Everything that went into my last live event – what went well, what went wrong, and what I’d do differently next time.

Conception

About two years ago, I realised how deeply I craved in-person connections. Video calls are nice and all, but there’s something magical about long lunch talks with other entrepreneurs who are on the exact same wavelength as you and get you. And I couldn’t find events I wanted to attend myself! Where were my people?

Not big, salesy conferences with people shoving business cards in my face.
Not the long, luxurious retreat in an exotic location.
Not a workshop where my brain would tap out after lunch from information overload.
And I would never do anything with my notes in that pretty new notebook.

I wanted something real and raw, where we could dive in with an intimate group. Where you would walk in and already know everyone’s name. Where we could go out for dinner and drinks afterwards, and have virtual catch-up calls later.

Most importantly…

1. Where you could create deep, meaningful and long-lasting relationships (think new business bestie, mastermind, client or referral partner).
2. Where you’d come away from and implement with the added accountability.
3. Where the content would meet you where you’re at (with hot seats and personal attention).

After running several international events and testing out various versions of one to two days events (that process should be a whole ‘nother post!), I crystallised the perfect structure for me and my audience: an immersive, intimate one-day event to deep-dive into your business and strategy, almost a mastermind style.

The structure I decided on:

• A one day event.
• At a comfortable, inspiring location, and a city that was easy to get to (Amsterdam!) and had a great energy about it.
• Have a virtual coffee chat call with attendees to talk and get to know each other already.
• Optional dinner in the evening. These are so, so fun! We have dinner and cocktails. And laughter and tears and vulnerable moments.

Promotion

Promoting live events is hugely important and I’ve personally found it much trickier than promoting a digital product or service.

With live events, there are so many other objections that can come up that you don’t get with digital offers.

• Do I like and trust you enough to hang out with you, and the people you will attract, in-person and potentially with no ‘escape’?
• The timing – someone will always have a wedding or be on holiday the date you pick.
• The location. Live events require travel, putting on pants, and being somewhere at a certain time.
• Logistics, like arranging childcare.
• And additional costs that incur, like for travel, accommodation and food beyond what you provide at your event.

For promotion, I focused on building up trust and relationships. One way I did this was video. Instagram Stories, short 1-min clips, and Facebook Lives all worked well. I did a combination of more spontaneous ‘behind-the-scenes’ videos where I shared tips and tricks of what was working for me and more strategic content.

I found the more spontaneous ones – like when I’m in the park with my dog, Frodo, and talk about mindset or a client conversation I had recently –  really helps build trust. It also comes naturally to me as I’m not afraid to be generous with my knowledge, answer questions honestly, and not hold back.

I also made more strategic content videos with trainings, like tips of how to get a higher ROI on your time, something we’d cover in the event. The strategic content was all clearly linked to what we’d cover at Scale Your Strategy Live and with almost every post I’d mention the event.

I also did a lot of personal outreach the week or two before the early bird closed. I did this all on Facebook messenger and only to people I truly believed would get a huge amount of value out of being there. They were also generally people who had mentioned in the past that they’d love to work with me or come to an event! And, since the event was in Europe, I reached out to people who could realistically make the trip. This worked really well too and all the responses to my short message (always custom per person) were positive. It was also great for market research to hear the reasons why they couldn’t make it this time!

Sales

6 tickets sold within the first 24 hours.
Multiple repeat event attendees or past clients (i.e. people who trust me and want more)
6 countries that people travelled from

12 different country backgrounds – from the Caribbean to Egypt to the US and Brazil.

1 attendee who convinced her husband they should go to Amsterdam for his birthday so she could attend
2 women who searched through my website and Google until they found the sale page link I hadn’t made public yet
1 attendee who blocked out the whole of April the moment she found out that was when I would be hosting my event

Most of the sales came in the first 24 hours, and then trickled in until I increased the early bird price and bonuses disappeared. That’s pretty standard when it comes to sales.

There’s people like copywriter Nadine, who bought her ticket without reading the sales page about two minutes after it went live, and like me, who will wait till absolutely the last minute to buy something, even if I really want it.

The early bird price increases and disappearing bonuses worked well. One particular bonus worked so well that I got multiple messages asking if people were able to get it – a private 20-min goal-setting call with me. These ended up being very helpful to both the people who got them, but also  to me for market research! It was wonderful to get to know my attendees on a more personal level as I was also able to refine my event content to make sure it was hyper-aligned with the attendees.

We also ran Facebook and Instagram ads, mostly focused at retargeting my warm audience and keeping the event, especially as the early bird was ending, top of mind.

We did not sell out, but that’s okay! In the promotion phase, I focused deeply on attracting the right kind of people in there. I could have easily ‘sold out’ or filled those empty spots by offering discounts, but I didn’t want to. I’d much rather have a smaller group and smaller profit, but the right kind of people – supportive, open, collaborative, and fun.

Costs & Support

Budget your event, omg seriously (again, this could be a whole ‘nother post). Have everything you think will cost you money – venue rental, food costs, team members. There’s hidden costs there too, like your own travel to and from the event, money spent on travel searching for venues, Facebook ads for promotion, and if you’re like me – yes, I want a new outfit!

People who helped make this awesome:

• Online Business Manager and event planner
• Facebook ads manager and Facebook ads budget (conservative at €10 a day)
• Copywriter for the sales page
• Web designer for the sales page
• Graphic designer
• Photographer
• Mentors
• My mastermind

You can definitely run an event with a smaller support group and lower costs. My first event was in my living room, with zero team members and minimum marketing, but this is what I did for this one. Wouldn’t change a thing!

Now that my event planner and I have run a few events, we’ve developed systems, processes and templates that we can reuse. I’ve also reused much of the original sales page design and copy so the initial investment has paid off so much.

How about profit?

Well, I don’t run my events for profit alone. Considering that Amsterdam is not a cheap city to run events in, and that I very much want to keep my events intimate and small, I’d have to charge a lot more per ticket if I wanted a large profit margin here.

However, that doesn’t work for me either because I do want to keep these events as affordable as I can!

So where does the profit come in?

Many of my attendees have come to multiple events. Joined my mastermind. Become long-term private clients. I definitely have great ROI on my events, but 1. it’s not from ticket sales and 2. it comes in the long run.

Day Of

The structure was heavily focused on helping attendees cultivate connection and interacting as much as possible. If I wanted to lecture you, I could do that as a webinar – so let’s make the most of our time here in person.

Highlights:
I would walk around listening in to all the deep, fascinating conversations that happened – I didn’t even want to interrupt and continue teaching!

Karen Burge in her hot seat and brought up the fascinating perspective of if you should focus more on ‘pain’ marketing or ‘aspiration’ marketing. Great conversation about how most of us didn’t appreciate hard-selling ‘pain’ marketing.

Jailan Heidar hot seat: we explored her potential customer journey and how she could scale her parenting course!

Alyea Sandovar: it started as a conversation about her customer journey for selling DIY creative workbooks… turned into how she could package her incredible skillset on game skills (gamification) and help entrepreneurs gamify courses and programmes! Two weeks later, she appeared on a summit to talk about this.

Seeing Nadine & Beverly excitedly making notes together on Beverly’s new business, which has since taken off so much they can barely keep up with delivery!

Dinner after, with amazing, intimate conversation, laughter and tears, and mindset breakthroughs – like “how do I know if I’m good enough for this”.

What would I change?

In the last two years, I’ve experimented a lot with formats. More teaching? More interaction? More or less worksheets? With Scale Your Strategy Live, I’ve found my sweet spot in the structure, and keeping it to an intimate, one-day event.

1.

This particular event, one area for our own improvement are the hot seats. I hadn’t specified how long they’d be, so all the questions submitted were these epic, massive things that I simply couldn’t cover well in 15 – 20 minutes. We were only able to do two, but we dove in deep.

This brings me to the ‘need to improve’ – I wish we would have been able to do more hot seats! That will be the focus for the next event – timing the hot seats, prepping them in advance, and being able to have more attendees get the opportunity to discuss their business more in-depth.

2.

The second change I’m making is adding an optional VIP mastermind day. This is especially for those entrepreneurs who want a deeper dive, more personal attention and customised feedback to their particular situation, and get more value out of the event overall. I’ve decided to only host this for 8 entrepreneurs so they each are able to have a dedicated, 30-min hot seat with me. Another decision I’m excited about is holding it in my living room – a beautiful, inspiring and cosy location. Bonus: fireplace, hot chocolate, and you get to cuddle my fluffy pupster, Frodo!

Aftermath

Personally, I realised (again) how much I adored running live events. I had an amazing time and loved seeing everyone connect. It filled me with so much joy, gratitude, excitement and energy – and I was already excited for the next one!

Debrief

The morning after the event, I immediately sat down with my event planner to do a debrief. What did we both think went well? What feedback did we get? How was I feeling post-event?

Ten minutes later, we had booked the same venue again for November 28. Yes, it had gone that well!

And with that, I’m excited to invite you to…

Scale Your Strategy Live

Amsterdam, November 28, 2019

Click here for more information, and to book your spot!