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Sept. 10, 2024

New Series: How I Started Hosting Successful In-Person Events

New Series: How I Started Hosting Successful In-Person Events

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In this new solo series of Walk to Wealth, I'll reveal how I started hosting successful business & networking events. From taking inspiration from my friend Guelory's event in 2022 to the pivotal advice from my public speaking coach buddy, Brandon, my journey into the world of event planning is packed with ups, downs, and invaluable lessons. 

Join me as I recount the milestones of my event-throwing career—each one a stepping stone towards building skills, gaining social proof, and connecting with amazing people. Discover how community, networking, and a dash of perseverance have shaped not just my events but my path to a wealthy and fulfilling life. Whether you're a budding event planner or just looking to be inspired, this episode promises to offer you a treasure trove of insights and experiences.

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Transcript
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00:00:01.241 --> 00:00:09.606
Even my 200 podcast episode celebration I had this year was like almost like three days work for promotion Almost like no planning really.

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I still got almost 30 people there.

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It's like, as I said, I've gotten to the point where, like, I'm getting pretty solid at throwing in-person events here locally.

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I haven't done anything major yet, but it definitely helped me along the way.

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So this solo series that I'm starting now is the journey to wealth is a long walk and some may walk quicker than others, but what good is sprinting to the finish line if you pass out when you cross it?

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On Walk to Wealth, we enlighten and empower young adults to build wealthy, abundant lives.

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They say the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step and your first step starts right now.

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This is Walk to Wealth with your host Jon Mendes.

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Hey everyone, Welcome back to the Walk to Wealth podcast.

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If you're tuning in on YouTube or any of the podcast directories, make sure to do yourself one teeny, tiny little favor and make sure to give us a follow, because I don't want you to miss out on any of the amazing episodes I got coming out this year.

00:01:03.985 --> 00:01:06.772
Without further ado, I got another solo series coming up.

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If you've been tuning on with the podcast, you know that I just finished my conference series.

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I've been going to a lot of conferences over the past two and a half-ish years or so and they've really helped me develop into the person I am today.

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But another part is throwing my own events.

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I haven't thrown any conferences per se, but I've been throwing events for almost two years now a year and a half now and it definitely helped.

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One it gave me a lot of skills that I didn't never have before, like managing putting together an event.

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Also, it gave me a lot of credibility and social proof.

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And three, they're also fun to do.

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It's a lot of work and stress, but throwing events is something that I've been doing now and my last few events, man, I haven't been missing.

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Man, I've been consistently hitting.

00:01:54.323 --> 00:02:04.316
Even my 200 podcast episode celebration I had this year, it was almost three days of work for promotion almost like no planning, really.

00:02:04.316 --> 00:02:05.902
I still got almost 30 people there.

00:02:05.902 --> 00:02:11.967
It's like, as I said, I've gotten to the point where, like, I'm getting pretty solid at throwing in-person events here locally.

00:02:11.967 --> 00:02:16.162
I haven't done anything major yet, but it definitely helped me along the way.

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So this solo series that I'm starting now is I'm going to be covering how I got into the events game, how I got started throwing events, how I threw my first events, and I'm going to be covering all the events I've thrown since then and kind of just take you along this journey.

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And we're going to start right with the first one.

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So this is back in late quarter four, december 2022.

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Yeah, quarter four, december, quarter four, 2022.

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My boy, guillory.

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He threw an event over in Norwalk, which is about a town over from where I live, a couple of towns over from where I live, and so I went to his event and it was super dope.

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I think it was like a Saturday morning up until like early afternoon, if I'm not mistaken.

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He had some speakers and then he had one guy that was his mentor at the time speak at the end virtually, and I was like bro, bro, this is dope.

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We probably had like 40, 50 people at that event.

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I'm like yo, bro, this is dope.

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So I'm talking to him at the end like yo, this is dope.

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I want to get into the events game.

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And my boy, brandon, who's a public speaking coach he's been on a podcast a couple of times.

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He also throws a lot of events and he's been throwing events for years now.

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So I was like all right, bet, I got all this motivation and all this inspiration.

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Let me hit up Brandon and be like yo, can you help me out with throwing an event?

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Like I don't want to throw one just yet, but I just want to pick your brain.

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And so me and Brandon ended up scheduling a call.

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I hopped on a call with Brandon and I started asking him some questions.

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And I remember this like it was yesterday.

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I was at my friend's house and I'm on the phone with Brandon asking him like hey, how do you get into throwing events?

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Like, what do you recommend?

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What do you suggest?

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Yada, yada, yada.

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And he ended up.

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You know we're having this conversation and I don't remember exactly what I asked or how the conversation went.

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I just remember towards the end he sort of asked me, you know, because I want to do an in-person podcast interview and that was the original idea for my event Because, as I said, I already had a podcast.

00:04:07.711 --> 00:04:12.156
By that time, probably, I already had 50 episodes out, maybe like closer to 40 episodes out.

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So it's already, you know, being consistent with the podcast.

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This is around the time where I decided to go all in on the podcast and start taking the podcast seriously, and so it was just like perfect timing with everything, how it all played out.

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So I'm like, all right, let me start doing it, let me do an in-person podcast event.

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Podcasting is already up my wheelhouse.

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I can just interview a couple people locally, some local entrepreneurs, and get an audience in front of us and boom, that'll be our thing.

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And so I'm answering all these questions for Brandon and at the end he sends me via text this Canva image.

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He was like yo, john, if you don't post this tomorrow, I don't want anything to do with the event.

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And I'm like, damn, like I didn't want to throw an event, I just wanted to ask about you know how to throw an event for, like when I'm ready, and he was like nah, you got to post this tomorrow, I don't want nothing to do with it.

00:05:02.973 --> 00:05:04.536
And so it was him that I was going to interview.

00:05:04.557 --> 00:05:10.648
My friend Rob had Rob and Carly on the flyer and I didn't even ask Rob or Carly yet if they wanted to do it.

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So like I was just kind of like I didn't even know what to do at the time, cause he had two other people that I even asked yet and of course they're my friends so they probably would have as long as they were available.

00:05:19.166 --> 00:05:22.512
But like he already had them on the fly and he was like post this.

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So I remember that next day ended up not posting it.

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I forgot what I did.

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I think I was doing some other stuff.

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I ended up forgetting about it, honestly, but the day after, so two days after our call, I ended up posting it.

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I had texted Rob and Carly and they both said that they were down to do the in-person podcast interview with me.

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I ended up doing that and, in terms of finding a venue, me and Brandon were brainstorming and I was like yo, I'm an agent with KW.

00:05:45.375 --> 00:05:48.322
Still, my license is active so I can use the office.

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He was like, okay, cool, do you have like a venue that you can use in the office or a space?

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I was like, yeah, they have a training room.

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I was like, boom, that was my training room was going to be the venue.

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The parking at the KW office in Stanford is immaculate.

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There's like infinite parking spots.

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I mean I wasn't expecting to get that many people anyways, but I knew no one was going to have an issue with parking.

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It's pretty easy to get to.

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So I was like boom, so I'm not coming out of pocket there.

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And then I think I ended up getting a couple glasses of bottles of wine or something like that, maybe pizza.

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I forget if I brought food or not.

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If I did, it was probably pizza and wine.

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And that was the first event ever.

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I ended up hosting it two weeks later from the call from Brandon.

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So I said me and Brandon hopped on a call Boom, two weeks later I hosted the event.

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All my invitations I did via text, so I was texting a bunch of people and I got, I think, in total, maybe like 15 of us ended up showing up to that very first event and that ended up being like the start of this whole like event, and that ended up being the start of this whole event space game that I've been doing.

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I've been hosting events, and it was really dope because it was a really good, intimate group of people all people which I knew already personally, and it was also a great way to showcase some of my friends that are also entrepreneurs and, from the other, local entrepreneurs and business owners, and so that ended up being the first event.

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It was a success.

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I didn't charge for tickets.

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I think it was free yeah, it was free to attend and I just had people RSVP pretty much, and so that's how I ended up.

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Throwing the first event Didn't come out of pocket anything aside from the pizza and wine which was maybe at max, maybe like 50 bucks or something like that Ended up getting 15 people and got some good social proof for that.

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I got some good story posts.

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I got some good photos that I posted, and so, as I said, you get a lot of credibility throwing these events, and so that was the start of everything.

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That's how I hosted my first event.

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In the next part of this solo series, I'm going to cover how I threw my next event, because it was a night and day difference.

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I definitely did a full 180 from that very first event to the next event.

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So stay tuned for the next episode in the series.

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I'm going to be covering how I threw my 100th podcast episode.

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We had over 50 some people there.

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It was a great time.

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So I'm going to be covering how I did that in the next one.

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You've now finished taking the first step.

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Now let us help you take the next one.

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Subscribe to our newsletter at walk2wealthcom that's walk, the number two wealthcom so we can keep you moving on your journey.

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We'll see you on the next episode of Walk to Wealth with John Mendez days.