What All Goes Into Planning A Community Event?

I've done quite a few large events for our community in the last two years. The first event I did for a small group of 11213 people. Then I did an event for our 500 people of our ILH members called the Freedom Visit Retreat. Then we had the third event that I did, which had again, around 600 people in an event. Freedom is Retreat. Then I did a Quantum Retreat, which had a total size of around 275. And then we also had another event, which is my latest FBR. We had around 600, 650 people in the event. So in this podcast, I want to share with you exactly what goes behind planning a community event. And I'm just going to list out all the points because it's not as easy as one would think. You got to have a lot of elements in the background to really make it work. So when it comes to an event, the first thing is you need to have a theme in place. So for me, the preference planning the theme was always the first thing on my mind. So Freedom versus Retreat is an event which is for the larger community. And my Quantum Retreat is for the smaller community. So Freedom is a retreat. Also, I made two themes. The first theme is called Recharge, which happens in October, and Rebound, that happens in April. So we'll be oscillating between Recharge, Rebound, Recharge, Rebound. So the whole FBR is the name of the event. But, you know, depending on when it happens in a year, the name would actually change. Even the color would change. So Recharge is a green theme and Rebound is a red theme. So that way, even when we capture everything on social media, we're able to capture the essence of both the different events. So theme is very, very important. And when it comes to Quantum Retreat, the first one was just a regular event that we had, and the last Quantum Retreat that we had in the year 2023, the theme was about a future city. So again, I came up with the idea and we thought, we'll call it Infini City. And we designed an entire city called the Future City. So when we went for just a site visit and look at the hotel and find out what else is there, the idea just popped into my mind. Let's make this theme as Infinity. And then we thought, okay, let's call it Infinicity. And then we actually built an entire future city. The entire set was done. So again, it was all based on the budget. There was a much higher budget event that we did, and we built an entire Future City. And even when people entered the Quantum event, I did something on a stage. We had some visualization on the stage which were. Which was very unique. The entire room was blacked out and people could only see my face. So I went to an actual studio and I recorded wearing a green dress where only my face would be seen so that it just blends only into the screen. And we did something really crazy in the year 2023, quantum retreat. So the first thing is all about theme. Then comes budget based on how much it is. There's a banquet cost, there is a, you know, you need to plan the production cost, which is. And that's my third point production team. So I have a event production team that actually helps me put together these events. And the main guy who's running this is. He's my college buddy, college friend, one of the top DJs in the country. And he and his partner, they helped me conceptualize the whole thing. So I just have a meeting with them, I give them the idea and then they go to the background and they work on all these different things. So production team is a third element, which is really important. And then comes the flow. So this is the flow is the most important part of an event. Like I go from the point of what should happen in the morning or what should happen the previous day, what should happen minute to minute. And I have an entire Excel sheet that I cover from start to finish. What all needs to be done. The entry music, exit music, visualizations on the, on the screen, the LEDs. So there's this minute to minute flow is something that will actually make or break an event. And I go to that detail of planning that I run through the flow multiple times with my crew so that when the event actually happens, everything is seamless. Because you have seen it so many times in our head. The fifth element of what goes into planning a community event is a design. And when it comes to design, I'm talking about everything else, right from the color tones that you're going to be having for the event, to the workbook design, to the. All the stationary design. So it is very, very seamless in terms of look and feel. I go for very high quality design in every touch point of the event. And then we have the materials. Design materials is like the, the badges that you have, the hand tags that you have, the gifts that we'll be giving people, even that has to be in sync with the design and the feel of the particular event. So that is number six. Number seven, what goes behind an event is the crew. So normally what I do is I have a crew of at least 20 to 25 people when I do an FBR, which is my large scale event. And if it's a small event of say 250 to 200 people, a quantum Retreat crew size would be less than 10, maybe around 10 or 8 people that will be there. So what I do is I actually plan the crew at least three months in advance. In fact, for my next Freedom Visit retreat that's going to be happening in April, I've already selected the crew members and we will be having our crew meeting starting from Feb. So I normally start my crew huddles three months before the event. So if my event is in April, I do a huddle in Feb. March, and then we have the April. So we have at least six to eight rounds of weekly huddles where I give the specific roles and responsibilities for each crew member. Where they should be standing, what they should be, what is the intent of them being there, and to the extent of how they should be in that particular role. I define everything into a mind map. In fact, I have a course in my diamond membership called Community Events Formula where I also give the recordings of some of my, you know, crew hurdles that we've had, where we do the planning before the event. And it's, it's really, really mind blowing. And this is something that I learned on my own. And I've done multiple rounds of this, so I, I get got the hang of this right now. And then the eighth area of what goes behind a community event are the speakers and the topics. So for the next fbr, I've already finalized most of the speakers. And I don't just pick speakers based on how much money they're making or what. I look at their story, I look at how they've grown, I look at their intention, I look at what are they in for. You know, there are many people who are making money, but some of them may just want to come and have the limelight and stuff. And I'm very fast to pick up intuitively those, those things. So if I pick up a speaker, if I actually choose somebody, then what we do is we put them through an entire speaker orientation process where every speaker chosen two months before an event, they have to start the preparation because they only get 15 minutes to speak. But I get them to a training and I connect them with one of our Quantum members who is a TEDx trained speaker who works with each speaker to bring out their emotion, bring out their story, bring out the essence of their journey and works with them. And then we do the huddles. So I have speaker huddles, I have crew huddles, I have production team huddles every single week. And all my huddles are like, It'll be like 30 minutes max. Sometimes it goes to one hour, but I try to keep it under 30 minutes. And then finally we have the last point which is the gifts and merchandise. You know, the T shirt design, workbook design, the name tag design, the hand tag design. So the design is done by the production team, but then getting it actually shipped from my Bangalore. You know, I have, I'm working with a team in Bangalore that does the actual work where we send them the design and they, they ship it to us before an event. So all of that coordination happens with my team. And when we do a large scale event like Freedom is a retreat with 600, 700 people in the room, you know, it's very, very important to make sure that the crowd control and the queuing and everything is smooth and the members have a good experience. So I have a dedicated software, custom built software where people can just scan and enter. So the first event was a lot of manual work and it covered up things. We had a good lesson in learning. But now even if we do a 700 people event within 10 to 15 minutes, probably maximum half an hour, all the registrations can get done like super fast. So we actually figured out on how to do that. And besides this, I do a lot of planning. My wife also. We sit and we plan the food, the menu, exactly how and all our events are satvik, food, no alcohol, none of that stuff. So we make sure that the variety is given to all the members and they're given the best experience over there. And I forgot to mention a lot of music. Another thing that goes behind this community event is planning the music entry music for every speaker entry music, that dancing on the stage, what music has to be played. I actually map out every music track that needs to be played before the break, after the break, before lunch, after lunch, before evening break, before, after evening break when people are leaving the room. I put myself in the shoes of a participant and think about how I want them to feel every single minute of the event. And music has such an important role to play. And of course the DJ night music that I play my own set, I do some prep on that. And I normally play a one hour, two hour set on both the nights on fbr and I normally collect hundreds of tracks, if not more than 102300 tracks. And I pick like the top, you know, top 20, top 30 tracks that I'll play for that night. Because when people come all the way travel, I just want them to let loose, completely immerse themselves in the power of the sound and just go back enlivened and looking forward to coming back. That's why in the last FBR we had around 700 people in the room. And when I asked them to buy tickets for the next FBR, we had over 450 people who bought tickets that same day. I mean that's like insane conversions for a ticket sale in a room because of the value that people got. And they knew they're going to be coming back for more the next time. And many of them had set the intentions to come back. And as you know, all of my community events are gamified. So there's no VIP seating, there is no separate pricing for tickets. All are same ticket price. People who are achievers will sit in the front row, people are action takers in the back row. And those who get qualified for different awards, they get in. They are called inspirers and they get to speak on the stage. So I've given you the essence of how I run community events in a nutshell in this particular podcast. But I would highly recommend that you become a diamond member and go through my community events formula course to actually learn the nitty gritty nitty gritties of how I do it. Okay, so if you are already in my community, that's awesome. If you're not, go to Internet lifestyle, go to Sidharthrajekar.com pick up, just go click on the link, attend my next webinar, join our community and then you can attend our next community event. Because this is not a public event, I only invite my community members to the event. So take care. God bless. Catch you in the next episode.