Ep 85 - Get Clients Hosting Small Events

Want a fast and human way to bring in clients every week?

In this episode, Aaron shares his all-time favourite client acquisition strategy: small events.

Whether you’re launching something new or just want a predictable way to grow your client base, this episode walks you through how to use intimate, in-person small events to build relationships, show your expertise, and generate leads without the cold calls or DMs.

You’ll discover:

• The event model Aaron used to grow three businesses since 2012
• How to fill boardrooms with future clients using Facebook ads
• Turning interest into paying customers
• Why small, live events works in today’s AI-world

👥 Want help setting up your own client-attracting event? DM Aaron or join the waitlist for the upcoming live event strategy offer.

🎥 Bonus: Head to aaronwitnish.com for a free training on generating leads that convert.

Transcript

It's one of the most fun ways to bring clients on board because you get to meet them and spend that time with them upfront. So you build a mini relationship before you start working together. And because of that dynamic, so you're presenting, you're at the front, you're teaching them things, you're the expert when it comes to the sales side, you've got the frame and you're not chasing the lead that might've given the phone number and you're constantly calling out and trying to get them on the phone to have that conversation with 'em. So it's a very powerful way to do it. 

In 2012, we put an ad on Facebook to an Eventbrite page, and we had 20 people show up to a South Bank apartment on the executive level, ran a workshop to launch our education company, which sold diplomas, and we had five students onboard from that session and a business was launched and we got paid in a very rapid timeframe. Small events, one of the fastest ways to launch and market a concept or consistently add new clients to your business. And since then I've done over a hundred small events and I've used it to grow an agency, a consulting business, and also that education company which got sold in 2016. I want to walk you through how you can run these for your business and get new clients on board, whether it's weekly, fortnightly, monthly, however often you want to do this. And I think it's such a powerful strategy in 2025 as this shift towards AI and all this synthetic content and avatars coming out online. 

When someone can walk into a room, they can look you in the eye, shake your hand, and listen to you as the expert teaching them stuff for 60 minutes. There's a very different buying dynamics than someone that's got resistance and scepticism from seeing you in the online world. So if you're new here, my name is Aaron Whitney. I've owned and operated a marketing agency for the last 15 years, and you can go download a free workshop to generate more leads for your business@aaronwhitney.com. A magical universe experience happened to me this week. My favourite suburb in Melbourne is Monte Albert. I just love the homes there. They're old, but it's a high-end area and it's quiet. If you move closer in towards the city, it's a lot busier. It's kind of tucked away. It's a beautiful little pocket. And often on the weekends we go for walks there. 

I take my son to the parks there, grab a coffee, look at all the houses. It's a beautiful experience and an office space, a coworking space opened up on the strip where we go and get our coffees. So in the most abundant suburb to me in Melbourne, in my favourite location, there's a ground level new office space that I've joined as a foundational member and I can use their boardrooms to run my small events. So I am very excited to be doing these events out of my favourite place in Melbourne. And the strategy goes like this. Once a week I will fill out the boardroom, which has 12 seats in it with people who want help solving a very specific problem that we can help them with. And we'll show them how to do that over the 60 minute session. They'll get to meet me and spend that time with me. 

And then at the end, Hey, if you want us to do this for you, you can apply and we'll work together. And that's the simple model. And you can do this exact same thing in your business as well. If you get a handful of clients from a single time investment, whether it's 30, 60, 90 minutes, however long you want to run a small event for, this can be a powerful way to predictably get clients through the door. And when you do them consistently and you get used to doing a couple of small events, you get this ratio of results. So for example, after a while you might know, hey, if we get 30 people to register for our small events, if it's a free one, then 15. So 50% might show up on the day. And that means from that we get seven of them that then apply because they want our service or our extra help. 

And then of that, we get fired that move forward as clients. And once you have that ratio of results, you can be very predictable and future pace how you bring clients on board into your business by just running those numbers and repeating it. And it's one of the most fun ways also to bring clients on board because you get to meet them and spend that time with them upfront. So you build a in relationship before you start working together. And because of that dynamic, so you're presenting, you're at the front, you're teaching them things, you're the expert when it comes to the sales side, you've got the frame and you're not chasing like you're doing with a lead that might have given the phone number and you're constantly calling out and trying to get them on the phone to have that conversation with them. So it's a very powerful way to do it. 

So how do we set these up? So you can do small events for your business. So if you haven't got the tools and tech or anything set up online before, Eventbrite is a really simple place to start. So you can set up your event using this tool. I think it's free to use Eventbrite and you just name your event time and date, what the location is, and to pick a venue, you might use a co-working space, you might have your own office boardroom. I even ran some events out of my apartment in Sydney when I was getting started, which was an unusual choice. And you've always got the online option too if you're travelling and you don't have a physical location to do it. But the conversion for me, I get a lot more clients when it's face-to- face in person and a better show rate usually than when I set these up and do them online. 

So it pays sometimes to have people come into the room and get to meet you. So you set your event up there. Eventbrite has some of its own inbuilt marketing features. So you can promote your event on Eventbrite itself, just depending on who your target clients are. But we've always used Facebook ads as a predominant way to fill the event. So we'll write a hook for the event. So what problem are we solving or what outcome are we delivering in the session, what the takeaways will be. So there might be three or four points that they'll leave with. Then there'll be the link, Hey, register, grab your ticket here. And then a few details, Hey, it's on at 10:00 AM Saturday morning, Mon Albert, et cetera. Bring a friend along and however we want to position it up. And then those Facebook ads drive the traffic to the event page. 

Naturally, people who click on the ad are interested, they want to know about the event, and they have the option to register and get their tickets, and that's as simple as it is to fill the event. Then there's a few automation settings you can have inside Eventbrite that send reminders. You can set emails to go out. You can even have SMSs if you have some software there just to confirm numbers. And then you get in there and you just deliver an awesome presentation. What I usually recommend is just showing how your stuff works. So whatever your system is, whatever your process, you might use a case study, walk through some examples. Hey, here's how we get from A to B. And then naturally your offer at the end would be, Hey, if you'd like us to do this for you or do this with you, then apply. 

We'll have a conversation, make sure it's a fit and work together if it's a match. And it's really fun, healthy, low pressure way of adding value to people, getting them to the point where they're ready to make a decision and then having them apply so they're selling you into the service rather than the other way around. So if your business hasn't tried that and you're releasing it, you've got an existing product or service, or you've got something that you want to test in the marketplace, this can be one of the fastest ways to get feedback. Do people respond in the marketplace to this offer and then monetize it. Get people into this small event and get paid to get some clients on board and prove the concept and then just repeat it. If it works, you do it again. If it doesn't work, you might make some tweaks and refine it just to see what lands. 

But really simple, awesome, fun, leverage way to get multiple clients from a single effort at a high frequency. So as I mentioned, I'll be doing these weekly from the end of June and going on a little bit of a sprint with that. Sure, I'll share more of the results on how that plays out here in the podcast. But if you've got any questions around this particular strategy or you want to see some content that I might've done with some examples around live events somewhere on YouTube, just send me a message. Aaron, Whitney, I'm easy to find. There's not too many of me around. And I'll happily help you and point you in the right direction. And if you did want help filling a small event for your business, a workshop, getting target clients into the room, a great lead gen strategy, and putting that together, I am releasing an offer around that. So you can let me know you want to be on the wait list or the EOI list expression of interest list for that, and I'll give you some more details about what that looks like. But that's the end of today's podcast episode. Make sure you hit that subscribe button and share it with someone else who might like to learn more about filling small events as a way to add more clients to their business.