Speaker 1: Hey, how's it going? So today we're going to talk about how to plan an event at a conference center. Now before I get into this, I'll let you guys know that I have some things that you guys may not in the sense of resources. I do already have a department that kind of handles the clients, but I speak to the clients as well. I do kind of have some things in place with HR as far as hiring, but what I'm going to give you today you guys can definitely use even if you don't have these resources. So we're going to talk about how to set an event at a conference center. And today I'm going to focus on staffing. That's right, staffing. It is very crucial that you have the right components in place when you're trying to execute an event. You need to know who the strong people are and not so strong people. But the main thing as the leader of the event, you just want to make sure that you put the right people in the right spots. So for me, as far as staffing goes, when I'm in the interview, excuse me, I have a set of questions that I generally run through and that kind of gives me an idea of one's work ethic or one's motivation. And if I don't find it in the questions, I will find it on the walkthrough, which is what we do here at the conference that I work at. And that's something that I kind of took upon myself to let people understand how much manual labor is involved when it comes to room arrangements. So if you were going to do an event for 50 people and we're talking, let's say a theater for 50 people, how many people would you need and how long would it take? These are all questions that you want to ask yourself as the person that's in charge of the logistics of the event. Now for me, like I said, depending on the talent level, you want to think about who you're putting where. So if you have somebody that may not be as assertive in details, then you might not want to put them on the spacing of chairs. You might want to lead them more in the direction of maybe pulling out the chairs. Sometimes employees surprise you, so you got to always account for that and let your employees grow for sure. And by letting your employees grow, you'll eventually grow. So what I have here is a group of guys that I've kind of put together. I have roughly 10 to 15 employees at any given time as we're working on these events. So over time, I watch my employees and see what kind of skill sets or talents that may arise that I didn't find out in the interview. So you always want to keep an eye open for that. And if you can, try to keep your best employees. That is very important. I say that because your best employees can almost be two people with the knowledge and the physical attributes that they may bring to the table. So for me, I would have roughly three or four individuals working on that theater that I mentioned of 50. And we would have someone pulling out the chairs. We would have someone setting the chairs. We would have someone making sure that the sides of the room are symmetrical. You know, you don't want to come into a room and then one side is all shifted and the other side is the opposite. So you want to have eyes looking at the event as it's being set. One thing that I've learned over my 15 years is if you're in the midst of it, you will miss something. So it's very important to establish leaders amongst your staff before the event actually gets underway. That just helps with management. So to give you guys a little background, I've done numerous events. I've been in this industry for 15 years and I've done quite a bit of hiring and as well as letting individuals go that didn't necessarily meet the workload. Because sometimes it's not about their skill set per se. It may be more or less the toll that it takes on one's body. Because at the conference that I work at, we are very flexible. So we may put a theater, classroom, banquet tables, cafe tables, theater, no chairs, no anything. We're pretty flexible and so we try to give the client as much as they request. And so back to the original statement, staffing is crucial to executing an event and you want to have your main players in place before the event, during the event, and after the event. And you establish this by sitting down with the team and kind of explaining where our strong spots are and where maybe some of our spots are not so viewable, if you will. And you start there after you've got your team together, establishing where everybody should be, and then five minutes before the program actually needs to be executed, you just want to meet up, huddle up, and make sure everything is squared away. So kind of back to the interviewing that I was mentioning earlier, you want to have behavior based questions within your interview. If you truly want to understand what the person's perception of manual labor, going the extra distance, you want to have questions as well that are kind of open ended and you want them to explain how they may have come up with an idea or how they may have viewed a situation. That'll help you gauge what you need out in the field, if you will. So I mentioned the walkthrough. So after the interview is over, I take my interviewee and we walk around and I show them the equipment, I show them the rooms, I kind of let them see what it is that they are going to be doing before we actually get the paperwork rolling and the background check and what's that form, where you got to do your taxes, and then before we get all the way down there, I try to make sure that the interviewee understands what they're up against. So that'll conclude the first video for YouTube and this is a Zayvati production and please come back, please like, please subscribe. This is the first one, so we'll be getting better with this over time.