167: She Thinks Big Live: How a Big Event Comes Together

Welcome to the Time to Level Up Podcast. I'm your host, Andrea Liebross. Each week, I focus on the systems, strategy, and big thinking you need to CEO your business and life to the next level. Are you ready? Let's go.

Hello, my friends, and welcome back to the Time to Level Up Podcast. Today I want to do a little post-event debrief for you. I want to give you a little behind-the-scenes of how this thing came together, how She Thinks Big Live on January 18th and 19th, and actually even on January 20th, how it all came together, what I was thinking before, during, and after, and what was happening behind the scenes that you might not have known even if he were there.

I think this is important because the theme for the event She Thinks Big Live was being a big thinker. What I wanted guests, attendees to walk away with was a plan on how they were going to create an extraordinary 2024. I had to embody big thinking and how I was going to create an extraordinary event in order to execute this as it was executed, what it turned out to be.

I think this is important because I actually lived through the principles that I was sharing and teaching that day in creating it, in creating the event in and of itself.

Here's where I want to go. First, I started session one of She Thinks Big Live, for those new listeners, I wrote a book in 2023 called She Thinks Big, and as a culminating event around the book launch, at least in my brain, which I decided, I decided this probably in June to do She Thinks Big Live, which is a full day-long workshop and conference in Indianapolis downtown on January 19th, I had a VIP, if you wanted to be a VIP, the investment was a little more but the night before, we had a VIP reception at Drybar in downtown Indianapolis where everybody got a blowout and we had some cocktails and hors d'oeuvres and got to chat at the VIP event.

That kicked it off for me, on the evening of Thursday, the 18th. The 19th was the event itself and then I invited my masterminders to come to my home on the morning of Saturday, the 20th, for some coaching because I love to do special things for my masterminders. I love to bring them together in person as much as possible. That was a little bonus for them.

Again, I don't know when you're listening to this but if you want to be part of the Runway to Freedom mastermind and you want to join us in April in Florida in our in-person retreat, you better get clicking and book a call with me ASAP or even just DM me on Instagram and we will find a time because, even while you're listening to this, the doors might have already closed for the April retreat, but maybe not. Message me, it's worth the conversation.

I started to think about all of this in June of 2023 before, ahead of the book launch, which happened at the end of September 2023. I saw it as part of this six-month rollout of She Thinks Big The Book. That's where it all started.

My coach helped me formulate this idea. Shout out to Stacey. My coach helped me formulate this idea. I've done live events before. I did something similar but on a much lesser scale in 2022. It was a day-long event and I had a VIP part. Then way back in the day, every month I used to do a 90-minute live event, the Lunch and Learn but I hadn't done something as big as this ever.

I had to put my big thinking hat on and really start to envision what I wanted it to look like and believe that what I wanted it to do would happen. Session one of She Thinks Big Live was all about a belief plan and my belief plan was that if I created this, number one, they would come.

It's like Field of Dreams. If you build it, they will come. I had to believe that people would dedicate this entire day and they would come from all over the country, which they did. I think about 17 or 18 people, a little less than half, traveled on a plane to get there. I had people from Miami, Eugene Oregon, Boston, Dallas, Denver, and all the places in between come together.

I had to believe that if I built it, they would come and I had to believe that it would fulfill my objective, two things: number one, of helping these women think bigger about 2024, and number two, that it would fuel my belief that bringing people together in person does amazing things. Coming together in person is important if you are a business owner, if you are a CEO.

I had to believe too, that these female CEOs of companies, small and large, some of them are in their first six figures, some of them are making multiple seven figures, no matter where they were in there, they would see the value in dedicating an entire day to this.

I had to believe that they were willing to put time, money in getting there and the investment of the actual registration fee, and brainpower into coming to She Thinks Big Live. They will put brainpower and a lot of brainpower in that day to get out of it what they wanted to get out of it. That's number one. That was my belief plan.

Session two of She Thinks Big Live was all about your life plan and how you have to integrate, we came up with that word, Stacie Simpson, who is a fellow coach on my team who is a time and focus expert, she talked on stage during that session too about life plan, about how we really just have to integrate our life and our business. It's not a balance, it's just an integration.

Sometimes the pendulum swings more towards life. Sometimes the pendulum swings more towards the business but it all evens out in the end if we're doing a good job at it. We have to set ourselves up for that integration.

Here's the thing, when I did the event in 2022, I had a friend act as the event planner. Shout out to Meghan, she did an awesome job. But Meghan's not an event planner, and neither am I, and I realized in planning that event, plus in planning some of my retreats for my mastermind people that in order for me to, number one, maintain my sanity and energy leading up to and on that day of execution, I needed to hire an event planner.

I needed to take all of the responsibility of the behind-the-scenes execution of everything out of my hands and put it into the hands of someone else because in the past when I hadn't done that, it was really impacting my life. It was not how I wanted to be. I did not want to be like a stressed-out crazy person leading up to it and on day of, I wanted to show up as an amazing host.

I did not want to show up as someone wondering when lunch was going to be delivered. I did not want to be worrying about audiovisual. I did not want to be worrying about any of that.

In July, I asked my amazing photographer whom I've worked with in the past, and client, Emily, who you might have heard on this podcast before, I asked her, I was like, “Hey listen, you've worked with a ton of event planners in Indianapolis. You get me.” She understands who I am and what my expectations of things are. “Who would you hire to be an event planner for an event like this?”

She gave me a couple of names and I interviewed three people. In the end, my gut told me to go with Annie. There was just something about Annie. I felt like she got me. I felt like she understood my vision. I felt like she could help me hold belief that this would happen.

I went back to Emily, I said, “I think I feel like I should go with Annie. What do you think?” she's like, “Well, that would have been my first choice too.” So Annie it was. In July, I hired Annie to help me start planning this January event. That was truly a decision that aligned with how I wanted to run my life for the days leading up to the event and on the day of.

I'm going to tell you that hiring Annie was the best decision and actually, Annie is going to come with me to Florida in April when I do my in-person mastermind retreat. She is going to help me run that and be behind the scenes there so I can again show up like I want to show up for my clients at the retreat as their coach and host, not as the person who is worrying about whether or not we have enough talents. Annie's going to do that and actually, Annie loves doing that. She's so good at it. It doesn't even fluster her. She's a natural.

Alright, so that was how I integrated this into my life. The next thing I talked about at the event was the action plan. Session three was about action plan. There were tons and tons of actions that had to be taken in order to execute the day or the couple of days like I wanted to.

Now luckily, Annie was executing on most of the actions, but we had to discuss them. We had conversations about what I wanted this to look like. I'm just going to give you a little bit of a lowdown on the number of people that were taking actions on my behalf in order to create the event.

We had the people who were running the venue. We visited a couple of venues and I decided on a VisionLoft at the Stutz building in downtown Indianapolis. Shout out to Julie and Sarah who did an amazing job on setting up the venue. We had to decide how we wanted the tables placed, what the furniture was in there, and what else did we need, etc. So there's the venue.

Next up, we decided we wanted a stage and we needed audiovisual, we needed TV screens, we needed microphones, we needed speakers. We hired Danny, The Simple DJ, to create the stage and to do all of the audiovisual and that was a huge job. I am not good at that stuff, to begin with, but he took all the actions needed to create what I wanted to create. So thank you. Shout out to Danny.

We had to hire someone to help with the curtain that went behind the stage. That was a separate company. Well, they also helped with the skirting that went around the stage. I'll call them like the curtain people. There were linens, there were linens on tables, and in my VIP section of tables, we had blue tablecloths.

We had to go to A Classic Party Rental to get linens. We hired a florist to decorate, put greenery on the stage, to put flowers around the venue and at the VIP night. Thank you, [Stacey, of Rested Window]. We had to create a step and repeat or a backdrop for the stage. That was Garrett at Printing Partners.

There were lots of printed materials. There were signs, there were handouts, all of that. Eileen at Noteworthy Expressions, she did that. The reason I'm listing this out is I want you to think about all of these actions, all of these decisions that had to be made.

Then there was all the food, food and drink. The Juniper Spoon, Lali. Delicious food by the way. Do you think a roomful of like 40 women is not going to eat anything? Oh, they ate everything. Delicious food. How did I want that packaged? How was it going to be presented? Did I want to have a menu? What beverages were we offering at VIP night?

All of the food the day of was Lali in Juniper Spoon. The night before the VIP night and the mastermind brunch, that was a company called 317 Charcuterie. Then Annie even said to me, “Okay, drinks, fancy drinks for VIP night, what if we get fun straws?” Like yes. So we came up with a signature drink with some fun straws. We sourced those from Amazon. There were some things from Amazon.

But these are all actions. We made a beautiful, what I would say beautiful, swag box. It was a big box tied with a big bow and inside were four things that represented belief plan, life plan, time plan, action plan. There was a card in there explaining why I had chosen those things.

For VIP night, they got little pouches, monogram from Mark and Graham that said, “Think big,” and some drive our goodies. All of these are actions, my friends. The stage had a couch and some chairs. We rented those from a place called Vintage Violet. They provide rental furniture for stages. The rug on the stage, that came from them. All of these are pieces of the puzzle.

Then Annie had a team to help answer questions and to make sure all the pieces of the puzzle were working smoothly. She had a team of three people there. She had a team of three people at the VIP night. I decided probably in September, October, I wanted an emcee at our event. Annie helped me source Nicole Pence Becker who was a great emcee and really helped with the flow of the event and doing some of the interviewing. Shout out to her.

Then Emily, the photographer and videographer, like I mentioned at the beginning, she was there and I am probably forgetting people behind the scenes getting me ready. I had someone do my makeup, Kate Shaw, you're amazing. I had someone do my hair, Carly Phelps, amazing. There are tons and tons of people that went into the production of this event. But this was all part of my action plan.

Then the last part of that day was the time plan. Session four was about a time plan. We were down to the minutes in executing, in planning what was going to happen at what minute. At this point, when I really got into the time plan of it all, I decided that I wanted to bring in Lina Midla to kick the morning session off, the afternoon session, and to end it off with some breath work, which is very grounding. If you've never done breathwork, go Google it.

You can follow LIMITLESS with Lina if you want to see a little more. She was the one that helped set the tone. When I was looking at time and how I wanted to use the minutes that we had, I decided this was worth it. This was something that I wanted. This was part of the experience that I wanted to create.

But that really didn't come to me until I looked at how I wanted to use every minute and the feel and outcome result I wanted to create with every minute. Now as I look back on the feedback from the event, here are some things that people said. I asked them what was the best part.

Here's what one person said, “Meeting the other women. I really appreciated the connection that was created.” Someone else said, “The best part was the VIP night. I truly enjoyed feeling like a VIP. It is rare in business that I take time to celebrate myself. I take off mental health days, but that does not really include pampering myself. This was a different level because not only was it me time, but it was also wonderful to connect with other female business owners.”

Then she said, “The best part, I'm not sure. It truly was perfection. I filled my notebook with all of the incredibly helpful information. I've been using it since. It is full of dreams, goals, and mapping out the year. This really helped me kickstart the year for me. I was feeling unmotivated when I walked in and this definitely brought my spark back.”

Someone else said, “The best part was the energy in the room. As I envisioned my dreams, it was comforting to know that there were others there further along who also started with a dream.” Someone said, “The best part was the time in each session where we can work on what we learned. The best part, meeting some of the attendees in person. The best part was being able to chat with interesting and motivating women and to treat myself.”

I think that's evidence that a lot of what I planned did achieve the result I wanted. Then I asked them what their biggest takeaways were. “Biggest takeaway: I felt absolute clarity on what I do and do not need to focus on this year.”

“Biggest takeaway: I have to believe in myself more.” “Biggest takeaway: connection and taking time for myself to think and take thoughtful action is worth it.” “The biggest takeaway, that I dream to build a business beyond myself, that I need to create more space so that I can have more life integration. I need more clarity around my boundaries. I need to build a support team, that my husband needs to get out into my business.” That’s someone's biggest takeaway.

Another biggest takeaway is “Belief that you have to believe to make the action stick to give the feeling you want, to be willing to dream wild dreams.” “Biggest takeaway: the belief plan was honestly the biggest section. I need to write down who I will be at the end of the year and spend more time really thinking about it.”

This word belief keeps coming up. That is why I've created another podcast episode about the belief plan that I want you to make sure that you listen to as well. But here's how I'm going to close this out. This is what someone wrote as their biggest takeaways and I don't think I can do a better job in sharing with you why I did this.

I think this person truly got exactly what I wanted them to get. They saw that I too have a belief plan, a life plan, an action plan, and time plan and that I am so, so willing to share it with them, and I'm willing to share it with you too. If you're listening and this sounds like something exciting to you, I want you to set up a call with me. Let's talk about how you can get some of this too.

The call in and of itself will give you some of it, but here's what she wrote, five biggest takeaways. “Number one, a dream is usually something outrageous, and don't judge it.” I didn't judge my dream to create She Thinks Big Live. “Number two, the most important list is not my to-do list. It's my to-believe list. I had to have a to-believe list before I even had a to-do list.”

She wrote, “I need to revisit this regularly to reinforce my belief plan.” This is true, my friends, I had to revisit my belief plan for this multiple times because there were some bumps.

Here's the third thing, her third biggest takeaway, “Failure is the currency of success. Don't be afraid to set wild goals,” and I'm going to do an episode on wild goals. But there were some failures along the way here. It wasn't all rainbows and daisies but I had to keep going back to being, “It's okay if I fail because, in the end, it's just fuel to get me where I want to go.”

This brings me to her fourth biggest takeaway, “I need to embrace the things I'm willing to fail at for those are the things that will ultimately hold me back if I don't attempt them.” Yeah, 100%. And here's the last one, “I have all the time I need to do what I want to do.”

I kept believing that as we were planning this because, at some points, I was like, “Are we ever going to get this done? Are people going to come together? Is every person I listed off going to do their job? Are they going to take the actions that I would love them to take in order to create the reality, turn this dream into reality for me?” And they did. We had all the time we needed. It was the perfect amount of time.

Okay, my friends, I hope this has helped give you a little bit of a behind-the-scenes of what went on and how it tied into the actual structure of the day. I was very deliberate, thoughtful, and intentional about how I went about planning this and the result I wanted from it, and how that aligned with the material I was presenting at She Thinks Big Live.

I might do it again in 2025. If I do, I hope you're going to be there. This event was included in my coaching packages. If you're a person in one of my coaching packages in the majority of my coaching packages, this was included in your investment for coaching.

I love to treat my clients the way I want to be treated. I love to provide for them the experiences that I know will elevate them. This was one of them. Come join us. Set up your call. I'm going to keep pushing that. Set up your call, you've got nothing to lose in a call.

If we decide coaching isn't right for you, that's okay, I'll find what is. It's worth a call. Head over to andreaslinks.com. If you want in on that mastermind for April at our in-person retreat, get on the schedule. Get on my calendar right now. Okay, my friends, until next time, now is the time to level up. It's your time. These people at She Thinks Big Live, all of the attendees, they are leveling up. What about you? Let's go.

Hey, listening to podcasts is great. But you also have to do something to kick your business up a notch. You need to take some action, right? So go to andreaslinks.com and take the quiz. I guarantee you'll walk away knowing exactly what your next best step is to level up.