Until someone else tells me that they have been doing this technique before 1977, I’m taking credit for it.    So this is another 99tools exclusive because I have a better story to tell than most.  LOL!

This post is geared towards all of you that do parties or are promoting your business through the Private Business Reception methods.   Basically, it’s great for anyone that is partnering with hostesses/hosts to get people in attendance to a “party”.

The power of this technique is that you’re probably only investing an extra 20-30 minutes, total, into doubling or tripling the size of your group at your party.

Now think about this… you already booked yourself out for the time slot … so now, do you want to have 7 people there (hopefully) or 21?  or possibly 30?  This, to me, is a no-brainer.    Here’s how to do it… {+} At the time of booking, your new hostess has committed to holding a party.  You’re in!  Now, don’t stop there.   For most party plans, it’s obvious she is going to get a whole lot more in freebies if she has larger sales and more bookings.  The goal is to have her book with a friend OR TWO.. and all of them invite.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to go figure out how to write the party up so that everyone gets more stuff… it’s all about being as generous as you can be while working within your plan.

Let me tell you a story… (oh man, here she goes!) … but this is where all of this started for me back in 1977.

I was only 20.  (ahhh.. those were the days)… I had been selling Avon since I was 16 in high school.  (and did a mighty fine business with it back then!  No joke!)… I had quit selling Avon and went into my first party plan company – jewelry.  This is back in the good ol’ days when there weren’t Walmarts and you had to go into the city to even find a Target.   The only real place to get jewelry back then was department stores.  I digress.. but I’m tellin’ ya.. the business was good in my little town… at least from my perspective.  It’s a cup-is-half-full thing to me. 

Anyway, my first party was one at my house.  Second one was done by a friend the next night… and then my friend’s aunts booked a party at that one.  These ladies were OLD!!!  (I mean… really… they were ancient… I’m guessing they were in their 40′s!)  LOL  I was scared to death to do their gig.

You gotta remember, my friends were all either in college with no money or were waitressing or working in little retail shops for minimum wage.  Back then, it was about $2 an hour.  (Gawd, I’m sounding older by the minute doing this post! LOL)

Anyway… back to booking these two old ladies (lol)….  Little did I know there was incredible “gold” in that experience.  While at my friend’s house, and when one of them said she wanted to do a party and then the other one thought it would be fun, too… they ASKED if they could do one together.  Huh?  What was I going to say?  No?   LOL… not hardly.  I’m not stupid.. I’ll do anything they wanted… after all, they’re ancient and I’m young and dumb and who was I to tell them what to do?!?!?  LOL

And besides.. it made sense to get the attendance up.   Gosh.. I wish I woulda thought of this!   But the cool thing was that this was all happening to me in LITERALLY my first week of the business.

So there was my first “double booking”.  I did everything perfectly.  I gave them invitation lists, I went to see them 2 days later to get their lists, I hostess coached them just like I was taught, and I mailed the postcards for their party.

Oh.. and this was in Minnesota.. land of the scandahoovians… so it was cute back then to do things with “k’s” in stead of “c’s”… like Kaffee instead of Coffee.  (ya had to be there).  Well.. on those invites (and I still remember.. after writing out 30-40 of these! LOL)… these two gals decided to have “Krudites and Kaffee”.   “Krudites” was being pronounced as kroo-dites.   No joke.  It was probably 20 years before I heard the real pronounciation of “Crudite” (which is kroo-di-tay for those of you still getting up to speed on this party hordeurve bandwagon).  he hee hee…  Crudite basically is a fancy schmancy word for a veggie tray, the best that I can tell.  LOL

The night of the party, I went into their living room and was now doubly-scared to death.  There was a whole room full of ancients… at least 20 women there and not one of them (other than my friend) was under the age of 35, I’m guessing.   (they might as well have all been 80!  I was scared shitless).

Too afraid to stand in front of this group of women (which in the end turned out to be another gift I learned that night) … I decided to play it safe… I used a coffee table (which would be waaaaaaaay under eye level to these women) and I did most of the party from down on my knees (staying lower than all of these old women).  No joke.

(Later, I could honestly tell other recruiting prospects how to avoid standing in front of a group of women if that was their fear/objection! LOL)

Back to that party.  While the women were eating their krooodites…. I wrote orders.  Lots of orders.  Nice orders.  Big, whopping $15-20 orders!  (lol… again… this was decades ago!)   In the end, this was a $300+ party.

Now, that might not mean much to you young’uns reading this… but a $300 party back then would be like having a $1,500 party today.    Third party out of the box in my new little business.  I was in hog-heaven.

I was making 35% back then.  So I made over $100 in those few hours.  I was hooked.  I was bound and determined to never have another little party again… .and that I would “up” my sales by having these double and triple parties as much as I could.

Another funny part of this story… and this speaks volumes to how new people think… is that I hadn’t been to a meeting yet since I had signed up.  I did over $1,000 in sales in my first two weeks or so… which was totally unheard of back then, for the most part.

So I showed up to my first meeting pretty content with my sales and income… but I had no idea I was the new “rock star” for coming up with this idea of double hostesses.   And remember… it wasn’t my idea!  I just went along with it and was just as shocked as anyone at how cool it all works out!

One more thing… and damn… if there was any one thing I would want to share with any new person… it is to have them feel like I did after that $300 party.   It’s glorious to make a big chunk of money in one night and actually be able to ENJOY it.  Still today, over 30 years later, I can still tell you about the incredible lobster lunch I had the day after that party (I splurged and went to a VoTech school that had a culinary department – they had a posh-make-believe-dining room).  I had Lobster Newburg.  I can’t tell you what I ate yesterday… but I can still tell you the color of the tablecloth and the look of that place!  I can still tell you in great detail about the outfit I bought myself that same day… the feel of the fabric, the color, and even the dorky hat I bought.  (hey.. this was the 70′s… gimme a break).   LOL

I was working in a doctor’s office at the time… for probably $4 an hour… my rent was $275 for a one bedroom nice apartment… so just think of how exciting $100 was to earn.   The same excitement would come today from earning $500 in a night.

Point is in all of this…. that I think it’s good for each of us to experience something so far out of our comfort zones that it stretches our belief system which in turn allows us to go on to even bigger and better things.   I hope you all experience it yourself… and then… it’s a real gift if you can do that for a new consultant, too!

So… this post was more story than actual tactics.. but we can go into this in more detail in the forum… but I hope you really realize how cool it would be to do 2-3 triple hostess parties in a month instead of 6-10 single ones.   It’s very doable.

Wishing you all joy and abundance….