420 Behind the Scenes of Hosting Live Events: Our Biggest Fears and What We've Learned After 9 Events

**Episode 420:** Rain or Shine Podcast
**Hosts:** Kelsey Reidl and Emily Elliot, Founder of Wave For Women

Behind the Scenes of Wave Events: Our Real Fears, Near-Misses, and What We Never Worry About

Episode 420: Rain or Shine Podcast
Hosts: Kelsey Reidl and Emily Elliot, Founder of Wave For Women

Quick Summary:

After eight or nine live events and nearly four years of hosting, Wave for Women co-founders Kelsey and Emily sit down for an unfiltered conversation about the fears that keep them up at night before an event — from pregnancy scares and ice storms to missing name tags and worn-out swag bags — alongside the parts of event-hosting they've learned to fully trust.

In This Episode:

Emily's biggest event fear: a sick kid (or herself) making an event impossible to attend
Navigating a first-trimester pregnancy and morning sickness during a live 75-person event
Two intense weather scares — an ice storm and an air quality warning — and the "Acts of God" risk that comes with event hosting
Why every attendee has a different risk tolerance, and how that shapes hard calls
The "little things become big things" logistics spiral: name tags, tape, table assignments
Real mishaps: a mismatched speaker time, a water shortage on a hot day, worn swag bags
Why building an event team (and having a "runner" on standby) changed everything
Wardrobe mishaps on the road — bra straps, blisters, and the case for trying on your full outfit beforehand
What Kelsey and Emily never worry about: guest connection, public speaking, and trusting their unconventional approach
Why choosing small-town venues and unique guest speakers became a competitive advantage

Key Takeaways:

Plan for the things you can't control. Weather, illness, and "Acts of God" risks aren't preventable — build contingency plans and a trusted team rather than assuming you'll be lucky forever.
Respect that risk tolerance varies. Not every attendee will weigh a health or weather risk the same way you do — communicate clearly and let people opt in or out.
Build an event team, not a two-person show. Having a trusted "runner" on standby for last-minute needs (water, supplies) keeps hosts from being stressed out at their own event.
Give yourself grace for the 2% hiccups. Wrong speaker times, mismatched dates, worn swag bags — these happen at almost every event, and naming them openly builds trust with your audience rather than eroding it.
Trust your unconventional instincts. Choosing smaller-town venues and guest speakers you personally love — rather than copying what everyone else does — can become your strongest differentiator.

Memorable Quotes:

"Don't make a mountain out of a molehill when little things go funny."
"When you make decisions that just feel good in your soul, you will attract the right attendees who see in that vision, and they want to build it out with you."

Resources Mentioned:

Kelsey's Instagram: @KelseyReidl
Emily's Instagram: @itsemilyelliot
Website: waveforwomen.ca
Instagram: @waveforwomen
Wave Mastermind — live coaching and blueprints for hosting events, podcasting, and public speaking
Upcoming Wave for Women events: October in Elora; early 2027 in Paris

About the Guest

Kelsey and Emily are the co-founders of Wave for Women, having hosted eight or nine live events over nearly four years — ranging from intimate 10-woman gatherings to events with almost 100 attendees, top guest speakers, and vendors. They also run the Wave Mastermind, a coaching community for women building podcasts, events, and businesses.

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Kelsey: Emily and I are sitting down today — we thought it'd be fun, as business partners who've now hosted eight or nine events. It's crazy; we've almost been hosting events for four years now. We've run up against some really crazy event fears and worries, and things have gone wrong. But things have also gone so right, and we've been growing our events, with moments that felt so easeful and peaceful. So whether you're tuning in with a desire to host your own small event — maybe ten women gathered in a room, which is how we started hosting Wave events — or you have a vision to host a 200-person event with top guest speakers, we want to bare it all today and share what's been going on in our heads behind the scenes: the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Emily: Ooh, juicy.
Kelsey: I don't want to start on a negative, but I think it might be juiciest to start with our top event fears. If I bring myself back to the days leading up to our really big events — almost 100 women coming, top guest speakers, vendors, a venue, caterers, probably 100 line items on the list — I know I felt increasing levels of stress and worry. Even though we're both good at trusting it's going to work out, there's just no way to avoid the event fears and worries. So why don't you kick us off, Em, with one of your top event fears?
Emily: Okay, so my top event fear is that one of our children will bring home a lovely virus — hand, foot, and mouth, or something — that's just very clearly, "you cannot go to this event." We love it, we've put so much on the line, and to realize it can come down to waking up feeling sick... would I just have to leave it all in Kelsey's hands? While she's super capable, it's not ideal.
In a funny way, one of my fears came true, in a 50% way. I'd revealed on Instagram this week that I'm pregnant with my third child. The good part of the story: I wasn't contagious, so I could still go. But two Sundays before our last event, I had to tell Kelsey, "I'm pregnant, in my first trimester, and I cannot stop throwing up." She knew there were a lot of moving parts in the schedule we couldn't afford to fall behind on, and at any moment I could need to run out and be sick. Kelsey was amazing — she said, "I'll cover if you need to run, I've got you." For some reason, my body was able, in a high-cortisol situation, to hold off on being sick, so I got through the day and everything went well. But the night before, I remember thinking, "Am I going to throw up on stage in front of 75 women and live with that the rest of my life?"
Kelsey: It's such a legitimate fear, especially at this stage of life for both of us — you have two young kids at home and were pregnant at our latest event, and I have a little germy toddler at home and was also pregnant. There are things that are so out of our control. We love to eat healthy, take our supplements, generally try to avoid illness — but it's one of those things that could happen to either of us at some point, waking up and thinking, "I can't do this." Thank goodness for a business partner — we both know the scoop, we'd know what the code words mean in the schedule, and that's such a relief. So that's a fear, but there was a backup plan there.
In terms of something without a backup plan, though, we've faced two pretty intense weather events on our event days. We had an ice storm the night before our April 2025 event — people were messaging asking what if the ice wasn't gone by morning. Then two weeks ago, we had extreme air pollution warnings where people weren't supposed to leave their homes, and we were debating whether to cancel the event. It magically cleared the morning of, both times. That's a bit of risk tolerance too — you control the controllables, but some things are so outside your control.
I think back to 2020, when the whole world shut down, and I learned the term "Acts of God" — in contracts, you can sign for a venue thinking you're covering all your risk, but there are things you just couldn't have predicted, like COVID or an air pollution issue shutting down an event. Sometimes the risk falls on the event organizers, and you're left with a tough decision: do we go forward with an event in an ice storm? Ethically, I don't think it's right to make people drive, but then you look at all the money spent — the venue's not going to refund us. We've been very lucky that we've never actually had to cancel an event, but as we've grown, we're realizing we need to bring someone onto our team with contingency plans to protect us, because we want to make the most ethical decision for our customers and clients.
Emily: Combined with the fact that every single person has a different risk tolerance. Some people were messaging saying, "I don't care about the air quality, I'll be okay anyway — book it up, let me come," and I had others in my text thread — and I respect this equally — who said, "I'm not okay with this health risk."
Kelsey: So risk tolerance with your audience has to be considered — not everyone's going to think like you.
Emily: What else made you freaked out for our last eight events?
Kelsey: One thing I often worry about is the little things that I worry become big things. In the nights leading up to an event, I'll worry about one specific introverted person walking in and not knowing who to talk to, or not having name tags so people can't address someone they've met on Zoom but never in person, or what if someone can't find their table easily and that stresses them out. It's the little logistics — even things like, what if we need tape to put up a sign but the venue doesn't have tape and we didn't bring any? It's funny how micro these worries can be, and how they come into my brain at 2 or 3 in the morning. I'll have to jot it down in the moment: "Pack the tape tomorrow," or "Double-check we have a name tag for Andrea." I often worry about the little logistics, and I think we're grateful that as we start hiring an event planner, maybe those worries will start to melt away. But for anyone planning events, it's always in the million details — of course we're going to forget a few things.
Emily: We've certainly had that experience, where we've either forgotten something or had an agenda item wrong. On a side note, we thought we had our agenda perfect at our last event, and then one of our speakers was ready to go, setting up with her husband helping her, while I was up front queuing another speaker — and she said, "You sent me the wrong speaker time in my email." Somewhere in the coordination, the email had the wrong time and we just didn't catch it.
Kelsey: All those tiny little things — you have to give yourself a little grace, you're going to have 2% hiccups. My top three fears also include mismatching a date between the venue contract and the website — like October 2nd versus October 3rd. So leading up to an event I'm checking the contract, checking the website, the big, big details — even though, of course, Scotch tape can consume our minds too.
Emily: You were sending out these cheeky reminder text messages before our last event in Prince Edward County — "See you tomorrow at 11:00 AM" — just wanting to reaffirm and reaffirm, because sometimes we say the right time but somebody reads it differently. You really have to dot your I's and cross your T's, because you want the least amount of surprises on event day.
It's funny because things do go wrong — a good recent example is that in the coordination of pickups, we didn't have enough water for our guests on a super hot day. That was the first time ever, in eight or nine events, that my heart dropped. It doesn't matter if a backdrop looks a bit funky, but it matters that our guests are well-hydrated, since not everyone brings a Yeti. I let myself have a one-minute panic, then thought, "Okay, we're only 25 minutes from a store, I can handle this." We pulled it off quickly and figured it out.
Kelsey: An important lesson from that, and from a few other situations, is to build out your event team. In previous events, it was just the two of us saying, "Okay, which one of us is going to go to the store and grab this?" — and then we'd be stressed out at our own event. Slowly, over time, we've included more people in our event vision, brought on team members, done ticket exchanges so we have someone we trust who loves the Wave community to say, "Hey, we don't have enough water, could you take your car and grab a case? We'll reimburse you." A good lesson is to have someone on standby who can be your runner on the day, because things do go wrong and you'll want someone who can help.
Emily: So well put — getting that resource team there. That's exactly who helped — someone said, "I've got vases, I've got water, let's hydrate your guests."
One last funny story before we shift to things we never worry about: we're both busy moms who live an hour apart, so before our last big event we said, "We need an in-person chat, to ground and get on the same page before 100 women come into this room." We asked the event staff where we could go for a quick, quiet chat, and they said there was nowhere — so we found a stairwell off the kitchen. Technically we weren't supposed to be in there, but we said we'd just be a few minutes. We're eating our protein bars, hiding in a dark stairwell, the event about to start in three minutes, in our high heels on the staircase, asking each other, "Are we on the same page? Are we good?" — while the staff are wondering what we're doing.
Kelsey: It's so true — the first ten times you do anything, you're just going with the indie version and not obsessing over it being perfect. That reminds me of our first-ever event where I wasn't staying on-site at my own home and overlooked packing a proper bra. I got dressed — for whatever reason I was wearing hot coral that day, hot coral straps under a mint green dress, and everything was sticking out everywhere. I thought, "This looks negative one percent professional." Thank goodness I had a backup dress — crisis averted.
But I'd also packed new platform shoes I'd gotten for my birthday because they were so cute — I wish I could show you the size of the blister I had the next day, a toonie-sized foot blister. I showed Blake and he asked how I'd even walked; I didn't know. In our event pictures there's a moment we're in a garden and I said, "Kels, let's just take our shoes off" — I was in so much pain.
Emily: So that's a thing too — when you do an event out of town, things can go funny before you're even at your event. You need to try on your entire outfit — underwear, bra, no new shoes — because I've made all those mistakes too, and then I don't feel good and still have to show up at the event. It's a lot to think about getting yourself ready for the biggest day.
Kelsey: Getting those clothes feeling good — because if you're wearing an outfit you don't like, you don't feel like yourself.
Emily: Always. It's one of those overlooked things for me, for many years, of just "oh, wear whatever." Now I think, "No, I actually need to put intention behind how I want to look, how I want to feel, how I want to move about my day," and find the outfit to match that. It's something that might be overlooked when you're thinking about everyone else at the event and not always thinking about yourself.
Kelsey: 100%, I completely agree. It's a very important piece — you want to not be too hot, but feel like you're wearing your own style, and no foot blisters the size of toonies, no sweat stains in weird areas when it's 35 degrees at a flower barn.
Emily: I had sweat stains at the April event, weirdly, but at the flower barn, my dress did me good. We've experienced it all — for anyone who wants to chat more about event fears, hit us up, because we understand.
Kelsey: Let's flip the script. We've had so much joy hosting these events, and there are things that have felt easeful and joyful, things we never worry about. What's something that comes to mind as an event win, success, or thing you never stress about?
Emily: The thing I trust the most in what we've created is that everyone is going to find someone to connect with. We've built a very relaxed approach to connection and networking, and I don't worry about people leaving feeling unseen or not taken care of, because I know we have such a compassionate group — I really trust people are going to leave feeling good. Eight or nine events in, with maybe a thousand people who've come through our doors, I think we've only ever gotten positive feedback on that.
I also, weirdly, have no fear of public speaking. At one of our recent events, we realized we'd forgotten to make a connection between the theme and something else, and I just said, "It's all good, I'll make it up right now" — and I did. So if we have to throw in some speaking, that zero percent phases me. Those are probably my biggest trust channels. How about you?
Kelsey: I love that — I remember you quickly coming up with a theme and overview, and I thought, "I couldn't have done that." Thank goodness she has no fear of building an idea from scratch and saying it out loud to a group of women.
I couldn't agree more about trusting that the right people will be in the room — that's definitely one of mine too. But the other thing I never worry about is trusting that our ideas are enough. We could copycat what every other event is doing out there, but we've often gone a different route — choosing smaller-town venues instead of Toronto, choosing guest speakers we genuinely want to hear from and who align with us. We've gotten feedback like, "I'd never heard of her before," or, "That was amazing" — we have pretty unique guest speakers. We also make sure there's healthy food available and curate vendors we'd spend our own money with. I think we've done a great job staying true to an event you and I would want to attend, and trusting that going a bit more unconventional — hosting in small towns — is actually a competitive advantage for us. People love making a day trip out of it, whether to Prince Edward County or Elora; they start to look forward to their visit annually. We never could have predicted that people would start staying overnight and going out for dinner with each other. When you make decisions that just feel good in your soul, you attract the right attendees who share in that vision and want to build it out with you. It's been fun to follow what feels light and easy.
Emily: So well put. There's an energy that can be trusted — even when things go messy, if you're in the right energy, you can make light of it and it's not a big deal.
Kelsey: Don't make a mountain out of a molehill when little things go funny, which we've clearly had our share of. We had swag bags that were crisp and brown when they were filled, but in the shuffle they got really worn and torn looking. We presented this gorgeous venue with our worn, torn, lifeless, limp bags — and I think it made us relatable. You're about to open these really awesome $120-value bags, the supplements will give you more energy, you've got a cuter protein shaker — but just overlook the 99-cent crushed bag, alright? Making light of it, having fun with it — you can't get upset about that stuff because there are so many moving pieces.
Emily: Exactly. We've always done a good job of just calling things like they are, saying it out loud, and including the community in our process — whether it's the Wave Mastermind, where we show up every week with a group of women, or with events, or even in our personal lives. We're never trying to posture that we have it all together, that things are perfect behind the scenes, because they're not. So why should we show up to an event pretending everything's pristine, ignoring the crinkled swag bags or the agenda hiccup? Just call it out: "Hey guys, sorry, there's a quick glitch in the agenda, give me 45 seconds, take a sip of water, and we'll be back on track." They laugh with you, and I think they appreciate the genuine feeling of two event hosts who are like, "Yeah, we have a couple things going on, and that's okay."
Kelsey: Super well put. I was excited to do this with you, because I never want to look online or in life like I've figured everything out — most days I wake up thinking, "I have nothing figured out." It's just at every turn: what now, growing, leaning into faith, being real with your fears. Hopefully, if you've had events on your radar, this podcast was helpful. We have a women's mastermind where we talk about this stuff — how to start a podcast, how to become an event host, how to stop being scared on a stage — because so many women aren't turning dreams into reality since they just don't know how, and then they don't do anything.
Emily: Thought this would be a fun one.
Kelsey: If anyone wants to learn more — we have these conversations, do a lot of live coaching, and give you our blueprints inside the Wave Mastermind — you can head to waveforwomen.ca. If you want to book a call with either of us, we'd love to chat and see if it's a good fit. And if you want to attend one of our events, we have events happening every few months. We've got one in October in Elora, on our website, and one coming up in early 2027 in Paris — get on the wait list to stay in the loop by adding your name and email on our website, or DM us on Instagram at Wave for Women. We can't wait to meet you and have you in our mastermind. Please share your event fears and successes with us, because we love hearing them. Thanks for listening, everyone — it's always fun to keep it real, and we'll see you soon for some chit-chat online.
Emily: See you later.

420 Behind the Scenes of Hosting Live Events: Our Biggest Fears and What We've Learned After 9 Events