Events maestro brings the party back

Hauraki School old boy Adam Bennett has carved out a career in events. He tells Helen Vause about his unconventional path to success – and bringing an event back home.

An Electric Picnic is coming – and just the name generates a happy frisson of excitement.

Adam Bennett, who is powering up the upcoming event at Hauraki School, is known to his many connections as the man who sure can throw a party.

Leaning on the wall of the school where it’s all going to happen at the end of the month, Bennett is excited about the prospect of a new event incorporating music, food and family fun coming to life right where his own education started.

The legendary organiser of parties and events, big and small, is very much a local lad. And he says he gets a kick out of bringing home some of the entertainment scene he’s associated with for friends and families he’s known forever.

The picnic is a charity fundraiser he hopes will grow and become an exciting annual festival that’s great for his local community and for the school’s coffers.

Bennett started his business, Highlife Entertainment, barely into his 20s. Now in his 40s, many of his childhood peers are likely to have been to at least one of the 300-plus parties or events he’s run.

At the Electric Picnic, he hopes to see many of them returning through the school gates, with their children, and maybe their own parents too.

After Hauraki School, he went on to Takapuna Grammar (TGS), but left early, keen to embark into the adult world.

Establishing and running a successful events business has been colourful and challenging, but the young Bennett set off out of the school gates with plenty of fire in his belly.

When the Flagstaff arrived a few minutes early for this interview at Bennett’s large Hauraki Corner home, he was outside, having a workout on his boxing bag, taking a break from the home office he shares with his wife, Joanna. Family and community have played a big part in getting onto the right path to building a successful business, he says. “School just wasn’t for me. Well it was more the classrooms. I was an incredibly social kid, and I always loved seeing everyone and being part of our social scene outside school. Everyone knew I was up for a party.”

He says he remembers feeling that some of his teachers at TGS would have been glad to see the back of him and expected him to get into trouble, even if they never said so.

“I just couldn’t stay at school and I left at the beginning of the fifth form. But I suppose the naysayers from my teenage years stayed with me a bit. I know I wanted to prove them wrong. Show them I could be someone and be successful.”

His parents, he recalls, were supportive of him leaving school so young, provided they could see he was working towards a future.

He found work in hospitality as a waiter, a cook and a porter. “ I remember picking up a lot of chewing gum off a lot of carpets. But of course, I was learning lots about the way the hospitality trade worked too.

He also remembers there was “lots of mischief”. But at 20, he says, he had to make up his mind what path he would follow and how he would make money to support his ambitious plans.

He worked three jobs, and his parents gave the fledgling promoter and event manager an office at home, under their house, to get started.

He learned hard lessons early on about the many moving parts, and the tricky juggling of them all that can make or break businesses like his.

In his second year in operation, Bennett lost $90,000 – a sum that would have flattened many 24-year-olds.

But somehow he was able to keep trading, and with other gigs on the board he carried on. He’s proud to say he paid everyone back.

“It was a big event out at the Trust Arena. I had made some serious miscalculations and it was a total disaster for me. But in terms of lessons learned, that was the best 90K I’ve every spent.”

Growing up, parties, entertainment and helping others to have a great time were the world he knew and loved. His father, Graham, is an internationally recognised magician and illusionist. Mother Gail is a singer and a magician’s assistant to Graham. On a normal evening at their place, the couple would be all dressed up for a magic show where dad would appear to saw mum in half before an excited audience. The Bennetts, like their son, have entertained thousands.

Though Covid was a long-running nightmare for events and promotions businesses and clients, with angst and cancellations and many going to the wall, Bennett has had a lot of luck to supplement the management skills honed over decades.

He says that sometimes when weather and Covid shut others down, he simply had the good fortune to have events that were able to go