Event Manager
Self-Employed

RACHAEL BEE

00:00:02 I’m Rachael Bee. I struggle somewhat with my job title. I suppose if I was trying to explain to somebody that I’d just met, what I do, I would say Marketing and Event Manager. Mainly live music events. I do a monthly event called ILUVLIVE, which is a platform for emerging talent. And we film it for MTV Base. So there’s a package that goes out on MTV Base every month. The end goal for me of putting on a great event is not counting the money, the end goal is seeing five thousand people with their hands in the air, having a wicked time. You know, there’s no feeling like that in the world.

00:00:41 I spent my teenage years going to under 18’s discos, and it was all urban music. I went to those clubs, and I went to those parties, and I felt this was where I belonged. I’d never really belonged anywhere else. I was kind of a hippie kid, going to school in Peckham with loads of black people. So I didn’t fit in with the white people, the posh people, who lived on the other side of Clapham in the big houses. Didn’t really fit in with the black people. And somehow the warehouse parties were just where I finally felt like I really belonged. So it was really important for me.

00:01:12 I kind of fell into doing the club promotion because – because I was out all the time, people who were putting on parties were like – God you’re out everywhere, will you give out some flyers for us for our next event? And, you know, being quite canny and savvy, even as an 18 year-old, I said well, you know, if you want me to give out flyers, then I want to be cut in. The Key card! The Key card was my first ever business, which I started when I was 19. Basically we had on 0898 number, you know, where you earn money from people calling, which was very early days. You bought this card for £20, and it gave you discounts at clubs all over London.

00:01:53 Me and Trevor Nelson did a night together at the Wag on a Friday, and that was the first black music night there’d ever been at the Wag. So it felt like, yeah, we were real pioneers. It felt like we were doing something and changing, you know, changing the music scene, and changing the club scene. So I was running all of these clubs, and doing all these parties, and sort of building a reputation, building my contacts, and I never saw that it was a career path. I – so I always had in my mind that this was just something that I did on the side.

00:02:21 I got head-hunted by Def Jam records, to go in and set up the Label in the UK. Def Jam is probably, you know, the ultimate urban brand in the world, you know, and to be a part of it was just sort of like, you know, phenomenal for me. But when I actually got into the Label, I found it really frustrating because there was a lot of politics, and a lot of politics playing, and I realised quite quickly the majority of my energies would have been taken up with – with playing the politics, rather than actually doing the job.

00:02:56 I wanted to be an actress, when I was young, yeah, that was what I wanted to be. I actually got a place at a school when I was doing Respect at the Wag on Fridays, you know, and I was 19, I was earning pretty good money, you know, kind of making moves in the scene, and it was then that I thought – can I give it – this up? Because I’m not going to be able to go to Drama School, and carry on what I’m doing now.

00:03:22 I left school when I was 13. We moved 17 times before I was 12, because my Mum was just a bit of a mad hippie, basically. We were living in communes. I didn’t really go to school very much. In fact between the ages of 5 and 16, I actually only went to school for a total of 5 years altogether anyway. Because I was pretty much left to my own devices quite a lot of the time, I learnt how to sort of cope and be a kind of manager of situations very, very early on. So school, when I did go, it almost seemed superfluous to requirements.

00:04:02 I always have like a little set of things that I want to do in the next, you know, year to two years. Bigger game plan though I suppose, you know, I’d – I just want to be happy. I think if you want to be an entrepreneur or work for yourself, the secret to success is just working bloody hard.

00:04:22 ENDS