[peteforde]

I just wanted to clarify one small point, because I threw around the term "core competency" which shifted your attention from the product to the people trying to make it happen. Let me reframe, because in that moment, I was definitely talking about the secret sauce aka the reason people would want to come to your event.

If you opened a store advertising "the tastiest yams", you would not hire an external operator to source yams. It's not because you can't learn how to buy yams at wholesale - anyone can do that, if they put in the time. It's because your customers believe that you have a superior opinion when it comes to yams, and they are effectively delegating the role to you because they want to gain access to yams that they could never buy directly even if they learned a bit about yam logistics themselves.

Never outsource your yam tasting. To do so would be to suggest that you have no particular insight into the yams that you're buying, and so there's no reason for them to keep you in the loop.