Success is the result of doing worth while things for people

I throw a large events a few times a year, something sort of a reason to get friends together to hang out. Yesterday, I threw a late post new year's party for friends that haven't gotten together for a while and invited out a few more friends to the party. The event was fun as I had about 30 people attending.

One thing I miss about living back home is the proximity of friends and the ease at which everyone can get together at a moment's notice. One point my old friends and I used to pride ourselves upon, was our ability to get together and do something in a very ad-hoc manner. When living in Tokyo, things are a little different.

I probably mentioned this a few times before, how much of a pain it is to get people in Tokyo together to do something. For a meet up to actually occur, people have to make time usually a week in advance else things either get filled up or people aren't prepared to make the time investment to come out to meet meet up. When a one way commute is only 10~15 minutes to meet up, the time investment is trivial. However, when a one way commute takes from 45~60 minutes, things aren't as trivial anymore. I balk at the idea of an impromptu meet up sometimes because the time investment is quite expensive. The dynamics change when you live closer to the city, of course, but most people are surprised at my ability to coordinate events while living far from the city. It's one of those things that I just have to deal with.

The other idea I was pondering today was "what is the primary factor which allows a person to be able to gather people to events?" I have several friends here that are event promoters, either for clubbing events or musical events. I feel for these guys as they are either mailing through their cell phones, on Facebook or through twitter to encourage friends to come out. I know how tough it can be when it comes to putting an event together. A place needs to be booked, friends need to be contacted, schedules need to be checked and there are questions that need to be responded to. Sometimes the most annoying thing is when you contact everyone and no one gets back to you and you end up scurrying to contact everyone directly to double check if they are coming out or not, or managed to forget about the invitation. Organizing events can be a real pain honestly, it's like doing a PhD-- you really have to like being a host to go through with the issues that comes with the territory. I for one, am happy when people get together.

I mentioned earlier that I have friends that are event coordinators/promoters by profession. The interesting thing I learned through Facebook was about event coordination-- the impact of mass mailing friends about an upcoming event. The general response to a mass invite of people on a friend list is abysmal, I wager that maybe 10% people confirm in advance if you're lucky. Other people are wishy-washy about committing to the event and list themselves as "maybe" and the people that say "no I can't attend" are usually fast to say so because they have prior commitments. Getting people to commit time to an event or anything is a challenging problem. And personally to me, a 10% confirmation percentage is really depressing. Unless you're really popular or have a very big pool of friends, avoid using large group invites.

I've noticed over the years that I am most successful at getting friends together to something was when I contacted small groups of them at a time. My friends generally divided into different circles so I end up contacting each circle directly or even people directly to invite them out. Response rates when you contact people directly are much higher and since they are actually responding to a direct contact from you, the probability of them saying that they'll come is also higher. After switching to this technique of inviting people out, I've felt much more comfortable running events as people are responding to me timely and I have a better idea of the general number of people coming out in advance so I can make things run smoothly.

Another important factor about hosting a successful event is the reason why you're running it. I am quite certain that there are people that we know are promoters of themselves. There have been friends that have sent out mails to invite friends to their musical performances and people in the real estate world that have ran events to promote themselves and spammed their friends to attend. My knee-jerk reaction to these invitations is one of disgust, in the sense that these promoters see me simply as a source of potential revenue and that I value myself more then that.

So I started thinking about what is it that makes my friends want to come out to my events and I've come to the conclusion that my friends want to attend my events because my intentions are different-- I am hosting the event not for myself, but as something for them to enjoy. I also like inviting new friends out to these gatherings so they have opportunities to meet new people and hopefully make new friends. In a sense, I have created a brand for the events that I run which makes my friends want to come out to the events that I host, in that these events are for them, more so than it is for me.

Oddly enough, thinking back at some of my earlier business successes that I've had directly correlated to a desire of me wanting to do things for other people. One of my fondest memories of an event was a donation drive salsa night between the Nursing and Engineering Department. I told the nurses to market the event as a good cause and I told the engineers that the nurses were coming. Suffice to say, that event was a resounding success as we made good money in a single night.

I would go on to start my own exam preparation series that turned out to a resounding hit that made the Engineering Physics student society the richest student society on campus. A story that I look back as one of my biggest successes while in university. I've probably recounted this story more than I should, but my dream was to run my own successful exam preparation business, more than making money. I ended up talking to my physics professors to get old final exams and told other students in my graduating class of my vision and I ended up recruiting a team of 8 people (including myself) to run the thing together.

Putting this event together was a passion for me, I wanted to make the lecture series as cheap as possible so I charged only $15/seminar session. I ended up making $4500 in profits in 2 weeks. I donated the money away and passed on the program to the student group, which resulted in a good recommendation letter from the head of the physics department which helped me get a scholarship to Japan and also would help me through an interview process that would also help me get my current job. What I gave away, came back to me in multiples and in ways that I could never imagine.

I have started reading books about human dynamics recently and about the rise of powerful people. The idea of having power has been defined in a variety of different ways. One definition is the ability to control people to get them to do what you want; another and more subtle version is the ability to have people depend on you. Neither of these 2 definitions sit well with me because they seem very Machiavellian, so I propose a third definition, the impact and the ability of what a person is able to give to others. The framing the concept of power like this make sense to me as it characterizes many of the most influential people I know and even some of the most successful and respected companies in technology that I can think of.

My train of thought stops here, but I feel that this is a strong idea.