This past year (and change) we all found things to take up the extra time we had – maybe you renovated your house, took up a new hobby, or binged the entire Netflix catalogue. But how many people can say they started up their own LLC and began consulting on the re-opening of a venue that had been unused and empty for over a year and a half? Meet Erin Maguire, who spent part of her COVID down time relaxing with her family and dog in sunny Arizona, then got down to brass tacks starting the Sunset Bay Lodge at the Ballard Elks.

Back in college Erin was like many of us – unsure of what she wanted to do for a career, taking classes here and there to get a feel for what she loved. She knew she had to pick a major, so she sat down and highlighted everything she was interested in and met with the different advisors before settling on Recreation Management and Tourism. From there, she still wasn’t sure what a career looked like. Did she want to go into Parks and Rec, Hotel Management, Travel, or something different? During her very first semester of classes in her new major, Erin’s class had a guest speaker who managed incentive travel. She doesn’t remember much from that lecture, but she does remember that the speaker mentioned that the invitations for one of their incentive trips was sent to the attendees in coconuts, and she was hooked. From there she worked as an intern for an incentive company in the Phoenix area (where she’s from) before moving to a conference resort in Scottsdale after the events on September 11th caused incentive travel to decline. While she missed the fun of incentive travel, she appreciated that she was able to learn about the hotel side of the industry so early in her career, something she’s found extremely beneficial over the years.

Erin has been passionate about MPI since the start of her career. Back in that first semester in college one of her professors had been the originators of the Arizona MPI chapter and had sold the whole class on the idea. From then on she was a student member, attending as many of the events as she could. One of her future bosses was also one of the first and youngest CMP’s in Chicago, who also supported her in her endeavor to get her CMP – something she managed to achieve on her first attempt. Erin loves that having her CMP shows how seriously she takes her industry, that’s it’s something she’s proud of and that she continues to add to her education within her career.

This continuous learning is actually her favorite part of the industry – she loves “learning something at every event. You’re going to have the events that you do over and over again…but all those new challenges and experiences, it’s always something exciting and new, it keeps you fresh”.

While Erin’s favorite type of event to plan is a recognition event – “you see so much joy in people’s faces and so much pride!’, recently she’s been working on a totally different type of project; Erin was contracted to help with the re-branding and re-opening of the Sunset Bay Lodge in Ballard. While she does still continue to work with SHW, where she worked prior to the pandemic, Erin has also spent the past year starting her own LLC (which is much harder than you might think – there are quite a few licenses and taxes you have to worry about!), setting up vendor and partner relationships, and even re-painting the venue herself when all of the professionals were booked up for home renovations. “It’s the biggest, craziest thing I’ve ever done, but I’ve been so supported by all of our vendor and catering partners.” 

Erin was officially hired on as a contractor for the project on April 19th, with just over a month to go before their first event on May 28th. She says with every event she learns something new, with each and every event getting better and better. “The biggest thing is just getting it open, getting the website up, and getting MPI in so quickly!” She’s excited to have MPI in for our October 2021 event on the 27th, saying “I think you can tell how passionate I am about MPI…it’s always been a big part of my career.” She’ll then host what she calls her “grand finale” to all this hard work with their first open house on November 3rd. We hope to see many of our MPI friends at both the education session on the 27th and the open house on the 3rd!