We recently connected with Lydia Turino and have shared our conversation below.
Lydia , we’re thrilled to have you on our platform and we think there is so much folks can learn from you and your story. Something that matters deeply to us is living a life and leading a career filled with purpose and so let’s start by chatting about how you found your purpose.
Almost entirely on accident.
During my senior year of high school and in the year or two after, I found myself completely plagued by the question “what do I want to do with my life.” I felt an insane amount of pressure to pick something and to pick the right thing, and to stick with it. I watched my friends and peers leave for 4 year colleges and “start their lives”, and I felt paralyzed by indecision and stuck. I also felt like a typical 4 year university wasn’t in the cards for me financially, and that added a level of confusion too. Many of my friends who I’d known for years were starting this experience I didn’t think I’d ever be able to have, and as a 18 year old with all the pressure in the world on them, I felt so beyond lost.
This feeling persisted through my late teens as I found myself sort of bopping around aimlessly. I spent about 8 months working odd jobs and saving up money for an intangible move I saw myself making. Constantly in my free time I looked at flights to random countries, job listings in other countries and states, and dreamed about just up and going somewhere to figure things out. Looking back, I took on more than my fair share of existential angst and definitely could have chosen any option and it would have been great. But I say that with a fully developed 25 year old brain, and with an 18 yer old brain that was incomprehensible.
Flash forward about a year and I moved from Wisconsin to California and was toying with the idea of moving to Sweden for a program called the Youth Initiative Program (YIP). I was still feeling lost and I was in love with a boy who was going to attend – following someone else’s purpose is a very tempting prospect when you don’t know your own. (Although, the program is super cool and I highly recommend checking it out, no matter what stage of life you’re in).
After running out of money and getting bored with my entry level job, I moved back to Wisconsin to “get my life together”. I enrolled in a few gen ed classes at my local tech college, and said boy went off to Sweden. We spent the year he was there battling an 8 hour time difference and living off long emails sent back and forth, and started talking about moving to Berlin together.
Somehow or another our 19 year old hearts got ahead of reality and a plan actually formed. He’d found a school there and so *I* found a school there, and after months of German red tape and endless researching, booking, and general figuring shit out, I packed up 2 suitcases and moved to Europe with what suddenly felt like a purpose and a plan and a life stretching out in front of me.
As I’m sure you can guess, things don’t necessarily go according to plan when that plan entirely balances on a relationship between two 20 year olds working out, and shortly after I moved my life across the ocean we broke up. This left me in a whole new type of lost, floundering in what felt like an impossibly large and empty ocean, and it was sink or swim. If you think not knowing what to do with your life is bad in your hometown, try it in a foreign country in a language you don’t speak.
I won’t bore you with the retelling of months of anxiety and post-break up vibes that followed. The important part of this story is that my experience of Berlin improved massively after we broke up, and I found a strength I didn’t know I had. My life there flourished and my university experience was exactly what I wanted it to be. I spent my days studying the events and music industry on an international scale, and my nights running around the city and falling in love with life in a new way. I did this until my student visa and funds ran out, and then back to Wisconsin I went, just in time for the COVID-19 pandemic to slam down on the world and alter everything as we knew it.
The rest of the story is important but not as exciting, but suffice it to say that I started taking online classes and found myself in an Event Management program. As I took these classes about events in the midst of a pandemic that did not allow for gathering (and was actually quite against it) I realized how much of my life experience led up to events. I’d spent all my high school years planning fundraisers and school events, and my first job was at a bookstore / music venue (Shoutout Driftless Books & Music and Eddy Nix – worth the trip if you’re ever in Viroqua, Wisconsin). Starting at 8 years old I planned my little brother’s birthday parties, and if you follow this thread all the way through to an international university in Berlin, you’ll find that planning events, and more importantly bringing people together, has always been a foundational joy in my life.
So yeah. Long story long it took an international move, a ridiculous breakup, and a global pandemic for me to stop trying to
“figure my life out” and just sit down and do what felt right long enough for it to present itself.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
I am the owner of an event planning business based in Madison, WI, called Miriam Events Co. I started this business after years in the event industry working for other people, when I realized that I wanted to be more in charge of my own time and the way my events are planned. Most of the events I have booked right now are weddings, and it’s lovely to spend my time working with people who are happy and in love. After years in the service industry where many days are spent working with someone who has a problem you need to solve, it is a breath of fresh air to do something so lighthearted and creative.
The most exciting part about event planning to me is the ability to orchestrate an environment for human connection. We live in a very individualized and fast paced world, and events spent with other people allow us to slow down and bask in a special moment. I think that events are truly important things right now. So often people enter the room as strangers and leave as friends, and I feel so passionate about that and honored to hold that space at my events.
My business is new! I just launched it at the beginning of February, so I would love if you checked it out. And although I’m based in Madison, I travel anywhere. My first wedding I’m executing is in NYC at the end of May.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
My first and biggest one is intuition, and my willingness to trust it. Ever since I was a kid I’ve had a very distinct “gut feeling”. I remember countless situations in my life where I’d be feeling indecisive and at the end of the day it always came down to my gut feeling about something. How would this or that make me *feel*. It’s easy to get swept up in not trusting ourselves and listening to outer voices when we’re feeling lost, but I’ve found that if I just take a moment to close my eyes and breathe and really ask myself how I feel about something, I’ll always find that answer inside. Developing this intuition is crucial in starting a business, because a lot of the time I don’t know what I’m doing and I’m very much just following what feels right.
Another important one for me is compassion. Compassion for those around you, and compassion for self. Especially being in the events industry, I find compassion to be one of the most important soft skills a good event planner can have. The vast majority of the events that I produce are not for me, and the objective is not mine. Event planning, particularly weddings, is jut cradling someone else’s dreams and helping them be executed. Without compassion, a lot of small details could feel silly and the stress that comes with them can seem small. But everyone is invested in their event with specific vision, and if their planner doesn’t have compassion for that vision it won’t be done in the right way.
And finally, for an area of knowledge, I’d have to say working in the service industry for years has been some of the most important experience I’ve had. This is an easy place to start, too. I think it’s crucial to owning a business and working with clients to have experienced that busy restaurant feel or holiday retail shopping. Working in jobs like that will give you an understanding of what people want faster than anything else, and it’s often just to feel heard and validated. Since I was 16 I’ve worked in retail stores and restaurants, and I know that that experience is very impactful to being able to handle event planning.
Okay, so before we go we always love to ask if you are looking for folks to partner or collaborate with?
Always! Events are inherently collaborations. There is no way I could do any of them alone. One of my favorite things about my job is meeting amazing vendors and developing those working relationships into friendships. My dream events are ones centered around good, local food and human connection. Think pop up dinners with guest chefs and talks from local artists and speakers. Some of my favorite companies that already do things like this are Outstanding in the Field, Don’t Cook for Cowboys, and The Deliciouser – look them up if you haven’t heard of them! And if this sounds like you and you’d like to collab, pleeeease reach out. You can dm me on instagram (@miriameventsco) or contact me via my website, miriameventsco.com.
Contact Info:
- Website: miriameventsco.com
- Instagram: miriameventsco
- Linkedin: Lydia Turino
- Other: email: miriameventsco@gmail.com
Image Credits
Mo Speer Photography East Elm Photography Azena Photography
