandemic, and she felt like she had done her thing. She was like, I feel really accomplished with what I've created and built. And she was in her motherhood journey, she was pregnant with her second and she was like, you know what? I don't know if I have the energy and what it needs right now to take this company through the pandemic. It was a really scary time, and I just kind of followed in our footsteps. I was like, well, I think I could take a stab at that. No idea what I was getting myself into, but we also didn't know what the pandemic was going to be. I definitely knew the pandemic was going to be here to stay. I think we started having conversations about ME taking Glow in April or May of 2020, so we were just right in the middle of it. All of our events had been canceled. We were all at home, no vaccine in sight. Nothing was happening, but we had started to launch a virtual events side of the business, which ultimately got us through the pandemic, and allowed us to be able to stay a healthy company, keep some of our core team members, and be ready for in-person events when we were finally able to do them. And May, June of 2021, a crazy amount of time that we couldn't produce events.
And now looking back, oh, my gosh, I can't believe we did that. I mean, we had COVID, what else are you gonna do? You're gonna watch a Netflix show, or you're going to figure out how to run a company? Everyone had to take their hobbies. I think we were doing sourdough bread starters and gardening. And then I was like, yeah, I'll just figure out this company thing. Why not? I really didn't know what I was doing in full transparency. And I think that that's fine to say that I'm really proud of what I accomplished over the past five years. And looking back, I can look at it and let anyone else know starting something like this, it's okay to just not know what you're doing, and you're gonna figure it out. That was the best advice Christina ever gave me. I think I had a moment where I just don't think that I can do this. This is so hard. I had a couple of employees. I'd been running the company at this point, I think, for six months, and I had the two employees that I decided to keep on. Both of them put in their Two Weeks Notice at the same time. And so I was by myself, and I had no employees, and I had all these clients and contracts that we needed to execute on. I was like, how am I going to do this? I now need to run this company, and I have no employees, and we're in the middle of this pandemic. I'm so overwhelmed, like, this is not what I signed up for. I don't know if I can actually do this.
I feel like I'm way in over my head so I called Christina and I was like, I can't do this. This is too hard. And he was like, one, you can, and I know you can. But also, stop trying to run the company the way that I ran it. This is now your company, and you can run it any way you want to go. I had a direction, and I had a way that I wanted to do things, and that was because those were the things I enjoyed doing every day. Those are the things that I wanted to come into the office and work on. Those might not be the same things that you want to do. And so if you don't want to make your company a 10 person team, you could have it as a one person team. It could be you and one other person, and you could just do virtual events until the end of time, and that could be your company. Make it what you want, and then go from there. And I think just getting that permission from someone that I just have the utmost respect for, and I truly idolize, I was like, okay, this was her, and it's her company too, right? This is something that's really precious, and I don't want to mess it up. And her giving me that permission to just make it my own really led me into the way that I've taken the company over the next five years.
Heather Nelson: That's so cool. I love her so much. You're killing it, and you have 14 employees. And one thing that I've always admired from afar is that you really do a lot for your employees. I think I would love to hear your thoughts about how to keep the motivation, keep that good juju going within your team, and keep them engaged. For people listening and they're not in the events industry, it's not an easy job, especially doing events. They're long hours. You're dealing with clients. Sometimes, you're dealing with weather elements. How do you keep your employees engaged and happy? I can't wait to hear what you have to say about this.
Melanie Zelnick: Well, we do a lot of fun things to start. I tried to incentivize the team. If we hit goals, we hit them together. We just actually got back from Palm Springs, we did our team retreat there. A couple of weeks ago, we went to Parker and had a lovely time for four days, which was just a great way to celebrate. So fun. Just a great way to celebrate last year. The year prior, we went to Hawaii, which was really fun. The year before that, we did Disneyland, cut all the lines, and can just go on any ride you want, snap with your fingers. We do fun big retreats at the end of every year. I think those are really important. Because when we're in those really tough times in production, typically our fall, you're at your wits end. You're like, I am so tired, I'm so fatigued. How much more can we do? And then we just kind of think about, okay, Hawaii is on the horizon. Palm Springs, we're coming for you. It is a little bit of motivation. I think for all of us, it doesn't always feel this way. We just have these waves of time where it's the natural cycle of our industry. There's just going to be peak times where it's really busy, then we're going to have down times where it's slow. And just understanding what those cycles are and being comfortable with them, I think, makes it possible for anyone to just stay in the industry. Just knowing that chaos is not always chaos. So one will do trips like that. But I think the origin of doing trips and incentivizing the employees in that way, and rewarding them and trying to create a fun culture is, I think, you talking about our industry, it's tough, it's stressful.
And being the event producer first before the business owner, and having those grueling long hours being on site, and even in the pre planning things get stressful. Knowing that your job is stressful enough, we don't need to make it even more stressful on the internal company side of things, and trying to kind of have that mindset of our clients can be stressful, our work can be stressful. But when we come into the office every day, let's not make that stressful. We're an all female team, and girls can get catty. And you can have that mean girl energy sometimes, which I hate. We've really made this point of making blow feel like a really safe place for all of the employees that come in every day. And we have a lot of team values that we actually recite every week during our all hands meeting, almost like a sorority. Some of them are just like being a good person and not gossiping or talking poorly about others. I would say the trips that we do, and the big things that you see on our Instagram is a small piece of what we're doing all year round. You could go on a trip. Any employer, you could take your team on a trip. But if your culture is awful, no one's actually going to have a fun time, no one's going to want to be there. Everyone's going to be on this really nice vacation, and they're all going to be thinking that whatever you're saying is fake and not genuine, and won't actually want to be together.
I think it's more important to not just reward your employees for something big, but making sure that you are being intentional every single day and in every single interaction, and showing appreciation and gratitude to your team even in small ways. It can be as simple as, for us, since we have really long hours knowing when someone's been on site until 2:00 in the morning and not expecting them to be in the office or online at 9:00 am, right? When I talk to them at 11:00 am if they haven't been online, instead of me pointing fingers and being like, where have you been all morning? It's like, how are you doing? How was last night? Have you slept? Are you doing okay? Do you need a coffee? Do you need a rest? Just having that empathy for every single person, and recognizing that we're all just humans trying our best, I think, goes a really long way. And then I think also having that team mentality is something that is really important, especially in the industry that we're in where they feel like they are overwhelmed, or there's too much on their plate there. It's appropriate to ask for help and ask for support, and that there's a support system there that's willing to lend a hand and willing to jump in. And that it doesn't feel like a chore. It feels like we're all family, and we do this for each other. I think all of that translates to then you see us on these fun trips.
A lot of our vendors and clients will joke around like, are you all really like that? Happy? Are you all really like that? You're not faking it for Instagram, you all really like each other. I can truly say that we all really like each other. We like hanging out with each other. We have this really cool culture, but it comes from those every single day interactions. It doesn't come from just being on a trip with each other once a year. I love that so much. That's so cool, I think. And it's for any industry, right? How you treat your team is what you're going to get from them as well. And I love that. Besides your team and Christina as a business owner, I know that it gets, and I'm in this world right now, very lonely, because you feel like you're on a solo Island dealing with all the things that come at you. Do you have mentors or people in your circle that you rely on, or support each other during some of these fun business and ventures? But having other business owners, I think, is important. It doesn't even have to be in your exact industry, but because you're still going through the same thing. So I do coffee shops and lunches with a lot of other business owners in the industry, or vendors that they don't have to run an event firm. They could be running a rental company, a catering company or other subsets. But just having someone that you can chat about the things you're going through, I think, is really helpful, because it is a very lonely job.
Heather Nelson: Great advice. Okay, I want to ask you one more question, being a business owner, what is your favorite? Out of everything that you do, like designing, running a team and all that, what's your favorite part?
Melanie Zelnick: I think it's running the team, then the data, the statistics and the strategy, which is so weird for me to be a thing, because none of that is my background.
Heather Nelson: And you also said you've never thought I'd run a team, or I didn't want to run a team. And here you are running a team, and that's your favorite thing?
Melanie Zelnick: I know. It is so wild. I thought I was going to be an event planner forever. I studied event planning in college. I got my first agency job when I graduated. I did that. And I never had a break from doing event planning until we got to the pandemic, and then it was, do you want to run a company? Okay, sure, let's figure that out. It's really interesting that now, I actually don't do any event planning for Glow. That's all on the team. Because running a company is actually a full time job, and I truly do not have the capacity to be planning events, designing. And honestly, my team that I've built, I can now say that it is better than me at a lot of that. And I think that that's a really cool place to be.
Heather Nelson: Isn't it funny? I always tell people that all the time. You think that you don't want to do it, or you never thought you'd be a business owner. I was with you. I was like, I'm just gonna get paid every two weeks, and just be okay with that. But now that I'm on my own, I'm like, this is fantastic. And it's so fun. You learn so many different things, and you learn about yourself. You challenge yourself. It's a really cool thing so I'm glad that you made the plunge.
Melanie Zelnick: Thank you. I've kind of realized about my personality, I really don't actually like having a boss. I don't like someone telling you what to do every day. And I feel for every manager that I ever had before I was running the company, because I'm like, I actually was a real pain. I really did not appreciate an authority figure saying that you should be doing this every day, and this is when you need to be coming in, and this is when you need to be, this is what you need to be doing for your job. I'm really hard working, and I like to work. But I like to work on the things that I want to focus on. And so I think going back to that advice that Christina gave me back in 2020, that's one of the most fun things about being a business owner, is that you do get to dictate what you do every day where you get to say, I really like doing this, and so I'm going to hold on to this, and this is going to be a part of my work, and I don't like doing this, and I'm going to hire someone to do it for me. Because it's not something I enjoy, and I find it really draining and fatiguing, and I just don't want to do it. And so then you hire someone to do it, and then you can get in these flow states. I still work full time. I think in most weeks, I'm working a 50 plus hour week. But that's the things that I enjoy doing, and so it just really doesn't feel like work. It makes it worth it.
Heather Nelson: I'm gonna transition into vendor partnerships, and then I want to get into some fun questions about your events, because you have the most beautiful events. The branding behind it, the activations, those little moments, and we'll get into that in a minute. But because of my background of business development, I have really seen how creating relationships can help grow your business. I've been on that side of it. But as a vendor that I've been in the past, and as a partner, as a planner for you, what are your thoughts about your partnerships with your vendors? Obviously, you guys do these crazy designs. You're not using cookie cutter types of things. Everything's custom. Talk to me a little bit about your ideas and thoughts around vendor partnerships.
Melanie Zelnick: We are nothing without our vendor team, and that is our perspective at Glow. We are the project manager, for sure, on every single thing. You can think of us as your general contractor where we're going to come in and manage all of the vendors. But ultimately, we're not the ones that are arranging your flowers, or cooking your food, or setting up your rentals. All of that comes from our vendors. And if they make a mistake, and if they do a phenomenal job, Glow does a phenomenal job. And so those relationships are super, super important. We are really loyal to our vendors. If we find someone that we like, we will use them all the time, and that relationship will continue to build and grow. One thing that you'll hear me say a lot if you're in the office is you treat every single vendor as if they are your client, because you never know when they might become your client, and you never know when your client might become your vendor, and you never know when someone from the team becomes your client or becomes your vendor.
Our whole industry is so incestuous in that way that you really need to be treating every single person as if they're your client. And also, why not? Why would we treat our clients differently than anyone else? We are truly just human beings existing. Everyone's working hard. I would say that if you're in the events industry, you're likely in the events industry not because you fell into it. It's because it's your passion, and it's what you love. There's a whole lot of other jobs you can do that are way easier than event planning that you should do if you don't like event planning, and you're not actually passionate about what you're doing. So when we are interacting with all of our different vendors who are incredibly creative and talented, we know that they're working their hardest as well, and we all have the same goal to pull off something exceptional for our attendees.
Heather Nelson: I love that, because I think that when I was in my role that I was in, I was like, we have to work together as a partner. This isn't you and the client, and the vendor. We are a team that has a common goal. There's been so many times where a client will, or if I was in the rental company now, a client would almost throw the vendors under the bus. And it doesn't feel good. Your client could be a client one time, but your vendor partners are forever partners. It's so important how you treat those relationships, so I love that. I personally have always enjoyed working with you because of that. I think that's what makes it fun too, right? Working with people who are collaborative.
Melanie Zelnick: Totally. To your point where something bad does happen, a mistake is made. Who is to blame? I think that that's actually the most telling time where you really get to see how people actually react. And for us, like I said at the beginning, if a mistake is made, whether it's from our team or it's from the vendor, it doesn't matter. It's still our mistake, and we need to figure it out together. Let's say the wrong thing gets put on the truck and you're setting up for your event, and you have the wrong couches that show up on site, you could call a couple options, right? You can get really upset, and you can call the vendor, and you can yell at them. You can say, oh, my gosh, you messed this whole thing up. Or you can just approach it as, we're a team, and we're in this together. We need to work together. So it's like, hey, the wrong thing showed up. What are our options? Do you have anyone at the warehouse that can load another truck? How much time would that take? What can we do together? Where else could we pull inventory? Coming up with solutions versus just pointing fingers. It's just a waste of time and energy when you're in those really intense moments, there's no reason to put that energy towards pointing fingers, yelling and blaming people. You need all of that energy to solve the problem. And so whenever my team I feel like is getting stressed out, I'll be like, okay, we're going to take a deep breath. Sometimes I'll tell the girls, if you have that personality where you have to feel all of your emotions before you can get to this solution, then go feel those emotions by yourself. Go into a corner, cry it out, scream it out, feel it all and then come back level headed. Sit and come up with a solution for how we're gonna solve this problem.
Heather Nelson: Oh, my God, I'm sweating from all those calls on a Friday, oh, my gosh, all the things.
Melanie Zelnick: There is no event that's ever perfect, but it's your job as the planner to make it look like it's perfect. There's always something that happens, and you have to be prepared for that. You go on site with a problem solving mind, and you're just like, I don't know what is going to happen today. But something will, and I just need to be ready, prepared and open for it, and then we'll just figure it out.
Heather Nelson: It is so true. I always tell people, we're not saving people's lives. We're literally just putting on an event where people come, eat and drink. We are not saving lives, so it's not the end of the world that your napkin color is not the exact color that you thought it was going to be.
Melanie Zelnick: What I would say is we have clients where they'll be really upset if they did have the wrong napkin color. It is one of those things where it is important. It is something that we want to focus on. It is something that we want to make sure is right. But is it something that we need to lose sleep over? Is it something that we need to have that anxiety attack? I don't think so. Like you said, we're not saving lives. No one's going to die at the end of this, we'll figure it out. And it's tough to have that. I think that to have that mindset of this is something that's important, this is something that we want to make as close to perfect as possible at the same time, if a mistake is made, it's not the end of the world, and we're going to figure it out. And your career is not over. No one has died, we will be okay. This will blow over. And being able to have both of those perspectives, which I think is a challenge. Because normally, if you have the perspective of like, we're not saving lives, then you're kind of like, oh, maybe we can be really lackadaisical about this, and you shouldn't. You should be like, we have a really high standard. We want to make it as close to good, but not stress ourselves out too much.
Heather Nelson: So good. How do you keep your team? Obviously, you guys are super, super creative. What do you guys do to stay on top of trends, or to think out of the box? Where does all the creativity live? Do you guys do all these crazy creative sessions? I'm dying to know where you guys come up with these wild ideas.
Melanie Zelnick: Yeah. We actually have a weekly creative meeting, which is super important to have as a team. We have it every Thursday at 9:30, and it's an hour long. And it's really an open forum. Throughout the week, we have a place where people can post questions or prompts, or things that they want to talk about. And then on Thursday, we'll pull it up and we'll say, okay, what does the team want to talk about today? And it can vary if someone's working on an event where they want to brainstorm, we'll do a brainstorming session. And I think we've gotten really good at brainstorming. Brainstorming is really powerful when you're doing it with a big team, and you have a space where there really are no dumb ideas, and everyone's really open and receptive to whatever anyone says. I think some of our best ideas do come out of the brainstorm.
Heather Nelson: I love that so much. Okay, I'm dying to know what your favorite event is that you guys have produced? I know you have one. One that was the most unique? Probably your most wow event that you've done.
Melanie Zelnick: There are so many. Every single year, I feel like the team is talking about topping the next year, right? Every single year, I'm like, oh, my gosh. How are we going to top this? It's so hard to play favorites so I'm just going to share the event that's most memorable to me because I kind of call it my capstone event. I feel like it was the last time I did and then I was like, okay, I'm done producing. And I mean a step away, and let the team do it. I might have talked about this when I did the podcast with you a couple of years ago, but it was the event that we put on in 2021. May of 2021, it was the very first event we did coming back from the pandemic. California wasn't open at the time, and so we ended up needing to host everything at private residences since venues weren't open. I think everyone was half vaccinated at the time, just trying to just, okay, hopefully we're allowed to actually do this. But the event was really special. It was a full weekend, celebrating San Francisco. We bought out three Michelin star restaurants. We did the first night at Quince, we had lunch at Lazy Bear. Both restaurants hadn't been opened. They actually still technically weren't open. They just opened for us for that event. But at the time, it was his home, and it was in Hillsboro, and it was just like a beautiful estate. And so we hosted the final dinner there. And we brought in Dominique Crenn of Atelier Crenn. We brought in the San Francisco Ballet and Symphony, and that was the first time that the Ballet and Symphony had performed over a year and a half.
We ended that, I think, just kind of a touching moment for everyone that was a guest involved where we had gone through so much. I think the events industry had gone through so much that the whole arts industry had gone through so much, the ballet, the symphony, that they weren't able to perform. And for everyone when things were still really scary for us to be able to pull off something so beautiful, where we had this a crazy 10 course meal with these fabulous minds sourced all over the world, and then the Ballet and Symphony performing, it just was such a special night where it felt like, okay, we're back. We're getting back to normal. This is good. And then for me, I've been running the company now for a year and a half, and it was this moment and testament of where I had all my employees. I had to hire a new team. I had to build and get us to this point for me to say, oh, you can do this. You got the company to where it is now, and it's running, and it's working, and it's successful, and you're able to pull off these really high touch programs. You can keep going, and you can do this. And so I'll always look at that one as a special one just because there is so much going on at the time. And it really felt like, okay, we can get through this.
Heather Nelson: I love your story so much. I love watching you and the events you put on, as I mentioned. Where can people find, follow, stalk and see your beautiful event designs?
Melanie Zelnick: I would say Instagram is a really good spot. You can go onto our website and can see some of our work. I try to keep our Instagram, though, really up to date. I'm normally showcasing a recent event. Our stories too, if you like. Go into Instagram and click on the highlights from previous stories. I try to keep those really up to date too so you can see more of the behind the scenes. You can see more of the team, the things that we're doing every single day. That's the best place to find us.
Heather Nelson: I love it. I will put that link in the show notes. Is there anything else that I missed that you want to talk about? What's next for Glow?
Melanie Zelnick: Oh, my gosh, what is next for glow? We did a lot last year. I want to slow down. But last year, we ended up getting a new office space I'm so proud of. It was a real labor of love getting it to where it is. Where are we going next? I feel like more of the same. I'm never going to try to grow a Glow into this crazy big thing. We're gonna stay really boutique and high touch. If anything, we're just kind of pushing the boundaries on the events that we do. I want to see things that are more custom, more fabricated, more unique, whimsical out of the box. That's really where we're taking things. We're probably saying NO to a lot of businesses that don't really align with the creative that we like to work on, and we're really selective to the clients we work with. And so the projects I would say that you're going to start seeing this year, and next year, and the year after are just going to be bigger, more beautiful, even more well designed and unique, because that's where I want to take the company. That's what my employees want to be working on. They like those challenges. When we get asked to do something really crazy, I'll look at them and I'll be like, can we do this? And they're like, yeah, we can figure this out. Then let's go like, let's see what we've got.
Heather Nelson: I love that so much. Thank you so much for being here. It was so great to catch up with you and see what's going on in your world.