Strategy
Connecting the business moment, the people, and the purpose, so every decision supports one direction instead of competing with itself.
Nightshift Planning Co.
Event strategy for the decisions made before the planning starts.
I am Madeline Narlock, and Nightshift is my event strategy practice. I work with small businesses, founder-led brands, and creators who gather people on purpose.
Headquartered in Phoenix.
Partnering worldwide.
Established 2025
Strategy before planning
Phoenix, Arizona
A decade of experiences
I am in this for what happens to your business.
A launch that gives you a market. An opening that fills the calendar for a season. An annual dinner people start rearranging their year around. A community that finally grows because it has somewhere to be. Customers who stay because of one night they still bring up.
Ten years of that work, across nonprofits, global brands, and small businesses.
- Small businesses
- Founder-led brands
- Experiential marketing
- Hospitality
- Creators and community
- Nonprofit
- Fortune 500 brands
Nightshift is a practice of one, by design. I read your business, I write the strategy, and I am there for the parts that matter most.
How I work
Most events get planned in the order the vendors need, not the order the business needs.
A date gets chosen. A venue gets booked. A budget gets committed. Vendors come on, and each one asks for decisions in the sequence that suits their own work.
By the time anyone asks what the experience is for, the format is already fixed, and the answer has to be reverse engineered from choices that were made for other reasons.
I work the other direction. Purpose, audience, your role as host, and what you want out of it get settled first. Every decision after that has something to measure against.
An experience is shaped by the decisions made long before anyone arrives.
The practice
Four things I bring to every engagement.
They arrive together and stay together. The strategy gets written down, and then I am there for the decisions that follow it, all the way through to the night itself.
Hosting
How you lead the evening. Where your attention is worth spending, which conversations to protect, and what to hand off so you can stay present.
Creative direction
Defining what the experience should feel like, then translating that into direction a venue, a caterer, or your own team can follow.
Coaching
Asking the questions, naming the tension, and helping you trust the choices that fit what you are building.
Hosting
Strategy decides what an experience is for. Hosting is how people feel it.
The welcome. The pace. Whether you seemed glad they came. Whether anyone made the introduction that mattered. These are the things guests actually carry home, and they are all things you do, not things a plan does.
So part of my work is building that capacity in you. Where to spend your attention, which conversations are worth protecting, what to hand off so you are leading the evening instead of managing it.
The strategy serves this year's calendar. The hosting is yours permanently.
Meet Madeline
A strategist who stays close to the work.
I have spent more than 10 years building events. Nonprofit galas, brand activations, hospitality openings, community gatherings, and the kind of dinner people still bring up a year later.
Somewhere in there I noticed something. The production always mattered, but it was never the thing that made an experience land. What made it land was that someone decided early what it was for, and protected that decision through every choice after.
Usually that someone was me, standing a little outside my job description. A background in project management and operations helped, though events came first and they still do.
Nightshift is that job, made official. I come in before the venue, before the budget, before the first vendor call, and I stay for the whole year.
Madeline Narlock, Founder
Madeline brought clarity to every decision and helped us create an experience that felt deeply aligned with our business. She became a trusted partner to both me and my team.Strategic Event Partnership client
Ways to work together
Three ways in. One method behind all of them.
The Partnership is where I do my best work. A full year, the whole calendar, every experience building on the one before it. Start there if you are ready for it. Start with a single session if you want to feel out how I think first. Start with the Toolkit and run it yourself. Same method, three doors.
The Toolkit
$47
Twenty-one templates covering the full planning lifecycle, plus the methodology that shows you when to reach for each one. Everything I use, in your hands.
Strategy Session
From $600
One event, one opportunity, one set of decisions that needs direction now. You leave with it written down. The fee is credited toward a partnership begun within 90 days.
Strategic Event Partnership
$1,600 per month, 12 months
The annual calendar, 8 written strategy briefs, monthly working sessions, quarterly resets, and direct access throughout. A full year of building this together.
Not sure which fits? Start with a 15-minute introduction and we will work it out together.
Headquartered in Phoenix.Partnering worldwide.
I work with businesses that gather people on purpose, wherever they happen to be.
Whether it is taking shape in Phoenix or across the country, the work starts the same way. A conversation about what this moment asks of your business, and of you.
Start a conversation
Tell me what you are building.
Tell me what is taking shape, where you are in it, and what would actually help. However rough it is right now is fine.