Running Your Own Successful Speaking & Training Events

In today's episode, we're going to dive into a topic that I know many of you have been eagerly waiting for: 'Running Your Own Successful Speaking and Training Events.' We'll explore everything from the initial planning stages to the vital post-event follow-up, and I'll share some of the lessons I've learned from my own experiences along the way.

Running your own speaking and training events is a bit like throwing a party where you're the DJ - you're in charge of the vibe, the guest list, and best of all, you're the one who can make it a profitable gig. You get to decide the ticket prices, how much you want to spend on the event, and even how big or small you want the whole thing to be. This means you've got a lot of room to work out how to make the most money, whether that's from ticket sales, getting some sponsors on board, or even selling some cool merchandise. Plus, you get to call the shots on what the event is all about. You can choose topics you're really into, craft the content to play to your strengths, and shape the whole experience to reflect your own style. It's a pretty awesome way to stand out from the crowd in the speaking world and deliver an event that's not just enjoyable for your audience, but also puts some extra cash in your pocket.

[00:00:00] "Creating Profitable Speaking and Training Events: Tips and Insights"
[00:07:25] "Maximize Speaking Event Success with Testimonials and Preparation"
[00:10:52] "Venue Selection & Presentation: Finding Balance"
[00:19:45] "Prepare for Tech Disasters in Steel Sheds"
[00:21:51] "The Importance of Rehearsal in Presentations"
[00:30:51] "Tips for a Successful Event Recording"
[00:33:32] "Maximizing Event Success: Gathering and Analyzing Feedback"
[00:40:07] Creating Memorable Events: Tips for Success.

Transcript

0:10

Welcome to episode 31 of the Profitable Speaking Podcast, where we provide practical tips and insights to help you succeed as a public speaker. In today's episode, I'm going to dive into a topic that I know many of you have been eagerly waiting for, and that is running your own successful speaking and training events. I'll explore everything from the initial planning stages through the vital post event follow up stuff, and I'll share some of the lessons I've learned from my own experience experiences along the way. So grab a notebook, get comfortable, and let's get started on creating your own successful speaking and training events. Running your own speaking and training events is a bit like throwing a party where you're the DJ, you're in charge of the vibe, the guest list, and best of all, you're the one who can make it a profitable gig. You get to decide the ticket prices, how much you want to spend on the event, even how big or small you want the whole thing to be. This means you got a lot of room to work out how to make the most money, whether it's from ticket sales, getting some sponsors on board, or even selling some cool merchandise. Plus, you get to call the shots on what the event is all about. You can choose topics that you're really into, craft the content to play to your strengths and shape the whole experience to reflect your own style. It's pretty awesome way to stand out from the crowd in the speaking world and deliver an event that's not just enjoyable for your audience, but also put some cash in your pocket. But it's not as simple as it sounds. It does require a bit of work the first time and a lot of marketing, all of which you can do, and also things you'll get better at the more events you run. So I first started running training events way, way back when. I ran a SEO company and I used to run SEO training. It was probably the first thing I did where I get business owners in a room and teach them how to do search engine optimization on their websites. When I first started, I was happy to get ten people in a room. It was fine. I enjoyed having ten people I could work with them. Now. That grew when I got more people in the room as more people knew me or the idea was shared with them. I used to record it as well. Not every time, but sometimes, and that would give me some recorded material to sell and to use for a promotion and all that sort of stuff. It was very useful in multiple ways, not just making some cash flow. A couple of things that I discovered along the way was that my audience tended to be more female, and I'll mention this later on as well, but I invited them to invite a friend and it was the same for obviously every member of the audience. But it's really great when you can double your numbers because someone invites someone else along. I often provided morning tea, but I kept it basic. Just some muffins or some basic tea, coffee, those sorts of things. And generally speaking, it was three to 4 hours. And the reason it was three to 4 hours is, quite frankly, the content was exhausting. I get in depth sometimes, and even though people were there to learn, it became overwhelming. So I learned a lot from that. I learned to cut down on the amount of content that I was delivering at once, put some more practical activities in there, things where people are moving around or doing some digging or writing or whatever it happens to be. I kept them in a morning sort of size. I brought more practical stuff in. Over time, I found that time to chat was really important. And as I mentioned, less content was really one thing I did learn. You always try and pack so much into running these events, and then you realize that the people can only take so much on board, so it's better to probably peel it back a bit. One thing I did do was I set it up regularly, so I ran them on the same day each month, e g the third Tuesday of the month. That way people could put it into the calendar because they knew that more training was coming out. Now, sometimes I repeated the course, other times I did courses based on the original one. So people who've been to the original SEO one might go to the link building one, or they might go to a bit of email marketing or something like that. Meanwhile, I could also continue to run new SEO training so you can build quite a large training organization off this. And all of it helps from a speaking perspective because you get better at being in front of a crowd while keeping that cash flow going. So before we jump into all the planning details, we're going to look at establishing your event. We've got to start with the basics, and that's really important. Think of this as like laying down the groundwork or sketching out the blueprint for your speaking or training event. We're going to talk about picking a topic that lights you up and offers value to others, figuring out who your audience is, and setting some clear, measurable goals for what you want to achieve with your event. It's a bit like doing your homework before the big game, but it's going to make sure you're on the right track from the get go. So first up, choosing a topic that you're really passionate about and others will find valuable. And this is important. It's all very well to choose a topic that you're passionate about, but remember, other people have to find it valuable, as in get value out of it if they're going to pay for you. Teach what you know best on your first time event. That's what I would say. If you know something really well, you've written a book about a particular topic, then your first training event should be about that topic. Why? Because it's easier to put together. Your confidence levels are up because you know that content really well. And then because you know the content really well, you only have to worry about the other stuff, such as setting up the room and booking and all that sort of stuff. The content stuff you're not stressing about. So that's real important. Choose a topic you're passionate about, one that you know well, that people are going to get value out of. The next thing you need to do is define your audience. Who do you appeal to? As I mentioned earlier, women in business in my case were a big part of my audience, and I liked working with women in business. I'd been a teacher in primary schools where I was the token male, and I very used to working in that environment. It's really good fun to work with women. They're very smart, they're very forward thinking, and these days they're definitely very business orientated, even more so than their male colleagues and counterparts. Think about things like the age of your audience, the place that you would find them, what niche are they in, and are they in a particular job, like accountants or something like that? Remember, you want to target your training to a particular audience. So the more general you get, yes, you can advertise to more people, but the harder it is to advertise effectively. If I send an email to 1000 different businesses, I have to make my copy very generic. Whereas if I send it out to accountants, I can be really specific about how this training is going to help accountants. So have a think about that. Think about what your audience is and who you're going to try and reach. I highly recommend you don't try and reach everybody. Okay? And then you need to set some measurable objectives and goals for the event. So keep these simple. My main one was always to cover costs for the event. I think that's a simple one because if you cover costs, it's not costing you anything and you're growing your name. So there's a benefit there for everybody. It's not too expensive. Everybody learns something and they get to see how good you are. And then other opportunities can come from that. I know many speaking events came from the training I ran, because people then saw me as a speaker and said, do you think you could do a breakout session at our next conference? And things like that. Make sure you also get testimonials as part of your objectives and goals so that you get written or video testimonials from people who are in the audience that you can then use when you run your next event that says, oh, Brad was fantastic. We really enjoyed, we learned so much, et cetera, et cetera. And the other thing is test what works when you're there. Obviously, you got your goals, but make a list of everything you need to go through and see what actually is working when you're in the room. Because you might find, for example, using a particular piece of software to manage your event doesn't work for you. It just doesn't fit with how you do things or whatever and make notes about these things so that when you go to run another event, you can review your notes and make a decision about what the best step is forward. So after we've got into establishing our events, the next thing we need to look at is the planning and preparation. So let's roll up our sleeves and get into the nitty gritty of planning and preparation. Now, I know this might not be the most glamorous part of running your own event, but trust me, it's the foundation for your successful speaking or training event to be built upon. We're talking about figuring out where your event's going to happen, what kind of format you're going to use, who you need on your team, and how to budget for it all. And look, don't stress too much. We're going to break it down now, and I'm going to tackle each step that you will need to do. So let's get into it. The first thing that I think is important is your location. Okay? Is it going to be a virtual training or a physical training? Now, I still believe that physical in person training is better than virtual. I don't care what anybody says. There is nothing better than being in the room with the people you're actually training, where you can walk around and look over the shoulder and make comments and answer questions and all those sorts of things. That just does not happen in virtual training, no matter what people try and tell you. I'm a teacher. I'm telling you now, it is not as good. It's one way of training, but it is nowhere near as good as having people in the room. So if it's physical, where is it going to be? Is it going to be so, for example, I'm on the Gold Coast. Do I run training on the Gold Coast, or do I run it in Brisbane? There's more people in Brisbane than there is on the Gold Coast, or do I pick somewhere that's on the edge of Brisbane? If you came from the north side of Brisbane or you came from the Gold Coast, it'd be about the same distance. Often I actually do that because I find that's a good balance, especially if it's near the highway. I try and find a venue near a highway so people can zipple on the highway, jump off and get to the venue easily, because going somewhere you haven't been before is always stressful for many people. What kind of venue? Is it going to be a hotel? Is it going to be a training premises? Is it going to be someone else's training room? I've used training rooms in friends businesses before. There's so many options available to you. What I suggest is you do a ring around and you get some pricing and look at some photos, and maybe you can go into the venues and actually really have a look and get to know what you're getting for your money. Some places overcharge and I mean, they overcharge severely. It's shocking the prices they expect people to pay for a tiny little room. Now, I understand it's their real estate and they're paying rent or whatever it happens to be, but it's just unrealistic. It's sitting there empty, and if I don't hire it, you're not going to make a cent. Wouldn't it be cheaper to give it to me at a better price? So decide what you need. Are you going to need a boardroom table with a TV or projector screen up the front and you can sit ten people around that? Is that going to be enough? Alternatively, what if you book that room and you need a room for 20 people? Does the venue have a bigger room? My suggestion is, when you're promoting it, maybe don't put exactly where the room is. Say, venue to be announced on south side of Brisbane or something like that. Okay? Does it look good? And this is important. There's a balance between providing really good content and providing really good content in a venue that makes you look a million dollars. So presentation is important, but it's not a deal breaker. I think getting the balance right is important. I've found a lot of hotels that have been retrofitted and done up often have presentation rooms and training rooms attached. And they can be really nice because they've all been refurbished and they're lovely and clean. They don't smell like beer and cigarettes anymore. Those places are actually quite good for training rooms sometimes. Other times you'll find training organizations actually have rooms you can hire too. Look at it, make a decision whether it fits your brand. And one thing I think that's absolutely killer is parking. People will actually drive further if they get free parking. Why? Because parking is a pain in the butt, okay? Especially when you're in the city. There's nothing worse than having to drive somewhere and find out there's only five car parks. And then you go out in the street and they're all taking because no one's got car parks around the area. And then you got to park for 2 hours. The train is going for three or 4 hours. What does that mean? Means everybody bails out halfway through to move their cars. And so it's just a real pain. I highly recommend you get somewhere with free parking or cheap parking that people can use that's very close by and put that into your ad as well. This is just stuff I've learned along the way, and it's also things that bug me as well. Next thing you need to look at is deciding on the format. Are you going to be single speaker, multiple speakers, panel discussions? Is it a workshop? Whatever. It's up to you what you run. I've always done single speaker, but I have done some where I've got other people speak about related topics just for a change. I might have someone do SEO, someone do email marketing, and someone do social media just to appeal to a writer audience. And also you can share the promotion. You've all got different email lists, all that sort of stuff. Assembling a team. Now, this is important. I did it by myself, but I was a teacher. I was used to running a classroom. Setting up a classroom was simple to me. If you do hire someone, it's going to increase your costs. And to be honest, it's really not necessarily with a small group. They don't expect you to have a big organization running it, okay? They know it's you. They know probably because you're already on their email list and those sorts of things. Unless you're doing cold call marketing, that sort of stuff. It's a chance to talk to people as they come in and things like that. But what you can do, and what I found to be really successful, is ask someone who's coming to help. If you've got a friend who wants to do the training, why not ask them? Come and give them a free ticket. And what they have to do is just give you a bit of a hand on the door, tick people off, and maybe press Play or record on the video camera, that sort of thing. But in exchange, they get to sit in on the training and learn. And there's always people that will do this for you. They're wonderful. I've done it for other people, I'm happy to do it for other people. And it gives them a chance to learn at no cost. And you a chance to get someone to help you for a couple of hours. So it's a win win for everybody. Creating a budget is important and there's a lot of factors to consider here, but we'll talk about a few. The first thing is, I'd say you work from a minimum budget, okay? If you can't afford to give people morning tea, then get a room near a coffee shop where people can walk next door and get a coffee during the break. You don't have to feed people. It used to be whenever you went to anything, there was always muffins or there was always pancakes or whatever. It happened to be, you don't have to do that, okay? People can buy a coffee before they come. As long as there's water there. People can drink the water, they're fine. Most people can survive till lunchtime without being fed. Okay, if you're going to do that, make sure you finish before lunch or before dinner if you do afternoon training. I just feel that if you're starting out, you need to watch your budget. So don't feed people if you can't afford it, or if you can't put it into the budget from the cost of the ticket. If you want to buy some stuff from Kohl's and supply it yourself if you're allowed based on the venue, there's no reason you can't buy some food for people to eat some biscuits. They don't have to be fancy. Honestly, we tend to project that people expect higher things than we actually provide, when in fact, the truth of the matter is most people are happy with a bicky and a cup of tea. And the other thing is to bring your own gear. You go to these venues and they want $200 to hire a projector which is already mounted on the ceiling and not doing anything. It's got me blown away. The bulbs run for 10,000 hours. It's not like they're expensive. Even a new projector is less than $1,000. So I'm not quite sure what their thinking is there for a small room projector I'm talking about or a TV. A TV to connect your computer to. These days, that's a $500 investment. So it's not like it's a massive investment, and yet they charge you the world to use it. If you've got a projector, you can pick them up secondhand on ebay, but next to nothing these days. Or you can buy a brand new one through Office Works for less than $1,000. Take your own projector and save yourself some money. Or call a friend and say, hey, if you got a projector I can borrow. Most speakers have equipment sitting around, and they're more than happy to lend it to you. Now, understand, it could go faulty on the day, so always remember that can happen. So have a backup plan just in case. Okay, so let's get into section three, content creation and your preparation. So you've got your event established, your plans all laid out. You've done, your budget, everything. Now comes the fun part creating your content and getting yourself ready to shine as a speaker. This is where you get to channel all of your passion and expertise into a presentation or a workshop that will captivate your audience. It's all about structuring your talk, finding the right balance of information and engagement, and rehearsing until you're confident and smooth. Don't forget, even the best speakers rehearse. And remember, you're not just preparing your content, you're also preparing yourself. So let's talk about developing your content. Preparing as a speaker look, there's not much I should need to tell you here. Think about what you like to do, what you like to see, et cetera, in training. Okay? You're a professional speaker, or you're trying to be a professional speaker. You've probably been to a few training rooms along the way. Make some notes about what you like to see and build your presentation around those activities and information. If you're going to use PowerPoint, that's fine. But don't put all the information on the slides, okay? Just put one point up and talk about it. It's much more effective. It keeps the audience engaged and they're not just sitting there writing down PowerPoints. And you can always start your speech off by saying, if you do want this PowerPoint, I'll give it to you as a PDF at the end. Okay? It's a good way to get people on your email list. They got to email you to get it. You might want to set up a workbook or a worksheet. As I've mentioned previously, you print out a three double side fold in half. You get a four page, a four booklet that you can use. You don't have to do that, but it is good branding that you can give out to people and it costs about a dollar to do. Set up quizzes, flip charts. Remember, if you're going to use live data such as stuff that's coming from the internet, please test it beforehand. You need to know what the internet is going to be like in that room. Now this is important because a lot of stuff these days connect to the internet. The venue will probably have WiFi and they might give it to you free or they might charge you for it. But if you don't pay for the WiFi, will your phone work to hotspot to a lot of these venues, they got a lot of steel around and you'll find your phone doesn't work really well in there. So you can't get your usual free internet via your phone to use with your laptop when you're presenting. So go hand test it. It's really important. I don't know how many times I've gone in a venue and my phone's gone from five bars outside to one inside. This is common. That's what happens inside steel sheds, which is a lot of the buildings are steel framed and it kills your internet access. Stuff will go wrong. So prepare a backup, okay? That's really important. And remember, what if you get sick, what are you going to do? So make sure you've prepared upfront an email that can be sent out saying I'm sorry I'm sick. And also beware you're going to need to send it very early in the morning or the night before. So you're going to have to make that cutthroat decision the night before probably so that people have got time to read the email. I know

myself, I don't open email after 05: 21:06

00 at night and I

don't open it before probably 08: 21:09

00 in the morning. So if I've

got to be somewhere at 09: 21:13

00, you better try and get that message to me multiple ways. So maybe there's other ways you can send a message. But email is generally the way you reach people who have booked for an event. So what are you going to do if you get sick? You need to rehearse and you need to make sure you get feedback. So I always recommend running through your workshop a couple of times lightly. You don't have to go through it word for word, but run through the slides. Run through what you're going to cover. Rehearse your booklet, and think about what you're going to say about now. Let's do exercise. B. Now swap with your partner or whatever it is and all those sorts of things, but run through it. Okay. Then run your outline past a friend or or another expert speaker who can have a look at it and go, yep, that's great. I think you might have missed this. I feel that should be there. Or maybe you should move that to there. Just get them. They don't have to be an expert in the area, though. They get the flow. And most people have a wide variety of knowledge anyway. Every time you speak is going to be different. But the first time you do an event, it's going to be a test. You're going to have to test everything you do. The first time you do that presentation, you can get a little bit more slack when you've done it a few more times. If you do the same SEO training five times, by the fifth time, you really only have to print out the booklets and turn up, you know what you're going to do. Okay, but I also know that when I do practice things, I discover where I've made mistakes or where I should be inserting some extra slides or removing some slides from my presentation. So that's why the practice and the rehearsal is so important. If it's a really long workshop, you're talking 3 hours. 4 hours. Don't practice as such, but make sure you read through your slides and put notes in where you're going to do your what I'll do is I'll put a slide in for where I want them to do a workshop sort of activity. It might say activity one, or it might say, what is your dog doing this today? And that's the cue to that question that's in their workbook or that I want them to do okay. So I do put them in. That way I don't forget to do my activities where I want my activities to be. So step four marketing a promotion. All right, so now that you got your event all planned out and you kill the content ready to go, it's time to spread the word. Welcome to marketing. At promotion land. This is all about getting people excited and booking those tickets. We'll chat about building some bars and writing enticing, event description, social media, et cetera, et cetera. It's not just about shouting from the rooftop, though. It's about reaching the right people in the right way. So how do we build anticipation? The first thing we need to do is create compelling event descriptions. This is so important. We need to build a landing page on the web for this event only. Don't put it on a page with everything else. You can link to it from a page like that. But you must have a landing page that's nice and clear and easy for people to type into the computer, so that when you advertise it, they can type it in or click a link and go to it and read about your event. I highly suggest that you use a booking system like Eventbrite, which is one I've used a lot. There's other systems available nowadays, but for quite a reasonable cost. They will take the money. They will give you the tools to run the event, as in tracking people, barcodes scanning app, all that sort of stuff. There's, as I said, multiple tools that do this. But I've used Eventbrite a lot because it's very reliable. When you do your landing page and your writing content, it must be exciting. It's really important. This is not dull, boring stuff. It doesn't matter whether you're writing for dull and boring people. They still like exciting copy. Make sure you use buzzwords. So if you're writing to a particular industry, use the jargon, okay? That's why going wide is not always a good thing. Make sure you use copywriting. And if you're not a great copywriter, write out what you want and then flick it over to Chat GPT and say, turn this into a sales copy letter or something like that and it will write it for you in an exciting way. And if it's not exciting enough, say redo and make more exciting. That's pretty simple, isn't it? But don't be boring. People don't buy boring. They like excitement. They want something fun. If they're going to leave the office and go to your training, they need to know it's going to be fun. Have a look at some other similar events. Go and do a search online and have a look at other people's advertising. And make note some of the bullet points that they used to sell their content. Have a look at what they've said, what they covered. Get some ideas. You probably have already done this before you write your event, go and have a look. Remember to talk about benefits, not features. When you're writing your sales copy, people don't care about this. It'll enable you to grow 3 week. They want to know. It'll enable you to grow 3 week, which means that you'll be the tallest person in your class or whatever it happens to be. The why is so important, okay? What you'll actually learn if you come to this room and how it will help you become more successful, appeal directly to one person. Don't do the hey guys. Okay, that is not it. It's not hey guys. Sitting there watching it. It's, hey you. It's you the one person who's reading the sales copy or watching the sales video. Talk to a one person specifically. Okay? That one person is a lot of one persons. But don't be talking to a group. You're not selling to a group. You're selling to one person. Use the word you a lot. And I highly recommend that you do a little video sales letter and record the video to go at the top of your landing page. Your sales page is really important. Utilizing social media, email marketing, and other promotional strategies, running ads can be a very effective way of doing this. And generally speaking, I'm talking Facebook ads because you can target a specific audience. Google Ads are not so much useful for this because unless people are looking for, say, SEO training, in which case you could really target a specific phrase, which I know people do search for, it's a little less time based, whereas Facebook ads tend to be like next week and very close. Some people will say, you need to run the ads weeks out. Most of the studies I've seen say that you should be running them within a week or two of the event, not months out. Make sure that if you're going to run some ads, do that. But if you're just going to do some general social media promotion, post something different about the event with a link every couple of days. So don't just talk about the same point. Don't use the same ad. Talk about different things that you're going to cover and then link to your landing page. As I said, don't start months out unless it's a weekend or a conference that you're running. Contact your friends and ask them to share it, please. There's no harm in asking for help. Most people will help you utilize your connections to the best effectiveness. If you've got people who have attended before and they're going to attend this next workshop, if it's not the first one you've done, ask them to share, okay? They've got friends who might be interested as well, and some people will share it quite happily. Include a buy one, get one. As I said, my audience like to bring friends, so I made it that if one person bought, they could bring a friend for free. Now, you might say it won't make as much money. True. But if you've got two people in the room, then they both go out and say what a great job you did. Next time they're going to invite their friends, and maybe you don't have to buy one, get one next time, so you make twice as much money. If you got one in the room that brings a friend, that's two, that's 4816, so on and so forth. We all know how it extrapolates out, but the point is that it actually works. Okay? More bodies in a room equals more buzz equals more fun for everybody. It's simple. So get people involved and get sharing. Step five. We're now up to showtime. The execution. This is where all your planning and preparation comes to life. This is where you'll see why all that groundwork was so important. We're talking about doing a little bit of a run through before the event, handling the day to day logistics of check ins and technical setup, and of course, stepping up to the mic and delivering that unforgettable experience for your audience. But remember, it's not just what happens on stage. Engaging with your audience during the event such as Q and A and interactive elements is a key part of making your event a huge hit. So the day of logistics, so check ins, tech setting and all that sort of stuff, first thing is find the room manager. If you've hired an event place, okay, get the rules, find out where the toilets are, all those sorts of things. Find out if anything's changed since you booked. I know we've moved you to this room or something like that, that can happen. Make sure you've got your eventbrite app or whatever printed sheet of the people who are coming so that you can tick off people. This is important because if you've got 20 people coming, you need to know, oh, we've still got five that haven't arrived, or ten that haven't arrived. So maybe there's a traffic problem, maybe you need to wait a little while before you start. So get some networking going or something. Have some name labels available where people can write their own name on. Make sure you get a pen with it. Don't print out labels, it's easier to get people to write them. Save yourself the time and then they can put their nicknames or whatever they want on that label. Get your equipment set up and test run it before anyone arrives. So check your projector works, check your HMI cables working when you're connected to the TV, make sure your internet access is working, et cetera, et cetera. Stand back and look at the front of the room from the perspective of the floor. So go and sit in a couple of chairs and have a look at how things are laid out. Does that work for the audience or does it only work for you? And alternatively, turn around, look the other way and go, actually, this room is set up wrong. It was supposed to be tables in a row in a classroom style rather than event style, which is round tables and groups of eight or something. So make sure you check your room when people come. Ask them if they could take some photos to send to you, okay? If you necessarily give them a gift, if they send some photos to you because you want shots of you in action, you want shots of the crowd, all that sort of stuff, and you're busy teaching so you can't pull out a camera, necessarily. And probably last and most important, get a video camera set up to record it. Even if you only get five minutes of footage, it's great for promos. It doesn't have to have sound, it just has to show you being excited on stage and a little bit of the audience. Doesn't matter how much you get, even 20 seconds is pretty useful when you're doing a video, engaging with the audience during the event, talking about Q and A's interactive elements. My advice is be yourself, okay? Just get out there and be yourself. Don't try and be someone you're not. You won't connect with your audience properly and you'll destroy your reputation. Okay? Have fun. Go and have a laugh with people. Remember, you are the person leading the training. So there is a level of professionalism expected of you. Have fun, smile. And if someone on the floor asks a question, maybe repeat it, because being a small event, most people will hear it, but maybe they won't. You won't have a mic to hand around, et cetera. So repeat the question. And that's always an easy thing to do. Steve says, what do you think about the state of affairs in Afghanistan? And you go, that's a great question, Steve. I feel the state of affairs in Afghanistan. You can bring it into the state of the start of the question, repeat it back. If people have questions that are in depth, just arrange to talk later, okay? You can answer it loosely and then say, look, that's a great question. I'd love to go into depth with you. Why don't we catch up later and organize, have a cup coffee or something, okay? And use a worksheet because it's branding, okay? And you need that branding. So might as well get it and put it in there and okay. It doesn't always work out that you get the time to put one together, but once you've got one and you use it multiple different training days, you can just print a new one out. So we're almost at the end. So you've rocked your event and hopefully you've had a blast doing it. But we're not done yet. Now it's time to dive into that post event follow up stuff that nobody likes doing. This is your chance to find out what worked, what didn't, and how you can make your next event even bigger. Can look at collecting feedback, analyzing how well you met your goals, and keeping the conversation going with your attendees after the event's over. Remember, your relationship with your audience doesn't end when the lights go out, okay? Staying connected is the key to growing your brand and your training. So let's wrap this up and get into it. Gathering Feedback there's a whole range of ways to gather feedback, and there's a lot of tools online to help you do this. Now, there's some where you can just send people a form or you can ask them to do the form before they leave the room, which I highly recommend. Make it anonymous, unless they want to add their email and name, okay? And you can even have a little box that says something like, would you like to make a comment that can be used as a testimonial? Okay? So you can build all that in there. If you want to set up a QR code, people can just scan it and they can write a testimonial for you or give you feedback if that's all they wish to give. Some people will do both, some people will do none of it. Doesn't matter. Any feedback you get is useful, but don't take it to heart, okay? Sometimes you're going to get people in the room and go, oh, this is terrible. I can't believe I pay for this. Don't take it to heart because the other 95% of people are going, that was great, I had a good time. But they didn't bother to fill out the form. Have a look at getting some online tools. I highly recommend it. Signing up for appsumo.com, because there is a heap of tools come through there at very reduced lifetime prices, which means you only pay once, and then you can use it for the rest of your life. Now, not all of them last forever. Some companies go out of business. That happens. But all the same, you can pay $50 US a month to get a feedback tool, or you might find a one time fee of $100. So after two months, if it dies, you've got your money out of it anyway, haven't you? One piece of software I really like is and then there's a range of them, so I won't give you a particular name actually in this case, but go and check AppSumo because there's a pile of them. But there's one that allows you to submit video testimonials from a phone. So basically set up a form, people go there and they press a button and they can record straight through their phone into your form. And then that's uploaded. So you get a video testimonial. And that's really cool to be able to do that sort of stuff. Remember that you can ask them for pics to post on social media. Right at the start, we asked some people to take photos. You can also ask the room, oh, by the way, if you took any photos today or made any really great discoveries, et cetera, et cetera, please send them to me. I would love to use them to share with other people on social media. The other question you can ask the room is, what did you learn today? What was the most important thing that you learned or that you want to go away and do straight away? And that's really fun sometimes, because you can get some really good feedback from people going, oh, that story about such and such, or your idea about how to do this. I've been having trouble with that for months, and I cannot believe that it was just such a simple fix or whatever. So that's a good sharing opportunity when you're still in the room. And of course, if there's people who want to learn more, organize a one on one chat with them. Organize to meet them, get their details, and say, I'll give you a call tomorrow. Don't leave it a week. I'll give you a call tomorrow to organize a chat. If I don't get you, I'll leave a message or text you, and let's get together and talk about that. Because in my case, sometimes these trainings would actually leave to SEO clients. So people come to the training and they would do the training and then decide that it took too much time. And while they enjoyed learning how to do it, they just wanted someone else to do it for them. So you never know where that's going to lead. And it may be other speaking gigs. Who knows? If you're going to analyze your success, the first thing you got to look at is, did you meet your objectives and goals? Okay, we set them out a little bit at the front. They don't have to be big ones. They might just be, I want to break even, have a good day, but make notes when you're finished on what did and didn't work. And then the next day, when you have a cup of coffee in the morning, sit down with your notes and review them. And then add any extras and make some changes if you need to. I suggest that you build a checklist of what worked so that next time you can use that checklist for when you set up your event. So there might be a checklist of things you need to do before the event, during the event, after the event, whatever. It might be three checklists, who knows? But checklists are really handy for streamlining what you did so you don't forget what worked, and that's why they're so powerful. And I also suggest that while you're analyzing it, start to plan your next event straight away. Put it in your diary, start to get ready to promote it. Okay, you've already got the content. If it's a different topic, you'll have to write new stuff. But if it's the same topic, get going while you're hot. While those people still love what you did, because they're going to share it when they see it on their social media. Or when you send out an email and you say, would you share this with someone who might like to learn? Remember that maintaining relationships with the attendees that were there is really important. It's not only important for the growth of your business, but it's important for their growth. Keeping them in touch with each other could give them opportunity to build some amazing business connections. Who knows? Again, going and learning stuff together is not always about just the learning. It can be about the connections you make, the networking while you're in the room. I always find that my favorite bit. So maybe build a Facebook group and you invite only those people who attend your training into that group. And as you run more training, you invite those people into the group. And some will join and some won't. But at least they'll have a little cohort place where they can all talk about the same topic and ask questions. And you can put little posts in there. And as it grows, you can use it for promoting other events if you want to you. But don't just use it for that, use it as a place to talk. One thing I would say about if you're doing that is to keep it exclusive. It's only people who went to the training. Don't let anybody else in because you think that they'd be great. Keep it exclusive. Make sure you add all your attendees to your mailing list with their permission, which you should have had on their form, that we can send you more information because people want to keep learning from you if they've enjoyed learning from you the first time. It's pretty simple, okay? And also you can always offer special member deals. As I said, buy one, get one free, or get 50% off your next training if you come to our next session, whatever it is, it's up to you. That's totally your business. So there you have it, folks. We've walked through the entire process of running your own successful speaking or training event, from establishing your event all the way to the post event follow ups. Remember, this isn't about just hosting an event. It's about creating an experience both for you and your audience, okay? It's about sharing your passion, learning some things along the way yourself, and of course, turning a profit, doing what you love. As I said, my first goals were always just to break even because you never know where the money is going to come from. But as you build bigger and bigger events, it could be about running a couple of big profitable events a year. You don't know who knows where it's going to take you, but you won't know unless you do it the first time. So I hope you found some nuggets of wisdom in this episode and I can't wait for you to tell me about the events that you're going to host. If you found this episode interesting, I've got a challenge for you. Hit that like button and subscribe to the podcast right now. And then share this episode with another speaker who could use the tips and strategies I've shared. Let's help each other grow our businesses and make an impact in the speaking world. Together we can reach even more people and make a bigger difference. So so don't wait. Take action now and share the love thanks for tuning in. And get ready for more exciting business building tips in the next episode.