The start of another trip around the sun generally comes with this new-year-new-me mentality. For those looking to use the next 365 to grow in their role as an event planner or producer, one industry thought leader is sharing her secret sauce in the form of a 10-chapter online course.
Titled Million Dollar Event Planning Career and officially launching Friday, Jan. 14, the on-demand course features 50 modules, 30 exercises and 10 downloads for event pros. It's the brainchild of Gianna Gaudini—former marketing events lead at Google, current head of global events, training and certification at Amazon Web Services, and author of The Art of Event Planning: Pro Tips from an Industry Insider.
Gianna Gaudini is set to launch Million Dollar Event Planning Career on Fri., Jan. 14.Photo: Sarah Deragon/Courtesy of Gianna Gaudini
Here, BizBash sat down with Gaudini herself for more insight on the soon-the-launch resource for the event and meeting industry.
What inspired you to launch Million Dollar Event Planning Career?
The idea for a sequel to my book had been percolating ever since the pandemic. I was actually approached by a team [The Buzz Lab] that suggested producing an e-course, and I decided that was a natural evolution of my book and an opportunity to add more content in an engaging format that people are looking for these days Training, mentoring, teaching is something I've always done (my first job in middle school, I was a piano teacher), so it's always something I've enjoyed. So rather than converting my book into an e-course like was proposed, I decided to build out new, 'edutainment'-style content as a follow-up to my book, using a lot of stories and anecdotes from my career as examples.
Did you notice a gap in the market that your course fills for event planners?
I'm constantly engaging with my community to see what's on their mind, what kind of content they're interested in, where they're struggling. I also check my own posts to see where I'm getting the highest engagement and talk with publications such as BizBash to see what people are asking for and what they want to hear about. I was surveying my community throughout the pandemic, and by 2021, I realized there was a real need for this.
How did you come to the decision to offer it on-demand rather than an as a live class?
Knowing my demographic—many planners don't necessarily have the time to tune into extra events at a specific time. I, myself, am a busy mom, and I know that I love to consume content when and how I want it. By providing on-demand content, people can access it at night, on the weekends, on a Friday or while on their stationary bike at 5 a.m.—whenever they want to visit it and whenever they're in the right mindset to visit it. And then they can go back and revisit it. They can pause, take notes, go back to chapters they want to visit in the future. It's a flexible way to meet people where they are.
What can planners expect?
Event planning strategy and all the ways to prove ROI, building more engaging content and extending an event's reach into a community, contract negotiations, successful virtual event strategies, how to find your niche and build a million-dollar event planning career that you love too—these are all themes I built into the curriculum after learning about what planners want to know more about right now. It's also more interactive, with exercises at the end of each chapter for people to try, interviews I conducted with industry thought leaders and downloadable resources and cheatsheets for people to use as they implement events in real life.
Is there a main takeaway you hope for planners to get from completing the course?
Whether you're just starting out or you want to learn what it takes to elevate your career to true pro status, my course will teach you how to really elevate yourself, and earn a lucrative living while having fun. Planners are going to walk away with tangible advice that they can put into practice and instantly have the confidence to earn more money and successfully find their niche. I always say the next best thing to 'learning through doing' is 'learning through someone else'—a mentor or a course like this. So I try to share a lot of personal stories so planners can learn what I've learned through my personal experience.
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Planners interested in partaking in Gaudini's Million Dollar Event Planning Career online course can prepurchase it here and receive 20% off until the course launches on Friday!
