May Yeo Silvers of M2 Hospitality: 5 Things You Need To Know To Successfully Run a Live Virtual Event

Before you hire a speaker, do your research, mainly what is their social media presence. Some speakers get their on-stage energy from the live audience. They don’t do well talking to a screen with no live audience. I had to replace a speaker after I checked out how she came on LIVE on her social media. She was awkward and paid more attention to how she looked because she kept touching her hair and trying to catch the best camera angle. You want to hire someone who is used to going LIVE on their social media, can speak naturally and knows how to look at the camera to maintain eye contact with the audience.

As a part of our series about “5 Things You Need To Know To Successfully Run a Live Virtual Event”, I had the pleasure of interviewing May Yeo Silvers.

May started her hospitality career as a food and beverage trainee at the Raffles Hotel, Singapore. It was there that she fell in love with the hospitality industry and decided to pursue her career further. In 2004, she came to Miami, Florida and eventually worked her way up to Director of Catering and Conference Services and Director of Event Planning at several luxury hotels, including the JW Marriott Marquis Miami and The Royal Palm, South Beach, where she was part of the hotel opening team. As an event planner, May worked with celebrities, dignitaries, and leaders including President Bill Clinton, Rock Bands like U2, World Class Tennis Players including Venus Williams, Novak Djokovic, and Rafael Nadal, and Nascar drivers Jimmy Johnson and Jeff Gordon . In 2012, May decided to take all that she had learned and started her own event planning company, M2 Hospitality. May brought the hustle as she built her company to multiple 6-figures while shattering industry norms. May ran her event planning company without owning inventory, an office space, or any event venues. She also didn’t have a single full-time employee. May created an entirely new model for event planning, and because of that, enjoyed wild amounts of success Today, May is passionate about helping other event planners increase profitability, grow their business, and create on their own terms. Her coaching company walks EVENTrepreneurs through building a business and life they are excited to wake up to.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your “childhood backstory”?

I was born and raised in Singapore and growing up, we would have many family vacations where we would stay in different hotels. It was during these stays that I became enamoured by all the glitz and glamour of the hotel industry and how effortlessly and elegantly the events ran. This lead to refocusing a career path for myself and I took a job as a food and beverage trainee right out of college at the iconic Raffles Hotel in Singapore. This experience allowed me to delve deeper into the world of F&B within the hotel hospitality industry and furthered my passion for this exciting career. Because of this experience at the age of 21, I decided that I would pursue further education and applied to complete a Hospitality Management degree in Switzerland. Although this meant that I would leave my family, which was hard, it lead to a fruitful and exciting career in hospitality where I have spent 15 years working in an industry that is so fascinating to me and allowed me to start my business in 2012 M2 Hospitality.

Can you tell us the story of what led you to this particular career path?

Honestly, food was what led me to this career path. When I was young, I loved attending banquet events such as weddings and big celebrations where there were a lot of different types of food to be consumed. So I thought to myself, if I were to specialize in food and beverage and organize events, I could eat all types of food. So you can imagine all the events I put together, I always made sure there was a food and beverage component that people would leave the events I had planned with a memorable experience, be it in taste or presentation. I also love putting pieces of ideas together to form a big vision, and events are just like that. Fitting different components of an event together to deliver the entire vision.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

I grew up in Singapore and our school system teaches us British English which means we used different terms compared to American English. For one event I managed I was asked to arrange the snacks for this event. When completing the order I requested a plate of biscuits, which refer to cookies in the British context. It wasn’t until we were presented with a plate of American biscuits that I realized the error and the communication mix-up. It was then that I learned (very quickly) that although English is a universal language, there are variations and I needed to make sure to double-check the context of each event.

Is there a particular book, podcast, or film that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?

“There’s No Plan B For Your A-Game” by Bo Eason, taught me that in order to be the best at what you do, you must first envision the successful version of yourself. This lead me to create a 5, 10 and 20-year plan on what I needed to do in order to become my successful self. Bo explains how he made a lot of sacrifices in order to reach his goal of becoming an NFL player.

I made a lot of sacrifices to get to where I am today, owning 2 multiple 6 figure businesses. I left my family in Singapore when I was 21 years old to pursue my hospitality degree in Switzerland. I worked long hours, sacrificing my social life because I knew I needed to be the best in what I did and I could not allow any distractions, time was very precious for me and I needed to be very intentional with how I spent my time. Bo knew that these sacrifices were temporary, and so did I. Freedom of choice came with temporary sacrifices, that’s what resonated with me most in the book.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

It is not how many wins you have in your life and business that determines how successful you are. It is how many times you get up after you have been knocked down, and how fast you get up each time.

In 2004, I took on a sales job where I made cold call sales selling VIP tickets to world-class sporting events. I had to pitch to decision-makers and had them purchase 10 grandstand seat tickets for $25 000, during that one phone call. I made on average 300 calls each day, 5 days a week. I did that for 3 months with ZERO sales. I never gave up. I kept working on my pitch and I was convinced that I would make a sale. Not once did I lose hope. In the fourth month, all the sales came in. That whole experience taught me to trust myself, keep doing the right thing and the results would follow.

Ok, thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview. For the benefit of our readers, can you tell us a bit about your experience organizing events in general?

My background has always been in Catering and Conference Services in the hotel industry where I have had the honour and responsibility of managing not only the planning and budget of an million dollar events but also the successful execution of these. Throughout my career I have had the honor of planning events which have included some A list celebrities and dignitaries like former President Bill Clinton, U2, Venus Williams and Brookshields. And have been able to also plan corporate events that have helped business encourage team building and collaborations

Can you tell us a bit about your experience organizing live virtual events? Can you share any interesting stories about them?

I have done quite a few virtual events but the most memorable one to date is a virtual happy hour that I executed. For this event we sent out snack boxes and cocktail making kits to the attendees so that they could have a different experience from the usual virtual event setting. As a way to make this a memorable event, we allocated the budget to bring a different forms of entertainment and so we decided to bring in an illusionist the attendees with an exhilarating experience. In one of the acts, the illusionist took out his analog watch and asked one of the attendees to think about an important event and recall the time that event happened. Then, he started turning the dial on his watch, and when he was done, he showed the time on his watch. He proceeded to wind the clock to the exact time of the special event that the particular participant had in mind, the birth of her daughter. Everyone at the event was in awe, you could literally hear the audience gasping in disbelief, which was awesome!

In your opinion, what is an example of a company that has done a fantastic job creating live virtual events? What specifically impresses you? What can one do to replicate that?

Party Slate and Event MB are the two companies that currently come to mind. When they create their events they make sure to take steps to produce events which have concise presentations which still incorporate engaging aspects which keeps the attention of the audience. They also use technology that is not only easy to use but also inclusive allowing event the most technically challenged audience member participate in the events seamlessly.

What are the common mistakes you have seen people make when they try to run a live virtual event? What can be done to avoid those errors?

One of the most common mistakes people make, is assume that the program agenda they used for their in-person event can transfer to a virtual one. For instance, if you have an event where the program is set out with 8 hours of general session, that is not going to work virtually. The sheer length of having back to back speakers on a virtual platform will lead your audience to lose interest. You need to break out the session into mini-sessions. Or, you need to look at what are the essential contents you want to present, and only present those content. You will have to restructure your presentation to capture the short attention span of your virtual audience.

Which virtual platform have you found to be most effective to be able to bring everyone together virtually? Socio is one that is easy to use and has a lot of functions that allow virtual attendees to interact seamlessly with the vendors, network with other attendees and simply feel like they are not missing out on the event experience.

Are there any essential tools or software that you think an event organizer needs to know about?

Project management tools such as Dubsado and Asana in my opinion are essential in keeping your team and even yourself (if you are working solo) organized and on track. For sourcing venues I would recommend Cvent. While Social Tables and All Seated are great for creating floor plans. Finally, I would recommend Honeybook and AislePlanner to make workflow easy for everyone.

Ok. Thank you for all that. Here is the main question of our discussion. An in-person event can have a certain electric energy. How do you create an engaging and memorable event when everyone is separated and in their own homes? What are the “Five Things You Need To Know To Successfully Run a Live Virtual Event” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)

1. Hire an emcee! If you have a host/moderator for your live event, you need to have one for a virtual event as well. The emcee keeps an eye on the time and keeps the energy level high for the virtual audience. I was once at a virtual event where the host was the speaker and he was trying to read the chat to answer questions and at the same time, trying to tee-up the next speaker. You can guess how quickly the audience disengaged.
2. Before you hire a speaker, do your research, mainly what is their social media presence. Some speakers get their on-stage energy from the live audience. They don’t do well talking to a screen with no live audience. I had to replace a speaker after I checked out how she came on LIVE on her social media. She was awkward and paid more attention to how she looked because she kept touching her hair and trying to catch the best camera angle. You want to hire someone who is used to going LIVE on their social media, can speak naturally and knows how to look at the camera to maintain eye contact with the audience.
3. Make sure the background of your speakers DOES NOT have any graphics or words that would offend the sponsors or audience. I once had a speaker who had a vintage coke bottle in his background and one of the sponsors was Pepi so you can imagine how that went down.
4. Test, test, and test EVERYTHING!. Make sure your speaker and audience know how to get on the platform BEFORE the actual virtual event. Send them an instruction sheet that teaches them what to do to get on the platform, for instance: Step 1: download this app. Step 2: Check your bandwidth so you don’t get disconnected. Step 3: This is where you go get help if you can’t access the platform. I have had speakers who were at a location where the internet was spotty and the presentation was choppy. In cases like this, you need to have a backup plan of a pre-recorded video that you can stream so you don’t lose your audience.
5. Make sure the streaming platform has a live help desk that can troubleshoot in real-time.

Let’s imagine that someone reading this interview has an idea for a live virtual event that they would like to develop. What are the first few steps that you would recommend that they take?

1. Determine what’s the purpose of having this live virtual event by asking who will attend, what do they want to gain by attending this live virtual event.

2. Once a purpose is defined, the host will want to determine what’s the end goal or ROI for this event, both tangible and intangible and how to measure the success of the event.

3. Determine which streaming platform can fulfill your event vision. Ask questions to the platform provider about tracking attendees’ participation, advertising sponsor’s banner, backend cyber and data security and the ease of accessing the recorded content after the event.

Super. We are nearly done. Here are our final questions. You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.

Giving women the confidence to be in charge of their own destiny. I want to share the message that YOU are in control of your destiny, it all starts with every choice you make. I want to inspire every woman to have the courage to make that first good choice in life. I want to show women all around the world success comes in all shapes and sizes.

We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.

Elon Musk. I would like to know how he thinks and where he gets the courage to do something that no one ever dares to dream about. He is such a visionary.

Thank you so much for sharing these important insights. We wish you continued success and good health!