Jodie McLean 0:04
Hey, I'm Jodie. Event Manager, business owner, educator and podcast host. I'm an introverted homebody, want to be wine master, and I truly believe in the power of events to inspire, delight and ignite human potential. Every week, I take you backstage into the wonderful world of business events, and give you the insider scoop on how to take your events to the next level. Before we begin, I'd like to acknowledge the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the traditional custodians of the lands where we live, learn and listen. Let's get into it.
Well, hello, and welcome to episode one of the Events Insider Podcast. I'm very excited to be here and thank you for tuning in to this episode. I thought for today, it would be good to sort of introduce myself and this podcast to you and sort of why I've started it and take you on a bit of a journey about what we're going to cover in this podcast. And today's episode is going to be about just like I'm getting started with this podcast, we're going to talk all about getting started with your event. And I'm going to give you lots of tips and tricks about how to get started because to be honest, it's probably my number one ask question is okay, I've got a plan an event, where do I start, and to be honest, it's something I'm really passionate about, because it's something that I think a lot of people get wrong. So we're gonna dive into that today. But before we do, I thought I would just give you a bit of an insight into who I am, so that you know who you're listening to, and what you can expect from this podcast going forward. So I do hope to bring you a lot of value. And I do hope that you will subscribe and listen to all of my tips, tricks and interviews every week. So a little about me, my name is Jodi, I am an event manager. I'm an aspiring wine master. And now I'm a podcast host. I have been doing events for pretty much over a decade now I studied at uni and have been working for lots of different businesses, small businesses, large corporations, not for profits, and everything in between bringing their events to life. And as far back as I can remember, I have always wanted to start my own business. I'm not really sure where that came from. But basically, since I was a teenager, I always thought I would start my own business. And so in 2019, while I was working for a business association, running their events, I decided it was time to step out on my own and become an entrepreneur myself. And so I launched my events, agency JEM events. And for the past four years, I've been working one on one with my clients to bring their business events to life. And as I'm working with these businesses, and kind of chatting to other businesses about potentially outsourcing their events, it became really clear that there was a whole group of businesses that didn't want to outsource their events, because they had what they called an internal resource that could manage their events. And by that in inverted commas, resource, I mean, the amazing admin professionals that plan amazing business events without the knowledge, skills and expertise, and it just gets lumped on them. And I'm sure I'm speaking to a lot of you, and you can understand that feeling. And so it became really clear that there was this group of people. And as I was meeting them at networking events, and venue openings, it became really clear that there was this group of amazing admin professionals who had to plan business events, but they felt really overwhelmed and under equipped to do so. And I started thinking, Well, I know how to plan events, I've got a decade of experience, this is literally what I do day in day out, why don't I share my knowledge, tools and resources with admin professionals to help equip and upskill them in planning business events. So in 2022, I launched events Academy, which is all about upskilling, and equipping admin professionals in planning business events. So you can jump onto events academy.com.au, and download some free resources, if that's of benefit to you. But basically, through that, I sort of thought it'd be good to kind of reach more people and share some free content with people who, you know, maybe don't want to jump inside the course. So that's where this podcast came about. And my goal with this podcast is to do just that. It's to share my knowledge, tools and resources from over a decade, and take you behind the scenes of what it's like to plan business events. So I'm going to bring you a mix of solo episodes where I will share my expertise with you like this, and some guest interviews. So at this stage, we're going to alternate the two and we'll see how we go but I'd love your feedback as well. After a few episodes, let me know what you're loving what you want more of. But I am going to bring you some guest expert interviews as well with people in the industry who are experts in their particular field so that we can dive deeper into those topics.
And I thought for today because I am getting started with this podcast, I thought I would help you get started with your event. As I said at the beginning, it is something I'm really passionate about and something that I think people get wrong all the time. So today we're going to dive into Okay, where do we actually get started?
Just jumping in to let you know that this episode of the events insider podcast is brought to you by events Academy, Australia's first digital education platform for admin professionals to upskill in Event Management. At events Academy, we believe in the power of events to inspire delight and ignite human potential. And if you want to learn how to plan amazing business events with confidence and creativity, then you're in the right place. So for now, let's get back to the episode.
Okay, so you need to plan an event. Where do you start? Now, let me tell you what people typically do. So typically, when you need to plan an event, you open up a fresh Google page, and you type in event venue, insert city that you're gonna hold it in. So people will type in event venue Sydney, conference venue Brisbane, private dining room Adelaide, all those sorts of things. But what I want to tell you is there's about 20 steps that we need to do before that, and I don't say that to overwhelm you or to overcomplicate things, absolutely not, you know, I'm all about streamlining. But we really need to do the groundwork first in order to set ourselves up for success. And jumping straight to trying to find a venue is skipping a lot of important steps that are going to make it actually easier for us to plan the event. So what we want to do instead is start with our brief. Now, inside the course I talk about a whole project plan. But for the purpose of this episode, today, I just want to focus on the event brief, because that's what's going to be really crucial, and help us so much when it comes to actually planning the event. So whether you've just been given a brief kind of on the fly, or there was a lot of you know, chitchat in a meeting and ideas floating around, what you need to do is take some time to actually sit down and put together the event brief based on all of that conversation that has happened. So what your event brief needs to include is four things and we're gonna go through them now. So the first thing that your brief needs to cover is the outcomes. And by that, I mean, why are we holding this event? And it's a great question to ask your stakeholders when they tell you that we need to put on an event. So why are we holding up? What are the outcomes? What are we hoping to achieve with this event? And it always blows my mind? How many people don't really think about that? Like, they just think, oh, let's hold an event. Because events are fun. And that's great. And if the objective is purely social, then that's fine. And that's what you'd put on your brief. But odds are, there's probably going to be more than that, because we're talking about business event. So we need to get real clarity on why are we holding it? What are we hoping to achieve? And what does success actually look like? Because when we come full circle to evaluating our event, that's what we're going to come back to and look at, okay, did we actually achieve what we set out to achieve? Take? Yes, the event was a success. So that's the first thing is getting clear on your outcomes and objectives and what you're trying to achieve with this event. The second thing that you want in your event brief is your audience. So again, getting really clear on who it is that this event is for, who are we inviting, who are we hoping to attract who's going to be invited. So you know, whether it's an internal team event, or it's going to be a public ticketed event, we want to get really clear and drill down on who that person is. And it's helpful if you have, you know, a real clarity over the exact person and kind of write down, you know, some of their characteristics, the type of person they are. Because when it comes to briefing your suppliers and things like that, it's going to be helpful to give them a really good picture of who is going to be at the event so that they can tailor their service accordingly. So that's the second thing is getting really clear on who this event is, for the end of the day, you know, an event is only an event because there's people there, whether virtually or in person, an event exists because people attend the event. So whilst it can be really exciting to focus on some of the other aspects of an event, I think it's really important that we keep coming back to the guest and their experience. And so getting real clarity on who that is, is going to really help guide our decisions that we make in the planning process, when we keep coming back to is that suitable for this person? Would this person like this, what's important to this person, all those sorts of things. So that's the second thing is your audience. Now the third thing in your brief is budget. And this is where some people get a little bit unstuck because they don't always have a clear budget. And that's okay. At the briefing stage. Obviously, you know, the more clarity we can get around it, it's going to be helpful, but what I think is important here is to at least kind of have a starting point. So
And whether that starting point is like a total lump sum that you've got for the event, or whether it's a rough guide on how much the business is willing to spend per person, or maybe it's going to be, you know how much the event is going to be ticketed, or how much people have to pay to attend. So there's a few different ways you can come at your budget. And either ways fine, depending on again, the objectives and kind of what the event is. But if you can have some kind of clarity over what money you're working with, even if it's a bit of a range, that's going to really help again, guide your planning decisions, because it's going to put you on a path of where you start exploring the venues, you inquire to the supplies, you inquire to. Because obviously, with events, you know, there's such a range in the cost of events. And so just having a rough guide is going to be really helpful for you. So if you haven't been getting clarity on that, or made decisions on that, then definitely bring that up, because it is really important to include in your brief. And the fourth thing that I like to put in an event brief is what I call non negotiables. Now, these are your must haves. So it's the things that sometimes don't get brought up till the last minute, and someone assumes that, you know, we knew Oh, yes, we definitely have to have that. We need to know that from the beginning. So again, if this hasn't been discussed, then definitely bring it up with your stakeholders at the beginning, what are our non negotiables? What are our must haves? What's really important to us that we need to include in this event, so these are often actually the catalyst for the event. So it might be you know, a specific date that you need to have the event on, it might be a specific venue, you know, maybe it's your company facility that you're opening. And so obviously, you know, it's going to be on site at that facility or something, maybe it's the specific content or the topic that the event is around, you know, there are a lot of different things that can be a non negotiable. Sometimes they're not, as you know, they're not hard and fast, but I just call it non negotiables. Because these are sort of things that are really important, I guess you could call them. So it's important to get those listed down so that they can again, help guide your planning and your decisions. So if there are things that are not flexible, and you know, strict, then that's actually a good thing. And it's going to help guide you. So those four things that we want to have in our brief are the outcomes, the audience, the budget, and our non negotiables. So we want to spend a decent amount of time getting real clear on those four things. Because then you can go and start your planning process with all of that information in mind. So when you do go and you know search for a venue in Google and start to inquire, you can actually give them a decent brief and solid information around this is how many people this is who they are. This is our budget that we're working towards, and all those sorts of things, which means it's going to actually make that process much easier. Because if you don't provide that information to your suppliers, when you're inquiring, they're just going to come back and ask you those questions anyway. So it is good to have all that sorted so that you can make that process smoother and less back and forth. It's like the saying, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail, it's so cliche, but it's so true. And I really believe that your brief acts as your roadmap to your decision making, you know, planning an event can become really overwhelming. And especially when you spiral down the Google rabbit hole of options, it can be really overwhelming. And so actually getting clear on all these things gives you this roadmap to make your decisions. And if you can get kind of sign off and approval on those things from the beginning, it frees you up to then go and make decisions that as long as they are aligned to those aspects of your brief, you can feel confident that you can go ahead and make those decisions because they're achieving what the brief is. So the next time you get tasked with an event, don't feel overwhelmed, take a moment and actually put down your outcomes, your audience, your budget and your non negotiables. And that will give you the roadmap to then go and start the planning process. So you don't have to feel overwhelmed with where to start. Now you know where to start? Well, I hope that was helpful to get you started in planning your next event. I've got some great topics coming up and some amazing guest expert interviews to share with you if you want to get more content like this, as well as a spotlight on some of our suppliers and venues to visit then head to the show notes and sign up to our weekly events insider email, and I'll chat to you next week.
Thanks for listening to this episode of the Events Insider Podcast. If you loved it, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, share with your friends, and I'll chat to you next week. Bye
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
