Running events post-COVID is tough. Just getting people to invest the time to show up is a real challenge. I'm sure my fellow entrepreneurs have felt this pain and I am keen to share my learnings from our recent CampusLife event. (Check out the pic here)
I am not an event manager by trade, but those that know me well will understand that I LOVE running events. It ticks a lot of boxes for me; meeting new people, helping clients, drinking & eating, doing business, and developing my team. What's not to love!
Over my career, I have run events for 2,000 plus people in Las Vegas (yes we had an Elvis...no it wasn't me...), arranged an international event in Sydney for 800 people from 12 countries including negotiating with BMW to donate 2x fully loaded motorbikes, and loads of smaller client events too. I even had my own business club running monthly events - BYOB Social Club. Some events were amazing, some not so much, but I learnt a lot from all of them.
Last week my team pulled off an amazing event with 100% attendance. Who does that?! I was so proud of them that I wanted to write this blog partly to give them some kudos and also to pass on some knowledge to help others out there. Here are my top 3 tips from rocking your next event:
1) Vibe - your tribe is your vibe. I am lucky enough to have an awesome team of Marketing Coordinators who are studying or just finished their university courses. They are motivated, hard-working, and down-to-earth and they attract similar people to our events.
A large part of why people will show up to an event is because of who invited them and how they feel about that particular relationship. Most of the people that showed up had a personal connection to someone. If you don't have a big team, get your close friends or business associates to help bring people.
2) Teamwork - many hands make light work. Gaby was the event manager and I put a lot of responsibility on her to do this job because I recognised she is a fabulous people motivator. Basically, everyone in my team loves her, and thus showed up and put in a full effort because she is awesome.
That's a dozen people helping to promote the event, set up, pitch in and pack up. Which freed up my time to do what I do best, network. If the event is positioned to authentically help your target audience, you can find people to put in the effort to help run it.
3) Prepare - do the work. There is nothing like preparation to ensure your event runs smoothly. We actually moved the date a few times as it was a bit slow to get traction initially. But once we had the right team in place to run it, we went to work on refining the plan.
We thought about what our clients and students would really enjoy on the night, reviewed it constantly and worked hard to get it done.
So there you go, a few quick tips on how to get people to show up to your events and run them stress-free. Of course, there is a lot more detail that I could talk about and happy for people to reach out if they want some more advice.
But I would really love to hear some other tips and tricks from those more qualified and experienced than myself, so hit me up with a comment below and let's help small business owners to run better events.
Cheers Andrew
P.S. Congratulations to my team for an awesome job: Gabriella Ishak event manager extraordinaire!; Shinyi Chin the best CMO I could hope for; Lily Schultzdream team leader; Chloe Smith bringing the best vibes always; Nako Akashicapturing the night in pics; Carmen Parker rocking the bar; Mitch Benbowpurveyor of fine wines; Ben Jowett always helping, especially for high stuff; Andi Campisi new team member and bringing it!; Carynna Teh the quiet achiever, I see your efforts and very much appreciated; Eliza Wright off on her dream job but still came and contributed, amazing!
Special mention to Grace Pehar and Angelina Tully who were overseas but still helping out; Daniela Montes de Oca our newest recruit who helped with the tequila and that can't be underestimated!
