How to Organize a successful event: How I've Made over ￡1,000,000

I got asked by listeners, readers, viewers and friends alike how I have been able to make money with events and how I get them to sell out each time and over 100k in profits.

"Let me start by saying that, like raising a child, it takes a village!"

I have made no success, in events, single handedly and have been beyond blessed to work with incredible people.

So remember, RULE 1: YOUR NETWORK IS YOUR NET-WORTH!

"The best time to make friends is before you need them." - Ethel Barrymore

Networking has been cited as the number one unwritten rule of success in business. Who you know really impacts what you know. So, put this in your book to start and then let's start on how you can easily be (more) successful with your events.

1. The most critical thing of a successful event is making it memorable. I know that sounds cliche but it's about creating an event that people will remember and talk about. Get valuable speakers and provide a great forum for the right crowd.
2.  Reverse engineer : Reverse engineer. Work backwards from what you know works so you can guarantee success. Work out your metrics of success, I've completed events without realising how much money we have made until the event was over. Our priority was for everyone to talk about the event and love what I have done. That's why we recently got from The Calisthetics Games. For this event, we got the best food (Boulevard Events) and great speakers.
3. Try and Go FUNGHI. That's it. You want something that is easy to share, a message or idea. Once your idea is easy to share, your followers become your fans and then your ambassadors. This means that people will start selling you and asking each other "oh, you going." "oh yea," And ones who aren't going will feel left out.

Mailing lists are GOLD. I get mailing lists from LinkedIn and all the cards I collect at speaking opportunities but you can also purchase mailing lists - check https://www.quora.com/Where-can-I-find-free-email-lists-online and just use www.quora.com

Try to attract people who can expense it, easier for them to make purchasing decision.

Partner with local offline groups. MEETUP.com is a great way to find them. A great audience of potential attendees.

Don't stress but if you have only sold a few tickets and there are only a few weeks left. Think of hitting up associates and as many contacts as possible. People love helping people. Also look at VC's and Angel Networks as they have great expense accounts and can promote to the companies they have in their portfolio.

Going back to #1. Really need your Core client locked down.

That is around 20-40 people who either got free or discounted tickets. Hit up other people who have events. They can help you promote via their lists or provide suggestions. Damn, you can even contact me if we are LinkedIn.

Post your event in the generic places, you get 1-2 sales from them, ie. Facebook and Meetups and EVERYWHERE.

Enable tracking links in Eventbrite, so you can see where your sales are coming from.

Leverage people who already bought. Give them 1/2 off for 1 friend. Always ask people how they hear about your event and why they are going?

IF YOU AINT ASSESSIN...

YOU GUESSIN

Realize 99.99999999999999999999999999% of events are networking.

AS I SAID AT THE START

This totally surprised me as I wanted to learn great things. The speakers and price just help filter the types of people who will come. It's hard to encourage it but alcohol is an amazing social lubricant and try to do fun things with name tags. Ensure that every attendee gets connected with someone. 

A great tip is to email every attendee before the event to find out what would make the even invaluable for them.

You should discount your early bird around enough that selling 10-15% of capacity will get you to break-even. Consider a twitter RT free ticket thingy. Seed with 1-3 key people in your area or target market. Give them 1 ticket to give away for followers retweeting. Should help sell 10-20 tickets. Try to aim for people who have over 500 followers on Twitter with a 2/1 follower (>500) / following( <250) ratio.

Ask questions. Try on quora.com and Linkedin .

Do a freebie. Buy Google & Facebook ads. Try reddit ones for geekier events.

Your SUCCESS METRIC of your event is NOT profit but retention for future events. Simple things to improve this: connect people during your events, spend more to have drinks for Free all day long and don't have sponsors that don't add value or do cool stuff at your event. A nice thing is also to prep your speakers over the phone to make sure what they are going to say won't suck. It's about the kind of relationship you have with your customers.

Trade labor for promotion. You inevitably get a few freeloaders who want to help, let them.

Enable your people to promote for you. @Simon Burton always emails out badges, now you can give people things to tweet and post to Facebook / LinkedIn statuses. Ps. Try encouraging people to promote to LinkedIn groups, don't think this has been done much.

Surprise people. Do the unexpected, but be authentic and personal so the people who attend feel special.

Cos they are.

did you speed read?

Ok, here it is..down to a tweet

Ultimately when doing your event you need to think about why you personally want to go and attend.

Get that figured out, setup a budget, lock a few speakers down, get your core group and you are good to go!

Good luck and don't work harder..work smarter and for more help listen to our new show and don't be scared to reach out to me.