How to Host a Two Hour Cocktail Party

All right, good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Welcome to a brand new office and a brand new camera. I've gone for the one where it's a bit, bit wider, 11 millimeter lens on here so you get to see everything, including my nootropics and my floor and my radiator. So, anyway, welcome back to the podcast. This is a very special recording that I did at the end of December 2023. And the story behind this is that I went to two events in the USA this year that was around BiggerPockets and Hostcon. And at this event there was a chap called Nick Gray. And Nick Gray was talking about cocktail parties and how to host a two hour cocktail party. I was fascinated by this guy. I loved his talks. Such an engaging chap. And while I was at the event, I downloaded the book, listened to it, also read it on the plane on the way back, and then I went and got the print version. Two weeks after flying back, I was hosting the Big Bash and I instantly implemented the Nick Formula into the Big Bash. And in this episode of the Boosted podcast, you're going to find out what the Nick Formula is, but most importantly, why you should be hosting a two hour event in 2024. It is going to be key and this podcast is going to delve into that. And so, with that being said, I'm really excited to introduce you all to Nick Gray. I. I really wish that all of you go and check out his Instagram, go and check out his website, go get his book, but most importantly, host an event in 2024. We talk about how to do it on a pro level, on the level that I did it, which I call medium, and how you can do it at a newbie level as well, and everything in between. So with that being said, I'm going to flip over the screen and we're going to chat to Mr. Nick Gray. All right, brilliant, everybody. Thank you so much for tuning in. Um, we have got the fantastic Nick Gray with me. Nick, the question I love to ask all of our guests is, how did you get this job?

I hate networking events. I moved to New York 15 years ago and I tried to go to these events to make friends, to meet people. And I found that they were oftentimes held in a big, loud bar that was way too dark. And the only people I met were like, swarmy, transactional, just not the people I wanted to meet. And I would leave the event feeling like a loser, like it was my fault. I ultimately figured out it wasn't, that I was Bad. It's just that I was going to bad events and I said, well, I'm going to figure out how to host good events. And that led me down a path over many years hosting hundreds if not thousands of events. Dinner parties, cocktail parties, happy hours, networking events. And now I've become something of an expert in teaching people how to host their own meetups and gatherings.

So very recently you hosted an event around your birthday. Can you just. I saw this on Instagram, it looked. No, can you just tell me a little bit about it and the idea.

Oh my God. Look, I hesitate to talk about this because I'll tell you why. I'm focused on people learning how to host their first event. And if I tell you what I did as an expert, I think I can call myself an expert. I have literally hosted in the upper 7, 8, 902 hour house happy hours. If I tell you what I did for my birthday, I'm worried it's going to blow people out of the water and they're going to be like, I can't listen to this, I got to stop. That's way too advanced. But I'll tell you if you want to know. Do you want to know?

Let's just have the 60,000 foot overview of what you did so then we can delve into newbie sort of territory, if you don't mind.

60,000 foot overview. For my 42nd birthday, I invited 42 of the most interesting people I know all around the world. Ultra successful content creators, super successful business owners, teachers, people that work in oil and gas, a neuroscientist, a private tutor, all these random people I've met over the last 15 years. I invited them to come to Austin, Texas for an intellectual salon that I hosted on my birthday. And it was the most challenging, most difficult event I've ever hosted. And it was the best birthday ever.

Amazing. What a way to show in your 42nd birthday. Okay, so let's dial it back and what I would say to everybody. If you're thinking, hey, this all sounds great, but I'm first time doing this, I don't know where to begin. I want to point everybody to Nick's book, the two hour cocktail party. I picked up a copy after hearing Nick speak at an event in Houston. It was a fantastic event. I delved into bookstore afterwards and a month after the event in Houston, I hosted the big bash which hopefully a lot of you watching this was attended and all that cool stuff. I actually took a lot of the tips from here and applied it last minute to The Big Bash and the first one I wanted to delve into is the Nick Party formula. This in itself, these four little acronyms that we're going to talk about, I implemented these into the Big Bash and they were a huge success. So could you just delve into the Nick Pie formula, explain what they are? Each one for everybody that's tuning in.

I'm smiling right now because the end in Nick is name tags. And I want to know, at the Big Bash, did you do name tags?

We did. We basically what we did last minute I messaged a printer and I'm literally flying back from America, bearing in mind two weeks away from the event and I've got your book and I've got the Kindle version of the book. So this is before I even went and got the print version. So I'm like, hey, we need name tags. Could you do a name tag that's like the hi, my name is, but with Bruce Lee colors and my face on it and it's like, yeah, no problem. So we, we got the name tags. We got the name tags. The one mistake that I made though is the name tags didn't stick to all material because you know, the ones you peel and you stick that. I should have got the lanyards. I saw yours with the lanyards. So it was cool. But yeah, people were putting it on their real nice like frocks and gowns and they were just going straight off. But named.

That was fancy. Frocks and gowns. Dang, dude. Respect was.

It was a party. The Big Bash. We called it the Big Bash. It was, it was an event. We had abba.

That's cool.

We had Robbie Williams tribute acts. It was stand up comedians. It was, it was a gig. But yeah, name tags 100%.

So you did something great, which was you used some of this framework to host a huge event. And I want your listeners to think about how they can host an event for other short term rental hosts. I know you and I are going to talk about that why later. But just plant that seed that this is meant for you to Host, let's say 15 to 22 people in a casual happy hour format that would cost you less than 100American US dollars. So it doesn't have to be complicated. You don't need bands or catering or anything. I'll talk about that later. But first let me say what the Nick Method is. And that's N I C K N stands for name tags. Even if it's your neighbors and your friends, you have to do name tags. I'll tell you why. Because the reason we want to host is to bring new people into our world. You want to host to build your network of loose connections and acquaintances. That's what I found. All big relationships, whether it's business partners, new tenants, new real estate, whatever, everything starts in this acquaintance network. It's what salespeople maybe call a cold lead or top of the funnel. We want to bring a lot of those top of the funnel people into the gathering so you can figure out who you want to build a relationship with. To make them feel comfortable. You need to use name tags. I'm curious, at your own event, Mark, did you notice or hear any feedback? I'm guessing that the name tags help people start new conversations.

Yeah. No, 100% because people that were attending the event had seen everybody for like the last three, four or five years, but with Facebook profiles and they used the name tags as a way to go, oh, your ex, your.

Yes.

And we had seen for the first time after four years. And the name tags really does help because you can go, oh, your thing. Instead of just looking from the other side of the bar thinking, are you bit awkward? They use that as a way of, oh, you're that person. I remember seeing your Facebook page or et cetera, et cetera.

I'm so bad with names. I find that I, I have a hard time. I can remember everything about somebody, what they did in high school, where they went to college, their spouse, stuff like that. I can remember details, but I'm bad with names. And I use name tags to, number one, help me be less embarrassed for forgetting people's names. Number two, I found that doing name tags shows everyone that this is not a party or a meetup of clicks. So imagine you're hosting this for short term rental people. You invite a new, new person who you happen to hear they have a short term rental that's intimidating for them to show up to a room where they think, oh, this is like a private club. Like, I'm new to short term rentals, am I welcome here? When you have name tags, it's a leveling of the playing field that we're all on the same team and everybody's kind of equal. I saw some photo from like Davos or some fancy thing where they made Brad Pitt and Bill Gates and other really famous people wear name tags. And whenever somebody says like, oh, I'm too good for name tags, I'm like, look, if Bill Gates can wear a name tag, you can wear a name tag too.

Yeah, 100% so name tags. The first one. Love it.

I In the formula, N I C K I stands for icebreakers or introductions. Now, at a very large event like Mark hosted, it can be hard to do introductions. You have to split people into small groups like he saw we did at Hostcon. But when you host 15 to 22 people, you as the host, want to lead two or three rounds of intros to simply let people sound off and know who is in the room. Okay, so what does that look like? It looks like saying, hey, everybody, I got a bunch of really interesting people here in Nashville that are all doing short term rentals. We're going to go around the circle real quick. Say your name, say a little bit about your business and tell me one of your favorite things that you like to eat for breakfast. Okay, that may seem like a stupid question. You're rolling your eyes, oh my gosh, am I in primary school? But what we're trying to do at the beginning, when there's no rapport built up, is just get people talking and comfortable. If you know social skills, you know that at the beginning of an event is where it's the most awkward. So we use an easy icebreaker. What I don't want is a brain teaser icebreaker. That's the icebreakers. I hate that. Give them a bad reputation. So that's the I. Were you guys able? I think your event was too big to do it. No, you did them.

We did, but I put a little spin on it. And the reason why I did this is because I was influenced by me growing up and something that we used to do at family events. So at every family event, and I've got a pretty big family, my mom would love to play a game as like an icebreaker for a family event. And we would play this, this very typical British game called Beetle Drive. It involves dice, it involves paper, and it's a very intense game, fast and furious, but it's a ton of fun. So I, I brought my parents to the event that I threw and so we, I surprised everybody by playing this icebreaker game. And so the icebreaker game that we did involved everybody on their tables playing this game furiously. It wasn't a case of into introducing themselves. It was playing this, this game. So it was a lot of fun. And the cool thing about this game and bearing in mind it was tables. So everyone was sat at tables. We had 20 tables. When you win the game, you have to move on two tables. So for the icebreaker, even if you sat with a group of friends, if you Won the game, you had to move two tables clockwise. If you came second place, you had to move one.

So.

And the game lasts about a minute, two minutes max. Everybody was moving around and they were sort of breaking the ice by playing this, this fun game. That's my little spin on it. But I remember at Houston, at who's Con, we did this right at the very start and it was tricky because we, you know, we all had to go into the, into the corridor to do it. But I actually met somebody during that icebreaker. Again, super simple little questions that we asked. I met somebody that I still now chat to on Instagram and we're going to potentially do a, you know, we're going to sign up to Bruce Lee very soon because of that icebreaker, which was really cool. If you're struggling on how to get direct bookings and overwhelmed on where to start, then I recommend you go and book in a call with Boostly and our team right now. We can walk you through exactly what we're offering, how we can help you and give you a portfolio of websites that we have worked with that are matching not only your niche, but could be in your location as well. Boostly has helped over 2000 hospitality businesses all over the world increase their direct bookings. And if you are interested, then all you need to do is go to Boostly. B O O S tly co UK call and booking an appointment with one of our sales team.

Dude, isn't that cool that even from that forced icebreaker, you were the big speaker there, Everybody saw you on stage. But still, that icebreaker helped to make a new connection.

Yeah.

And the thing is, you never know who you're going to meet from some of these gatherings. You never know. I hosted a party 14 years ago in New York City. I saw photos from it and still to this day, I became roommates with one of the women there. I was in one of the guys weddings and I did business with one of the other people. You never know who you're going to meet at one of these gatherings. And it's really the purpose that this overall, okay, it's about cocktail parties, party hosting, whatever, but it's actually about building and growing your network. And you were telling me short term rentals are really changing. We need to think about our funnels and a lot of different things. And this is part of building your network. You can't just rely on the online tools anymore. So that's the gist. All right. That's the I, that's the Icebreakers. I'm Blown away that you did that game, which is amazing. And I see the C stands for cocktails or mocktails only. This is drinks only. I do not want you to plan a dinner party. Many people think, oh, I have to host a mastermind dinner. I have to invite these people out for dinner for the thing. Don't do a dinner. And here's why. The best people that learn how to host make hosting a habit. They do regularly what others only do occasionally. A dinner will suck the life out of you. For new hosts, the dinner is too expensive, too complicated, too hard to say yes to. And you don't get the same amount of connections that you can when you host a happy hour dinner is advanced. If you're listening to this and you've successfully hosted dinner parties, congratulations, Good for you. I would encourage you to try something simpler because I talk to people. Oh, I love to host. I host all the time. I ask them, when's the last time you host? Well, since COVID you know, things haven't been. I'm like, okay, put your money where your mouth is. Show me your calendar. When did you host? Because you should be going through life as a short term rental host as a business operator, whatever, collecting the interesting people that you meet in your town. You need to think about that. Top of funnel. How do I build a relationship? Do I want to build a relationship? And the reality is you may meet all these people and be like, let's go out to dinner. But you never do. You never do. What do you think about that, mark?

Well, I 100% agree. And again, after reading your book, one of the things that I was thinking of doing was putting on food. Because there was. When I first announced the event, there was a lot of grumble saying, oh, there's no food. Da da da da da. Even though it was like a 7pm hard stop at 11pm, right? So 7pm start. And I just said to everybody, and after reading the book, this just solidified my thinking. I was like, listen, I've got a budget, right? I would much rather put that budget to the bar and get you one or two drinks, cocktail, whatever you want it to be, then have to go out and spend a heck of a lot more money and get, and get food involved. Because you're right, it would suck out the resources, suck out the actual party of it. And yeah, I'm really happy I read that in the books. It solidified my thinking and it was a massive success. We actually, it went down even better because halfway through the event, one of the sponsors of the event, gave us an extra amount of money to go behind the bar so one could get one more round of drinks. And that was the biggest cheer of the evening. When.

Dude, how, dude, how awesome is that? That the sponsor in the moment said this is so good and they lay down more money. That. That is one of the best testimonials I've heard of running a good event.

Yeah, man, it was good. And, and again, I'm a massive, a massive believer of it. I will never have food an event again.

Here's what I believe. I would rather someone leave my party hungry rather than bored, okay? Because my friends are adults, they can feed themselves, but I am the host and I want to introduce them to new people. So I spend all my time and almost all my energy on the people, the introductions, the conversations that happen and less time on the food. Oh my God though, for my birthday I had to do catering because it was like a one and a half day event and you know how expensive that is. It was insane. And everybody has these dietary requirements which I'm not going to judge, but it's like dairy free, gluten free, vegetarian. Then one one night we set out all the food and it's my first time catering, I don't know. So I set the salads out and all the stupid meat eaters thought that the salads were for them and so they took the salad and by the time the vegetarians got there, there's like no salad. I was like, you idiots. I mean it was my fault, but still.

Yeah. And again, this is before I even go down the route of like people's requirements and dieteries and needs and all of that and you know, places that you hire things out. And again, I'm from the hospitality background. We used to run a restaurant that catered for events. We would make our money not from the actual hiring of the venue, we would make our money from the food and the markup. And so I know from like both sides of the table when as soon as you go down the route of food, the, the budget just goes through the roof just on that. So yeah, definitely food forefought for a lot of people.

So that's the CC is cocktails or mocktails only by the way, doesn't have to be about alcohol. I don't drink myself. There's not a single drink recipe that's in this book. Most of my happy hours are super simple self serve bars. But it's about the people, not about the food or the drinks. All right, so that's The C N is name tags. I as icebreakers, C as cocktails or mocktails. Only the K stands for kick them out at the end. This is really only a two hour gathering and I'll tell you why. One of the reasons why is that I want you to host this on a Wednesday night, probably a Tuesday or a Wednesday night. Because when you're not doing what Mark did. Look, Mark did a seventh anniversary huge blowout hit everything fine. Someone will clear their calendar for that. They're not going to miss that. But for your just casual happy hour with other short term hosts, I want you to do it on a Tuesday or Wednesday night because you're less likely to get no shows and cancellations. It's much easier for somebody to swing by at the end of the work and make a pop in. The number one fear for a new host is that nobody will show up. And you can reduce that fear by hosting on what I call green level days. Green levels Tuesday, Wednesday. A red level day would be a Friday or a Saturday night. Everybody, come on, it's holiday season when we're recording this. Everybody's planning events on Friday, Saturday nights. Yeah. It also assumes that you'll be hosting a big, more traditional party focused on alcohol, music, dance. That's not what this is. This is a connections party. Thoughts on that, Mark?

Well, we did our night on the Tuesday. We got, we got the green night. So yeah, again, this is what I loved about reading the book. I was just like, not on a long going. Yeah, we, we've got this, we've got this. And it gave me again, first time organizer, gave me all the confidence in the world that when the big bash came along, it was going to be, you know, a big success. So massive credit. Well done. The book's fantastic. I absolutely love it and I want as many people to go and pick it up as possible. Quick break from the podcast to let you know that the boostly books that we brought out, the book Direct Playbook and the book Direct Blueprint are two of the top rated and the best selling in the hospitality category on Amazon for just two pounds. You can grab both of those books right now. The foundations and the structures that you need to put in place is in the Blueprint and then for 101 marketing tactics that is in the Playbook. So go and grab a copy on Amazon now. Just type in Book Direct Playbook or the Book Direct Blueprint and we'll see you on your side.

It'd be great. I'd love to see people host something like this, can we talk about the purpose on why they should host, whether it's the changing rules and regulations or just building their own community. Yeah.

So I think I'm always a massive believer is that your, your network is your net worth. And I feel like so many people, they go down the route of competition and I see it a lot and it really breaks my heart when people go, oh, I don't want to engage with X because I perceive them to be my compet. And I've always said that anybody that you think you're in competition with, it means that you believe that your product, you're offering, your accommodation isn't as good as this. If you can flip that around and go about collaboration, then this is how you truly, truly win. And I was talking to Nick off air about regulations and legislations that is coming in all over the world, not just in America, not just in Canada, but in the UK and Europe and further afield. And from speaking to members of Parliament, speaking to people in government, speaking to people that are the decision makers behind these rules and regulations. One of the things they said that business owners, small business owners, you can be doing is to come at this as a group, don't try and go solo, come at it as, as a group. And there are some amazing partners out there, like rent, responsibility, who are helping people get together, etc. But for me, the reason why I wanted to get Nick onto the podcast and I wanted to sort of help educate you is that next year, if you can start to arrange meetups, if you can start to arrange parties, two hour cocktail parties, and do it with Nick's formula behind you, it's going to create a buzz. And we've all been to those meetings, those network meetings that we're talking about, the one that you experienced all those years ago in New York, we've all been to the ones where you leave and go.

That was awful.

But from what I know to be true, is that attending an event is so different to hosting an event. When you host an event, by the byproduct of it, is that you somehow become the go to. And if you can become that go to in your town, in your city, in your location, in your state, as seems to be the person that is bringing together a group of professional hosts, then when regulation comes for your town, you will become the go to that they want to put in front of the Chamber of commerce or whoever it may be. And as we've always said, you've got to be in the room for these decision makings. The problem is so many people are very single minded, competitive minded, thinking it's all right, they'll do it. This is why I think this is really, really key. And this is why I wanted you to get on and talk about the book. Because if we can just convince one person to do this in 2024, then who knows what impact that will have on the industry as a whole.

You said it. People want to know people who bring people together. You can become that person. And you know, the power. Look, there's, there's rules and regulations. Frankly, to me, it seems very intimidating to try to change local policy. And there's no way that I could do that by myself. But I could host an event to get people together and say, hey, look, we need to have this on our radar. Does anyone have ideas? I mean, how can we do this? So sometimes I hear from people and they say, oh my gosh, I want to do this. That, you know, I want to host a launch party, or in this instance, I want to change the local rules. And they want to do that without having put in the work to build a list prior. They want to host a big launch event, they want to change local rules and they haven't done it. They haven't hosted anything. They don't have a list of people that are going to show up for them and be active. And so if I could give advice, it would be start this now before you need it. Okay? Because Mark is telling you what's on the horizon. You want to be hosting events. So if there is a local rule that starts to show up on the ballot, you've already got your people, you say, hey guys, look, we need to have a meeting. We got to talk about this. This is on the ballot. Let's start to rally. You want to be doing that and not be rushing, reactive. Oh my gosh, this is happening. Whatever. Make the investment now. Like he said, your network is your net worth. In the time it takes to watch a movie on Netflix, you can host a very simple meetup.

Love that. And I really do agree, do a little one when it's not essential just to get the habit of it and say start to start to get the, the routines and the reps, etc. Because the first one that you will do, you know, it will be a little bit awkward at times and you won't know what to say and do at the right time. But it's just like anything you've done, your first one, your second one, your third one, it just becomes, just becomes natural and just all that Nick would like you to do. And this is something we talked about off there. When somebody does host their party, what would you like them to do?

Oh my God. If they so wear name tags. Got to have the name tags and then take a group photo. By the way, you want this group photo for yourself. And I'll tell you why. Because if you meet another short term rental host, another interesting person, you get to show them that photo and say, hey, I host these little meetups. Sometimes I meet all these interesting people in town. Nothing's for sale. It's just a casual happy hour to meet new people. Would you like to come? Can I send you the info? And you use that photo to share to them to help build your network. But I love to see those photos because I'm collecting them and I'm trying to get to 500 verified hosts who use the Nick formula to host an event. And so please, if you host something, know, tweet it at me or send it to me on Instagram or send it to me on email. My address is nick@nick gray news.com Nick Gray News NWS.com Send it to me. And I would love to count you as one of my first 500 hosts.

Yep, I, I sent one over. So we had the end of night picture. We had the end of night picture that we sent over. So that is added to the list. So yeah, if you do do one, definitely, please make sure you reach out to Nick. And again, the Instagram follow. What is the Instagram handle again for everybody?

It's Nick Gray News at Nick Gray News NWS News.

Yeah, is a great follow. Again, Instagram. I really love what you're doing on there. I pick up so many just little bonus tips on there. So yeah, well done. Thank you very much. All right, so to finish with, I've got a couple of fun little questions that I'd like to run by you. First question is this. Who was the last person you remember following on social media? And do you remember why you did?

So last night I went to a talk by this guy who paddled across the Atlantic Ocean on a standup paddle board that he had built. And it was a motivational talk. It's been a long time since I went to one of those and it hit me at the right time when I needed that motivation and hearing about all that he went through. You know, that Trek took him 96 days to paddle across the Atlantic Ocean. And I followed him immediately after because I was very inspired by what he was doing.

Okay, so the Next question is for 2024, you could only follow five people on social media. It could be any platform. X, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc. Five people. Who would those five people be?

We met through Rob Abbasolo. I like Rob's content because it's not only business. He also shares about his personal life and he shares good tips. So I would say Rob, there's a guy in the business world and he posts on X. His name is Sean Puri. He hosts a podcast called My First Million. So Sean I would follow because I like what he shares. I'd like to think that there's like an artist or a musician that would be in there. So I'd probably say there's a filmmaker I like. His name is Baron Ryan. So I would follow Baron Ryan. Who do we have so far? Those are three guys. Let's add a woman into the mix. I like my friend Halle Teko. Hallie's a businesswoman and a venture capitalist. And then last but not least, I'd probably pick this woman who is a journalist. Her name is Barry Weiss or Bari Weiss. Yeah, Barry Weiss. And I like what she kind of reports on from the news. So she'd be my news person and.

Though also would be cool people to be involved in a, in a. In a party as well.

I'd love to. Oh, my God. Dream guest.

Yeah, definitely. Nice.

I love it.

So I, I obviously follow Mr. Rob Abasolo, good friend Sham. I'm a massive fan of, of my first million. And I. I think he is a cool guy. I love his. I. I love this. Listening to him talk about business and. Yeah, very good one. And I've got three new people now to go and check out, which I will go and do so after this podcast. So, Nick, my final question to you, seeing that we are recording this in December 2023, what are you most looking forward to in 2024?

I'm excited to host events and try to take it on tour. Not a tour that I want to. I'm not sure. I love experimenting with events and I'd like to travel and be able to host events as I travel. And so that is my goal, is to figure that out and to do something like a world tour in 2024.

Well, if you ever make it over to the UK, you ever make it over to England, let me. Let me know. And I have officially said that I will never do a bash again in the uk, But I did leave that little option open of doing the big bash in the USA one year. So when I Do. I will be in touch and I would love to have you involved in it because yeah, if I, if, if and when I do it, it will be in, in. In America because I feel like bring this big bash over.

I'd love to do it. That'd be an honor. That'd be so much fun to work together. Plus, I get to learn your family's game maybe.

Yes, 100%. We will bring the Beetle driver. Called it Boostly Beetle. We brought it over. So fun fact is that we had so many cards because we had the printers design cards for that game and we get so many left over and I've got boxes of it. My family have been around a few times since the event and we have played it every single time, which has been just being hilarious. So, Nick, with that being said, uh, it has been an honor and a privilege and a pleasure to have you on the podcast. Thank you so much. So the Instagram handle the website. Can you just give them one more time so people can go and check it out, please?

Yeah, please check out my stories and my reels on Instagram. I'm at Nick Gray News and I'm on the Internet@www.nick graynews.com. in the show notes, I'll include some links about how to host a networking event or a housewarming party and a checklist that you can get of 17 things to do for your next event.

Amazing. So if, if you need to get a hold of that, just go to boostlead.co.uk forward/blog. Come and look for Nick's podcast episode and we'll have all of that in there and much, much more. All right, Nick, thank you very much for being with us and everybody that's tuning in. We'll see you again for the next one. Just please remember, be proactive, do not be reactive, and let's go and get some diary bookings.