Episode 10: The Logistics of Running an Online Conference

See the show notes for this Episode here.

This transcript has been automatically generated.

The connection point with my people is just so incredible that I leave saying, as long as it makes this kind of a connection, as long as it makes this kind of an impact, we will always do this.

I'm Bonnie Christine, and this is where all things, creativity, design, business, and marketing unite. I'm a mama living in a tiny town, tucked right inside the Smokey Mountains, running a multi seven figure business, doing the most creative and impactful work of my life. When I first set out to become an entrepreneur, I was struggling to make ends meet and wrestling with how to accomplish my biggest dream of becoming a fabric designer. Fast forward to today, I'm not only licensing my artwork all over the world, but also teaching others how to design their creative life and experience the same success. I'm here to help you spend your life doing something that lights you up. I'll help you build a creative business that also creates an impact, changes people's lives, gives you all of the freedom you want and is wildly profitable. Welcome to the Professional Creative podcast. 

We just wrapped up our fifth annual immersion live conference, and while we are kind of packing up all of the details and it's all really fresh in our minds, I thought, how amazing would it be if I packaged it up for you and let you know all the different things that we did to make this event come alive. There are so many moving parts, but it hasn't always been that complicated. And so I also wanna take you back to the very beginning of the very first year that we did this and really tell you how simple it can be even though it has gotten to be quite the event today.

I'm excited specifically about the freebie that I have for you for this episode because I have outlined every single thing that we did to make this event come alive this year. I've also put it on a timeline so that you can see at what point if you're doing an event like this, you need to be paying attention to all the different things. I'm also outlining who on our team did all of the things, and I'm also outlining just the essentials because as you'll see, it can be fairly simple or it can be fairly complex. And so by no means should you be coming out of the gate doing your very first online conference and have all of these moving parts. But if you've been doing it for a few years and you're really ready to step up your game, then maybe you do do everything that I've outlined here. So that freebie is over in the show notes. You can get to those by going to professional creative.com/blog/ten and get this download that outlines everything that I'm going over with you today. Now at the end of today's show, I'm also going to share with you our revenue from this event for this year, 2022, and also our expenses. So are you ready to dive in?  

I wanna begin by taking you all the way back to the beginning of this event and what it looked like and why I did it. The first time I offered this was in the fall of 2018 and it was only open to alumni who had taken the immersion course that year, which was its first year.

And I really just was craving this extra connection point with some of the people in my community. And so what we did was we planned it to be right after International Quilt Market, which is in Texas. And so we rented this kind of farmhousey complex in round top Texas, and we had about 30 people join us for that event. And so it was a little bit expensive because of the venue and the food that we covered and everything.

So I wanna say tickets were around $650 and that included lodging in meals and the event of course. And so it wasn't actually very profitable because it was pretty expensive just to host the event. But I loved it and it was such an intimate, sweet experience. We spent an evening and two days together and so on the first evening we come together, we eat dinner and we, we did something that I called Ladies drawing night. So we stayed up late and made artwork together. Then we hopped for the next two days. Fast forward to 2019, we did the same thing, except this time I hosted it in Asheville. It was roughly about the same price point again because of the venue and the meals, but we had a larger group this year. 

I think there was about 40 of us who came together in Asheville, and I structured it very much the same way. So we started the evening with ladies drawing night and dinner, and then we shopped for the next two days together. So both of these events really had me outside of my comfort zone. I was so used to just running my business from inside my house.

And this had me out meeting and greeting people in real life. And as nerve-wracking as it was, I loved it so much. And so the first thing that I did at the end of this event in 2019 was book a big venue for 2020. It was going to be in Greenville, South Carolina at a place that would hold about 300 attendees. And I remember just very consciously stepping outside of my comfort zone because I knew that I loved meeting in person and I was ready to go kind of create a bigger stage.

Now, I don't know if you remember what happened in 2020, but all live events got canceled. And so we very quickly pivoted. The venue was great, they worked with us and let us out of our contract, but we still wanted to hold the event. And so we decided to do it virtually. And this was the first year that we called it immersion live. 

And so we held this event virtually, there was about 350 attendees and I did it from my studio. Now the tech almost killed us at this time. It was just me and one other person, and it was my event coordinator who had expected to be doing a live in person event and instead spent the summer learning how to control a Zoom event and do all of the, all of the things that go into hosting an online event. And you know, we had some technical glitches, we had worked out a bunch of them ahead of time, but there were so many chords all over the room. And actually it was pretty stressful to have all of the tech on our shoulders. But overall, the event went really well and the takeaways for members or attendees were also really, really good. So we decided to really do the same thing for 2021. I remember struggling with this decision because some people were starting to meet again, but because of the venues getting booked, you have to make the decision pretty far in advance. And so in the early, early 2021 was still so questionable over whether people wanted to meet in person or wanted to stay home. 

And so we decided to do virtual again, but with one big up level, we decided to rent out a studio in Greenville that would handle all of the tech for us. Oh my goodness, this was such a game changer because we were really able to show up and treat it more like an event rather than us scrambling with a bunch of chords behind the scenes in my studio. 

It felt so professional. We were able to bring in speakers, have them travel to Greenville and come on stage even though all of the attendees were at home. And so this year in 2021, we really felt like we figured something out. It ran very smoothly, it felt fun, it felt like an event. And again, the takeaways from the attendees are really what keep me coming back over and over and over again because honestly it's quite a lot of work. 

And sometimes when you'll see as I get into it how much work it is and sometimes I feel like, are we gonna keep doing this? And then as soon as we do it, the connection point with my people is just so incredible that I leave saying, as long as it makes this kind of a connection, as long as it makes this kind of an impact, we will always do this. So that year we had around 600 attendees. That was 2021 and we just wrapped up our 2022 version. And this year we had right at 800 attendees. It was again, an incredible experience. It was upleveled in a couple of ways. We did HD recordings this year for the first time and we had more speakers come in. 

And again, it was really just incredible. In fact, I think one of the things that transitioned this year was, you know, we didn't do it virtually because of C or anything like that. We actually did it virtually because it's better, it's more accessible to more people and people can really be at home and comfortable while they zoom in. We can do replays, we can still interact and unmute people and talk, but at the end of the day, it's more affordable for attendees because you don't have to book a flight in a hotel and you can do it kind of on your own time. And so many of us have busy businesses and lives and families, and so we enjoyed having it virtual so much this year.

We've already made plans for next year's. So now that you have an overview, it started very, very simply, literally just me in front of 30 people. And we came together in person pretty much as simple as you can get a workshop style event to the online conference that has many moving parts. So that's what we're gonna dive into now, all the different moving parts that go into an event like the one we held this year in 2022.

So again, I have eight people on my team and in addition to those people, we also brought in an event coordinator and an external studio in Greenville, South Carolina that really ran a lot of the like tech logistics for us this year. So there's a lot of people touching this event. And again, in the free download for this episode, I've outlined who has done each of these things.

But for now, I wanna go over the timelines. So there are several things that we do really way in advance. So we're talking six plus months out from the actual event and one of the first things that I do is really dive into the feedback survey from the year before. So this is such an important part of developing this event. We survey our attendees afterwards every year, and I'm really careful about the questions that I ask because I'm able to use them to really inform what we do the next year. It informs me on the speakers that we're gonna have back and the improvements that we need to make and people's favorite sessions and their least favorite sessions and their ideas that they have that they'd like to see us implement. So before I really dive into planning the next year's, I spend time reading every single feedbacks from the survey of the previous year's attendees. Really the next thing that I do is I open up what we call early bird tickets. Now, this is really before we have our minds wrapped around the event. We're not sure who the speakers are gonna be, we're actually not sure what the theme is gonna be, but we are sure that the event is happening, that it's gonna be awesome, and that we have the dates on paper. And so typically what I do is open up early bird tickets alongside enrollment for the immersion course. And so you're able to get $150 off if you decide to join us at the same time as enrolling in the course. And you get that $150 off really because it's so early. It's like you trust us because we don't necessarily have all of the details in place, but you know that you wanna come and make the commitment to attending later in the fall. So we actually sell the majority of tickets to the event at this early bird price and it's about six months before the event even takes place. The next thing that we do is hold a vision storming session. Now, vision storming is something that I do in my business with a couple of key people depending on what the topic is that we're vision storming. 

Vision storming is like heart storming and brainstorming all brought together. And so we really sit down and spend time vision storming this entire event. Now what we do in this session is we make sure our dates, our dates are usually already decided by then, but we make sure the dates are solid. We also really decide on the event theme, which is tricky. 

You know, we really kind of take turns thinking about what the lay of the land is and what the industry needs, but most specifically what it feels like our personal community needs. And so the theme is different every year. We also button up the location and we start brainstorming speakers. We also start talking about swag. So we send swag and event materials to everyone who enrolls, and we want that to be very in line with the theme. So we start kind of discussing what we wanna put in our swag box, and then we're also talking about things like keywords and phrases that we're going to use as we start promoting and talking about the event. So those usually last about an hour and we walk away with just a ton of clarity on the event and where we're going at this six months out mark, we're also making contact with the venue or the event place that we're going to hold it and reviewing the contract, going over dates, going over payments, making sure the rates are what we know them to be and going over any logistics with the studio. And so this is just an important key to have in place really early on. And then all throughout we're tracking the budget so we have a budget in mind and we have a spreadsheet where we're just really tracking every expense that's made for the entire year as we prepare for this event. 

Okay, so sometime over the next few months I start reaching out to our keynote speakers. And this really depends on kind of how big and busy they are. You know, someone who is speaking routinely may be booked a year in advance. And so I have the list of speakers that we're hoping to work with and I'll start reaching out to the biggest and busiest ones first in hopes of getting them on our calendar and committed to our event.

First I have a list and you know, sometimes you'll hear back from people right away, it'll be a a maybe or a yes or no or sometimes you just won't hear back from them at all. So I have a list and I work my way down at I'll work to reach out to our mini keynote speakers, which hold about 30 minute time slots.

And then we also do 15 minute sessions for success stories. And we also feature artists on the night before with something that we call open studio night. So I really just start working down our list and I make all the initial outreach as the host of the event and see if they're interested in committing to it. Now you kind of get to take a take a breather until about six weeks out.

So starting at six weeks to the event, things begin to get really busy and almost everything that you do is directly related to preparing for this event. So at six weeks out we really make sure that we have all of the speakers lined up and committed. We also have what we call a speaker form. And so this is like a Google form or a type form sometimes. 

And what we're doing is trying to get everything that we need from the speakers in one swoop. So these speakers are busy and we don't wanna have to be reaching out to them, you know, five times over the next month to get their bio and their headshot and their topic for their speech and things like that. So we try to get one form that collects everything that we need from this speaker and we give them a deadline so that we really collect it all in one file swoop, which has really been helpful. And then at this six weeks out, we're really focused on swag. So swag is the event material that we send. We send a box to the first 600 people who enroll in the event, and this box is full of just a bunch of goodies, but they're not like event goodies that you just throw away. They're like amazing things that you wanna keep and cherish something to eat and something to really enhance your experience. 

We fill it with usable, beautiful things that I have personally designed and sourced. And so it's really, really a fun box. Now we only send it to the first 600 people because we have to decide on a number really early on, which is kind of difficult, but we also always reward those people who take first action. And so the first 600 get what we call the ultimate swag box.

And then everyone after that gets an envelope, which is still full of so many goodies, but it's all of the event materials and workbooks and worksheets and things that we can fit into a flat envelope. This is really when we put the budget for the swag onto paper as well. So we try to keep within a specific budget plus shipping for each box that is usually around $30 per box plus shipping.

And then we make a detailed outline of what is needed and by when. And this is really helpful because as you begin to source resources for this box, everything has a different deadline and shipping, you know, rates and things like that. And so you wanna make sure that you get them into your studio and plenty of time to pack it and have it arrive to attendees before the event actually begins.

In week five, you're really designing and ordering the swag, so you wanna give it plenty of buffer time to get it designed, get it ordered. Shipping is still pretty unpredictable, so we try to give it enough buffer on both sides for delays. And then we set a date for in studio packing and shipping, which is usually about two weeks out. 

We'll get there in a minute. Okay, four weeks out. So we're one month away. And what I do is really put the final touches on the schedule. We're not sharing this schedule with attendees yet, but it is shared internally and with all of the speakers. So there's really a flow to a nice schedule where you're mixing in keynote bigger sessions with smaller sessions and breaks and lunch and all of the things.

So I really like to have, you know, my hands on that one really drafting out the schedule to where it makes a lot of sense with people who are gonna be in studio and people who might be coming on to present virtually and make sure that it has a really nice flow to it. Now we also allow just our speakers to promote the event as a partner as well, so they don't have to, but they are invited to use an affiliate link and if anyone signs up through their special link, they get 40% of the ticket purchase for themselves. And so this is really when I'm just making sure that they're aware of this and just making sure that they have everything they need if they do wanna share about the event. So we give them images, we give them scripts if they need more information about anything at all, we just make sure that they're taken care of and they have all of the details at four weeks out. We're also booking a hair and makeup artist and usually a florist. So I wanna talk about this because a hair and makeup artist feels a little bit luxurious or maybe extravagant and I thought so too. 

I thought, no way do we need a makeup artist? We've got this, but we did it anyways. We did it for the first time in 2021 and it ended up being my favorite part of the whole like behind the scenes of the event because you just felt the weight of what you look like taken off of you. You know, you don't have to worry about that. 

Someone is in charge of making sure that you look your best and they're flattening out your frizz and they're picking the fuzz off your sweater and they just are eyeballs on you and all of your speakers. But it also does this thing to your mindset when you're about to go on stage, like it just really makes it feel like a professional event. And so I love our makeup artist.

We, we bring her back every year and she just makes everybody feel their best and she has eyes on, you know, our outfits and our callers and our, you know, wires and make sure everything looks professional and honestly it takes so much weight off of our shoulders. And so I actually suggest this, if you ever have professional video done even for your own studio, like B-roll or promotionals of some kind, just try hiring your own makeup and hair artist and see if you don't love it because it's not as extravagant as it may seem and it really does make such a big difference. Now we typically also do, we do our own set design and so that usually involves a florist and so at the four weeks mark, we wanna make sure that they have us on their books and their schedule.

At this point we're also really trying to pay attention to what we're doing so that we can keep it all in a like running list. So we use Asana for this. You could absolutely also use like a Google doc, but we're trying to just keep notes of processes and issues that may be coming up and notes as they come up so that once we're done with the event, we have something solid to reference and come back on, we can improve it and then we can reference it for next year, which is so important.  

Okay, now we are at three weeks out and so I am finalizing the sales page or the information page for the event.

This is something that I probably don't really need to be the one doing, but I love it. I love being in the webpage design and so this is all me. I'm adding speaker details and all of the information about the event and really just bringing it home back to our community. I'm sharing testimonials from the year before and I'm actually getting to design the webpage with my own graphics and stuff, which is just so fun. We're also designing the promotional graphics and anything that is shareable. So we try to make it really easy for all of our guests and our speakers and our attendees to be able to share about the event. And so Rebecca, my lead designer, does all of these Instagram graphics for stories and posts and emails and people are able to share not only about the event, but who's speaking and if they're speaking. And she also makes things like blank templates for attendees to share their takeaways. And we organize them in a Dropbox folder and we just make sure that everyone has them so that they can easily share not only about the event, but if they're speaking and what their experience was like if they're attending to. The key takeaway here is to make it easy for people to share about what you want them to share about.

 So if you have partners or affiliates or attendees or students or anything like that and you hope that they share about whatever it is you're doing, how could you make that easier for them? Can you design, you know, we even design everything in a couple of different color options so that if someone wants something really neutral, they've got it. If something, if someone wants something a little bit more colorful, they've got that option too. So making it easy, giving it to them in the easiest way possible, just does them a favor and also does you a favor. Okay, we're still at three weeks out and this is really when I begin talking about the event more and more. So we are ramping up sales and we are also talking about it to our existing audience.

So people who are in our courses or our membership or who are on our email list, we're just referencing it, making sure they know that it's coming and making sure that they have any questions that they might have answered. This is also the time to book hotel rooms. This past year we waited a little bit long to book hotel rooms and our favorite hotels were sold out because there was another big like conference in the town that we didn't know about. 

And so I'm putting this on at least three weeks out. We book hotel rooms, we, the studio is about two and a half hours from where I live, so we book a room for me, but also for any of the speakers who are coming into town. We take care of their hotel room and we all like to stay in the same hotel so we can kind of like carpool together and go to dinner and things like that as well. 

Okay, now we're coming up on the two weeks out. So we're two weeks away from the event and this is when you should be finalizing your presentations. Now I giggle a little bit because I'm kind of one of those last minute. Well, I don't mean to be, but something always comes up and something happens when there's a little bit of a crunch. 

Is it that just me because when there's a little bit of a crunch, my goodness, creativity just seems to flow and things begin to connect and it's actually really hard for me to wrap my head around, you know, presentation number three when I haven't even given number one yet. So even though I have the big rocks in place at this point, I'm not really finalizing everything until, you know, I'm, I'm building in time, like after dinner and early in the morning and over lunch of the actual event to pull together some last minute things, which kind of is just the way I work. But I put it on three weeks out here because that is, that is a goal for me and I think that if it's you, you'll probably feel a lot better if you have them finalized way in advance.

So the next one is swag. We actually have all of the swag, all of the products in studio and we're starting to package them. So building boxes, making the envelopes and shipping them. This is a huge undertaking, even just building 600 boxes alone, let alone, you know, packing them beautifully. And also packing, it's about a thousand envelopes which have all of these different inserts in them.

It is quite the undertaking. And so I have an amazing shipping manager and then she also brings in just extra help for a whole week to get everything shipped and packaged beautifully, all of the labels printed and everything delivered to the post office in time for delivery by the time the event starts. Of course, if you have an international audience, you need to take that into consideration as well. 

Make sure that you're shipping those in time for them to arrive as well. Upgrading their shipping or giving them priority in, you know, the packaging line or anything you can do in order to get those in hand before the event starts. We always also give a PDF, like digital version in case someone's haven't arrived yet of the essentials, but it feels so special to get a box of goodies for an event that's coming up like in the same week.

It also really helps drive buzz around your event because people will, you know, go on Instagram stories and open the boxes and you get to share that and it gets you excited as well. So make sure you are doing it in time for everything to arrive prior to the event. At this point we are designing the final schedule and we're delivering it to the attendees, which I'm always conflicted over because you know, typically for an online event you wouldn't give the schedule because what it does is some people will kind of cherry pick which ones they want to attend and which ones they want to skip. And we as the event hosts want everyone to show up for the whole thing. However, I know that people really love to have the schedule in advance.

So we up until this point, and I think we plan to next year as well, we give the schedule and then just really urge people to come because we haven't built anything into the schedule that isn't phenomenal. So we want you to come, we want you to show up anyways. The other thing that happens when you give them the schedule is that they really hold you to it. 

And with an event like this, there is inevitably something that's going to happen, a speaker that gets sick or someone who's running late or something that just changes and you've got to make last minute changes in the moment. And so something that I've learned is on the schedule to just like make note of that like schedule is subject to change. You know, this is a live event and that just helps people know that this is a guideline and it's a rough outline.

This is what we're hoping for at this point, we're also very much finalizing the set designs and so we have two different sets that we can switch in between. One is what we call the keynote set, which has a table and a computer at it, and all of the big sessions are given there. And then one we have is called the conversational set. 

And so we've got multiple chairs, we can do more of like a round table situation there, or even if it's just two people, it feels a little bit more cozy. And so we're designing those now. We can't set them up yet, but we wanna make sure that we've got everything that we need to set them up when the time comes. That puts us to one week out at the one week out mark.

We're building welcome bags for all of the guests now, not the attendees, but the actual speakers who are coming into the city to speak. We are putting together welcome bags to put in their rooms for them as a thank you and you know, get them excited about what they're there for. We also do tons of pre-event announcements, so we're really working to build anticipation, get attendees excited, also get them planning to attend live. And we're doing fun things like designing gifs for the event. Now, I don't know if you say gif or gif, I'll probably say both, but I usually say gif, but it's okay if you don't agree. And so our lead designer made event gifs and they're on Instagram stories, so that's a super fun thing to do as well, which brings us to the week of the event. We are in the actual week of the event and there are a lot of loose ends that need to be tied up as well as a real sense of focusing and turning kind of inwards in order to present really what you want to present at this event. My event coordinator is busiest on this week, and so she does things like organizes the studio.

She'll have everyone's favorite snacks, she'll make sure there's a full length mirror. She'll make sure that there's like a quiet room that you can go into to prepare and gather your thoughts. She also has things like Alka Seltzer and Tylenol and mouthwash and like just all of the little things that you might need during a three day event like this. We're also actually setting up the set design and then we're breaking it down at the end so that all happens in the actual event week.

And then during the actual event, the event coordinator is managing the Zoom room. And so this is absolutely something essential if you are doing a workshop like this or a Zoom conference, it's really necessary to have something who's in charge of the tech of the Zoom so that you don't have to manage that part. Examples of things that she's doing is spotlight spotlighting speakers and muting everyone if they need to be muted or unmuting them if they want to raise their hand and talk with me. 

She's also considered the studio manager and so someone who's actually in the studio communicating with you with usually like a whiteboard. So she'll write any notes that the speaker needs to see in real time, like while they're on live and hold it up, what's coming up next or was there a schedules change or do we need to take, you know, let everyone have a 15 minute break or something like that.

Now we also have someone with eyes on our inbox and this is really important because as you go live, whether it's a big online conference or even like a workshop or a q and a, you'll inevitably have people who are Searchie for the link to join. And so they'll kind of come into the inbox and a little bit of a panic. And if you're the only one with eyes on the inbox and you're over there live, then there's no way that they're gonna make it to the event. And so make sure that you have someone with eyes on the inbox to help anybody who has those last minute questions or who are trying to get to the live event. Anything that feels like an emergency is so well taken care of by someone who has eyes on that. Now the other thing that we do is I create something called a hub, which is really just a private website, like a landing page where we can put everything that's pertinent to the attendees. And so I implement a live chat on the back end of that page and that's really for things like administrative questions. 

And so someone can, you know, come into the Zoom chat and say hello to everyone and connect, but if they have an admin question, they come over to the hub and they speak one on one directly with someone on my team. And this is just a nice place where if I mention a link or a resource in one of my presentations, they can update the hub right in real time. And so we always tell people, you don't have to worry about links or emails. If you can't find something, just go to the hub. We'll have everything that you need for the event listed there, you know, don't worry. And so it really does help put everyone at ease and it also helps reduce the actual inbox support that's needed because we've got someone in live chat on that page as well. Okay, so besides actually hosting the event and killing all of your presentations and making your speakers feel special and loving on your attendees, well that wraps up the event. So there are quite a lot of moving parts and so after the event, there are still some kind of loose ends that you want to, you want to take care of. So first and foremost, you're really breaking down the set. You're cleaning everything up and you are working on replays. So we offer replays as a part of the entire event. 

You may or may not, but we use a program called Searchie that we upload all of our videos to, it gets transcribed and then we import them into a product that we have for all of the attendees. It's called Kajabi. The platform that we use is called Kajabi. And so the whole week after the event is really spent working on building out this product, we have to make sure that the replay product really showcases the event. It has all of the relevant links, it has notes for each session and all of the details that are needed for a real quality experience. And so it basically looks like a course after the live event is over, you get a login and access to a product that has all of the days and all of the sessions with replays and downloads and all of the slideshow presentations and everything attached right there.

We also very much pause to store everything that we did for this event. Now my integrator usually does this and she references it as if we're done with a holiday and we're packing up all of our decorations and we're putting them in a box and labeling them and putting them in storage. And it's such a game changer for a big event like this. Or anytime you do something big because you just pause to kind of capture while it's still fresh what you did.

And so we are storing all of our emails, all of our social media copy, all of our images, our schedule, our outreach to speakers. You think about it and there's just so many different things that we did that it's really important to bring them all together so that next year you don't feel like you're reinventing the wheel. Rather you've got something to work with, you've got a plan, you've done it before and you can kind of come in and refresh it. We are also following up with our speakers. We're sending them thank you gifts and loving on them, making sure that they know how much we appreciate their experience. We're also paying them so we pay speakers and we're also sending out any affiliate commissions in the week after the event.

I think it's also important when you do something like this to make sure to kind of recap it on social media as well. Sometimes we all focus on the anticipation and like it's coming, it's coming and then it happens and then we're just onto the next thing. And when you do something like this, you actually end up creating so much content that you could easily pull from it and make some post production, like post event content to share as well. Maybe you take some audio clips or some video clips or some takeaways or some testimonials or stories or anything from the event and share it afterwards as well. And then of course we are sending out the post event survey to the attendees. This is what we will use in order to really vision storm the following years.

And so it's always important to just get feedback from the people who came to whatever it is you're doing and hear them out, listen to what they loved, listen to the feedback that they have, ask them questions that you want to know the answer to. Like who would you love to have as a speaker next year? You know, do yourself a favor and let them help you generate ideas for the following year. 

Now, the very last thing that we did was have just a quick vision storming session right after the event. And this was so key because it was all so fresh. We were still in this bubble of the event feeling all of the things, loving it so much, and we just paused to come together to discuss what we could do better next year and what we need to make sure that we keep.

And so one of the things that came out of that this year that I thought was really cool was Lisa, my integrator, she was actually supposed to come and speak live and at the very last minute had someone in her family get sick. And so she ended up staying home and presenting from her house, which was just not what we had planned, but she ended up attending as an attendee for the entire event from her house.

And it ended up being such a cool thing because she was able to really experience it from the other side and have immense feedback. She was, first of all in love with the experience and the ability to sit in her most favorite chair in her pajamas, you know, and you know, get takeout or food broad or all these different things. And that really made us think about how we could set up our attendees for more success next year. 

Like maybe we could do a little training on how to make the most of a, of an online conference and how to go ahead and, you know, maybe plan your meals in advance or tell your family that you're gonna be off the radar for a couple of days. You know, maybe we've got t-shirts that everybody can wear. I'm not sure exactly what, but it was really fun to just brainstorm how can we make sure that everyone who attends next year is set up and really thoughtful about their intention for attending the online conference and kind of removing distractions and being present. So that's a wrap. That's everything that goes into the six weeks right before a big, big online event. Now, like I promised you, I wanna go over our income from this event this year and also our expenses. So I mentioned that we had around 800 attendees and ticket prices were $349 except early bird tickets were $150 off of that. And so our gross revenue for the event this year in 2022 was $197,000. So right at $200,000, which is incredible. Now our expenses were around 87,000, so $86,769 plus payroll. I did not slow down enough to really calculate the payroll that went into this event. I don't even know if I would be able to if I tried because it really is such a huge team effort. So we need to take that into consideration and I don't really know where that puts us, but let's say, let's say half of it was an expense, so I'm gonna kind of work from our highest expenses down. And one of our higher expenses was the actual studio that we rented. This took care of all of the tech, it took care of all the recording and the replays and the HD recording and it was money well spent. Also, the event coordinator, again, hands down, one of the best things, someone to take care of, all of the details of an event like this. Next was our swag box and all of the items that go inside of it. And then our shipping. So shipping, actual postage fees were way high up on the list of expenses, which is just a known unknown thing every year. And then of course, our speaker fees.

So we pay all of our speakers and our guests. After that comes some miscellaneous expenses like the hotel rooms that we book, the hair and makeup artist, the florist for this set design and our thank you gifts for all of the speakers post event. That is an overview of what it took all of the logistics of an online conference like we did this year. 

Now I want you to remember, you can start as simply as you want. You could start with an in person event, or you could start with a simple, you know, zoom workshop or q and a where it's just you and some people on camera together. But if you wanna turn it into an entire event like this event of the year, these are all of the things that went into it for us. 

Don't forget, head on over to professional creative.com/blog/ten in order to get the download for this episode. The download is going to tell you not only what we did and when we did it, but who did each thing. And I'm also highlighting everything that is essential so that you know if you're just doing your very first conference or online workshop, what's essential as opposed to all of these other things that we've built in over time.

Thank you for tuning in to another episode of the Professional Creative Podcast. I'll see you next time. Same place, same time. See you then.