Deborah, with her thirty years of being an ltrepreneur and creating over seven companies, knows exactly what it means to accept the mission. When you make that decision, when you accept the mission to become a solopreneur, to take yourself and your talents to market, then you embrace a life of not only unlimited possibilities, but also the unknown. It's an elixir of fear and bravery that only someone who's
taken the leap really understands. On our show, deb digs deep with her guests to highlight what you the listener wants to know, the stories, the whys, and the hows to navigate the journey to success. Get ready to hear from some of the most incredible mission takers from Generation Z to boomers. So sit up, perk up, and get ready to be blown away. Now here is your host, Deborah Drummond.
Welcome back to get another mission based podcast. I'm so happy to get her here. Thank you so much, our high Cast family. We absolutely love you and adore you.
You know that, and you know what.
You are not only the coolest podcast audience, but you're very well organized, you have vision and oh lucky you, We're gonna have a conversation with Wendy Watson today all the way from Colorado. She is a spiritual relationship mentor, and right pre show we were talking and I said, you know what I mean, there's a lot of entrepreneurs. I know that a lot of you out there are doing your own thing. You've got projects, you've got ideas.
You're watching us do it first, You're like laughing, going ha ha ha, until you do yours and you.
Take your mission, and then we'll copilot you. That's my new word.
I found this new word this morning, and I'm going to use it because people were saying, like, what is it with you two sixty two women? I go, we are like the best co pilots, And I was like, I really like that, because you know, most of us are going forward. Wendy is one of those co pilots to this project, and she is doing some very cool things.
She just finished doing some she's going to tell you what she does, but she just finished doing a really cool event that made huge waves, big enough that it's now going to be an event next year as well. And so I said, you know, so many times people want to do events. What is it about event? What makes a good event? What don't you know behind the stage?
What don't you know behind the stage? And in this world of multiple you know, multiple revenue streams and joint venture relationships, and some people that's their whole business, their whole business.
I know a woman who has a business and it's called I Got people for that, And so she basically connects people and makes a relationship fee, right, and she's having the time of her life because she's talking and connecting.
So there's a job for you. Put that one in your college calendar, you know. So let's get to talking to Wendy, because you get to hear about me all the time. So Wendy, welcome to mission accepted.
Hi, thank you for having me on. Oh my god, it's such a pleasure to be on here with you guys and to be talking with your audience sisters.
Yeah, it's good, it's good.
So please introduce yourself, tell people what you do, give them a bit of background on who you are, and then let's have a little conversation about what this whole event thing looks like and maybe just share with us your last event.
Yes, so a little bit about me is I grew up in a very chaotic household, two divorces of my own, my parents' divorce when I was eight. I was very angry, very selfish, and loss of a child, bankruptcies, all the things, until I went on my own spiritual journey and healed a lot of my wounds and brought out a lot
of my gifts. And now I help people to do the exact same thing, be in complete relationship with themselves, with your anger, with your mind, with your brain, with your back wings and your chicken legs, like all of these to me are different relationships. So being in relationship with all the different components of who we are brings out the real, authentic, true version of ourselves. And to be able to do that in alignment with our values
and our principles, that is my mission. And I was able to bring that to life at my SaaS Cash and Class conference that I just hosted on April fifth here in Denver, and it was all about showing all the possibilities that we can have these days without feeling like we need to sacrifice anything. We can have the health and wellness without sacrificing the kids or vice versa. We can have the career and the business. These days without feeling like we have to sacrifice the relationship or
vice versa. And we can even pick our men these days, without just sitting by the window and waiting for them to call on us. We can have kids on our own these days. We can have everything. So let's like inspire, Let's teach you how to do that. Let's show you that it is currently being done, so that you can do that for yourself.
Right on.
Well, thank you so much.
And you know, for those of you that don't know, you will be able to open that gorgeous, beautiful book and see Wendy's story in the two sixty two and we share stages and all the things. And so I thought that would a perfect person to kind of dive a little deeper into the conversation about doing events, because for some people it's that automatic obvious.
They're like, oh, I'm doing a book, I should have an event.
Or I know a group of really cool people in the same business sector as me, men or women, and hey, maybe I'll do a conference, maybe I'll do a live event. Maybe I'll do you know, like a live event or a live online or You're starting to see a lot of people pop up with summits. You're starting to see a lot of people and it's an extension of their business. Now.
Some people do it as a market leverage, right. They use it as a market love to build customers and to build relationships and to build you know, inter relationships with other people that are their colleagues. Some people do it as a revenue stream, you know what I mean. I'm going to rent this space, I'm going to charge this space. I'm going to bring people in, and then
there's different things that they charge within that. So I just thought, let's have an exploratory conversation because it's not you know, like a lot of things, it's not as easy as it may look.
There's things that.
Can go on what I call behind the curtain. We've been living and doing behind the curtain for a long time, I mean two sixty two. My audience is very well versed that you know, we've had over five hundred women come on stage. It's been pretty seamless and not too many you know, you know, challenges at this stage. But in the beginning, it was about how did you build that formula, what were your boundaries around, what are the expectations, and how do you relay them out.
So let's talk a little bit because I'm super excited.
I will be in Colorado in twenty twenty six and I get to be one of the speakers on Wendy's stage.
So, Wendy, you just had an event. It was very successful.
If we were to break it apart, and I'm going to do the same thing if you were talking to someone that is either doing events and looking to do another one, or someone looking.
To start, how did you start?
Like?
Where? Where did like? What was your concept and what did you find that was cool for you?
So I started with my mission? What is my mission? And what is the theme for this particular event? Right, because once you have that, it's just the same as decorating a house or any or starting a painting or anything else. First you have to come up with the concept, the mission, the why, the reason, and then that way you can start bringing in all the people that represent or in alignment with that vision and that concept.
That's that's brilliant.
There's so I will let Wendy line with that and I will start with the other side where once you for me, once I have that done, it's the part that sometimes can get put aside depending.
On your brain and how it works.
But for me then comes up beautiful infrastructure, right, the infrastructure I was talking about it.
Today.
We have an event that's coming up in a number of months, and then it's like, how many people? What's the marketing plan? You know, what places of media can we do?
What are the costs?
What do we have to charge for that event to make sure that it's worth that event? How many people are involved? Are we going to do sponsorship? Is does the event warrant sponsorship? Is there going to be people that give Are we going to do swag bags? What is the price for people to put swag you know, things in the swag bags? And so all of the elements. I think it's like, you know, I call it inspector gadget, but you got to get it down. I use a
big whiteboard because this event happens to be bigger. You might be doing something of twelve or fourteen people. You can do it in your own beautiful journal, you know, But just breaking it all out, I think makes you have to think about many different things.
And then how did your mission?
How does your mission like when someone walks into the event, how does your mission show up before the person that says hello.
Right, so I can tell you I have countless spreadsheets.
How many spreadsheets?
And I have countless?
Yeah, yeah, countless spreadsheets right.
Right, So there's different spreadsheets for the speakers and the sponsors and the budget and the layout and all of those different things for that event. The spreadsheets were crucial for me to be able to track who's done, what has this been done? Has that been done? I do have a big whiteboard behind me over here. I'm starting to plan for my next one. And you know, and I think, like the color matching and how is it represented as the audience walks in? So I love so
I kind of followed that. So right, once I had my theme and my mission and my whye, then it was the strategy and the logistics and okay, so now I need to get the money rolling in. So let's get the speakers rolling in, let's start working on the sponsors. And for this particular event, it took a while to find the right venue, right. I could have found a venue, but it was I wanted the right venue for this particular event, and so I didn't get my venue until
four to six weeks before the event. Oh wow, and so.
Wow, that's so, you know, we talk about double O seven mission exception handling danger, handling risks.
That is super crazy.
I had all this money, and I had all these people that were flying in from Delaware in California and Utah and Texas and Canada, and then we're starting to worry, and I'm like, don't worry. We got it. We will have a venue. Even if I have to get a permit in a bunch of chairs and a thing. It's going to happen. Don't worry about it. Right, having that faith and just knowing what you need to do and waiting for the right things to come into place, I
think is a lot of it. And then setting it up, Like once you're there, how does your venue, how does your layout really open up and invite the audiences in the attendees into this big vision that you've created.
Right, So I'm going to say that's not for the new person, not for the experienced person who has a strong relationship with faith and all the things. So you know, and it's interesting, everybody's very different, right, So everybody's very different. Your faith may come in obviously the you know the place where you're going to have it, but there is
a piece of faith that comes with this. I think when you said intentions, it helps you make decisions based on For me, it's about and I had someone say to me a long time ago with events, it's like, what do you want people to feel when they walk in? What do you want them to feel when they are in the event, and what do you want them to
feel when they leave the event? And that was that was really different because you know, we're doing an event that has a bit of multiple things for people to do, but really, if they're doing the art area, or they're in the merchandise, or they're books signing, or they're getting a.
Picture, what is the unison feeling that you want?
And I think that dictates a lot of the decisions around for me, a lot of the feelings around who's going to you know, right now we're hiring live music, so that live music has to make people feel the same way that we are presenting. And it shows up in the brand right that you want people to have an experience because like yourself, now, there's some events that you're going to do that you're not worried about revenue generating from this is not a revenue generating maybe it's
a market leveraging. Maybe it's something because there's free events as well. People do free events and they're doing it for other reasons, other charity, nonprofit. While they're doing nonprofit, they're probably raising money, but there's they're not expected.
You know.
I just supported an.
Event that they made nine thousand dollars and every piece of profit went to the women's health initiatives.
So there's times where money may not be part of the picture.
Yeah, yeah, but I think the real tried and tru result from any conference, Like if you really want to sit, so it's going to hit all the senses nice, right, the sites, the sounds, the visceral, the emotions. That's really when people connect and remember that event. You know. So a lot of my speakers talked about the courage to stand up and they kind of got emotional and what do you stand for and being open to receive and
asking for what you need, all these emotional things. But they did it kind of like in a fun, lighthearted way. And then we had food that was you know, help minded, drinks that were health minded. We did a social media contest to make sure everybody integrated and took pictures and interacted with each other. So when we went to dinner, when they said their biggest takeaway was unity, it was just it was mic drop. It was like, that's exactly
what I wanted, and that was your biggest takeaway. And I think the second thing, the second sign of a good event, at least a big event, was that even after nine hours of conferencing, more than half of the conference went to dinner together after because they weren't they still weren't done connecting with each other yet and feeling that sense of unity.
Right on, Let's dig into that a little bit. Let's talk about some of the things that we've done that have been successful and some of the things that we've done that we needed to take a rethink on so people can kind of learn from a successful event.
Yeah, so I had originally, So something I had to rethink was that I originally had four panels, and they were there was going to be two panels at one time, and it was going to be an hour long, and the panel is didn't say anything until the day of, by the way, like a couple of hours before we're going to start the panels, and they wanted to be center stage so that they had the lighting and it was going to be great camera work and all the things,
and so we had to think about that. And once they realized it was going to be an hour, they're like, we don't want to do this for an hour. Like, we're good with a half an hour. So we shortened the times down, had one panel at a time, and then just bumped them back to back and so they were much happier with that. They're much happier with the video that they're getting from it. But it was something that we had to rethink and navigate within a couple of hours.
I think it's important to mention that.
I mean, for me, having an agenda, like one of the successful things is having an agenda, having your whole team know what that agenda is.
I mean, that's like our summits, right, you're on your off, you're on your off. This is what happens.
You need to be there an hour before, like all the things that you tell to your speakers, and then sometimes things will happen. You may be able to accommodate it, you may not be able to accommodate it. You were able to accommodate it, you know what is it? So I'll talk about from you know, we obviously have speakers, and even if you don't have speakers, if you have a band. So when I was talking to you today, I'm like, okay, this is when people walk in in half an hour.
Is the welcome speech.
Then we're going to do the fashion show, and then we're going to do the band. Then we're going to do the fashion show. Then we're going to do the band, and then we're going to do the you know, awards and what it is that so everybody kind of knows in that gray zone if it is a gray zone or you know, with us in the summits, we're pretty tight.
You're like, you talk.
Your speech is at two twenty.
One of the successful things that we've done because in the first couple summits, sometimes speakers will come on ten or fifteen minutes before we're running forty speakers. My team doesn't need to freak out and wonder where you are. So now speakers have to be there an hour before, half an hour before. You have to have your camera off, so that you're in the flow and you're in the energy.
That was important to us, right in the energy and in the flow and to be able to capsualize it as well as people get to see them, see that they're part of this. They don't just come on and off. And then that speaker's like, man, I wish I'd had more business from that. I'm like, you need to stay, you know, you need to stay and do some business.
So I think that for me, it's having that and then then because I have it orchestrated, if something bleeps, were fine, because we only change one thing, not everything. Like we had one celebrity who texted us very close to time, like we were on air, we were shooting, there's no and she's like, I'm too sick on the coach. I can't put my face on a camera. I'm like, all right, you know, and we have communication between me and the co host. You know we're here, but we're
talking communication. I'm like, you know, flip camera to this. You know we can make those decisions. But for us, it was really getting clear and having the business boundaries and competence and confidence to say they're saying, I don't know if I can make it.
I go pick another time. No, I think I can. No, we don't do think here, we don't do maybes.
We just do no for sures, right, we have to go all for sures because of the nature of the event, and we can accommodate it, and let's accommodate it when it's a for sure time. So sometimes that's hard. When you're working with celebrities, they're like, you know, can you change the time, And if you can.
Let me know ahead of time.
But if you can change it for someone who's your keynote speaker or whatever, or they're flying in and they only have a short amount of time, you can do that. You can make accommodations for sure. But the more time that you have that the better. So for us doing is things as far ahead. I mean, you've got an event next year, you've got your whiteboard going. One of the mistakes we made I've made in previous in my early days of doing events was getting too excited and
launching it too soon. I now know, particularly the world now where many people are abundant with many things going on, is a six months out, a year out sometimes so that you don't have to change the date. But if you have to change the date, if you smell and you think that date needs changing, do it as soon as possible, right.
Right, Yeah, Yeah, I think for me like having those agendas and having the timelines what actually worked really well for me. So between each speaker, I had a two minute buffer where we would play a song. They would really either we were on time and they would get to enjoy that song, or if the speaker went over, that was something that we could just cut out and move on to the next speaker. And so because I know that sometimes speakers don't always end on time, especially
in a live event. With being on Zoom, I think it's a little bit easier to navigate that you're live and they're in the middle of ending their speech or something, and you don't really want to cut them off. So I think it was really smart on my end to just have those two minute buffers between each speaker each section of the event.
Yeah, that's a gem drop for sure. That's a gem drop for us because it's Zoom. Right, we do some live, but it's Zoom.
We have someone texting them so they'll see it in the chat privately to themselves, like time up. We've had that before. Ironically, we had this one as a professional speaker. She organizes stuff.
Just like we do.
And I'm like, after this, I'm like, girl, if anyone should know they're timing, but here was something that I did that's a gem drop. So if you have someone who's not used to speaking on like to a timeframe where they're like, they have that variable like podcast or variable at twenty twenty five, thirty minutes, it's variable, right,
depending on how cool the conversation's going. So when you say to someone twenty minutes and they're like, oh, particularly if they're new, and I'm like, when you are practicing in the mirror, sixteen minutes is twenty because you talk in the mirror like this and you practice and you're like, Hi, my name is Dev Drummant, and I'm a top performance trainer and today I'm going to teach you. You know whatever you're talking like to yourself. You're not like, hey,
it's so nice to be here. Thank you Wendy for having me. This is such a pleasure to be here. Like you're not you're not breathing as much, you're not talking yourself in the mirror like, oh, that's hilarious. So I remember when you don't do that, you talk your speech. So sixteen to sixteen.
And a half minutes is a twenty minute presentation.
So interesting because for me, it's the opposite. Every time I would practice, I was at so it was an eighteen minute slot, And every time I was practice, I was at nineteen to nineteen and a half. But once I was on stage and one of the other speakers did this too, I spoke a little bit faster and so I ended up ending right on time, right on
eighteen minutes, right right. So I think knowing your speaker style, yeah, and how you do which only comes with experience and practice, yeah, I think is incredibly important to know.
It is. Yeah, when we're telling people, if you're needing to practice, that's your by nature.
So the cool thing is it's better to have not too much time left over. Like we had a woman that came on.
Her speaker spot was twenty minutes. She was the opening speaker. She was done in twelve eight minutes. Is a lot of time to fill until your next speaker. Now here's the challenge with that. Of course, you can move your next speaker up, but you're having to text.
Are you okay? Are you ready to go early? And she's marketed to her friends. You know, we're big.
You know our expectations around our speakers, even though our speakers are paid speakers. And the same thing is when we do live events. So whatever when you have people that are paying to play, or you're paying to play, or there's some kind of I'm not paying, but I'm not this like whatever your your your deal is with people, our expectation is to have them market I mean, how are you going to get it out there? Like that's part of it, that's part of it, like you you
know you do it. So for us, moving people sooner can be a challenge because they're like, all my friends are coming at this time.
You know, they're coming to see me speak. So you have that become as an issue if someone ends early, right.
Right for the lack of communication. That was one of my speakers wasn't responding at all to any emails, any chats, any text, And so my mind is going into okay, if for some reason she doesn't show, like how do I fill this spot? Who do I pick? Like? Who are my top three that I think can just hop
on stage? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, Now without preparation. I think that's that's part of it, Like being able to navigate because yeah, all of my speakers, all my panelists, everybody involved, they knew The expectation was to market and to bring at least five to ten people to the conference. I had twenty people involved. Everybody brings five people, we've got one hundred people. We've got a successful conference. Yeah, and that didn't happen. So that falls on me as the organizer.
It's like, Okay, now I need to amp up my promotional, my marketing in order to get people in. So then I got to the point where I was like personally calling people and paying for ads.
And I think it's important to take that, take that away from whoever's listening, right, because even.
Though so you know, there's expectations of an event that's cool, there's expectations of the people participating in the event. It's like, I was part of a big event that we flew to and this person had this person had someone who was bringing forty five volunteers to the event and they canceled forty eight hours before. If you are planning events, yeah, right, you have to know that those kind of things are happening. That's the stuff behind the stage that you don't see.
Oh my gosh, it was a great event.
You don't see.
So that person's calling everyone they know, you know, capable or not capable to get there?
Can you do front door? Can you do this? Can you do that?
Now?
Some of us on the inside we kind of noted a few. I was like, well, that's interesting, right, you've got to figured it out. But by nature, that's the kind of stuff that you do.
Same as with you, So the expectations and then how much do you keep those expectations and asking and life happens as well, So you have to know that even if you have a certain amount of people coming.
So I always, I always now.
So some of the things that I've learned is get way more volunteers than you need. There's nothing wrong with having someone, having someone walk around to just make sure people are happy. The other thing I've learned in terms of volunteers is to have a leader and how an assistant leader. So there's two people in charge. They you know, so they have an idea floor plan, job roles like this is your solo, this is your spot, this is where you're going to be for three and a half hours.
What we're doing for an event or the next event is having lanyards so they have the schedule on the back. They're all going to wear the same clothes, right, so please dress in black. We're going to give them obviously a piece of oceans, you know, clothing wear, because we haven't be clothing. But if you're not clothing wear, you can do something that you know, defines so people can see who volunteers are, so they know where to go to ask for that.
Sure.
Yeah, right, So there's those kind of things that you can implement. But I always say, kind of overstocked, you know, overstock the cupboards. Right, if you have fifty people, like someone said to me, I want to send books to your you know, books to Ireland, we have thirty people, I go send thirty two, send thirty. Someone might bring their sister and all of a sudden, now you don't have a package for her or the organized there's like, you know, so sm thirty two.
I was like, go high a little bit on on those things.
So I've learned, and one of the things that I would say to somebody is go higher in your back in your backyard, right, And so yeah, there's nothing wrong with having too many people supporting and helping. Let's talk about pricing. Let's talk about pricing. Let's talk about how you would price the show or like just do do people do shows or do you do shows too that are market based where it's more important about the marketing and getting your name out there in relationship to the project,
or for you is it a revenue stream. There's lots of people that I mean, ultimately you want both most you know, you want to be able to you know, but what about for you.
And some of the events that you do, let's talk let's talk about happens.
So, I mean one of my events that I'm scheduling out for this year is just a little twelve dollars workshop, right, It's more of a lead magnet and to get people in to experience what I do without it feeling like a big financial burden. R most people can afford twelve bucks plus. The goal of it is to get people. So the whole workshop is around redefining your relationship with money, and so we want people in to be able to think about it and get the juices rolling and stuff
like that. One of my there was a financial advisor that came to me and said, I have a lot of clients that just aren't getting over that speed hump so that they can hire me. What can we do to give them just enough information to get them over the speed bump so that they're making more money so that then they can hire me. So that was the
concept of that. So I have the twelve dollars, I've got the fifty dollars program, I've got the two hundred dollars program, depending on on what the purpose is, who the audience is, and where they're at personally, right, and their growth and their belief Yeah.
Right, So different prices for different things.
So that's you know, those events, so it can be so your purpose is more about so your you know, your mission walking in is to have people know what you do and how you do it. So your your ticket's a little lower when you start getting into events that have speakers or other people involved or doing the costings.
For that are you like what is the market bearing out there? What do you know?
Like like when you think about an event where you're charging, like, we just went through that process. Like so when we were deciding the price of the ticket. When we first decided the price of the ticket, we're like, where are you?
So we're in Vancouver. It has to be much lower in Ireland because in Ireland they don't like big ticket pricing, right, So She's like, whoa we are We're at this price there where If that event that we're doing there would be the same thing in New York, it'd probably be three to four times the price. It would be well, first of all, the venue would be more, there would be more things to have to cover, but different places.
So we're Vancouver super cool. Unfortunately, people in Vancouver are last minute deciders.
We know that.
So you have to deal with the anxiety of you know, we're going to sell three quarters of our tickets in probably the last two weeks, because that's how Vancouver people roll. If you know events here, those kind of things, and then what cost is it going to be. We have swag bags included. So we've done two different prices. One's VIP, so you're on the red carpet, you're in the VIP room, you get a different photographer, separating those kind of things.
So making it so we can justify the price of a very expensive photographer compared to not or or knowing what we have to sponsor and put a sponsorship package out there for what are some of the variables that make your prices.
Like one of the variables was my business partner, so I bought a license from Leiden empower her she talks, and so they have a policy that the pricing has to be one between one fIF two hundred okay, okay, so right, So that's that's a variable. If you're going to partner with somebody, you have to know what their policies and their requirements are. They want it affordable enough
to get people in without breaking the bank. So and that after eight years of doing this, that's the window that they have found is very successful for their demographic right, So I think that's part of it. I think also knowing and planning what your expenses are is part of it. Knowing what your break even point financially is, how many
people you need to get in the door. I think that's another variable, especially if the venue ends up changing or you don't get enough sponsors or anything like that. Then throwing in the VIP and you know, how can you make it more experiential?
So let's wrap up with some super success. That's that's kind of like, you know, double down for everybody.
Now you're doing events, not doing events, yea events, no events, Oh my gosh, events, lots to do planning, mission vision. What's the nature of the event. What are you going to charge for the event? What's your break even point? Super important to know people. What's your break even point? What are the benefits? What's your date? Is a far enough ahead, don't plan on anybody doing anything. Make sure that you've got back up for everything. That's that's my model, right,
Hire the right people, Hire the experts. Honestly, there are people out there that can help you do events that are absolutely fantastic. This is what they do every day, all day, from you know, in the morning and the night, just like you do your thing from morning tonight. So it's great to have people like that on your team. But let's talk about some things that have been highly successful.
Let's talk about some things that you would put in, like having a song in between that was great, you know for us, because you have to give value, you have to highlight the value. So us having a red carpet says value, right, Those are carpet yes.
And I love the lanyard thing with the agenda on it. I thought that was brilliant for all the volunteers. Hiring the right people. It's not just about hiring people and filling in the spot. It's about hiring the right people that are actually going to do it and escentually your event versus.
Yeah, another thing that I do and then well, let's just take a little turn here. So another thing that we do for our events that's super successful is we refuse to put anything in a swag bag that someone's going to come home dump their swag bag into recycling.
We actually have criteria.
We have a video.
You have to hit this criteria.
It has to be it has to be caliber, it has to be if your certificates, a gr certificate's got to be a or ten and fifty dollars. If it's a service, if it's a product, it has to be a certain product is certain this. So we have swag bag criteria. So people feel like that's part of the experience and it's part of our mission.
Right.
What about you, what's something else you do that is successful.
Yeah.
So we had all of our speakers provide their presentations a week to two weeks in advance so that our videographer and our tech team could create one whole slide deck.
That way, the presentations and the songs and everything were just leap were just seamless, and we could just go to the next deck, or we could skip that deck and go to the next presentation instead of plug and play and like where is it and blah blah blah, and you know, in exchanging just creating one slide deck so it was completely seamless, was brilliant, was super successful. That's cool.
Something that we do is because our events that we do live now.
Even sometimes people are late, so even if it's in a conference room, we always make sure that there is someone at the front door the whole time so they're welcomed. They come in and now we're doing some stuff in clubs, so people are going to be coming and going. So there was someone to say hello, thank you, and welcome, and there was someone to say goodbye and gave them a little gift on the way out. So we're holding swag bags out. Who wants to carry swag bags everywhere?
Sometimes in conferences you can put them, but we don't want them digging there. We want them looking there. So your swag bag is your gift that you get to go home and go whoo. This is cool part of their after effect. So literally someone sitting there and you know that's willing to sit there and be the welcome for the whole event.
Yeah.
Absolutely. Another thing that was super successful for us is that we had it in an area where there's probably ten to fifteen different restaurants, so that when we were on lunch break, because it was a full day thing, there was a different option for anybody based off their personal styles. There was just a bunch of options in the local area that they could go to. Yeah, appreciate it. Yeah.
If people are flying in from out of town, hotels and transportation access is really is really important for sure, directions because you know, someone's taking an.
Uber and what have you, So that's really important.
Yeah. So that was one of the things I was very cognizant of. You know, Denver is huge, Yeah, and so I didn't want it to be more than I didn't want the venue in the conference to be more than a half an hour away from the airport, Yeah, because then you're talking about much different expenses and time and they're already flying in and it just so happened that the closest hotel was point four miles and less than seventy dollars a night.
Right, how much is it night? Can you negotiate? Yeah?
Uh huh? Do you need to get a room block? All of those things. So it was so because it was already a reasonable amount. I didn't it saved me time from having to go get a room block.
Yeah, the thank you at the end, whether they've left the event or not, but I thank you, and then your your after party, Like what does the after party look like? That's going to be different for everybody. But don't forget about your after party sponsors. You know, you may want ten accommodate if you get five. You know, sponsorship can be an interesting So for us, having the right branding, like we have a sponsorship package, right, so it's it, you know, and does that reflect what it
looks like? And taking the time to pay someone to do a proper sponsorship package that you know you can probably use over and over again.
Yes, the sponsor packages. The individual landing pages for the sponsors and the speakers and the panelists. They really appreciated that because then they had their own dedicated page and they could promote it and give them that individual focus.
Oh that's really interesting.
So having your having your landing page and having your sponsors have their own page on there.
Yeah, so it's one landing page and then you could click on any name or photo or logo and it would take you to their individual landing page or their website so that you they get that's awesome lead. Right now they're getting clicks and views on their websites.
Yeah, I hadn't. I hadn't done that, so thank you. I even learned something on my own show today.
Okay, we're going to wrap up a little bit because we've just taken you through a number of different things that you can do for a successful event.
Right, you got all the different elements, and.
I think some of the stuff behind the stage we shot, we shared with you some of the stuff behind the stage.
Maybe next and we get together will tell you how to prepare yourself.
There's all sorts of things that you need to do to pray yourself to be able to present to the world this kind of container. Right, So I say still start smaller and then go to go to the next level. So I'm going to ask you a question that's completely not that completely not that we're all having events.
We're doing well.
You're doing sellout events. Everyone's purchasing, they're fighting to get on the stage. They're having a blast, they're talking about it after they're going to dinner. They're staying connected. Everyone's doing all the great stuff that you want from a good event. People are begging you to do one next year. They're signing up right after this event.
I have a client.
We're signing up for this event right before, you know, for next year's event because it was so much fun. I mean, this is what we want for you all out there. And they can be revenue streams if you want them to be. Just realize that it's work. It's an extension of your business, but it is work. And with that being said, because we have all your information in the show notes, people can contact you. You are
doing an event in twenty twenty six in Colorado. If you're listening to this podcast in two years from now, she's probably doing another event, right, so we're probably doing one together. I'm going to just kind of clear that slate and say music is such a big part of events. It's an incredible piece. Choosing music the way that you did that was really cool based on what they're speaking on.
But if you were on your way to a desert island and you had a suitcase and you were putting one album with you that you couldn't imagine not listening to for the rest of your days. What one album would you absolutely want to take with you?
Okay, so I don't know how to pronounce the name of her albums?
Okay, yeah, what's the singer? You can new singer?
The artist is Ivor ei vo R. She's a Nordic singer and she sings in both Norwegian language and English. And like I had to, it would have to be any of her music would have to be what I carry.
Oh my goodness, you're gonna have to send me a song. Send me a song, Text me a song. That's awesome. Yep, all right, Well, look at you.
Have been an incredible audience, and we are so grateful for you because we do look at our analytics and we know that you are all around the world.
We also know that you share this show.
We're so appreciated because there's some pretty cool people doing some pretty cool things, and you saw them sitting here. If you have some pretty cool things and you want to be sitting here, you have some options, right, So you can come onto a group podcast, you can come on to a solo show. If you want to do something that's a three part mini series, let's get it done. You would have because you were the first to know because we're very inner circle people that we were launching
the Women's Channel. It is for women and those that support women, so basically women and cool dudes. So if you're a woman and cold dude and you want to be on our show, then get on our stage because that's going to get you on the Women's Channel and you're going to have three hundred million viewers listening to you talk about your upcoming event. I'm thinking you're probably going to fill your road and if look, if you're ready to wow, should I do a podcast? Should I
do a television show? I've got this podcast, it doesn't have two hundred million views. Can I move it over to your show? Yes you can, So let's have a conversation. If you are new to this channel, well I make it really difficult deb Drummond dot com. You go to any contact page you have put it through and it actually bypasses my team and goes right to me.
So I'm happy to have a conversation with you. We have incredible summits. We have one coming up.
We always have one coming up right March, May, August and November seventh and eighth. If you want an invitation. If you want a free invitation to one of the most incredible events ever, just reach out.
To us and we will get you that link. So, thank you so much for being such a cool audience. We appreciate you.
We know you're going to be popping over to the television channel as well with being our audience there.
Wendy, thanks for making so much time today. That was so fun. It was so fun.
And we know you're in spirituality. We know you and money those two have a very powerful relationship. We're going to put all your information in this show. Note, So the spirituality and making more money, you know inspires you. If you leaned in on out, please your joke twinding and until we see you again on one s, stay well, stay well.
I stay with bry for now,