‘Entrepreneur’ is synonymous with ‘risk-taker’, and one such risk-taker is Heather Mason, Founder and CEO of Caspian Agency, and an entrepreneur who is transforming the events industry.
Heather cites her father as one of her biggest inspirations, as he was an entrepreneur himself. Heather learned from his example, but also understood when he had to step away from the volatile entrepreneurial life for a more stable professional. “I feel like I’m building on the foundation he laid for me, along with my mother’s inspiring words. And for me, not having a family at the time I started my company meant I was able to take more risks,” Heather says. “That allowed me much more freedom.”
Before commencing her entrepreneurial journey, Heather was already producing events and conferences as an in-house employee at the Charles Schwab financial company. Prior to this, she spent time working in the film industry at Fox Studios, Fox TV, the Sundance and Cannes Film Festivals, and the Bud Greenspan Olympic film crew. During the dotcom boom, she served as head of marketing at ShowBIZdata and Broadstream internet-based companies. Even in those early days, Heather was always looking ahead with an eye towards innovation. While at ShowBIZdata in early 2000, she created and produced the first-ever Interactive Lounge at the Sundance Film Festival.
This drive towards innovation has not changed, and as a result, Heather is now a highly sought after consultant, educator, and speaker. At Caspian Agency, her team creates top-tier events that promote both the bottom line and positive social impact. Over the past 15 years, her company’s innovation and expertise has delivered successful projects around the globe. “We believe the effects of a well-produced event are felt far beyond the experience itself,” says Heather.
Achieving Strategic Business Objectives
Heather founded Caspian Agency in 2005 in order to bring a strategic methodology to white-glove event management. She is the creator and mastermind behind the Caspian 10 Essentials™, a framework to map out and achieve strategic business objectives through event production. Headquartered in Los Angeles, Caspian also operates out of New York, San Francisco, and overseas, meaning Caspian is able to produce gatherings both domestically and internationally.
In addition to event management, Caspian has established itself as a thought leader in the industry, and offers a wide range of training modules that teach the fundamental Caspian principles of event science, as well as the mindset needed to innovate.
Caspian’s flagship offering is The Caspian 10 Essentials, the only formal methodology available for event managers. This course was recently accepted as curriculum for the Meetings & Events Masters at San Diego State University, and Heather is continuing her teaching there next with a Financials curriculum.
Earlier this year, Caspian launched several other online training courses in response to recent events, including Thinking Virtually, to its academy page of classes. Caspian will also soon be offering more courses for entrepreneurs, including risk management and contract law.
Heather adds, “As with everything Caspian does, all of these products have a specific focus on mindset, because we believe that with the right mindset, you can do anything, including creating a thriving business during a worldwide pandemic.”
Re-evaluating and Redesigning Strategies
Due to the sudden outbreak of COVID-19, events worldwide have been canceled or postponed, leading many to speculate on the future of event management companies. However, in the face of these enormous challenges, Heather is undeterred. “Caspian is more than just event management,” she says. “We have been in the business of designing human interaction and connection in order to drive change for 15 years, and we are standing by that mission today.” Indeed, it could be said that this mission is even more imperative now given the increased need for connection and engagement in order for events to succeed during this present crisis.
However, this focus on strategy is nothing new. Caspian has always offered consulting services on event strategy and design, but oftentimes the in-person demands of event logistics would obscure the vital need for strategy. Now, as a result of COVID-19, these conversations are finally coming to the forefront. Heather believes that with gatherings and engagements shifting to virtual platforms, her clients will need to re-evaluate every engagement and analyze their audience in order to understand the inherent value before translating that to a new medium. Now more than ever, there is a need to strategically shape events, and to redesign them in order to thrive in the new normal.
Terms of the Next Normal
“Event producers have always been required to be strategists and designers, but many corporations and organizations have not necessarily understood that this is an inherent value,” says Heather. COVID-19 is an opportunity to correct this imbalance, as it has become more vital than ever to fully embrace these multidimensional roles. In fact, Heather believes that the role of an Event Producer is simply too diverse to be contained within one title. With most industries currently being forced to rethink the old status quos, this may finally be the time to recognize the difference between event producers and event planners, as well as the need for both.
Additionally, Heather believes that going forward, good event producers will have to begin to think like futurists. “A successful Producer in the time of COVID will adopt the mindset of a forecaster, and instead of thinking in terms of a New Normal, they will think in terms of a Next Normal,” says Heather. As events continue to pivot to online spaces, the producers having a futuristic approach will be at the forefront of the industry in the era after the pandemic.
Reset and Reinvent
The way Heather sees it, the COVID-19 crisis is giving people a much-needed perspective on life, as well as the time to reset and reinvent themselves. People around the world are focusing on how they can leverage this time to create new opportunities. Alongside this personal reflection, business practices across all industries are also being reevaluated, because the businesses that thrive during a crisis are those that seize on the opportunity to innovate. COVID-19 will always be an unimaginable tragedy, but Heather believes that the world that will emerge from this situation will be more resilient than before. She adds, “Just look at what we’ve survived in the past. What’s amazing is that we’re not just reading about this time in a history book. We are experiencing a moment in time right now when the world as a whole is taking the time to stop and take stock of where we are. And quite often what we’re seeing is that the way things were going wasn’t working.”
In the time of COVID-19, every entrepreneur should be on the lookout for opportunities that will change the world. The pandemic has been incredibly successful in highlighting the fact that the world is interconnected, and it is now the responsibility of everyone to acknowledge this interconnectedness. As Heather observes, “Every business owner should see this as a chance to change for the better of the world. We all have the unique opportunity to do better on a grand scale, which is pretty cool when you really think about it.”
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Read full magazine: The 10 Women Business Leaders Overcoming the Pandemic
