MBA2239 5 Mistakes To Avoid When Running Live Events in 2023

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The world changed with COVID and live events changed with it. Many people are making the mistake of just acting like nothing has changed and then they are disappointed that their event is not a big hit. People's expectations are different, people's needs and wants have shifted. It's important for us to be aware of that and avoid mistakes that we probably thought were good ideas a few years ago. And that's what today's lesson's all about. If you're thinking about doing any kind of live event, big, small, local, international, it doesn't matter. You're going to want to avoid these five mistakes I share with you in today's lesson. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. With COVID restrictions easing over the last few months, 2023 is supposed to be a blockbuster year for live events. People are going to be doing revenge conferencing. But in our rush as business owners to create an event and get back and tap into this market, whether we're looking to promote our services or products or the event is the product itself, we can forget that things have changed and people will think twice and three times and maybe even more before saying, hey, y yeah, I'm going to commit to going in person to wherever this event is, buying a ticket, and participating in your live event. So I want to share with you five mistakes that you want to avoid like the plague so that you have a successful live event in person with your crowd. Now, the first mistake may not be obvious, and it's something that has been shifting or changing over the last few years. And the conferences that didn't make this shift or don't in the future are really going to feel the pain. So what's this mistake? Well, it's not niching down. People are just not interested in going to a general marketing event or a business event or even an online business event. Like, there's so many different kinds of online businesses. If somebody has an e commerce store, they would prefer to go to an e commerce conference where everything is specifically tailored to e commerce stores. People might even want to niche down even more people with Shopify stores in the e commerce world. Why is this important? Well, in my research of doing this podcast episode, I was speaking to a lot of different entrepreneurs that I know and I asked them, what is compelling you to go to live events? Now after Covid and one of the things that people said over and over is that I need a compelling reason to go. When it's too general, it just feels like, blah, blah, blah, why do I have to go to this event? Why am I going to benefit from this event? But when it's specifically tailored for a niche, people feel like, okay, this event is for me. I specifically asked people who signed up for my own event, which is oscon, which is a retreat for business founders here in Australia. Now, it is kind of niche because it's a retreat in the snow in Australia. So if you like to ski or snowboard or you're interested in learning how to ski and snowboard, you're going to love this event. So it's not for everybody. It actually disqualifies a lot of people. But this is great because it attracts like minded people with a similar interest, with at least one interest that they can bond over and start building a relationship with this activity. So those who are looking for an excuse to go skiing or snowboarding will love coming to this event because, yes, they'll meet new people, they'll have fun, they'll network, they'll learn, they'll come home with a new perspective. It's hard for them to find something like that because it's so niche and therefore it's an easy conference to say yes to. So I highly recommend that you niche down even if you're running a small two, three hour conference meetup where you get really specific. For example, we do this locally here in Sydney where we do a small mini conference where we give workshops on how to start a podcast. We don't talk about all kinds of media or all kinds of marketing or all kinds of business strategies. We talk only about podcasting and specifically how to start a podcast now, how to grow one once you have one. So niche, niche, niche. Mistake number two, and this one was a unanimous mistake that I heard being repeated in conferences over and over and over. And it became more obvious of a mistake after Covid. And here it is, speaker overload. Back when I started going to a lot of these conferences in 2012, 13, 14, in 2015, I went to like 12 different conferences in one year. It was normal to have speakers back to back to back, one hour after the other, session after session, because it was kind of like an opportunity to hear people speak, to meet them, to ask questions, to learn. But with the proliferation of online learning now and live courses and live webinars, people feel like I can just get that at home. Why do I need to travel? Why do I need to pay the price of admission to this conference, pay for my accommodations, all that kind of stuff to learn from somebody that probably is going to give a webinar next week. Everybody I spoke to when I did this research said I don't go to conferences anymore that have too many speakers and not enough time for me to, to meet the attendees, to get to know other people, to network, to make friends, to socialize. They also express that when there's speaker after speaker, they feel compelled to have to go to some of these sessions or all the sessions because they're there now. They got to take advantage of the fact there's all these speakers, so there's a little bit of a burden on them. I also heard from the speaker side where they don't really love it as a speaker because there's so many sessions and breakout sessions and all that kind of stuff that they don't really make much of an impact. They might be speaking to 10 or 15, 15 people, and the conference has thousands of people. But because there are so many breakout sessions and there are so many sessions, people get fatigued. And the speakers kind of are frustrated with this because they may have traveled for hours, maybe days, to get to where the conference is. They're taking out a few days out of their schedule to speak to 15 people. They could have spoke to hundreds or even thousands of people on a webinar. So if you're running a conference and you have speakers, spread them out, have long breaks in between, have longer lunches. Don't jam pack it and think the more speakers, the more sessions, the better. One conference that I thought does this very well is microconf. They've been running this conference over a decade, and I had the chance to speak at the conference in 2019. I attended the whole conference and it was such a nice vibe because they didn't have the speaker or session overload. They spread out the sessions. They have what's called the hallway track, which basically means enough time for. For you to meet people, mingle in the hallway before the actual talks or sessions. The lunchtime session was, you know, long. It was about 90 minutes, maybe even more. And it was just a comfortable pace. All right, mistake number three, and it leads from mistake number two. And that's not taking advantage of the fact that you're in person with other people. Why would I go to an in person conference or eventually? Well, because I'm gonna get something that I can't get online or I can't get at the same level. And that is human connection. Discussions, meeting people, building bonds. So if you're running a conference or an event, have some way to organize the chance for people to meet each other, whether it's a cocktail hour or some sort of activity or game they can play together. A table tennis tournament or open discussions at roundtables. So there's groups of eight people, and they have discussions on different topics. These types of activities are hard to replicate online or at least at the same level. When you meet somebody in person, you see them, you talk to them, you can build a relationship very quickly. Use meals as a chance to do this, whether it's a breakfast or a lunch or a dinner. For example, in our conference OSCON this year, we kick off the conference with a dinner the night before. We actually take off and go to the snowy mountains. We have a Dinner in Sydney where all the attendees get a chance to meet each other, to break the ice, to get to know each other before they spend a few days together. Am I organizing some sort of structured conversation and agenda during the dinner? No, I'm just creating a time and space for people to get to know each other, to at least talk to the people next to them, to the right, to their left at the dinner table. They can't break bread online or at least they can't do it at the same level or the same level of connection. So make sure your conference or event does things that takes advantage of the fact that you're in person. Mistake number four, and this one is easily avoidable with a bit of planning. The thing that annoys most of the people I spoke to when it comes to an in person conference is being not well organized. Now the funny thing is that being organized is actually not objective, it's actually subjective. Some people think something is organized or feels organized. When another person say, no, this is chaotic. I don't know where to go or what time to be or things are running late, there's not enough information before I go. They didn't give me any idea of where to stay or accommodations to book. And some other people might think, you know, it was okay, I figured it out. One way to make sure everybody is sure is that you go and you plan ahead. Get organized, okay? And one of my best pieces of advice when it comes to this is plan your event as early as possible. For example, our event OSCON is in August of 2023. We started planning this event in September of 2022. It was a week or two after the last year's event just wrapped up. And it's for good reason. It's because there's a lot of things you need to get right in order for this to be successful and to be organized. And people feel like this is well put together. Your job is to be a great host of the event. And a host makes people feel comfortable, puts them at ease. And a good way to put people at ease is to make them feel that, hey, you're going to take care of them. Everything's taken care of. They feel secure that everything is organized. They have all the information that they need in the moment and in advance before the event. You can't over communicate because some people need to know the details, some people don't care to cover your bases. Make sure it's organized to the maximum degree. This also helps you enjoy the event more because you're organized well in Advance. You have everything planned out, you've communicated everything properly. This allows you to be a little less stressed when the event comes around. Now, I can't stress this enough, but if you have an itinerary, if you have a plan, if you have a schedule for the day, you got to be on time. People hate when things are late. One of the best ways to make sure that the event runs smoothly and on time is to not overload it. Okay. Is to have enough wiggle room to make sure that you're not putting too much pressure from one session to the next, one activity to the next. Have a little fluff room so people can be able to relax, go to the bathroom, take a moment to make a phone call, whatever it is. But one of the things that can really put a downer on an event and its reputation is not being well organized. I've been a speaker, I've been a participant, an attendee at a lot of different events and I can tell you about 40% of them are not well organized. And, and I don't return to those events because I don't want to deal with that stress. I don't want to deal with the ambiguity. I'd rather just do my work at home or in the office and not really worry about if this is going to be a waste of my time.

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Alright, the fifth mistake to avoid. Now this one was interesting. People that have attended an event that had to pay a reasonable amount of money to go to the event. The price of admission weren't very happy if the event was overly promotional. Now we're not talking about sponsors, we're talking about promoting the event itself, whether it's next year's event or whatever that business or that company has for sale a product or service. Some people reported that, hey, I went to an event and after every session they sold something. It got really tiring and it really put a downer on the whole vibe. Now the exception to this rule is if the event is very low cost, like less than $100 or the event was free. Now a lot of people, they use live events, they give away free tickets to the event to get people to come to the event, and then they sell their products and services off the back of the great value that they're sharing at the event. That's fine. People are expecting this. It's a free event or a low cost event, it's not such a big deal. What we're talking about here is people are paying hundreds of dollars and maybe thousands of dol to an event. And every moment that the event organizer have, they're promoting something, they're selling something. Now there's nothing wrong with selling or promoting something at an event, but you gotta be mindful of the fact that people are here for the actual event. And one of the things I say is one of the best things to promote at a paid event, a high paid event, is the event itself, meaning next year's tickets. And you don't have to do this all day long. You can do this at the end of the day or the end of the event itself, where they had the full experience and they're on a high and they absolutely love it. And then you could say, hey, if you'd like to book next year's ticket, you could do so right here. And that's a very soft sell and it's a congruent sale. And it's not that bad because it's not the whole event. You did it once or maybe even twice throughout multi day event. If it's a one day event, you did it once at the end of the day, not such a big deal. What we're talking about here is sales and upsells and promotions every single session, asking people to go to the back of the room so they can fill out some forms, so they can buy some sort of program. And every five minutes, well, maybe not every five minutes, but every hour or so. And if you've never been to an event like that, they're actually more common than you think. But you want to avoid that because people are a little more sensitive to that these days than they used to be. People really felt there was a scarcity of information and programs, you know, five, 10 years ago. These days there's such a plethora of options that people are just kind of like, okay, fine, that's okay. Thanks for letting us know, but you don't have to put on my face every five minutes. People are being sold to constantly online with ads and promotions and TikToks and all kinds of things. They probably came to the event because they want to be able to take a break from all that. Well, there you have it guys. Let me recap the five mistakes to avoid. Number one not niching down. Number two speaker overload. Number three not taking advantage that you're in person in a live event. Number four not well organized and number five overly promotional. Thanks so much for listening to the hundred dollar NBA show. If you got something out of today's episode, you thought it was useful, follow us. Hit the triple dots on the top right hand corner in Apple Podcasts or Spotify and click the follow button if you want to give us some extra love. Share the show with your friends and family over on social media. Let them know that, hey, I listened to this podcast called the 100 RMBA Show. It's pretty cool. Check it out on Spotify, Apple Podcast, whatever you want to say. Thank you in advance for doing that. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. One of the things I love about live events is that you make an incredible impact on people very quickly. When I ran OSCON for the first time, the 12 people that attended that retreat became close friends of mine. They wanted to work with me, they wanted to meet up with me, invite me to their parties. I felt like we built a five year relationship in four days. But most of all, they had a great time. They loved it. It's like throwing an amazing party for your favorite people in the world. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. Q and A Wednesday. I'll see you then. Take care. Of. Dear McDonald's, your breakfast menu. Fire tens across the board. I could be happy with anything even though I ordered the same thing every time. Thanks for not judging me. I'll try something new next time.

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