BONUS: Building Your Dream Business, Events, and Life with Lauren Smith of Modern Collective

Today I have a very special guest, Samantha I cannot wait to introduce you to one of my favourite business babes and friends. Lauren is not only an amazing event planner, but has created a business and a life of her dreams, listen to this episode to learn how you can elevate your life and your events...

[00:05] Meet Lauren Smith:

A passionate event planner, connection creating expert and lover of all things events + travel.

Lauren helps busy entrepreneurs create in person connection with their online community so they can strengthen their relationships, provide incredible value and turn their community into raving fans.

With over 10 years of event planning experience working with Canada’s largest financial institutions, Lauren brings countless unique and innovative ideas, and an impressive tool-box of skills to the table for her clients, spanning from an unmatched ability to pivot on the spot, to killer negotiation skills and the creative ability to think outside the box.

Dubbed “the future of the events industry” by Meetings + Incentive Travel Magazine and featured in CMP Magazine’s Women of Influence Issue, Lauren’s signature approach to the planning process and stress-free execution puts her clients at ease with every step of the process. Lauren’s community loves her because of her ability to think outside the box, create true and authentic connection and truly go above and beyond to create a WOW factor experience that helps turn their attendees into raving fans.

[3:05] Her story:

It was not a straight line or a smooth road. I went to school for event planning and I graduated when I was turning 21, and that fall my dad had a stroke. He lost his ability to speak, he basically was disabled, and we spent the next six months in the hospital with him trying to nurse him back to health and teach him how to speak again and do all those things. So my “career” post-school started off quite turbulent just trying to get our footing.

And then I got a job with a mortgage company doing all of their events. For me that was such a cool opportunity because I got to basically travel the world doing my dream job and I got a little bit of normalcy after living the caregiver life for a little while. We still are caregivers. I needed that time to just go and “do me.” So I was an event planner with them for six years and then I went and worked at a corporate bank, and while that was fun, it was definitely not me or creative or who I am in any realm of the world. So I decided to leave and go and do my own thing.

Throughout that course of a couple of years I was working for the mortgage company, I was living in Vancouver and that's where I met Danielle. She is the founder of the Business Babes Collective which started in Vancouver. When I moved out there I was like, “how do you make friends as an adult?” It's so awkward, I'm not going to just be friends with my work people. I wanted to meet women who were empowering and doing really cool things around business and their lives, and I went on Meet Up. I found the Vancity Business Babes and it was one of their first events in their first year of being a community, and met Danielle and asked her to go for coffee, and the rest is history.

When I moved back to Toronto, I was like “Dude this has to come to Toronto!” There was no girly business, educational, supportive community for women so we started one.

PART ONE: Entrepreneurship: Building Your Dream Business & Life

[7:55] Take us through a typical day or week in the life for you!

It depends. My business comes in waves. So there's either Event Prep Mode, Client On Boarding Mode, or Event Execution Mode. The week will really depend on what's going on in my life. For example, if I have a big program; let's talk about how my life looked in December because that was one of my busiest months. I would wake up in the morning. I take supplements and have a smoothie and I do start my morning when I eventually get out of bed. For the first little bit of the day I clean out my emails, and then I time block as well as day block.

Mondays: Dedicated to one of my two businesses

Tuesday & Thursdays: Strictly client work

Wednesdays: To the other business

Fridays: Typically when I take meetings, podcasts, out of the office, all my errands – so I try to only leave my house once a week because before I was doing meetings in Ajax on Mondays and downtown on Tuesdays, and it was too much for me.

But then when we get into our flow is like the really, really cool part. So we have a really fun and cool client management system. When I get off the phone with my client I'll brain dump what we talked about, I'll put all my ideas onto paper and then my team and I will start bringing that together and we'll do that when we're on boarding a client.

But in December it was a little bit of a gong show because we had so much going on, so one day, it will be that: full creative flow. Pinterest is my favourite thing as an event planner.

Then the next day I would be prepping for the retreat I did in January in Bali, so literally completely the opposite of the day before. I really try and give myself rest days so I will not look at my phone, I will not look at my computer, I will just completely check out.

[10:53] How do you create space for yourself and for grounding? Do you have any self care routines, what do those look like?

I don't have a morning routine, but I have a really, really locked and loaded eventing routine. Since I was a kid I've taken a bath every night. It is my time to put on a candle, chill. Sometimes I'll bring my phone just to aimlessly scroll pinterest, not do email but I'm kind of obsessed with my phone. Or I will read a book, or meditate in the bath. So that is my sacred time and I notice if I don't do that, I'm kind of grumpy; it's not fun.

Saturdays are the days where I will literally not look at work. I'll give myself Sunday's to regroup and write my to-do list, and meal prep and all that fun stuff.

[13:40] What advice would you give to someone who wants to create their dream business? Where do they start?

I think the biggest thing is, and I think people forget this, is that you're always going to be talking about it. So if it's something you love of you're going to get sick of, or you're not passionate about, don't do it. Because you're going to be able to see right through that. For me, I'm always going to see, or always talking about being an event planner. If you hear my name, you know that it's associated with events. And that's not because I'm strategically thinking, “okay so I need to make this many sales…” it's just who I am as a person and it's something I'm so passionate about. So that would be step number one: only really jump into something if you're going to be okay talking about it every day.

The second thing I would say, do your research and come up with a little bit of a plan. Know what your next 3, 6, 12 months is going to look like, and then just JUMP! You can plan and you can say you'll do it when you're ready but you'll never be ready, you just sometimes have to do it, because you'll learn about yourself when you're in hot water and you'll figure it out.

[15:50] Listener Question from Casey: What have been some of your biggest setbacks when working toward building your dream job, and how have you overcome them?

The biggest one I would say is when I was working corporate. I actually bought my domain and started to build my website 5 years ago, knowing that this was my end goal. And it was when I was working corporate that I was climbing the ladder and doing all those things, and I just remember being told all the time, I was told once that they wouldn't have given me a promotion if they knew if I got a boyfriend. It was the women in business type of struggle; but my type of struggle with it was I started to believe what everyone was telling me. I was told, “you were just a server before I hired you. They basically making me feel that I was indebted to everything they ever gave me. Which is a complete load of crap, but when you're told that all the time, you start to believe it. And I would surround myself with people who I thought were supportive of me, but would only ever let me be at their level. They would never help me achieve more, they would never make sure I was successful enough to be comfortable but never more. So the biggest set back was believing. How I pushed through it was I just listened to who I AM, and what my soul needed. And I did what was against the popular belief. Following myself and being true to who I am is what I think got me through a lot of all that crap I had to go through.

[18:00] Listener Question from Rachel: If you could go back in time to change one thing, what would it be?

It's so hard. There's not many things I would change because everything has brought me to where I am right now, but I think the biggest thing is I would have listened to what my dad was saying before he got sick. Because, it's kind of ironic but, my uncle who I was just with in California used to be business partners with my dad, and a lot of the stuff my uncle was walking me through and coaching me through in California is stuff that my dad taught him. So if had I listened 10 years ago, would my life be different? I don't know. You obviously can't tell that. But I would have loved to had a couple hours of business conversation with my dad.

PART TWO: Events & Event Planning

[20:05] What are some of the benefits of hosting events for women in business? What are some creative examples of types of events we can host for our business?

Connection. We live in an ever-changing world and there's so much online. And there are two different types of events: there's the online experience that you can give your community, which is huge because you can reach more people, and there's less cost involved. So I think we should be doing both: online and in-person events. So workshop or webinar or couple day online series of something, plus the in-person events.

The in-person events are going to be massively impactful because when we are together. I think women, specifically, we crave that certain type of connect in the business world. Going to an event that is hosted by another woman is when you're soaking in different energies and I think that's super, super important.

And then in terms of creative examples:

Retreats are going to be huge in the next couple of years because it's a small group of people who are really there to drive change. And you can get more out of the experience when it's a smaller group of people.

Conferences are still a thing, but they have to be really creative and really unique. They can't be your typical conference like when you went to figure out which University you wanted to go to. People want it to be an experience. There needs to be photo opportunities and really fun food, and make pop-up experiences. It has to be really different. So as much as events are still going to be a thing, we're in a bit of a shift that we can't just do a typical pop-up that we used to be able to do.

[23:22] I read somewhere that “Women come together in celebration,” and I know that so many of us love hosting parties and events. Where do we start? Walk us through some steps for mapping gout our dream event!

Absolutely. I think the first one is to get it on paper. and I'm guilty of this too. I will have a Saturday when I'm hiking with the dog and I'm building this dream event in my head. And then I get in the car and I forget everything. So map it out and ask yourself these intense questions like:

What do I want to get out of it?
Who is my attendee that I want to attract?
What are the experiences that I want them to have?
How do I want to be remembered from this event?

Ask yourself questions that aren't related to “what type of food am I going to serve.” Because people care more about how they feel, than what you say to them. They really want to feel like they're part of your community.

Form there, you can segregate them like, here's the feeling I want them to have, then write out how am I going to achieve that? Here's the visuals that I want them to have, how am I going to achieve that? And map it all out and start researching people that can help bring that vision to life.

And the number one thing I always say is budget from the beginning, because if you don't budget, you won't be profitable.

BUDGETING TOOLS/RESOURCES/TIPS:
Expect the worst but pray/plan for the best. I always map out my ideal situation.

Sponsorship isn't guaranteed so leave it out of the mandatory budget. Account for the things that you don't think you need to account for.

Make your slush fund bigger than it is. It's better to over budget than to under budget.

[26:42] There is so much that can change in the world of events and event planning. What are some of the challenges that you've faced? How did you handle them? What advice would you give to people planning an event on how they can flow through or overcome the disruptions?

I've had people have heart attacks on programs, I've had speakers not show, I've had boxed not delivered. Breakdown is going to happen in events. It's just how are you going to handle it. The key to being a good event planner is knowing that something is going to happen – you obviously can't prepare for what that thing is – but prepping yourself to handle it in the right way.

For example: when my attendee had a heart attack, I still had a 250 person event to plan. So I needed to take a minute and think of what that next step could be. I was going to support that attendee and visit them in the hospital, but I had to put in place other things, to deal with the group that was in Mexico and things that we had planned.

Handling [the challenges] with respect and calm, and to an extent being humble about it. Take on ownership where you might not necessarily need to, but if it's going to put the fire out, do it. Come together as a team, and don't put blame on anyone else. Take ownership.

[30:28] Obviously we can do anything, but we can't do everything on our own. Why do we need to hire an event planner like you for our next event?

Being an event planner means you have education behind it, or you've being doing it for a certain number of years and you've overcome these obstacles and you've planned different types of events. I haven't just planned evening networking events. I've planned thousand person conferences and retreats.

You can try and plan your own event if you want, but don't call me in the eleventh hour when shit hits the fan, because it will be too late. There are going to be problems that happen with your event, so how will you overcome them?

Or if you're planning an event in your business, you're taking away that part of your event that makes you money. So why would you want to shift your focus to learn something completely new, when you could just hire someone.

The other part where hiring an event planner comes in handy is with contract negotiations and contract negotiations.

[33:24] Where can we find you, follow you, and how can we support your business?

INSTAGRAM | @torontobusinessbabes and @moderncollective_

WEBSITE | www.moderncollective.ca

Engage with Lauren, ask her questions, if the Toronto Business Babes has an event, come to the event or online workshop!

PART THREE: RAPID FIRE

[34:11] #1. What are you currently reading OR what is your favourite book?

BOOK: The Answer by John Assaraf and Murray Smith

[24:50] #2. What do you love most about being a woman?

Our time has finally come. There is so much support for us, and so many people are behind us that it's really empowering and exciting to know that for the first time in what feels like forever, we can really do whatever we want.

[35:14] #3. What does “empowerment” mean to you?

Having the confidence and the support to follow your dreams, and to be unapologetically yourself, and show up super authentically.

[35:27] #4. What are you currently working toward?

A lot. But my biggest thing is I am registering my company as a travel agency and going to build out that side of my business as well.

Val Lavigne Life Women's Empowerment Podcast

Podcast Host

Valerie LaVigne

Valerie is the creator and founder of Valerie LaVigne Life and the Women's Empowerment Show. She helps busy and empowered women create healthy habits so that they can become the best version of themselves and transform their lives. Learn more about Valerie here!