April 2016
Travis Thomas and I got introduced to each other and connected from there. While I had the goal to put on an event, he had the same desire. So went out in search of the perfect venue. We found this place, Emko, a unique, creatively designed resto which was not your typical conference venue. It was more expensive, sure. But we wanted to create an ambiance that gave more excitement and oomph!
The Challenge of Raising the Funds
Raising money for the conference was pretty challenging. We wanted the community to get involved and a lot of people have donated (shout out to all you guys who have made this rockstar event, not just possible but a sweet success!)
Event Structure
We didn’t just want it to be full of lectures so we had breakout sessions and masterminds so members can gather in small groups and discuss things they’ve learned and how they’re going to apply it into their business.
The Benefits of Joining a Conference
- Gain great information
- Connect with the right people and build relationships
More challenges we met along the way:
- Time constraint
Again, we had this whole thing conceived back in April so we basically only had 6 months to put this together. Not a lot of ramp up time. The sponsors we had expected to help but for some reason weren’t able to and lost them.
- Not enough sign-ups
We weren’t getting the sign ups we wanted at the right time. That was absolutely scary!
So Travis and I just thought about backing out and canceling the event. But I thought of putting down this event on November 4 and make it happen. We’re just going to hustle and do everything we can to make sure we get people to attend the event and take part in it.
Strategies (we’ve done for this event) which you can apply to sales:
- Write down the date of the event.
Write down a particular date and what is your pipeline going to look like at that point? How much income are you going to have? How much revenue are you going to generate. From here, work backwards.
- Personal invitation is a huge part.
Write down names of individuals, people in your community, and folks you can get connected with and personally reach out to them. That was a huge factor because people started coming in and signing up.
- Get with like-minded people or communities.
There might be people in your industry with complementary businesses that you haven’t cross-pollinated with who could help. So we found local meetup groups that had people who were interested in joining the event and they started inviting their people to our event. Now we started more traction.
- Let thee be known.
We printed out flyers and distributed them out to people around the area. We did Facebook marketing and a little bit of everything. At the very end, we didn’t hit the 100 people which we had targeted but 70 people registered. All of them did not make it to the event but the key was to scale back the event from a 2-day event, we came back down to a 1-day event but we made sure it was jampacked with helpful content.
Was it a success?
We didn’t necessarily hit our 100% goal but instead of giving up and canceling the event mid-way, we didn’t let that happen. We decided to stick it out and WE MADE IT HAPPEN!
These are the things that we succeeded on:
- Creating an avenue people loved…
- Generating an ecosystem of doers…
- Creating local meetups…
Today’s Major Takeaway:
When you plan and take action on a specific outlined desire, you will see significant results. Consistency is key. Most importantly, make sure you have the guts, you’re determined, and push through. Make sure you follow through and be consistent. Put the right habits in place.
Episode Resources:
The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg
Get a free audiobook download and a 30-day free trial at audibletrial.com/tse with over 180,000 titles to choose from for your iPhone, Android, Kindle or mp3 player.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS