COPPER PENNY
creative
Copper Penny Creative is where I plan and run events. Signature events, leadership retreats, client programs, team builders, workshops, start to finish.
The Way I Work
You tell me what you want people to walk out feeling, and I build the day backward from there.
This is the work I've been doing for twenty-plus years and the work I'd do on a weekend for fun, which is either a red flag or exactly the person you want holding your run-of-show.
Coaching and consulting happen somewhere else on this site. This is the other half.
Where This Started
I've been doing this as long as I've been working, whether or not it was in the job description.
Most of it happened inside a national construction firm, where I built culture programs and produced events at real scale:
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concert outings
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tailgates
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sporting events
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golf outings
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fishing trips
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vendor parties
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a fundraiser that took a small army to coordinate
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themed gatherings
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DIY activities dropped into work retreats, the outside-the-box thing nobody else wanted to figure out.
I did it all day, every day, and then went home and did it for fun.
Copper Penny Creative is what it's called now that it's a business instead of a side of the desk.
What hasn't changed is the reason I do it: I like watching people walk into a room and realize somebody thought about them.
Event Experience
Think about the last work event you sat through. How did people feel walking out of it? Did it do the thing it was supposed to do? Would anyone sign up to do it again?
The room you put people in says something about how much you value them. It should be worth the time they gave you.
The part I'm good at is the complexity. Usually that means people. Five stakeholders with five different visions for the same event, plus the thirty small decisions nobody thought to ask about until six in the morning the day of.
The exec wants it buttoned up, the business development lead wants it loud, and somebody who has run this thing for eight years has strong opinions about the food.
My job is to hear all of it, find the pieces that are genuinely good, and build a version nobody in that room would have landed on alone. Twenty-plus years of doing this, and what I still care about most is what it feels like to be the person walking in the door: expected, thought about, somewhere they didn't see coming.
Internal Experiences
Retreats, team builds, culture moments. Your team should walk out feeling like the company gives a damn about them, and that comes down to details that look small on paper and land hard in person.
External Experiences
Client events, golf days, appreciation dinners, weeklong programs. People forget the agenda and remember how the day treated them. That's the thing worth designing for.
The Ways This Works
Full Service Experience Design
Complete ownership from concept through execution. Concept, venue, vendors, theme, run-of-show, swag and event essentials sourced, the recap document afterward telling you what worked and what to change. Hand it over and show up.
Multi-Day + Weeklong Programs
Fully embedded from arrival to close-out. Golf tournaments, client summits, flagship events, the ones with a hundred moving parts and no room to improvise. Extra on-site coordinators brought in where one set of hands isn't enough.
Planning + Execution
We build it together, then I run the day so you don't have to. You stay in the decisions that matter and hand off the two hundred that don't. This is where most of my work lives.
Partner Support + On-Site Execution
You work the room. I handle everything else. Built for clients who already have a planner or an internal lead and need someone to make it all happen, including quietly hosting in the background, keeping the room warm and the timing honest.
Day-of Coordination
You've done the planning. I take it from there and run the day. Starts at $1,500.
Every project gets scoped to what the event actually needs, and you'll have a real number in hand before anything is committed.
Workshops + Smaller Gatherings
Not every gathering needs a production behind it. Some of the best ones are ninety minutes on a Tuesday.
Corporate Moments
Lunch and learns, team builders, DIY activities dropped into a retreat, a deliberate pause in the middle of the workday for a holiday or a milestone worth marking. Small footprint, disproportionate payoff.
Dinner Parties & Craft Nights
Themed dinner parties planned like weddings, or a lower-key DIY version for a smaller crowd.
Also...
Keeping it on track
Here's the thing about running events for a living inside construction: you inherit a superintendent's brain whether you want one or not. Sequencing. Long lead times. Who must finish before the next person can start. What breaks if the delivery slips two days.
That's the same skill as an event, just with a different set of nouns, and it's most of why I'm good at this.
So if you have something that isn't an event but needs the same treatment - a move, a renovation, a project with too many people and no owner - I can run that too.
What This Looks Like Once It's Handled
You're in the room instead of behind it.
Nobody's texting you about the caterer. The run-of-show holds, and when it doesn't, somebody who isn't you is already fixing it.
The dinner party happens instead of getting talked about for six months.
And at the end, your people leave feeling like the whole thing was for them, because it was. That's the part this exists to hand off.
Frequently Asked Questions
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