#140 Niamh Martin | Managing Director, UK @ Convene Hospitality Group

Speaker A: You are listening to Win Win, a podcast brought to you by the global nonprofit organization WIN Women in Innovation. Each episode features inspiring innovators from the startup world, innovation consultancies and Fortune 500 companies who share their innovation secrets and career trajectories every Monday. As for me, I'm your host, Zoya Kozikov, global product lead at WIN by night and product manager by day. Hello everyone and welcome back to the Win Win podcast. Today's guest is Nev Martin, Managing Director of the UK for Convene Hospitality Group, a multi brand event and workplace company with 40 locations across nine global cities and more than, uh, 40,000 clients walking through their doors every year. In her role, Neve oversees 12 venues, nearly 600 people and the entire UK operation. Commercial, finance and culture and everything in between. But she didn't start there. She fell into hospitality, as she puts it, completely by accident, studying business and finance, planning a very different kind of career, and then spent over two decades moving through restaurants, retail and eventually Selfridges, learning something at every stop that most business schools don't teach. That the energy in a room, the trust between a team and the ability to make a decision with incomplete information are the real foundations of leadership. At Convene, Niamh helped reshape what the company should be from a corporate meetings venue into a full hospitality group, including launching an indoor Christmas market concept that became one of the UK's most in demand large scale event experiences. Not because it was in the plan, but because she kept asking, why not? If you remember, we've previously had Phoenix, who is VP of sales for Convene, on this podcast and we are so proud to partner with Convene. I'm sure you will get a ton of new learnings from this episode and a conversation about what it actually looks like to lead removing the veil that can sometimes romanticize it all. I hope you enjoy the episode.

Speaker B: Hi Niamh and welcome to the Win Win podcast.

Speaker C: Hi. Thank you so much for having me on.

Speaker B: Thank you so much for coming on. You are the Managing Director of the UK at Convene and, and I'm sure lots of people are wondering, what the heck does that actually mean? So let's kick off the podcast with you sharing a little bit behind the scenes.

Speaker C: Yeah. So Convene Hospitality Group. We are a multi branded event company that specialize in both meetings and events and workplace within that, we've got five different brands in our portfolio and we have over 40,000 clients that come and host events at our spaces with us each year and My role is overseeing the UK side of the business. So we have two of our brands currently in the UK and the plan is to open additional brands and we have got 12 venues as well in the UK. So I oversee the entire operation. A team of just under 600 people here in the UK and that spans across operations, commercial team, people and culture, um, finance team, and then our on site operations teams as well.

Speaker B: That's incredible to work with and oversee so many people. But, uh, you started your career in

Speaker A: restaurants, which if I may be a

Speaker B: little too honest, is about as far from a corporate boardroom as you can get.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: What did that world teach you that you still use today?

Speaker C: Yes, it is very far removed from where I am today. Coming from hospitality, it's been, you know, I started in restaurants over 20 years ago. Not through choice, it was just by, by complete chance. I, um, was studying business and finance at the time and that was very much where I saw my career going. And what I loved about hospitality was just that interaction between the client or the customer and the teams. The camaraderie, the sociability of the environments, the energy and it's really that the kind of kept me in that industry for such a long time. The other thing, uh, as well, when I think back to when I started early in my career was the room for growth. I was very fortunate. You know, my first move into hospitality was with a business that was only starting out and was growing and I could see very early on that there was a lot of opportunity and also apply the skills that I was, you know, that I had learned in, in university as well and marry those two, I suppose, passions, if you will, like that, that sociability that I, I love and also working, you know, with a business to drive the numbers and create something from the ground up. If I fast forward to where I am now, whilst throughout my career I've always been in hospitality and to some extent now this role, it is hospitality led. But it, as you pointed out, I'm also within a boardroom and you know, discussing strategy and future growth plans and performance, etc. So it is very different to how I started out and how I thought my career was going to go. When I think about what the hospitality industry and my earlier career thought me that I still very much use today, it is around like building teams and ultimately realizing that you cannot build something meaningful alone. You know, hospitality and specifically restaurants, it's very much a team environment. And if I look to the industry that I'm in today and meetings and events we have very large teams across the business, and I have a very large team that I work with. And my ability to work with multiple different personalities and skill sets is something that has served me very well.

Speaker B: I couldn't agree more. Especially when you have that many people that are working for you, but also all of the external people, which I'm sure you interact with. So it makes me think about the fact that there is a moment a lot of women describe where they go from being the best person in the room to being the person who's actually responsible for the room. What did that transition feel like for you and what did you perhaps have to unlearn?

Speaker C: That transition for me was definitely, I said, the very early part of my role as a leader. Like that moment you go from doing everything yourself to trusting other people to do the work for you. I think that's where leadership really begins. You know, it's not about your skills anymore. It's about your ability to really communicate vision clearly so that everyone else can run with it. It's like the ability to make decisions, sometimes with incomplete information, and own them, even if they don't always land the way you'd hoped that they would.

Speaker B: I've heard a lot of women talk about how that can also feel very lonely because in that moment where you have to lead, you also can't always say that you don't know something or you have no ide what you're doing. Um, are there people, mentors, allies that you leaned into as you stepped into that role?

Speaker C: There are definitely allies that I have leaned into that I still speak to very regularly, you know, on a weekly basis. And these are people that I started out with very early in my career, and we've all kind of gone in different directions. And also one of my closest friends from, from childhood as well, who is, you know, ah, entrepreneur. She started her own very successful global, um, beauty brand. And I think we were both kind of going through like a learning curve at the same time. And to be able to have somebody who's on your level or that you're able to speak to on your level, who's not going to judge you and ask for advice during certain situations that come up, I think is, is so valuable and so helpful and also in a way that you don't feel jud or you don't feel insecure or worried about what the other person is going to think because you've had that relationship for years. If I think about previous leaders, like people that I've worked under in the past There is one in particular who comes to mind who I meet quite regularly for coffee. Um, very charismatic character, always offers me really sound advice. He's more of a father figure than a peer, I would say. And the one thing that I love about him is that he's very like, what I call like, straight laced. He will just tell me as it is and if there are times that I need to speak to him and you know, explain something that might have happened or something that I'm thinking and I'm like, am I wrong? And like, uh, he will tell me probably straighter than anyone else will. So yeah, I've definitely learned to rely on those people who have been in my circle for a very long time.

Speaker B: And I think something you also called out is the importance of those people being straight shooters and not afraid. To tell you the truth, I think that's huge.

Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. I mean, you know, I, I find it myself, even with the team, if we're making these really big business decisions that are going to kind of trickle down through, through the organization, like I try to create a space where everybody will voice their opinions and tell me if this big decision that we're going to make is going to be maybe more impactful than, than I think it is. Because it's important that there is that two way conversation happening. Because ultimately, you know, when you're leading a, uh, team of almost 600 people, what you do matters and those big decisions you make matters.

Speaker B: So no, I couldn't agree more. So before coming to convene, you were at Selfridges for seven years, which is a long time. What was your journey to convene? How did you come across it and how did you know at this pivotal moment in your career it was the right place for you to go to?

Speaker C: So being honest, I wasn't looking to move careers at the time. And a recruiter reached out to me and um, told me about Convene Hospitality Group and that they were looking for a UK md And I'm quite a curious person. So I thought, okay, let's, let's just have a conversation. And I think instantly when I learned what they were about, I was very intrigued. I was like, okay, because originally I think I thought, you know, this is more like a corporate, uh, meeting company. It's very corporate, if you will. And I thought that's very different to what I've done my entire career. So I did my homework and I met with probably six different people from across Convene. You know, I read every possible article I could about the company. I listened to interviews that Ryan Simonetti the our CEO had been on and instantly I like, I was hooked. I think probably by the time I had Mesh like the third member at the time during that sort of interview process, I was like, like I have to move to this company because this is the right move for me. And where I see the opportunity and where this business can go really excited me. And I've always been really fortunate that every move that I have made throughout my career has always been with companies that are at the very early stages of transition or they're at this inflection point where they're really about to change their trajectory. And that's something that really excites me. You know, getting involved in something at the very early stages and building something new and exciting from the ground up.

Speaker B: Totally. And even to that point, you know, Convene started out as one premium meeting and event venue and now it's Convene Hospitality Group operating a global portfolio of all these different lifestyle brands and places. You have Neue House here in New York, the Mallory. I mean the list goes on and on with a network of 40 locations across nine global cities. So when you came in, as you started to allude to, you helped reshape Convene into something much bigger, uh, than a venue company. Can you describe what that looks like? What did you guys build and what problem were you really trying to solve?

Speaker C: In the UK specifically we had two of the brands Convene and etc venues and in the US they had just the Convene brand. And about 18 months ago our executive team, which was kind of led through our product team, we started working on looking at what segments across the market we were currently missing. You know, we knew that we had all of these amazing clients. We noticed that uh, their events were starting to change in how, you know, that what was typically known as, as a corporate style event, you know, they were bringing experiences into their events, they were bringing, you know, these much bigger production capabilities into their events and into our spaces. And we really saw, I suppose, a gap in the market there for being able to create spaces that we could enhance those types of events even further and also bring a lot of those capabilities in house for us to be able to ultimately serve all of our clients in all the different ways that they need it. So that was really the starting point of building Convene Hospitality Group. You know, we've got an amazing team globally with so much skill and expertise across this industry and we just really needed a platform to be able to expand on that and to look at moving into new segments and new spaces. And obviously there was a lot of research behind it and we were looking at, you know, so much different data and what the market was telling us and what our own clients needed. We held uh, client advisory boards with, with some of our, you know, global clients to kind of ask them as well, what is it you need? Like how are your events changing? What are your expectations on us as an, as an event provider? What are the pinch points or the pain points on your side when it comes to planning an event that we can try and solve for you? So that was really the starting point of where Convene Hospitality Group formed and then it was really looking at, okay, these are the types of events, the trends that we're seeing coming through. How can we create that in a really unique space? So that's the kind of part that we're working through and developing right now, which is really exciting.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's extremely fascinating. On this podcast we talk about a lot of the source of innovation. Where does it come from? And I do think a lot of innovation comes from borrowing a model that works in one industry and asking yourself, why doesn't this exist in mine? Was there a moment like that for you where you looked at how another industry operates and thought, we really should be doing this?

Speaker C: Oh, definitely. One of the things that you're coming from, especially the retail side of hospitality. When I was with Selfridges Group again I joined at uh, a time where I suppose footfall into stores was down, people were shopping online, E commerce was, you know, growing more and more powerful and we need to look at reasons to bring people back into the traditional store. And we did that through experiences and events and things that you wouldn't typically see in a traditional retail store. So when I joined Convene, I was blown away by the level of hospitality, the execution and um, the production capability of the on site teams and all of these amazing spaces. But the one thing that struck me the most was, you know, we were doing just pure corporate style events and there was a real opportunity there for us to offer something more for our existing client base. You know, one of, and again this kind of comes from my background in restaurants. One of the key areas of business if you are a restaurant in the uk, is you know, Christmas, that build up to Christmas, that can be the make or break of whether you reach your, your revenue numbers at the end of the year. Um, whereas at ah, Convene it was quite the opposite. December was, you know, the real wind down there was nothing really kind of happening in the venues. And I thought, well, hold on a second. If we have 30 plus thousand people coming through our doors, uh, like these are corporate businesses, they all have Christmas parties. Where are these people going? Because they're not coming to us because we're not hosting these Christmas parties. We need to, we need to address that. We have the spaces, we have the culinary expertise on site, we have production capabilities, we've event planners, like we have 50 plus event planners on our team. Like, why aren't we doing this? And I was, I was quite amazed by like the answers that I got at the time. It was like, oh, well, you know, Christmas, Christmas isn't really our thing. It's not something that we've done before. And I'm like, yeah, but why, why aren't we doing. And I kept like pushing and pushing the team as if we need to do this. So then we kind of looked at, okay, well what is it people want? Because, uh, Certainly in the UK, like for groups of like 300, 400 plus, you're quite limited in option, you know, in, in your options. You either go to a hotel and um, you might sit down and what traditional kind of ballroom format and there's music and it's, you know, it's been around for years. It almost has like kind of a wedding type feel. And I was like, okay, well why don't we mix it up and do something really different? And that's where the Convene Christmas market was born out of. And we first launched that two years ago and we worked with an amazing production company to basically create an indoor winter wonderland market experience. We had, you know, everything from like what you would traditionally see in a European Christmas market, like Bavarian type food stalls. We had music, entertainment, like winter wonderland aesthetic, uh, throughout the whole space. We created like a northern light zone that was like a chill out zone. There was like a cinema room. It was insane. And that was like specifically targeting groups, parties for like 500 plus. And how we packaged it was in a way that if you are an event organizer, I mean nobody wants to be the person that gets uh, stuck organizing the Christmas party. Because it's true. You've ever done that. It is, it is painful. And so what we did is we package it in a way that, you know, we will do literally everything for you. All you have to do is turn up. You don't need to, you know, source a venue, source entertainment, source decoration, or you know, choose from four or five different menu options. We just tried to make it as seamless, uh, a booking experience as possible for our clients. And it was hugely successful. So this will be our third year doing it. We've actually expanded it into more venues and we're, we are creating different themes. So one of the themes that we're doing this year is like a retro 90s Christmas vibe, if I can. It's like for, you know, taking people back to the 90s. And the other one that we're doing is more like a, a Wisteria, ah, Narnia type space. Um, and, and that is through. We're doing that because like that is the demand that is coming through for these um, large scale events. So it's allowed us to expand into, um, into more venues and we'll, we'll keep developing that and growing that over the years.

Speaker B: It's very exciting. And I do think always at the heart of innovation is both science and art. And I think, you know, this story really, really exemplifies that. So I appreciate you sharing it. You mentioned looking forward. So to wrap up the podcast, I'd love to ask you the question that we ask all of our innovators and that is where do you see yourself and your industry one month from now, one year from now, and 10 years from now?

Speaker C: Wow, that is a good question, John. I tend to probably think about this more maybe in layers rather than timelines. You know, we are building something really exciting at CHG right now. So I think this next month for me it's about being incredibly focused, making the right calls, setting the direction and I guess creating the foundations for what, for our next stage of growth in the next year. I would really like us to increase our footprint into Europe, you know, as a brand that is recognized not just for what we do, but for how we do it. That includes some of the ESG and sustainability work that we're doing right now. And I'm really passionate about that and embedding like responsible purpose into our business. Ten years from now. God, I think, I think it will probably become less about what I'm doing and maybe more about what I've built and what lasts beyond me. You know, I'd love to have played a key role in creating and leading hospitality group across Europe. You know, something with real, real legacy.

Speaker B: Very, very exciting. Thank you so much for joining us on the Win Win podcast.

Speaker C: Thank you so much for having me. I'm such a big fan of this podcast. So it's yeah, been an honor to be on m speaking with you. Thank you.

Speaker A: Thanks for listening to Win win. Brought to you by WIN Women and Innovation and myself, Zoya Kozakov. If you enjoy this podcast, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and visit womeninnovation.co to learn more about our organization, programming and other opportunities. And remember, when women innovate, we all win.