My Secret Life As An Event Planner

As most of you know, I've been a talent agent of sorts, first for music then for speakers, for over a quarter century.

However, I was actually an event planner first, and continued to plan events off and on for most of that time.?And if I hadn't planned an event, I might never have started this career.

As a freshman in college, I got this crazy idea to put on a concert. I'm still not sure where it came from. I found the phone number for the William Morris Agency. I asked them for the cheapest musical act they had at the time (answer: husband and wife act Angelo and Veronica). Then I made a flyer and asked a bunch of student organizations for anywhere from $50 to $400, got a concrete company and florist to each donate $100, and we were on!?I then asked our amazing DePauw Gospel Choir to open, and then I asked a local Indianapolis coffee house singer to open.??

The smartest thing I did was to get people to do things I didn't know how to do, like sound and printing real flyers that involved pictures and such.?The dumbest thing I did was to book the biggest auditorium on campus instead of the medium to make it all crowded and lively.?I did at least one concert every semester with our budget increasing by 800%. At one point the student activities counselor said that we had the second largest student organization on campus, trailing only the football team.

I learned that it takes an incredible amount of time and energy.?Things you thought?were done and finished get opened up and you have to redo them.?People you were counting on backed out last minute. Other people you thought you couldn't count on stepped up in a big way. Budgets change, bands are late, and you don't sleep the day before and you can't do anything else.?Sometimes you don't sleep for the night after, either, wondering how you could have done it differently or better, no matter how successful it was.

That coffee house guy that we'd booked to open, named John David Webster, came up to me after the concert and said, "Hey, man.?Do you want to be my manager?"?I said, "Sure!?Uh, what's a manager?"

That led me to my first time on the agent side of things, booking him for coffee houses and churches for $30 to $50 a pop, maybe $100 on a good day.?We didn't know about commissions so I just told him to pay me $20 every once in a while.

When I was graduating, I realized I needed a job. Since I'd booked talent from William Morris for four years, they hired me.?

Once I started at Premiere a couple years later, I realized that we had access to these amazing speakers, so I decided to start our own internal training series for our staff.?"Hey, I know you normally get $10,000 (or $50,000) to speak, but can you come in and speak for 20 people for free?"?This started our Premiere University series, which has had dozens of events for our staff over the years.?You pick up little things, like the fact that if you've got snack food available, make it "quiet".?Chips? No.?Bagels? Yes!?(Bagel chips are also out.)

I think the most important event series I've ever done began when the Great Recession hit.?I'd thought of myself as a donor when it came to nonprofits, but when companies stopped booking events, my income plummeted.?I asked myself, "If I couldn't donate money, how could I help?"?I wrote up four ideas for nonprofits and ran them by my friends, and an idea called "NonBoardBoard" won.

Have you ever known a nonprofit leader who had a big heart but didn't have the business skills to match??I knew plenty, and I wanted to arm them.?I realized that I could help most of them to be a little better, but I know people who could help them be a lot better.?Some friends and I started this monthly speaker series that met in Premiere's conference room for seven years, bringing in speakers on nonprofit law, marketing, fundraising, leadership, and more.?On top of that, leaders got to know each other and benefit from each other's wisdom.?The leaders took the lessons they learned from speakers and each other and used them to impact the lives of millions of people in dozens of countries around the world. When my wife and I adopted newborn twins, our board and I decided to throw a big party to thank everyone and shut it down.?I'll never forget the lessons and blessings we've had and seen.??

All in all, I've booked 93 events since 1995.?The concerts were the biggest with?1,000+ people, but I've learned that every event matters.?In one of the smallest events we had, when maybe only five nonprofit leaders showed up, this husband and wife decided to start a pizza place that employed mostly felons.?It ended up being a success, with many people rehabilitating their lives.?Our kids loved going there after soccer games.

That's all to say that when I book an event, I can feel some of the pressures and stresses?an?event planner feels.?I know that even the smallest thing heard at an event can make a difference in someone's life.?As an event planner, what you do can make a huge difference in someone's life!

COMICS SECTION

From 2002-2007, I wrote a weekly comic strip that appeared in about 40 small publications in the US, Canada, and Israel. If this is a newsletter, might as well have a comic each week, too!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Brian Lord is the President of?Premiere Speakers Bureau?and the host of the?Beyond Speaking Podcast. A 28-year speaking and entertainment industry veteran who started his first agency in his dorm room, Brian has done everything from running a non-profit and writing a comic strip to coaching youth softball and competing for TeamUSA in the duathlon age group world championships in Romania in 2022. He and his wife Krista enjoy raising their four kids outside of Nashville.

From 2002-2007, I wrote a weekly comic strip that appeared in about 40 small publications in the US, Canada, and Israel. If this is a newsletter, might as well have a comic each week, too!