Masterclass 2: Lesson 1 of 5
Prepare less
You don’t need to prepare as much as you think.
Perhaps you’ve learned over the years that if you don’t obsess over details, it won’t get done. That if you don’t positively hound the vendor, they won’t follow through. If that level of micromanagement suits you, there’s no need to change. But if it doesn’t, well, you’ve enrolled in the right course.
In this lesson, I’ll explain why it should actually take a whole lot less work.
Brought to you by our team of experts
Want to get this course in your inbox?
It’s not your problem—it’s the partner’s
Perhaps it’s annoying to hear this given all you’ve been through in the past, but all that responsibility and stress you take on isn’t necessary when you have the right partner. You can figure out what kind of partner you have on your hands with one question: “What do you need from us?” If their response is to send an Excel spreadsheet and ask for lots of technical details before you ever discuss the concept, they are telling you, “I’m someone who needs to be actively managed.”
Whereas partners who don’t need to be managed—who’ll get creative and fulfill the spirit of your request within whatever budget you set—will say some version of: “Just the story, please.”
A story is all the right partners need to begin. Either the seed of an idea and how you hope it affects your audience, or just as useful, a problem statement about what your audience is facing.
Fundraiser Story
Seed of an idea
We hold a fundraiser to fight animal cruelty and we know our audience loves their pets, so we’re thinking about having a dog be the cohost to enliven everything and provide comic relief.
a problem statement
The donors who support our animal cruelty nonprofit are hungry for something new and keep attending the same old galas—including ours, year to year.
This is unlike how most companies approach event production vendors. Companies feel compelled to basically plan the entire thing in excruciating detail. And for efficiency and consistency, they often repeat the same event as last year, so as not to surprise anyone. And they treat the budgets set at the start of the fiscal year as law. Again, that can work. If you want to manage that vendor obsessively.
But if you want that vendor to pour all their creativity into the pitch and inform you of things you’ve never thought of, which achieves what you want with less effort and mixes ideas across disciplines to deliver an experience, there is a way.
“If you want your event vendor to pour all their creativity into the pitch and inform you of things you’ve never thought of, just ask them, what’s your process for that?”
That’s how the skincare brand Youth to the People approached us—they presented it as a puzzle. Their ambition was to do a roadshow across cities that required a lot of setup and takedown. Our team was free to ask, why not take it on the literal road? Which led us to outfit an airstream as a roving skincare lab
See Youth to the People’s event →
When you approach the vendor with just the story, you invite their genius into the equation. You tap into dozens of people’s experiences trying and seeing thousands of things. For free, even. They’ll pitch you their ideas. The worst that happens is you leave with a lot more information than you had before.
And that you can always go with the details-focused spreadsheet vendor. Provided you’re willing to obsessively manage them.
Today, ask yourself:
Who is our audience and how do we hope this event changes them? Provide that to your partner.
In the next lesson: The only good response to,
“What’s your budget?”
Download your RFP template
We’ve rewritten the standard one to help you get more of what you want.
