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Do you feel like becoming a control freak was a direct result of the attack? Yes. I knew ultimately, I have no control of my life, not really. I think the way that I gained control was through the things around me … physical things, tidying things up. That makes me feel like I can breathe. Because when things are chaotic in my house and my life, it just adds more chaos, and it does not calm me down emotionally. I went through many issues in my life, and it was all about control. If you cannot control any- thing externally, you try and control the things that you can.

If event planning is a mix of control and flexibility, how do you find the balance? I think that at the end of the day, you have to let go emotion- ally. Because it just is not going to help anybody if you start to get hysterical. While I am in the moment, while it is really emotional, I think: “Okay, I have to separate myself out, figure out what I can do and what I can’t do.” And make what- ever I can work, because it is way more about how you pres- ent it. I tell my office staff: You can get anything you want in life, it is all in the way that you ask. If you go at somebody in a certain way, you are going to get a certain type of reaction. So you have to learn when to be more flexible, and ask yourself, what is the best thing that we can do to make it better now? An event is a living, breathing thing. You can do your timelines up and down through next week to the second, but if a truck breaks down and your rentals do not show up, guess where the timeline goes? At the end of the day, things happen that are beyond your control.

Do you think that this resilience enabled you to stay on your feet during the rollercoaster economy of the last few years? There are a lot of people who have had to close their doors because they could just not ride it out, because the economy has been horrible and because they were stuck in what their niche was and who their clients were. And I understand that, because we had problems. The first thing that I had to do was to talk to everybody and

cut salaries. And we rented out part of our office. My staff had to know that I would do anything possible to save the business, and if they were not going to be part of that, then this was not the right company for them. If I had been emotional and just sat and cried every day, my business would have been gone. So, the first thing I had to do was cut the losses. Then I had

to go to the clients that I had and see if there was anything we could do. And if there wasn’t, I had to come up with new clients or new business, which is what we did.

There are a lot of layers in your book — it is a memoir, a business book, and it could serve as a primer for how to talk to a friend who has gone through a tragedy. It was very, very edited, because each of these layers had its

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own book in it, but it all had to tie together. People say to me they could not put it down, that it just flows. The reason why I think it worked and why people are responding this way is because I am an event planner. An event has timing and a tempo and an energy to it. You have to know how to pace it. And my book, I treated it like an event. Just when you felt like you were satiated with something, I went in a completely dif- ferent direction.

Have there been any changes in your relationships with clients as a result of your book? I do not know how many of my clients have read the book. Maybe you put it out there, but you can’t send it to four thou- sand people. A lot of them have [read it]. A lot of them loved it. A lot of them, they loved me before, but now they kind of get it. I think it makes people feel better about working with our company, to know that … it really started about celebrating. One of [my clients] said to me, “Now I understand the rea-

son why you fight so hard for me.” Because I get what fighting is, and I do not understand the word no. And I just want the best for my clients. And so I go into every situation with, “Yes I can.”

What about the goodie bag in the title? It is a universal truth that people love a goodie bag. But to me it always seems sort of sad. You are waiting for what you are going to get on your way out. Instead of just being in the moment and enjoying the party that someone has spent so much time putting together, people are reduced to worry- ing about goodie bags and fighting over who is getting the better one. Just be here now. Be in this moment, inside the event, and appreciate and enjoy what has been an army of people’s work, for how-many months. [A goodie bag] is something you may or may not like, as you are leaving. How sad is that? It is always looking to the next thing, instead of just being in it. Like I said in the book, it is not about the presents, it is about your presence.

If someone had told me my life would have worked out

that way, … what do you really know at the end? The end is that you just have this day, and that is all you know. So, make it count. You have one life. Make every day count, and stop waiting for your gift to happen some other time.

. Barbara Palmer is senior editor of Convene.

ON THE WEB Learn more about Jennifer Gilbert at savethedate.com. Watch a trailer for I Never Promised You a Goodie Bag at convn.org/goodie-bag.

AUGUST 2012 PCMA CONVENE

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