Producing and Running a Nightlife Event

Some of you who may be reading this may have no interest in producing an event or even working in nightlife, but you may appreciate the effort that goes into making an event. Yesterday was the first night of my co-hostess (The Countess Mascara) and myself's event "Are YOU Smarter Than a Drag Queen?". What a night that was! By the end of the night when we are all liquored up and just enjoying ourselves, you have to look back and see what actually went into starting this event, so let me rewind and give you some steps of what went into it.
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1. Being Broke
        Sometimes to have the drive to want to create an event you have to be hurting for money. In the times of hurting financially you become creative. Sometimes making scarfs for kiddies, baking cookies for bratty little kids, or building toys for spoiled kids. Ok I don't know what my issue is with kids in this segment, but I think you get the point.

2. Planning the Event
        Now you have to come up with an idea for the event. Things can either be fun or be hard if you have never done this before. For my partner and I, it was pretty easy because it was a show that my partner did at another venue and brought it to this new one. But now that there was going to be two hostesses, we had to revamp. The idea of our show came from the popular TV show from the past, "Are YOU Smarter than a 5th Grader?". The next thing was to figure out how to break it up into rounds and create rules and the format of the show. This can be very stressful when both you and your partner are stubborn ass Italians. But hey...FUGGEDABOUTIT! 

3. Finding Sponsors
        Now this may be something that not all of you will have to do for your event. In our case we needed prizes for our winners of the game. One way to do this is to go door to door of businesses in the neighborhood and see if they be willing to donate prizes to your event. If a business sponsors your event, be courteous and advertise them throughout the night and also maybe post their logo on flyers if they are a sponsor for every event of yours.

Can't give you all the goodies...so let's skip forward to the night of the premiere!

​4. Night of Event
       This is the part where you are suppose to make sure all of your hard work is executed the right way. All the promotions you may have done (i.e. putting flyers in local bar bathrooms, after sleeping with a trick and say hey, you should come tonight to my show, or even just go to a Church and say that if they beat a Drag Queen in trivia, the Queen will convert to hetero-sexualism, not like you have to be honest about it. (I find it funny!) When you get to your event...you should probably show up a good half hour or hour prior, so you can make sure the staff and yourself have everything set up properly. Now the crowd walks in and you are starting to lose seats in your venue and people are starting to drink, it is almost showtime. There is not much more you can do to plan the event, except the last thing...EXECUTION! Start that show and have fun! These people came to have fun so make sure you are having fun. If people have fun, they will tell people "OMG I had so much fun at this event earlier tonight"...this will excite people and possibly cause some talk about your event. YOU WANT THIS! 

Last thing to do, and this is important...walk around after the show, speak to people, have a drink with them or just enjoy their company. Become very personable with them. Exchange social media and if you really like the person, maybe your phone number. Now you have a bigger network and a way to promote to people who have already experienced your event. They know what they are getting themselves into. 

Remember everyone's event is different but the beginning steps are usually the same for most events. Brainstorming, finding money and a venue to have the event, filling the venue, and then finally walking onto the stage and showing off all the hard work that you did to make this event possible. PROMOTE THE CRAP OUT OF YOUR EVENT ALSO, that is key! 

Hope this helped!