How NOT To Run A Workshop or Event!

In this episode of the Experts Journey Podcast, Brad and Dixie chat about common mistakes made while hosting workshops and events that can turn memorable experiences into disasters. 

They share insights on the importance of professionalism, cohesion, and audience engagement, using a recent experience at a poorly managed event as a cautionary tale. Learn about the significance of reading your audience, maintaining professionalism, and the intricacies of delivering valuable content. 

Perfect for speakers, coaches, and trainers who want to ensure their workshops build, rather than break, their reputation.

The Expert’s Journey podcast is dedicated to empowering authors, content creators, experts and professional speakers worldwide.

Join hosts Brad Hauck, author of AI Powered Profits: Use AI to Automate & Accelerate Your Business in 90 Days, and Dixie Carlton, author of Start With the Draft: How to Easily Plan and Write a Non-Fiction Book, as they share practical insights to elevate your speaking career.

Each episode delivers actionable strategies to grow your audience, sharpen your skills, and increase your impact through speaking, publishing, and smart marketing.

Whether you're looking to boost your influence or explore new ways to share your expertise, The Expert’s Journey gives you the tools and direction to succeed.

Transcript

0:14

Welcome to the Experts Journey Podcast, where we're all about creating your path to impact. Join your hosts, Dixie, Mary Carlton from Indie Experts Publishing, and Mr. Web Marketing, Brad Howe, as we look at how you can grow your business and influence by leveraging your knowledge for profit. Welcome to the Experts Journey Podcast, where we help you build your brand, grow your income, and lead with impact. Today's episode might sting a little, but it's one every speaker, coach, or trainer needs to hear. We're talking about how not to run a workshop or an event. These are the common mistakes that turn an event from a memorable event to a miserable event, and worse, have your audience talking about you for all the wrong reasons. If you've ever walked out of a session thinking that was a waste of time, you'll recognize some of these instantly. So let's unpack some of the things to avoid so your next event builds your reputation and doesn't break your reputation. Good morning, Dixie. Good morning, Brad. That was very well said. Build your reputation, not break your reputation. As I mentioned to you a couple of days ago, I have just attended an event in Australia where the person that I attended it with was also a professional speaker. And we several times looked at each other and raised our eyebrows, rolled our eyes and said, what were they? And king. And of course, all the way home and for the next couple of days, we kept reflecting back to the things that really made us appreciate the difference between a professionally run workshop versus one that there was no planning, there was no connection, there was no professionalism. And it really hit home just how much when you go to a lot of conferences or you attend a lot of professionally run events, the difference in how spoiled we get, perhaps. But it was all good, wasn't it? Because it was free. You didn't pay for this? Oh, no. In actual fact, my friend who I attended it with had a spare ticket, so she had paid and we both ended up spending a few hours. There were some good things that we got out of it, but mostly, let me just paint you a picture. And these are the sort of things that you might notice something like this in any event, but when it's all in a cluster of over several hours in the same day, it really does stand out. So, for example, the people who were running this event, it was two guys, they seemed very much disconnected from each other, and one of them in particular made a point of ribbing the other guy a lot. It was all like inside jokes. Inside of jokes? Yes. Okay, inside jokes. And then put downs with the inside jokes. The Other guy would also be standing off to one side, often with his arms folded. And on one occasion he was using his telephone while the other guy was speaking. The main guy, so let's call him guy one and then guy two. So guy one was speaking and the other guy two was frequently picking up his phone or he would remember to put his necklace on that had the logo or the thing that they were all about. So there was an imagery thing that he suddenly remembered that he hadn't signed up for or gotten right. At one point he took his T shirt off or his sweater off and exposed his belly while he was on stage. And that something that just made us all go. The guy then turned around after the first break and appeared back on stage with bare feet. Now, I'm sorry, but unless you're Amy Grant, who is a famous singer who does perform famously in bare feet, and I think Delta Goodrum has been known to take her shoes off when she's playing the piano. I know one other very good speaker who performs in bare feet. Everybody knows it when they turn up. Yeah. And this was just random and unusual, besides the fact also that neither of them were particularly well dressed for a professional event that had 60 paying people. So we thought that was a little bit unusual. And so then you think about things like if you guys are going to co present, then there needs to be some cohesion between the two of you. You need to look like you're both in this for fun because you both have done this before and you love the topic that you're talking about. So that there is no guesswork on the part of the audience to as regards to why you are both there. Because if you ever are in a position where you are co presenting, there has to be congruence between the two people or the panel or the other people that are involved. And if there's not, it becomes really obvious that it's not there. So there was a disconnect. Then we get to the breaks and the breaks are all about. This is an opportunity for you to speak to the people that come up to you and talk to you about whatever it is that you've just been talking about. No cohesion there either. A very big lack of connection or desire to connect with the people that wanted to talk to them. And in one instance, one of the people had a book that they had written several years ago was featured in the front of the stage and I personally went up and spoke to one of them about the book and picked it up and said, hey, this looks really Great. Didn't really get that enthusiasm of, yeah, this is my book, you should buy it, it's great. It's got some good things in it. It was like, oh, yeah, thanks. And then turned to speak to the next person. So then the other thing that my friend pointed out on the way home was maybe when you go to something like that and you've put your name in the registration list, the people who are the speakers ideally should at least glance at the list and see if there's anyone on that list that may be a standout person in any way, manner or form. Either someone who, in the case of my friend who was with me, was also a professional speaker and quite well known as a professional speaker. I was there. It's not hard to Google someone like me and find out that I work in publishing. Missed opportunities for these guys in both instances to at least have had some opportunity to engage this on what we did. And like, the stupid thing is you can literally take your list of names and their email addresses that they give you and feed it into ChatGPT's deep research and it'll come back with a breakdown on every person in the list for you. Pretty well. It's not like it's rocket science. It's not like it's hard to get that information these days. Exactly. And then when you've got the opportunity to have engaged with someone even in a simple conversation, and you don't, people leave feeling underserved and underwhelmed. Yeah, certainly. There's certainly a lot of things there. So let's unpack a few of those. The first one I love, like the barefoot thing, as I said, I know a very good speaker, an exceptionally good speaker who wears barefoot and. But that's known. That's his look. It's always his look. And he always wears jeans and T shirt and bare feet. So when you buy him online, you buy him through his videos. When I say buy, as in you buy into his stuff, that's him. But I suppose if you see someone normally in their advertising and they're all dressed up and then they turn up in bare feet, I'm dead. Sometimes that people are trying to put a brand across. It's a bit like, generally speaking, you'll see me in a T shirt or a polo, but when I'm on stage, I'll generally wear a suit. People have said to me, you're a tech guy, you should actually just be wearing T shirt and jeans on stage. And I'm like, I can't, I can't. I'd like to, but I can't. So that incongruence in the branding is one thing where you expect someone to look a certain way because of all their marketing and then they come out looking the other way is the big one for me that I see when people do that. Whereas I suppose also context matters, because, for example, if it was a yoga retreat that they were talking at, then you wouldn't think twice about it, but because it was a business presentation. But you see it differently. I don't think people sometimes think about the context of their workshops. And is this the first time someone's seen me in person? What am I trying to sell them? Am I trying to sell them a $10 million product, or am I selling a $20 product or whatever? So there's so much that goes into your presentation workshop. You were also talking about the fact that two guys didn't seem to actually gel together and know what the other one was going to say or back each other up or even get off the stage, quite frankly, when they weren't on the stage, so that people weren't looking at them, using their phone and ignoring their partner. Now, it's all very well to get off and ignore your partner while they're doing their bit. That's fine. But don't do it where everyone can see you. That's what the wings are for. If you're on a big stage, disappear into the wings or come down on the floor and go stand at the back of the room until it's your turn to come back on or whatever. But, yeah, I've seen these things over the years, and I think it's really important that you understand what the whole process, as in how do you look when you're selling the workshop? First of all, in the presentation, who are the people that are coming understanding your audience, as you said, they didn't even know really who was there. And then making sure that all that matches. So that if you're presenting at a yoga workshop on growing your business, that's fine, fit in with the yoga people. But if you're presenting that workshop to a whole pile of professional speakers, fit in with those people and work for your audience. Yeah. And even to the point of if you are not the one speaking and the other person is, watch your own body language. Don't sit there looking like really fiercely ticking on your beard and looking like you're thinking about what you might be having for lunch. That sort of thing is also really bad form. Right. If you are on stage, if you are Visible at the front of the room facing your audience. I believe you owe it to the audience to at least look like you are present. And without looking like you are present, you very definitely look like you are away with the fairies. And that's not what you have to be going. Yeah, I think also, I think from the perspective of you two sitting there watching this, I also am a people watcher. So I'll be watching the audience, not just the comments on stage. And I'm watching how they react to the situation. So it might just be I'm in the wrong room. In fact, they're totally relatable to the rest of the audience. It's just like I'm not that person. That's a good point. And I have to say it wasn't quite a yoga retreat type workshop, but it was focused on some esoteric topic. There was a meditation as part of the presentation which was fine, but it was still like, if I'm gonna wear jeans on a stage, even for a casual thing on a Saturday, which is still a paid half day workshop, I'm not going to have scruffy ill fitting jeans. I'm going to still look like I am dorkish. They're probably Gucci or something there. Don't think so. But the other thing is two things. Not introducing yourself or not actually making it clear who you are. Because yes, there might have been a bit of marketing, et cetera, but not everybody, for example, knew who these guys were or anything about them. So I think if you're not being introduced, where someone specifies what your credibility is to present, then you have to yourself present who you are and give some reference to why you do this or where you've come from or why you have the right to talk about your expertise to a particular group. So I think managing that, and this is all about therefore managing the expectations of the audience from the minute you get on stage. If you don't manage the expectations about what's coming up in the workshop, what order you're going to take for the day, who you are and why you should be there, and why people should pay attention to you and then deliver on good quality thought through content, then you are doing a disservice to your audience, in my belief. Yeah. And I suppose it comes down to the programming your workshop up and looking at it. Sometimes I suppose I forget that I've got a teaching background. So for me that sort of thing comes really naturally. I don't even think about it. I automatically do intro, middle end exercises, break up, whatever But I think a lot of newer speakers who are doing their first workshops aren't really aware of that sort of structure. They've seen it, but they haven't really noticed it. And maybe sometimes the thing that I would suggest is that you go and do some research and have a look at a structure for a workshop. I mean, as I always say, you can always ask ChatGPT. It will give you a breakdown based on your topic of a great way to deploy the workshop and even activities and when you should put them in. And then you can build your PowerPoints or whatever you want to do around that. But also, like anything, it needs practice before it's done. There's so many elements to make a workshop work if you want to have really good impact. It's one thing to deliver something in a workshop, but to have impact as something entirely different. And as I said, I've seen a lot of really great speakers who, as I said, they're dressed in jeans and a T shirt and that's fine. But their content is amazing, Their delivery is incredible. Their slides are top notch. So it doesn't matter almost what they're wearing, because they're so good that you accept that this is their brand, this is their content, and you want to be part of it. And I think that's really key. Is that homogenous sort of connection between everything. The biggest turnoff of all on the day. Can you guess what is the biggest. No, no. The biggest thing that made everybody go on more than one occasion. Swearing. Yeah, it's funny because I swear a lot. Okay, it's funny. Like, I do swear quite a bit, but I never swear in a podcast like this. There's sometimes when it turns itself off, but at the fire station room at home here, I don't think twice about swear. And on stage is another place where my brain has just gone, no. And maybe it's a hangover from when I was a teacher. But yeah, swearing on stage, it's become a little bit more common and you'll hear it in podcasts a bit. And even now, I grew up in an era where if I said bloody, my mother would wash my mouth out. And of course, I grew up using a lot more words than that. I just wasn't allowed to use them at home. But it's become normal. I was listening to a podcast the other day and the guys were just swearing while they were talking. And it was quite normal, but it was still jarring. Yeah, and it was funny a bit. There were out of the entire audience in this particular instance, most were women, about 10% were men. And I still think that if you are going to pick your audience and be well aware of who your audience is, if that audience had been construction workers, tradespeople, mostly men, even a men's business group, it might have been a lot more acceptable. But when you've got regular swearing, as though you are just a couple of guys hanging around in the back of the yard having a few beers and it is that level of relaxed swearing again in a podcast. But whether it's a podcast or whether it's a workshop, it's just not the right place. Okay. I also have a really bad potty mouth and I'm quite well known for it with some of my friends and family and even some of my clients. Because if I'm one on one with someone, I will, I will be authentic and that's who I am. And I'll swear never on stage and never in certain company. So you just learn how to not do that. And as you say as a teacher, you just, there's times you switch that off. But I think, yeah, I think there's a real push towards authenticity. People are saying, okay, I need to be authentic. What does that mean? I normally swear. So to be authentic, I should be able to do that on stage as well. And I totally get that, I really do. But when you really look across the board in media especially, so workshops is just another variation of media. It's face to face media and often you're recording it and things like that. So you are creating media, you will find that there's actually not a lot of swearing goes on. You look across TikTok and Instagram and all those places, while there's the occasional word or whatever, most of the really good creators aren't swearing. It's really funny. And yet I know in real life they probably swear like troopers. It's still a thing. It's still accepted that you shouldn't swear. And especially, I'm not going to be sexist here. Room full of women. Most women do swear, but they don't like swearing in certain circumstances. Exactly. If I'm having an argument with my wife, if I swear, I am really going to cop it back. That is not a circumstance where I should swear. Whereas if I kick my toe, that's acceptable. Exactly. But that's the thing again, you have to read your audience and you know the odd word here and there, that's fine. But when it is in such a relaxed delivery, an environment where that's not acceptable, you do Start to feel like you've stepped into a public bar room or a sports locker room, and that's just not quite what you expect. So, again, I think if you are going to be someone who runs workshops and for anyone listening to this, thinking about some of the things we may have talked about this morning may be a little over the top. I may sound a little bit whiny and whingy because maybe I'm used to a certain level of professionalism on stages. But I think that there is a time and place for some behaviors and thinking about taking the money from people who have paid to see you and hear you present something of value to them. You have to step into a level of professionalism that is akin to you are taking their money. They are paying to hear what you have to say. And so you have to think about professionalism first because it's not a freebie. If it was a free event, hey, you can maybe argue more about that. Is it me? I can be authentic and I can sit relaxed on the sofa and put my feet up and, oh, the bare feet, that's okay. I can show my tummy when I take off my shirt and not worry about it. But you have to be thinking about the fact that these people are paying me. Right? And so when you are doing preparation for a workshop or obviously especially a keynote, you have to think about your personal branding, how people perceive what you have to say and whether anything that you do actually drowns out the value of the words that you're speaking. And that drowns out the value of the words. I really like that because it's like you can't stop hearing that thing, so you don't hear what they're saying. Looks like your brain literally goes, he's swearing. That's all you need. It's like when a mic goes every time someone speaks and all you can hear is that at the start of the breath hitting the microphone. I went to a meeting the other week and one person had the mic too close and every time they spoke it went. I couldn't listen to them. All I could hear was the B all the time in my head. I don't think people appreciate that. That's actually how the human brain works. It's so caught up in the thing that's annoying them. They can't the good work that they're putting forward. But also, I think you don't realize what the flow on effect of what you've done can be. For example, we're talking about this workshop. We're not Necessarily naming names, but, you know, if I wanted to and I had a social media audience, I might do something about this person and say, I can't believe I saw them, blah, blah. Or you don't know what the staff of the venue is saying. The staff of the venue go home and say, oh, I heard this guy. Unbelievable. Terrible. Unbelievable. And then it's, should we rent to that person in the future? Because there was no sign saying course language being used. So therefore the audience was surprised. How does that reflect on us? Or when you do a workshop, sometimes, for example, pubs and clubs have training rooms that you can rent at a very good price. But you know how many people who are members of the club or in a pub are walking past the door and even though it's closed, they can hear all this language coming out there. You don't know what happens after you leave stage, how many people have gone home like you two did and gone. Yeah, I would never go back. Never. And I would never tell anyone to go back. And if anyone mentioned it to me, I'd tell them not to go. When you're talking about the impact on other people, and even when you're doing a workshop and you're in an environment where there may be another workshop going on in the next room, and we experienced this last year, I think you were in the room as well, at one of the conferences that we were both attending, where someone in the next room was so loud with their music and so obnoxious with their choice of music that not only did it drown out what was happening in the room that we were in, but it was confrontingly unpleasant style of music that just drowned out all of the good stuff that was happening in our room. So I think that's the audience. Yeah. And even if you're doing things like running some good music through the break time, I think you have to be a little selective. And not necessarily if you're into heavy rap or heavy death metal. Just because you're into that doesn't mean that everyone in the audience is gonna appreciate that's what you're playing. Sometimes you have to step outside of yourself to be present for who you are there to serve on the day. I think that's the key. Yeah, absolutely. So you mentioned also the time in between sessions and what they suggested doing. To me, one of the most important parts of going to conferences is the time I spend in the hallways, as I've always said, because that's where I meet people. But it can be structured well and it can be a really powerful part of a workshop because it allows people to connect and talk about things. Setting up a conversation or giving people a topic to talk about when they meet someone. There's so much you can do as the person running the workshop that can set those conversations up and make it easier for people who don't know each other to connect, talk about something interesting, get to know each other, and maybe build some friendships. And. And you can't just every time you want to feel something, tell someone to turn to the person next to you and have this conversation. Because that doesn't always work either. Especially in the first few minutes, because to get a feeling for settling in. So thinking ahead about how you're going to manage some of those is also an important part of planning your workshop. Yeah. As well as I do. I hate any speaker that tells me I have to stand up and any speaker that says, now put your hands in the air or something. If I'm going to get up and do something, I don't like you very much at all. It's just my personality. Okay. So for me, that's. I'm out of here. Lots of people really like that. So where you bring in those interactive elements into your workshops, make sure that you cater for everybody. Don't expect everyone to get out. Make sure that they're things that people are going to be comfortable doing. So don't go straight to get up and dance around. Go start out. Say hello to the person next to you. Okay, this time we're going to get up and we're just going to do a stretch for a minute because we're going to loosen up. It's not confrontational. They're not expected to throw their hands up in the air. Build people up through that stuff. It's all very well if you're the sort of person that loves that, but you've got to remember there's going to be probably more than half your audience won't want to do it. I reckon if that's the first step is get up and dance. Warm your audience up. And when you're structuring your workshop, think about those things as well. Because you're dealing with so many different personalities and they're all interested in what you've got to offer. They really want to stay in the room. But if you make them feel uncomfortable, it's like that old thing calling someone from the audience up to stage. Unless you've set that up beforehand, that's very dangerous because you pick on the one person that doesn't want to go on stage now, you've embarrassed them and you've embarrassed yourself. Whereas if you say, early on, look, later on in this workshop, I'm going to actually break down your website. I might have a look at the conversions on your website and where you could increase conversions, if you'd like to do that. Have a think about that now, because I'll be calling for a volunteer in about 15 minutes, but I'm not going to call anybody out. But just have a think about it. We'll get up here and we'll break it down or whatever, but ease people into things as well, because, you know, it can be really powerful doing that, but you don't want to do it wrong. Again, it all comes down to the planning and the willingness to step into some really good professional ways of operating. If you are running a workshop that people are paying for, particularly to make sure that it is memorable for all the right reasons. We, my friend and I, thought about leaving twice through that one morning and we both agreed to stay because it was almost worth watching to see what else was going to happen. It was like watching a train crash. I do leave, I must admit. There's plenty of times where I've gone to things and even small meetings where I've gone. You know what? I think my wife's calling, I've got to go home and I've left. Oh, I hear my mum. Yeah. Because in the end, I've only got so many hours left in my life and you've demonstrated to me that actually you're not going to teach me anything and I'm sitting here wasting my time and that's embarrassing sometimes for people. On the other hand, so be it. People's time is valuable and you can't. Please everybody all the time. And I'm sure there were some people that attended this and thought it was wonderful, but you just never know who's in your audience. You can't be stomping on or drowning out the value that you're giving by messing up how you communicate it. And you need to be thinking about being the most professional of all the people in the room, because you're the one that everybody's looking at. And what your definition of professionalism is might be different to someone else's. But who's the majority of your audience? Step into that expectation. Yeah, actually, you prompted something there with me. You're talking about the content and I think it's like that old saying, this could have been an email, sit in a meeting. Sometimes when people go up and present workshops they present the content directly out of their book, for example. Yeah. And then you're like, I could have read this, or I have read this. Which is even worse. When you're putting together your content, make sure that you're not directly feeding out. You might take your main chapter topics or you might take your main modules, but make sure it's not the same stuff that you've already pushed out that's so important. There's nothing worse than getting in a room with someone and having them deliver what you've already seen them deliver on their free YouTube channel or their social media channels, whatever it happens to be that they've already given all this stuff away and there's nothing new for you there. Yeah. And I think that's actually going to be a really good topic that we should talk about in more depth in a future podcast. Because how you deliver the content and what content you deliver I think is something that we should be dissecting more of. Yeah, let's. Because it's really important that you're delivering fresh content within that particular workshop, whatever its name is. And you might have five or six workshops, that's fine. But making sure that it's unique in its own way will then. Staying within your funnel and your branding and all that sort of stuff is really important for the audience because they're going there for a reason for. To learn a particular thing. Yes. Deliver on what you've promised from the marketing that you've done sometimes. And then this is something I gotta be careful of too. You write a description of what you're gonna speak about and then you go to write the workshop and you write something different. Now, this can be done on speech, too. I've seen this done on speech. You read the description and then you go and see the speech and you're like, that's not what I signed up for. And so you've gotta be very careful when you are writing your sales copy, that you then go back to your sales copy when you prepare your workshop and make sure that all those bullet points that you spat out you were going to cover, that you actually are teaching those things. Because one of those might be the one reason that people are in the room. And so it's very. I tend to write the workshop first and then write the sales copy. Some people, because, for example, if you're speaking at a conference, they say, oh, we need the description of what you're going to talk about. So you're like, okay, I'll write a description of what I'm going to talk about and then I'll prepare the speech closer to the time if it's a different topic, for example. And you've got to be really careful that you don't drift off into an entirely different speech. So watch your sales copy and your delivery that you are matching up so the people that are in the room are getting what they expected and what they're paid for. Absolutely. Very important. And I have to do exactly that this week. Write something. And I, it was so long ago that I was asked to present on it that I actually have to go back through some old emails to see exactly what they wanted. And it is an easy trap to fall into to overlook the importance of what you've actually said that you're going to deliver and deliver on that. Yeah, look, it happens all the time because we oversell things because it's in written word or whatever. So you put all the extra bullet points in and make it look really cool. Yeah. The whole big thing is that anyone listening to this, you have to know that people are in the audience judging you for all kinds of reasons. And it's, it doesn't matter whether or not it's for a couple of things or a lot of things. You need to minimize how much people are going to judge you for what you are presenting and how you're presenting it on stage. If you have, you know, invited them into your world to hear what you have to say, you have to be credible to them right from the start. Absolutely. I think we've covered that one pretty well. I've covered that well. You got the trauma out and we've discussed it. I feel so much better for venting. Thank you for joining us on the Experts Journey podcast. And if today's episode helped you avoid a few workshop landmines, take a second to subscribe, share with a fellow expert and leave a quick review because it really helps us reach more people. And don't forget to check out our latest books on Amazon. Dixie's Start with the Draft how to Easily Plan and Write a Non Fiction Book and my book Microcourse Profits Build a seven Figure Income with Bite Sized Courses. Both are packed with tools to help you grow faster and lead with confidence. I'll catch you in the next episode. Thanks, Brett. See you.