Crystal Morrell

I didn't get here alone. I needed mentorship, I needed accountability, and I needed to be challenged. I needed to be given the opportunity. There's a lot of people in my life that invested in me. I had very influential women in my life that saw something I didn't see in the beginning, and guided me the way I needed to go, and challenged me the way I needed to be challenged to grow. Every job in my life, every business I've owned is for what I'm doing today. It took a lot to get here, but having people who believed in me and pushed me made all the difference. I also have a mentor, the director of Universal Studios meetings and events, and I've been with him for about 3 years and had several promotions since I've been with him. The investment of my company in how they invested in me was crucial. Marriott sent me all over the world doing 22 trade shows a year, traveling every single week for 3 years. That experience you'll never get in a classroom.

You have to invest in yourself and brand yourself. Learn how to network and how to build your brand, which is yourself. Give back to the community by helping and doing volunteer hours and doing stuff with associations. When you get to a high position as a woman, there's not much support. You did all you did to get there, but then when you get there, there's no one there with you. That's why it's so important to connect with other successful women and support each other. Being successful doesn't mean you don't need support to get to the next level. I teach my team to be 1% better every day and try to give back to the community as well as lift each other up as women. Nobody teaches you how to close a deal or negotiation skills in college, so you have to take advantage of training opportunities. I want my team to learn more Excel and negotiation skills. You have to grab opportunities when companies offer education and training programs.

AI is both my biggest opportunity and my biggest competition. I just created two AI agents, one for New York and one for Nashville, Tennessee. I've created agents that will capture business that we're not capturing, because they speak 40 languages, and they don't sleep, and they don't call out sick. They're a really cheap employee, and I'm using the newest technology. However, it's also my biggest competition, because now people, when they want to plan an event, they go to ChatGPT. If you're not marketing in that area the most, when you do ChatGPT, my venues don't come up. For me, the marketing is out of my control because Margaritaville's a huge company. So AI is like a nemesis. On one hand, I love it because it's bringing in money that came from somewhere else, and then on the other hand, it's my biggest competition. The market changes constantly, and learning different markets has been challenging. I'm only familiar with California and Florida, and now I'm in Boston, New York, Texas, and so many different states. I've had to learn what those markets are and how to run those teams, because you have to run the teams completely different. What works in Myrtle Beach doesn't work in New York. What works in New York doesn't work in Boston. They have liquor laws and all kinds of things.