How Jessica Lombardo Is Bringing An Immersive Experience to a Trade Show

Jeani Ringkob: Welcome to The Contractor's Daughter, your go-to podcast for eliminating random acts of strategy and marketing in your highway construction business. Hello, friends. I'm your host, Jeani Ringkob. I'm a third-generation asphalt contractor and an absolute brand strategy and marketing geek.

I'm super excited. We just wrapped up a three-part series about conference success. It was broken into how do we prepare for our conferences as we're heading into conference season? What do we do while we're at the conferences to make sure that we get the most out of them? What do we do post-conference to make sure even when we're distracted and we're tired, that we get the most out of it and we really 10x our ROI on sending our people to these conferences?

If you didn't catch those three episodes, first off, make sure you're subscribed, but secondly, go back to these three episodes and check those out. But in this episode, it's the perfect follow-up because we're talking to Jessica Lombardo. She has been an editor for some of the leading industry publications including Asphalt Contractor & Pavement Maintenance & Reconstruction, and Sustainable Construction magazine.

She's also the Conference Manager and editor-in-chief for AC Business Media. She's recently really stepped up the game in terms of her involvement in leading conferences and really reinventing how we think about that space. We're talking about what she's been involved in in the past and also what she has cooking with the upcoming PAVE/X Conference, which is going to be so incredible.

If you haven't registered for that event, definitely go check it out. We're going to have all the links in the show notes for you to connect with Jessica, to check out the conferences and the publications that she's involved with. She's got some incredible insights into where conferences and publications are going in our industry, and also some tips that she uses for making sure that when she shows up to conferences, she's really hitting her A-game when it can be incredibly overwhelming.

Let's dive right into our interview with Jessica and make sure that you're also registered for our upcoming workshop where we're actually going to go into further detail and give you actual resources to prepare for your conference season. You can get access to that event at storybuilt.marketing/conference, and you're going to be able to find that link in our show notes as well. Let's dive in.

Jessica Lombardo, thank you so much for joining me today. I know you're absolutely busy. You were just talking to me before we started recording about all the things you're going on, the travel you have coming up. You have multiple jobs and then for you to take a quick aside and talk to me about the upcoming conference, I'm super grateful for because I wanted to squeeze it in with this series that I'm doing because I'm really excited about PAVE/X and everything you guys are doing.

For anybody listening that doesn't know what PAVE/X is, which I can't imagine anybody wouldn't, but tell me what makes it different. It's a brand-new conference, right?

Jessica Lombardo: Yeah. Well, thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to share what PAVE/X is with your audience. Yes, PAVE/X is a brand-new conference and it is going to be held January 30th through February 1st in San Antonio this year. What we're bringing to the industry, the paving and pavement maintenance industry is 60 hours of education with tracks and paving pavement maintenance, sealcoating and striping, and business management and sweeping.

We've partnered with the North American Power Sweeping Association for that track, and it's going to have live equipment demonstrations on a big parking lot just a block away from the convention center and a full tradeshow floor. In fact, I was looking at the tradeshow floor this morning. We only have 2 10x10 booths left [inaudible] tradeshow floor. Really cool to see in year one.

We have some of the top equipment manufacturers joining us there in the tradeshow floor and then the equipment demo space. What we wanted to do with PAVE/X is really bring an immersive experience to the typical tradeshow that you see, not just iron on the floor, but actually iron in action, and those networking opportunities that you really want to see at a tradeshow, where you really learn, we'll have roundtable discussions, we'll have an innovation theater where you can ask questions about those innovations, and then the parties.

You can mingle and really pick the brains of the mentors that they'll see in the classrooms that they might not have an opportunity to ask the questions that they really, really want answered, and then find one’s mentors that they can ask the questions to year-round so they don't just leave San Antonio with those burning questions that they can call them and ask them those questions the rest of the year too.

Jeani Ringkob: Right. I love that it's leaning towards building, like it's taking network, integrating in that relationship, and encouraging people that build a relationship there and take it away from there as well.

Jessica Lombardo: That's one thing that we've heard from contractors is that we have such a fun, amazing week and then we have to wait a whole year before we're back together again but why?

So between the advisory board, the PAVE/X educational advisory board, and the advisory board with Pavement Maintenance magazine, we're coming up with a whole mentorship program where we're hoping to have PAVE/X office hours once a month where people can call in where we'll have discussion hours on any given topic, and we'll have “Here's the theme this month, please call in, and we're going to be talking about this and here's our expert,” and people can ask their burning questions, so we don't have to wait a whole year to get together.

Maybe in person we do but you don't have to wait a year to ask your question because as an industry, we might not always have the best reputation. That was really my motivation behind becoming a conference manager because I want to make sure we're putting our best foot forward in our industry and putting that education out there is so important.

Getting those best experts out there, experts like you and like our advisory board and really getting that top-tier education so everybody's going out and putting their best foot forward for our entire industry.

Jeani Ringkob: I know when we talked about what we talked about early on, we talked about action steps and what are the takeaways, it’s almost like what are people's marching orders when they leave or do they feel like they actually accomplished at least that first couple steps in the room, which I think a lot of times historically, we've just had the same presentations over and over again and said we'd like to see that push of like, “Let's make it actionable, actually do something when we're together and spending the time, and talk about what comes next beyond what we just do in the room.”

Jessica Lombardo: We've even talked about having prep documents before classes if I could get that one with our speakers like if you've signed up for your class in advance, which we're really encouraging our attendees to do so we can get our accurate handout counts, like, “You signed up for your class in advance, here's your prep document and things we want you to have yourself ready [inaudible] right headspace for as you go into your class.”

I talked to Brandon Stanton, who is another speaker at PAVE/X about doing that. That's something he really wanted to have, so he could make sure the people attending his class are really going to get the most out of his sessions.

Jeani Ringkob: Right. I think when you're there, you're maybe doing a lot of stuff, you're getting a lot. You're absorbing a lot or you're trying to absorb and we never absorb as much as we think so I think having something like that where this speaker has already thought about “I know what the key takeaways are. I know what the most frequently asked questions I get are and I can highlight these in a way that's going to help them focus on the right things when they're there present in the room” I think is a great idea.

Jessica Lombardo: Well, it's a lot to ask people to take time away from their families and their businesses and people have such busy, busy lives. It's important for me to get in to make sure that people are going to maximize their time at PAVE/X. It's three days away but you're going to go and what you're going to get out of it, you're going to take with you the rest of the year and beyond and really build on that for your business so why not do the work beforehand, so you're going to be able to get the most out of it?

Jeani Ringkob: Yeah. I know, with this series that I've been doing on my podcast, one of the whole episodes was what do you do ahead of time, because it's not just looking at your calendar and saying, “I'm sending my sales team to this conference. We're taking equipment here, we're doing a booth here,” but why that one? What are your goals there? How are you going to measure it? What do you need to do? What does each person need to do before they leave?

That might not even just be the people going, it might be other people in your company on your team to help them get the most out of it there. There's really a lot more to think about than I think sometimes we get busy and we're so glad that physical season is over and we're just like, “Just drop them in a bag, and let's go.”

Jessica Lombardo: Yeah, and that's a great point because there are so many sessions to choose from. At PAVE/X, we have this all-access conference pass that does get into every single session, but we want people to choose them in advance so that we can have accurate handouts because those handouts are going to really trigger you and like you were sitting in the class and you're taking your notes, you want to have that booklet in your hand, “These are the sessions I attended. This is the speaker and these are my notes,” we want those accurate counts.

We're encouraging people to look at the sessions and see what they want to attend. How do you decide how many business classes do you want to take or how many specific courses you want to take on paving? Or do you want to add striping to your business? We have some great striping courses. It's all about really dedicating that time, sitting down, and mapping out that show.

Jeani Ringkob: I think that dictates when you think about from an owner standpoint or manager, that dictates who you sent. This is a good time. The agenda is out. Now is a really great time for people to go look at that and figure out who’s exhibiting there, what education is going to be there, then think about your team and maybe somebody in HR needs to go, which I think is probably one of the areas of our business where we think about that.

I know I had a topic on the CONEXPO that was strictly about workforce and how we can integrate marketing and strategy into the workforce, which was a great HR topic and how can HR work with the rest of the company to help elevate and overcome some of the problems they have. Looking at that now may help business owners make those investment decisions, and they may I think be surprised about all the different variety of education opportunities that are really there.

Jessica Lombardo: Yeah. We really tried to find something for everybody at PAVE/X and really hit on those smaller guys, really looking for where do I grow. I don't even know what I want to do, where I want to focus. Something really unique about PAVE/X, we have some panel discussions, and one panel discussion is focused all about, “I don't even know where to start with growth.”

We have three contractors on there who are all at different levels of their business, a stripping contractor, a larger paving contractor, and then a sealcoating contractor. They're really going to give us a holistic view of how they decided to grow and how they approached it. That's going to just be a really interesting conversation of what contractors need to look at when they're approaching growth in their business. That's just one panel discussion we're having.

Jeani Ringkob: That’s such a good one. It's so nice to hear from peers.

Jessica Lombardo: Yes. We saw that with a different conference we have at IGNITE and that's basically all panel discussions and that just brought such a different energy to the conversation and a different way to learn that we wanted to bring it to this new conference because it just encourages a different way of learning.

It's not just one person's perspective standing up at the room about how they do it, it's three different people on the panel, but that encourages people in the audience to be like, “Well, what about this way?” and then it's more conversational. In PAVE/X, we'll be bringing those panel discussions and we think it's going to be a great addition to round out the education there.

Jeani Ringkob: Yeah. I love the variety of how you guys are delivering and how you guys are really getting creative with them.

Jessica Lombardo: Fun time for everybody.

Jeani Ringkob: Yeah. You and I were talking earlier, I thought it might be fun to share how did you get into the industry to start with and you actually wear a lot of different hats in the industry. You show up in a lot of different ways and contribute to our industry in a lot of different ways. For anybody that doesn't know, fill us in a little bit about all the roles that you play. Besides wife, mom, all those things in addition, what else do you do and how did you end up in our industry? I think that's always a fun story to hear.

Jessica Lombardo: Yeah. Well, I had started out with a career in journalism. I actually wanted to be a sports broadcaster. I can't keep all those numbers and statistics in my brain, but I stumbled on an editor role and it was for asphalt contractor. I just applied, went in, and didn't know much about asphalt or concrete. But when I started, I was immediately welcomed.

I attended my first tradeshow which happened to be a little show called CONEXPO. I had been on the job like two months, and I just [inaudible] up and started to ask questions, and people immediately invited me on job sites, which is I think the best way to learn about what we do, and people were just so incredibly welcoming.

As editor of Asphalt Contractor and Pavement Maintenance magazine, I really started to learn the industry, attending industry tradeshows and conferences, and learning the conference side of the business, I loved the education part of it.

Meeting the teachers of the conferences, which were actually just contractors who just took time out of their busy lives to come and teach and better the industry because they thought the same thing that I eventually adopted like, “We're all in this together. We all need to make sure that we're teaching people to do this the right way. Because if we're not, then it's all going to make everybody look bad.”

So just kept meeting more people and got out of the conferences for a little while and started working with the manufacturers, because I really fell in love with the brands and working with LeeBoys, Weilers, and WIRTGENs and saw that they had such great stories to tell.

Their marketing departments are all so busy, but they have such great stories to tell so I was like, “Hey, I know these great contractors that run your equipment. Maybe I can talk to them about helping you tell their stories.” That's how I got more of my content director role.

I love that side, I know you do too, because that's I think what we're both passionate about is telling stories. The content director role is what I had been working on in the last two and a half years working with brands to tell their stories with contractors and really developing those kinds of communications.

Then with PAVE/X, in the IGNITE Construction Summit, getting back into developing those conference programs and helping get back into conference programming and developing the big job.

Jeani Ringkob: Yeah. As you've pivoted back into that, which I see a lot of passion when you talk about IGNITE and PAVE/X, and you have great energy at these events that's just really hard to capture and emulate, but what's been the hardest thing about really rolling PAVE/X out that maybe you didn't expect, was harder than you thought, or make you think, “What was I thinking?”

Jessica Lombardo: When you're attending events, you have no idea the logistics that go on behind the scenes, so learning of the pipe and drapes and picking the colors of that, the booth planning, and all of those kinds of back-end logistics that I had no idea that other people manage, that whole thing that Amy Schwandt, my co-creator of PAVE/X and I have been like, “Oh, my goodness, there's so many that we need to decide and especially with the live equipment demonstrations.”

Luckily, our exhibitor advisory board has been extremely helpful in helping plan those logistics. But with the conference program, mapping out the timing, unfortunately, we have to start conferences at seven in the morning, which I'm sure people are not going to enjoy, especially after hanging out so late networking.

Jeani Ringkob: You burn the candle at both ends, literally.

Jessica Lombardo: Yeah. There's only so much time in the day, and like I said, we want to make sure we're maximizing everybody's time there. Fitting everything in all one massive puzzle. As we get closer and we're going to have to make sure we have the right speakers in the right rooms based on how many people are signed up for each class, it's a massive puzzle to put everything together and one that I had no idea so I just have so much respect for people who put on conferences full time, much bigger than this one. It's been a lot of fun, but it's a huge learning experience, that's for sure.

Jeani Ringkob: Yeah. What have you learned this year that you'll take into next year for it?

Jessica Lombardo: There are a lot of topics that need to be covered, a lot of topics that I think that we might have not necessarily missed, I just think there's only so much we can cover. Like you mentioned, HR, that's a topic that we didn't even get to cover year one in PAVE/X just because there just wasn't enough time.

We're trying one-hour sessions at PAVE/X instead of longer three-hour workshops. But some sessions have part one and part two. We're just trying it out, seeing what attendees like, what works, and what they might want to see more of next year. Topics like safety, HR, some of the bigger topics that might need more time.

There are definitely going to be some shifts that I think we'll need to try just because I think some topics do need some more meat, some more time. I think more next year at PAVE/X, we're going to need to look at the conference scheduling program and see where people want more meat in their program.

Jeani Ringkob: Right. I like the idea of you talking about doing something throughout the year, kind of like continues that, which will probably help you guys keep a really good pulse on that as well as maybe offer some stuff you couldn't or go deeper where people wanted more. You guys are already doing some really great stuff.

Jessica Lombardo: And we're so thankful that we have just such a great team of people who want to help and who are passionate about the industry. I mean, I can't say thank you enough to people who are like, “Whatever you need, I'm here. I'll sign up for an office hour right now.” I'm just so thankful for that.

Jeani Ringkob: Right. You've been to a lot of conferences in this industry. When you think about leading up to the event, at the event, and post-event, what are some tips and tricks that you use to help you get the most out of those three phases of going to and attending an event that you might want to share with people coming to PAVE/X?

Jessica Lombardo: Yeah. I think that's a really great question because you can't just, like you said, pack your bag and expect to get the most out of it. You have to really inspect the conference program and look at what events are going to be there, what sessions you want to take, what sessions you think you're going to get the most out of, not just during that event, but what you're going to get the most out of for the next year during your business.

Do I want to add a certain service or have I had a problem with retaining my employees? Do I need to have a session on employee retention? Or do I maybe want to get into sealcoating? I don't know. But really look at those session topics and refine where you want to be, and then you're going to need to hone in on that for sure.

You could even look at the speakers. I've heard great things about Jim Panzenhagen or I've always wanted to take a session by John Ball. He's here at this program, or I've heard great things about Wayne Jones. Just make sure you're looking at the speakers and the session topics and really lay that out in advance.

Then you can even take a look at the networking opportunities. That's where you're really going to learn the most, the roundtables, the after-parties, even events on the tradeshow floor where you just have the opportunity to meet peers. That's where you're going to find the most off-the-cuff learning where you can ask questions.

I always found the cocktail receptions to just go to their nametag like, “Oh, I've heard of your company before. Could I ask you a question?” Those are some of the most impactful places where I've learned the most.

Jeani Ringkob: I love it. What about after a conference? I feel like everybody walks away and they feel like they maybe just got hit by a truck or they're exhausted and then their emails are stacked up, their staff is screaming at them about all the things, their family, they've missed events. Do you have any tips that you use post-conference to help you make sure that nothing falls through the cracks?

I feel like it's hard to say nothing because you're never going to probably catch everything when you think about all the opportunities and the follow-up. But do you have any tips to help streamline that process?

Jessica Lombardo: I know it’s old school, but I always take a business card from people and I always write a note on the business card about what I talked to that person about. It can be hard, especially if you have a cocktail in your hand, you can forget what you talk to that person about. That's why I write a note on the card about, especially what I talked to them about.

Or even put a note in your phone about that person, because things do stack up after a tradeshow event but if I have my stack of business cards right next to my computer, I'm eventually going to get to those notes that I’ve written on those cards and the things I talk to those people about. Then I send them an email, just say, “Hey, great to meet you at PAVE/X, wanted to follow up, and say thank you for the conversation.”

Even if nothing comes of it, you had that note card there and you made that contact. The thing about PAVE/X too, if you do attend the sessions and you get those booklets, you have your notes there, you have the booklet, you have your resource, and you have the contact in there from the speaker so you can always refer to them if you have a question about anything you learned there or any questions that you're going to have throughout the year. You're always going to have me as a resource as well and I can connect you with any of the speakers from the event too.

Jeani Ringkob: Yeah. You've always been a great industry connector.

Jessica Lombardo: One of the things I love most about my job is being able to connect people.

Jeani Ringkob: Yeah, which is such great, and this is something a blessing to all the people who connect with you and work with you and makes you perfectly suited to launch something like this and make it unique and different and really put the emphasis on building network, connection, the community of our industry.

I'm super excited about it. As everybody's leading up to the show, and getting ready and doing all this prep work, where's the best place for them to follow you?

Jessica Lombardo: Yeah. We are posting regularly on LinkedIn and Facebook. PAVE/X Show is where you can find us and yeah, we are just cruising along, pavexshow.com as well.

Jeani Ringkob: Right. Registration is already open and underway but there's still time to get your team and to get your people in. Everybody listening, definitely make sure that you're checking it out and thinking about when your team should go, maybe thinking outside that box of who typically goes.

Jessica Lombardo: Yeah, we know that it’s construction crunch time right now so people might not be thinking about it but as your season starts to wind down, definitely reach out if you have any questions or need help registering. I am wide open to help.

Jeani Ringkob: I don't know about wide open, I've heard your schedule, but I know that you help even when your schedule is crazy, [inaudible] wide open, which that's an art form. Thank you so much, Jessica. I'm excited to be there to be part of this kicking it off and I'm so excited. I think it's going to feel different. It's going to be different and it's really exciting to be part of something like that.

Jessica Lombardo: And it's going to be a lot of fun. We are very excited. We just can't wait to get there.

Jeani Ringkob: Yeah, super excited. Now you know why Jessica is Jessica in our industry. She has just made a name for herself but she's done it so effortlessly and easily because she has a strong connection. She cares about the industry. She's passionate about it, and she's a natural-born connector.

I think that's an incredible just skill to develop, but when you come by it so naturally, and you continue to nurture it the way Jessica has, she's a great person to have in your network and she's a great person to be following to see what is she up to and what is she doing. Because it's definitely a great indicator as to where you want to be spending your time in the industry to grow and develop your business.

Make sure that you check the show notes, that you get registered for PAVE/X, and also get registered for our workshop coming up because as you're looking at PAVE/X, World of Asphalt, all the events that are coming up in short order, you can actually make sure that you and your team, everybody that you're sending there has a plan of how do I need to prepare, what am I going to do at the conferences, and how am I going to make sure that even though I'm tired and overwhelmed afterwards, I'm really going to maximize my ROI.

You can get access to that workshop at storybuilt.marketing/conference. Make sure that you're subscribed because we want you to be here every single week and make sure you're connecting with me on LinkedIn. You can find me at Jeani Ringkob on LinkedIn. That link will also be in the show notes.

Let us know what you want to hear and what you want to really learn about to help you grow stronger businesses in this industry on The Contractor's Daughter. As always, we can't wait to be with you again next week and make sure you're also checking out everything else that's part of the Blacktop Banter network and team, they're all creating great, incredible content for you. We are thrilled to partner with them.

Thank you so much for joining us for this episode of The Contractor's Daughter. If you liked what you heard, be sure to subscribe and review. But most of all, share this with all of your friends, partners, and customers in the highway construction business. Thank you for building the infrastructure that we all rely on.