Freelancer Tips

Fiverrcast Episode 41: Getting Help for Your Events

By
Fiverr Team
|
July 5, 2016

Transcript

Adam: Hi there and welcome to Fiverrcast, the podcast for sellers by sellers. I’m Adam also known as Twistedweb123.Ryan: And I am Ryan known as Customdrumloops on Fiverr and today we are joined by Aimee from Sampaguita Events. Aimee, welcome to the show.Aimee: Hi. How are you doing?Ryan: Great. It’s great to have you on.Aimee: Thank you. Thank you for having me.Adam: So Aimee, can you give us a little bit of background into yourself and Sampaguita Events.Aimee: Well, I’m actually originally from a little town outside of Chicago, Illinois and I moved down here to Southern California about nine years ago and basically I turned my love of scrapbooking, putting together parties and events and opened up my own business about six years ago, which I ended up naming Sampaguita Events.Now a lot of people, they always ask, “Like oh, where did you get the name Sampaguita?” and so I tell them. I said, “Actually it’s the national flower of the Philippines.” So because I’m of Filipino descent, it just made the most sense for me to name it after that.So that’s how I came up with the name and basically I worked in the night industry for about ten years and I coordinated events, working with different vendors and different celebrities. So again like with all that experience and with kind of the love of event planning, that’s kind of how the business kind of came about.My connection actually with Fiverr actually was through my buddy Francis Ramos and he knew that I did events and he’s the one who called me up and said, “Hey, can we jump on to those campaigns I’m doing?” I said, “Absolutely! It sounds so much fun.” So that’s kind of how I came about and connected with you guys.Ryan: So Aimee you mentioned the campaign and that’s the Save the Date campaign. So for those who are listening who don’t know what that is, why don’t you go ahead and explain what it is and your involvement with the project?Adam: OK. So basically the Save the Date campaign is something that Fiverr is putting out there and basically it’s a contest for couples who just recently got engaged and they have a chance to win $25,000 and it goes towards their wedding or putting together their wedding just by telling their love story.So my part in it as a consultant is really to help them with the various things they need for their weddings, like venues, photographers, down to like the little details of like place cards and like what it’s going to look like. So everyone knows that weddings are – even just events in general, they really take a lot of time and there’s a lot of details that go along with it and to be able to do that altogether is crazy. It’s impossible to do it alone.So having someone to consult on what to do actually gives them an opportunity to kind of keep organized and stay on task. So that’s pretty much my part in that.Ryan: You know it’s funny. I remember when I was planning my wedding and I had the event planner ask, “So who’s going to change the toilet paper rolls in the bathroom?” I think that was the – my eye-opener of wow, there are so many things that I am not going to think of at all. So I think using an event planner, that’s what you’re there for, to remind people of all those different things that they would never think of.Aimee: Yeah. Oh, yeah.Ryan: Because there’s a lot to do and they’re doing so much, so to have your help in planning those, I think that’s a great thing and it must be exciting for you too.Aimee: It is. It’s a good stress. I mean everyone goes through a lot of different kinds of stress but it’s fun to actually go through it because you just see the reaction.Adam: It’s great to have someone on the show today with your expertise where we’re basically going to start talking about executing major events and how Fiverr can play its role or a part in that. Obviously that’s something that you do have quite a lot of experience with.Aimee: Yes, absolutely. One of the things that I know Fiverr offers is again different affordable options to help make the couple’s wedding day or their event perfect. They offer designers, do invitations, save the dates, logos. They offer writers to help write speeches and like – for example like you need someone to do your best man speech or your maid-of-honor speech or even up to the vows.They offer videographers to help with the slideshows, web designers to create the wedding websites. But not only wedding websites. I mean I know they could create other kinds of websites for the actual event, which is actually pretty helpful. They also offer photographers who can retouch pictures. So if you were to provide them a picture, they can actually retouch it, so it looks a little bit cleaner or better to the specifications of the client.But yeah, the extra hands from the outsider who specializes in creativity. I think it’s so awesome that Fiverr offers that kind of service for the customer who is probably looking for something more affordable than going to different consultants who might be charging ten times more than what Fiverr can offer.Ryan: You know, one of my favorite Gigs I’ve ever done on Fiverr was actually a song that a guy wrote for his wife for their wedding day. So it’s like I feel like oh, I get to be part of the special day. It’s such a creative thing that most people don’t know they can do. Finding something on Fiverr is not something that would be – you go to an everyday wedding planner and they would suggest.Aimee: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I think that sometimes a lot of clients – this goes across the board where there are wedding clients or even corporate clients. That they will come to me and they will expect me to have all the answers. Fiverr is such a great resource to use. You should go to this website because it provides those types of services.So having that actually is quite helpful because there’s so much creativity on there and there are different vendors that can help with those types of services that they need to make it special, to make it creative.Adam: Yeah. I think when it comes to Fiverr and things such as bigger events, there’s a very – there’s a potential for it to be kind of very pick and mix. So you can pick and choose what you want where I think – I mean in the UK, what you often hear about where people are trying to save money in things like a wedding is they might print invitations themselves. Usually that also involves designing the invitation themselves as well because if you go to a printing company, it’s quite difficult to say to them, “Hey, can you just design this for me but not charge me your normal rate and don’t print it either?” whereas what Fiverr allows you to do is they kind of – they allow you to kind of take that control of making a little bit more DIY or do-it-yourself, but to the next degree. So you can go to someone on Fiverr and kind of say, “Can you design my wedding invitation or my event invitation?” and then you can go and get that printed.One of the hosts on the show, Redd, who’s currently on a mini sabbatical while she’s planning her wedding, actually did a very similar thing. She booked her wedding venue and everything about the venue pretty much ticks all the boxes that she wanted and it includes invitations with it.She got the invitations back that were included and in her eyes they were bad. I mean she shared them with a few of us and it looked great. It’s not what she wanted for her wedding. In that moment, when you’re trying to plan this whole event, you might look at it and go, “This is the last thing that I need. I just want it to be simple,” and there was absolutely no panic there. All she simply did was kind of go, “OK, I don’t like these invitations. There’s no point going back to the venue and trying to get them to re-go through everything because it’s a bit of a complimentary service.”You know, it’s not their specialty. Instead she just jumped on Fiverr, hired someone to create the design for her and then had to print it as normal. No stress, no fuss and everything just carried on as normal.Aimee: A company like Fiverr has been so helpful that you can pick and choose and the quality of it is so different. They’re very efficient and it’s really affordable really.Adam: I think it all kind of comes down to trying to make it simple for the persons organizing the event. So when you often go to main companies, there are often packages involved where they don’t just say, “Look, we’re just going to do your invitations,” or “Look, we’re just going to do your table décor.”Instead, you will go somewhere and they will have the – kind of go along the lines of, “We can do your table décor and the flowers with that,” or “We can do your invitations, your menus and everything else all in one”. But what you have to come across there is you’re working with one company that’s kind of set skills in certain areas but they’re not all kind of experts in each area because that’s kind of impossible unless you’re a massive company.Aimee: Right.Adam: But then if you go a little bit more virtual there, I mean imagine Fiverr as the company. You’re going to them and you’re tapping into the resource of experts from all these different fields available in all of these different areas. So there’s a little bit more DIY in that respect. But when they’re saying, “Let’s go and do some graphics,” you’re not just going to Fiverr and saying, “I need you to make graphics.” You’re going to a specific expert graphic designer who’s handling that task.I think there was actually a period in time as well where Fiverr also had a personal shopping experience for things such as major events where you can kind of go to them and they could help you go through different elements of what you’re looking for or what you needed.Aimee: Right. And I completely agree with you and looking through the quality of the vendors that Fiverr actually uses, that’s exactly what it’s for because again, just like you were saying, there are some places that they offer – oh, here’s a whole package but that’s not what they specialize in.One of the things, the beauty of Fiverr again is just that affordable pricing, that price point that works for them. So again, like some of the invitations, they start at $5 for the design. That is so good. The price point for it is so great and all they need to do is just design it and then they just go off and they print it on their own.That’s what their specialty is. Using that is so helpful for an event. Again, I don’t want to just keep it to just weddings but whether it be weddings, corporate events, quinceaneras, birthday parties, graduations. I mean – and the options are so unlimited.Ryan: I mean I think the one thing that you’ve touched on with all of these is there’s a lot to do to plan each of these. As an event planner, you have these connections to every single element that’s required to plan something that’s a great event, whether it’s a wedding, a corporate event. I think that’s where event planners – I think a lot of people, when they think event planner, their first thought is it’s going to be too expensive.Aimee: Yes.Ryan: When really the value you provide me – and that might be the biggest misconception of using an event planner, that it’s going to be too expensive. But you’re saving so much time that people can be doing other things with – I’m sure you have vendors that you work with on Fiverr pretty frequently. I’m sure you have other vendors that you work with all the time. You have these all in one spot.Aimee: I can direct you to someone who can be cheaper for a DJ and then someone who could be a really good designer that’s going to be affordable. That’s basically what you’re paying for.So the fact that Fiverr – again, they have so many valuable resources that will help with the timelines. So for example, if your client will come to me and like – you know, I really need to get these invitations out by this particular date. Great! So again, it definitely helps planners be a little bit more efficient with the timelines. Making sure that there’s someone that’s keeping on task the whole way through helps so much.So yeah, that’s one of the things. That’s one of the beauties of having that person as a resource and using resources like Fiverr to defer to, to kind of execute those tasks.Adam: I think there’s also another element to it as well, which we touched upon very briefly earlier where you mentioned things such as retouching photographs. I mean a lot of times I hear things at weddings. I’ve got a few photographer friends who will take photos and sometimes the bride or groom will come back and kind of say, “I really like this one but I wish it was kind of like this.”From the buyer’s point of view, that can be quite stressful. The last thing you want to do on your honeymoon is be worried about your photos. The last thing you want to be doing after your corporate event is making sure that the photos are decent enough quality to put on your website.So rather than going back and forth to – you know, the original person that maybe took the photos and they’re working a 9:00 to 5:00 in your time zone, you could literally jump on somewhere like Fiverr, look for someone who’s online right now, saying, look, I’ve got this photo here. There’s a weird thing in the background or this guy looks a bit funny or someone’s photo if I’m going to get as an example. Can you just take that out? And then we can use it.You could get that turned around in 24 hours or less before the close or before the open of business the next day, before your previous photographer has even come back to you. So you completely reduce all of the stress there because you just kind of hand off or you have someone else to refer to if you need something changed because there’s nothing worse than – in anything in general with service where you don’t like a service, you’re always kind of complaining or you’re trying to rework the person you’ve got that service from. It can sometimes be difficult. But if you’ve got an affordable option next to you where you can kind of say, “I don’t like it like this,” and refer to them, it’s very seamless.Aimee: Absolutely. One of the things I did notice is that with a lot of these photographers, they will tell you what the turnover time is on Fiverr that is. I completely understand. Sometimes you will reach you to the original photographer that you had used and it will take them a week or two for them to get back to you.I actually have that same problem when I got married and we were going back and forth with the photographer for six months. I couldn’t believe it. It has got to the point where we just got so frustrated. We were like, OK, just give us whatever you guys – whatever you have. Then if there was – again, at the time, there were the options that Fiverr offered. Oh man, the turnover time is like 24 hours. It’s great.So again, it’s another reason why couples or any kind of client should use Fiverr for that reason because the turnover times are so quick and especially when you have to meet deadlines. It’s great. It’s really, really great.Ryan: I mean I think just the diversity of options too. I know Adam touched on this in the past episode but you can take four, five different sellers and spend $20 to $30 and get multiple options rather than investing a large chunk like say maybe Redd did to get one option and not even knowing if you’re going to like it. Then if you want to proceed with one, you can upgrade to the vectors and all the other things like that.Adam: I think it also touches upon as well is – certain Gigs have such a low entry price. It’s also very risk-free. So you might go ahead and go to a designer, put $5 down to see what they come up with. When it comes back, you may think to yourself, well, it isn’t maybe quite what I wanted. But it has told me two things. One, it has told me what I don’t like and two, it has given me ideas to move forward to something else.For $5, that’s invaluable whereas if you enter a company, seven or eight months before your wedding, trying to plan these invites and it came back and it wasn’t quite right, the clock has started. You’re on a timer. You’re trying to fix it. You’ve probably spent more with this company where you can’t just kind of like cut the call and go. You need to stick with them whereas Fiverr allows you to pick and choose, see what you want, have a low base rate to spread the risk. Have a look at different options available. Order multiple options to choose between them as opposed to being stuck on a clock with one service provider where you’ve probably committed by that point and you’re a little bit tied in.Aimee: There’s always that problem of the – again, the back and forth. I can’t tell you how many brides and couples that I’ve worked with who were just like, “I don’t like it like this. I don’t like it like this. How do I talk with this person about it?”So again as a planner, usually I’m kind of the person who does the – I do a lot of mediating and do a lot of listening. So I provide a lot of advice for them, especially when they talk to a designer. They actually have to go – sometimes, they have to actually go to the place because the designer is unavailable with her email or what not. So they had to actually go to the place.Fiverr, one of the things that – again, big thing, turnover. Number two, they’re efficient with – you know, again the designs and what not. So I think that that – again, it’s another good way to look at things because it’s specialized. It’s – you want your – you don’t want things to be cookie-cutter.For those that are getting married or they just want to create an event, they want to make it different from the last one. So having that ability to communicate with somebody and to make it like – you know, I really want this, this and this. It’s so helpful for the client for sure.Adam: So for anyone who’s listening now and thinking about an event they’ve got coming up and how they want to handle it or what they could potentially outsource onto Fiverr and make their job easier in that respect, what kind of categories would you recommend looking into or focusing on? What kind of literal service options are available?Aimee: Definitely designers for the invitation, Save the Dates logos. That’s number one. I love the fact that they have videographers and photographers that can help with the slide shows and again retouching pictures. It’s huge! Those are big deals because sometimes I will – actually I shouldn’t say sometimes. A lot of times with videographers, they do it and they said, “We’re not going to show you until the day before.”OK. Well, again, that’s not going to be helpful because if you show it to me the day before and there’s something that’s already messed up, it’s like you’re shaking the dice and rolling it. You’re taking that chance that they’re going to do a good job.Again, same thing with the photographers. A lot of times, they’re not going to give you the stuff in an efficient time. I guess the one big one that I have to touch up on is the web designers. One of the biggest things that you’re going to see nowadays is wedding websites or event websites. They’re huge because a lot of people want to go green. They maybe don’t want to even send out “save the dates”.But it’s easier because everything is all digital. So people, they just pop it up on their computers and then you can see the whole website. So I believe that the web designers are going to be a huge tool for these clients to use because they want a cool website for sure.Adam: It also helps with the kind of guest like me, where you invite me and I ask you a couple of weeks later. I’ve lost the invite. When was the date again? And then a couple of weeks later again, what time was it and what were the food options? Then by that point, you’re going to say, “Adam, it was two weeks ago. You missed it.”Aimee: No. And that’s the thing too. Everyone – I mean unless you’re archaic and what not and don’t have like a smartphone. I mean I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to use it or I don’t even have the invitation in my hand. It’s like, oh, what’s the website for the wedding? And you’re driving around and you’re like, “Oh my gosh! What are the directions?”So again, it’s that website that’s going to be completely helpful, especially again being in a digital age, it’s going to be – it will be very useful. So yeah.Adam: So other things I could think of as well. I think it would be quite cool, especially for things like corporate events or even if you were putting on a hen do or a stag do is T-shirt design. Having T-shirts designed and printed out for your event. I mean that’s a thing that can really be quite costly if you were to go to a specific company for that. You can talk hundreds and hundreds of dollars to have ten T-shirts printed.Aimee: Absolutely. I worked in an event last year where – it was a quinceanera. It wasn’t even a wedding. It was one of those birthday parties. The woman had – actually it was the grandma but she actually had these bags. I guess they are like giveaway bags. They were custom made and I couldn’t believe it. I mean it was crazy what she had put together.She had the bags custom made. She had the goodie bags from the dessert table. Those are all custom made and they just had the logo on the bags. It was a super cool concept. But when I asked her how much she paid for that, I mean it was unreal how much she paid for it.Fiverr actually – the fact that they come up with logos and all you have to do – they will just send it to you and you just get it to the print shop. So much more affordable.I think one of the things that make the biggest difference is the theme. A lot of people, they come at you with – I want to have this, this and this. I’m like, “OK. Well, how is that all going to tie together?”One of the things that I always talk to clients about when they’re looking for the design of their invitation is you look at your invitation and it sets a tone for the whole wedding. If it’s something super casual, you’re thinking, OK, it looks like it’s going to be a casual wedding. If you have something super fancy, then you’re thinking, “OK, it’s going to be a pretty fancy wedding.”That’s one of the things that people as guests are going to look at when they view a wedding. Then as the couple, it’s like, “What is it that you want to put out basically?”I’ve done all sorts. I’ve done super casual and I’ve done really, really fancy. That’s one of the things that we always talk about from the get-go.Ryan: It seems like – you know, in the day of the Pinterest wedding, it seems – all the brides’ first steps are going on Pinterest and looking at ideas. I would imagine that sometimes it’s pretty hard to make it all come together and make it work. You know, a bunch of different ideas and that’s where an event planner can be helpful and give some direction and guidance.Aimee: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I can’t tell you how many Pinterest pages. I’m on like secret pages all the time. So they said, “Oh, look at this. This is an idea I have,” blah, blah, blah. Again, being an event planner, it’s so helpful whenever they actually do add me to those pages for me to say, “Hey, why don’t you go to this site instead and take a look at that?”You would be surprised how many people would be like, “Oh, OK.” Again, Fiverr offers affordable options that will help with the cost because the cost of a lot of designs, oh my goodness. One of the wedding websites, I think one of the couples had done, was probably about three grand. It was crazy. I’m like, “I’m sorry. What?” I couldn’t believe that. I said, “You didn’t have a friend that could do it for you?”But they really wanted it specific. Now, mind you, the budget for that wedding was over $100,000. I was, OK man, do your thing. But just for the website alone, it was unreal how much they paid for it. I was like, “Oh gosh.”Adam: Well, that’s all we have time for this week and thanks again for listening and thanks to Aimee for joining us. Be sure to check out the Save the Date page at Fiverr.com/savethedate where the deadline has actually been extended due to popular demand from the 5th to July the 12th.Remember the winner can receive $25,000 to help pay for that dream wedding. What you need to do is submit a one-minute video describing your love story and why they would love Fiverr’s help.As usual, our jingle was created by Customdrumloops and we were edited today by Dansha. Thanks so much and see you next week.Transcription by Prexie Magallanes as Trans-Expert at Fiverr.com

Fiverr Team
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