Heidi Luerra started and great RAW natural born artists from a few showcases in Los Angeles to over 70 cities and hundreds of events internationally. Now she is launching PLATFORM by RAW to empower creative entrepreneurs to use the powerful tools & promotion structure that RAW pioneered to create showcases in their own cities.
Learn more at https://rawartists.com/platform
Heidi has a wealth of knowledge and experience as a creative entrepreneur, event organizer, and promoter. Her scrappy style and concrete tactical advice is sure to inspire event organizers listening.
Learn more about Heidi Luerra at https://www.heidiluerra.com/
The Event Promoter Podcast shares stories and tips that help our industry bring communities together through events.
Our guests are event promoters, talent, organizers, and industry professionals working to bring people together through entertainment, art, business, and experiences.
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Heidi Luerra's Background and Starting RAW artists
Heidi Luerra started her events business in the fashion industry by hosting swap meets as a way to market her clothing line. When she realized the cost of hosting her own fashion show was too high, she decided to bring together other fashion designers, artists, and musicians to showcase their work together.
She hosted her first show in 2005, which was successful and attracted 750 people. She used the concept of crowdfunding, where everyone involved contributed a little bit, to make the event more successful for everyone. Luerra has a natural ability for event production, organization, communication, and leadership, and her events business grew out of her desire to create a platform for herself and other artists.
Heidi has found that involving other people in the promotion and execution of events helps create a multiplier effect and leads to more successful events.
She has also found that securing large sponsors for events can be difficult and can sometimes pull the focus away from the substance of the event. Instead, she prefers to partner with friends and family to create successful events.
RAW Natural Born Artists evolved from Luerra’s first showcase event and has continued to grow and evolve over time.
Heidi Luerra started RAW Natural Born Artists as a small, intimate event in Los Angeles in 2009 and quickly expanded to San Francisco and San Diego due to successful turnouts. She and her partner (now husband) merged their ideas of an online presence for artists with her experience in offline events.
They bootstrapped the business by investing the proceeds from each event into the next one and eventually grew to 21 showcases running across the United States. Luerra was ambitious and spent the next two years growing the organization to wherever there was interest.
Heidi felt that there was nothing quite like the RAW Natural Born Artists events, which featured a diverse range of creative crafts all under one roof for five hours. She took on the ambitious task of organizing and promoting these events, relying on the crowdfunding model and community involvement to make the process easier.
Although it was still a lot of work, the events were successful and attracted an average of 1400 people. Luerra enjoyed being a patron of these events and appreciated the unique atmosphere they created.
