Last Wednesday, I had an incredible experience.
I hosted four bloggers from out of state (one from out of the country) at a luncheon and panel discussion I created for my local business community.
The event was a smashing success. Win-win-win.
The bloggers got exposure,
the attendees got a fabulous experience,
and it was a profitable event for me as an organizer.
And, I believe, an interesting case study.
You’ve heard you get what you ask for, right?
Well, when it comes to business, I believe this is doubly the case. There’s a big difference between thinking “Oh, I wonder if I could do something bigger?” / “Oh, wouldn’t it be so cool if x, or y, or z happened?” and actually doing something about it.
But you know what?
I’m beginning to think that coming up with those bigger questions is at least half the battle.
Once you’ve come up with a creative question or idea and fully articulated it to yourself, it’s a much shorter road to start testing it, or asking for what you want or looking for what you need to make it happen.
Once you find your idea looks viable, all that remains is to do the work to make it happen.
Let’s look at how this event happened, shall we?
A few months ago, I found the blog of Matthew Kimberley, by way of a clever comment he posted on Johnny’s blog.
(Matthew also keeps another blog on how to get a grip, which I find entertaining.)
I checked Matthew’s blog out again a few days later and made an interesting discovery: A post by Matt (who lives in Malta, in the Mediterranian) announcing that he would be part of the Fox Rent a Car road trip, which meant he would be touring the western United States. The post included a map with a proposed trip route. And the route went to Los Angeles, driving right past my city.
“Hmmm,” I thought. “There’s an opportunity there.”
I shot Matt a message, asking if he and the other bloggers would like to visit my city for a luncheon and panel discussion.
I didn’t hear back from him immediately.
But within a few days, an email showed up in my inbox from the guy at Fox who was organizing the Fox Rent a Car promotional tour.
He’d received my note, which Matthew had forwarded.
He said it sounded like a cool idea and asked what I’d do with it.
I outlined a basic plan.
He agreed to add it to the itinerary.
Suddenly, I was going to be hosting four bloggers from out of state at a luncheon event.
Mainly because I noticed the opportunity and asked for it.
Did I mention this would be the first time I’d hosted a business event on my own?
In the past, I’ve collaborated on events with Maile and Alison.
And worked with teams of other people on creating larger projects.
What I love about co-creating ventures is the heightened sense of accomplishment, the things you can learn from working with other people, and the fact that the workload is shared, and therefore more manageable (physically and psychologically).
It’s a little bit of a different picture when you’re the solo organizer.
Realizing there would be a bit of a growth curve, once again I asked for help.
I had a few conversations with Judy of Sprizzie to help me wrap my mind around what would be required.
(Judy makes and sells cute cards and other items, but she used to be a professional speaker, and can organize an event like nobody’s business).
Judy is the one who suggested I look in to having it at a restaurant rather than having it be catered at a hotel. I so loved the restaurant plan. They set everything up, they prepared the food, and they cleaned up after everything. Leaving me free to plan, promote, and run the event. You know, the little things.
The fabulous Julie Molinare gave great moral support. Julie is very sharp. She’s observant and she is also analytical and a fast thinker. I asked her if she’d review my promotional copy so I could quit agonizing over it and send it out. She gave it a stamp of approval and away we went.
I worked out pricing and positioning on my own, but also ran them past Judy or Julie to get a little outside feedback. This was helpful and kept me moving forward.
Next, I started to invite people to purchase a seat at the event.
My primary strategy for promoting the event was through Facebook.
I posted the promotional copy as a Facebook event, and linked to my website for the “Buy Now” button.
And I invited people to come, via Facebook.
The “list” feature on Facebook came in very handy here. I have people sorted by how I know them. So it is an easy matter to isolate the “business” people on my Facebook network.
I invited other people too, who are not in business, if they blog or I thought they might be interested in coming.
My initial hunch played out though, and pretty much exclusively entrepreneurs were interested in an event called “Blogging for Fun and Profit.”
I also posted the event on LinkedIn (no results) and shared it on Twitter (helpful in letting the panelists forward the event to their followers, so it may have helped with visibility, but I don’t believe it netted sign-ups).
To assist in getting the word out, I also called and/or Facebook messaged a few key people and asked them to share my event with their Facebook friends or let others who may be interested know about it.
Once again, asking was helpful in making something happen, and a handful of people did share the event. This helped build social proof and, once again, get the word out to remind people to register.
The biggest issues with planning and promoting the event were lining up the location and encouraging people to register ahead of time.
There are many, many places you can host an event.
My stroke of luck was in thinking “Oh, I’ll bet event planners do this kind of work all the time,” and searching for, and finding, a list of good event locations in my area. After that, it took a long time to call locations . . . it took phone tag to get booking details in a few cases . . . and it was a little hard to plan the event in advance and nail down attendance numbers, given that over half of my R.S.V.P.s didn’t sign up until the last possible weekend.
And the restaurant I selected wanted final figures three days in advance. Oy vey.
The way I worked with this was by doing projections. The last time I promoted for an event (where I was speaking), I drew about 42 people, and the standard for that monthly event was closer to 20.
This blogging panel was the first event I was promoting solo, so I figured 20 attendees was a reasonable guess.
This was convenient, since the restaurant wanted at least 20 people for a buffet luncheon in their banquet room. Since the bloggers plus me equaled 5 people, this meant I only needed to sell 15 tickets.
I believe by the end I sold 16 tickets.
It’s stressful as the host of an event when the bulk of the people R.S.V.P. so close to the event. I know it’s human nature to procrastinate (“What if something comes up on my calendar??”) but I’m trying to give people an incentive to register earlier for my next event. (Yes, there is a next event. More on that later.)
The day of the event was magic
I sent panel questions and driving directions to the bloggers the night before. They would be coming up from LAX.
The day of the event, I got ready, finalized my special offer for event attendees, and headed off to the event with my sister, who was in town and thought it sounded interesting.
We arrived at the restaurant. I showed my special offer to Julie and asked for her opinion. She said “go for it,” so I sent her off to make NCR copies (she had come early for the express purpose of helping me, bless her).
Judy welcomed people and checked them off the sign-up list.
Shortly after I had arrived at the banquet room, the door opened and in walked the bloggers.
It was like magic.
In addition to Matthew, we were favored with a visit from:
Amy Schmittauer of Savvy Sexy Social.
Lauren Rains of The Mad to Live.
and Nick Laborde of Locationless.
I’d only seen their online work before. This was the first time I’d seen any of them in person, and there was something surreal about meeting people that you’ve read about and having them show up at an event. Almost like having characters from a story show up at a party. Very cool.
They were cordial and delightful and generally wonderful.
People came, brought raffle items, and mingled. We had food. I think it was good. I talked to Matthew and my sister over lunch.
And then it was time for the panel.
This part of the event was very interesting.
When I speak at an event, I feel like I fill the room with energy and light. As long as I’m prepared, it’s rare that I don’t have at least one person come up afterwards and share that they got some inspiration or other whilst listening (often the thing they got inspired about is only tangentially related to what I was speaking on).
This time, I was a moderator, not the main focus. I envisioned holding space for the entire room for learning and inspiration to happen.
The space was electric.
The panelists brought so much good information and energy, it was fabulous. The attendees were very engaged, asking a ton of questions.
At the end of the event, more and more people wanted to add an item to the raffle. I believe over two-thirds of the attendees walked away with a raffle prize, and the prizes were really fabulous.
Also. Remember how I planned a special offer?
Toward the end of the event, I offered an opportunity to enroll in my first teleseminar at an introductory price, and the opportunity to purchase a seat at my next event at a special price. About 20% of the attendees took me up on one or both of the offerings. That’s a nice feeling. Not bad for a first attempt.
The event netted me about $500 including back of room sales, after expenses. So not gangbusters, but again, not bad for a first solo attempt. At the point a week before the event where people were not registering en mass yet, I was just hoping to finish in the black.
And now I’m moving on to the teleclass and my next event. I do invite you to check them out, I’ve got some exciting stuff planned for them:
The Organic Online Blogging teleclass will start on Wednesday.
And my next LIVE event, called “Create Your HOT New Offering” will happen in July. I’m giving a discount to people who sign up before July 1. Because I like to help you avoid procrastinating like that.
Readers say: