Sometimes an event starts with a strategy session, a creative brief and months of careful planning.
And sometimes it starts with your Chief Commercial Officer saying:
“I want to do a sporting clays event. And you run it.”
Apparently, that is all it takes to activate the part of my brain that says:
Fine. Let’s see what we can do.
Challenge accepted.
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An Idea Is Just an Idea Until Someone Makes It Happen
The idea was pretty simple: bring customers and our team together at NILO Farms for something different.
Not another meeting. Not another presentation. And definitely not another event where everyone spends half the day being sold something.
The goal was a relationship day.
No decks. No pitches. No agenda disguised as networking.
Just get people together, give them an experience they might not normally have, introduce them to people worth knowing and make sure they leave thinking:
That was a great day.
Simple enough.
Except there is a whole lot of not simple between having an idea and watching 82 people actually experience it.
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The Stuff Nobody Sees
There’s a point in event planning when the idea stops being an idea and suddenly becomes approximately 400 tiny decisions.
Registration. Customer communication. Squads. Stations. Tech employees spread throughout the groups. Event T-shirts. Giveaways. YETI coolers. Raffle prizes. Swag. Banners. Food. Drinks. Waivers. Parking.
Who needs to be where.
What needs to be there.
And approximately 7,000 versions of:
“Wait. Did we think about _____?”
Somewhere in there, I also rebuilt the registration experience.
Instead of someone registering and then relying on a manually forwarded Outlook invitation, the new registration process automatically sent an email confirmation with an .ics calendar file.
Tiny improvement?
Maybe.
But those are exactly the kinds of things I love finding—the little friction points nobody really notices until somebody asks:
Why are we doing it this way?
And then fixes it.
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Then I Started Watching the Number
I wanted 80 customers.
Our CCO told me he’d be happy with 65.
And the week of the event, I became slightly obsessed with the registration number.
It would go up.
Then someone would cancel.
Then two more people would register.
Then someone else would drop.
And then another registration would come in.
At one point I watched it climb:
65. 66. 67. 68. 70. 71.
And somehow, after all of that back-and-forth, 71 was exactly where the customer registration count landed on the morning of the event.
Add in 24 Tech Electronics employees, and our board showed 95 people expected.
For an event we’d never done before.
Okay then. 😂
At one point before the event, our CEO reminded me that Tech had never done anything quite like this before—and that even 50 people standing out there would make it a success.
That helped.
A little. 😂
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And Then the Plan Met Reality
Because no event survives first contact with actual humans.
There were last-minute changes. People moved around. Squads needed adjusting. Some people didn’t show. Others brought plus-ones.
And event morning included the glamorous world of Instacarting a whole lot of water, getting ice, finding another cooler and making sure approximately a thousand little pieces were where they needed to be.
A couple of teammates jumped in when I needed extra hands.
And then there was the weather.
Earlier in the week?
Rain.
Of course.
By Friday?
Dry. Sunny. Beautiful.
Hot in the sun, perfect in the shade.
Honestly, we couldn’t have ordered better weather.
And then people started arriving.
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Holy Shit. That’s a Lot of People.
The shirts started going on almost immediately.
People grabbed their swag. They found their squads. The sunscreen, towels and other giveaways we’d spent weeks ordering, sorting and hauling around were actually being opened and used.
And somewhere in the middle of all of it, I looked past the crowd toward the rows and rows of cars behind them.
I had one very professional thought:
Holy shit. That’s a lot of people.
That’s probably the moment it became real for me.
This thing we’d been planning on spreadsheets and screens was suddenly standing in front of me.
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Take Your Best Shot
Once everyone headed out, we had experienced shooters mixed with people who had never done anything like this before.
And that was part of what made it so much fun.
Things started a little slower than planned while everyone got settled into their stations. NILO’s team quickly realized we had plenty of first-timers and jumped in with pointers to help everyone get comfortable and keep things moving.
Before long, people were shooting, laughing, cheering each other on—and discovering muscles in their shoulders they apparently hadn’t met before.
I have no idea how many times I said:
“Ice it down tonight when you get home.”
Twenty?
Feels reasonable. 😂
And then there was an unexpected logistical win: golf carts.
A last-minute opportunity came up to get carts out on the course, and it was one of those decisions you make in about 30 seconds because you know immediately it’s going to make the experience better.
It did.
That’s event planning in a nutshell.
Make the plan. Then be ready to change the plan.
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Obviously, There Were Puppies
At some point while everyone else was shooting, I ended up getting a little private NILO tour.
Which included dogs.
And puppies.
So naturally, while other people were out there trying to improve their sporting clay skills, I was doing some very important relationship-building with puppies.
I regret nothing.
I did eventually take my own best shot.
Two clays. One hit.
50%.
We’re calling that a win.
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The Part I’ll Actually Remember
When everyone came back in, the shooting may have been over—but people weren’t ready to leave.
They ate. They had drinks. They talked. They laughed. The raffle prizes went out.
And they hung around.
Most stayed until around 6.
A smaller group was still there close to 7.
And that might have been my favorite measure of the entire event.
Because nobody had to stay.
The scheduled activity was finished.
They wanted to stay.
People who had never shot sporting clays before told me they’d absolutely do it again. Customers told us it was one of the best events they’d attended. People were already asking about next year.
And the event T-shirts?
Huge hit.
People were putting them on as soon as they got them. At the end of the day, I told people to grab some of the extras and take them back to coworkers.
They did.
Those are the things that don’t show up on an event spreadsheet.
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71. 95. 82.
I spent a lot of time watching numbers leading up to this event.
65 was the number our CCO said would make him happy.
80 was the customer goal I put in my own head.
71 customers were registered the morning of the event.
95 total people were expected when you included our Tech team.
And when all the no-shows, plus-ones and real-life event math settled?
82 people were there.
But 82 isn’t really the number I’ll remember either.
I’ll remember the shirts going on.
The packed parking lot.
The first-timers hitting clays.
The people laughing at themselves when they missed.
The sore shoulders.
The swag actually being used.
The puppies. Obviously.
And I’ll remember looking around after the shooting was over and realizing people were still sitting there talking, drinking and having a genuinely good time.
The smiles were the part that mattered.
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So… What Happens Next?
Before we’d even finished processing this one, the conversation had already shifted to next year.
Do it again.
Make it bigger.
Maybe take the concept to other regions.
And apparently our new target is:
Because obviously. 😂
There’s something pretty incredible about watching an idea move from:
“Could we do this?”
to
“We need to do this again.”
That’s the part of this work I love.
An idea is just an idea until somebody starts figuring out registrations and T-shirts and squad assignments and coolers and raffle prizes and whether there is enough water and what happens when the plan inevitably changes.
Then, eventually, you look up.
There are 82 people standing there.
They’re smiling.
And the thing that used to exist only in somebody’s head is real.
If you’d told me when that first message came through that we’d end up here—with a packed parking lot, 82 people and plans for 150 next year—would I still have accepted the challenge?
Absolutely.
Probably before asking nearly enough questions.
But that’s usually where the fun starts.