What I Learned from Hosting my first Three Day Event

Last week I hosted my first online three day event. I’ve hosted multi day events before. In person. Pre-Covid. This was a completely different experience.

I knew it was going to be a lot of work - and it was - but despite my obsessing for MONTHS trying to think of everything, there were still so many surprises.

It's not a joke that public speaking and running a business are two of the most effective tools for personal growth. Wow has this been challenging! And life affirming. And I can't wait to do it again once I can get myself out of the foetal position.
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For those of you who might be thinking of hosting your own events, here’s what I’ve learned…

​1) Something will always go wrong, so think about what your approach will be when it does
I’m lucky, my coaching style is pretty informal, so when something goes wrong I can usually just chat about it as we try to fix it. I'm very transparent, I don't pretend to have it all together. I make a joke, maybe turn it into a teaching moment, we move on. This works for me.

​If you don't want people to know what's going on behind the scenes you might need an emcee or extra help on the back end so you're less involved in the running of things and less "front and centre" when they go sideways.

Either way, always have a backup plan. Sometimes the tech is going to fail. Do you have PDF backups of your Powerpoint presentation so instead of making everyone watch you fight with presenter view for 10 minutes, you can switch to the PDF and share that screen? Do you have filler content for when you're suddenly unexpectedly under time? Do you know what to cut out if you go over time? What if no-one participates? What if a guest doesn’t show? (Luckily all my guests were on time and wonderful)

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