Doing stuff live is scary. Yes, stuff can go wrong disasters can happen and real live human beings will be there to witness it happening in the moment. But there is a secret to making sure that disasters don't happen that often. And a secret that gives you the confidence you need to move forward into the live event space. I can't wait for you to hear it. And you're going to love how easy it is.
Inquiring minds want to know, how are entrepreneurs like us daring bravely to build a stage ditch the sweat pants? And step up to the mic? How do we create our own transformative events? So we can get our message out into the world in a bigger way. It's not only profitable, but it's actually something we can be proud. That's the question. And the answers are inside this podcast. My name is Sarah Faye for welcome to Greenroom Central.
Hey, it, Sarah, I have an invitation for you right now. You can join entrepreneurs from across the globe who share a passion for hosting their own events become part of the community that inspires and cheers you on over at Green Room central.com.
So I'm going to give you my number one strategy for preventing disasters at your next event. This can be fun, y'all. So okay, I know rehearsals are a thing. But we're going to take it one step further. Because yes, you have to do rehearsals, yes, you need to do tech checks. But there is one more thing that you need to assign to your event team. And notice I did not say you do this. You need to assign it to somebody on your event team. And what I want you to tell them is they need to advance everything. That is the secret advance everything. Advanced, yes, fancy word.
But it means just get there in advance. And and what I mean is go early, and how early? Are we talking? Well, and what do I need to get there early for? Well, basically everything go early, I want you to sign someone to go early to everything that is happening at your event to double check stuff. And and I'll leave it up to your event team to decide on what time allotment they should give to this in each scenario, because it varies. But I want you to get there early for everything. And here's the reason why. Because if something is broken, or if something needs fixing, or if something is missing, your team is on it. And you have time to change it. So let me give you a short story here.
I've had a session go that could have gone hugely wrong. So we were training people to we're having like all these subject matter experts in a ballroom teaching about their things getting a big half day event. And each subject matter expert had their own table.
And each table was supposed to have some big signage with the number of their table, their session title and their name so that from across the ballroom, someone one of our guests could see what the topic was about and make a decision if this was for them or not for them. And if they wanted to go to the table, because we kind of ran this event like speed dating.
So we ring the buzzer and say, Okay, you have two minutes to go get to your next table. And in so the guests would scurry around and figure out where they run to learn from next and grab a chair and there'd only be like five chairs in front of every subject matter expert. And so it's really important to make sure that you could see, there was a visual cue of like, what table every table was about? Well, when we went to advance the session early that morning.
I think probably like maybe 90 minutes in advance, we realized that all of the signage wasn't there turns out whoever was in charge of making sure that it had been received that check had failed to happen and so now and then the check of bringing it to the ballroom in advance the night before also failed to happen so we have to check some bells balances go wrong, but But thankfully we had the person go in advance the room and got there and realize there's no signage.
So How the heck are these hundreds of people supposed to look around this ballroom and figure out where they're gonna go for the next few hours? Well, a third check or fourth check and balance was in place, which was, I always have a designer send me the final printer ready files and just want to have them just for my security blanket kind of purposes.
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And so I quickly went to my laptop, got those files, put them on a flash drive. And thankfully, we were at a property a big hotel that had a like a FedEx Kinkos on site.
And so I went in stood at the doors of that fine establishment so that as soon as they open that survey at 7am, I can say, hey, how fast can you print 20 signs for me? And how large can you make them?
And do you have any of those stick on the table tent back so they could stand up on their own? Sure enough. before the session started ate, all the signs are in place, no one was the wiser, and guests could see where they were going, there was beautiful signage in front of every subject matter expert, you just got to assume there's going to be chaos.
You know, if I hadn't had time to fix that problem, before we were to start that morning, there would have been chaos. But because I had assumed that we needed to double check, there might be chaos, you know, the chaos didn't end up happening. And maybe we would have started late or we would have hobbled through, but it would have been a mess.
And thank goodness, we had advanced that session and eliminated the chaos.
So I want to really encourage you that someone on your team should check every space for every session with plenty of time to adjust if need be, again, that amount of time really, you need to kind of decide for yourselves it really, it really depends on how how intricate the session is, how important it is, what's involved where it is. So kind of go through your agenda in advance of the event, decide who's going to advance everything and how much time they need.
And just put that in, in the plan that in the execution plan for the event. Kind of just decide that that's how it's gonna roll and it'll save you time. And it'll kind of prevent problems time and time again, I guarantee you this trick is so simple, but so, so powerful. If you need a little kind of placeholder, a plug, if you will of time, say 90 minutes for safekeeping.
Sometimes you might be able to check something the day before but then you can also to kind of get a bunch of things out of the way. But then maybe the day of you're also kind of circling back. Know that and then just a few things that you're looking for. So I'd say are the tables where they're supposed to be
Are there enough chairs if you're virtual?
Are you checking all the connections the green room for your your presenters you're checking if the remote perfect cube slide advancer is working you're you're checking if the polls are working, you're checking if you can hear the video. You're checking if the we're on break slide and music is working.
You're in person if the flip chart and markers are, are there and do the markers work, are they dried out serving meals is the food on the buffet labeled for allergy purposes. If you're making an offer during the session, does your chat moderator have the link to drop in the chat or their offer forms in the room ready to go if you're in person, I think you get the picture. You're going to go early.
And you're going to make a mental walkthrough of your guests journey and the presenters journey and you're going to make sure everything is where it should be.
Our goal made some headway here and I guessing you can almost feel like this sense of relief right by just kind of implementing this one strategy inside of every single event you do bigger, small, virtual or in person. I can't stress enough how much this one detail is going to save you and give you so much more confidence and peace of mind.
Thank you for listening to the greenroom central podcast. If you love this episode Then I want you to please take a screenshot on your phone and posted to Instagram. And be sure to tag at Sarah Fejfar. And let me know why you liked it and what you'd like to hear or like to hear from in the future. And that'll help me know what to create for you.
If you're thinking right now, Sarah, yes, and event is happening. But here's the thing. I have the size of the team who can make this happen, but we need someone to teach us. Then go to green central.com To book a private workshop right now, you'll get a customized two day workshop for your team. during that workshop, you'll get a customized, repeatable framework that you can use to start or scale events. You'll then create a roadmap as a team, so that everyone means the workshop with a shared vision for how to move forward with confidence.
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I appreciate your commitment, led, learning the mindset and strategies of live events, which to keep going, I want you to keep learning. And if you want more, I want you to head over to reserve a central doc For show notes and follow links from today's
