How to calmly freak out

Today's post is my weekend update about what's keeping me up at night. Namely: registrations. Even though I know in my heart that virtual event participants rarely sign up before the 2 week out mark, it's scary and frustrating to experience it. As of today (Sunday, August 23rd), we're at 117 registrants for the event. We have a long way to go to hit our 2,000-participant mark. I know we will hit it... in fact, I'm confident that we will surpass it. But it's scary.

So I'll put the big chart of registrations here, and then post my Vlog for the weekend, and then get to the meat of this post.

I want to take the next few posts and focus on a few lessons learned so far from the experience of creating a virtual event from scratch in 6 weeks.

Lesson 1: How to calmly freak out.

Step 1: Breathe. No, but seriously. We're not saving babies here. We're creating an event that will impact our participants lives. Whether we connect someone with a new job, or help them get 5 amazing ideas to use at their upcoming virtual conference, or provide a platform for an up-and-coming speaker to test out their conversational leadership style and hosting experience, we will have helped someone. Will that be 117 people or 2,000 people? Well does it matter? Other than the money part and needing to pay for the creation of the event, the number of people we help isn't as important as the genuine desire to help the ones who join us.

Step 2: Admit that you're anxious. As a leader, it's tough to be vulnerable. You have to be supportive, cheerleading, positive, excited, glass-is-half-full, and optimistic all the time. But here's the secret: You don't. You can let your team know that they are doing an INCREDIBLE job in the role (and often beyond it!), but that there are a few key things keeping you up at night and ask for help. If you are a supportive leader, your team will be a supportive team and will pitch in and make your project a huge success.

Step 3: Challenge your thoughts. Part of being anxious is having irrational thoughts that don’t necessarily make sense. Most often the “worse-case scenario,” you may fall into a “what if” spiral that is not going to help you at all. So flip it. What's the best case scenario? For me, I know that our platform is sound. Our speakers/conversation leaders are incredible. Our team is dedicated and excited. The industry buzz is electric. So the worst case scenario is we stop getting new registrants and don't even break the 200-person mark. BUT what's the BEST case scenario? We get 10,000 registrants, our platform is as risk and we have too many people to have the conversations be intimate and engaging? OMG! That's crazy! Yes, I will focus on THAT!

Step 4: Change your focus. Rather than focusing on the one problem you're worried about, focus on the things you can do to address that concern. If we don't have enough registrants, how can we get more? We probably just need to tell more people about it! So I will focus on creating more content to reach more people - in fact, it's more content that HELPS more people. No more advertisements on who is speaking. I want useful, helpful content FROM those conversation leaders that people can use RIGHT NOW. For example, if we were going to put one out about my How to Run Roundtables in Zoom class, I might say, "Handy tip: did you know that you can use your spacebar to unmute yourself like a walkie-talkie? Try it on your next meeting instead of fumbling for the unmute button!" Get this and more hands-on learnings in Liz's 1-hour on demand session! Perhaps I can also do some just-under-1-minute video snippets that we put on Instagram interviewing speakers on their content. I think there's so much more we can do here, we just need to mobilize the army!

Step 5: Step away. Listen to a podcast. Pick up a new book. Walk the dog. Play a board game with the kids. Paint the guest bathroom. Whatever you need to do to step away from the problem for an hour and get your brain on something else... then the solution will present itself to you!

So that's what I did. I walked the dog this morning, cleaned the house while listening to podcasts, went to the grocery store, and make a nice dinner of crab legs, shrimp, and mussels for the family. Now I feel excited and ready to tackle the week! Nowhere to go but up! Won't you join us?

Register at: https://ageofconversationsummit.splashthat.com

Here's how you can get involved in this journey with us:

• Watch our progress: Daily LinkedIn updates (like a journal!)
• See it get created: You can watch our twice-weekly planning meetings live on our YouTube Channel (subscribe to get notified when we go live)
• Join in the process: You can join the Age of Conversation Slack channel and be part of the creation of this event
• Register for the event: The Age of Conversation Summit, September 9th!

Liz Lathan, CMP is co-founder and CEO of Haute Dokimazo, a "spontaneous think tank” company that empowers participants to solve their business challenges through conversation fueled by the wisdom of peers. Haute Dokimazo is part of Haute Companies, a family of companies anchored in human connection, from events to media (podcasts, videos, and more) to direct mail to swag to entertainment talent management to strategy session facilitation.

Haute Dokimazo is partnering with QiqoChat to create The Age of Conversation Summit on September 9, 2020 to bring conversation back to the digital world.