How to Host a Meaningful Business Event w/Lauren Najar

In this Business Chaser episode, Lauren breaks down what actually makes an event meaningful, impactful, and worth attending. From networking dinners to retreats, she shares her perspective on why hosting an event is about far more than filling seats or planning something pretty. It’s about intention, connection, and making people feel genuinely seen.

Lauren walks through what she believes separates forgettable events from transformational ones, including guest experience, event etiquette, personalization, community building, and how to create real value for the people in the room. If you’ve ever thought about hosting an event for your business, this episode will give you a clearer understanding of what matters most and how to do it well.

Episode Highlights:

• What makes a business event feel meaningful and memorable
• How to make guests feel seen, supported, and connected
• The key difference between hosting a good event and creating real impact

Chapters:

00:00 — Welcome to The Business Chaser

01:02 — Why Lauren Started Hosting Events

04:03 — Bad Event Experiences and What Was Missing

08:02 — How to Make Guests Feel Seen and Supported

11:10 — What Makes an Event Truly Impactful

Let’s Stay Connected:
→ Follow Lauren on Instagram: www.instagram.com/laurennajar
→ Learn more or work with me: www.laurennajar.com
→ Follow Business Over Cocktails on IG: www.instagram.com/businessovercocktails
→ Attend Growth & Connect retreats & events: www.instagram.com/growthandconnect

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to the Business Chaser, your quick pour of strategy, clarity, and momentum. We skip the small talk and get straight to the strategy here in these bite-sized episodes. We're here to help you grow smarter, market better, and chase what matters all in 15 minutes or less. I'm your host, Laura Najar. Tune in and let's chat. Hello, hello. Welcome back to Business Over Cocktails. We're going to do a short and sweet episode of this Business Chaser segment over events. So this was something that I fielded from all of you. It asked for some upcoming topics. So I already recorded an episode, which you have already heard. So we did an episode on ads, and we are now gonna do an episode on event hosting. So I was asked about how do you and not just like host events, but how do you have people feel seen and what's kind of like etiquette and what do you do specifically to give people that transformation? So I'm happy, more than happy to take you through this. So anyone can host an event that wants to, right? Like not everyone wants to. It's a lot of work. I tell this to people all of the time that I really don't know like why I am this way, but I remember watching The Wedding Planner, which is a movie that came out, I think, probably in like 2001, and it has Jennifer Lopez in it and Matthew McConaughey, and that's one of my favorite rom-coms. It was such a good movie. I don't know if it's a good movie, but it's a really good rom-com. And if you are not familiar with the movie, Jennifer Lopez is a wedding planner, and she's very type A perfectionist, and you can kind of tell she might even have some like OCD where in the beginning of the movie she has like everything, has a spot, how she eats her dinner and folds her napkin is just like so prim and proper, and like she's just super professional, and you don't know much about her other than she's like perfectionist, and I don't know why, but like that movie, like I was like, man, I want to be like that. And then like as I went through life, I'm like, I don't know if I can be a wedding planner because you have to work a lot of Saturdays, and now I'm an entrepreneur, and I guess I do work all of the time. But I, for whatever reason, at that point, I'm like, no, I don't want to do that because like you have to work a lot of weekends, so did not want to do that. However, I ended up being the friend of the friend group that makes all of all of the reservations, plans bachelorette parties, plans birthday parties, wants to do things for special events and celebrate. Like I love planning. And really, that has been taken up a notch when it comes to business and hosting events for my business. And I think I've always led from a place of I want people to feel something versus this event is not for me by any means. I feel that events can be impactful regardless of the reason as to why you're hosting them. So I think that if, you know, if you're listening to this episode, I'm gonna kind of go through like why hosting an event can be impactful if you are kind of on the fence, like that it's you know, it's a huge undertaking to pull off a successful event regardless of how many people. But I think the the thing that I want to really portray is that it's it's really not for everyone. And if you don't have a full intention behind it, then it really isn't is not going to make sense for you to host it. So I'm gonna start out by saying, like, why did I start hosting events? Because I think that's always been something in my mind that I wanted to do when I lived in Chicago. I actually hosted my first event in February of 2020, and it was like two or three weeks before COVID shut down the world for a really long time. And I hosted a meetup at a wine bar in Chicago, and I had four people come, and it was so good. And I'm like, man, this was so good. I'm gonna do this every month, and could not do it every month. Fast forward to 2021, I hosted or I had a mastermind that was virtual, and I had clients all across the country, and I actually had a client in Chile as well, and everyone was going to fly in to Chicago in October of 2021. But Chicago was definitely one of the cities that had the most restrictions. And at that point in the fall of 2021, a lot of other cities were reporting high COVID cases again. So therefore, a lot of restrictions happened. We ended up having a virtual retreat. So, with that being said, I've always had an inkling of like, I really want to host events. And, you know, soon after, like maybe about a year later, I became pregnant with my daughter. We moved out of Chicago, we bought a house. So a lot of life stuff happened and fast forward to 2024 and being back in Northwest Indiana and you know, trying to find, you know, my place and just like getting out and connecting. I started connecting with some local entrepreneurs and I started going to like networking events because I thought that that would be really cool and get involved. And I slowly started going to events where I felt, you know, I already kind of had this like chip on my shoulder, to be completely honest. I feel that I'm originally from Northwest Indiana, born and raised here. Growing up, I could not wait to get out of here because I felt that what I wanted and what my goals were in life, I couldn't find anyone that resonated with that. So I I still to this day, I love the city of Chicago and I love being there because I feel like that is my true, true home where I feel at home, I feel seen, I feel supported. I think that being in a city of any magnitude allows you to be seen for who you are and just be accepted for who you are. And I think I really needed that because I think in the suburbs, a lot of times you have to fit a certain mold. At least that's what my experience has been, where a lot of people around me were getting married and then buying a house and having kids as if that was like the order you had to be in. And when my husband and I we wanted to sell our house in Northwest Indiana that we had and move to Chicago to a one-bedroom apartment and not own anything, I think a lot of people thought that was dumb. And a lot of people thought that, yeah, there was just a lot of like negative vibes around that. And people thinking because we were thinking outside of the box or just doing things out of order, that it just was a little crazy. So we that was our experience. But moving back, I definitely wanted to try and like make myself like connections and get known and have some like local clients. And the first event that I went to was just not a good experience. But what I was thankful for is I actually started connecting with people individually. And so I found someone who did social media management and she had a pretty big following on Instagram. I'm not gonna like name-drop her, but I I mean, I'm still friends with her to this day. We're in a peer mastermind together, and we talked for like three or four hours, and we have met up since and have coffee dates, and like she's one of my friends here locally. Definitely someone actually, she helped me start this podcast. So she helped me with the name of it and everything. So I started to like go with her to events, and that was nice because then I had someone to go with, but then I started going like just then to some of the events I went to were just not good experiences. It was a mix of like people getting wine drunk or just an excuse to get drunk during the day, to maybe like have friends because they don't have any friends in real life. And I say real life as in opposed to like business life. It just felt like, why am I even leaving my house? I'm coming here to not only just network, but like to build relationships with people where I'm going to be like uplifted or supported or learn something or meet someone that is going to add more benefit to my life. But I started going to events and then the energy was just immediately sucked out of me. And I had like instant regret of like, man, I spent like$30 to come here,$40 to come here. I drove 45 minutes. Why am I even here? Everyone's drinking like on a Thursday afternoon. I have to go back and work. Like, it's just like a lot of people who are just like playing business, right? Like hobbies. And I'm not I'm not afraid to share like this information anymore because that's personally just not what I'm in business for. I love building relationships. I have a lot of friends who are business owners. I have a lot of business owners who are friends. But there's a line that I draw between like going to an event that I paid for, expecting it to be for my business, and then it ends up being just women deciding to drink, or then the host isn't even thanking you for being there or greeting you or introducing themselves. When you're hosting, so this is I'm gonna get into like the hosting event. All of those things are things that I witnessed and events that I went to. I then knew immediately that I could do it way better. And it was time for me to do it better, and time for me to do it in the area I grew up in because I was so hell-bent on hosting in Chicago that I just really, really, really wanted to be in Chicago and you know, to hell with Northwest Indiana, right? But slowly but surely I started meeting some wonderful people, and thankfully there were some groups that brought together some really amazing people that I got to meet and still friends with to this day, and I have loads of clients, and we're all kind of in the same path and think the same way and have each other's backs. And so I really wanted to create the biggest thing why I wanted to create an event is because I wanted people to feel seen and supported in everything that they were doing for who they are. It doesn't matter what stage. But the reason why I hosted these events because I was going to events where I wasn't being poured into, and I wanted to make sure that if someone did leave their house and pay 60, 70, almost$100 to come to a dinner or to come to a retreat, that not only were they gonna be seen and supported and met where they're at, but they're not gonna regret it at the end of the day. And I'm gonna make everyone feel seen, supported, and all the things. So a couple of things that I do for the dinners is I know every single person who's coming through the door. I have 20 to 25 people every single time. I know exactly who that person is. I do my research, I personalize every gift, I say hi to everyone, and I also make sure that they get connected with somebody else ahead of time. I actually then connect everyone ahead of time. I hand out the guest list before we meet up because I want it to be connection focused, but I also want it to be for your growth of business too, where there's going to be maybe referrals, maybe there's going to be communities. And that's the difference when you host events where you know how to build a business versus someone that just wants to throw a good party. Yes, we can party. Yes, we can have fun. Yes, there are dinners where we can just have camaraderie and speaking. But, you know, if again, if I'm paying for an event or a workshop, I'm going to expect to get some sort of value where I wasn't getting that pretty much at any event that I was going to, where I end up being in the room and I was the one speaking or I was the one being asked questions. So it really made me not only regret that, like, why am I paying to come to this, but also like, what is my ROI? And it really then made me stop going to a lot of events for that reason and just focus on my own. And so I think like to kind of sum it all up is that the reason why my events work is because there'sn't so much intention behind it of how I want people to feel at the end of it. Doesn't matter the programming, doesn't matter who I have speaking. I sold out retreats time and time again without naming where we're even going, where we're even staying, where we're eating, what we're doing. There's no agenda to half of the people that have already bought retreat spots. They just know where we're like the know the location and then they jump in. I don't even rely on advertising the speakers. Like I don't rely on marketing that. People already signed up because of that or before that happens. So that is going to be where you're going to make the most impact is not only people are going to sign up because of you, but because of the intention and making sure that the intention is clear behind the event that you're hosting. What are they going to get out of it? Why should they join it? What is it going to do for their business? That is why I don't have to resort to mass marketing, getting new leads every single time. The same people that have come to my first dinner a year ago are the same people that come to my dinner a year later and have come to so many people that come to multiple dinners. And there's a reason why behind that. And I'm like proud to say this now. And I've built my confidence around this, and the numbers show it, is because every single time someone feels that they're seen and supported, and that yes, we're leaving our homes, and yes, we're leaving our families. We could be doing anything else during the week. Everyone is busy. But in order for you to prioritize yourself, is find events that are going to really make you feel seen and support you in your business journey. And I want my events to be the exception to what a lot of other events are, where it's just, you know, it could be people just sitting around a table and no one's really greeting anyone or talking or engaging with anyone. When you are an event host, you are an event host. You are the host, you need to connect people, you need to have people talk to each other, and you can't be micromanaging. That's a huge one. You can't be micromanaging a community or a group that you're in. Your people are the heartbeat to any community or event that you have. So let that be a breathing and living organism, and how do you nurture that at the end of the day? So that's what I'll end with. Hopefully, this helped you give you some insight on kind of like my vision and my thinking around hosting events. I'm super passionate about it. And as time goes on, I'm just going to keep refining. So stay tuned and see what's next. That's your quick hit of clarity and momentum for the week. If it sparks something, share it with a friend or tag us in your stories at Business Over Cocktails and or at Lauren Major. We love seeing what resonates. Don't forget, Mondays are for full-length episodes with rich conversations, and Fridays are the Business Chaser episodes. These are bite sized insights pulled from our guests to keep you inspired and aligned throughout the week. Do you have a question or takeaway? DM us at Business Over Cocktails. We just might feature it in a future episode. Cheers.