This week’s guest is Deirdre Wildman, senior event designer, and self-anointed “Hospitalitarian,” at Four Five One Events. What exactly is a “hospitalitarian?” According to the write-up Deirdre received as part of the Denver Business Journal’s 2012 40 Under 40 award winners, she defines it as “someone who supports, advocates and practices the hospitality doctrine through philanthropy, culinary arts and event sciences.”

Deirdre shares her journey to becoming a hospitalitarian which brought her from Indiana to Denver basically on a whim after college with the initial disapproval from her parents, saw her learning to expand her “boring” – her words – Midwestern palate by reading cookbooks cover-to-cover as if they were novels, and finally finding her niche planning and executing large scale events for corporate and non-profit clients. We take a lot of digressions along the way in an energized, very Type-A chat. Find out why Deirdre reminds Jon of a specific character from The Shawshank Redemption, how Deirdre came to tend to a 5,000 sq. ft. garden, how she came to be involved with non-profits both in year 100, and year 1.

And if nothing else, be sure to listen to this episode as Deirdre takes Jon through an initial consultation for a hypothetical event. If you didn’t appreciate the forethought that goes into every event you attend before, you will after listening to this.

The episode goes live on Wednesday, February 4. It will be available (and FREE!) on iTunes, Stitcher, and the Jon of All Trades homepage.

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