BEFORE YOU HOST YOUR NEXT EVENT…

From 2015, I have hosted 4 grand events so far. My first ever large event was BCP Conference that held at Unilag (University of Lagos) in November 2015. BCP stands for Behavioural Change Practitioners. The intention was to hold forte for professionals who practice any form of behavioural change work; from social workers to counsellors to therapists to psychologists, etc. The event was free. We spent around 3Million Naira to host the event and had a deficit of more than a million Naira afterwards. After that event, several speakers who attended BCP Conference created their own platforms and that broke the momentum I had for the conference. I threw in the towel immediately.

After 2 years, in 2018, a friend and SOBCA Coach, Damilola Odedele, and my team, impressed greatly on me to host another edition of BCP Conference. Their argument was that the more I pushed the brand, the more it will draw success. Reluctantly, I agreed and we hosted a second edition in Abuja. Venue was BMO Event Centre and again, it was a free event. This edition helped me meet the most iconic PASTOR TONY RAPU. I also had a great honour of hosting several resource persons to dissect the topic around SUBSTANCE USE, which has ravaged our country Nigeria. My team went all out to market the conference. We sought sponsorship. We got NONE. We sought support from corporate, private sector, public sector, etc. We got NONE. We literally bootstrapped our way to successfully host the event. The most shocking was that we had OVER 1,000 registered people to attend but ONLY AROUND 300 came to the live event. Damn!!! I felt deflated. 🤣😂😂. This affected our promise to vendors who came to sell wares as exhibitionists. At that point, I told myself “THIS IS IT. NO MORE BCP CONFERENCE”.

In 2019, when I had registered Business Study Group (BSG), I decided to commence annual SUMMITS called BSG Summit; as a replacement for BCP Conference.

THAT WAS THE MASTER STROKE!!!

Now, see the twist…

1. BSG Summit is a PAID EVENT. Not free like BCP Conference.
2. BSG is strictly for Business Owners or C-Suite Executives.
3. BSG Summit is OFFLINE BASED and ABUJA based (for now).

We SOLD OUT 2019 event by over 15% and SOLD OUT 2021 edition by 25%. We have not regretted hosting BSG Summit at all.

Both editions, we have had MORE THAN the number of sponsors we sought for. In 2019, we had 7 sponsors from 3 requests. In 2021, we had 14 sponsors from 3 requests. This means we planned for 3 sponsors and got more.

LESSONS LEARNT:

1. Place VALUE on your idea or brand and see value come back in multiple folds.
2. Do not BEG people to pay for your brand. Pay your dues to build your brand and see how people will COMPETE to be part of it. After BSG Summit 2021, 3 people IMMEDIATELY REQUESTED to sponsor 2022 BSG Summit. That is value speaking. We had people who were toying with whether to pay or not and they lost their seats for the summit because we sold out all seats.
3. Design free events with caution. Personally, I will always tilt towards paid events for grand scale nature because it looks like when money is paid for large scale events, trust is heightened and participation is guaranteed.

How To Set Up Your Event To Succeed:

1. Identify the TRUE cost of the event. HOW MUCH WILL EVERYTHING YOU REALLY WANT TO DO COST?
2. Identify how many people you really want to host. Determine the MINIMUM NUMBER you MUST host. This is what determines the fee of the event.
3. Set a fee and FOCUS ON SELLING OUT THE SEATS THAT WILL OFFSET YOUR TRUE COST. If you sell your minimum seats that will hit the exact cost of event, you have done very well.
4. Target filling the rest of the room at your venue. The moment you sell all seats to cover costs, next is to try to complete the seats in your room (for physical events). The more ‘extra’ seats you sell, the higher your NET INCOME post-event. I made an 8-figure net after BSG Summit 2021; less than I targeted but way better than 2019 income. Despite the COVID-19, the event turned out do well.

If you want to learn more about hosting events, please register for EVENTIC-8; a course designed by EMEM OPASHI. Please call her team on +2348053885437. It will remove all the stress. I promise you. Also follow her on www.Instagram.com/ememopashi. Thank me later.

Have I helped you today?

m a k t u b!!!