A Sweet Show For 300 Guests For A Candy Company in Arlington, TX

This Substack functions as a blog for me to highlight cool memories from the past (like meeting Harrison Ford), educate fellow hosts (How I Got Started), and find any other worthwhile use I can think of at the time of posting. Today, it’s highlighting a recent successful show I had in Texas. Don’t worry; I’ll highlight the unsuccessful ones, too 😉

Most of the time, for my corporate bookings, I get hired to do a single activity for a set amount of time—i.e., trivia for a group of 30 lawyers in an office conference room for 60 minutes. I’ll show up with a mic, a speaker, and all the materials needed to run a pub-quiz-style event where they work on teams to answer questions and play mini-games for bonus points between rounds. The winning team usually gets a prize basket or gift cards at the end. That’s my most-performed kind of show.

This event, however, had two parts: trivia during dinner for 20 minutes (with a tight timeline), and an after-party following dinner where guests could casually come up to my table and play game show offerings.

Part I: Dinner Trivia There were about 300 guests sitting at round tables, ten to a table, in a giant hotel ballroom. The client wanted a quick activity that everyone could play at the same time for a short period, and my go-to offering for any group of 100+ is ALWAYS Crowdpurr. I started using Crowdpurr in 2020 when I needed something flashy and easy to run virtual events. I stumbled upon it from another virtual trivia host in Chicago on YouTube. It quickly solved all my problems; it lets you host for up to 5,000 people, which was clutch when I had large groups that needed entertaining online that year (and pretty steadily into 2023 or so). I’ve used Crowdpurr between 3,000 and 4,000 times since then, and it never fails to wow a crowd with its sleek presentation, ease of use, and great customization. I tell every trivia host I meet to use it.

I prepared three rounds of five questions each, with the third round being all about the main event sponsor. We did the first round, it went well, and I awarded the winner with a gift card prize. In between rounds, the client wanted me to go into the crowd and chat with people in a fun, interactive way, so I pitched a “roaming reporter” kind of game I’ve done before (last time for 2,000 people!). I had five gift cards and five challenges—things like “I’M LOOKING FOR SOMEONE WITH AN ANIMAL TATTOO!” I would stand in a central location and have guests run up to me to claim the prize. Then, I’d interview them with my best Bob Barker impression and hopefully get some laughs. We also did “SHOW ME SOMEONE CARRYING THEIR SOCIAL SECURITY CARD,” and then I’d reprimand them because you’re not supposed to do that. It’s a fun segment.

We had planned on doing another set of five roaming reporters and another five-question trivia round, but by the time we finished the segment, the client asked if I could just skip ahead to the sponsor round because of time. I put that in bold because this is a huge part of hosting events on a corporate timeline; if it’s a strict event with lots of moving parts, you have to realize you’re just one part of many and you have to be flexible. When I first started doing comedy and emceeing, I think it would have terrified me to be told to cut my time in front of a crowd that size and make it seem seamless. But after doing so many of these things, it comes naturally, and I welcome the shake-up. I went into the last sponsor round of trivia, it went great, and we gave away an Ember Mug that keeps your coffee or tea at exactly the temp you desire. Cool prize!

Part II: After-Dinner Game Shows For the post-dinner entertainment, I had a table set up outside in the lobby area with four buzzers and a slew of game shows ready to play. We played games like Quiz Show (think a “fastest answer” setup), Crowd Says (filling in blanks in common clues), Speed Trivia (smash the correct buzzer color corresponding with the answer on screen), and a few more. My biggest hit is always Word Wheel Challenge, which has players buzzing in once they realize the puzzle slowly appearing on screen letter by letter. Whenever I host this game for a crowd—no matter the size, age, or background—it’s always a huge hit. All eyes nearby are locked on the screen trying to figure out the puzzle, even if they’re not technically playing. It’s a lot of fun and runs flawlessly thanks to Next Level Games and their easy-to-use, customizable software.

Every game was met with a new batch of players while they mingled around a bar, schmoozed, and took pictures. It was a lot of fun handing out gift cards to winners of each game, and we ran the games for about 90 minutes. All in all, it was a blast for everyone involved!

Final Takeaways There’s a lot of prep that goes into these shows to make sure they’re executed in a way that makes the client happy and ensures the crowd talks about how fun it was—enough to bring me back for next year’s event (and hopefully some more in between!). I felt especially good about how this one went, and it was rewarding to get a message like this afterward:

I was happy. They were happy. It all worked out great. Corporate shows can be daunting, but if you nail them, they’re a great source of pride and income in my niche biz.