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The $100 MBA Show
MBA2358 What I Learned Running My Annual Conference OZCON in 2023 + Free Ride Friday
00:15:57
No matter what type of business you run, building an audience and becoming an authority in your industry is crucial. By hosting events, you can position yourself as a leader and create a remarkable experience for your participants and attendees.
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Omar Zenhom
Foreign. Hey. Oh. Welcome to the $100 MBA show, helping you get better at business with our practical business lessons. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher, Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja, an innovative software company I started back in 2014. And today is Free Ride Friday. On Free Ride Fridays, we give away a lifetime membership to the $100 MBA program. Our program showing you in six steps, six modules, how to become a better entrepreneur. 100% guaranteed over at 100 MBA net. If you want to win a free ride, just leave us an Apple podcast rating and review and you enter our weekly random draw. We announce this week's winner a little bit later in the episode. Hang on for that. In today's episode, you'll learn what I learned from running my annual conference, OSCON in 2023. I'm going to share with you what worked, what didn't, what screwed up, what went really well and why you would want to run an event, a conference, a retreat for your audience. A bit of background. Nicole and I started OSCON back in 2021. The idea of OSCON is to make it easier for entrepreneurs in Australia to get to know each other, make relationships, make connections, help each other out, and go beyond the shallow conversations that we usually have at meetups and conferences. We wanted to basically create a unique experience, the best of a conference, a ret, a mastermind all wrapped in one. And boy, has it been challenging. I mean, the first one got canceled because of COVID or I should say got postponed. Made our first run at it in 2022. It was an interesting first experience. This year we just ran it again for our second time and 2024 is already in the works. So you might be saying, Omar, what does this have to do with me and my business? I'm gonna tell you and I'm gonna give you some options on maybe an event that you might wanna start to become the tastemaker, to become the authority in your industry. Let's get into it. Let's get down to business. I have to say that running events, big or small, either a two hour workshop or a two week retreat, is one of the most underrated ways to grow your business, to grow your audience, to make connections. People are starving for connection now more than ever when we're all working from home, so to speak, in front of our screens, really not connecting on a human level. So when an experience like this comes up on somebody's radar, it's not a yes, it's a heck yes. And the Reason is you get a lot in a short period of time. That's just the bottom line about events, if you do them right. Now I've been a part of a lot of events, a lot of conferences, a lot of retreats, and I've run my own. And I want to just walk you through what are some of the advantages of doing this, what things I've learned in this year's event, and what are some things you don't want to do? First of all, it doesn't really matter what kind of business you run. Whether it's a brick and mortar business or online business, or an information business, coaching business, software business, doesn't really matter. At the end of the day, we all have audiences, we all have a network we need to build so that we can grow our business. And events are a great way for you to become the authority. When you become the person that makes the connections for people, that when you become the hub, when you become the person that brings people together, people automatically start seeing you in a different light. They see you as a leader in the industry, not to mention they feel incredibly grateful to you because you have created an incredible experience for them. Great memories if you do it right. We're going to talk about that in a moment. So even if you want to just get started with a one day event, a lunch and learn, a meetup, a little cocktail event, good friend of ours, Angela Henderson, she goes from city to city and has these great little dinner cocktail events and gets entrepreneurs together. It's not a big hoopla, but it's enough to make connections with people, a few hours. It's impactful, it's fun, it's interesting. So you could start with something like that, you could start with even something smaller, even like a lunch or a couple hour workshop just to get your feet wet. You don't have to do what we do, which is a week long event where we travel to a new location and take care of accommodation and transport and food and dinners and dietary restrictions and all that kind of stuff. You can keep it simple for your first go. And that's what we did back in the day when we started our first events. My first kind of event was just tagging along onto another event. So there was this big event in Las Vegas called New Media Expo. Yes, that's what it was called, New Media Expo. It's been that long. And I just decided to make a meetup where we all had dinner together with a bunch of entrepreneurs that we knew online. Everybody paid for themselves, but I just organized the thing, it was very, very simple, but it was great because it allowed me to have this experience where it allowed me to have the chance to build bonds with people I wanted to meet, people I wanted to connect with, that I then later on build upon that experience and made lifelong relationships, friendships, connections, business partnerships, introductions to other people. The list goes on and on. So the benefits of doing this is tremendous, but you gotta plan ahead and you gotta carve out the time. So that would be my first tip. So, for example, we just wrapped up OSCON 2023 weeks before the actual event. Before we actually hosted our OSCON event, which is a week long retreat, we had 2024 pretty much all planned out. It was set to go and we only have small details we need to fill in, but the location, date, time, hotel, accommodations, all that was already settled on. So planning ahead makes your life easier. And that's the big thing I learned this year was because we planned so far ahead, we started planning this year's event just after last year's event. And it made the whole experience pretty enjoyable and less stressful. Now you gotta remember OSCON is a week long. There's several locations. We go to different places. It's primarily around snowboarding, skiing in the winter months when we do ozcon, but we go to different places, restaurants. It's a real, a great time. We have different sessions for the founders to have talks and discussions and to share and to help each other out. But all that gets planned out months and months in advance, almost a year in advance. So that when it's time to actually deliver and to show up, it's easy. We already know, we've already rehearsed it, we already know how everything's gonna go. Everything's been decided. We're not deciding at the moment how is this game gonna be played or how is this gonna be done, or how we're gonna hand out these papers. No, we already know we're not flustered and it just becomes a relaxed situation. And everybody who's attending sees the organization, they see that you're a professional, sees that this, these people know what they're doing and they're happy to pay good money because they know that you can deliver. I can't stress how important this is. By planning ahead, it gives you the opportunity to be your best. Now, having said that, I talked about, we're going to talk about the challenges too. You are on all the time. Right from the moment you open your eyes in the morning, you're getting to go, you're getting ready you want to make sure everybody's got what they need. You want to make sure the itinerary is on time. To the moment you go to bed, people are asking you questions, people are pinging you. You want to make sure everything's going well. Now, that can seem a little bit tiring at the time, but that's okay. You can recover later. And for me, it's a week long. So, you know, I know that it's going to compound and I'm going to feel later, but that's okay. I'm having a good time now. A few hiccups happen because you're not in total control. Venues will change. Restaurants will, you know, change their menu. Logistical, things can just pop up that you weren't expecting. But if you're organized and you're planned and you have a backup plan, you're going to be all right. And everybody probably won't notice because you are thinking a few steps ahead. And sometimes people are going to be a little bit inconvenienced, but they see that you're trying, they see that you're working hard, and they get it. It's okay if things don't go perfectly to plan when you're running events. And the best thing you could do is to set up expectations from the start. We tell all of our attendees, hey, things are flexible. Things are fluid, Things might change. We have a little saying that we would repeat over and over that I borrowed from Rick Steves, one of my favorite travel bloggers. And that saying is, if something's not to your liking, change your liking. Meaning just be flexible. So what was my biggest takeaway and my biggest learning from running this event? Again, number one, if you give people a great experience, if you create memories for people, is just about the best thing you can ever offer. It's like the ultimate product. It's the ultimate offering because people love a good time. People love building memories, building bonds, bringing friendships. When you have a great experience, this stays with you, and you reminisce about it, and you can't wait to do it again. And I realize that running events, you're in the experience business, you're not too far from being like a Walt Disney, right? Being a Walt Disney World, where people go there to have a great experience. So no matter how big or small your event is, people are going there to have an experience. And if you can give them a great experience, then they're going to absolutely love you, love your event, and want more. Another huge learning from running this event. And any event really is it's all about the people in the room. So a lot of people, when they are running events, they just try to sell tickets. They don't care about who comes. And I'm saying that's a big no, no. You gotta filter out. You gotta make sure that the right people are in the room. Because if the wrong people are in the room, then the experience won't be great, it won't be congruent. People will kind of like, ugh, you know, the event was well organized and the food was great, but you know, I didn't really feel comfortable around those people. It wasn't so great. So curating the room is something that we really, really believe in. Because if you have the right people together, the synergy is incredible. People start to enjoy themselves, get comfortable, be vulnerable, ask question, open up. They make lifelong friends and memories and it's an incredible experience. And that's because of the people that you've gathered together. That's really priceless, right? They can go on their own trips, they can buy their own, you know, transportation and accommodation and dinners. They wanted to set it up themselves. But what they can't do is curate the group. That's what you're doing in an event and that is the secret sauce. That's really the gold that they're signing up for. Another big takeaway is we charged more this year and we will continue to charge a little bit more next year for good reason. When you can charge more, you can provide more, you can create a better experience, you can level up the experience. You can get people to go home and say, wow, they spared no expense. So a lot of people are afraid to charge for their events. It's okay to charge a little bit even if it's a one day event and charge 100, 200, $300. But they have an incredible experience. Number one, they're going to value it more because they're putting down more money. Number two, it's going to help you curate the room a little bit. People that are serious. Number three, again, you're not going to be penny pinching. You're going to have some wiggle room so that you can be able to go the extra mile and have those little details that people remember. So charge more so you can provide a better experience. Now, what are some things you don't want to do? One of the things you don't want to do is you don't want to put the onus on marketing and selling the event on the attendees or anybody involved. I'm a part of a lot of events. I speak a lot of conferences, masterminds. I try to get as many stages as I can. And I'm honored when I'm invited, so I'm happy to go. But one of the things I noticed that some larger events do is they really push the attendees or the speakers to share and to promote the event. That is not their job. That is the event organizer's job. My job as the organizer of OSCON is to get the attendees, is to market it, is to do a great job so that it markets itself for the next year. That's my job. I can't throw that on somebody else. And that sours the experience for people when they feel like they have to sell tickets because they're part of this event. Whether it's a speaker or you're a coordinator or an event attendee. I understand the pressure of selling tickets and breaking even. I've run a lot of events. I understand that pressure. But just like any business or any product that you create, don't ruin the product, which is the experience for everybody. For the sake of sales, change the product. If you have to do that, change the way you do this. For lack of a better example, if I'm selling hamburgers and all I have is stale buns, I have to serve this hamburger with stale buns and just say, hey, guys, suck it up. I know it's not the best hamburger in the world, but hey, that's how it is. No, that is not an answer. Okay, just don't sell those hamburgers with those buns. Sell bunless hamburgers, Wrap it with lettuce, something else. Change the product so that it's a better product. Don't just settle, because this is how it is. No, people want a great experience. Don't sacrifice the experience by putting the onus of marketing on them. Lastly, when you run an event, if anybody and everybody can attend this event and would love this event, you're doing something wrong. In order for people to have a special experience, it can't be for everybody. I know that sounds strange, but by niching down, by doing something that's a little bit special, that's unique, where people opt out themselves and say, you know, that's not for me. In our case, it's a snow kind of situation in the winter, they don't love snow. Okay, no problem. Because if you came and you didn't like snow, you're not going to enjoy this experience. So people that love snow, they're going to be like, oh, this is amazing. So by getting a little niche and specific and not being for everybody. Those who attend were going to enjoy even more. It's not going to be vanilla for them. It's going to be something special. So it's okay. If your event is not for everybody, that's a good thing. Again, design your event so that it is a unique experience. Well, there you have it guys. I hope that helped. I wanted to share some of my takeaways, my learnings, and some of the things that might help you as you do your first event for your business. Remember, this could be a way for you to meet your customers. This, this could be a way for you to network with other industry leaders. It could be a way for you to meet other entrepreneurs and make friends. By being the event organizer, you become the connector, you become the authority and it makes it easier for you to reach out to them and build upon that relationship. Today's episode's not over though. It's Free Ride Friday. Let's see who won this week's Free Ride. And the winner is Darrell Woodhouse from Great Britain, Darrel Says. An excellent podcast for entrepreneurs and business leaders. Five stars. I like the actual advice aspect that is throughout each episode. Perfect for entrepreneurs and business leaders looking to upskill and improve their success. Thanks Darrell for that great review. Your mission is to email me over at omar@100mba.net so I can hook you up with the lifetime membership to the $100 MBA program, our six part course on how to become a better entrepreneur. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. One of the things I've learned throughout my over 20 years of business experience is your most valuable asset in business is your network. The people that you know, the people that you meet. If you lose everything today, if you still have your network, you can build it up all again. Because no one does this alone. We all need your introductions, help, support, feedback, opportunities to have partnerships. Your network is your net worth, as they say. So invest in it. Do your best, whether it's through events or attending events, to build your network. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you on Monday's episode. Take care.