构建社群：Liz Lathan谈联合创办Club Ichi及其对活动行业的价值

CHICAGO — If you’re in the events industry and active on LinkedIn, odds are you’ve seen a post or two about Club Ichi. From its signature Spontaneous Think Tanks to its Clubhouse pop-ups, Club Ichi exudes excitement and has earned itself a cult following. But what is Club Ichi?

After years in corporate and association event planning, Liz Lathan, CMP, decided it was time to hold an “unconference” for planners. Alongside Nicole Osibodu, Lathan had rented out a children’s museum in Austin, Texas, and 87 people flew in for the event. At the time Lathan was working for IBM and Osibodu had her own event company.

The next event the two put together was at a children’s museum in San Diego, and again, it was a hit.

After the San Diego event, a friend of the two women said he was starting an experiential agency and needed someone to run the events department. Lathan took the role, and eventually Osibodu joined too. After four years growing the agency and other related companies, Lathan and Osibodu left to create The Community Factory.

The new company was focused on helping people build community at their events — a fitting vision for what the two would go on to build for the events industry itself.

In 2023, those same people who attended the events at the children’s museums wanted to know where their community had gone. Lathan found the Japanese phrase, “ichi-go ichi-e,” meaning “one moment, one time” and Club Ichi was born.

What started as a Slack channel, some supper clubs and think tanks has evolved into a year-round community that is focused on bringing people together to solve real problems.

Trade Show Executive (TSE) caught up with Lathan to find out what really goes into building and sustaining a community, how Club Ichi serves event professionals and how emerging leaders can find their own community.

MADDY: I know that Club Ichi has the tagline “the social club for people in events.” Fundamentally, what is Club Ichi?

LIZ: We like to call it a reverse mullet: We’re party in the front, business in the back. You don’t come in to swap business cards and sell to each other. You come in to make friends and for the social club atmosphere. It’s a first name only, social vibes kind of activity that really lets people talk to each other.

Then people do business with the folks that they know, like and trust; and you get to know, like and trust people by hanging out with them.

At the front it’s a party, it’s some retreats and it’s people talking to each other and solving problems. In the back, there’s like $50 million of business being done inside the community with people just working with each other.

MADDY: How has Club Ichi grown in the last three years, and how do you determine what makes sense for the community strategically?

LIZ: The beautiful thing about community, which I think is different from associations, is we’re fluid and can morph and become whatever the community needs us to be. We don’t have these strict, structured boundaries around certifications, advocacy and education.

We’ve learned what our members need, and every year we evaluate it, do some focus groups and figure out what needs to change. There will be changes for 2027, and what we do is based on what they’re telling us.

At this point, we’re gaining 100 members a month, which means members are starting to get overwhelmed as it’s become a firehouse of information. Now, for 2027, we’re consolidating some spaces into special interest groups so people can find their path … and feel that micro-community camaraderie again.

MADDY: I have been following you on LinkedIn for a while, and know that you are deeply connected to this community. You’re so candid in what you share with them. Where do you think that value of transparency and honesty comes from for you professionally?

LIZ: I just think it’s stupid to hide it. We’re all in this together, and we can help somebody else by sharing mistakes we’ve made or how hard it is. I think people see these overnight successes in their brains, but it’s like we’ve been working for 10 years to get to this point.

If you’re not talking about that, you’re doing a disservice to the people that are like, “Well, I’ll just set up a community then,” and then 30 days later they close it down. You have to be upfront and realistic about it and share it.

Plus, I’m a female. I don’t lead with bravado; I lead with female nurturing and “if I can do it, you can do it” vibes.

MADDY: Why do you think community has become such an important differentiator for event brands and business these days?

LIZ: Community is this weird fluff word, like experiential. What does that mean?

I think you define community in your own mind and figure out which way you want to do it.

Social media influencers are always talking about “my community,” but that’s not a community; that’s an audience. It’s not a community unless they start doing gatherings and meetups where people are meeting each other and not just meeting them. And then, do those meetups happen without them, or do they have to be there for it?

We have a phrase; we call it fans and locals. The fans are the ones who are like Savannah Banana fans. They watch the TikToks, can buy the merch, but have never been to a show. If they’re a local, they know Grayson Stadium and have been there, they’ve met Jesse (Cole, owner of the Savannah Bananas) and can tell you where to eat before the game. Both are part of the community; it’s just a matter of who and why are you fostering it and what you are building?

When Nicole and I had The Community Factory and were building communities at people’s events, it’s okay that that community is a moment in time that happens over 90 minutes and then goes away, because we’ve started something and it’s up to them if they continue it. But it’s allowed to be called a community.

MADDY: What was missing from existing groups that you knew you could build with Club Ichi?

LIZ: It was the online bridging of the valley of engagement that I always thought was missing. I was really big into one of the professional associations early in my career, but they were basically one event a year. Any community that came out of it was a network I built from the people I met going year after year that I would reach out to. There wasn’t a place to keep it going after that.

There are other associations that have chapters and things like that, so you can get active in your chapter. I was active in one of the local chapters, but worked for a corporation and the chapter happened to be a lot of associations and hoteliers, which didn’t apply to me.

Then I felt like the whole association wasn’t for me because I couldn’t go to their big stuff and their little stuff wasn’t for me. All of them were very specific on if you did incentive travel or meetings, or owned a convention. I wanted to know where the place to meet all those people existed, and it didn’t.

Club Ichi is for people in events. We have AV people, exhibit people and gifting people. We have a couple DJs, a florist and then we have the people that are in-house association or in-house corporate. We have the solopreneurs and the show caller. They’re all in there and they’re all solving each other’s problems and connecting people.

MADDY: How do you get members? How do you then connect them to each other?

LIZ: When we started it, it was years and years of direct LinkedIn outreach, inviting people to things. I literally call it candy crushing because it’s like instead of playing Candy Crush, I’m on LinkedIn telling people I have something coming up and asking if they want to come. I don’t automate any of it. I sit there on the couch candy crushing.

That’s part of the grind that I think a lot of people don’t understand. They’re like, “I’m throwing this gathering, and I put it out on social media and nobody came.” That’s because that’s not how you do it.

If I want 20 people to come to a supper club, I have to send over 500 LinkedIn DMs to get 25 to say yes, to then get 15 to show up in the room. It’s a lot of work and I think that’s what people don’t quite realize.

But, at this point, there’s enough people in Club Ichi that people are just telling other people, so we’re not having to do that. I still have to do it to get people to come to stuff, but it’s proliferating on its own now, which is super cool.

It’s just clubichi.com to check it out and to join. But, we have a lot of stuff that we do that you don’t even have to be a member to access because we want people to see it and be part of it and to understand what it’s about.

Especially for young professionals, we have a program called the Greenroom. I don’t like to learn by webinar or panel discussion; I like to learn by doing and going.

The Greenroom is all based on field trips and getting people to go behind the scenes and figure stuff out. We did one at an experiential fabrication company where we learned how to install vinyl walls for activations.

MADDY: Can you share an example or two of something that was facilitated through Club Ichi that made you feel like, “Yes, this is exactly why we did this.”

LIZ: Yesterday in the Slack channel was so cool. Somebody posted in the community that they needed a general service contractor for an event in Florida, but it was too small for the big guys.

I tagged in somebody who’s in the community that works for a GSC and someone tagged in somebody else. The first one was like, “Hey, let me DM you and talk.” He found out it was too small for him, too, but he came back to the Slack channel and publicly wrote, “Here are some other companies I would recommend. There are some that are nearby …” and everyone could see it.

The other guy that had been tagged was like, “Hey, he’s right. We can help you with that.” He reached out, and the problem was solved and they’re working together now. It all happened within 15 minutes, and you saw this magic come together.

MADDY: If you could go back and tell yourself at the start of your career something, what would it be?

LIZ: I would not go back and change a thing because everything got me here to what we’re doing and where we are now. I think I would just say to keep saying yes because I have always been led by curiosity and I like to learn from everything.

I think the thing I did right throughout my early career was to say yes to every agency’s capabilities presentation, to say yes to meeting the vendors because I learned so much about the industry by hearing them tell me the trends they were seeing. I had so many relationships that when I needed a new job, they knew who I was and I could help them navigate inside the company and meet people.

Being helpful and being curious fosters your own community, and I did that right. I think more people need to, but they’re afraid and they don’t feel empowered to do so. That’s what I hope Club Ichi does: show them that you can come in and can make friends with everyone and they’ll all be helpful to you.

MADDY: What would your advice be to young professionals in this business who are still trying to find their people?

LIZ: Keep looking. Your people are out there. Trial all of the professional associations, the social clubs and the communities. There are a bunch of them out there, and don’t shy away from the ones that are actually product-based.

If you’re running your registration system for your company’s conference, those companies have user conferences. Go to those and you can find people who love to geek out over dynamic questions. I think about those things as communities, not just an event I have to go to because my boss sent me to it.

MADDY: When people hear entrepreneur, they often think about freedom and flexibility. What’s something about entrepreneurship that nobody tells you until you experience it yourself?

LIZ: It’s lonely. It’s all on you for a minute and you have to be really careful that you’re creating what you’re creating and not just creating yourself a job. The saying a lot of entrepreneurs have is, “I traded in 40 hours a week for 100 hours a week.”

It’s just constant all the time.

I still feel like that, but we’re getting to a point where I can disappear for a day and everything won’t crumble. You hear a lot about working on the business, not in the business. But when you’re just starting out and it’s just you or you and a partner, it’s hard. You have to have that division of roles and responsibilities.

The one thing Nicole and I have is we know we can never both be down at the same time. One of us has to have a positive attitude and be forward-looking. And if you can tell when the other one comes in and has a bad morning or whatever, we know we need to go get pedicures. One of us has to rally.

I think that’s the other thing: Find a person. Even if they’re not a partner in your business, have an accountability partner, or a person, business coach or somebody so that you don’t ever feel alone.

MADDY: What’s on the docket for 2027 at Club Ichi?

LIZ: We have all sorts of fun things. We’re going to do more Clubhouse parties. We always do an IMEX one. We’re going to do a South by Southwest one. We’re going to have Happy Camp, which is the big thing I’m looking forward to.

We are taking over a summer camp in the Poconos, and we’re going to do a five-day adult summer camp with rope courses and arts and crafts. It’s our Spontaneous-Think-Tank style, so it is definitely still a business conference, but it’s going to take place in a camp setting. Everyone is going to be solving each other’s problem while sitting around with s’mores, and it’s going to be amazing. You should come!

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