I got a query over the weekend, and it is a question that I was given all of the time. And it is in case you're planning your first event, your first business occasion, what might your guidelines be or what might your feedback be? Events are a massive passion for me. I threw my first one once I turned 18 and found it loads of fun. At the peak of it.
I used to throw approximately 30 events a week, so I truly love the events I have and I am by no means form of educated officially in the space. I simply drove in and I pretty much made each easy mistake the hard way. And what's lovely about that is that every bit of kind of every bit of perspective I have are advice that I give is built on, is built on experience. And so for anybody thinking about hosting an event, the first thing I would say to them is if it's your first event playing small. So most people, when they think about events initially speaking, they want to do something big.
They want to make everybody go, whoa. And the fact of the matter is, you are 100% never going to be able to go from zero to a hundred in the event space. There is simply so much stuff which you want to grasp and so many useful things after which such a lot of mental things.
It is like whilst you throw an occasion, you are taking obligation for all of the people you deliver collectively and for all of the people that come. And that takes pretty intellectual capacity. And so actually, you know, if you need to host your first occasion with one thousand people, you'll have a bit of a frightening breakdown. And so begin small, begin genuinely, genuinely small, now no longer simply in phrases of the intellectual capacity, however additionally withinside the financial space. More regularly than not, the irritating aspect about events is that actually, 90% of people in their first instance lose money. And so in case you begin small, you'll lose small.
But in case you start big, you'll lose big. So begin small. And the alternative moderate factor I'll make on this is that you'll make hundreds of errors for your first event. And the smaller they are, the heart of these errors is to see. The larger you move, the more apparent and large the errors will be. And so keeping matters small for your first instance is truly everything.
When it comes to kind of the second point that I share if you're looking at an event, don't get too carried away by yourself in it. So a lot of people will think very self-centred when they throw an event. And what's so important is to see everything from your customer's perspective and to ensure that your customer's journey is when it comes to hearing about the event and buying tickets for the event or registering for the event that it's convenient to them. And that affects how you market things, that affects how you present things on site. And convenience is so important because when you're doing something hosting an event and if it's you, you're interrupting people's normal journey.
You're saying, hey, you normally do this, but you should totally do this. And if you want to do that, you need to make sure that you do it in a manner which is convenient to the person. You really invite them in. You don't make your site overly complicated. Are your messaging really difficult to understand? You make the messaging around your event simple and aligned with your target audience, and you make the journey from that messaging to your site really simple and really, really accessible.
The second thing is, whilst you consider the event, consider it from the second Your attendee decides, okay, I'm going to go. So consider the timing. Is the timing handy? Think about the journey to the space in which you are going to host the event. Is that handy or is it really out of the way? And consider once they get there. You know, in the event that they need to park how they prefer if they are biking, can they store motorcycles and then how they enter the event, how they how the registered and then their event experience? And there are hundreds of various examples that I ought to supply within the space. But I'm hoping that is being considered from a genuinely huge form of event organisers' perspective.
So I may not move into the little examples, however, I suppose it is so, so vital to think about your occasion out of your attendee's attitude and nearly make a list of their journey and pretty much from the second they've registered for tickets to a week after they depart. You know, quite a few times people only consider events in phrases of when people come inside the door and whilst humans depart the doors, they do not consider sending them emails the day afterwards to thank them for coming and possibly asking them for their advice and feedback.
People that have come are really well positioned to give you feedback in terms of what they thought of the experience, what perhaps you could do better for next time, and how you could do things next time. And so I think about, as I said, from your customer's perspective. And the third thing when it comes to events is not to get you not to let your ego get ahead of you and remember that you're just starting off. So again, when you're starting off, you want it to be the biggest and the best, and you want everybody to be really, really impressed with what it is that you're doing. But.
If it's your first one. Honestly, the best thing is just making sure you host a successful event and that people are happy with it. It's not about blowing them away; you won't do that in the first instance. And to be fair, you won't be able to afford that in the first instance. And so bringing your ego in a check-in is important. So you might have an idea that you want to host in the biggest venue. You don't deserve that in your first instance. You haven't earned it and you won't be able to manage it. Taking it down to a realistic venue is important and you might want to have the big speakers or the biggest entertainers. Again, if it's your first run at it, you won't be able to manage them properly. You'll end up paying way over the odds for them. And so you need to come in at a certain level and build towards whatever goal you have. That's pretty much across the board. You'll want the fancy packages when it comes to production. You'll want the best sound, the best, like the best, all of that. And you won't be able to you won't be able to afford it. You won't be able to manage it. It'll knock the balance of your event, out
of sync. So anyway, keep your ego in check.
That's much easier said than done. And there are huge amounts of pride obviously, associated with events. And there's want to do things as best as possible. But frustratingly, there is that all has its place in its journey and skipping steps in that will a lot of the time cost you too much money and so you'll have to raise your ticket prices and it'll get to a point that it's out of balance. Ah, you'll just take on too much personal stress and crash. So you must keep things in check so you can manage yourself and manage the event, keeping everything in balance.
