Hosting Successful Events - Steve Turk, The Hospitality Mentor

Josiah: 0:00

Steve Turk is The Hospitality Mentor and in this episode, you'll hear about a recent event he hosted in Miami. Stick around to find out what he learned through the process of planning and hosting this event and get ideas on how you might show hospitality to the people around you by hosting your own events.

Steve, Thanks for taking some time to chat again. It was great to chat with you a little while back. Good to see you again. You've been on a tear. You've been on fire mentoring people individually and at scale through the hospitality mentor. I love what you're doing. The reason we connected today was to talk about your most recent event. I wonder, maybe just before we get into the conversation, if you could set the stage for us tell us a little bit about this most recent event that you hosted.

Steve: 1:01

Absolutely For listeners and watchers. If you don't know The Hospitality Mentor, it started as a podcast, really to learn the journeys of people that are leaders in the industry and show people. Some people start as dishwashers and front desk agents. Anyone can get these levels if you really work hard. I wanted to share those fantastic people's stories. Steve, thanks for taking time to talk about your most recent event. 

We've been doing the podcast for just over a year now. I've interviewed some fantastic people. A lot of them had said look, we would love to get together to meet you in person. I was like, what if I can get everybody in the room together? How cool of an event would that be? Because now we've had CEOs of great companies and general managers of hotels and restaurant owners and all these different people in this industry, but they never get to meet each other. Steve, thanks for taking time to talk about your most recent event, and so that was. The genesis of this event was let's get hotel people, vacation rental people, cruise ship people and restaurant people all in the same room, get them to meet each other and who knows what might happen we might have the next big idea for them in that room and so that was really what it was how can I get all these people in a cool place and actually, show up.

Josiah: 2:08

I love the premise of it, and how do you get started with something like that, because I imagine events are hard. People haven't hosted events themselves. There's a lot of work and a lot of planning that goes into it. So you have this idea. What's the next step? How do you proceed with that?

Steve: 2:22

Yeah, so the fun part was I'm a super user of LinkedIn, I'm a big believer in it, and so sometimes I use just to force myself to do something. So I put it out there saying as a poll hey, if I create an event like this, would you show up? And so many people responded to it saying absolutely, we would. And then they would write me personal messages of what they would like to see there. And there was hundreds of ideas and I said, no, we're going to keep this first one simple. We're going to do it at a great location. We'll have four components, and so this was the kind of how it started to come together. In my head was I need some kind of cool technology to be there that people can interact with, a great food piece, a great vibe in an environment, and then entertainment. And I put that out there to the world and it all started coming back in. So it was amazing, like if you just have this idea for an event, you put it out there, you'll be surprised it comes back. But the Florida International University Bacardi Center of Excellence say, hey, we want to participate. Can we bring our new AI bartender? I said absolutely, let's show that off. Then I had a great local restaurant that's called Icebox Cafe wanted to show off their new menu and their new samplings to the people that would be in that room. So all right, come on in. So they provided everything for the food there. The location was a distillery, so they already had their fantastic spirits being made on site that they wanted to show to all the hospitality people. And then a great entertainment company that surprised me with the level of entertainment they brought in. So all these people wanted to work together to help me to create this event. Now, there were some bumps along the road of getting people to work together nicely, but that's part of event planning. You have to make sure that you are the moderator and a little bit of a politician, so everyone can see that they're all going to win together when providing them.

Josiah: 4:08

I think just hearing you explain that it shows a couple things to me. It shows the power of collaboration right, and if you're gonna do something cool, it's gonna take working together with people to make it happen. But I think it also speaks to in the investment you've made over the past years you mentioned, but I think in the years prior to that, acting as a mentor from our earlier conversation, you've kind of thought about how do I use my life experiences, my career experiences, to help others, and so it came from this, this place, of wanting to help people and doing it in a fun context. So, of course, a big piece of this is the people you have in the room. You mentioned putting the call out there. I'm doing this, this cool event. Was there anything else you thought about as you were thinking about? I guess, that the people that would be there present at the event.

Steve: 4:52

So that was a big piece. Look and and events only as good as the people that are attending, right, and you want to have a good mix of people there, and so I, you know, I've been to many events where, listen, I'm a vendor now I've been on both sides, I'm been in operations and being a vendor, where it's just vendors and really they're just hanging out with each other and nothing really is happening. And so there's this fine balance of getting the operators of people who are doing things every day and leading big teams and creating companies. That needs some interesting vendors. But it can't be like you feel you show up to an event and you're just being sold to, and so, in this balance, I wanted to make sure we had great people there. So I reached out to everyone who's been on the podcast. So, if you look at that podcast list, some amazing people and a lot of them are not in town, but I still invited all of them and I was shocked to see how many of those amazing people said yes, that they would be there, and how many of them said I can't make this one but I'm going to come to the next one. Um, and they showed up. You know when you make an event. I remember telling my wife I was like I just hope I get like 20 people there. 25 people and 200 people showed up was awesome to see and just the quality of people in there Uh was fantastic. So I'm grateful to all of them showing up. And there was a moment of me Walking through that event and looking across the room and seeing introductions that I had made. So I had, like my new friend Thatcher Brown, co four seasons yachts, talking to my old friend Mootluka, chuck area general manager of Lowe's hotels. Then I have the general manager of the award-winning faena hotels talking to the founder of my vacation. I'll come to you, victor faria, and you see all these different people from different industries getting together making plans. I made so many meetings just to have coffee with people in this next two weeks that I'm excited about just from that one event.

Josiah: 6:45

I don't know if you had this, but was. Was there a moment at the event where you just stopped for a moment, looked at over the room, all these people talking? How did? How did that feel?

Steve: 6:53

it was a surreal feeling and, uh, you know I was excited about it because I stood there for a moment right when that is peak and you know we're in Miami and we're having an excessive heat wave going on right now, and I was in full sweat because I'm in my, you know, looking sharp. But everyone was having a good time. I looked around the room everyone was smiling, everyone was talking, everyone was interacting with each other and I saw, wow, just from having the idea of starting a podcast and just having the small idea of creating event Look what was created. And so, if I can do it, any of you out there can do it too Just to start with that idea and see it through.

Josiah: 7:32

I love that and and when you speak to going through your guest list and inviting people, you spoke to a couple of the people but you know, encourage Listeners to go to the hospitality mentor podcast, go through the back catalog, you'll see the caliber of people. So when you say, going through that, that is a, that is a very high caliber list of People. And then you spoke to kind of making some introductions and I feel like that is. It seems that is a core, a key part of being a host Right and really being hospitable and these sort of environments. How did you think about making those introductions? And it sounds like you're very proactive and, yeah, it was interesting.

Steve: 8:06

I was. I, you know it's funny because you know I like to enjoy a nice drink when I'm at an event but I was like very thoughtful. It's like all right, I'm gonna be hydrating with water here as I work the room and Make sure the people I want to meet each other meet. Um, and I kind of felt back because it was my first time where people wanted to talk to me and I was like interrupting conversations to be able to Meet as many people as I could there, and so I thanked a lot of them. But I think the key to these events and the future ones is the relationships that are formed From people who have not met each other, and then we'll hopefully get to see each other at the next one and continue on building that relationship. So it's really important to me that those great people that I know don't know each other Actually connected, because I know how much they would actually like each other.

Josiah: 8:54

I think you touched on an interesting point, because when you're working as the host, it is a job and you are there, you're kind of floating around right, and so, as fun as it is to have a longer conversation with someone, you almost have to put it on a different hat when you're the host, right, and you're there to make sure everybody is connected to somebody having a good time right.

Steve: 9:12

And I felt bad. So there's a couple of you out there. I know you came right up to me as I was in mid conversation and I would get back to you, and I didn't. I had nothing against you all. Well, I'll do it at the next one and I promise we'll chat a little bit more.

Josiah: 9:23

Well, that might be a good segue, because I wanted to hear you know what are you excited about. You think about events, you think about these gatherings, what are you looking forward to or excited by in this area?

Steve: 9:36

What I found with this was an overwhelming response, with people that were there like when's the next one? And then the people who missed out had the FOMO. The fear of missing out was, hey, when is the next one? So both sides of it were when is the next one? And so for me it's trying to figure out when that is right. How many of these do you do before? It's too many, and you'd want to replicate the success as well. So in my own head it's like all right, I did really well this time. How can I get that caliber of people again? Because really, what matters it's not anyone can go get drinks somewhere and meet some people, and there's plenty of networking events out there. It's really the quality of people that show up. So that's. My next step is working on how I can get these great people that came to come and enjoy it again, and then also making sure the people that want to come, who come for the first time, enjoy themselves as much as the first event.