Events Are Hard to Execute, But You Need to Do It Anyway

This week’s blog post is a bit of a departure from other blog posts.

I had a post all ready to go, about sponsorships and how to position your event to make sure it’s attractive to sponsors (don’t worry, that’s coming next week).

And while I know A TON about that stuff...I also was feeling a little less connected to that particular message this week. I work really, really hard to help give you the tips you need to create a successful event but I also, I feel like we all need a reminder about WHY we do these dang things year after year (or month after month, or week after week).

Because events are hard.

Events can be expensive.

Events can be really, really complicated.

Managing all the details can make you feel like you’re drowning.

People’s feedback to your best effort may sting and make you feel unworthy.

You may feel like you need to “level up” year after year, to reach a bar that eventually will become unreachable.

But what I want to say to you today is this:

Remember WHY you’re doing this.

Think about the hug that one person is going to give you, and how they’re going to tell you in a text message or DM later that you change their life with the space you created.

Think about the way you’re going to feel with glass of wine in hand, looking at all the people you’ve assembled, who are there because they desperately need you to help them.

Think about the connections that you’ll help people make that will quite literally change the course of everything.

Think about, in three years or five years or 10 years, when someone who attended your conference or your retreat tells their employee or their spouse or their boss “You know, it all started to change when I went to this one event this one time…”

Because haven’t you been that person? Whose life was changed by a dinner with new friends at a conference? Or a late night in a hot tub at a retreat?

Because the truth is, sometimes, underneath all of the spreadsheets and the endless feedback loop and the near constant “problem solving” and “fire-putting-out”, you need to remember the bigger picture of HOW you are showing up for your attendees and WHY you are doing this.

Here’s the truth, as undisputed by me and lots and lots of research (which I am not persistent enough to Google, but if you’re feeling skeptical, search “need for human connection” and go forth and read about science!):

The greatest need of humans in modern society (after basic food, shelter, and safety) is connection.

We need to feel connected in some way for our survival.

And it’s not just connected to an idea or to nature or to a business. We need connection to real, life human beings. We need it like we need air.

We need it for our well-being, our creative process, or simply to understand our place in the world. Humans are meaning-making creatures and we are constantly asking “why.” And if we don’t have someone else to EITHER make us feel grounded in our “why” or who can empathetically explain the answer behind the “why”...then we are simply adrift. We make up stories or continue to feel isolated in our unknowing.

Events can change lives because you are creating the forum for those connections to happen. For humans to make sense of their crazy ideas and to drag them out of their isolation.

Every single person that is attending your event feels isolation in some way in their lives. They are coming to your event to find out how they can be less isolated in their confusion around the topic that you’re teaching. Or perhaps they’re simply coming because they know they are isolated and the need to stop feeling such.

I don’t have 5 steps or 3 Top Tips, but I do have one, very, very strong plea.

Please, keep hosting your life-changing events.

Please keep answering customer service emails, and apologizing for tech glitches, and following up for the 37th time.

Please order the fancier wine, or the cheapest vodka, or a ridiculous amount of Grapefruit La Croix.

Please try new things, like a silent meditation for your very chatty sales people, or a workshop on playing for your very serious CEOs.

Please keep hosting dinners and cocktail parties, and things with real food that people can enjoy while learning a ton about each other (and mostly about themselves).

Please keep creating spaces, creating agendas, creating small group discussions that help people feel less alone in what they don’t yet understand.

As a matter of creating harmony in an increasingly disharmonious world, we need you to do it.

Even if it’s not perfect.

Even if it doesn’t sell out.

Even if it doesn’t bring you hundreds of clients (maybe not even one client).

Keep doing it. Keep showing up, keep inviting people to sit with you and your people.

Because, I promise you, if you keep going, keep trying, push through the frustration, and continue hosting? You’ll change everything. Your business. Your community. Your limits. Your life. All of it.

Go forward, be the connector, create the space. We really, really need you.