What I Learned Hosting Workshops & Event Planning Tips For Your Own Workshop
Over four weeks in April and May I hosted three workshops in different corners of the country. As a start to spring this was immersive, intense, overwhelming but also completely inspiring. I’m an INFJ, which means I’m an introvert but I can turn it on when I need to, and I was actually surprised by how I fed off this experience and how much I enjoyed it. It did wonders for my confidence, and also I just love talking about business and it was so inspiring talking through everyone’s dreams and ideas.Workshops and in-person events in general are having a real moment right now.
‘Experiential marketing’ (i.e, marketing that happens in-person) has been steadily growing for a few years, and almost everyone I speak is going to, hosting or thinking about workshops. In our online world we’re all craving a bit of connection, so events are a great way to provide that to your audience, as well as get a bit of connection yourself.If you are toying with the idea of hosting your own workshops, here are a few things that I learned, both from a practical point of view, and also more cerebrally.
The value is in providing the space
This was the biggest shocker to me. As you know, I’m all about providing value, so I felt a real weight of responsibility to always be giving, performing, adding more. I had such an intricate plan (see below) and got myself in a real tizz before the first workshop about making sure I got everything in.But once we were all sat down, the power of the workshop took over. Everyone was sharing their own stories and ideas, helping each other, laughing and thinking. And it dawned on me, as I felt conscious that I hadn't spoken for a long while, what the value actually was. It wasn’t me, not really; it was in providing the time, space and opportunity for these conversations to happen. To get these women in a room and give them permission to talk and think about their businesses in a way they never would have when left to their own devices. It almost didn’t matter who I was or what we were doing, the value was in the time and space.
Don’t overplan (you won’t stick to it anyway)
As alluded to earlier, I went well overboard with my planning for the first workshop. The night before I wrote out a minute by minute (not an exaggeration) itinerary of the day, planning to spend five minutes on this, and fifteen minutes on that, followed by a ten minute discussion and lunch. I planned in the minutiae of each exercise, how I’d break it down and how I’d add even more value at each stage.And obviously, I didn’t look at my itinerary once. In fact, by the time everyone arrived and we started early, it was completely irrelevant anyway. I also quickly realised that in a group setting, simplicity was key. The layers could, and did, build up in the discussion – the complexity lived there, the exercises just needed to kickstart the thinking, rather than be the end result.
They are stressful to sell
Events are in this weird space where they straddle services and products. They are, technically, a service, yet they have the fixed costs and margins of a product. But there’s another layer too: unlike a product that can sit in storage til it sells, they are time specific. So when selling a workshop, you have fixed costs you have to cover, and a finite period time in which to cover them.I found this quite stressful. It’s not my style to talk much about my product, and as a service provider I can afford to do that because there are never any end points or deadlines. But I really felt the pressure of the deadline and the weight of the costs, particularly with the London workshop where my costs were significantly higher and the workshop was slower to sell (in fact over half the places didn't sell until the week before).
Do your sums
With that in mind, you really have to do your sums and keep on top of the costs, because it doesn’t take much for your profit margin to be wiped out. By the time you’ve paid the venue, food, materials, travel and accommodation, workshops are actually not hugely profit-making, so you have to be really cost-conscious.
Which also ties into why they were stressful to sell, because if, for example, I’d had 8 instead of 10 people at a workshop, I’d have lost money. This is because I’d started with the number of people I wanted and how much I wanted to charge each, and then tried to find venues that would fit. In planning any future events, I will start with costs and factor a buffer into my pricing to ensure that I don’t have the same amount of stress, and that they are financially more worthwhile.
They make you realise how good you actually are
Although the workshops aren’t the most profit-making of my offerings, they provide value in other ways. I loved meeting everyone, getting feedback and generally being inspired and connected IRL. It also gave me so much more confidence in my abilities, and I feel I’m a better coach for doing the workshops too.Nothing will put you on the spot more than a workshop – you have ten different people all with different businesses and struggles and they’re all asking you completely different questions for eight hours straight. Which on paper sounds terrifying, yet you find yourself answering every single one, and answering it well – you see the a-ha moment on someone’s face followed by the ferocious scribbling down and triumphant underlining of their idea. And that is just the best feeling.
