The Best Party You'll Ever Throw Is Already Half Done. You Just Don't See It Yet.

Alf Marcussen

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22d • 📝 Tips

Stop Waiting for the Perfect Event. The Best Ones Are Already on the Calendar!

Here's something most people get wrong before they ever send an invite.

They think the hard part is the party.

It's not!!1

....the hard part is that people have forgotten how to be in a room together.

Look around.

Everybody's home.

And when they finally do go out, they're standing in the corner staring at a screen, scrolling through photos of other people having the life they're too checked out to go live themselves.

That's not a problem for you.

That's your opening.

You are not in the party business.

You are in the "get people off the couch and make them feel like they belong somewhere" business.

The party is just the vehicle.

And forget big for a second. Big is not the goal.

Your event doesn't have to be huge.

Some of the best things I ever did were for a core group.

Twenty people.

Forty. Fifty, eighty, a hundred.

Your core people.

The ones who already trust you.

Take care of them.

Make something happen that makes them feel special, like they're on the inside of something good. Do that, and watch what you've actually built.

You've built an army. People who will go to work for you to pay you back for every favor you've ever done them.

They'll fill rooms for you and they'll do it gladly, for free, because you took care of them first.

And here's the part that matters most.

When one of your people tells a friend about your next party, that friend doesn't feel like they're being sold anything.

They're just hearing about something amazing from someone they trust.

No pitch.

No pressure.

Just "you have to come to this." That's the kind of person you want around, and that's the kind of word of mouth no ad budget can buy. Keep that in your head for everything that follows.

So let me give you a pile of ways to build that room.

Steal any of them.

You don't need your own event.

The city is already throwing one.

This is the easiest first win there is, and almost nobody does it.

There's a concert coming to town.

There's a street festival next month.

There's a game, a tasting, a comedy night already on the books.

Somebody already booked the venue, sold the tickets, and did the heavy lifting.

Your job is just to gather your people around it.

I did this for thirteen years with the Gipsy Kings.

....started with one bus, fifty people going to a concert together.

That became eight buses and four hundred people.

I didn't produce the concert.

The "Concert Place" did.

.....I just produced the experience of going together, and that's the part people remembered for the next thirty years.

Ask yourself:

what's already happening in your city in the next sixty days that you could simply rally a group around? You're not competing with it. You're riding it.

Make somebody's birthday bigger than they ever expected.

Birthdays are gold because the reason to show up is already built in.

Nobody questions a birthday.

Do YOUR VERY OWN BIRTHDAY for "God's Sake"...I did that many, many times.

But here's the move most people miss.

Don't throw the birthday person a party.

Throw a party that happens to be around them and invite people who don't all know each other yet.

You turn a small circle into a bigger one.

Guess what happens next year? Half those new faces want you to do theirs too.

Look at the calendar. It's writing your year for you.

Open a calendar right now. Every month is stuffed with reasons to gather that you're walking past.

Cinco de Mayo.

The first warm Friday of spring.

Halloween, obviously.

Some ridiculous national day, like national taco day or whatever it is, that's funny enough to build a theme on.

You don't need a deep reason.

You need a date and a vibe.

The date gives people permission to say yes.

The vibe gives them a reason to remember it.

What's the next date on the calendar your crowd would happily get dressed up for?

Help somebody else fill their room first.

This one takes patience, and that's exactly why it works.

Somebody you know is throwing an event and sweating whether anyone shows up.

Bring your people.

Make their night.

Don't ask for anything.

Just show up big and make them look good in front of their own crowd.

Now you've done two things.

You've put your network in a room full of new faces, and you've banked a favor with someone who will move mountains for you when it's your turn.

I built twenty thousand people over the years partly on this.

Generosity in a room comes back.

It always comes back.

It just doesn't come back on your schedule, so stop counting.

The pre-party is where the magic actually happen!!!!!

Here's the thing I learned that changed everything.

The main event is rarely where people connect.

It's too loud, too crowded, too much going on.

The connection happens before, at the pre-party, when there's still room to talk and a stranger can become a friend.

So build one.

Get everyone together an hour or two before the concert, the festival, the main thing.

Drinks, music, low pressure, easy conversation.

By the time the group walks into the main event, they're not a bunch of strangers anymore.

They're a crew...they are a TEAM.

....and a crew/team has ten times more fun than a room full of individuals.

Are you giving your people a place to actually meet each other, or are you just handing them a ticket and hoping?

Give them a way to belong on sight.

This is the simplest, cheapest, most powerful trick I've got, so pay attention.

Give people something to wear that puts them on the same team.

Everybody in shades.

Everybody in wigs.

Bad-taste outfits where the worse you look the more you win.

A Latin theme where everyone's in something red.

Halloween, where the whole point is showing up as someone else.

It sounds small.

It isn't.

The second a stranger sees someone else wearing the same dumb hat, the wall comes down.

They have permission to walk up and talk, take pix of each other, with each other.

You just did the hardest part of socializing for them without them even noticing.

That's what belonging feels like, and people are starving for it right now.

You're not selling a costume.

You're handing out a reason to not feel alone in a room.

The one idea underneath all of these.

Every single thing on this list is really the same thing wearing different clothes.

You are creating a reason for the right people to get in a room and a way for them to feel like they're part of something the moment they arrive.

The concert, the birthday, the calendar date, the costume, those are just the wrapper.

The gift inside is connection.

And in a world where people have basically forgotten how to do it, the person who makes it easy becomes the person everyone wants around.

So here's what I want you to do this week:

Pick one thing that's already happening in your city.

Start small, with your core people.

Add a pre-party.

Give them a reason to dress alike.

Then stand in the back and watch what happens when strangers start becoming friends.

Because of that.

That's the whole job.

...SO...what are you waiting for.... Start That List right now and Write it into your calendar and start mapping out how you will execute on it ... and promote it...

Ps.. want to Brainstorm some ideas with me.. .then Show up on my Weekly Tuesday calls.

Here's the link: https://www.skool.com/party/calendar

2 comments

The Best Party You'll Ever Throw Is Already Half Done. You Just Don't See It Yet.