Success Secrets Exposed - Event Marketing - Understanding your target audience is key!!

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Welcome to Success Secrets Exposed with Sally A. Curtis, where we share stories of challenge, success, and inspiration, along with practical tips and strategies to move you forward to new heights. Your success. And now here's your host, Sally A. Curtis.

Good morning, good evening, and good day to you all. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for joining us today. We're actually going to be talking about all things event marketing, so I've got an exciting show for you. So if you're a speaker, coach, or consultant and you're running your own events or workshops or want to know how about how to go about filling them and making them profitable, then do listen in for the entire show. I've got an expert joining us again, Michael Gray. So for those that are new to the show and don't know me yet, and we haven't yet connected or had the opportunity to have a conversation, my name is Sally A. Curtis and I'm a marketing strategist for speakers, coaches, and consultants, and I particularly specialize in content repurposing and LinkedIn lead generation. And it is my role to help you amplify your voice, your message, and your impact. And that's something certainly Michael and his team do in the event space and for all the delegates that attend the events that they help to promote and market and arrange. So Michael Gray has been in the event arena for over 13 years, and he's done lots and lots of different types of events, very, very large events where there's been 16,000 attendees. He also works very, very closely with nonprofit organizations and has helped them have profit increases of 300%, so pretty significant for the nonprofit space and the charity space. And even during COVID when COVID was at its peak, he helped his clients get online and create online events where some of those companies and people saw profit increases of 830%. So to say Michael knows event marketing is an understatement. He brings a wealth of experience including event conception, marketing, sponsorship, public relations, and of course management. And he's worked with a very, very diverse portfolio of clients, both small and large, and works throughout the US and here in Australia as well. So please let me— help me, I should say— welcome Michael Gray to the show.

Hi everyone. Thanks, Sally, for the very kind words and introduction.

You're very, very welcome. It's been an exciting journey that we've been on together since we've crossed paths yet again on LinkedIn.

Absolutely.

So I would really love to sort of delve into the arena today of understanding your audience and how that's actually key to having a great successful event. But can you give us, just for those that haven't experienced you last time you were on the show, a little bit of your backstory to set the stage as to why you do what you do now so well?

Absolutely. So sadly, 13 years ago, I lost someone, then decided to do a fundraiser for a cause that represented that issue. That's when I was 16, as a third-party fundraiser. With my family. By 18, I was running the event myself, brought 10,000 people, being offered sponsorship by large corporations and getting national media coverage. And then I guess I kind of discovered my skillset and abilities when it comes to events and worked with a range of charities over the following years in marketing events, fundraising, sponsorship, PR, worked with a corporate marketing company for a while, and then 6 and a half years ago, started MKG Events. So that's, I guess, one of the reasons why we focus on nonprofits and that side of things. But MKG Events does all types of events, excluding weddings and funerals and birthday parties, but all other types of events from 20 people to 20,000 people. And we offer in-person events, around Australia as well as online events both within Australia and to clients internationally as well.

Beautiful, thank you. So we were talking, and I know I've been talking to your team a lot this week, and very advantageous that we wanted to talk about how focusing on your target audience is actually the key to successful events. So in your experience, Why is that so important, understanding your audience prior to actually getting into— as you set up the event?

Understanding the audience is really vital when it comes to getting enough of the right types of attendees for your event, because the thing about it is not every event is going to suit every person out there. And on top of that, if you're looking at it from an ROI perspective for your business or charity or organisation, then having the right people in the room is instrumental to making the event work for your organisation. So I'll give you a couple of examples. One of our clients, who was an anti-human trafficking charity, before they worked with us, they had 100 uni students that attended the event, and they made about $9,000. We took over the event where our revenue was $125,000 with 200 people, but we got 200 high-quality corporate and successful SMEs which had the capital to invest into the charity. In the context of a business event, it's important to understand who the types of people are that would want to transact with your business so that you can bring the right kind of people along. And I guess an area where it's not quite worked out, so in the past we had a client. And I guess when they first came to us, their challenge was that they had an event with 400 people. It was their annual gala dinner. They only made $20,000. What I kind of identified from speaking with them is that the people they invited to their event was the people that their charity helped, not the people that can help their charity. So very kind of distinctly different scenario there. So fundamentally, it's about understanding who are the right kinds of people to have in the room. If you're a charity, it's obviously the people that are wealthy enough to be able to fund your charity's endeavours. If you're a business coach, it's obviously a startup or an SME that has money to pay for business coaching and is committed to improving their business. If you're Running a networking event, obviously people that are keen to network and learn how to do it successfully. So, whatever the occasion may or may not be, it's important to understand who the right kind of person is to attend.

Yeah, absolutely.

And then to have marketing messaging and strategies to be able to reach them. So, on top of that as well, it's about choosing the right platform to get the types of attendees that you're looking for. So, going back to that anti-human trafficking example I gave earlier, the client wanted to invest heavily into Facebook because they liked the platform. And I think Facebook's a great platform. It's, you know, resulted in thousands of people coming to other type events in the past. However, for this particular event, given the target audience was corporate, it wasn't the right platform to reach that target audience. Unfortunately, the client didn't listen to our advice on that, but we did manage to also get $300 from them for LinkedIn advertising, which produced a $45,000 return on investment. So, you know, choosing the right platform is really, really important. Otherwise, you're literally just going to be throwing money in the bin when it comes to that. Make sure that you understand where your target audience is and invest into marketing methodologies that reach them when they're paying attention. I remember this really interesting story a friend was telling me. This friend is older than me. He's a father of 3 children. So, child number 1 isn't a fan of answering the phone or emails or anything like that. But will answer only texts. Child number 2 isn't a fan of any of the above, but will only answer WhatsApp messages. Child number 3 doesn't really communicate at all apart from through the messaging app on the video game he likes. So, he has to communicate with each of his 3 adult children in different ways. So, fundamentally what I'm trying to say is understand who your target audience is and communicate with them on a level that they accept, and that's how you get the best results.

Yeah, absolutely. So just recapping there, it's really understanding who the audience is, who you want to have in the room, but who's ideal for the outcome that you want to have in the room. So if it's profitability and ROI, obviously having the right narrative and the marketing message that speaks to them in a way that helps them buy you, so make yourself easy to buy. Understand where they are as it relates to the platform. Which platform do they play on? Which platform do they converse on or share their problems, etc.? And I love the children's story because I was only having a conversation with my ex-husband the other day going, Rory's not answering his phone. Can you get him to answer his phone? It's like, he won't answer his phone. You need to message him on Discord because he's gaming. If you message him on Discord, you'll get him straight away. And that's us as adults having to adapt to the way our son prefers to be communicated. So, it's understanding those nuances, isn't it?

Absolutely. And on top of that as well, like, I'll give you some other examples. So, one of our clients, they hold a large Christmas carol service. Yeah. So how we get people to that, we've worked with this client for 5, the last 5 years, 800 people to the event a year, primarily Facebook and local kind of parenting groups. By comparison, one of our other long-term clients, a guy by the name of Rich Isom, elite business coach, made over $330 million in sales in business, started in 15 industries. So we've done over 30 events with him over the last 3 years before COVID and about 5 or 6 online events with him last year. And primarily how we get the attendees to his events is through LinkedIn, through our business owners database, through our SMS marketing to attendees of business events. So as you can see, 2 totally different strategies to get the required outcome in both scenarios, but 2 very different marketing plans customized to the needs and target audiences of each. each of those 2 distinct clients.

Yeah, absolutely. I'd love to dig into that a little bit more because I remember when I started in the event space about getting bums on seats back in the day, going back a long way, it was all about you've got to have a big list, you need a list of at least 10,000 and you've got to do lots of email marketing. And we've all been through that very sort of predictive and sort of we're a bit sick and tired of it type scenario. So you actually, from an events perspective, it isn't just a database, it isn't actually just a post on social media or a post on the right platform. There's actually a number of different strategies. So how do you go about, what sort of questions do you need to ask yourself or do you ask your clients to help determine what are the best strategies to attract the audience that they're after?

So, obviously, first, understanding about who their target audience is. Are they targeting startups? Are they targeting experienced entrepreneurs? Are they targeting coaches? Are they targeting people in corporate executive positions? Are they just trying to attempt to get marketing people or just trying to get lawyers or just trying to get accountants? Whatever the case may be, understanding all those kind of details. Where do these people need to come from? If it's an in-person event, is it just promoted within the city the event's held, or is it an event that's promoted on a larger scale to bring to said city, or is it an online event that can be promoted anywhere and have an audience participation from anywhere in the world? Is it a hybrid event where it's both an in-person gathering and an online scenario? So just understanding all the different particulars. Which then allows us to create a marketing strategy that is suited to the client scenario. But also too, if they've run events themselves or with other organizations, understanding what worked last time, what didn't work last time. But then not just understanding what did and didn't work, but understanding why it did and didn't work. Because the thing about it is obviously doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different outcome is stupid. However, if the right strategy was used but in the wrong way by the previous people, if it's the right strategy used in the right way, obviously it will get the outcome wanted. Does that clarify things? Yeah.

And as you've just expressed there, I think the level of detail— and I'm going to say that the devil is actually in the detail— but when we're I know when I'm first starting out and when you're only needing smallish numbers at events, you can sort of wing it. You go, I sort of need these sorts of people. But when you're wanting larger numbers and you're actually really getting into the event space as a business, the devil is in that detail of really understanding all of the different elements as it relates to the audience. Because your guys have asked me some incredible questions. Because just for reference, Michael and I are working and his team are helping me put together the potential event. And your team have asked me great questions that I had never thought of, which has been brilliant, which was along the lines of, you know, what do I want the delegates' experience to be like? You know, what happens when they're there? What is the journey that they're on before they, you know, come to me? They're Sally's interpretations of what Domedek actually said to me. But they, in themselves, were very good questions that needed another level of detail. that helps you guys do your job of marketing and finding the— working out the right strategies that much easier. So if you've got some other sort of questions and elements that you could share with the audience of what you ask me, I know you've asked me so many, but they're the ones I could think of off the top of my head.

Yep. So also too, I guess, There's many kinds of questions depending on the scenario. So, for example, what is the outcome that you're looking for from the event? Are you just looking to have the event to be a networking opportunity? Are you looking to do direct selling? Is there a particular sales target that you're looking for from the room? Because that also too would change the caliber of people that need to come to the event. But also too, once we understand who those people are, it also changes the way that you would sell to them at the event as well. So I'll give you an example. One of, like, we work with a lot of coaches, consultants, people that are passionate and inspired by helping other people improve the quality of their lives through education and knowledge and empowerment. And so when it comes to an online event scenario or an in-person The strategies that some of these clients have used before is to try to sell their program from stage, you know, and if you buy now, it's 50% off, but this is only available if you buy tonight, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Those coaches generally, in my experience, don't tend to do that well in terms of sales. The coaches that tend, and consultants and speakers that tend to do better are the ones that are like, this is not about doing a sales pitch. It's about helping you. If you want to speak with me later, I have a free 45-minute call available. And then what normally happens on the 45-minute call, if you do it properly, is it's the client asking to hire you, not you begging the client for work. Which obviously puts the speaker in a greater position of power to secure the sale from a sales strategy perspective. So it's about understanding all these different aspects in terms of how you can get ROI in terms of having people there, because if you have the wrong people there, they're unlikely to buy from you or unlikely to buy as much as what The right kind of person.

Yeah, and it's very much about creating the, as you said there, the right experience and then understanding the audience enough to add enough value, to understand the journey that they're on and the way that they perhaps like to buy and giving them a choice. So that was one of the things we talked about, Dominic. I was saying to him, no, no, no, not a sales event. People in the room will love it, they'll get great value and they'll either want to do work with any one of the speakers, but it'll be their choice and it'll be up to them to seek that out. It just depends on, as you said, the strategy of what you're wanting to do at the time and what that customer experience is. One of my mentors is always saying, you know, you have to make it— you have to be easy to consume from a content and information perspective, but more importantly, you have to be easy to buy. And it's not about the way that you want to be brought, and it's not about the when I want them to buy. It's always about their timing, their need. All I can do is provide an invitation for them for when they're ready. And I know, as I've said, working with Dominic, we've sort of been able to sort of set the stage as to what that experience from the customer would look like versus that rah, rah, rah, rah, rah, run down the back of the room and let's hope hope for the best type thing and run off into the sunset with all of the client's money, which is one of my absolute pet peeves. So it's been good. Sorry, I'll let you add to that, Michael.

Yep. So for those of you that don't know that are listening, Dominic's one of our senior producers that's working with Sally. So when it comes to I guess other aspects, I guess, of the event marketing as well. It's also important to kind of understand where the event is going to be held as well. So, I'll give you an example. So, let's say you're targeting— you're a success coach and you're targeting people who want to be more financially free and successful. Mm-hmm. running your event in a rundown council hall or something like that in a rough neighborhood, let's say, that's obviously not conducive with the messaging of the event. So even when it comes to all aspects of marketing, branding is important. And if your brand message is not consistent, then you're not also going to get enough people and you're also not going to get the right people. So there are so many different Facets to having a successful event that a lot of people don't kind of consider. And when it comes to, I guess, cost, sure, you might want to do things on a budget, but at the same time, there are ways to do things on a budget that don't compromise the outcome of your event. So one of the services we've actually offered, launched recently is a service called Event Profit Maximizer. So the concept of that is having more profitable events through reducing unnecessary expenses. So for example, we've had clients in the past that have come to us. This client was quoted $75,000 for the cost of their event, which we reduced down to $15,000. Reason being that the client was, I guess, You'd call it naive because they'd not really run events before, didn't really understand how things worked. And they were ripped off and also told they needed to buy things they don't actually need to get to the outcome they wanted and were overquoted on many things. So say, for example, audiovisual equipment, they were quoted $11,000 for equipment and we got the same equipment for $3,000, as an example. So that's How we're able to reduce it down so much because we know what the right price to pay is for things, what's a fair price for said service. So, as you can kind of see, you can have quality on a budget, but it's about knowing what to reduce, what's reasonable, and what's essential to the outcome. And obviously AV equipment is because if the people in the room can't hear your message, they're not going to buy it.

Yeah, but surely for $11,000, you might have been able to actually buy your own equipment in that scenario based on the difference in the cost.

Absolutely. In fact, you probably could have bought equipment for $3,000 or $4,000 too, in the sense that obviously you could have bought quite a lot of high-quality equipment, but I guess the debate over hiring something or buying something depends on do you have space to store it, do you want it, or use it once or multiple times.

That's a story

for

another day. Yeah, absolutely. I remember when we were talking about the venue, I said, oh no, you said what about this venue, what about this venue, and I went yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and then I didn't think anything more of it. from a brand perspective. And then when I was talking to Dominic again, he said, so do you want it like this or like that? And I said, well, I don't really care. And then he said, well, this does this and this does this. Oh no, no, no, don't want that. So you don't actually know, even though you might have some experience, you have— there's always naivety, there's always those elements that you don't know that you don't know that make a real difference to whether the event is successful and whether the delegate's experience is the way you actually want it. And I, even I didn't know until having, again, having the conversation, do you want it like this or do you want it like that? This does this, this does that. No, no, don't want that. So when somebody shares with you and you have that hell no or hell yes, that is the level of detail and specificity that you need to be able to have with all of the elements as it relates to the event marketing and the experience. experience of the delegate. So yes, as I said, you guys have asked me some incredibly good questions that have been a bit confronting for somebody that's been running events for a while, not to the level and the numbers of delegates that you guys do. So I'm really pleased to be working with you. Is there any other nuances as it relates to marketing when you're determining the marketing strategy, or I'm thinking more of the promotion strategy, when you've got a clear understanding of the characteristics? So there's different characteristics as you expressed, and obviously there's different demographics, you know, whether they're a startup or whether they're an experienced entrepreneur. What are the other nuances that you then, with that information that you've got, that you then go, okay, we've got more of this intel now, we've got more of this information. What do you then look at to work out how you're then going to map things out?

Yep, so we also look at things like, has the event been run before? Has the client run a different event before? What is the quality of the network? And just going back to touch on something you were saying earlier about databases with 10,000 people and all I guess the harsh reality is you might have 10,000 on the database, it might be 5,000, it might be 50,000, but if your database is stone cold and was a bought list from some unreputable source or something like that, it doesn't matter how many emails and phone numbers are in it. The take-up rate is likely to be extremely low. Extremely low, if at all. So it's important to, I guess, bear that in mind as well. So, you know, that's one area where a lot of people actually go wrong when they try to market and plan their own event is they get overconfident with this number of subscribers. But the problem is if the subscribers don't care and they just kind of subscribe for the sake of it, then That's where a lot of people overcommit and end up getting financially hurt. So, what's very important to remember is that, you know, you have people opt in, the people willingly subscribe, that you spend time warming up the database, building a relationship with the database, your networks before you, I guess, try to do an event yourself. But the other advantage, I guess, of working with a company like MKG Events is that we have very, very extensive databases of attendees who have attended our events before. And we can, we do customized campaigns depending upon what type of events they've attended in the past, which would obviously change the database we would use for upcoming events, if that kind of makes sense. So say for example, people that have gone to business coaching events previously would get promoted business coaching events in the future, charity events in the past, charity events in the future. Yeah. But obviously those people have subscribed and we also have separate databases of people who we consider to be our frequent flyers. And to qualify as that, basically you attend 2 events or more within a 6-month period. If that kind of makes sense. So there's different, but many people actually attend many more of our events than that. Like, there are some people that literally attend everything. So it's about, you know, kind of having a really connected kind of network. It is also something else that's really important and not getting lost in the number of subscribers.

Yeah, yeah. I remember, and this is going back a little while, slightly different story. It's not database related, but it was the number of people that they had on. And I saw this consistently very early on in the sort of speaking as coaches were coming into the arena. They'd set up their Facebook business page and they'd have— I think the statistic was about 242 people on their business page. And they'd go, great, I'm going to put 40 people in a room. every month, but of course they're only putting it out to their Facebook business page and the Facebook business page got fatigued very quickly. So again, looking at the numbers, there wasn't enough numbers for the frequency and the actual relevance for the people that they thought that would come to their events. So it's, as you said, it's about the relationship but also being the ability to make it relevant at the right time for that them to make the right choice that they need to make, but also not fatiguing the subscribers and those sorts of things as well.

And the good thing at the moment is actually that the government has lots of grants to help people pay for the in-person events they want to have in 2021. And obviously part of the money can be used for, in many cases, in many grants, Or marketing the event as well, which obviously gives you an opportunity to reach out to new audiences in new kind of ways so that you don't get that fatigue so much. And that is actually something— so one thing as well that can cause fatigue with an audience is getting sent the same thing over and over and over again. So if you're going to be doing regular events, Unless you're promoting it to new audiences or new similar audiences, you know, you need to consider how long can you run the same type of event for before people get fatigued with it? What should the frequency be? How can it be changed so it's always new and exciting and you build up a loyal kind of fan base? So there's so many questions around this that need to be asked and answered and And sort through problems.

Absolutely brilliant. And just coming from the change, just sort of pivoting very slightly, have you seen, or what are your tips, I suppose is probably a better question, as it relates to marketing a face-to-face event versus an online event? How does the strategy or the questioning from you guys, from the team, change when it's going to be an online event?

So when it's an online event, people can watch from anywhere in the world. So as an example, one of our clients was doing a 2-day online conference. They wanted 100— and this was June last year during COVID Actually, I think it was May, June, something like that. Anyway, they wanted 150 people. We ended up getting them 700 people. Wow. And, you know, that was something that was really, really kind of relevant at the time. It was a psychology conference, and there was literally people tuning in from all over the world. With the example that you gave during your introduction of me, so one of our first clients that did an online event with us, once we pivoted from in-person events last year because of COVID to online events, One of our first events was actually a sales talk for business owners and the client paid us to get 25 people online and we ended up getting 40 people online, but they ended up making $56,000 in sales, which they were quite happy with selling a $6K package. But they had kind of people from not just locally within their kind of geographical location, which was Queensland, but also to people from all over the world. And as another example, we had a client that was doing an online event on how to have difficult conversations with people. Client wanted 60 people, ended up getting 160 people, and the people were tuning in from everywhere from within Australia, New Zealand, Hanoi, Vietnam, right through to the US, right through to Canada, right through to many parts of Europe. And all these people that I just mentioned, when they were doing in-person events before COVID you know, were just stuck, I guess, or at least had the mindset that they were stuck speaking to a certain type of person within a certain geographical boundary. But online, I guess, kind of breaks those geographical boundaries because people can tune in anywhere. When it comes to in-person, it's, I guess, more geographical. All the marketing strategies are similar. I guess the main difference is that with an online event, you should promote it more broadly because if you're a business that can service clients remotely, like many of us have had to learn how to do in recent times, I guess those would be the main differences. Is there any, I guess, further questioning around that?

I think too, from the way that the event space has actually evolved, and because of being involved with so many speakers as I am, and even prior to the professional speakers arena, there's so many coaches and consultants that were so used to doing workshops. And as you said, and as so many people have demonstrated, the ability to get online now has literally broken down not only our normal borders, but it's actually broken down the global borders. So I'd love to hear your, I suppose, insights or your perspective as it relates to what's going to happen next in the event space. We've seen hybrid events coming in, we've obviously gone from face-to-face to doing online events, they're now talking hybrid events. What, I suppose, what are your insights? What do you think will stick and where do you think we'll be in the next sort of 5 years from your perspective with what you've seen and what you're seeing putting on?

Well, I guess to be quite honest, none of us in the events industry could have seen what happened a year ago almost with unprecedented lockdowns and a radical change to life as we used to know it and all of that side of things. I think, though, online is going to be a larger part in the future than what it has been in the past, and particularly kind of hybrid scenarios where, you know, you'll have an in-person gathering with an online aspect. And from my perspective, all our clients that are doing in-person events, we do encourage them to consider the hybrid model as well because that allows them to reach similar audiences internationally as well, which provides greater opportunity for event ROI. But also too, I think that the government grant program that's on at the moment with local councils, state governments, federal governments, other organisations, I think that's something that the Australian government has thought through. extremely well in terms of making these available to help support the industry. Because the events industry prior to COVID in Australia provided over 200,000 jobs, it contributed over $40 billion to the nation's economy. That's just business events, and those are the stats according to BECA, the Business Events Industry Council. And That's not including, I guess, all the social benefits that events have. So as an example, COVID, one of our clients that was a charity, they desperately needed $40,000. We put them on a fundraiser, we got them all the money, and that was to purchase life-saving medical equipment for underprivileged and under-resourced hospitals. And that $40,000 allowed them to save the lives since of over 2,000 children that would otherwise be dead today if it wasn't for that financial investment in that saving equipment. So COVID caused over 400,000 events in Australia alone to be cancelled. And if you think about the economic and societal impact of that over the past year, that is just something that is horrible and unimaginable. And, but obviously the government recognises the contribution that events makes and hence why they're supporting them. So— Yeah. I think that's something that's really good that will help the industry to rebound. And that's actually something I think that many governments should do around the world once they get their health scenario under control.

Yeah, yeah, beautiful. I think that's such a great indication. For those that don't know, I was actually at the Professional Speakers National Conference conference on the weekend that COVID hit as we went into lockdown. So we had 150+ of expert speakers that do professional speaking, keynotes, events, and being at the front of the room is their livelihood. And we were all in the same venue together, and we were just watching the phones light up. Cancellation, cancellation, postponement. It was just everyone was just lockdown had come and all events were off. So we saw it go from you know a year and most of my speaker buddies are booked out you know twelve months ahead. They'll often say in January, look, I've only got sixteen days left where I can book anything. They're booked that far ahead for their whole year to be wiped out and do that. Well, you know hell now what do we do? And seeing so many of them pivot and people like yourself. help them pivot into getting into an event and an online space was quite extraordinary how everybody in quite a competitive industry suddenly became very collaborative and supportive of each other, which has also been a great benefit that I've seen for the industry. Which has been good. Just one, one very, very last quick question as we wrap up. When it comes to somebody starting the ball rolling, And they're looking at doing an event and they want a hand with it, what do they need to know to make it easy for them to come and have a conversation with you?

So, we actually kind of make it as easy for people inquiring as possible. We actually have a form that people can fill in with the details about the event they want to do in terms of the outcomes, about, you know, what they kind of event to kind of feel like at a basic kind of level. And that allows us to help ask further questions to really hone in on the expectations so that we can create the best memorable event possible. And I guess as well, the value proposition of MKG Events is very different to other events companies. So we can, from helping clients concept their event, plan the event, negotiate with suppliers, right through to marketing, content creation, strategy, through to Canva, delivery, ticket sales, sponsorship, media on the day. And we also help our clients as well apply for the government grants that I was referencing earlier and putting together the professionally written event documentation and applications and also, I guess, assessing the different possible grants that are available and recommending the right ones that would suit our clients to apply for, but also back-end eligibility criteria and all of that, which is generally actually really basic.

Yes.

The general grant eligibility criteria is that you need to have an ABN. You can't be insolvent. Your event needs to be welcoming and inclusive of all people, including those with disabilities and of foreign backgrounds and all that side of things. The event's not allowed to endorse smoking or gambling or anything like that. And it has to be, generally speaking, for one of the 4 following purposes: has the potential to help business and the economy improve, has the potential to help improve mental health and wellbeing, has the potential to help to highlight cultural diversity in a positive way and has the ability to get people back together.

So,

these are all foundations that events really should be based on anyway.

Yeah, very much so. Can I ask, and I know because you do so much work in the US as well, and I know we've got the grants here in Australia, do you know how far off or whether the grant scenario is likely to happen soon or any time soon? Do you have any knowledge on that as yet?

In the US market? Not in a position to comment on that at the moment, but for anyone in the US that's listening to us tonight, for you guys, feel free to drop me an email and I will be able to come back to you personally with that, but also mention the state in the US that you're based in. we have some insight on, we can definitely reach out. So yeah. And also too, when it comes to, I guess, our team, you can see behind me the new Sydney office, which is double the size of the one we had 2 weeks ago. But we've also now got offices in Melbourne, in Brisbane, as well as Asia, as well as in the US as well. Whichever time zone that you happen to be watching in, there's a team of experts ready and willing to help.

Yeah, absolutely. And I will go on to say the team that I've been working with have been exceptional. I love people asking me great questions and putting me on the spot. I thought my questions were done when I filled out the very first questionnaire, and then I got another questionnaire that gave me another level of specificity and clarity. And I think I really enjoyed that process because I actually understood that I actually did know specifically what I was looking for, but I would have never considered it or thought it had I not been asked a good level of questions. So certainly do connect with Michael and his team and let them help you put on some great events or some more significantly profitable events, and that is exactly what they do, and they're an absolute pleasure to deal with and a wealth of knowledge, and they've got lots of great stories that they can share with you as well. So certainly do connect with Michael from MKG Events, and you'll be able to see going across the screen Michael's details, and of course that'll be posted up in all of the relevant places later as well. So thank you very much, Michael, I'll just give everyone the update as to who we've got on next week. So next week I've got a dear and longtime friend from the South Australian marketplace, a serial entrepreneur, Wade Bileski. Now he's been involved with lots of different companies at a director's level or a creation level over the last 15 years and has created multiple successful organisations and successful teams within those businesses. And we're going to be talking all things entrepreneurship, innovation, and marketing as it relates to business growth. So come and hear somebody else's success stories and war stories on how to be successful and grow businesses in your marketplace. So that's on next week's show. And if I could just ask everyone to thank Michael for joining us again, thank you so much. Thank you, Sally. Thank you so much. Really, really appreciated it. Do you have any closing quick comment, Michael?

Yeah, any questions at all, happy for myself or team to kind of support you in the process. So yeah, you can see our contact details below. Yeah, we're very keen to help if you're looking for ways that you can grow a more successful event.

Absolutely, and as I've said more than once, they're super duper helpful, they're here to support you. It is about getting the events— event industry back up and running so we can help provide some opportunities for the events and our local economies. and bring back the events and help people grow their businesses as we move forward. So thank you very, very much everyone, and we look forward to seeing you very, very soon. Thank you very much. Take care. See you next week.

That's it for this week's episode. Thank you so much for joining us. I trust you got some inspirational tips to move you forward. See you next Thursday at 7 PM Eastern for more Success Secrets Exposed.