Taking Your Event On the Road
Phase 1

Remember back when you were first learning to drive. Your Dad or Mom or somebody who had more patience with you didn’t take you out on the freeway that first day. They probably found a big empty parking lot before they put you behind the wheel. It was a nice safe space, and that’s what you want for the trial run or runs of your event.

The best way I have found is to do a dry run in front of a small group of invited guests. These folks are usually friends and family willing to support you as well as honestly share their opinions. If you are the person who will be presenting the event to them, you want to assure them that you WILL NOT TAKE ANYTHING THEY SAY OR DO PERSONALLY. It’s just not worth it to have a relationship damaged because of feedback given honestly with the best of intentions.

You also want to be as open and truthful as you can when you invite them. Tell them what your intentions are and that you will be looking for their genuine feedback. After that, it’s up to you to deliver the goods as best you can and to receive their criticism as valuable insight for doing your first major course correction.

Although you want this dry run to be as close to the real thing as possible, you probably also want to minimize your expenses. So consider setting it up in your home if you have a large enough room. You’ll want to have as many people present as possible, but the reality of the situation is that you’ll probably only get a handful to spend the time unless you are a professional with an existing clientele. In that case, you can pose your trial run as a valued gift (which it is) you are giving because they are your clients. Then, consider limiting the number of participants to what you can comfortably fit into your office or perhaps a meeting room that is available to you.

Whatever the venue you select, you want this trial run to mirror your first event as closely as possible. Even ask some of your guinea pig participants to register before the event and ask others to register at the door. That way you can see how your registration system flows when the table is manned by one of your team members just like you will have when you do the real thing.

This may appear to be a simple element that can be skipped during the trial run, but that initial impression people receive at registration is crucial to your success, so testing it as much as possible will be of enormous value to your future success. The same is true for other aspects of the event such as pre-event homework (have some do it and others not, just like in the real world), handouts, timing, breaks, exercises, sharing and the evaluation form.

Of course your participants are probably people who know you either personally or professionally, but you want to keep it as close to what the real thing will be as possible. In fact, the best participant will be someone you don’t know, so ask those you invite if they will invite their friends, family and associates to join you. After all, you are providing a valuable learning experience for everyone who comes, so why not have them bring “strangers.”

That’s how it will be in the “real world.” In fact, it would be good if you told some or all of the strangers to register through your website just like many of your participants will be doing. That way, you also get to test out that element of your event. If you don’t have a viable and professional looking website by this point in the game, it’s time to get busy on it. For my money, the best way to create an effective, efficient site that does not tax your valuable resources of money and time is to use Site Build It, but the way you create it is your decision. The only thing I strongly suggest is that you have your site up and running well before your begin offering anything to the public, even if it is only a trial run in your home.

That’s not to say that this test has to be produced in your home. It could be done at a local community center or church or even at a hotel if you have the money to rent a room with no income being generated by participants. Their feedback is how they pay you back for the value that they receive from attending.

Most learning centers (Discovery U, etc.) and community colleges are looking for concise presentations, so if you propose a weekend workshop and you are not a nationally known presenter, you will probably be rejected. So, I suggest initially proposing a portion of your larger workshop or seminar. Do this as a two or three hour event, and they will be much more open to accepting your proposal. Do a few of these presentations and make the necessary course corrections prior to taking the next step.

All of these trial runs can also serve to help fill your full-blown seminar. First, make sure that you collect every participant’s contact information so that you can begin building your VERY IMPORTANT database. Also, have a special offering to your complete seminar ready to present as part of every event. This is also a great opportunity to practice your back-of-the-room sales presentation. Who knows, you could fill a local workshop just from a few such practice runs.

The other valuable type of practice run is the free introduction. These are usually evening events where you provide valuable content (within an excellent, inviting context) AND do everything you can to enroll participants in your full event. This is not an easy task to accomplish, especially if you are a novice presenter. Accordingly, I suggest that you don’t schedule these introduction events until you have had a few trial runs.

Of course, the two types of events can be woven into one. You don’t have to advertise it as a trial run, but, rather, as an evening event about whatever your topic is. Just remember that you need to practice, practice, practice before you stand in front of the room before a group of strangers. This type of presentation is no different than a musician or an actor. They rehearse continually before going on stage for their actual performance, and you need to do the same.

While you are investing your time and energy in practicing, you can also be setting up your actual “road tour.” It might just be a series of local events or weekends within driving distance or making the major investment of planning a several month schedule in major cities around the country. Whatever you choose, you will need to begin the process of selecting and booking venues, creating advertising and publicity, putting together local support teams, etc. at least six months in advance.

You also have to have a system for taking registrations and getting questions answered in place the moment that you put your plan out to the public live be it through a radio interview, ads in papers, ads on the Internet, blogs or whatever else you believe will create registrations. Nothing is more frustrating or bad for business than when a potential participant responds to your promotion only to be met with a website or person that is unprepared to handle all aspects of the process (including answer questions intelligently).

And, just to make things a bit more challenging, the person answering questions should not be the presenter. It is very amateurish if the person handling calls is also the presenter. Worse yet is when the phone is the presenter’s home phone and any member of the family might answer the phone. This will cause you to lose business and creditability. You must appear professional from the get go.

If you have a valid and desirable topic to share, you will succeed by following the steps outlined in these pages. Many have tried to bypass some of them, and those people generally fail or take much longer to make their event a success. There is no need to do that. All the information and coaching you need to succeed is available. Personally, I want you to succeed because almost nothing makes me more crazy than attending an event that has great content and falls flat because of logistical / context mistakes.

Don’t do that. Use everything on these pages to get your event(s) up and running as effectively and efficiently as possible in as little time as possible.