This fancy dress wake was the saddest, funniest and most life-affirming that I’ve been to, as these things tend to go together.
Heather Greaves was someone who made you feel special from the moment you met her. She left behind her husband, and two young daughters.
“Heather had very particular ideas about what constituted a party,” her widower Aaron told the colourfully dressed crowd.
“A party needs a theme, and dress ups. The food and music went with the theme. And it needed some kind of performance, in line with the theme.
“A theme, dress-ups, food and performance: if a party didn’t have these four things, it wasn’t a party, it was just a gathering.”
Heather’s philosophy on parties is one I try to enact.
As humans, we are more isolated, more alone, and lonelier than ever. As business owners, this goes double. Businesses need communities around them, to engage, refer, celebrate, commiserate, and mark rites of passage together.
Your online business isn’t just you, your laptop and your chair. It’s not hiding behind a screen, sending the occasional missive into the interwebs, crossing your fingers and hoping that someone’s listening.
If you want to be a category of one brand, if you want to render your competitors irrelevant, if you want your business to feel like a movement, not just a place of commercial exchange, then you need to throw parties.
Gather your community, pull people closer, and for god sake, enjoy yourself.
If you want a client to commit to your business over the long term, beyond delivering value, you also need to give a sense of progression, a reason to return, and a curated community of awesome-type folks having fun.
Types of events and parties for owners
As an extrovert who’s been working alone from home for 18 years, I instigate a lot of gatherings in real life.
When I travel, I tend to instigate meetups. I’ve hosted lunches, dinners, drinks, yoga classes, retreats, and everything in between, from Perth, to Hong Kong, to Magnetic Island and Melbourne.
And I’ve been rewarded – by people who have taken a punt to leave the house to come meet strangers and me, even if I’m just a face on the internet to them.
But there’s many more online events you can run, both free and paid. My Life’s a Pitch!® party is an event that I’ve run nine times over the last five years. A one-off masterclass, sometimes called a webinar or a lunch and learn, is an event.
More recently, I’ve been running – and teaching my clients to run – audio-only events. Similar to what used to be called a ‘live stream’, these are asynchronous audio-only events typically run through WhatsApp, Telegram, Voxer, or any other social media site that supports audio.
A lot of our Momentum Masterminders are enjoying the freedom and intimacy that audio-only events allows. You can make these content-heavy, or story-led. You can lean towards the challenge format, which engages participants in taking some action, or make it more of a fireside chat.
And yes, you can add video too, if you like, and PDF downloads or other tools, as you please. But most importantly, don’t forget to bring the vibe.
Marking your event
An event needs a theme, feeling, and playlist (obviously). Your theme should act as a rallying cry, to call in the freaks and weirdos {LINK} (your weirdos), while repelling those who aren’t your people, and are only going to bring down the vibe.
Your theme needs a story – something that’s easy to understand. This is not a sermon or speech, so don’t get too clever – we need to quickly get the gist and count ourselves in or out.
Our Life’s a Pitch!® party theme is ‘have the audacity to ask’. Our Momentum Mastermind theme is ‘get on a roll’. Our Audacious Mastermind theme is ‘build a life, not just a business’.
Whatever your theme is, your storytelling (marketing copy and copy on your landing page), decorations (branding), costumes (profile pics), playlist (feeling), should all work in unison.
Lay out the welcome mat, and give a clear call to action to invite people in.
The responsibilities of the host
As the host, we’re responsible for setting the tone, and making people feel welcome. We do this through responding to comments (yes, ALL comments) on social media posts, responding to emails (even annoying ones), spelling people’s names correctly, and making folks feel seen and heard.
Feeling seen and heard is a fundamental human driver, and simple to do, if you get your head out of your arse and pay attention to others.
You’ve worked hard to get people into the room. Don’t destroy your efforts by overlooking, patronising, or ignoring. We will forget the fine detail of what you did or said. But we will remember how you made us feel.
The responsibilities of the guest
As a guest, you have a responsibility – to mingle with new people and not just hang with the people you already know, to get the dancefloor started {LINK}, to pass the snacks and drinks, and to lure the socially awkward away from the walls.
As a guest, you do your bit by relaxing into it. You’re not eyeballing the host, anticipating their missteps. You’re gracious, charming, entertaining, and leaving the party in a better state than when you found it.
At an online event, the more you give, the more you get. The more you implement, the bigger your outcomes. Joining endless challenges, downloading endless lead magnets, buying endless masterclasses and courses, and failing to change anything? In business, this is procrasti-learning, or mental masturbation
You know this already – so stop being a know-it-all and start twerking – it’s far more impressive.
Taking social risks
Leaving the house is taking a social risk. Meeting someone new is a social risk. But as Helen Keller said, “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.”
Naturally, we’re not going to love everyone we meet. And they won’t love us either (some people have terrible taste).
In a group, whether face-to-face, or online, or a combination of both (like my Momentum Mastermind, which includes four IRL events a year), we discover ourselves through other people.
We get triggered or provoked. We naturally resonate with some people, we recognise some ‘types’ and we’re intrigued by others. We aren’t meant to love all of the people, all of the time.
Much like our ideal clients and ourselves form a mutual admiration society together, some people don’t fit together. It’s neither their fault nor yours, but you can still respect that person, make them feel seen and heard, and less alone.
My role at a party is to be the dance floor-starter because everybody’s happier when they’re dancing. Much like Heather, I believe a party without a dance floor isn’t really a party; it’s a gathering.
So I take the social risk to be the first on the dance floor because I want the party of pop off.
It’s a small risk to take to model for others how to truly live.
Life’s a Pitch!® party is starting soon! Here’s your invite.
