There are lots of ways you can learn. Read a book and you'll learn something. Ask a question and you’ll learn something. Punch somebody in the face and you'll learn something rather quickly. Show up late to work and you'll learn something. But last week, I discovered a new way to learn something: host a Christmas party at your house for 50 guests.
The Context
I live with 5 other guys in the suburbs of San Diego. Think of it as a fraternity house, but elevated. My mom bought us a rug and a lamp which gives the place a fighting chance at being considered livable.
Within the group of roommates are a variety of talents and skills, but one thing that unites us all, is that we enjoying hosting and showing our guests a good time.
Naturally, as the Christmas season approached we wanted to see what sort of Christmas party we could pull off.
We decorated our house from head to toe, developed a game to be played on a bar crawl, and aimed to give our guests a night worth talking about. Here’s what I learned from the experience.
Novelty Plays Well at a Party
People love new things. Things that they haven’t seen or experienced before. It’s exciting. Imagine the first time you went to Disneyland. It was magical. A party is the perfect place to introduce some novelty. Get a shotski, wrap the walls in wallpaper, make everyone dress up, etc. These all provide little hits of novelty, something to differentiate this experience from every other night out.
The Ultimate Icebreaker
Having a theme for your party is the ultimate ice breaker. It helps blend different groups together. We chose an “Ugly Christmas Sweater” theme. It makes everyone feel like they belong. Even if you don’t know anybody else in the room, you at least have 1 thing in common with everybody, an ugly ass sweater.
Give People Moments Worth Sharing
Humans are social beings. They want to share with other people what they are doing. If you can provide visually stimulating experiences people will share them. The snow machine is a perfect example. We flipped that sucker on and everybody whipped their phones out and started taking videos. Snow in San Diego? Why not.
Big Crowd Energy
We had no microphone or way of amplifying our voices at the house. With different instructions we needed to provide to our guests, it turned into playing a lot of telephone. “Tell everybody to be in the main room in 5 minutes.” It is very hard to get a large crowd of intoxicated people to do anything in an orderly fashion. Lesson learned. Next time we will bring a microphone.
People Need Direction
It’s more important to make a decision than it is to make the perfect decision. “What bars are we going to?” “What time should we show up?” “What should we bring?” “Are we allowed to bring a +1?” As the host, you need to make all of these decisions. The guests will feel more confident in the night if the hosts have concrete details planned. The secret is that you could really just be pulling the answers out of your ass, but as long as you speak them confidently and stick to them, then you’re good to go.
The Energy Arc of a Night
Think of the arc of the night like the arc of a movie or a song. It should start out slow, then gain steam, build, build, build, have a big moment, and then have a cool down. This is important to keep in mind when planning the festivities for the night. If you lead with your biggest surprise and then have nothing planned, people will get bored and leave early, which is not exactly a sign of a good night. Being intentional about when you have certain things scheduled is imperative.
Giving Purpose to a Night
People love having a mission. It turns them from passive bystanders to active participants. For our party, we divided all guests into 4 teams. Then we gave them a list of photos they were to try to take during the bar crawl. The catch was they had to do it on a disposable camera that we provided for them. I was curious to see if people would get into it or be "too cool" to play. I was pleasantly surprised to see that within minutes, everybody was planking, ordering shots at the bar with a sock puppet, and switching shirts with a stranger (3 of the challenges). It just goes to show that people love having a mission.
Read the Room
You might think that techno house music would be the perfect music for the party (as I did), but if everybody leaves the dance floor and goes outside, then maybe it’s time to change up the music. In our case, it seemed that everybody wanted to listen to light Christmas music outside, so we went with that. Always have a plan going into the night, but be ready to adjust as the guests show what they want.
Hosts Lose Money but Gain Trust and Reputation
Decorating a house is a lot more expensive than I would’ve thought. We wrapped an entire 3 walls in wrapping paper, bought inflatables, a snow machine, fake snow, snacks, alcohol, lights, a tree, etc. Additionally, we booked a party bus to take us on the journey for the night. Also not cheap. We did charge our guests for the night but after running some calculations and carrying the 1 we definitely took a huge L in terms of finances. This is okay though, because what we lost in money we gained in reputation and trust. Anybody who came to our party now knows what we can pull off, so if there is word that we may throw another, we can likely count them in.
Wrap Up
It was both a fun and interesting experience hosting an evening like this. My goal in writing this is that you could maybe take some of these learnings and apply them to other aspects of your life. Perhaps you are in charge of hosting an off-site retreat for your company, maybe apply some of these learnings. Say you are taking your kids on a weekend trip, maybe you could apply some of this. High school reunion coming up? You know what to do.
This was a bit of a new topic for me to write about so let me know if you found it interesting. As I move through the world I am constantly trying to find little life lessons and frameworks that help me understand things. I'd love to keep sharing those on this blog if you guys are interested.
A couple questions for my dedicated readers:
Have you ever hosted a gathering of 25+ people? If so, how did it go? Any lessons you learned?
As a partygoer, what has been the most remarkable thing you've experienced? Something you still think about today?
I hope you've all been well and are gearing up for Christmas!
Until next time,
Flickman