This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Let's talk about virtual events, leading virtual events. A city government staffer focuses on virtual events to build her income generating project, also known as her side hustle. Welcome to Side Hustle School, my name's Chris Guillebeau. Today's episode is part of a feature we call your first $1,000. It is in fact true to form, true to advertisement, how does someone make their first $1,000?
And we try to focus on the point of origin, the idea, how the person goes from idea to income, anything they learned along the way and what you might need to know if you wanna do something similar, whether it's the same kind of business or something different. Using this kills you already have and of course without spending a lot of money. Now with that in mind, today's feature comes from Victoria. As mentioned, she's gonna talk about virtual events planning, which could be any kind of shared activity that's available for streaming to people in different locations. These days, we've got virtual everything.
We've got virtual concerts, conferences, weddings, funerals, honestly, anything you can imagine. So producing a virtual event has some similarities with in-person events, like there's some overlap in the event planning world, but also some key differences. So let's hear how Victoria got going with her hustle. [Music]
Hi, this is Victoria. Here to tell you about the time I accidentally started my virtual event planning side hustle.
It all started with my friend's birthday party. She wanted to have a virtual celebration during the pandemic and being the tech savvy person I am. I offered to help her set it up. I had so much fun organizing the event and I started to think about how I could do this for other people too. I mentioned my potential service on social media and before I knew it, I had my first client.
The client was a small business that wanted to hold a virtual networking event for their employees. I was thrilled, but I quickly realized that was a lot of difference between planning a virtual event and an in-person event, especially one that wasn't for a friend. One of the biggest differences was the technology involved. I had to make sure that everyone had access to the right software and knew how to use it. I also had to test everything beforehand to make sure that there was no technical difficulties during the event.
Another difference was the atmosphere. With an in-person event, you can create a certain ambiance with decorations, lighting, and music. With a virtual event, you have to rely on different cues. But despite these differences, I was determined to make the virtual event just as engaging and fun as an in-person event. I came up with some interactive activities that would keep everyone engaged and connected, and it was a huge success.
In the end, I earned my first $1,000 from that small business event, and I was hooked. I continued to promote and landed more clients who wanted to hold virtual events. And the best part, I was able to do it all while still working my full-time job with the city government, which of course was remote during that time as well. My funniest moment so far is when I was planning a virtual baby shower for a client, and we'd organized a game where the guest had to guess the baby's gender. Each guest had to hold up a sign with their guess, and we're going to count the votes to determine the winner.
But as we're getting ready to start the game, one of the guests accidentally held up a sign with a completely different message. Instead of guessing the baby's gender, the guests sign read, "I love cheese!" We all burst out laughing, and the guest was so embarrassed that she tried to hide her face from the camera. But we turned it into a joke and decided to count her "I love cheese" vote as a write-in candidate. In the end, it turned out to be a hilarious moment that made everyone feel more relaxed and connected. And who knows, maybe the baby will grow up to be a cheese lover.
My advice to anyone who wants to follow in my footsteps is to start small and build up your experience. Be sure to test things out and learn as you go. And most importantly, have fun with it. Virtual events can be just as exciting and engaging as an in-person event, if you're creative and willing to think outside the box. - Thank you so much, Victoria.
I really appreciate the report. Hopefully our listeners were encouraged as well. Listeners, I know you have an idea out there. I know you have something you're working on, or at least thinking about, I know you are thinking about how to make extra money without quitting your job, whether you want it to be full-time or otherwise. So if you have a question or an update for us about your hustle, let me know, sidehustleschool.com/questions.
I always want to encourage our listeners and really everyone to just try to move forward as best as possible. You don't always know what the next 10 steps are gonna be, but just try to figure out one step and do that today. So I'm gonna take that encouragement for myself. I'm gonna move forward. I'm gonna identify a project and take one step toward it.
Hope you'll do the same. New episode coming out tomorrow. My name's Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
