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Your Event Sold Out - BUT DID IT MAKE YOU ANY MONEY?

After 22 years working on events including the Olympic Games and FIFA World Cup, Lauren Penny knows the real flex isn’t filling a room - it’s making the chaos invisible.

BY WONDER GIRL | PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 27TH, 2026

You booked the gorgeous venue. The tickets are selling. The catering proposal has enough tiny hors d’oeuvres to make everyone feel important. Your Canva mood board is practically begging for its own Vogue spread.

There’s just one teeny problem.

Who’s checking whether the toilets are clean?

It’s not sexy, but according to Lauren Penny, it might be closer to the reality of producing an unforgettable event than the flower arrangements you’ve been obsessing over.

Penny has worked in the event industry for more than 22 years, including work on the Olympic Games and FIFA World Cup, and spent more than 13 years working abroad. Now, she’s bringing that major-event experience to women entrepreneurs—and challenging a particularly expensive fantasy along the way: having a brilliant event idea does not automatically make you qualified to produce it.

The $125,000 Learning Curve

Nicole Cherie Hesse learned that one the expensive way.

During their Unicorn Beat conversation, Hesse recounts her first major client event: approximately 30 attendees, tickets priced at $10,000 with a $15,000 VIP tier, and an Airbnb in Lake Tahoe that cost $40,000 for the week.

Then, three days before attendees were due to arrive from places including the UK and Australia, a fire put the property in an evacuation zone.

Plot twist.

The event had to move to the Ritz-Carlton—with no Plan B already waiting in the wings. The following year? Hesse booked another Airbnb, only to have the property sold the week of the event.

Penny’s reaction is considerably calmer than ours.

“At the Olympic Games, we always looking at Plan B,” she explains.

Because apparently “surely this won’t happen twice” is not an internationally recognized contingency strategy.

And that is precisely where Penney’s big-event experience becomes relevant to entrepreneurs with considerably smaller guest lists. Scale changes. The fundamental problem doesn’t: something is going to go wrong.

When asked how often an event makes it from beginning to end without something going sideways, Penney’s answer is delightfully brutal.

“Never.”

Your Clients Don’t Need to Know

The door doesn’t open. A speaker doesn’t arrive. The caterer screws something up. The AV decides today is its villain origin story.

Penny isn’t promising entrepreneurs an event where nothing goes wrong. She’s making the case for creating one where the attendees never need to know.

She describes events using an iceberg: attendees see the polished portion above the water. Underneath sits the enormous amount of planning that makes that polished experience possible.

That can mean briefing speakers before the event rather than assuming they read your emails. It means collecting dietary requirements when attendees purchase tickets instead of digging through 50 scattered messages later. It means reading the venue contract closely enough to know that the extra table, screen, chair or cup of coffee may come with an extra charge.

Yes, even the coffee can betray you.

It also means building the event timeline in 15-minute increments. At the Olympic Games level, Penny says planning can come down to seconds.

Because the person who is supposed to command the room probably shouldn’t be answering catering questions five minutes before walking onstage.

Please Step Away From the Registration Table

Here’s where Penny’s philosophy gets particularly uncomfortable for the high-achieving entrepreneur who considers “I’ll just do it myself” a personality trait.

Stop.

Penny says she regularly sees hosts welcoming guests at registration, checking banners, talking to AV and making sure the room is ready—right before they’re expected to walk onstage and deliver.

Experienced hosts behave differently.

“They are walking into the room at the last minute,” Penny says, because their teams are handling registration and AV while the host protects the energy she actually needs to lead the room.

That isn’t diva behavior. It’s part of the attendee experience.

Your clients paid to experience you, not watch you discover that the microphone batteries are dead.

Pretty Isn’t the Same as Profitable

And then there’s the money.

Penny wants the budget involved from the beginning—not after someone falls hopelessly in love with a venue and starts rationalizing the invoice.

Food packages, service charges, coffee, AV, furniture, screens and all those innocent-looking extras can quietly turn “profitable event” into “very expensive group hug.”

Her approach also stretches beyond cost control. Penny says sponsorship can potentially work even for a curated 10-person event when the right sponsor wants exposure to that specific audience.

The point isn’t simply to throw something beautiful.

It’s to intentionally build an experience around who will attend, what they’ll value, what the event costs, how it makes money and—perhaps most importantly—how people will feel when they leave.

One of Penney’s favorite creative-development questions starts there: What will your attendee tell her husband when she gets home the next day?

That answer shapes the touchpoints, branding, surprises and experiences that come before it.

Because when an event works, Penny describes something bigger than flawless logistics: people cheering when the host enters, attendees hugging, crying and celebrating, and nobody wanting to leave.

That’s the magic.

The spreadsheets, contingency plans, speaker briefings and yes, toilet logistics, are simply what protect it.

Your attendees can experience the electricity.

They never need to see the extension cords.