Ideas to Make Your Event More Accessible Financially | Facebook Walk With Reid
Reid: Hello Facebook it is Reid Mihalko from https://reidaboutsex.com/ and sex geek summer camp which you can find at http://www.sexgeeksummercamp.com/ and when I’m wearing the sex geek summer camp T-shirt that means this is business advice for sex educators, workshop facilitators, healers, therapists, counselors, anyone who feels like they’re working in that kind of sex-positive realm. You could be a relationship coach. You could be a tantra teacher that’s kind of the umbrella for being a sex geek pro as I like to say.
And today I’m very excited that I’m on the other side of the river or the little Alameda canal kind of like… it’s not a river. But usually, Allison and I or myself, I’m walking over there and today I came over here because I wanted to show you….there’s a really cool mural that this is just art project right here. I’m just going to walk the mural and I’m going to walk by the river as we talk about some businessy things and as you’re signing on and saying Hi, le….let me know where you’re saying Hi from? Because that seems to be really that’s exciting for me just to hear that or in and also share what kind of sex education or relationship intimacy stuff you do or what…what kind of workshop leader you are? This business advice, I love this mural. This business advice is useful for almost anybody who’s trying to help people with their areas of expertise, being somebody who is a sex educator and nobody ever became a sex educator to get rich, I don’t think. And that’s kind of the end of that mural. But you know I’d just struggle a lot to try to make a living and was hassling a…. you know two or three jobs back in Manhattan in 2004 when cuddle party was first created and came into being. So happy 13th birthday cuddle party! Thank you Marcia Baczynski for being my co….co-creator in cuddle party and helping all those years ago get the website up and help design the facilitator’s training for cuddle party facilitators and now all these years later with the help of Betty Martin and Lynn Dale and the…the board of cuddle party ‘coz cuddle party is a non-profit now yeah and like just thirteen years with all that help. All facilitators across the globe, cuddle party is being done in different languages even and then the thousands the tens of thousands of cuddlers who come to that event, happy birthday to all of you. Without you and the media and facilitators and Lynn and Betty and Marcia, none of this would have happened and it wouldn’t still be a thing. So that’s exciting. That being said, Happy Birthday!
Now let’s talk about business. We’ve got a… sex geek summer camp coming up this summer and that’s many months away even though it’s quickly approaching and I also have a…a workshop called sex geek design studio that’s about designing workshops and content in the curriculum. There’s a particular way that I like to do it that I think is useful for lots of reasons and I’m doing that event in September and this information or what I want to share is the power of having FAQ’s actually I think that sunlight’s burry here. The power of having FAQ’s in your descriptions for certain kinds of events and the power of doing early birds tickets or payment plans that eventually expire. For those of you run workshops or thinking about it, the…the struggle air quotes or part of the work is like how do you create ways to motivate people to sign up for your workshops; to sign up for your retreats or your events? And the thing that I will share as somebody who used to be resistant and now I’m just going to give a quick shot of the drawbridge and now we’re going to turn around, just enjoying the sun. Thank you again for being my excuse to get the hell away from my computer and out into the rest of the world and see some sunshine and some vitamin D.
So, as somebody who used to be sales resistant and would always be suspicious about you know psychological techniques or you know sales psychology because I just didn’t want to be salesy and I didn’t want to be pushy because and I and I understand this more now. One, I was burned by a lot of you know too pushy too aggressive sales tactics from the ‘90’s and the early at’s especially around internet marketing. And there are a lot of people who got burned or just have a bad taste in their mouth from just…just pushy sales or pain marketing. So I had a resistance there and as a sex and relationship educator and as somebody who’s trying to be a good representation of non-toxic masculinity and consent culture, I didn’t want to be pushy in my sales because it felt creepy and a kind of like you know forcing yourself on to people or manipulating people to sleep with you like from my consent culture perspective, it just felt weird or wrong to try to manipulate anybody ever. And the breakthrough for me being somebody who…who is fortunate enough to be able to study with a bunch of different mentors around business, not sex educators but people who were you know making a living in other industries online, the “aha” moment for me was “oh, I need to approach sales and registration kind of the way that I would approach hitting on somebody or flirting with somebody and inviting them to sleep with me. And like how do you do sales and registrations in a non-creepy, non-pushy, non-guilting and shaming way? And so when you start to….for those of you who are consent nerds when you start looking at registrations or invitations you…basically when you start looking at sales as a form of invitation and that you never stop educating. The way you….the thing that we talked about it at sex geek summer camp which is ABE you know Always Be Educating. So when I have in….in….in real life when I’m trying to non-business life, when I’m when I’m hitting on to somebody like eventually, I want to have the safer sex elevator speech because I want them to be able to make an informed decision about whether or not they want to sleep with me. I want to give them as much information and potentially blow the opportunity because the information that they’ve got from me revealed to them that it was not a good idea to sleep with me.
So here is where this all comes around to FAQ’s. You can use your frequently ask question section for events and retreats you know maybe not a two-hour workshop that’s free at an adult store because you don’t want the….the copy to be humungous but when you have a $997 three-day retreat or you know camp is five day situation, you can use your FAQ to help dissolve people’s concerns because you can address specific things that you know people might be wrestling with while you also educate them on how to know if this is the perfect fit for them. And when you use your FAQ’s to help people figure out and work there and give them the ability to….to work themselves through their questions. People who have less questions technically have more certainty and then can figure out I’m going to turn around and then can make better buying choices you know the idea of being that somebody who is uncertain traditionally it’s not going to pay a thousand dollars to attend to your retreat or twenty-five hundred dollars or whatever it is that you’re charging for your thing.
So, using your FAQ to address concerns you know the camp FAQ if you’re curious about it you can go to https://reidaboutsex.com/campFAQ one word and that’ll send you to the FAQ page for people who haven’t registered yet but the FAQ there will walk you through you. Know where camp’s happening, how to get to camp, you know we….we rent a charter of bus to just bus people from the airport all in one shot to….to camp at West Virginia. That way, you….you know that two and a half hour ride to the campground, you’re bonding with other sex educators and so that will you know it says in the FAQ this is we….we do this to make it easy but also so you start to get to know everybody and then you arrive at camp already having met people. It also was kind of fun ‘coz it’s you know, for me as a nerd about summer camp you know “it’s the buss to summer camp!” And then you play games and….and get to know people.
So again like, what are the FAQ questions you could be answering to help dissolve people’s concerns and give them more information so that they can make a more informed choice that helps people be a yes to your event and it also drives the wrong people away. The people then get to understand or have certainty if they should buy your product or your program or come to your retreat and you as a facilitator will have a better time I think teaching an event filled with the right people who should be there rather than having to deal with all the upset and problem solving of running an event with all the wrong people at the event. And so this is a very different way, then most people would think about registration because in the…the old version the 90’s and the early [inaudible 00:11:36] it was all about the sale so you wanted to make as many sales as possible. But for us as event organizers, you want to make you want to fill the room with the right people for the event because it makes it easier and it makes to look better event and it’s more positive and people will have a better experience rather than you know having a workshop filled with people who….who came to the wrong event. Who made the wrong choice and now you’re the one in-charge that has the….you know try to fix that on the fly and that’s a lot of….it’s usually not worth the money. And then it….you’ll have higher return rates, people are asking for their money back, people having a bad experience and then they say that your workshop sucks and then it just it….it….it’s not a sustainable model.
The other thing I want to cover and I’ll try to read some comments, hey Romy! Yehey! Soul yey soul…Soul Play the event, Romy if you can put the…..can you put the link to Soul Play in the comments? because I’m going to be teaching at that and this is another….this is a great example of this next point which is like how do you have if this is congruent for you, there’s no right or wrong way but I would consider having early bird tickets because you will have people who are who like to buy things first and who like to get a deal as an ex-New Yorker, I love a deal. So you’ll have people who know that they want to be at the event, they’ll buy their tickets early so they can save a little bit of money and for you as an event organizer what I would I would recommend is set a limit on how many early bird tickets there are or at the very least you have to put a deadline like these are the early bird tickets and they expire by when. That will motivate people who want to get a deal. You can promote the early bird ticket thing expiring but if from an event perspective, you may want to consider choosing the number of early bird tickets if you want to limit them to meet a certain financial requirement of yours like what I like to do, not with every event but sometimes is like let say I have you know twenty early bird tickets available. Those twenty early bird tickets when I sold them, that….that amount that comes in meets a certain requirement of mine like let say it…it if I sell twenty tickets at the early bird price, I will have brought in enough money to pay for the venue or to meet my basic operating expenses. And then what happens there is when I meet that number, now I’m….I’m moving more towards being in the profit range for the rest of my ticket sales.
This might not be feasible for really big events where you need a several hundred people to be there to be making your profit but like certainly if you’re running a smaller weekend event or something, think….do the math and figure out the idea of well, if I have you know fifteen early bird tickets or ten or whatever, that meets my basic cost so that then what I sell after the early bird special puts me in the profit range. You might have the…you know play a little bit with numbers to figure out how that works for you but generally speaking, I like that psychologically because then if I meet those numbers with the early bird special I know I’m going to have people registering last minute usually and then you know throughout the rest of the promotions I’m hopefully going to be selling tickets and maybe I’m having a contest or something else to help with promotions but I like I like positioning my early bird prices as a means of….of hitting a certain milestone that I need too for my budget. And again, you….you…you but my….and if that not feel good to you, you might not want to do early bird specials for whatever reasons you have that can be real reasons or just emotional or the particular style and flare that you have.
The other thing that you can do instead of early bird or in addition to early bird is for me with….with most of my event for sex educators because I’m also trying to keep them pretty affordable for a population that generally doesn’t seem to have a lot of money. So sex geek summer camp is five days four night and it’s a….497 for the whole retreat. If you want to get a bunk bed rather than tenting then you…you cost a little bit more but for 497 that’s five days and I feed you three meals a day. So camp doesn’t like that’s really….figuring it out like that’s the least that I can charge to help as many people to get there who might not have a lot of money and still have camp break even.
So for me, I can’t do an early bird discount. What I can do is I can create a situation where I have a….a longer payment plan to lower the monthly cost so that hopefully other people can participate and register. So you know like right now we’ve got I think tomorrow or Saturday night so within the day like 24 hours or less, the….one of the multiple pay options for camp goes away because the reason you want to do this is you want to make sure generally speaking that when you run the event, everyone’s paid up. So if we’re five months out from camp, I can do a five payment plan but once we’re….we’re inside that five months, my recommendation is don’t do a five pay because then people come to camp. They get what they want out of it and then they’ll start telling you that they can’t afford the rest of the payments.
So generally speaking, only do multiple pays that will work up until the actual event and then you can use you’re an extended multiple pay as kind of like an early bird thing like that’s the deal and then only….always charge a little couple of dollars extra in your multiple pays usually because there’s recurring charge’s fees and you just going to have more pain in the ass from people not….not you know you just can’t attract people down and trace them down for money. So now you have five months of doing that versus three months. So, you know always have a full pay option I think the choice have a three pay option that just helps and then if you’re five months out or seven months out, you can do a five or seven, honestly I don’t recommend it but if you want to create like something special to help more people be able to register, multiple pays are pain in the ass but I think they can be really helpful for your demographics. So you know like in this situation we’ve got camp coming up in July the end of July and then right before catalyst can, I’m doing a three day sex geek design studio to teach people how to design workshops that seven months away. So for the people who want to go to both, I’ll create and….and this’ll expire tomorrow night. I have a seven pay that allows people to do all of it on a payment structure. So again like I’m just trying to help make people make it easier for people to say yes and if it might not be worth your time, you might try these things out and be like “god, I hate doing anything but a one pay or I only do one pay’s and….and three pays.” That’s fine but these are just ideas to try help make your event more accessible financially and for you to set yourself up to also be able to pay your bills and make a living doing what you do.
So I will put the links to those payment options because the seven pay for camp and design studio, that isn’t listed anywhere like I needed to share the link with you. But if you want to get more information and read the FAQ’s for camp or for design studio and so I’m talking about with FAQ’s then you can go to https://reidaboutsex.com/campFAQ and you can also go to https://reidaboutsex.com/designstudio one word and that’ll bring you to those….those sales pages or….or registration pages or invite to….to….to register pages whatever you want to call them. Some people you know I still have weirdness around sales but whenever I’m saying sales page to me, that’s basically where I teach people if this is a good idea for them and dissolve their concerns with the FAQ and give them opportunities that hopefully help them be a yes financially.
So that’s basically it. So now, we’ve walked a couple of times up and down here, we saw the….the mural over there. Did you see it? Yup! And now I’m going to go to the post office across the river or across the canal and send some sex geek t-shirts to different places and one this some shirts are going to Israel this week which is exciting.
So that’s it! Leave some comments. Let me know what was useful about this video. Share it with folks. Hit some emoticons and make it rain as we a…..as we leave the canal in Alameda and I wish everybody an amazing weekend.
Thank you so much for being a part of all this and when I get home I’ll put those links for the seven pay for both….both camp and design studio if you want to come to both. And also oh, oh, oh well I figure another video on guaranties. Read the guaranties on both of those pages ‘coz that’s also really helpful for a lot of people. Okay? Bye!