The Festival Staffing Problem Nobody's Saying Out Loud
How to run festivals, community events, and event production successfully? Don't fall victim to running your business with a system held together by spreadsheets, QuickBooks, Google Forms, and a prayer.
This week, I'm back with Cat McDevitt, CMO at Eventeny, and we got into the festival operations conversation I've been wanting to have. Not the highlight reel. The real picture — the Frankenstein systems, the volunteer data that will shock you, the vendors who are quietly deciding you're a reputational risk, and what the festivals that are actually winning are doing differently.
If you organize festivals, produce community events, or have ever thought about scaling into that space — this one is for you.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
TIMESTAMPS
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
00:00 Introduction to Eventeny and Festival Planning
03:34 Understanding the Event Industry's Challenges
06:46 Scaling Events: The Frankenstein System
09:23 Staffing and Vendor Management in Events
12:26 Utilizing Data for Event Success
15:22 Building Trust with Vendors and Attendees
18:09 Creating a Collaborative Festival Experience
20:58 The Importance of Marketing and Promotion
23:55 Volunteer Management and Event Safety
26:38 Data-Driven Decision Making in Event Management
28:48 The Importance of Volunteer Management
30:06 Understanding Attendance and Volunteer Needs
31:30 Leveraging Technology for Event Success
32:55 The Role of Data in Vendor Relationships
36:05 Innovative Business Models for Vendors
37:24 The Value of In-Person Engagement for Vendors
39:40 Organizing Event Management Systems
43:39 The Confidence of Data-Driven Decisions
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
RESOURCES + LINKS
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
→ Check out Eventeny (affiliate link): https://meetings.hubspot.com/cat-mcde...
→ Book a free demo with Eventeny: https://meetings.hubspot.com/cat-mcde...
→ Follow Eventeny on Instagram: @eventeny
→ Grab Jese's free After-Yes Checklist: https://chipper-creator-3415.kit.com/...
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
ABOUT CAT MCDEVITT
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Cat McDevitt is the CMO at Eventeny — an all-in-one event management platform built for festival and large-scale event organizers. She works daily with producers running community festivals, music festivals, fandom conventions, farmers markets, and more, and has a front-row seat to what's working (and what's quietly breaking) in the festival industry right now.
📌 Resources Mentioned:
🔗 Honeybook - http://share.honeybook.com/greeneyeda...
🔗 Asana - https://asana.grsm.io/dswe2jqa67ij
🔗 Convertkit - https://partners.convertkit.com/wlu5g...
🔗 Quickbooks - https://quickbooks.grsm.io/l651g75pw11g
🔗 Want a free business system audit? Let’s identify the gaps and opportunities in your event business → https://businessconsultantcompany2491...
🔗 Work with GEA Systems Studio to build your systems + automations → https://businessconsultantcompany2491...
🔗 🎧 Listen to more episodes of the Hustle Free Entrepreneur Podcast → https://www.buzzsprout.com/2449235
Stay Connected & Get More Event Business Tips!
📲 Follow me on Instagram for daily tips: / greeneyedambition
🌐 Visit my website: www.greeneyedambition.com
🔔 Subscribe for more insightful content and hit the bell icon to stay updated on all things business behind the scenes!
Support my channel by using my affiliate links! If you go on to sign up for a paid plan, I will receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. Thanks so much!