Musings of Sally Boldt-Strebel

After several months of development and testing, we opened BestPartyEver.com’s doors to select vendors. On the average, our business members have received 254 views of their listing within 14 days. We look forward to increasing their page views over time and having them utilize the many business membership benefits.

With the holidays just around the corner, chances are your employees are expecting a shindig. For the small business or start-up owner this can be a very stressful time. Here are 5 tips to making sure your party is a hit.

Tip 1: Set a budget
Sounds obvious, right? You’d be surprised. Without a clear understanding of financial resources, a business owner can easily overspend on their party. Commit to a certain dollar amount and figure out a way to work with it. The last thing you want is to feel guilty about spending too much when you should be celebrating.

Tip 2: What’s the objective?
Figure out what the objective is for throwing a holiday affair. Are you having a party because you want to build a team, have fun, show appreciation, etc.? Understanding your objective will help determine where money is best spent and the activities you plan to host. This takes us to tip 3.

Tip 3: Determine your activities
Will you have a theme party? A theme such as an Ugly Christmas Sweater party. Will your party be formal or informal? Are you going to host your party during the day or at night? Is it going to take place in the office, at a restaurant, ballet, ballroom, etc.? Once you figure out what activities you plan to host, it is important to inform your guests and make the needed reservations.

Tip 4: Show acknowledgment and appreciation through your gift.
Let’s face it, employees measure your appreciation through the gift. They usually want money but for the start-up or small business owners that can be difficult. Consider placing a small check in a card that highlights all the attributes they bring to the business. Tell your employees that the business is growing and sell them on the vision. Also, give personal gifts. If one of your employees likes wine, give her a wine basket.

Tip 5: Remain Cool
This is the most important tip for any party-Remain cool. The host’s attitude sets the mood for the entire party. If the host is stressed out, the guests will try to alleviate some of the stress by helping instead of having fun. If the host is having fun, he allows others to have fun as well.

These past couple of weeks have been crazy. I’ll give a short recap of the events.

- The BestPartyEver.com team spent close to 18 hours a day for the past 5 weeks preparing for the launch on Oct. 1
- Early Tuesday morning, talked to Robert Scoble and set up a time for an interview for that Friday. Booked flight and took off on Thursday.
- In San Francisco, I stayed at Francine Hardaway’s house, went to the Social Media Club meeting, had the BestPartyEver.com interview with Scoble and Rocky, met Scoble’s family, partied with the wonderful people of Half Moon Bay, and met up with some great friends. Headed home 3am on Sunday.
- On Sept. 30th, right before the launch of the new BestPartyEver.com, we found a huge bug. We had to devote the remainder of time trying to fix the problem.
- We launched the site at 7pm Oct. 1. Yippee. However, we did have to strip down some of the features due to the unruly bug from the previous day. The features were 97% complete.
- Oct. 2 Melinda, our resident MySpace addict, unleashes BPE myspace profile and already has 200+ friends
- Oct. 3 activated the “basket” so people can save their chosen vendors.
- Oct. 4 introduced “people” into search

What can you expect in the next couple weeks-
- Checklist
- Guestlist
- Budget Calculator
- Recipes
- More search options

I hope you enjoy the new site. If you have any recommendations or comments, we’d love to hear from you. And thanks Kyle for the kudos.

All the best,
Sally Strebel