Emceeing Journey of Chennai Corporate Event Emcee Thamizharasan Karunakaran

This article in a transcription of a video that was shot when I organized an Emcees Gettogether at 30 Minutes Business Centre, TNagar Chennai. I have shared my emceeing journey in this video. Thanks to my friend Sumana Perumalla to have transcribed this video.

Transcription:

I am Thamizh! Most of you may be knowing me, except these two, others may be knowing me and one thing a lot of you, what you don’t know is, Monisha is my teacher. She was my MC teacher, she was my VJ teacher.

Many people say, I am an aspirant for acting, but I am an aspirant for Emceeing. Actually I was a VJ trainee to her. Once she gave me an event. She asked me “Thamizh there is an event, would you like to do it?” There should have been two answers. One, “yeah, I will do it”. That would have been the confident answer and second thing, “I don’t know, I will not do it”. That should have been the answer. But I gave somewhat an answer intermediate of these two like, if you are confident, I will do it. I asked her “Are you confident, that I can do it? Then I will do it. “She said yeah, I will teach you something. Then she thought me some ten games. That was the first event in my life. It was at DLF, Mphasis company. No one was there. She taught me the games, I went there, carnival was going on there. I held the mike and made announcements.

Something happened, that was more of the games I conducted, they were happy with that. With that my event career was over. It started, over. I didn’t do anything else. Then again whenever there was event happening at Artrobe, I used to go there. It was nothing, just holding the mike, whenever there is a singing or dance competition being held, I would go, give the intro, hold the mike and took the pictures. So one thing that I did was taking the pictures, I took around 4 to 5 pictures during my 1^st event and Artrobe event. Any event that happens, I go there, I take pictures, I collect it. It was the time I met Dr. Maharaja. He taught me some marketing strategy, online marketing. One day we created a website, in July 2012. I uploaded all the pictures that I had, VJ Thamizharasan at Artrobe, VJ Thamizharasan at Emceeing, whatever the keywords were there, we started using and tagging them. And that happened in July 2012. By October 2012, I got a call from Bangalore event manager. He asked me “I have an event. Would you like to host it?” It’s for Cognizant. I told “Yes, I will do it.” He saw my profile online and gave me the event. It was for 12 days, continuous 12 days for Cognizant. That was one of the biggest events I did in my events life. It came because of my strong online profile. That Bangalore event manager called/caught me through the online profile. During my Cognizant event, I took lot of pictures, lot of videos and started uploading them regularly. That was the biggest success, I would say where I have been uploading regularly and lot of my friends have been knowing, this is what I am doing. When I created my website, 1^st year, my friend, my close friend, Dinesh Babu used to ask me, “Did you earn anything through this website? How much did you spend?7500. How much did you earn>? Nothing.”

Starting from July 2012 until July 2013, there was no revenue. He asked me every month “how much you have earned?” I used to say “No, just branding happened.” I upload an article in my website, I share it. I keep uploading and people appreciate me after reading my articles. So it made me happy. It was in October 2013, my website started generating revenue where I got my first order. After that, I got more inspired. I got a thought “Ok, I can do more” and every day I used to sit in my website, I keep updating my pictures, started writing articles, till then, I used to write some scattered articles, it was my first time BLOB. When I found myself as an established MC, after that CTS event, I realized that, I am able to do Emceeing/can do emceeing. I can take this up as a regular profession and I started updating my website regularly. While following this, every month I used to receive 2 or 3 enquiries from my website, either I receive a call from Mumbai or a call from Bangalore, but unfortunately it will not get finalised. That is what I wanted to learn from my Mentor, very often I used to tell him I am getting enquiries, around 8 to 10 enquiries per month, but after the call, they are not getting back to me, so some where I need to improve on my telephone etiquettes and I am working on that, because when the order is not getting finalised, there is some event hiccup.

After that, regularly I have been getting orders. I have been doing/getting a lot of big orders as well, as I wished in/from my website. Cricket player, Dinesh Karthick’s mother, she called me from Kuwait once. She called me in the morning and said I saw your profile in website. After finalising everything, she said I am Dinesh Karthick’s mother. Then she came and that order was finalised. Similarly, every order that I received through my website, not only website, face book also, what I did was before I go to an event, I write a blob or article. I write and share it. Two results/reasons, one, it is marketing material and second my friends know that I am doing that. If I am doing an event at phoenix mall, I will update and leave for the event, so that some of my friends, they come for me, they come to see me, if we had not met since long time, else ok, my friend is hosting and they come along with their family. For these two things, before I go to an event, I update it. After I come back from the event, I take the picture and see and upload them on that very night, only then I can sleep. Else I will feel restless. After completing the event, if I haven’t uploaded the pics, I won’t talk to anyone in the phone until I have done it. Only after completing that work, I will relax. Because some things have to be done then and there.  Example, when I go for Cine festival, it happens in December every year. When I go for that, every day I write blob. As soon as I come back, I do it because that is the period when people will be searching a lot about cinema, cine fest and hence when they do, my website stands first.

After that automatically, I am coming under the right….., I don’t have to go, search and tell them that I am actor. When they come to my website, automatically, they will know that, yes, he is an Actor!, he has been doing certain things/something. So when something like this is trending, I started doing blogging which has become a habit. Many people think that website page is not so important to them right now and would do it after becoming an established/ big person. But when you are busy with the events, you will not be able to write a blog. When I started my blog in July 2012, it took 2 hour or 3 hours for me to write an article. If I need to write an article about the event, I will take solid 3 hours and read it slowly for at least 10 times. But today, trust me, if you ask me to write an article, I will do it in 10-15 minutes. One thing I shared before you people came, today noon, while I was going to home for lunch, Maharaja messaged me, before you come, take a video and share in face book. If I was normal Thamizh like some two years ago, I would have thought I am already tired, we can go and take care of it later and skipped it. But last 3 days, I was so serious, I went home and moreover I also have a comfortable laptop now, I can shoot by looking at my face, I shot 2 and a half minute video. It took two minutes for me to prepare, to check at which place the lighting is good, totally two and a half minute video. As soon as I completed, I uploaded in face book, in you tube and immediately shared it in 15 groups. May be whoever is connected in face book can see it. Within 10 minutes it happened. Rather if I had started (this practice) just now, definitely if you are starting it now, it will take 2 to 3 hours for you to do that work. For the first 15 minutes you will think, is it necessary to take a video? After that, some more time will go in reshooting the video again and again. After that, can we share this? And then where can this video be shared? So a lot of problems like this will be there. So if you learn all these basic things in the beginning itself and follow it, it takes no time. If I have to write two articles or shoot four videos per day, easily I can do it. So I would say, one thing is online presence is the strongest reason for my success, second thing I started marketing myself, in a lot of my training workshops this word is used, called as “shameless marketing.” Few of them give this feedback also, that I started doing shameless marketing.  Because my friends need to know what I am doing. Lot of people, they don’t know. In spite of me involving/doing many things, still many people are thinking that I am working for some channel. Every day, I get a call, will I get a reference in Puduyugam. I stopped updating about Puduyugam. I am not in Puduyugam, but still people keep asking. The reason is, all of a sudden they will see someday and get a thought “can I use him?”. So you have to keep on repeating it. That is what I have been doing. This is what I am doing. I am proud of my profession. So I don’t mind sharing whatever I do like Dr. Maharaja said, be it my photos or videos, I never bother sharing it. I keep sharing it because I do it legally, I do it happily.  I am entertaining others, so I keep sharing my articles, I keep sharing my videos, everything which is bringing more revenue for me, which is bringing more contacts as well. Apart from business, 4 to 5 members among you have approached me through this. Lot of people, they see my face book, they say I want to work with you and before organising this training, I have been training a lot of people and people who came, I teach them games. The purpose why I organised this here is, many people, 2 to 3 people I have trained, after completing 2 to 3 events they say I didn’t like this and  have some problems and they quit the industry itself, event industry. I didn’t want that to happen again. I want serious people, so that before attending the events itself/as such they have to know that, yes! this is for me. He told something about value. He has been regularly asking me the question, what do you want? What is your value? It took two and half years for me to identify, what’s my value. Even now I don’t know whether that is true. But as of now I have finalised/covinced that yes, this is my value. It is connecting with people. During those two years, whenever he used to ask me, I keep on saying something. At last, I have fixed it, ok, this is my value, connecting with people. Where I started using it is, what he taught me is, whatever work you take up from today, it has to be connecting with people. Apart from this if you take up any other work, you won’t be shining. If you are not connecting and doing something else, you are not going to shine or you are not going to do it happily. Since then I took a decision, any work opportunity that comes to me, I will see whether it is connecting me with people. Either in person or through camera like while I am trying for movies, ok, somewhere through camera, I am connecting with them. But more than that, since I got so busy with events in the past 3 months, I realized that, more than movies, I am more satisfied with events, where I interact with live crowd and getting connected live with them. In fact, to be honest, my focus on movies has come down a little.

In these three months, some people say it as overnight success, I was unable to manage my time, after that I started doing one event per month. Fortunately, last three months, July, August, September I did more than 20 e events in a month. Sometimes I did 2 events, 3 events on the same day. When it was like that, my complete focus was on events. I was unable to manage, ok to go to auditions for movies, or to groom myself I didn’t have time. I used to roam around a lot in sun and so my face became dull. Sometimes when I used to go for auditions, they didn’t even identify me as a movie face. Earlier they used to say ok. But in the recent times when I went for audition, there was too much of mismatch between my portfolio and myself. So I myself stopped and decided to groom myself again. I need to manage time for that and get back to the industry and hence I stopped it. So as if now I would say that one is my marketing is my success and another one is my online presence.

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