The beginning
People often ask me how did this happen, how did I become CreativeMornings Lisbon host.
It was by chance. Pure chance, as so many other good things happen in life.
My first contact with CreativeMornings Lisbon was as an attendee. I learn about it at Meetup and immediately fell in love.
One day I saw a Facebook post asking for a volunteer for the next day event and since I was already going anyway, I offered myself. I thought it would be really cool to be a part of it. The rest is history. A few months later, the previous host, Victoria Ivanova, told me she was stepping down from her role and I decided to apply for the role. It was not the easiest process, but I got it.
The struggles
On the first months, I was terrified. I wasn’t sure if I would get the speakers, the sponsors and, on top of it, the previous team of volunteers all drop out with the change of host. Except for Lucia. You might know her for being the first face you see when getting to the event. She does the check-in and helps organizing all the stuff to be ready when you start coming (Thank you, Lucia!).
Then, we couldn’t find a breakfast sponsor. So, we bought ourselves breakfast with the help of Impossible, another one that stick with us during this transitional period. I was also lucky enough to have Daily Coffee on board and they have been providing the coffee since. Thank you both!
My first speaker was a close friend who I knew could speak English and had always interesting stories. Only 16 people came. The second speaker was my boyfriend’s boss. 17 people came. And it was actually a shame, as it was one of the best talks we ever had.
The errors
When people ask me how I do it, there’s only one answer: with errors. At the beginning my sole objective was to make it happen. Venue. Check. Speaker. Check. Communications. Check. And then I would hope for at least one person to show up. I have been a little bit luckier than that.
During the past year I did so many mistakes. From incorrect links on the newsletter or typos on social media to not setting up people’s expectations correctly, whether sponsors or volunteers. It’s not easy to sell something that is not for sale. This is a free small event, we all are volunteers or supporters. The main result is being able to provide a good and inspiring time to a small group of people. It can be very rewarding (and it is) but any other lateral results are not immediate, and this might be frustrating for those investing their time and products. Communication is the key, but it took me a while to learn that.
The lessons
It’s hard to quantify how much I learned the past 12 months.
I learned that if I keep my expectations aligned with the right goal (providing a good time for a small group of people) the more I work, the more it grows. It’s proportional. More work means more audience, more audience means more sponsorships, more sponsorships means a better event. This means I also had to learn to limit myself. Limit the time I want to work on this. If I allow, CreativeMornings can take up all my time. Unfortunately, I do have other things to do.
I learned that word of mouth is still the best marketing campaign. The more I tell my friends about this, the easier it gets to find what I need. The more people enjoy the event, the more they will tell their friends, the bigger my audience gets.
I learned that breaks are essential. We decided to have a break in July to re-think all our strategy and in August we came back stronger than ever and we saw an immediate boost on the event. We reached a record on our numbers and kept surpassing ourselves every month since then.
I learned that I need to be able to delegate even if I feel that there are things that I still need to do myself. It’s a hard balance. I learned that our moto is true, everyone is creative. Everyone I talked with, from volunteers to members of the audience, have taught me something. I learned that more than network, more than feeling inspiring, people long for connection and that must be my goal and focus for being successful. From the talks, almost all of them, I learned two very important things:
1st,a lot of things happen by chance. Or so people say. Truth is, almost every speaker talks about how things just happened. But interestingly, all those things happened after they decided what they needed to change. So, do things really happen by chance or is it us who get more sensate to chances once we are aiming for them?
2nd, the most interesting talks had one single thing in common. Passion. It doesn’t matter the topic or how interesting it would be for each individual, the best feedback we get is when we hear people really passionate about what they are talking about.
The future
I believe the big lesson is understanding what people want and what people need. Now that we were able to grow enough to have tickets sold out in two days and to reach a record of 70 people on one single event, we need to focus on maintaining the vibe for people to connect and leave with a smile, inspired and motivated. More than growing we need to keep exploring ideas such as the morning match board that allows people to verbalize what they need or what they are offering on a post-it, we need to keep the good coffee that keeps us all awake at such an early time and we need to keep bringing in people with inspiring stories and ideas to share.
If you have any ideas, feel free to share. We are building a community here.
Speaking of community I could not finish by thanking everyone that somehow contributed to the events, but I have a special thanks to those who made a big and continuous effort through the year such as Henrique, who helps setting everything up on the day of the event, it’s our Instagram stories guy and does a lot of back office work with sponsors and venues. Nicole. Nicole has been a photographer, a speaker, a designer, a cook, a co-host, and so many other things. She basically has put her work in anything required or that could improve the events. Sofia. Sofia is our community manager, she is great getting people together and has been a huge help with sponsors since she is on board. Tarlis, more than a photographer has been a photo reporter, helping us telling a story through his photos. Jakub is the one who makes our wonderful illustrations to help you remembering to bring your own mug, release your ticket, subscribe our newsletter and so many others. Theo. Theo did the most amazing videos we ever had. He is very talent with transition and capturing the vibe we all feel. I have already talked about Lucia. Lucia is an ideas generator and has that capability of always having a smile really early in then morning. She is the longest volunteer for CreativeMornings Lisbon.
Happy festive season for everyone.
This article features photos by Nimagens, by Acurácia Fotojornalismo and by Pedro Vilela .
