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 the light 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.
Hello, and welcome to episode 17 of the Events Insider PodCast. Today, I am sharing 12 lessons from 12 years planning events. And this episode came about because I posted something on LinkedIn the other day, that got quite a lot of attention. And on reflection, I mean, I kind of just threw up the post, and I'll talk about what it was in a minute, but I kind of just threw it up on the fly.
And then yeah, it got a really good reaction. And I thought actually, that's quite a significant thing. So what happened was I so 12 years ago, I graduated from the International College of Management in Sydney with a Bachelor of Business majoring in event management. So I have an event management degree. So graduated 12 years ago, and from this college, and then the other day, I was on site, the college running an event for my client under my own business. And it was kind of this beautiful full circle moment. And I posted that on LinkedIn. And obviously everyone was, you know, sending me congratulations. And you know how well I've done and that sort of thing. And on reflection, that was something that was kind of a milestone, I mean, you sort of finished college and start out in the world of events. And so to be back there, running an event for my client, under my own business was a beautiful thing. And so I was reflecting on the fact that I have been planning events for 12 years. And so I wanted to do this podcast episode. I don't know if these would be like my top things. But I was sort of reflecting on what would I want to share with people, what are some things that I would want to impart my wisdom on to other people. And so these are 12 things that I've put together that I want to share with you today. So let's get into it.
So the first lesson is that it's a fine balance between being detail oriented and driving yourself crazy. Now, I am a combination of the left and the right hand side of the brain. So I'm not super duper analytical, and I'm not superduper creative. I'm a blend of a bit of both. And I always thought that was a negative thing. And turns out, that's the perfect combination for being an event planner. So if you are the same, don't be disheartened, you are in the right place. But my lesson around, you know, it's a fine balance between being detail oriented and driving yourself crazy is because for events, we do need to be detail oriented, we do need to focus on the small things and make sure we cross every T and dot every eye. But it can spiral into driving yourself crazy, because the thing about events is that there is always more that you can check there is always more that you can do, there is always more that you can add. I feel like there's no such thing as a perfect event. And we can drive ourselves crazy with always feeling like we need to do more and check more and perfect things better. So it's about finding that balance for you in knowing what are you going to be comfortable with in terms of making sure that you've crossed your T's and dotted your eyes, without losing yourself and driving yourself crazy. So making sure that you are focusing on the small stuff to make sure the event is as successful as it can be, but not driving yourself crazy.
So lesson two is that a cohesive concept and theme will always work wonders for engaging your audiences. And I talk a lot about your concept and your theme. And in module two of events Academy. You know, we have a whole module on brief to concept and coming up with your concept because it's so important. Your event concept is essentially like the glue that ties everything together. You know, you can have a nice venue or a great speaker or some good catering. But if it doesn't all fit together in this strong cohesive event concept, then it can just be a bit random. And when there's so many events out there vying for people's time, what is it that's going to make them come to your event? Because we need to stand out and when we have a strong cohesive concept and theme that really feels like an event experience, then people are going to pay attention and attend your event.
So lesson three sort of flows on from this And this lesson is that free food and drink isn't enough of a selling feature to get people to attend an event anymore. It may have worked. At some point, it does. Look, it's not a hard and fast rule, it can still work. But we need to remember that free food and drink isn't enough to get people to attend. So if you're putting on a free event, and all your advertising is like, Hey, we're gonna serve drinks, and there's going to be good food. Like, that's not enough anymore. What else? Is it that you're offering to get people to come to your event? Because like I said, there are so many events out there. People are time poor, why would they come to your event? And just saying you're going to serve food and drink isn't going to cut it anymore?
Lesson four is to always question why you're holding the event and get clear on your objectives. And I talk about this a lot. And the first thing that I always ask a client when I start working with them is why are we holding this event, and it can sound abrupt and blunt. But it's really important to understand why we're holding an event and what are our objectives, because I think sometimes, you know, putting on an event can sound really glamorous, and like something we should do. But if we don't understand really, why we're holding it, and what we're hoping to achieve out of it, then you're not going to have any guiding parameters as to what the event should look like. You're not going to know if it's a success if you don't set out clear objectives from the beginning. So if someone says to you, hey, we need to put on this event, then the first thing that you should be doing is why, why are we holding this event? What's the objective?
Lesson five is that sometimes adding things for the sake of it can be worse than not having them at all. And I'll explain what I mean. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of making sure that we have a lot of different things to keep our guests engaged and to make the event exciting and memorable. But sometimes when we just add a lot of things in for the sake of it, it can be really overwhelming for our guest. So whether it's a lot of different experiences, a lot of different stuff happening on stage, a lot of different decorations, whatever it is, when there's a lot going on, it can be really overwhelming for them, they don't know where to look, they don't know what to do. And it's all just overwhelming. The other thing is, when we add a lot of things just for the sake of it, it means that we're probably stretching our budget too thin, which means that we're probably not nailing anything or doing anything really well. And so what I'm a big advocate for is picking two, maybe three things that are going to be really memorable and important for our guest, and absolutely nailing those things. Rather than having 10 different things that are just going to be random that we've added for the sake of it.
Lesson Six is that managing your guests expectations will almost guarantee that you'll have a great result for your event. So when we manage someone's expectations, or hopefully exceed them, then we're going to be able to achieve the objectives that we set out for our event. We do this by our pre event communication. So making sure that we're speaking to the right person and getting the right people to our event, making sure that they understand what the event is and what they've signed up for and what they can expect. And then leading up to it, just making sure that we're managing what the experience on the day is going to be like so whether there's food or whatever it is making sure that they understand what they're walking into. And then hopefully we can meet or definitely try and exceed their expectations so that we get the result that we want.
Lesson number seven is that risk management plans are overrated, do them lightly and don't stress about it too much. Now, before any lawyers come at me, obviously, if your company or the venue you're holding the event in or whatever, requires by law, that you do a risk management plan, obviously, you need to do it. But for the everyday business event company event, then we don't need to get too stressed about it events absolutely come with risks, and we need to be aware of what they can be. But it's as simple as thinking about what could possibly go wrong. How bad would it be if it did go wrong? And what do we need to do to maybe mitigate that risk? What plan do we need to put in place to try and make sure that doesn't happen. And that's as simple as it needs to be. So absolutely spend some time thinking about what could go wrong, and maybe putting some plans in place to make sure that it doesn't, but we don't need to get too stressed about it for the everyday business event. Because I think sometimes we can stress too much about something going wrong, and it's an event something will go wrong. But if we just spend some time and try and mitigate as many risks as possible, don't stress about it too much. Do it lightly and move on.
Number eight is that good suppliers are like gold and we want to treat them well and keep them keen. Now as you go along your event planning journey and as you start to plan more events over the years, you will naturally build up your own little black book of suppliers that you turn to when you need to plan an event. So unfortunate Leave, you know, there are some not so good suppliers out there sometimes. And sometimes we do need to weed through a few bad ones to get to the good ones. But when you do find a good supplier, we want to make sure that we are treating them well. So making sure that we're paying them on time, you know, not trying to like negotiate right down or those sorts of things, we want to make sure that we're throwing work their way when we can, and keeping them in our good books and us in this so that it's a mutually beneficial relationship, because when you do find a good supplier, it is gold, and you want to keep working with them. So treat them well and keep them keen.
Lesson number nine is to focus your time and money on what's going to make the biggest impact for your event. So I'm going to guess that you probably time poor, and most of the time, your event budget is going to feel tight. So what we need to make sure is that we're focusing our time and money on what's going to make the biggest impact and get us the result that we want. So like I was saying earlier, how we don't want to stretch ourselves too thin by just adding in a lot of random stuff, we need to make sure that we're focused in what's going to make the biggest impact. And this really comes back to what your objectives are and who your audience is. So thinking about what you're trying to achieve, and who you're trying to achieve it for. And really focusing in on what are the key elements of the event that are going to get the biggest impact and get us the result that we want. And that's where we focus our limited resources being our time and our money.
Number 10 is what I call the three P's, which is that you always want to be personal, professional, and punctual. Now, this doesn't just relate to events, but you can translate it to any area of work that you do. But I think it's really important. As people that plan events, we want to make sure that we're personal, professional and punctual in every interaction that we have. So whether it's with our suppliers, with our guests with our stakeholders, we want to make sure that we are portraying a personal approach that we're being professional and that we're being punctual. Because an event is not going to run smoothly unless we have those three things.
Lesson 11 is to be a stickler for the budget might sound boring, but it's super important because if we go over budget for our event, then it's not going to end well. And if we go way under budget, then we haven't maximised the opportunity that we could have with our event. So it's not just something that we draft at the beginning and we reconcile at the end, we want to make sure that we're referring back to it and updating it and that we've got a working budget throughout the whole planning process. So I'm usually in the budget like almost daily, updating it, adding to it adjusting things as they become solid. So I'm an absolute stickler for the budget, but it means that we're absolutely maximising every dollar that we have. But we're also making sure that we're not putting ourselves into bad waters by going over budget.
And lesson 12. My final lesson for this episode is that you will never stop learning and to never stop learning. What I love about the events industry is that it is so broad, it is so diverse. And there's always more that you can do and try and be inspired by. So making sure that you're following other people getting inspiration from other people's events, making sure that you're attending events yourself to experience what you think works and what doesn't work and getting ideas from those events. Making sure that you're trying new things, new formats, new suppliers, to always be learning what's going to work best for you and your events. And just making sure that you're always learning whether that's, you know, through something professional like events academy or purely reflecting back on the events that you've run and going, what worked well, what could I have done better, and taking those learnings to the next events that you run?
So those are my 12 lessons from 12 years of planning business events. I'll recap them for you. So number one, it's a fine balance between being detail oriented and driving yourself crazy. Number two, a cohesive concept and theme will always work wonders for engaging your audience. Number three, free food and drink isn't enough of a selling feature anymore to get people to attend. Number four, always question why you're holding the event and be clear on your objectives. Number five, adding things in for the sake of it can be worse than not having the middle number six, managing your guests expectations will almost guarantee you a great result. Number seven risk management plans are overrated do them lightly and don't stress too much. Number eight good suppliers a gold treat them well and keep them keen. Number nine, focus your time and money on what's going to make the biggest impact. Number ten. Remember the three P's always be personal, professional and punctual. Number eleven be a stickler for the budget and number twelve: Never stop learning. I hope those lessons are helpful. Let me know which one you loved the most. I would love to connect with have you on LinkedIn or Instagram, and I'll put the link below to events Academy if you want to check it out. But that's it for this week and I look forward to chatting 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
